It Sure Looks Like Donald Trump Is Trying to Trademark ‘Truthing’

On Wednesday, ex-president and present loser Donald Trump introduced he’s launching the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), a enterprise supposedly valued at $1.7 billion that will embody every thing from a hellhole social community known as Truth Social to “non-woke” leisure. Par for his monitor file, it seems to be like he’s attempting to grab up rights to numerous permutations of the phrase “Truth.”

As Mother Jones factors out, filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from a Florida lawyer named Holly Collins look an terrible lot like they have been made on behalf of TMTG. On Oct. 13, Collins filed for a trademark on “TruthSocial,” with the needs listed as associated to software program, telecommunications, on-line user-generated content material, and digital content material internet hosting. On Oct. 14, she filed for a trademark on TMTG+, and the subsequent day for TMTG, each listed as associated to cellular purposes, promoting and advertising and marketing, and on-demand content material streaming.

Around the identical time, Collins additionally filed for a lot of phrases that one might simply see popping up because the lingua franca of Truth Social, maybe changing phrases like “fave” or “retweet”: on Oct. 14, she filed for emblems on “Truthing,” “Retruth,” “Post a Truth” and “Follow the Truth.” The final of these is definitely already in use. The submitting for Follow the Truth is accompanied by a emblem equivalent to promotional supplies launched by Trump’s media group, and which additionally seems as the principle catchphrase on the Truth Social web site.

Collins advised the patent workplace she was submitting the trademark requests on behalf of, T Media Tech LLC, which was registered in Delaware this summer season and relies in Orlando, Florida. It doesn’t seem to have any on-line presence—until, after all, it’s the identical entity as or a kind of owned by TMTG.

(Gizmodo reached out to TMTG however didn’t obtain a response. We’ll replace if we hear again.)

Trump is famously obsessive about branding and emblems—it’s the explanation why the Trump household identify seems on much more properties than they really personal. One instance, NPR reported in 2015, is a collection of towers on the West Side that bear Trump’s identify regardless of him not truly having an possession stake in them. In the Nineteen Seventies, Trump reportedly owed Chase Bank a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars} over the Riverside South venture (of which the towers have been an element) on the identical time his different actual property companies and Atlantic City on line casino have been struggling. Trump was compelled to promote the event to traders from Hong Kong to keep away from a complete collapse, however the deal he struck required leaving the Trump emblem on them. According to NPR, Trump owns only a handful of the 17 Trump-branded buildings in NYC.

In 2011, Trump claimed to be value $7 billion, of which $3 billion he claimed was the worth of his model. At that point, Trump had filed over 200 trademark purposes for every thing from “Trump Class” and “Trumpnet” to “The Donald J. Trump Credit Card,” “Tour de Trump,” and (ominously) “Trump Power”. He additionally frequently information for emblems to companies that he has but to publicly announce. So, it is a man obsessive about snatching the rights to just about something he can get his fingers on.

TMTG might be listed on the NASDAQ inventory trade courtesy of a merger with one other shell firm, Digital World Acquisition Group, which is appearing as a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). SPACs are basically shell companies shaped for the only goal of buying an unlisted firm with the intention to fast-track it to going public. SPACs have raised over $100 billion lately, largely specializing in the tech sector and within the course of changing into emblematic of the speculative hype that’s rife in tech investments. Trump’s enterprise seems to be a little different.

As CNN noted, regardless of the announcement being accompanied by an investor data packet somewhat than the extra common disclosures of economic projections and particulars on the deal, shares in Digital World Acquisition Group are actually skyrocketing. After closing at $9.96 on Wednesday, it was value as much as $131.90 a share on Friday, in keeping with CNN.

“This is extremely unusual, especially now…Nowadays it’s rare to see a SPAC pop more than 10%,” Matt Kennedy, a senior IPO market strategist at Renaissance Capital, advised CNN.

“This is clearly meme stock territory. It’s totally disconnected from fundamentals,” Kennedy added. To traders, he warned “Be prepared to lose potentially everything else. This is a stock trading purely on momentum.”

Beyond the speculative surge, TMTG and Truth Social have one accomplishment to this point: doubtless being the demise of GETTR, the MAGA social community that longtime Trump aide Jason Miller grew to become CEO of this yr. Truth Social is itself not doing so scorching, because it was promptly flooded with trolls who found an insecure signup web page that shouldn’t have been stay but. One of them registered the deal with @donaldjtrump and instantly started posting a meme of a pig pooping. Developers behind the open-source codebase that Truth Social seems to be constructed on, Mastodon, have accused TMTG of violating the software’s licensing agreement and are demanding that the corporate come into compliance inside 30 days or danger dealing with authorized motion.