So we have another on-set rewrite on the Saving Private Trump movie.
Today was the day Trump’s 30-day grace period ran out and the State of New York, in the person of NY AG Tish James, could start collecting on the $464 million judgment. But now a New York appeals court judge has stepped in and given Trump a significant reprieve. He now has ten days to come up with a significantly reduced bond of $175 million. Remember that the judgment was actually $355 plus almost $100 million in interest. So the logic of the number seems to be cutting the main judgment roughly in half (that’s my speculation) and making that the amount of the bond. The judgment itself stands. This is just about the bond.
Needless to say, this is a big, big win for Trump, at least for now.
But he’s not necessarily out of the woods.
Reporting to date suggests that very few underwriters will write any bond for over $100 million. So even apart from what liquid assets Trump has to provide as collateral for the bond, most underwriters won’t go over $100 million at all. Or at least it’s a big departure for them. It’s also not clear whether Trump has the liquid assets he could use as collateral for the reduced bond. Remember that he already put up a bond for approaching $100 million in the E. Jean Carroll case.
On paper he now has a couple billion dollars tied to his Truth Social Twitter clone. Literally nobody thinks that valuation makes any sense. I looked it up. Truth Social has total revenue roughly equal to TPM’s and about something like $50 million in expenses. The whole thing is a joke. It’s essentially a memestock. But for the moment they’ve found a mix of dumb and corrupt money to float it. It’s very hard to imagine any underwriter would accept that as collateral. At least in theory it’s also locked up for at least six months. We’ve learned never to say never here. And I am writing on a story that is changing as I write. So see everything here at tentative. The point, however, is that that path is at least very complicated.
For now I think we can say big win for Trump, for reasons or rationales that are not yet clear. But we could easily be right back here in ten days. Because $175 million is still a ton of money. And it’s not totally clear Trump can come up with a bond for that amount either.
