Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the US Election Countdown newsletter for freeThe stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House“To the extent users prefer a platform that is not associated with president Donald J Trump, TMTG’s ability to attract users may decrease,” read the disclosures in Trump Media & Technology Group’s recent filings. One user who apparently does not prefer TMTG is Donald Trump. Trump and Elon Musk conducted a glitch-filled discussion on Monday night but not one that happened using Truth Social, Trump’s social network owned by TMTG. Instead, the session was on X, formerly known as Twitter and owned by Musk.Both face desperate circumstances. The former president and Republican candidate is now trailing Kamala Harris in the polls ahead of November’s election. As for Musk, X has shed billions in annual advertising revenue since his 2022 takeover. It is dire enough that the tech billionaire has been left to allege an illegal conspiracy among big brands to deprive him of business.Still, each retains plenty of loyal acolytes and both believe themselves worthy of their own social networks. But the two businesses are in very different positions — ones that lead them to embrace each other, however awkwardly. Consider TMTG to be a meme stock, one that came out of a messy Spac merger. In its most recent quarter it only generated $800,000 in revenue. It is building a conservative media ecosystem including not just Truth Social but a nascent streaming content business “focusing on news, Christian content, and family-friendly programming.”TMTG has no debt: just $344mn of cash and big dreams. All of that is worth a market capitalisation of roughly $5bn (almost half belongs to Trump himself).In this sense, TMTG is both a meme stock and a cash shell built around the cult of Trump. Standing up a real business is hard enough. Not having Trump’s undivided loyalty may be fatal.Musk’s X has the opposite problem: it is very much not debt free with $13bn worth of loans and bonds. But he does have hundreds of millions of users whom Trump is desperate to reach (Trump retains 88mn followers on X even after once being banned and later reinstated. On Truth Social he has fewer than 10mn followers).Musk might wonder then if his fanboys would prop up X were it publicly traded, in the way that Trump’s have boosted the much more barren TMTG. For a night, politics made for strange bedfellows. And so did business.sujeet.indap@ft.com
