The empire of the loyal: How Trump is turning loyalty into a media asset

In the summer of 2025, Donald Trump's Trump Media & Technology Group significantly expanded the area of its interests: the company now officially intends to deal with cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence.  Ksenia Turkova - on how the president and entrepreneur is creating a business around an alternative media reality.

The starting point of the current American president's media assets was Truth Social - it was launched as an alternative to Twitter in 2021, after Trump himself was blocked there. The platform was immediatelypositioned as a personal tribune and the foundation of Trump's future media ecosystem, where one can control the agenda and monetize political capital. Bloomberg wrote at the time that the social network's ambitions extend beyond competing with social networks: "the company is hinting at a future technology stack that could include payment services similar to Stripe Inc. and cloud features that compete with Amazon.com and Alphabet Inc.'s Google.";  

The company itself does not publish data on the number of users. According to information from SEO.AI, Truth Social had about 6.3 million active users as of January 2025. According to Statista, the platform records about 3.9 million visits from desktop computers and mobile devices in the U.S. every month according to Statista. Based on these numbers, Truth Social is still well behind  Facebook with 3.29 billion daily users and Social Network X with 600 million monthly users (data is unofficial, Ilon Musk does not publish these reports). 

However, according to Vasily Gatov, a media analyst and expert at the Annenberg School of Communications, Truth Social cannot be considered as an alternative to established media platforms in the classical sense - neither in terms of coverage, nor in terms of technological maturity, nor in terms of economics;

"It's not a competitor to X (formerly Twitter), Facebook or YouTube. It's not even a Telegram channel - in terms of distributing news and ideas. But Trump's key objective - creating a safe environment for 'information masturbation' - Truth Social fulfills brilliantly. It's not a media outlet, it's not a platform, it's a safe haven. It's not where they discuss, it's where they agree. The audience is compact, predictable and extremely loyal. In a political sense, yes, it is an alternative. In the technological and market sense - no," says Gatov;

In the beginning, Truth Social was an isolated network and the sole product of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). Toward 2025, its role changed: it became the core of more than just a media structure. Now the Trump Media & Technology Group includes Truth.Fi - this year it filed applications to register two crypto ETFs, while TMTG  - has filed applications for the trademarks "Truth Social AI" and "Truth Social AI Search" - part of initiatives to integrate AI features into the platform.  

In early July, Trump Medialaunched the global streaming platform Truth+, making his longtime supporter Christopher Rudley's TV channel, Newsmax, the flagship channel for international markets. This agreement allows Newsmax content to be streamed globally - on Apple TV, Android, iOS, on Roku (a popular US streaming platform and TV set-top box through which users watch online content) and web platforms, and without the need for a VPN. 

NewsMax's audience over the past 5 years has grown in primetime viewing by 1027%, according to Nielsen's Q1 report, the channel is now the 4th most popular cable TV channel in the U.S. 

In March 2025, Newsmax went public and the IPO was more than successful. Due to high volatility, trading was suspended several times. The stock rose by 735%, Christopher Ruddy became a billionaire in one day, his fortune grew to $3.3 billion;

NewsMax has been criticized for propagating conspiracy theories - about the 2020 election, the January 6 storming of the Capitol, and the dangers of COVID-19 vaccines. Voting system manufacturers Smartmatic and Dominion even sued Newsmax for its claims about the 2020 election. Last year, the company reached a settlement with Smartmatic, with Newsmax paying the latter $40 million. Trump's representatives have yet to reach a settlement with Dominion;

Formally, Newsmax remains independent from Trump Media. It has quite influential investors: Interactive Brokers founder Thomas Peterffy, Ukrainian industrialist Vadim Shulman and a member of the Qatari royal family, Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al-Thani. The Al-Thani family will gift one of their planes to Trump in Mayit was officially said to "give the Pentagon a plane for Air Force One as part of an intergovernmental agreement." 

De facto, it is Trump's Truth+ platform that expands NewsMax's access to audiences. Media producer and futurologist Jaan Jones on MSNBC's Opinion section (one of the outlets Trump calls "fake news")  notes, "This means the president is now financially tied to a propaganda platform he frequently invites into the White House briefing room, a media outlet embroiled in a legal battle over falsehoods regarding the 2020 election." And earlier this year, Newsmax and The Blaze, MAGA-friendly media outlets, were given access to the White House press pool instead of HuffPost and Reuters - which was apparently part of an effort to add more media outlets loyal to Trump. This is the type of corrupt scheme that one can imagine Hungary's leader Viktor Orban talking about in 2022. He advised Republicans to have "their own media" to fight liberals and build a society like Hungary's, which Orban called an "illiberal democracy."

It is the fight against the liberal agenda that Trump Media executives say is the main goal. "We are excited about Truth+'s rapid expansion into international markets," said CEO and Chairman Devin Nunez. - We are laying the groundwork to challenge the monolith of the woke agenda [increased focus on equality and diversity - Oninvest note] with hard-hitting, reporting without woke ideology and commentary."

While accusing media outlets that don't support him of "left-wing radicalism" and usurping the news space, Trump is building his own, conservative monolith. And that's the difference between his 2025 media strategy and what he did during his first term. Media analyst Vasily Gatov explains, "In 2016-2020, Trump played a parasitic game: sucking attention from the big media, turning CNN and Twitter into his megaphones. He didn't own the agenda, he hacked into someone else's. After the lockdown (in 2021), he realized: control is more important than reach. Now the strategy is different: isolation and sovereignty. He doesn't want to be part of a big media platform - he is building his own."

The media business for the 47th President of the United States is also a family media business. Members of the American leader's family are actively involved in the activities of Trump Media. The most prominent figure is Donald Trump Jr.: he is the only beneficiary of the revocable Trump Media trust - the president is not supposed to be in business. Not only is Trump Jr. the chief promoter of Truth Social, but he is also the "public face of the brand" for TMTG's patent applications, he also supports the launch of Truth+ streaming and will likely co-host it. Eric Trump is also involved in promoting the platform, and served as a strategic advisor during TMTG's early development. His wifeLara Trump is a media personality, she appears regularly on TMTG's closely related Newsmax and OANN channels, and has been considered as a potential female talk show host on Truth+.  Lara Trump is also a member of the Republican National Committee (RNC). 

The company's overall strategy is clear: to monetize the political allegiance and will of millions of loyal users by creating a media network, financial products and an alternative platform for speaking out. 

Can Trump's media business be considered a success? When the social network Trump Media & Technology Group went public, its shares jumped by 59%, the company quickly reached a valuation of almost $10 billion.However, this success, while seemingly obvious, has raised questions. In September before the election, the company's value fell more than $7 billion from its May peak, and then it recovered by nearly $3 billion dollars in less than a month. 

The growth wasn't driven by any fundamentals, wrote Bloomberg: Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. reported sales of just $1.6 million in the first six months. According to independent data, Truth Social's number of active users hasn't topped a million a day over the past year. It looks like a classic meme stock, but there's a nuance. Unlike investors who solely want a return on their investment, buyers of Truth Social shares have no such motivation, Reuters wrote: Trump supporters  see the investment  as an opportunity to invest in him - or simply to show the president their support and belief in the political drive. That's why they're getting into the business despite the losses. Although a major institutional player, Charles Schwab Investment Management, is listed among the investors in TMTG. Charles Schwab's granddaughter was appointed to a senior Treasury position in the spring.

In 2024, Trump Media reporteda net loss of $400.9 million  on revenue of just $3.6 million.  

In Q1 of this year, Trump Mediarevenueswere already $8.8 million, with a GAAP loss of $31.7 million. But the company has an impressive $759 million liquidity cushion and operating expenses remain moderate. 

There have been no attempts to create such media empires "for themselves" in the history of the United States. However, can this be considered a bid for a classic empire in the spirit of Murdoch (who, incidentally, was recently sued by Trump)?

Media analyst Vasily Gatov believes that it is impossible;

"Trump has no content to sell to Netflix. No news that can be reprinted in other countries. No systemic revenue other than fundraising and merch. Everything hangs on one thing: his name, conflict, and constant mobilization heat," the expert explains. 

According to him, efficiency in this system is measured differently, within the framework of the specific task it solves. In other words, this is not media as a business, but media as a system of power, in which real revenues remain minimal and the sustainability of the business is questionable.

At the same time, even companies that are affiliated with Trump's "media empire" but are not formally part of it raise fewer concerns. 

For example, global online trading platform Mitrade.com, which provides access to international financial markets, recently analyzed the best Trump-related memes and compared Newsmax to the Trump Media. 

Conclusion - even though neither looks reliable, you should choose Newsmax out of two evils;

Newsmax earns about $171 million dollars a year, and investors value the company at about $1.8 billion - $1.9 billion, which means it is worth 10-11 times its annual revenue,   by the way, Meta has the same P/S ratio.

Trump Media's situation is different.  The company has a market capitalization of $5 billion, although it earned only about $4.5 million last year.  That is a P/S  (price-to-sales) ratio of more than 1,100. Further evidence that demand for the securities is fueled by Trump supporters' faith in his brand. 

As media analyst Vasily Gatov says, in essence, this is not an empire, but a media tribe with a totem;

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor