By
Bena Ilyas
March 11th, 2024
Digital World Acquisition Corp says shareholders have voted to extend the public merger deadline of Trump Media and Truth Social.
According to reports, the planned public merger of Truth Social parent Trump Media and Technology Group has been delayed further. Digital World Acquisition Corp, the blank check company tasked with initiating the public merger, made the delay announcement on Tuesday.
DWAC said it arrived at the decision following a shareholder vote at a meeting on Tuesday. According to the company, it secured the 65% shareholder support needed to extend the deadline of the Trump Media merger to September 2023. Following the delay, DWAC’s shares closed more than 5% higher.
More on Truth Social Parent Public Merger Extension
The public merger extension of Trump Media and Technology Group and its Truth Social platform comes with additional legal and financial challenges. The company’s deal with DWAC is currently under probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and federal criminal investigators. However, DWAC was also in danger of liquidation next month if it failed to secure the deadline extension. Meanwhile, the shareholder meeting took place after multiple delays, a period also characterized by DWAC’s failure to secure the necessary votes from its numerous retail investors.
So far, DWAC has yet to generate any revenue and already has $1 billion in financing at risk. In a recent filing with the SEC, the blank check company said there was significant doubt that it could continue its affairs. However, DWAC chief executive Patrick Orlando contributed $2.8 million from his company Arc Global Investments II as part of the merger’s built-in extension.
Orlando commented on the nature of the shareholder meeting, saying, “It’s a really arduous process when you have as many stockholders as we did”. The DWAC CEO has been working to heighten the vote count on Trump Media’s Truth Social platform. He even went as far as urging Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes and Donald Trump himself to assist in publicizing the effort. According to Orlando:
“I would expect Truth [Social] to be the main platform for the [former] president’s tweets, or, his truths. At Digital World, we don’t actually control anything to do with Truth and its users at this point. But we’re watching it, and we really like what we see with user engagement.”
Trump Supporters Rally for Truth Social
Several Trump supporters have already taken to Truth and Reddit to express their support for the DWAC-Trump Media merger. According to these supporters, they have already invested thousands of dollars in DWAC. Should the merger take place, it would grant a substantial amount of funding to Trump Media.
Trump previously expressed a willingness to take the company public. Furthermore, internal documents also revealed that Trump Media considered mergers and partnerships with other platforms that support traditional social ideas. These include Rumble and Parler.
A few days ago, new Twitter owner Elon Musk reinstated the Twitter account of Donald Trump. However, the former president does not appear keen on rejoining the social media platform.
