Opinion | Finally, a Sort of Real Number for Donald Trump’s Entirely Subjective

And yet the company has excited traders enough to boost its current market value to more than $2 billion. You might think that this means the Trump brand is actually worth $2 billion, but you’d be wrong: The speculative run-up of the stock is a reaction to the $1 billion the Trump brand attracted, not to the Trump brand alone.

Did we say there are no big names attached to TMTG? Well, Trump is chair, and he is a big name. But he has no tech experience and a mixed record, at best, as a company-builder. The second biggest name at TMTG is Devin Nunes, whom Trump just appointed as the company’s CEO. Nunes is a soon-to-retire Republican member of Congress who has degrees in agriculture science and lots of experience running his family’s dairy farm, but no tech background. Sounds like a great starting rotation for a phantom team!

The ridicule that’s gushing down on Trump’s company from the tech and financial press is wholly warranted. Putting money into the company is “is closer to gambling than investing,” says Marketwatch. TMTG has already blown through its promise to produce a beta version of its Truth software by November and the Securities and Exchange Commission has commenced an investigation of whether Trump’s media company had broken securities laws in its formation. All this flakiness gives us a safe harbor the size of the San Francisco Bay to speculate that Trump hasn’t set out to create a viable media business as much as he has dreamed up a new fusion of politics, media and finance designed with one primary objective: To give people who like Trump an easy and legal way to give Trump money.

The way TMTG has come charging out of the gate with no product and no revenue but ample investors has financial journalists comparing it to a meme stock (like Gamestop, AMC and Blackberry) — securities that appeal to naïve retail investors who willingly ignore business fundamentals and buy depending on which way the social media winds blow.

A different point of comparison might be with other ex-presidents looking to cash in on their political celebrity. Trump isn’t the first to board the money-go-round after leaving office. In the first dozen years out of office, Bill Clinton collected $106 million for giving speeches. Barack and Michelle Obama reportedly signed a $65 million book deal. But no former president — and certainly no former president who is preparing to run again — has ever dipped his cup into financial markets to raise the sort of money TMTG has raised overnight.

The prospect of another Trump run again raises fresh ethical issues. Who might the unnamed investors enlisted by Trump be, O’Brien asks in his column? To whom might Trump become financially beholden? Who will have financial hooks into him if he regains the White House? The Saudis? United Arab Emirates? Russian oligarchs? Drug cartels? Any one of these groups would represent a conflict of interest — not to mention a potential national security threat — that would make his Trump Hotel entanglements look like free tickets to a monster truck show.

What, exactly, did unnamed investors buy when they dropped their millions into TMTG? And should we…