Truth Social, we hardly knew you! Just six months after its chaotic launch, it looks as if Donald Trump’s social media network could be on the verge of collapse. As first reported by Fox Business, Truth Social allegedly owes about $1.6m to RightForge, the internet infrastructure company that hosts the app. Paying that back might be tough since Truth Social doesn’t seem to make money and is facing a number of problems, including declining traffic and the recent denial of its trademark applications. Trump Media & Technology Group, Truth Social’s parent company, is also embroiled in a federal investigation about whether it violated securities laws.
While all that sounds pretty bad, everything is rosy in the alternative universe Trump appears to inhabit. On Monday, the former president said that rumours of Truth Social’s demise are greatly exaggerated. And, to be fair, while multiple reputable news outlets have reported that Truth Social hasn’t paid RightForge since around March, the CEO of the hosting company – which targets its services at conservatives – hasn’t publicly confirmed these reports. Instead, Martin Avila told Fox Business that RightForge “believes in the mission of President Trump’s free speech platform”. Believing in free speech can be very expensive, I guess.
Can I say with 100% certainty that Truth Social is stiffing its business partners? No. But would it be a surprise to anybody if it was? Also no. Trump, after all, has a long history of refusing to pay his bills. A 2016 USA Today investigation found that Trump has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades – a large number of which involve small contractors, who say Trump or his companies refused to pay them. Rather than being embarrassed about avoiding his contractual obligations, Trump wears his stinginess like a badge of honour. He has told reporters that he will frequently refuse to pay bills in an attempt to negotiate them down. For normal people, reneging on debt ruins your credit and gets you in a lot of trouble. For the likes of Trump – who has called himself “the king of debt” – it’s a money-making technique. “I’ve made a fortune by using debt, and if things don’t work out I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing,” he has boasted.
Credit where it’s due, Trump does seem to have a gift when it comes to convincing others to pay his bills. Last year, for example, the Republican National Committee agreed to cover up to $1.6m of Trump’s personal legal bills in what the New York Times characterised as an “unusual arrangement”. (I’d love to find an unusual arrangement like that myself! It would make my mortgage so much easier.) And when Trump was president, of course, he got the taxpayer to fund many of his expenses, including a $1,000 bar bill his team racked up at Mar-a-Lago in 2019.
Trump may be exceptionally cheap but it’s only fair to note that he is far from the only rich person accused of not paying their bills. Ghislaine Maxwell, her brother Kevin and her (now estranged) husband Scott Borgerson, for example, are being sued over more than $878,000 in unpaid legal fees by a law firm representing her. Do I know for certain that these allegations are true? No. Does it seem as though rich people learn to hold on to their assets at around the same time the rest of us are playing hide and seek? Yes.
Speaking of the rich and evasive, I can’t not mention Boris Johnson. I don’t know if he’s ever fleeced a web hosting company out of its monthly fees, but it’s been widely claimed that he has tried to get Conservative party donors to pay for everything from his kids’ nanny to a personal trainer. Jennifer Arcuri, who had an affair with Boris Johnson when he was mayor of London, also once claimed that Johnson asked to borrow £3.10 in order to buy drinks on their first date. The first rule of Rich Club, it seems, is that you let everyone else pay for Rich Club. The second rule, meanwhile, seems to be that you ignore the contractual obligations to which the rest of us are beholden. Laws are for poors!
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
