Did President Donald Trump sell $2.3 billion of his Truth Social stock a day before he announced new tariffs? No, that's not true: Trump cannot yet sell his shares in Trump Media and Technology Group Corp., the company that owns the Truth Social platform, according to SEC filings. The company issued a statement saying the claim was a false interpretation of a "routine" registration filing on April 2, 2025, and that no shares were sold. The filing came on the same day Trump announced 10 percent tariffs on imports from all countries, along with higher rates on dozens of countries with trade surpluses with the U.S.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on April 7, 2025, under the title "He played all you MAGA SUCKERS AND LOSERS!" It read:
Trump sold 2.3 billion worth of his Truth Social stock the day before he announced the tariffs. And other stock as well. His family did the same. What does that tell everyone?
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X.com screenshot)
The origin of the claim appeared to be from a registration filing, known as a Form S-3, made by the company on April 2, 2025. The company soon followed the S-3 filing with a statement making it clear there was no stock sale by Trump:
SARASOTA, Fla., April 02, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. (Nasdaq: DJT) ("TMTG" or "the Company"), operator of the social media platform Truth Social, the streaming platform Truth+, and the FinTech brand Truth.Fi, released the following statement in response to inaccurate stories about its filing of a registration statement on form S-3 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission:
'Legacy media outlets are spreading a fake story suggesting that a TMTG filing today is paving the way for the Trump trust to sell its shares in TMTG. To be clear, these shares were already registered last June on an S-1 form, and today TMTG submitted a routine filing that re-registers them on an S-3 form in order to keep the Company's filings effective. In fact, there currently is no open window for any affiliate to sell shares.'
Any sale of TMTG shares (listed as DJT on Nasdaq) would be documented in filings with the SEC. There are no such filings at the time of writing.
There were media reports on April 2, 2025 about the new S-3 filing, including a New York Times story headlined "Trump Media Refiles to Register the President's Shares, Worth $2 Billion, for Sale":
President Trump's social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, filed to re-register for sale billions of dollars' worth of shares that he has in the company and that are held in a trust overseen by his eldest son.
The registration statement, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, permits the trust to sell shares, but that doesn't mean any sale is imminent. The nearly 115 million shares held in the trust were previously registered last summer by Trump Media, which is the parent company of Truth Social, the social media platform that Mr. Trump has used as his primary online megaphone.
The NYT report did not include a claim that Trump sold the shares before the tariff announcement. DJT shares plunged in value soon after the announcement.
