So, last night I went to the Truth Social website, entered my name and email address. clicked the button which says that I ‘agree to Truth Social’s’ followed by a blank space, and then when I clicked on the Sign Up button, what you see above is what I got. When I went to the website this morning, the same 404 came up again.
Remember Enron? This Houston-based company started out as an outfit that managed gasoline and gas pipelines, then it changed itself into a financial management and investment firm which had the unfortunate habit of overstating how much it earned and understating how much it owed.
Eventually the company went bankrupt, the CEO was packed off to jail, the accounting firm had to change its name because the stench was so bad and a really great book about the scandal, The Smartest Guys in the Room, is worth another read.
At some point, when the company was flying high on revenue that really didn’t exist, the management decided to rebrand its image by coming up with a new corporate logo that would require a complete reprinting of all the stationery and business cards that bore the company’s name, along with a floor-to-ceiling glass wall at company headquarters that had the new logo embossed within the wall of glass.
So, Enron hired a firm that specialized in making sure that the logo was unique, reprinted all the company letterhead and planned a launch of their makeover with an unveiling of the new corporate headquarters wall.
It turned out, of course (you could see it coming) that the day of the launch the Italian subsidiary called up and said that the new logo bore a striking resemblance to the way that Italians held up their fists (with the middle finger extended) to say ‘ma fongool’ (read: go f*** yourself) and millions of pieces of letterhead had to be thrown out, along with the glass wall at the corporate headquarters being demolished before the media showed up to help celebrate the new launch.
I’m wondering if the reason I can’t get into the Truth Social website is because it turns out that the company’s logo bears a remarkable resemblance to the already-published logo of a British energy company, Trailar, which has already begun talking to lawyers about a possible response. And believe me, when you contact an attorney over a trademark issue, it’s not because you want to send a ‘best wishes’ message to the company which has maybe stolen the design of their logo from you.
Yesterday or the day before, Trump said that 300,000 people had already signed up to subscribe to the Truth Social service, but nobody takes anything seriously that he says any more. After all, this is a guy who ran an entire Presidential campaign based on the idea that Hillary Clinton should have gone to jail because she was allegedly receiving classified documents in her home.
How many classified documents did Trump ship down to his home in Palm Beach? Duhh….
When and if the dummies running the Truth Social service are able to figure things out, it’s going to be shared by what Newsweek called “a number of high-profile personalities” who have already signed up. The list of these so-called ‘high profile’ subscribers includes -ready? - Republican North Carolina congressman Madison Cawthorn, Trump-endorsed Arizona gubernatorial GOP candidate hopeful Kari Lake, far-right Arizona Senator Wendy Rogers, Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ryan Fournier, founder of Students for Trump.
That’s a list of ‘high-profile’ subscribers? That’s a list of political ‘high profile’ wannabees and nobodies.
If Trump thinks this website will ever rival sites like Twitter and Facebook to any slight degree, he probably also believes that Rudy Giuliani will go in front of the January 6th Select Committee and do nothing but invoke the Fifth. Which is why Rudy’s lawyer has already said that his client intends to ‘cooperate’ with the Committee when he appears.
Remember the great scene in Godfather II (thanks Paula) where a mobster named Frankie Pantangeli goes before a Congressional Committee and says, “The FBI told me to say this, the FBI told me to say that.”
I can see Rudy right now: “Donald Trump told me to say this, Donald Trump told me to say that.”