President Donald Trump’s media company announced Tuesday that it has replaced CEO Devin Nunes, a Trump loyalist, amid what appears to be ongoing tumult for the organization.
A news release from Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., which operates the president’s social media platform, Truth Social, said the company had appointed one of its advisers, Kevin McGurn, as interim CEO. Nunes said in a statement that McGurn would lead Trump Media “through its current transition phase.”
One way to think of McGurn, a longtime media executive, is as a corporate babysitter tapped to watch over the Trump family’s business interests. McGurn also leads a firm backed by Trump’s two eldest sons that invests in U.S. manufacturing — that is, an industry in which the president is personally invested and over which Trump’s administration has tremendous influence. The New York Times noted that McGurn also apparently leads Texas Ventures Acquisition III Corp., to which Trump Media has considered selling Truth Social.
The idea of a president owning an eponymous media company — and effectively promoting it via deranged Truth Social proclamations — is one of those brazenly unethical scenarios that was previously unheard of in the White House.
But no matter the ethics, Trump Media is a real thing that exists. And despite announcing products like Truth+, the streaming platform where viewers can gorge themselves on the likes of pro-Trump propaganda network Newsmax, things don’t seem to be going swimmingly of late: The Wall Street Journal reported that the company’s stock price fell to an all-time low last month. (Trump Media has filed defamation lawsuits against MS NOW and several other media organizations over 2024 reports about the company’s revenue.)
The company’s flagship product, Truth Social, has also shown signs of decline. A recent New York Times report noted that there has even been a spike in anti-Trump sentiment among the president’s own supporters, amid the administration’s ongoing war with Iran:
Thousands of users on the social media platform, which Mr. Trump created in 2022, have responded to the president’s drumbeat of posts with a mix of frustration, disbelief and outrage.
They have written that they feel betrayed by the expanding war in Iran and ashamed when Mr. Trump used an expletive on Easter to make demands of the Iranian government. Some were so perplexed by his military interventions that one declared they ‘make zero sense.’
As Trump Media’s new CEO, it seems McGurn will be tasked with pulling the company out of its financial and public relations tailspin.
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