--- title: Trump’s SPAC, explained - The Hustle description: Donald Trump’s new venture -- Truth Social -- wants to take on CNN, Twitter, and Amazon Web Services. There are no details as to how that’ll happen. image: https://hs-sbup.thehustle.co/hubfs/The%20Hustle%20News/Assets/Images/394897829-News-Brief_2021-10-22T003648.746Z.webp --- # Trump’s SPAC, explained ![Trung T. Phan](https://thehustle.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Image-from-iOS-300x300.jpg?width=48&height=48&name=Image-from-iOS-300x300.jpg) [Trung T. Phan](https://hs-sbup.thehustle.co/author/trung-t-phan) [Trung T. Phan Twitter profile ](https://twitter.com/TrungTPhan) Published: October 22, 2021 Updated: October 11, 2023 With how wild 2021 has been, it was inevitable that the following sentence would be typed by business journalists: Donald Trump is rolling out a SPAC. ![Trump’s SPAC, explained](https://hs-sbup.thehustle.co/hs-fs/hubfs/The%20Hustle%20News/Assets/Images/394897829-News-Brief_2021-10-22T003648.746Z.webp?width=595&height=400&name=394897829-News-Brief_2021-10-22T003648.746Z.webp) As a quick primer, a SPAC is “special purpose acquisition company” that raises money into a public shell corporation before acquiring a business (we wrote an explainer [here](https://thehustle.co/what-the-hell-is-a-blank-check-company-spac/)). #### **Trump’s venture is called Truth Social…** … and plans to merge with a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition per [*Axios*](https://www.axios.com/trump-social-network-social-spac-11ae24f9-1774-4b31-946a-e5ab1b5b017e.html). The venture is supposedly Trump’s effort at building a new media empire, but details are lacking: - **What’s the product?** So far, there’s a preorder for Truth Social in the App store (*Axios* says it looks like a “reskinned Twitter”). - **Who’s running it? **The SPAC sponsor Patrick Orlando has not completed a successful SPAC merger, and the only other names mentioned are Trump as chairman and Scott St. John as a streaming producer. Shares in the vehicle ($DWAC) jumped [300%+](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/21/trump-linked-spac-shares-soar-more-than-40percent-on-news-of-social-media-deal.html) on the news and trading was halted multiple times because of volatility. #### **The larger ambition…** … is an entity called the Trump Media & Technology Group. In a 22-page slide deck, the competitive landscape includes over $5T in market cap value (CNN, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon Web Services, Stripe). Unsurprisingly, there are no further details. Somehow, this isn’t even the wildest SPAC announcement this month. Two 20-something frat brothers — one the scion of a Dallas energy family — just raised [$125m](https://www.dallasnews.com/business/banking/2021/10/14/23-year-old-dallas-natives-spac-raises-125-million-in-ipo-to-seek-latin-america-deal/) to find a Latin American acquisition target. 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