Despite his rocky track record with social media, which includes a fictional cow for making fun of him on Twitter, Devin Nunes will be the CEO of Trump Media & Technology starting next month.
The company is a SPAC, which pool funds from the general public in order to finance a merger or acquisition opportunity. Bloomberg's Matt Levine has a fantastic explainer that was originally posted in his newsletter. Currently, the company claims to have over a billion in capital and is being investigated by the SEC.
Trump Media & Technology Group plans to involve both an on-demand programming aspect and a social media called Truth Social. The public saw a test version of the social media in October but it experienced excessive trolling in the hours before it was taken down. It appeared to be similar to Twitter, but it and it calls a post "Truth," a share a "Re-Truth," and a news feed a "Truth Feed."
Critics were quick to note that the Truth Social site was Mastodon fork in violation of the terms of use— Truth Social didn't offer its source code to all users.
So far, its track record is no better than that of Gab or Parler, but it plans to officially launch during the first quarter of 2022. More of the company's vision can be inferred from their absolutely ridiculous 22-slide-long slide deck.
Nunes' departure from Congress comes after nineteen years.
Mr. Nunes was once a trusted lieutenant of Speaker John A. Boehner, a Republican loyalist who clashed fiercely and publicly with the ardent conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus. Those Freedom Caucus rebels went on to become the vanguard of Mr. Trump's takeover of the Republican Party, and Mr. Nunes followed suit.
From his perch on the Intelligence Committee, he ran interference for Mr. Trump against accusations that his 2016 campaign had collaborated with Russian intelligence. Mr. Nunes also organized a united Republican front opposing the first impeachment of the president for withholding military assistance to Ukraine to pressure its government to dig up dirt on Mr. Biden.
Mr. Nunes also waged public fights against the news media and his critics, suing The Washington Post, CNN, The Fresno Bee and Twitter over perceived slights, and going after Twitter in efforts to unmask the author of a mocking account ostensibly written by his cow. (His family runs a dairy operation.)
NYT
The fictional cow on Twitter Devin Nunes once tried to sue (promptly increasing the account's following by a factor of 7000 and illustrating the beauty of the Streisand effect) is thrilled to see him go.
