Fox Reports Trump’s TRUTH Social Faces ‘Big Money Woes,’ Owes Web Host $1.6 Million in Outstanding Payments

By Sarah RumpfAug 25th, 2022, 3:48 pm
 

At least he’s consistent. The ex-president with a decades-long history of screwing over his vendors is once again the face of a company with major financial troubles and unhappy unpaid vendors.

TRUTH Social, the social media platform launched by former President Donald Trump to post his various complaints and musings after getting permabanned from Twitter, is reportedly having major financial problems, including owing its web hosting company $1.6 million.

The scoop was tweeted Thursday afternoon by Fox Business senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino, who wrote there were “big money woes” at TRUTH Social, specifically describing how one of its “biggest vendors,” web-hosting service provider RightForge, was owed $1.6 million after the company had fallen months behind in its payments.

Gasparino reported the story on his colleague Neil Cavuto’s show, noting how TRUTH Social had finally seen improvement in terms of user growth with a surge of downloads in the aftermath of the FBI executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, but “still trails Twitter by a mile.”

TRUTH Social “kind of can’t get out of its own way,” Gasparino continued, mentioning the platform’s early tech glitches and ongoing investigations the company was facing.

RightForge was getting “stiffed,” Gasparino reported, according to “three sources, all with direct knowledge of the matter,” with TRUTH Social “reneging on its contractual obligations to pay” after making only three payments.

“This is a big thing,” said Gasparino, pointing out that this was a major vendor providing the critically-important web hosting infrastructure and other services without which TRUTH Social could not operate.

Trump himself has struggled recently hiring a top-notch legal team to defend him regarding the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, reportedly due in no small part to his well-documented history of failing to pay his legal bills, and the attorneys he did manage to hire have made some humiliating stumbles even in these early stages of the case. If RightForge expels TRUTH Social from their web hosting services after this publicly-reported spat over nonpayment, the platform may find it challenging to sign up a new provider.

According to Gasparino, TRUTH Social last paid RightForge in March and currently owed $1.6 million.

“If you talk to the people that are close to this battle,” said Gasparino, “they say they [TRUTH Social] have no money, they are broke and they’re not paying.”

When Gasparino reached out for comment, RightForge did not deny the story and TRUTH Social had no comment, he told Cavuto.

“It has the smell of pretty bad money problems at TRUTH Social,” Gasparino concluded, “and generally — I’m not saying this is going to happen — but, Neil, you’ve been covering this as long as I have, when you start stiffing your vendors you’re on the road to a Chapter 11,” referencing the reorganization chapter of the federal bankruptcy laws.

Gasparino shared a byline with Eleanor Terrett in a Fox Business article covering the “bitter battle” between TRUTH Social and Right Forge, noting that the vendor was threatening legal action to collect the money it was owed and describing the allegations against Trump’s social media platform, if true, would suggest that the company’s finances are “in significant disarray.”

Watch the video above, via Fox Business.

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Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law & Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on the BBC, MSNBC, NewsNation, Fox 35 Orlando, Fox 7 Austin, The Young Turks, The Dean Obeidallah Show, and other television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe.