That might appear straightforward, but DWAC has been running an aggressive campaign to get the votes out, suggesting that it is concerned about the outcome.

Its sponsors hold about 18 per cent of the vehicle’s shares, but the rest is widely dispersed among largely retail shareholders. DWAC’s chief executive, Patrick Orlando, has said a majority of the stock is held by those retail investors. Typically, in proxy votes, only about 28 per cent of retail shareholders participate, he said in an online interview late last month.

‘I’ve made a fortune by using debt and, if things don’t work out, I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing.’

Donald Trump

To get the extension across the line, DWAC needs a vote of at least 65 per cent in favour, which means it needs about 57 per cent of the non-sponsor votes. While most of the retail investors will probably be die-hard Trump supporters, that’s still a tough ask.

If the extension doesn’t get sufficient support, then DWAC could get a six-month extension if it can convince its backers to put more money up, but there is no certainty that the SEC or the DoJ will have completed their investigations by then, or what action they might take.

Without the deal, Trump Media is probably in a bit of strife. Indeed, with reports that it is already failing to pay its bills, it might already be.

Donald Trump does, of course, have a track record of not paying his debts as part of what he sees as a clever business strategy.

“I’ve made a fortune by using debt and, if things don’t work out, I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing,” he once said.

Truth Social and its parent Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), however, don’t appear to have much of a future even if Trump were to get his hands on DWAC’s cash. Without it, it would have to either raise cash elsewhere (Trump might have to dig deep into his own pockets) or be liquidated.

The social media platform, something of a rip-off of Twitter, has struggled to gain traction with anyone other than Trump’s hardcore MAGA crowd.

It has only modest traffic – a couple of hundred thousand viewers a day compared with the 1.5 million when it launched and Trump himself has only about 4 million followers, compared with the 88 million he had on Twitter before it kicked him off that platform. Twitter has nearly 40 million active users a day.

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While the site did get something of a spike when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, that only reinforced the view that the site is completely dependent on Trump and his popularity, which has been waning among voters in the US.

As DWAC itself said in a SEC filing recently that “if President Trump becomes less popular or there are further controversies that damage his credibility or the desire of people to use a platform associated with him, and from which he will derive financial benefit, TMTG’s results of operations, as well as the outcome of the proposed business combination, could be adversely affected.”

Apart from the fact that Truth Social doesn’t have exclusive access to Trump’s “truths” – he could tweet/post elsewhere if other platforms allow him – he has an obvious use-by date.

If he runs for president again and wins in 2024, he could extend that date, but his shelf life, and that of the platform, appears limited to how long he remains a central figure within US politics and even that assumes he can broaden Truth Social’s appeal beyond his base.

That ambition of enlarging the audience has been impacted by Google’s decision to block Truth Social from its Play Store, citing multiple violations of its content policies.

[Trump Media] clearly needs DWAC’s cash, or a big lump of funding from elsewhere, if it is to have a future.

(After the FBI raid in Florida, one Truth Social user posted “kill (the FBI) on sight”. He was subsequently shot and killed after attempting to storm an FBI field office in Cincinnati. That’s the sort of thing that gets you banned, or kicked out of, app stores, but threats of violence aren’t uncommon on the platform).

As for controversies, the hoard of classified documents he was hanging onto at Mar-a-Lago is only one of a myriad controversies and potential legal threats Trump faces from his controversial tenure of the White House.

Trump Media lost $US6.5 million in the June half and, while it raised $US15 million earlier this year, it clearly needs DWAC’s cash, or a big lump of funding from elsewhere, if it is to have a future, let alone realise Trump’s ambitions of creating a major digital media business.

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Even if the shareholder meeting approves the extension, of course, it could be up to another 12 months before Trump media gets its hands on the money, assuming DWAC’s sponsors and the hedge funds that have made the $US1 billion commitment are still prepared to hand it over.

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