Screenshot / MSNBC, Morning Joe, Cropped by Resist the Mainstream

On Tuesday morning, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” panel raged about former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social Stock, urging an investigation into it by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

During the first official days of trading after shareholders approved a merger, the stock soared in price, far above initial expectations. Trump was initially expected to earn a bit over $3 billion from the merger. Instead, as the stock soared in its early days, providing Trump with a nifty sum of 6.8 billion, according to CBS News.

Since then, the value has fallen some, with shares on the market selling currently at 51.60, as opposed to its peak of 79.38, marking a nearly $4 billion loss in market cap. 

However, the merger has still provided Trump Media & Technology Group, formerly Digital World Acquisition Corp., a shell company designed to take Truth Social public, with a 178% increase in value this year, and has made the company more valuable than companies like Bausch & Lomb, Alcoa Corp., or Harley-Davidson.

Trump himself has still earned well above expectations, with the shares he owns being worth $3.8 billion, CBS reported. 

In response to the news of the successful opening, The MSNBC panel suggested there may be “manipulation” of the stock’s value, calling for the SEC to look into it and warning of political ramifications.

“To the extent it makes any money, the revenue number, the amount of money this company makes, is $4 million,” said CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin. “That’s it. That’s all this company makes and it’s being valued in the billions of dollars, literally something like 2,000 times the revenue number. And then the whole thing is absurd.”

“Why the SEC does not think there’s some kind of stock manipulation going on, by the way, but clearly this is one of these almost meme-like stocks where there’s clearly a group of people that are trying to push up the price to almost transfer money potentially to the former president,” he continued.

“Any other social media platform that went public has a real business, has product innovations. This is nothing,” said MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle. “All this is is Donald Trump posting. And so you’ve got … that whole kind of Wall Street Bets, Trump loyalist[s] … saying I’m going to take this thing to the moon. But the other group that could be more dangerous, what an unbelievable transfer of money, right? Unofficial payments, unregulated, almost political donations that nobody’s going to track. And that’s when people are looking at the SEC saying, are you kidding me?”

Sorkin again called on the SEC to look into the stock, suggesting that investors are attempting to sway the election for Trump. 

“That’s why I said, where’s the SEC in this?” he said. “Because this is one of those true manipulations of sorts … People have trying to push up the price almost like in a pyramid-like way to try to get money to the president to try to, effectively, influence the outcome of the election. Why nobody’s going, what is going on here, makes no sense.”