President Joe Biden indulged in some good old-fashioned Trump-bashing along the campaign trail on Tuesday, needling his rival about his media company’s plunging shares during a speech in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
“You know, I have to say, if Trump’s stock in Truth Social—his company—drops any lower, he might do better under my tax plan than his,” Biden said to a surge of laughter and applause. “Possibly.”
Stock in Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) has tumbled a staggering 68 percent since its initial offering in late March. Widely viewed as a meme stock, it was nevertheless snapped up by MAGA-loving day traders and quickly peaked at $80 a share on the second day of trading.
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At close on Tuesday, the share price was down to just over $22, a figure that slices the company’s valuation by more than half compared to its first week on the market.
Donald Trump owns nearly 60 percent of the company with more than 78 million shares. After Trump Media stock nosedived in early April, he was unceremoniously booted off the Bloomberg Billionaires Index—where he’d earned a spot for the first time only days prior upon DJT’s white-hot debut.
He will be unable to realize his shares, whatever their value, until September unless granted express permission by the Trump Media board.
Biden is in Pennsylvania—both his home turf and an important battleground state—for a three-day swing. In Scranton, he pitched voters on a “fair” tax code and his economic record, touting plans to expand the child tax credit, institute credits for new home buyers, and permanently extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.
Along the way, the president was careful to frame his chief rival as a bootlicker to his billionaire friends whose tax plan shafted ordinary Americans during the previous administration.
“Donald Trump looks at the world differently than you and me,” Biden said. “He wakes up in the morning at Mar-a-Lago thinking about himself. How he can help his billionaire friends gain power and control, and force their extreme agenda on the rest of us.”
Trump “embodies” the trickle-down economic policies touted by Republicans that “failed the middle class,” Biden said. “Folks,” he added, “he’s coming for your money, your health care, your Social Security. And we’re not going to let it happen.”
Even as Biden attacked Trump’s “Mar-a-Lago vision,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was just a few hours away in New York, where he spent the day largely nodding off (again) in a Manhattan courtroom. The contrast—Biden pounding the trail, Trump stuck facing trial—was striking.
Both men, however, have campaigned hard in the Keystone State, with Biden averaging a trip a month this year. Over the weekend, Trump—who himself has visited Pennsylvania twice in 2024—held a fundraiser and rally across two of its counties, where he complained about his upcoming criminal trial.
“I will be forced to sit fully gagged. I’m not allowed to talk. They want to take away my constitutional right to talk,” he told a crowd in Lehigh County, according to the Associated Press, adding that he was “proud” to endure it for them.
Pennsylvania’s primary election is Tuesday, April 23.
