The CEOs of Trump’s social media company and a trading firm are going head-to-head in a battle of insults and clashes over the stock.
Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump’s Media and Technology Group (TMTG), was labeled a “proverbial loser’ by Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, a billionaire Republican donor, on Friday.
Griffin also said that if Nunes was on “The Apprentice,” Trump would have fired him.
The conflict started when Nunes, a former Republican congressman who resigned two years ago to run TMTG, had written to the head of New York’s stock exchange to raise “potential market manipulation” of the group’s stock.
TMTG shares, which also owns Trump’s Truth Social network, have faced considerable pressure since having a widespread market debut last month. However, in recent days they have rallied in unstable trading.
On Thursday, Nunes wrote in a letter to Nasdaq that so-called “naked” short-selling was behind the market turbulence that has plagued TMTG, and named several large trading firms as the culprits, including Citadel Securities, which he said was behind most of the trading.
Following Nunes’ letter, Citadel Securities published a statement accusing Nunes of tying to deflect blame for the company’s recent struggles in the stock market.
The short-selling Nunes accused Citadel of includes betting against a public company, as an investor borrows a stock, and then sells it; if the stock then drops, the investor buys it back and pockets the difference.
Additionally, “naked” short-selling includes selling a stock without first borrowing it, or assessing if it can be borrowed. The process is usually illegal in the U.S., as Nunes wrote in his letter.
“Devin Nunes is the proverbial loser who tries to blame ‘naked short-selling’ for his falling stock price,” a spokesperson for Citadel Securities said. “Nunes is exactly the type of person Donald Trump would have fired on The Apprentice. If he worked for Citadel Securities, we would fire him, as ability and integrity are at the center of everything we do.”
TMTG then responded by saying, “Citadel Securities, a corporate behemoth that has been fined and censured for an incredibly wide range of offenses including issues related to naked short-selling, and is world famous for screwing over everyday retail investors at the behest of other corporations, is the last company on earth that should lecture anyone on ‘integrity.”
Shares in TMTG rose 9.6% on Friday.
