Trump Media & Technology Group, the social media business owned by former president Donald Trump, surged on Friday after Trump said he has “absolutely no intention of selling” his stake in the Truth Social owner. 

Shares of the stock, which trades under the ticker DJT — the same as Trump’s initials — soared $1.89, or 12%, to $17.97 on Friday. The surge helped the stock rebound from a record low on September 11, the day following his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, with investors appearing to downgrade his chances of winning the U.S. presidential election.

Trump Media & Technology Group had already suffered from a months-long slump, which lopped billions form its valuation and shaved about $4 billion from Trump’s personal holdings in the company. Trump Media’s shares have been under pressure due to the September 19 expiration of a so-called lock-up provision, which so far has restricted Trump and other company insiders from selling their shares. 

Because Trump owns 60% of the company’s stock, selling even a portion of his stake could flood the market with available shares, potentially lowering its price. At a press conference on Friday, Trump pointed to the lock-up’s expiration as the reason for his stock’s slide. 

“A lot of people think the reason it’s down is a lot of people think I’m going to sell, and if I sell, it’s not going to be the same,” Trump said. “But I have absolutely no intention of selling.”

Lock-ups are a common restriction on Wall Street, designed to prohibit major investors from dumping their shares in a company soon after the company goes public. That’s because large stock sales by insiders can cause a company’s shares to tank. 

Even with Friday’s bump, Trump Media & Technology Group’s share price is still 77% lower than its March peak of $79.38. 

Coming on the heels of his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he won’t agree to a second, writing on social media that “when a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I want a rematch.'” Nancy Cordes reports from the campaign trail in North Carolina.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance today took a dig at American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift after she endorsed Kamala Harris. Swift voiced support for the Democratic candidate in an Instagram post on Tuesday, calling her a “steady-handed, gifted leader.”

She signed off her post – which has so far drawn nearly 10 million likes – by dubbing herself a “childless cat lady,” a swipe at a JD Vance, who in a 2021 interview called some Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies.” He has since said it was merely a sarcastic remark.

“We admire Taylor Swift’s music, but I don’t think most Americans, whether they like her music or are fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans,” Vance told Fox News.

“When grocery prices go by 20%, it hurts most Americans. It doesn’t hurt Taylor Swift. When housing prices become unaffordable, it doesn’t affect Taylor Swift or any other billionaire. It does affect middle-class Americans all over our country,” he added.

Taylor Swift Endorses Kamala Harris

Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris minutes after the televised presidential debate between the Democrat and Donald Trump.

“I’m voting for Kamala Harris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them,” the 34-year-old singer said in a long post on Instagram.

“I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” she added.

Swift, who is one of the world’s most popular stars, encouraged her followers to “do your research.”

 “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice,” she said, and told her fans, “Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make.”

“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election,” the singer wrote on Instagram.

Donald Trump, however, slammed Taylor Swift and said he is “not her fan”.

“I was not a Taylor Swift fan… she’s a very liberal person. She seems to always endorse a Democrat, and she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace,” he told Fox News.

Leah Feiger: Right. Obviously, the one that I think at least caught our attention the most in the WIRED politics Slack room as we were watching in disbelief was the conspiracy and lie that Haitian immigrants were illegally crossing the border into the United States and camping out and stealing and eating people’s dogs, cats, and pets.

Donald Trump [Archival audio]: They’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.

Leah Feiger: This is not happening. This is in no way happening, but this was a talking point that has been bubbling up for the last 36 hours. JD Vance has been adding fuel to the fire. He has been tweeting about it. Congress. This has been all over. Trump got into it in the debate. That was wild, you guys. That was so wild. It felt like a fever dream.

Makena Kelly: The difference between how it played out online ahead of the debate and how it was received when Trump actually said it, was wild. Because when you look at online, when people were discussing all this conspiracy about the cats and eating them and et cetera, all that, for the most part, it was just like a joke. It seemed like it was mostly silly amongst a lot of these creators that were posting about it. Then just to see it taken so seriously and literally on the debate stage with Trump, I think was the change of perspective that made everything like, what the heck is he doing?

Tim Marchman: Yeah, I have a conspiracy theory about this, which is that Trump was briefed to allude to it, but stay away from it. Because very early in his first statement, he mentioned Springfield, Ohio, very pointedly where the conspiracy theory says this is happening. He looked very smug and self-satisfied as he said that. My base, the people who are on truth social—

Leah Feiger: They’ll know.

Tim Marchman: … they know what’s going on in Springfield. But he didn’t say anything. Then he actually started talking about it after Harris had baited him by mentioning the people left his rallies early, that they were interminable and boring and repetitive. He started visibly getting pretty angry and he just blurts out, he’s talking about how horrible the economy is and how terrible post-apocalyptic America is, and he says, “In Springfield,” he can’t bring himself to say it. He says in Springfield, and then he just says, “They’re eating cats. They’re eating dogs.” It’s so lurid and ridiculous. Then the thing he does after that is, he almost meekly says, “The people on the television said their dog was taken for food.” Just the almost childlike tone of it. It was really this incredible moment. I really got the impression that he knew he wasn’t supposed to be talking about this, I guess.

Leah Feiger: I think you’re right. To me, it didn’t actually come off as childish though. It came off as the grandparent or elderly relative that you’re like, Grandma turn off Fox News. That’s not true. That’s not correct. He felt very old in that moment. He was rambling, he was uncertain. I guess my question here though is, with all these conspiracies he brought up again, like he did in the June debate with Biden, that the Democrats support abortion after nine months, which is unequivocally not true. There were just honestly so many to even get into and list. My question is, does it matter? The internet was taking a lap, the liberal internet was thrilled. Pundits on CNN and MSNBC were like, “This was wild. Harris trounced him, et cetera, et cetera.” I don’t know. This race is not actually about who is more eloquent or who can tell the truth better or more, and that feels a little bit naive at this point. It’s actually about who can mobilize their base. The question is going to be if Trump successfully mobilized his base with his litany of conspiracies tonight. Was he convincing?

In the 75 days since the Biden-Trump debate that reshaped the 2024 presidential campaign, polling has shown a razor-tight race. CBS News’ Anthony Salvanto and Major Garrett take a closer look at the key battleground states and potential paths to victory.

PITTSBURGH – Vice President Kamala Harris plans a four-day campaign trip through major swing states after the Democrat’s debate Tuesday with Republican Donald Trump.

Her “New Way Forward” tour will include a new television spot, rallies, canvassing events and programs designed to target important voting groups, the campaign said Sunday, adding that the tour will culminate at the start of Hispanic Heritage Month on Sept. 15.

In a tight race against the former president, the Harris campaign sees itself as having the room to persuade voters before focusing more intently on turnout with the beginning of early voting before the Nov. 5 election. Trump has also stepped up his outreach with rallies and interviews in seemingly friendly forums.

The period after the debate in Philadelphia marks the start of the aggressive sprint toward the end of what has been a dramatic race.

“Our campaign will take the vice president’s message directly to the voters wherever they are -– on the airwaves, on the doors, and online,” said Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director. “With so much at stake in this election, we are blitzing the battlegrounds and leaving it all out on the field.”

Trump, who campaigned Saturday in Wisconsin, posted on social media that “when” he wins, anyone who he deems as having been “involved in unscrupulous behavior” tied to the election “will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

After the debate, political leaders on Wednesday are set to commemorate the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Harris kicks off her tour Thursday in North Carolina and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will be in Michigan. On Friday, Harris will return to Pennsylvania while Walz is in Michigan and Wisconsin.

The candidates’ spouses will also be part of the tour. Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband, will go to Nevada, Arizona and Florida. Gwen Walz is scheduled to be in Georgia, New Hampshire and Maine.

More details are to come.

Harris’ campaign will start running a new television ad that will speak to her plans for middle-class tax cuts, limiting prescription drug prices and addressing the housing shortage. The ads are part of a broader $370 million media investment and will be tailored state by state for voters in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nebraska.

Yesterday I praised Viola Davis’s Oscars speech for being memorable without being explicitly political—for simply talking about her job in a moving and well-written way. Twitter quickly let me know I missed something. On social media and conservative-leaning news sites, Davis’s speech had in fact sparked outrage.

After explaining that she felt her mission was to “exhume … the stories of the people who dreamed big and never saw those dreams to fruition, people who fell in love and lost,” Davis said this:

This claim has become one of the discussion items of the right-wing internet following the Oscars ceremony. “Art is wonderful; art is enriching; art can connect us with each other,” writes Ben Shapiro at Daily Wire. “But the utter arrogance of stating that artists are ‘the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life’ is astounding. How about doctors? How about stay-at-home mothers, who help shape lives rather than pursuing their own career interests? How about morticians? How about pretty much everybody in a free market economy, giving of themselves to others to improve lives?”

Variants of that sentiment have ricocheted online, with Davis sometimes misquoted as though she’d said only “actors” celebrate what it means to live a life, or, worse, are the only ones who “know” what it means to live a life.

Are people right to be offended? Did she say artists are better than anyone else? Reading her words literally, within the context of her speech, and extending her the slightest benefit of the doubt, it’s hard to see backlash against Davis as anything other than a symptom of our overblown culture wars.

Anyone might “celebrate what it means to live a life” in their own personal ways, but for whom is that a primary function of their profession? Artists, definitely. Clergy, maybe. Doctors save lives rather than celebrating them, and it doesn’t denigrate them to say so. Stay-at-home parents help others, and Davis might even agree that that’s more noble, important, and essential than “celebrating” the meaning of life.

Her point was simply that artists serve a unique role in telling stories about the human experience, and that she’s glad she’s a part of that.

Certainly, she could have edited herself to make a less controversial, though arguably less interesting, statement. If she’d simply said, “I became an artist—and thank God I did—because we celebrate what it means to live a life,” complaints may have been harder to come by. The “only” highlights a specific way that artists are special, but it also is a dogwhistle to anyone holding strong resentment about Hollywood elitism and condescension. And there’s rarely been a better time to air such resentment than right now.

On the right, reflexive disgust for the entertainment industry has taken on new fervor under Donald Trump. During the Fox and Friends after the Oscars, the snafu whereby La La Land mistakenly was announced as Best Picture was spun by Steve Doocy as, “Hollywood got the election wrong, and last night Hollywood got the Oscars wrong.” Guest Tucker Carlson agreed but added that Moonlight “had to win” because the moralizing, politically correct establishment willed it to. Yes, the Oscars were both an out-of-touch catastrophe and an insidiously rigged game.

Donald Trump has given his own interpretation of the Academy’s screwup: “I think they were focused so hard on politics that they didn’t get the act together at the end,” he told Breitbart, as if the PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant who handed Warren Beatty the wrong envelope did so because he’d been cackling too hard at Kimmel tweeting the president “u up?”

Liberals may groan at Trump taking credit for his critics making a logistical mistake. But, of course, both sides see a lot of politics in entertainment these days: See all the takes making like Doocy and comparing the end of the Oscars to election night.

To many viewers on Sunday, Davis’s speech seemed remarkable for how it nearly transcended partisan fray and just passionately talked about acting. But one word—“only”—was enough to make her a culture-war litmus test. Maybe she wanted to pick a fight about art’s place in society, or maybe she was simply portraying her profession as she genuinely sees it. Either way, it was a defiant move in an era where artists are increasingly held to the same standards as candidates for office: expected to choose their words not for truth but for politics.