“A lot of people think that I will sell my shares. I’m not going to sell my shares,” Trump said, referring to his personal holdings in the Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the DJT symbol that takes after his initials.

Trump said he started the company as a way to get his voice out after he was banned almost simultaneously from the Twitter and Facebook social media platforms in January 2021 for the storming of the US Capitol building by his supporters in events that followed his 2020 election loss.

Twitter, rebranded X, allowed Trump back in a few months ago after its new billionaire owner Elon Musk voiced support for the former president’s campaign to recapture the White House in the November elections. While Trump acknowledged that he was unlikely to experience another booting from the platform under Musk, he said he still wanted his own media brand.

“It works so well … I use it as a method of getting out my word,” he said, referring to DJT’s Truth Social app, which is at the heart of the company. “It’s my voice. The reason I built it is because I don’t want to have my voice shut down, I use it as a method of getting out my word … It works so well.”

DJT’s stock price hit a record low of US$15.30 per share this week, tumbling 70% from the March high of US$79.38 when it made its debut.

The plunge was in response to the diminishing turn in Trump’s political fortunes of late, as well as the approaching end-September date that will allow him to cash out his personal holdings of some 115 million shares in the company, which can net him about US$1.7 billion.

Trump dismissed any notion that he would dilute his holdings in the company. “I don’t need the money,” he said. “I didn’t do it for the money.”

Republican Trump’s standings in the 2024 presidential election appeared to take a blow this week as the Reuters-Ipsos poll showed him trailing his Democrat challenger, Vice President Kamala Harris, by five points.