Wilfredo Lee/AP

After repeated delays, Donald Trump finally seems to be taking his Truth Social app public—an accomplishment that could set him up for a gigantic potential windfall. “Potential” being the operative word there.

In the moments after shareholders approved a merger between a publicly traded SPAC corporation and Trump Media and Technology Group—the parent company of Truth Social—the SPAC’s stock price began to slide. (A SPAC is a blank-slate corporation established for the sole purpose of merging with another business that wants to go public.) While some noted that the deal could give Trump an enormous shot of money right when he needs it most—he’s facing a deadline early next week to pony up around half a billion dollars for a bond in his fraud case—the stock’s initial volatility also wiped approximately that much money off his balance sheet in a matter of hours. Of course, that’s a danger with any publicly traded stock, and it’s entirely possible that the price will have rebounded by the time you read this. But it demonstrates why the long-awaited merger doesn’t necessarily solve Trump’s cash problems.

Trump established Truth Social in 2022 to be a MAGA-version of Twitter, and the app has sputtered along, powered almost exclusively by Trump’s own posting on the site. The social media platform has amassed just 10 million downloads—all of them in the United States—and had only about 5 million active users in February. Compare that to the roughly 3 billion active users on Facebook. According to filings made before the........

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