Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Welcome to a special
Speaker 1: conversation with the principles of seventeen eighty nine Capital, the
Speaker 1: politically connected venture firm with the focus on companies that
Speaker 1: are carving out space and a parallel economy that caters
Speaker 1: directly to conservative values. It's more notable investments include Xai,
Speaker 1: prescription drug provider blink Rx, and defense tech companies andrel
Speaker 1: and Firehawk. Omi Mallick co founded the firm in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, and Donald Trump Junior joined as a partner
Speaker 1: last year. They both joined me now along with Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Surveillance co anchor A Marie Horter, and here in Studio
Speaker 1: two in New York.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Remaine, and thank you gentlemen for
Speaker 2: joining us here in New York at Bloomberg TV. Tomorrow morning,
Speaker 2: you gonna be downtown at the Nicey nine point thirty
Speaker 2: ringing the opening vell omit. I just learned it's your
Speaker 2: fourth time doing so. This fact is for an online
Speaker 2: gun reel retailer, Grab a Gun. But there's been a
Speaker 2: tremendous amount of demand for this. What do you think
Speaker 2: is driving that?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: I think it's an extension of our thesis that Don
Speaker 3: and I start and what now five years ago, which
Speaker 3: was using various mechanisms in finance to try to push
Speaker 3: back against overreach we saw in the private sector, mostly
Speaker 3: at the behest of ESG and DEI mandates. What's happened
Speaker 3: is through those mandates, private companies that control a lot
Speaker 3: of the economy have starved certain industries of financing. You
Speaker 3: guys obviously know that that's happened in fossil fuels with
Speaker 3: some of the mandates we've seen with public companies, but
Speaker 3: it has also negatively impacted guns and ammunition.
Speaker 4: So we used a SPAC to take.
Speaker 3: A company called grabagun public in furtherance of the Second Amendment,
Speaker 3: and the people have overwhelmingly supported it. This is now,
Speaker 3: having just closed a few minutes ago, one of the
Speaker 3: most successful SPAC transactions in history. We received zero redemptions
Speaker 3: from trust, meaning the company will receive from our team tomorrow.
Speaker 3: We ring the bell over one hundred and seventy million
Speaker 3: in proceeds.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: When this was first introduced, I read it was actually
Speaker 2: only just at one hundred million. Obviously, this is politically controversial.
Speaker 2: You're talking about an online gun company being really direct
Speaker 2: access to the consumer.
Speaker 4: Are there safety concerns in this? Don no.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's the big misnomer. They say, you're not
Speaker 5: getting a gun to your doorstep. You're still going through
Speaker 5: Federal firearms licensed dealers, but we're all physically pick it
Speaker 5: out to go, physically pick it up. That's where you
Speaker 5: run your background checks again. And they like to pretend
Speaker 5: there's not such a thing, but it actually is very
Speaker 5: real and it's very regulated. But this is the way
Speaker 5: that regular people are buying throughout the crime of the
Speaker 5: last few years that you've seen women are now entering
Speaker 5: the gun market. The experience of going to your local
Speaker 5: gun shop. It may be fine for me when I
Speaker 5: walk in, it's hey, don how's it going. If you're
Speaker 5: a first time gun buyer, if you're a female, if
Speaker 5: you're someone that's young, that's an uncomfortable experience in many cases.
Speaker 5: So Grab a Gun allows you to do that the
Speaker 5: way you buy everything else, like you would on Amazon,
Speaker 5: if you're buying home decor or other goods. And so
Speaker 5: we're bringing the experience that they're shopping with everything else
Speaker 5: to the regular consumer and it's been incredible. And so
Speaker 5: it's a company with real revenue. They're doing one hundred
Speaker 5: million dollars a year real profit, and you know, pretty
Speaker 5: cool to take a gun company public on the New
Speaker 5: York Stock Exchange. That's not something I imagine money people
Speaker 5: would have envisioned a while ago. But there has been
Speaker 5: that big pushback from a big portion of the country
Speaker 5: that says, we weren't able to do these things. We
Speaker 5: were debanked, we were de insured, we were de everything
Speaker 5: for so long. So our whole thesis was to give
Speaker 5: a big portion of the country what they've been looking
Speaker 5: for and to free up and really democratize the capital markets.
Speaker 1: And you've given them a slice of that. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's still going to get a lot of big institutions
Speaker 1: that will say, Okay, we don't want to actually invest
Speaker 1: in in a gun company of any form. And I
Speaker 1: know that the whole thesis behind seventeen eighty nine and
Speaker 1: some of the other projects you two have been working
Speaker 1: on is designed to sort of provide an avenue for
Speaker 1: those areas outside of just firearms. What else are you
Speaker 1: looking at.
Speaker 5: Don Well, we've obviously mentioned some of the companies that
Speaker 5: were invested in. Again a contrary and approach, but something
Speaker 5: that again a vast majority of the country, or at
Speaker 5: least a solid portion of the country, really wants to
Speaker 5: engage in. We took another company public two years ago
Speaker 5: called Public Square, to get an online retailer for people
Speaker 5: to buy American made goods and to support the counties
Speaker 5: that they love. That's sort of morphed also into now
Speaker 5: a payments processor, since so many of the transactions that
Speaker 5: you saw for you know, conservative or right leaning type
Speaker 5: of goods were basically debanked. I've had businesses that I've
Speaker 5: started actually get debanked by getting a letter, Hey, by
Speaker 5: the way, there's no more money in your bank account.
Speaker 5: We have a cashiers check in the mail. We just
Speaker 5: don't want to do business with you. Not because we
Speaker 5: were doing anything else, but because we didn't go with
Speaker 5: the mandates of whatever it was of politically correct, you know,
Speaker 5: policy at the time, and so so many Americans felt
Speaker 5: left by the wayside that we said, hey, this is
Speaker 5: a pretty solid market. If we can cater to half
Speaker 5: the country that whether it directly or they just know
Speaker 5: it's a potential we're going to be left by the wayside.
Speaker 4: That's a solid business to be in.
Speaker 1: Another company and industry that kind of falls into that
Speaker 1: category is what we were seeing with Polymarket and some
Speaker 1: of these prediction market firms, and of course they just
Speaker 1: want to reprieve today a couple of investigations that have
Speaker 1: now formally been dropped. You're an investor in that, obviously
Speaker 1: you have a connection to the Trump administration. I am
Speaker 1: curious as to whether you think we're going to see
Speaker 1: more progress in the diction space, not only with poly market,
Speaker 1: both cauching and some of these other things to operate
Speaker 1: more freely in the way that those founders have articulated.
Speaker 3: So yeah, let me answer that in kind of a
Speaker 3: way to also summarize our rural investment thesis. So he
Speaker 3: talked a lot about the response companies as parallel economy.
Speaker 3: That's what we've been using our spacks for seventy United
Speaker 3: Mandate is even broader than that. It will include some
Speaker 3: of that. We have, for example, investment in Substack, which
Speaker 3: is a free speech platform protecting the First Amendment. But
Speaker 3: we also go into several other areas. One is areas
Speaker 3: that are going to enhance the security and prosperity of
Speaker 3: the United States, so think defense tech or the reindustrialization
Speaker 3: of the United States. The third is the area that
Speaker 3: we talked a little bit about areas that have been underserved,
Speaker 3: fossil fuels, guns that we see an arbitrage opportunity, and
Speaker 3: then finally where you're starting to pick on one with polymarket,
Speaker 3: areas where I think the government or certain incumbents have
Speaker 3: failed miserably. That's the reason we got into blink our X,
Speaker 3: which reduces drug prices. It's an area of the market
Speaker 3: where the government has failed to reduce pricing and we
Speaker 3: find this is a disrupt or. SpaceX falls into that
Speaker 3: category as well. Nasau failed and SpaceX took the mandate.
Speaker 3: Polymarket falls into that and that people lost faith with
Speaker 3: polsters they were constantly just paid off in hired mercenaries.
Speaker 3: And what poly market has shown is that you can
Speaker 3: basically take the markets to try to predict what the
Speaker 3: truth is and because people are gonna put their money
Speaker 3: behind what they really think. It's the same thing you
Speaker 3: see with using markets in finance in order to predict things.
Speaker 3: You can do that now with polling around politics and
Speaker 3: other issues as well.
Speaker 4: So the last thing.
Speaker 3: I'd say about poly Market is it also announced that
Speaker 3: from founder's fund, they're going to have over a billion
Speaker 3: dollar valuation, which we like, because that marks up our
Speaker 3: investment three times.
Speaker 4: Well, they've been accurate, they've been right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I've been in politics, at least the game peripherally now
Speaker 5: for a decade and how many times. I mean, we
Speaker 5: saw it the week before the election. Kamala Harris is
Speaker 5: gonna win Iowa.
Speaker 4: It's like that. I don't know.
Speaker 5: I was in Iowa a couple of days ago. I
Speaker 5: don't think that's going to actually happen. They were able
Speaker 5: to get that, so they saw the way these markets
Speaker 5: and some of these traditional sort of political institutions have
Speaker 5: been able to be weaponized for the benefit of the establishment,
Speaker 5: and they've gone against it. They've proven to be right,
Speaker 5: and that's a solid investment.
Speaker 1: Well on that point, don And we certainly saw that
Speaker 1: in the presidential election. We also saw that at the
Speaker 1: local level here in New York with the kind of
Speaker 1: the surprise victory of Zora and mom Domi in the
Speaker 1: mayoral primary. And I know there are a lot of folks,
Speaker 1: particularly in finance and real estate, who are wringing their
Speaker 1: hands over the prospect of a mayor mom Domi. But
Speaker 1: I am curious as to what you think of not
Speaker 1: so much him, but about the sort of a groundswell
Speaker 1: of support that he got, particularly from a lot of
Speaker 1: young people in this city, and what they're asking for
Speaker 1: out of their mayor or potential mayor.
Speaker 4: Listen.
Speaker 5: I think it's going to create a serious problem for
Speaker 5: New York. I don't remember what the exact stats are today,
Speaker 5: but I remember eight years ago when was, you know,
Speaker 5: getting ready to leave New York myself as a political
Speaker 5: refugee in the Free State of Florida from the People's
Speaker 5: Republic here in New York City.
Speaker 4: You see that.
Speaker 5: It is if you're a making, if you're a made
Speaker 5: in your drug in front of every court and you're
Speaker 5: sued for all these You know, I'm the first person
Speaker 5: in the history of the world to get sued for
Speaker 5: paying back a loan on time with interest. Just so
Speaker 5: we're clear, I get it. It's a little bit different,
Speaker 5: but I think at the time it was something like
Speaker 5: eighteen thousand people in New York City paid eighty four
Speaker 5: percent of the tax. Those people are mobile, They can
Speaker 5: move wherever they want. So as a real estate holder
Speaker 5: in New York, I guess it stucks for me as
Speaker 5: a real estate holder in Palm Beach. It's going to
Speaker 5: be incredible because those people are going to move. They're
Speaker 5: very mobile. They've had enough, they understand what's going on,
Speaker 5: and they're not going to continue to subsidize the nonsense
Speaker 5: that hasn't changed anything. We've seen this promises before. It
Speaker 5: hasn't worked. It didn't work when they promised communism in Europe,
Speaker 5: it didn't work in the Soviet Union. Certainly hasn't worked
Speaker 5: anywhere else that has been tried in the world. It's
Speaker 5: created more poverty than any institution imaginable. And it's sad
Speaker 5: to see literally the home of the free market, the
Speaker 5: home of capitalism, New York City, take this sharp turn
Speaker 5: to the left. And I don't think it's going to
Speaker 5: work out well. And I think people understand that. It's
Speaker 5: a little troubling watching Andrew Cuomo now try to come
Speaker 5: in as this sort of third party candidate, And just
Speaker 5: so we're clear, like you know, we probably didn't get
Speaker 5: along that well for the last decade, but my first
Speaker 5: political fundraiser in the this in history was for Andrew
Speaker 5: Cuomo because I was a real estate guy in this
Speaker 5: city and he was the Attorney general. So he signs
Speaker 5: off on your offering plant, so I know him well.
Speaker 5: But you're this is going to split up at the New.
Speaker 4: York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 2: Why didn't you guys wait to maybe go to the
Speaker 2: New Textics Exchange.
Speaker 4: If that's how you feel about New.
Speaker 5: York, Well, because you know we're here now. I think
Speaker 5: that'll be a place that will take companies public in
Speaker 5: the future. But we're here now, and I think for
Speaker 5: us and for our thesis to be able to ring
Speaker 5: the bill of the New York Stock Exchange taking a
Speaker 5: gun company public, it's sort of an ultimate vindication and
Speaker 5: what we've been talking about all along. I mean again,
Speaker 5: there's not a time in modern history where you think
Speaker 5: that's going to actually happen. So this is our thesis really,
Speaker 5: you know, manifesting itself, like we're back, We're going to
Speaker 5: do these things and we're going to fight for the
Speaker 5: freedoms that Americans love and deserve.
Speaker 2: Politics is on a four year cycle. How do you
Speaker 2: do that when you look at twenty twenty eight you're
Speaker 2: investing where you say we're conservative values, anti ESG. You
Speaker 2: call it maga make America grow again. What do you
Speaker 2: think about, say, there's a changing of the guard in Washington.
Speaker 3: Four years When did Fox News do the best. I'm
Speaker 3: guessing durg Obamas two years two terms, So we have
Speaker 3: an all weather strategy. Either we're the loyal opposition or
Speaker 3: like we are now, we've been vindicated culturally and politically
Speaker 3: with what we've been saying. Ultimately, I don't think this
Speaker 3: is partisan. I believe we represent the majority of the
Speaker 3: country actually, and I think there was a period of
Speaker 3: time where it lost its way and we were doing
Speaker 3: something that I think is actually totally capitalistic. We're simply
Speaker 3: providing people with choice. Esg's been around in earnest since
Speaker 3: twenty ten and became a multi trillion dollar asset class,
Speaker 3: and at the same time, when you map out their returns.
Speaker 4: They fail to deliver. And that's just the facts.
Speaker 3: Why isn't there a fund out there like ours who's
Speaker 3: providing an alternative for people to invest in?
Speaker 4: Fair point?
Speaker 1: But do you worry at all that your strategy EIG
Speaker 1: or whatever you're calling it, ends up being the next
Speaker 1: ESG where it's basically just sort of a niche instrument
Speaker 1: for a niche group of people, and maybe it doesn't deliver.
Speaker 3: I don't because if you look at the principles of
Speaker 3: what that acronyms for entrepreneurship, innovation, and growth. It's everything done,
Speaker 3: which just lamenting about New York City, which is to
Speaker 3: say that this was the place that capitalism are supposed
Speaker 3: to be universal values. It's one of the things if
Speaker 3: you have a country like America is supposed to be
Speaker 3: our unifying ideology is capitalism.
Speaker 4: And it does give.
Speaker 3: Me hope that tomorrow the New York Stock Exchange, which
Speaker 3: has been great by the way, as a partner, is
Speaker 3: welcoming us to basically do a ticker under the letters
Speaker 3: pew PW tomorrow, you know, a little takeoff on.
Speaker 5: Pew p like shooting a gun. But it's also important.
Speaker 5: I think the last four years taught Americans a lot
Speaker 5: of things, right. They became unafraid to speak up about
Speaker 5: things that were obviously insane, things that went too far.
Speaker 5: You see that manifesting itself right now. You know in
Speaker 5: so many cultural issues. You know, the trans women in
Speaker 5: ladies sports, you know men playing in women's sports, people
Speaker 5: who we're afraid to voice those opinions about how asenin
Speaker 5: and a concept like that was just a few years
Speaker 5: ago are now these are ninety ten issues. We're taking
Speaker 5: the ninety so we're okay with that competition. If it
Speaker 5: just means that ever ones actually thinking rationally, we're fine
Speaker 5: with that. If we're the catalyst for that change, we're
Speaker 5: good with that because that's what's good for the country,
Speaker 5: and that's what's good for America.
Speaker 2: Speaking of voicing of opinion, you have a big stake
Speaker 2: in Xai. Obviously there's been some tension with the former
Speaker 2: first buddy. Has that changed how you view that company?
Speaker 2: And even maybe more so in the financials, we've reported
Speaker 2: that they are burning through a tremendous amount of capital
Speaker 2: every single month. We still want to maintain that investment.
Speaker 3: One of the by the way, actually yes, one of
Speaker 3: the worst publicly traded companies of all time was Twitter
Speaker 3: before Elon Musk took it over and made it profitable.
Speaker 3: So I'm long on Elon. Our fund is we're invested
Speaker 3: in every one of his companies. We're invested in x
Speaker 3: which was Twitter Xai separately. Now they're merged, which is
Speaker 3: also a brilliant play because the feedstock that these Ai
Speaker 3: companies now he now has in house with a platform
Speaker 3: that has over six hundred million users. It's genius. The
Speaker 3: competitors don't have that. We're also invested in Neurlink as well.
Speaker 3: So we think the Elon index, if you will, is
Speaker 3: something that's here to stay, and the companies are demonstrated
Speaker 3: their success independent of whatever personal issue may happen, which
Speaker 3: obviously he and I want to get resolved and move
Speaker 3: on in a positive.
Speaker 1: Do you have a personal relationship with Elon?
Speaker 4: Of course, yeah, we did. It's still healthy.
Speaker 5: The reality is, kay, there's going to be political difference
Speaker 5: is the political world is different than the world in
Speaker 5: which you know, you often function with. That creates a
Speaker 5: lot of other tensions. I mean, I love Elon as
Speaker 5: an innovator. I mean he's gotten without question, one of
Speaker 5: the top innovators. Yeah, of this century, perhaps ever, and
Speaker 5: so you know, focusing on those things, I think it's
Speaker 5: very pol We've always been able to maintain that relationship.
Speaker 5: I think that comes back. You know again, politics is
Speaker 5: a very different game. I learned that one the hard
Speaker 5: way eight years ago. You know, people create obstacles, they
Speaker 5: create headaches that you know aren't real.
Speaker 3: They are and you are making it because look, just
Speaker 3: a few months ago in February, you know, space X
Speaker 3: was value to a three hundred and fifty billion. They just
Speaker 3: didn't oversubscribe round for four hundred billion a few months later.
Speaker 3: This is constantly happening in every single one.
Speaker 4: Of his portfolios.
Speaker 3: There's reports out there that XI, which was at fifty
Speaker 3: or sixty billion less than a year ago, is going
Speaker 3: to be a two hundred billion. So the markets and
Speaker 3: markets generally are speaking, and they still love the portfolio.
Speaker 2: When it comes to politics, though it is in our
Speaker 2: financial markets now, policy in Washington constantly drives what's going on.
Speaker 4: People are glued to truth social.
Speaker 2: To understand what potential the next tariff rate is. Don
Speaker 2: I want to get your sense, given the fact that
Speaker 2: you are the president's son. I asked your dad once
Speaker 2: about the Trump put if it exists in the market,
Speaker 2: Is there a threshold he's unwilling to maintain when it
Speaker 2: comes to either whether it's tariff policy or something else
Speaker 2: because of what is going on in the financial markets,
Speaker 2: And he once talked about the bond market getting yippie.
Speaker 2: Do you think a Trump put exists?
Speaker 4: No, I don't think so.
Speaker 5: I think the reality is he's one of the few
Speaker 5: people in politics who's willing to play a long game.
Speaker 4: We don't do that right. We have very short term cycles.
Speaker 5: People make bad decisions today to get a quick result
Speaker 5: tomorrow that is a disastrous for us in fifty years
Speaker 5: down the line. He's the guy that's willing to say
Speaker 5: the things that need to be said today, who's willing
Speaker 5: to take some of that heat now to be able
Speaker 5: to have the end result that's beneficial for the country
Speaker 5: in the future. That's what he He's done very consistently.
Speaker 5: You saw that even a couple of weeks ago. You know,
Speaker 5: SMP's down five. Oh my god, it's the Trump crash. Well,
Speaker 5: what happened when it, you know, hit all time highs?
Speaker 5: What last Thursday? What happens when it recovered, you know,
Speaker 5: ten days later? After that? He gets credit for the negative,
Speaker 5: but he doesn't get credit for the positive. The reality
Speaker 5: is these things manifest themselves over time. We've become an
Speaker 5: instant gratification society. He's one of the few people that's
Speaker 5: actually a decision maker that is playing the long game
Speaker 5: and doing so for the benefit of the country.
Speaker 1: Najer Head, I want to give you the last word,
Speaker 1: but I also just wanted you to just at least
Speaker 1: touch on some of the other two big political issues
Speaker 1: going on right now. The legislation on Crypto and the
Speaker 1: potential freeing of Fanny and Freddie. Where does that stand.
Speaker 3: Well, Yeah, I'm on the board of Fannie May and
Speaker 3: you know that was something that I wanted to be
Speaker 3: able to serve the country. I'm excited about making sure
Speaker 3: that those institutions stay in a great spot and see
Speaker 3: how I can work with Commissioner Polty, Secretary Investment, and
Speaker 3: Secretary Lotnek to improve upon them. And that's what my
Speaker 3: role is, given my experience as an attorney and capital
Speaker 3: markets professional investor, that's why I did that. As far
Speaker 3: as crypto legislation, next week, we're excited about that. That's
Speaker 3: going to be another signature piece of legislation the President's
Speaker 3: going to pass right after the big beautiful bill, and
Speaker 3: I think that's going to be something we needed and
Speaker 3: brings crypto out of the shadows as it was in
Speaker 3: the previous administration. And it's something or another reason why
Speaker 3: the President had that industry support.
Speaker 4: Crypto is going to be the future of finance.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we were doing everything imaginable in the prior administration
Speaker 5: to send that to all their places. People want to
Speaker 5: be in America, they want to invest in America, they
Speaker 5: want that stability. What they needed to some guide rails.
Speaker 5: They needed a framework in which they could work. Even
Speaker 5: for us in the crypto platforms that we were developing,
Speaker 5: whether it was American Bigcoin, whether it's World Liberty Financial,
Speaker 5: we didn't get into that because we all knew all
Speaker 5: that much about crypto. We got into it out of
Speaker 5: necessity because we were getting debanked. There wasn't a person
Speaker 5: in this city that I couldn't call and get a
Speaker 5: loan for a real estate project a few short years ago.
Speaker 5: Then we became political, and all of a sudden, your
Speaker 5: persona in Nograda. So crypto's the future to be able
Speaker 5: to have the legislation to create those guardrails, to be
Speaker 5: able to keep that industry. This is going to be
Speaker 5: a multi trillion dollar industry, and it should be based
Speaker 5: here in America. America should get the tax benefits of
Speaker 5: all of that, they should have the innovation of the growth.
Speaker 5: That's strategic thinking. And so I'm super excited about that
Speaker 5: bill because I think it's going to really make sure
Speaker 5: that America is the home of crypto and blockchain technology
Speaker 5: for the future. All Right.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great place, and I really appreciate
Speaker 1: both of you taking time for US. Donald Trump Junior
Speaker 1: and Omeid Malik over at seventeen eighty nine Capital