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00:00Tomorrow morning, going to be downtown at the NYC, 9.30, ringing the opening bell.
00:04Omid, I just learned it's your fourth time doing so.
00:07This SPAC is for an online gun retailer, Grab-A-Gun, but there's been a tremendous amount of demand for this.
00:13What do you think is driving that?
00:15Well, I think it's an extension of our thesis that Don and I started, what now, five years ago,
00:19which was using various mechanisms in finance to try to push back against overreach we saw in the private sector,
00:26mostly at the behest of ESG and DEI mandates.
00:30What's happened is, through those mandates, private companies that control a lot of the economy
00:34have starved certain industries of financing.
00:37You guys obviously know that that's happened in fossil fuels with some of the mandates we've seen with public companies,
00:41but it has also negatively impacted guns and ammunition.
00:45So we used a SPAC to take a company called Grab-A-Gun Public in furtherance of the Second Amendment,
00:51and the people have overwhelmingly supported it.
00:54This is now, having just closed a few minutes ago,
00:57one of the most successful SPAC transactions in history.
01:00We received zero redemptions from trust,
01:03meaning the company will receive from our team tomorrow,
01:05when we ring the bell, over $170 million in proceeds.
01:08Wow. When this was first introduced, I read it was actually only just at $100 million.
01:12Obviously, this is politically controversial.
01:14You're talking about an online gun company being really direct access to the consumer.
01:20Are there safety concerns in this, Don?
01:23No. I mean, that's the big misnomer.
01:24They say you're not getting a gun to your doorstep.
01:26You're still going through federal firearms license dealers.
01:28To go physically pick it up.
01:30To go physically pick it up.
01:31That's where you run your background checks again,
01:33and they like to pretend there's not such a thing,
01:34but it actually is very real and it's very regulated.
01:37But this is the way that regular people are buying.
01:39Throughout the crime of the last few years that you've seen,
01:42women are now entering the gun market.
01:44The experience of going to your local gun shop,
01:47it may be fine for me.
01:48When I walk in, it's, hey, Don, how's it going?
01:50If you're a first-time gun buyer, if you're a female,
01:52if you're someone that's young,
01:54that's an uncomfortable experience in many cases.
01:56So Grab a Gun allows you to do that the way you'd buy everything else,
01:59like you would on Amazon if you're buying home decor or other goods.
02:03And so we're bringing the experience that they're shopping with everything else
02:06to the regular consumer, and it's been incredible.
02:08And so it's a company with real revenue.
02:10They're doing $100 million a year, real profit.
02:13And, you know, pretty cool to take a gun company public on the New York Stock Exchange.
02:17That's not something that I imagine many people would have envisioned a while ago,
02:20but there has been that big pushback from a big portion of the country
02:24that says we weren't able to do these things.
02:26We were de-banked.
02:27We were de-insured.
02:27We were de-everythinged for so long.
02:30So our whole thesis was to give a big portion of the country
02:33what they've been looking for and to free up
02:35and really democratize the capital markets.
02:37And you've given them a slice of that.
02:38Of course, there's still going to be a lot of big institutions
02:40that will say, okay, we don't want to actually invest in a gun company of any form.
02:44And I know that the whole thesis behind 1789
02:47and some of the other projects you two have been working on
02:49is designed to sort of provide an avenue for those areas outside of just firearms.
02:56What else are you looking at, Don?
02:57Well, we've obviously mentioned some of the companies that we're invested in,
03:00again, a contrarian approach,
03:01but something that, again, a vast majority of the country,
03:04or at least a solid portion of the country, really wants to engage in.
03:07We took another company, Public, two years ago called Public Square
03:12to get an online retailer for people to buy American-made goods
03:17and to support the countries that they love.
03:19That's sort of morphed also into now a payments processor
03:21since so many of the transactions that you saw for conservative
03:25or right-leaning type of goods were basically debanked.
03:28I've had businesses that I've started actually get debanked by getting a letter,
03:32hey, by the way, there's no more money in your bank account.
03:34We have a cashier's check in the mail.
03:35We just don't want to do business with you, not because we were doing anything else,
03:38but because we didn't go with the mandates of whatever it was,
03:41of politically correct policy at the time.
03:45And so, so many Americans felt left by the wayside that we said,
03:48hey, this is a pretty solid market.
03:49If we can cater to half the country that whether it directly
03:52or they just know it's a potential, we're going to be left by the wayside,
03:56that's a solid business to be in.
03:58Another company in the industry that kind of falls into that category
04:00is what we were seeing with Polymarket
04:02and some of these prediction market firms.
04:05And of course, they just want to reprieve today a couple of investigations
04:08that have now formally been dropped.
04:11You're an investor in that.
04:12Obviously, you have a connection to the Trump administration.
04:15I am curious as to whether you think we're going to see more progress
04:17in the prediction space, not only with Polymarket,
04:20but with Cauchy and some of these other things,
04:21to operate more freely in the way that those founders have articulated.
04:25So, yeah, let me answer that in kind of a way to also summarize our overall investment thesis.
04:30So, he talked a lot about the response companies, this parallel economy.
04:34That's what we've been using our SPACs for.
04:351789's mandate is even broader than that.
04:37It will include some of that.
04:39We have, for example, invested in Substack,
04:41which is a free speech platform, you know, protecting the First Amendment.
04:45But we also go into several other areas.
04:47One is areas that are going to enhance the security
04:49and prosperity of the United States.
04:51So, think defense tech or the re-industrialization of the United States.
04:55The third is the area that we talked a little bit about,
04:57areas that have been underserved, fossil fuels, guns,
05:00that we see an arbitrage opportunity in.
05:03And then finally, where you're starting to pick up with Polymarket,
05:05areas where I think the government or certain incumbents have failed miserably.
05:10That's the reason we got into BlinkRx, which reduces drug prices.
05:13It's an area of the market where the government has failed to reduce pricing.
05:16And we find this is a disruptor.
05:18SpaceX falls into that category as well.
05:20And Nassau failed and SpaceX took the mandate.
05:23Polymarket falls into that in that people lost faith with pollsters.
05:27They were constantly just paid off and hired mercenaries.
05:30And what Polymarket has shown is that you can basically take the markets
05:34to try to predict what the truth is.
05:36And because people are going to put their money behind what they really think,
05:39it's the same thing you see with using markets in finance
05:42in order to predict things.
05:43You can do that now with polling around politics and other issues as well.
05:46So the last thing I'd say about Polymarket is it also announced that from Founders Fund,
05:51they're going to have over a billion-dollar valuation, which we like,
05:54because that marks up our investment three times.
05:56Well, they've been accurate.
05:57They've been right.
05:58Yeah.
05:58Okay.
05:58I've been in politics at least the game peripherally now for a decade.
06:01And how many times?
06:02I mean, we saw it the week before the election.
06:03You know, Kamala Harris is going to win Iowa.
06:05It's like, what?
06:06I don't know, man.
06:07I was in Iowa a couple days ago.
06:08I don't think that's going to actually happen.
06:10They were able to get that.
06:11So they saw the way these markets and some of these traditional sort of political institutions
06:16have been able to be weaponized for the benefit of the establishment.
06:19And they've gone against it.
06:20They've proven to be right.
06:22And that's a solid investment.
06:23Well, on that point, Don, and we certainly saw that in the presidential election,
06:26we also saw that at the local level here in New York with the kind of the surprise victory
06:30of Zoran Mamdami in the mayoral primary.
06:33And I know there are a lot of folks, particularly in finance and real estate,
06:36who are wringing their hands over the prospect of a mayor, Mamdami.
06:40But I am curious as to what you think of not so much him,
06:44but about the sort of groundswell of support that he got,
06:48particularly from a lot of young people in this city,
06:50and what they're asking for out of their mayor or potential mayor.
06:53Listen, I think it's going to create a serious problem for New York.
06:56I don't remember what the exact stats are today,
06:58but I remember eight years ago when I was getting ready to leave New York myself
07:02as a political refugee to the free state of Florida
07:04from the People's Republic here in New York City.
07:07It's not that bad.
07:09It is if you're a mayor.
07:10It is if you're a mayor.
07:11It is if you're a mayor.
07:12You're dragged in front of every court and you're sued for all these.
07:14You're ringing up the night seat tomorrow, Don.
07:15I'm the first person in the history of the world to get sued for paying back a loan on time with interest,
07:19just so we're clear.
07:20I get it.
07:20It's a little bit different.
07:21But I think at the time it was something like 18,000 people in New York City
07:24paid 84 percent of the tax.
07:26Those people are mobile.
07:28They can move wherever they want.
07:29So as a real estate holder in New York, I guess it sucks for me.
07:32As a real estate holder in Palm Beach, it's going to be incredible
07:34because those people are going to move.
07:36They're very mobile.
07:37They've had enough.
07:38They understand what's going on.
07:40And they're not going to continue to subsidize the nonsense that hasn't changed anything.
07:43We've seen these promises before.
07:45It hasn't worked.
07:46It didn't work when they promised communism in Europe.
07:48It didn't work in the Soviet Union.
07:49It certainly hasn't worked anywhere else that it's been tried in the world.
07:52It's created more poverty than any institution imaginable.
07:56And it's sad to see literally the home of the free market, the home of capitalism, New York City,
08:02take this sharp turn to the left.
08:06And I don't think it's going to work out well.
08:07And I think people understand that.
08:08It's a little troubling watching Andrew Cuomo now try to come in as this sort of third-party candidate.
08:12And just so we're clear, we probably didn't get along that well for the last decade.
08:16But my first political fundraiser in history was for Andrew Cuomo because I was a real estate guy in this city.
08:22And he was the attorney general.
08:24So he signs off on your offering plan.
08:26So I know him well.
08:27But this is going to split a vote.
08:28You're ringing the bell tomorrow at the New York Stock Exchange.
08:30Why didn't you guys wait to maybe go to the New Texix exchange?
08:33If that's how you feel about New York.
08:35Well, because we're here now.
08:37I think that will be a place that will take companies public in the future.
08:39But we're here now, and I think for us and for our thesis to be able to ring the bell of the New York Stock Exchange taking a gun company public
08:46is sort of an ultimate vindication in what we've been talking about all along.
08:50I mean, again, there's not a time in modern history where you think that's going to actually happen.
08:54So this is our thesis really manifesting itself.
08:57Like, we're back, we're going to do these things, and we're going to fight for the freedoms that Americans love and deserve.
09:01But politics is on a four-year cycle.
09:03Yeah.
09:03How do you do that when you look at 2028?
09:06You're investing where you say conservative values, anti-ESG, you call it MAGA, make America grow again.
09:14What do you think about, say, there's a changing of the guard in Washington in four years?
09:19When did Fox News do the best?
09:22I'm guessing.
09:24Durga Obama's two years, you know, two terms.
09:26So we have an all-weather strategy.
09:28Either we're the loyal opposition or, like we are now, we've been vindicated culturally and politically with what we've been saying.
09:35Ultimately, I don't think this is partisan.
09:37I believe we represent the majority of the country, actually.
09:40And I think there was a period of time where it lost its way.
09:43And we were doing something that I think is actually totally capitalistic.
09:46We're simply providing people with choice.
09:48ESG's been around in earnest since 2010 and became a multi-trillion dollar asset class.
09:53And at the same time, when you map out their returns, they fail to deliver.
09:57And that's just the facts.
09:59Why isn't there a fund out there like ours who's providing an alternative for people to invest in?
10:03Fair point.
10:04But do you worry at all that your strategy, EIG or whatever you're calling it, ends up being the next ESG,
10:10where it's basically just sort of a niche instrument for a niche group of people and maybe it doesn't deliver?
10:14I don't, because if you look at the principles of what that acronym stands for, entrepreneurship, innovation and growth,
10:20it's everything Don was just lamenting about New York City, which is to say that this was the place that capitalism are supposed to be universal values.
10:27It's one of the things, if you have a country like America, it's supposed to be our unifying ideology, is capitalism.
10:32And it does give me hope that tomorrow, the New York Stock Exchange, which has been great, by the way, as a partner,
10:37is welcoming us to basically do a ticker under the letters P-E-W, Pew, tomorrow.
10:43A little takeoff on Pew Pew, like shooting a gun.
10:46But it's also important, I think the last four years taught Americans a lot of things, right?
10:50They became unafraid to speak up about things that were obviously insane, things that went too far.
10:55You see that manifesting itself right now, you know, in so many cultural issues, you know, the trans women in ladies' sports, you know, men playing in women's sports.
11:04People who were afraid to voice those opinions about how asinine a concept like that was just a few years ago are now, these are 90-10 issues.
11:13We're taking the 90.
11:14So we're okay with that competition if it just means that everyone's actually thinking rationally.
11:19We're fine with that.
11:20If we're the catalyst for that change, we're good with that because that's what's good for the country and that's what's good for America.
11:25Speaking of voicing of opinion, you have a big stake in XAI.
11:29Obviously, there's been some tension with the former FirstBuddy.
11:32Has that changed how you view that company and even maybe more so in the financials?
11:36We've reported that they are burning through a tremendous amount of capital every single month.
11:41You still want to maintain that investment?
11:43By the way, actually, yes, one of the worst publicly traded companies of all time was Twitter before Elon Musk took it over and made it profitable.
11:50So I'm long on Elon.
11:52Our fund is we're invested in every one of his companies.
11:54We're invested in X, which was Twitter, XAI separately.
11:58Now they're merged, which is also a brilliant play because the feedstock that these AI companies know, he now has in-house with a platform that has over 600 million users.
12:06It's genius.
12:07The competitors don't have that.
12:09We're also invested in Neuralink as well.
12:12So we think the Elon index, if you will, is something that's here to stay.
12:16And the companies are demonstrating their success independent of whatever personal issue may happen, which obviously he and I want to get resolved and move on in a positive fashion.
12:25Do you have a personal relationship with Elon?
12:27Of course.
12:28Yeah, we do.
12:28The reality is there's going to be political differences.
12:32The political world is different than the world in which you often function with that creates a lot of other tensions.
12:37I mean, I love Elon as an innovator.
12:39I mean, he's got, without question, one of the top innovators of this century, perhaps ever.
12:46And so, you know, focusing on those things, I think it's very positive.
12:49We've always been able to maintain that relationship.
12:51I think that comes back.
12:52You know, again, politics is a very different game.
12:53I learned that one the hard way eight years ago.
12:55Yeah.
12:56You know, people create obstacles.
12:58They create headaches that aren't real.
13:00They are.
13:00You are making it because, look, just a few months ago in February, you know, SpaceX was valued at 350 billion.
13:06They just didn't oversubscribe round for 400 billion a few months later.
13:09This is constantly happening in every single one of his portfolios.
13:11There's reports out there that XII, which was at 50 or 60 billion less than a year ago, is going to be at 200 billion.
13:17So the private markets and markets generally are speaking, and they still love the portfolio.
13:22When it comes to politics, though, it is in our financial markets now.
13:25Policy in Washington constantly drives what's going on.
13:28People are glued to truth social to understand what potential the next tariff rate is.
13:33Don, I want to get your sense, given the fact that you are the president's son.
13:37I asked your dad once about the Trump put, if it exists in the market.
13:41Is there a threshold he's unwilling to maintain when it comes to either whether it's tariff policy or something else because of what is going on in the financial markets?
13:49And he once talked about the bond market getting yippee.
13:52Do you think a Trump put exists?
13:54No, I don't think so.
13:55I think the reality is he's one of the few people in politics who's willing to play the long game.
13:58We don't do that.
13:59Right.
13:59We have very short term cycles.
14:01People make bad decisions today to get a quick result tomorrow that is disastrous for us in 50 years down the line.
14:08He's the guy that's willing to say the things that need to be said today, who's willing to take some of that heat now to be able to have the end result that's beneficial for the country in the future.
14:17That's what he's done very consistently.
14:19You saw that even a couple of weeks ago.
14:21You know, S&P is down five.
14:22Oh, my God, it's the Trump crash.
14:24Well, what happened when it hit all time highs last Thursday?
14:27What happens when it recovered 10 days later after that?
14:31He gets credit for the negative, but he doesn't get credit for the positive.
14:33The reality is these things manifest themselves over time.
14:36We've become an instant gratification society.
14:38He's one of the few people that's actually a decision maker that is playing the long game and doing so for the benefit of the country.
14:44You nod your head.
14:45I want to give you the last word, but I also just want you to at least touch on some of the other two big political issues going on right now,
14:50the legislation on crypto and the potential freeing of Fannie and Freddie.
14:54Where does that stand?
14:56Well, yeah, I'm on the board of Fannie Mae, and, you know, that was something that I wanted to be able to serve the country.
15:01I'm excited about making sure that those institutions stay in a great spot and see how I can work with Commissioner Pulte,
15:07Secretary Besson, and Secretary Lutnik to improve upon them.
15:11And that's what my role is, given my experience as an attorney and capital markets professional and investor.
15:15That's why I did that.
15:16As far as crypto legislation, next week, we're excited about that.
15:20That's going to be another signature piece of legislation the president's going to pass right after the big, beautiful bill.
15:26And I think that's going to be something we needed and brings crypto out of the shadows, as it was in the previous administration.
15:33And it's something or another reason why the president had that industry support.
15:36Crypto is going to be the future of finance.
15:38Yeah.
15:38Okay.
15:38We were doing everything imaginable in the prior administration to send that to other places.
15:43People want to be in America.
15:45They want to invest in America.
15:46They want that stability.
15:47What they needed is some guide reels.
15:48They needed a framework in which they could work, even for us, in the crypto platforms that we were developing, whether it was American Bitcoin, whether it's World Liberty Financial.
15:56We didn't get into that because we knew all that much about crypto.
15:58We got into it out of necessity because we were getting debanked.
16:01There wasn't a person in this city that I couldn't call and get a loan for a real estate project a few short years ago.
16:06Then we became Politica, and all of a sudden, you're persona non grata.
16:08So crypto is the future to be able to have the legislation to create those guardrails, to be able to keep that industry.
16:15This is going to be a multi-trillion dollar industry, and it should be based here in America.
16:18America should get the tax benefits of all of that.
16:21They should have the innovation, the growth.
16:23That's strategic thinking.
16:24And so I'm super excited about that bill because I think it's going to really make sure that America is the home of crypto and blockchain technology for the future.
16:31And so I think it's going to really make sure that America is the home of crypto and blockchain technology for the future.
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