What is the opposite of the Midas touch? Whatever that is, Donald Trump Jr. seems to have it. On Wednesday, an online firearms seller backed by the President’s favorite failson went public. It didn’t take long for the public to say, “No thanks.” On Wednesday, the company’s stock price took a significant hit by the end of the trading day.
GrabAGun is a pretty simple concept. It’s an online marketplace that specifically handles guns, ammunition, and firearm accessories. Trump Jr.’s business partner, Omeed Malik, called the company the “Amazon of guns,” which is kind of a bold choice to name the company that could put you out of business in a snap if it decided it wanted to get into the firearms space. But nonetheless, the company went public Wednesday by merging with a SPAC owned by Malik—a method of going public that has been notoriously unsuccessful. It trades under the ticker PEW. (Feel free to roll your eyes.)
Trump Jr. got a morning of glee out of it, ringing the bell to open the New York Stock Exchange and starting a chant of “U.S.A.” on the trading floor. He went on Fox Business and took a victory lap, too. “To be able to come back to the New York Stock Exchange and actually take a gun company public feels like such a vindication of all the insanity, all of the ‘woke’ nonsense that we’ve been watching and facing for the last decade in America,” he said. “It’s an ultimate triumphant return.”
The triumph was short-lived. The company opened trading at $21.44 per share, which quickly sank to around $14 at the close of Wednesday. Things have not improved on Thursday, as the company is down around $10.20 at the time of publication. That’s definitely put a dent in Don Jr.’s holdings, as Bloomberg noted that he bought 300,000 shares of the company.
GrabAGun is just the latest of many “anti-woke” operations that Trump Jr. has pursued through his venture capital firm 1789 Capital. Trump’s kid has also reportedly invested in the “enhanced Olympics” that will allow athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs, a Republican social club in Washington, D.C., and the Tucker Carlson Network.
If right-wingers can explain businesses with “progressive” policies like diversity and inclusion taking a hit as “Go woke, go broke,” surely they can come up with a catchy slogan for when you haphazardly launch an anti-woke business that immediately plunges in value. Maybe “If it’s Don Jr., it’s probably a loser.” Just spitballing.
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