Joe Biden’s campaign team recently released a campaign ad starring Joe Malcoun, a self-proclaimed struggling bar owner who says that if Joe Biden is not elected President “a lot of restaurants and bars that have been mainstays for years” will go out of business. There’s a key issue with the ad however, Mr. Malcoun is not the “struggling” business owner” he says he is. In reality, he is a” wealthy tech investor whose startup was seeded by a large family inheritance.” The man compared receiving the large inheritance to “winning the lottery” in a past interview and has used that money to become an angel investor in Michigan.
Malcoun co-owns the bar Blind Pig along with founding CKM Captial Partners back in 2013 where he then went on to invest in several small tech companies. The owner has claimed that the bar’s low business is a direct result of Trump’s Coronavirus efforts however conflicting reports show Malcoun also claimed the low business is due to failed communication efforts on his part.
In a report from The Daily Wire:
Usually you become a CEO and you make money, and then the money allows you to become an angel investor first,” he said in the 2018 interview. “I happened to have different circumstances where I had money [first].”
…
“There weren’t a lot of people showing up, which is frankly what we wanted and expected,” he said in an interview with MLive. “Now that we tried it and saw it’s really hard to communicate what it means to have a really socially distanced and live music show, we decided it’s not really worth trying.”
It is also odd for Malcoun to blame Trump considering it has been Democratic governors that forced businesses such as the Blind Pig to shut down, and Biden promised to do “whatever it takes” to stop the coronavirus, which would include a national shutdown order. Trump has actively refused to institute such an economy-destroying order.
For example, Malcoun has praised Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D-MI) response to the pandemic. Whitmer has instituted lockdown orders that harmed businesses without slowing the spread of COVID-19.
Clearly, Malcoun has not been paying attention to the fact Biden plans to implement tax hikes and changes to the energy industry that would hurt small businesses like the Blind Pig, not that it would actually negatively impact his day-to-day life.
