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The MAGA surrogate and powerful adviser to the president-elect is joining venture-capital firm 1789 to invest in companies espousing conservative values, bringing new attention to a financial movement that hasn’t taken off

Omeed Malik ’s pursuit of anti-woke profits got off to a rocky start. Donald Trump Jr., his new partner, could change his fortunes.

Malik, a former Bank of America executive, advised hedge funds before being pushed out of the bank. He formed a company that then put millions into a MAGA-friendly but struggling online marketplace.

His latest endeavor, 1789 Capital, a venture-capital firm aiming to invest in what he calls the “Republican/Parallel” economy, launched last year.

He discussed the idea with top investors in Republican circles, including Peter Thiel and the family office of real-estate developer Steve Witkoff , whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to be his envoy to the Middle East . Neither are investors.  

Trump Jr.’s involvement, made public last week, is bringing it new juice. The president-elect’s son spent years in his father’s shadow before finding his calling as MAGA’s most valuable surrogate and a key adviser to his father on policy and personnel.

“It’s time to invest in companies that don’t hate you,” Trump Jr. said last year in a social-media post, promoting ideological investing. 

At 1789, Trump Jr. will work alongside some of Trump’s biggest allies, mixing politics with business even as he has said he plans to stay out of the administration. His current role is honorary co-chair of his father’s transition team, where he sees his job as keeping people seeking to capitalize on roles in the administration out of it.

In addition to Malik, a one-time Democrat who is now a fixture at Mar-a-Lago, often on the tennis court, 1789’s other founders include Rebekah Mercer , the daughter of a hedge-fund chief who was one of Trump’s earliest megadonors, and Chris Buskirk, a conservative publisher who co-founded a Trump-aligned donor network with Vice President-elect JD Vance. 

Malik and Trump Jr. were key in facilitating the president-elect’s ties with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had sought the presidency himself and is now Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services . Conversations began just after the assassination attempt on Trump in July, according to people familiar with the timeline. In mid-August, Malik and Trump Jr. attended a meeting at Mar-a-Lago between the candidate and Kennedy, and later that month Kennedy dropped out of the race and endorsed his rival.

On Thursday night, Trump Jr., Malik and Kennedy were seated together at a black-tie gala hosted by the America First Policy Institute, a think tank focused on promoting Trump’s agenda.

Trump Jr., 46, and Malik, 45, have gone into business together before. Both invested in and advised PublicSquare, an anti-woke online marketplace that also owns an antiabortion diaper company. PublicSquare’s shares have dropped more than 90% since it went public last year in a deal Malik arranged. 

Other ideology-tinged financial projects Trump Jr. has promoted have floundered, including cryptocurrency company World Liberty Financial , which slashed its sales target about 90% last month after having trouble finding buyers for its tokens.

1789 said its target was to raise $100 million to invest in areas including “Deglobalization” and “Sectors Impaired by ESG Mandates,” a reference to the environmental, social and corporate-governance standards that conservatives have railed against, according to an investor presentation reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“Mass Customer Alienation Creates Opportunity,” one slide in the presentation said, citing the blowback that brands such as PayPal, Disney, Bud Light and Target received from conservative customers for those companies’ stances on social issues.

1789 currently backs companies including Tucker Carlson’s media brand and rocket company Firehawk Aerospace, which has partnered with NASA and the Air Force.

As a partner, Trump Jr.’s role will be to monetize the powerful profile he has built among conservatives as a chief gatekeeper for his father—and as an astute adviser on a movement that delivered the White House and Congress to the GOP.

At the same time, Trump Jr. will face potential conflicts of interests that come from investing in companies his father’s administration could influence. People close to Trump Jr. said he plans to recuse himself from investments involving any company with government business. 

“Unlike Hunter Biden, who only got into business to sell access to his dad’s public office, Don has been an entrepreneur his entire adult life,” said a spokesman for Trump Jr. “He has owned, operated and personally invested in multiple companies over the years, none of which have anything to do with currying favor from the government. Don is a sincere believer in the parallel economy and has always put his money where his mouth is.”

This story is based on conversations with people who know or have done business with Trump Jr. and his colleagues.

Trump Jr. is also a board member at Trump Media & Technology Group , which operates the social-media platform Truth Social, on which his father makes his incoming administration’s official announcements. The company’s shares have vacillated wildly, often in tandem with the elder Trump’s political fortunes.

Trump Jr. helped oversee the Trump Organization’s international business development until the company paused that work during his father’s first term. A civil fraud judgment against the Trumps and the company earlier this year bars him from serving as a director or officer of a New York company for two years, which could make returning to the company in a meaningful way anytime soon difficult. The family and the company are appealing the ruling .

Malik and Trump Jr. first met in New York through mutual friends during Trump’s first term. The social relationship eventually led to a business partnership.

An executive at Bank of America, Malik was fired in early 2018. The bank cited allegations of misconduct , which Malik denied. He filed a defamation claim in response , and he received an eight-figure payout from the bank as a settlement.

Malik told the Journal last year that he was once a “run-of-the-mill corporate Democrat”—he started his career as a speechwriter for former Democratic congressman Donald Payne Jr. His politics shifted after he chafed under the government’s response to the pandemic and corporate limits on speech. After moving to Florida and hanging out with Republican donors, he saw a business opportunity in a so-called parallel economy of conservative-friendly companies. Malik aligned himself with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis , donating to his gubernatorial and presidential campaigns, before switching his support to Trump.

Malik and his co-founders launched 1789 last year. The firm, named for the year the Bill of Rights was written, set out to raise $100 million for its first fund. Buskirk and Malik promoted the firm at gatherings of Buskirk’s donor group, the Rockbridge Network, where 1789 swag—hats and mugs—abounded and Malik got prime speaking slots. 

In the 1789 investor presentation reviewed by the Journal, it said it only invests in U.S.-based companies that respect free speech and free markets, among other things. It also said the firm only raises money from American investors and is a “response to the weaponization of capital by foreign entities.”

The materials call out high levels of Chinese investment in Silicon Valley. The economic ties between China and some well-known venture firms are extensive, and critics have raised questions about political and security risks.

1789 instead touts what it calls the moral and financial opportunity for “patriotic capital.”

The firm made its first investment roughly a year ago when it backed political commentator Tucker Carlson ’s media company, Last Country, as part of a $15 million funding round with other investors. It recently led a $140 million fundraising round for Blink Health, a startup that sells discounted drugs online, as part of a new focus on areas of the economy it says are weighed down by bureaucracy.

1789’s advisory board members include Blake Masters , the venture capitalist who had Trump’s backing in an unsuccessful 2022 Senate bid, and Jamie McCourt, who used to co-own the Los Angeles Dodgers and previously served as Trump’s ambassador to France, according to its materials.

PublicSquare, the anti-woke online marketplace where Trump Jr. was an early investor and adviser, got him into business with Malik.

Founded in 2021 by a former marketing executive named Michael Seifert, PublicSquare was launched as a place to connect disaffected conservative consumers to alternative products. 

Trump Jr. said on an episode of his podcast last year he would do whatever he could to help “PublicSquare grow and really get that dual economy going until the other side is willing to not be political, to not hate your guts, to not hate your freedoms, your religion, your values, until they’re willing to not jam their woke bullshit down your throats.” 

Today it owns EveryLife, a diaper company started by former Vice President Mike Pence ’s chief of staff that champions antiabortion causes, and Credova, a buy-now-pay-later financing company for firearms purchases. Each generated under $5 million in revenue in the third quarter, but both are growing quickly. 

A blank-check company run by Malik announced in February 2023 it would take PublicSquare public via a reverse merger . The online marketplace was valued at about $200 million, despite having revenue of only around $475,000 the year prior.  

Trump Jr. repeatedly touted the deal on social media—he has roughly 13 million followers on X and big followings on Truth Social, Instagram and Rumble . He told his followers and listeners that investing in Malik’s company, whose shares mostly traded around $10 apiece, before the deal closed was a way to support the parallel economy. 

Trump Jr. later joined PublicSquare executives on an investor webinar, and he invited Malik and Seifert to talk up the deal on an episode of his podcast.

He invested an undisclosed amount in a $12 million funding round in 2022, and he and Malik appeared together at the New York Stock Exchange to ring the bell when the deal closed in July 2023. Seifert said Trump Jr.’s current stake is less than 5%. 

PublicSquare’s shares closed at $29.80 that day but are now trading at around $2, a decline of more than 90%, giving the company a market value of around $70 million. 

The company reported a loss of $36.9 million on revenue of $16 million in the first nine months of 2024. PublicSquare announced last week it laid off about 35% of its workforce. It said it would shift its focus to providing “cancel proof” payments technology for merchants—some of whom say their payment processors have “canceled” them based on politics. 

“It would be easy for one to look at the stock and think something was fundamentally wrong with the company,” Seifert said. “We actually believe it’s an undervalued asset at the moment.”

Seifert said Trump Jr. has never sold a share and said former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R., Ga.), a PublicSquare board member and co-chair of President Trump’s inaugural committee , recently bought $3.25 million of shares. 

A person close to Trump Jr. said it is too soon to judge whether his various endeavors have been successful and that he and 1789 are both long-term investors. 

In September, Trump Jr., along with his brother Eric Trump and their father, introduced the World Liberty Financial crypto venture in a two-hour livestream on X. 

Trump Jr. explained how his investment interest in the crypto universe came after banks appeared to discriminate against his family. In early 2023, PNC closed the bank account of the company behind an anti-woke media app he had just launched, MxM, because of what he said was his family’s political activity. 

“We went from being [the] sort of people that would have been the elite in that world to just being totally canceled, and it changed our perspective so much,” he said on the livestream. “We understand what so many Americans are going through.”

A spokeswoman for PNC said the account was mistakenly closed due to a good-faith error. The bank has since reopened the account.

World Liberty Financial’s “gold paper,” outlining its purpose, used an image of a gold-splattered Trump on the cover. Unlike cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or ether, which have prices determined by the market, the price of World Liberty’s token is fixed, and it can’t be resold by buyers. What holders get for their money is the ability to vote on what the project does in the future, though any plans haven’t been made clear.

Under the arrangement, a Trump family-owned entity will earn 75% of any net revenues after the project earns $30 million. So far, World Liberty hasn’t reached that threshold, selling about $20 million worth of tokens.

In a regulatory filing late last month, World Liberty cut its sales target to $30 million from about $300 million.

The Trump family’s contract obligates them to promote World Liberty for five years. The arrangement could pose a conflict of interest to the new administration, which has pledged to create a “strategic national bitcoin stockpile” and form a presidential advisory council on cryptocurrency.

The SEC under Gary Gensler , whom President Biden appointed to run the agency, has been antagonistic to many crypto projects. President-elect Trump has said he would fire Gensler and be more receptive to digital assets . “Right now, you have a very hostile SEC,” Trump said during the September livestream. “My attitude is different.”

Some in political circles have speculated Trump Jr. could be launching a solo business career to lay the groundwork for a future political run, perhaps in the style of Vance, his close friend. The vice president-elect had a short-lived stint as a venture-capitalist before he became a senator and Trump Jr. helped get him onto his father’s ticket.

The person close to Trump Jr. said he has “zero interest” in joining his father’s administration or running for political office anytime soon. The person said Trump Jr. has always preferred to be involved in a range of ventures, unlike his brother Eric, who has long focused on running the family’s real-estate business.

How Trump Jr. will manage the potential for conflicts of interests that come from investing in companies his father’s administration could influence is unclear, especially after he spent years accusing President Biden’s family of corruption for Hunter Biden’s business ventures .

Jared Kushner , the husband of Trump Jr.’s sister, Ivanka, has been building a business empire overseas thanks to political ties forged during his time as senior adviser to Trump. 

He drew on relationships with Arab monarchs to raise his $3.1 billion private-equity fund, and is developing real estate in the Balkans with the support of Albanian and Serbian leaders, among other projects.  

Ivanka Trump , meanwhile, closed her namesake fashion brand during her father’s first term after she said she tired of the extra restrictions and scrutiny. 

Eric Trump helms the Trump Organization, which has domestic and overseas ventures, including golf courses and hotels. He doesn’t plan to take a role inside the administration and told the Journal recently his father would be walled off from the company.

Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said a key question is whether children of presidents are placed in positions because it will allow people and companies affiliated with them to get favored treatment. “If it is a regulated entity, will it be given less oversight? Will they be treated differently than other regulated industries?” she asked.