The co-owner of a bar called “Blind Pig” has locked his Twitter account and the Joseph R. Biden campaign ad he appeared in has been taken down after it was revealed he’s really an angel investor for the tech industry.
Joe Malcoun’s turn in a recent spot — now deleted from the campaign’s YouTube channel — cited Mr. Biden as his “only hope” despite claims in 2018 that he possessed money to risk on tech startups.
“Usually you become a CEO and you make money, and then the money allows you to become an angel investor,” Mr. Malcoun said during an interview with a local NBC affiliate, the Daily Caller reported Wednesday. “I happened to have different circumstances where I had money [first].”
The Michigan bar owner, however, was portrayed as having dire financial straits caused by President Trump’s pandemic response in the now-abandoned ad.
“We don’t know how much longer we can survive not having any revenue,” he said in the spot, which was hailed by Rep. Eric Swalwell of California as the “Best ad of 2020.”
The Biden campaign did not respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment.
Mr. Malcoun, prior to locking his account, denied lying by omission for the Democrat’s campaign.
“I am the mechanism for telling a story on behalf of thousands of others,” he tweeted, the Daily Caller reported. “Right now thousands of venue employees and musicians are out of work and millions of fans were robbed of live music experiences. That is the real tragedy.”
The businessman also conceded that he chooses to keep his bar totally closed despite eased pandemic rules that permit limited-capacity operations.
“[We’re] technically ALLOWED to be open at reduced capacity right now,” he tweeted. “We are closed because it’s UNSAFE and irresponsible to be open.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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