Anti-Woke ‘Strive’ Unveils $DRLL to Go to War Against BlackRock, ‘Depoliticize Corporate

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“These three asset managers control $22 trillion in asset fund management. And so, if you think about that … that’s greater than the GDP of the United States of America,” Danhof explained. “And what do they do with that money? Well, they use their shareholder vote and their advocacy, that is their engagement with business, to affect culture in ways that most Americans disagree with.”

Danhof said environmental, social, and governance — known as ESG — is driving asset management firms to pressure corporations on a swath of left-wing issues.

“They use that $22 trillion in assets because they are upstream from American businesses to tell American businesses how to act,” Danhof said. “In a very large sense, what your audience sees every day with actions by Bank of America debanking gun clients or Nike pulling a Betsy Ross tribute shoe or Chevron and Exxon, for example, canceling energy projects here in the United States and abroad, a lot of the times you can actually point upstream and see that the largest shareholders of these companies are actually pressuring them to take these actions that are, again, going against the will of not only everyday citizens … but very often the folks who have their hard-earned money … with BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard.” [Emphasis added]

Most crippled by ESG, Danhof said, is the American energy sector. In response, Strive launched its first product on the New York Stock Exchange — $DRLL.

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In December, 2ndVote will launch an ETF perfectly attuned to the latest Trumpian cultural grievance: a “First Amendment fund” called the American Freedoms ETF. Composed of companies with permissive speech policies, the fund excludes platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, which the former president claims unfairly “censor” him. Grant insists the fund’s purpose isn’t political. Rather, it’s an expression of economist Milton Friedman’s dictum that a company’s sole responsibility is to make money. “What I would say to Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg is they should focus on profitability, not on social justice activism like Black Lives Matter and climate alarmism,” says Grant. “I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes if Trump gets reelected.”

Grant isn’t the first money manager to target the MAGA masses. “They’re kind of copying me,” complains Hal Lambert, founder of Fort Worth-based Point Bridge Capital, which rolled out its GOP Stock Tracker ETF, better known by its ticker MAGA, in 2017. Both firms also compete with the American Conservative Values ETF, started last year by Ridgeline Research. Despite bickering over which fund is the more authentically conservative, none holds assets in excess of $35 million. For all that Trump has suffused American life, the world of ETFs has so far been resistant.

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