Donald Trump Will Walk On Stage Tonight With Big Silicon Valley Money Behind Him
HuffPost
Trump’s pick of JD Vance as his vice presidential nominee could help rake in new support from tech investors.
When he first ran for president in 2016, Donald Trump infamously enjoyed the support of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. But for the most part, Silicon Valley avoided Trump and funded his opponent. However, the weeklong Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump will give his first speech tonight after surviving Saturday’s would-be assassination, has made it clear that a significant number of Silicon Valley bigwigs have hopped on the Trump train.
Look no further than David Sacks, the venture capitalist and co-host of the popular “All-In” podcast, who in recent years has become a representative of the increasingly reactionary wing of the tech elite.
After Trump summoned a mob to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Sacks said Trump had “disqualified himself from being a candidate at the national level again.” But last month, Sacks and fellow “All-In” co-host Chamath Palihapitiya hosted a high-dollar fundraiser for Trump in San Francisco — $50,000 per VIP ticket and $300,000 to join the hosting committee — shortly before “All-In” hosted him for a chummy interview. In a speech Monday at the convention, Sacks sounded like he’d picked up some Trumpian rhetorical ticks.
“We still don’t know which puppet Democrat party bosses will install as their nominee, but we know what their agenda will be: four more years of chaos and failure both at home and abroad,” Sacks said. He later called for voters to replace the “Biden-Harris cabal with a president who is strong and smart, rather than sleepy and senile, or in her case, clueless and embarrassing.”
That echoed Thiel’s case for Trump in 2016. The co-founder of Palantir and Silicon Valley’s arch right-winger — who once wrote, “I no longer think that freedom and democracy are compatible” — also spoke at the RNC that year.
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