Silicon Valley conservatives rally behind Trump, celebrate Vance VP pick

By Julia Shapero and Rebecca Klar

The Hill

Former President Trump’s announcement of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate is bolstering support for the Republican ticket among conservatives in Silicon Valley, who have increasingly consolidated around the former president.

The 39-year-old former venture capitalist joins the GOP ticket as a growing number of leaders in Silicon Valley — once considered a liberal bastion — have rallied around Trump, particularly in the wake of an assassination attempt on the former president last weekend.

Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk formally endorsed Trump on Saturday, shortly after the shooting at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Musk’s endorsement marks a turning point for the owner of Tesla, SpaceX and the social platform X, who had previously supported Democrats.

“The last several months, Elon has been signaling that he’s been leaning to the Republican side,” said Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “He was leaning in this direction anyway, and this was the perfect moment for him to formalize that.”

Like Musk, several wealthy tech leaders who once donated to Democrats are now backing Trump. They join a small, existing contingent of conservatives in Silicon Valley, as well as an expanding cohort of cryptocurrency investors who are dissatisfied with the Biden administration’s approach to the emerging digital assets industry.

This group cheered the decision to bring Vance onto the Republican ticket Monday.

Jacob Helberg, senior adviser to the CEO of Palantir Technologies, said in a post on X that the Ohio senator “will be a historic and uniquely capable Vice President.” Helberg, once a prominent Democratic donor, has reportedly donated $2 million to Trump’s campaign.

Investor Balaji Srinivasan pointed to Vance’s history as a “successful tech investor” and his understanding of the “military, media, tech, finance, and politics” in describing him as a “great choice for VP.”

Venture capitalist David Sacks, a longtime GOP donor who hosted a fundraiser for the former president at his San Francisco home in June, touted the Marine Corps veteran as an “American patriot,” adding, “This is who I want by Trump’s side.”

“God bless JD, God bless Trump, and God bless the USA,” he wrote on X.

Sacks also praised the Vance and Trump ticket while speaking at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday.

Sacks, Musk and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson were reportedly part of a last-minute lobbying campaign, pushing for Vance behind the scenes, according to Axios.

Vance, known for his memoir-turned-movie “Hillbilly Elegy,” has ties to the tech world, but in his political life has been an outspoken critic of the power held by the biggest tech firms. After graduating Yale Law School in 2015, Vance joined Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Mithril Capital. He founded his own Ohio-based venture capital firm, Narya, in 2019.

Vance has become one of Trump’s most prominent supporters on Capitol Hill, as an advocate for his policies in the Senate. But before his 2022 Senate election, he was a critic of the former president. He’s called Trump an “idiot” and “noxious” and described him as “America’s Hitler.”

In May, Vance said he was “wrong” about his comments about Trump in 2016.

Although Vance is part of a growing populist movement in the GOP, his tech criticism has also put him on the side of some of the most progressive members in Congress — especially on issues related to reining in the power of tech giants.

At a Bloomberg-hosted forum in February, Vance offered support for Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, a frequent target of GOP attacks.

“A lot of my Republican colleagues look at Lina Khan … and they say, ‘Well, Lina Khan is sort of engaged in some sort of fundamental evil thing.’ And I guess I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job,” Vance said

But at the same time, Vance’s anti-Big Tech agenda is also aligned with right-wing figures who have criticized large tech companies over allegations of censoring conservatives online.

Those allegations were boosted when mainstream platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, booted Trump in 2021 after comments he made about the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Twitter, which became X under Musk, let Trump back on after the change in ownership. Meta-owned Facebook has also lifted its ban on Trump’s account.

Stacy Rosenberg, an associate teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, said voters will likely be less aware of Vance’s tech industry background and instead pay attention to his position on hot-button social issues, like reproductive health access and gun rights.

But his venture capital background could be an asset to bring in additional resources from the tech industry and aligned super PACs, she added.

A newly formed pro-Trump super PAC, America PAC, has raked in large sums from close Musk allies over the past month, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.

Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale donated $1 million, as did Doug Leone, a partner at Sequoia Capital, and Antonio Gracias, CEO of Valor Equity Partners.

Another Sequoia partner, Shaun Maguire, contributed $500,000, while Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, founders of the crypto firm Gemini who are best known for their role in founding Facebook, each donated $250,000.

Musk, who is currently the world’s wealthiest person with a net worth of more than $250 billion, plans to commit about $45 million a month to America PAC, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The support from some tech industry leaders could also be an indication of them betting on a victory for Trump’s ticket, Rosenberg said.

“There could be a sort of strategic element here, from a business perspective, of wanting to be in the game, and that means showing support for who will likely be controlling those contracts,” she said.

After last weekend’s shooting, momentum in the 2024 race has “shifted dramatically” toward Trump, Chakravorti noted.

The former president is currently leading Biden by 1.7 points just under four months out from the election, according to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s national polling average.

Following a poor performance from Biden at a late June debate, Democrats have largely been in disarray, with some calling for the 81-year-old president to bow out of the race. At the same time, Trump has been buoyed after surviving Saturday’s assassination attempt and having his federal charges of improperly retaining classified documents dismissed.

“I think a lot of tech people and finance folks and other industry folks are going to at least lean in the direction of Trump because they don’t want to get on the wrong side of what they believe to be the presumptive new administration,” Chakravorti told The Hill.