This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Swamp Notes: Silicon Valley warms to Trump’
Marc Filippino
Big tech is big business, and big business comes with big money. That means when tech titans back a candidate for political office, it’s a pretty big deal.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about just all of the things happening in the 2024 US presidential election. I’m Marc Filippino, and this week we’re asking, Why is Silicon Valley throwing its weight behind Donald Trump? Here with me to discuss is Alex Rogers. He covers campaign finance for the FT. Hi, Alex.
Alex Rogers
Hey, Marc.
Marc Filippino
And we’ve also got with us Hannah Murphy. She’s the FT’s tech correspondent based in San Francisco. Hi, Hannah.
Hannah Murphy
Hello. Hello.
Marc Filippino
All right, so you guys wrote a story last week on the Silicon Valley bigwigs who are supporting Donald Trump’s campaign. Alex, what are some of the names that we should know here?
Alex Rogers
Yeah. So some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists hosted fundraisers this week for Donald Trump on Thursday, June 6th. There are also two other fundraisers in California for Trump on the 7th and 8th. The fundraiser on June 6th was hosted in San Francisco by David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, the co-host of the popular All In podcast. There’s also another fundraiser by Palmer Luckey, the founder of defence group Anduril, also of Oculus VR in Newport Beach, California. And then there’s a mystery fundraiser in Beverly Hills as well. And we don’t know exactly who’s going to be going to that one. But we do know that the tickets for the all-in fundraiser cost at least $50,000 a head. And they also have some extra VIP perks, such as preferred seating for dinner and a photo with Donald Trump if you give at least $300,000. So Donald Trump has been raising all of this money in Mar-a-Lago, in Florida. But now he’s finally going west and finding these Silicon Valley Republicans now who have decided to, in one of the bluest parts of the country, come out openly and support Donald Trump.
Hannah Murphy
. . . and pay half a million dollars for a photo opportunity.
Marc Filippino
$50,000 a head. Better get you some pretty good lobster, I’ll tell you that. Hannah, are Trump’s biggest financial backers from Silicon Valley? Are they longtime supporters? Are they people who have always supported Trump?
Hannah Murphy
So some of them, like Palmer Luckey, have long been sort of public about supporting Trump. David Sacks and Co, it’s unclear yet that they are definitely supporting Trump, that they’re definitely anti-Biden, but they haven’t come out with a firm endorsement despite holding the fundraiser. But you have David Sacks, you have Mark Andreessen very loudly criticising Biden as anti-business. And then one of the loudest, most vocal critics of all being Elon Musk recently. There’s manoeuvrings, both from the Trump campaign, to sort of woo him and get him on board, potentially as someone who endorses him and also donates. And also possibly it’s been reported that they’ve discussed a possible advisory role. Elon has denied these discussions have taken place. But, but there have been reports that this is part of this.
Marc Filippino
Which is so interesting because Elon’s public persona was very liberal, right? Like he had voted Democrat, or he said he voted Democrat for quite a few elections.
Hannah Murphy
Yeah, we, I mean, we’ve been able to watch as he’s posted repeatedly on the platform that he bought in October 2022, X. We’ve sort of been able to watch this transformation. And he’s been very open about: Yes, I used to vote for Biden, for Hillary, for Obama. But now he has criticised Biden over his immigration policies. He’s criticised or he’s jumped on the bandwagon of questioning, you know, his, his, mental acuity. He has . . . Alex, help me out here. He’s, he’s, he’s gotten involved in some of the, the debates about the, the court cases that Trump is facing.
Alex Rogers
Yeah, yeah. So, Elon has publicly said on X, his own platform, that the more unfair the attacks on Trump seem to the public, the higher he will rise in the polls. Meanwhile, he’s ridiculing Joe Biden, saying that he’s a pawn of the left and that he doesn’t know really what’s going on anymore. So while Elon Musk has not donated to either candidate, he has not endorsed either candidate. He is publicly defending Donald Trump as he faces all of these legal cases. And he’s, you know, ridiculing the president of the United States, Joe Biden, for being too old.
Marc Filippino
So I’m curious. Alex, let’s assume for a second that these folks aren’t only motivated to support Trump because of deeply held political convictions. Let’s assume they’re trying to get something out of a second Trump presidency. What exactly is that?
Alex Rogers
Well, I think that there’s a couple of different reasons why somebody like Elon Musk or David Sacks or Palmer Luckey would like Donald Trump to be president. You know, this is the free speech thing. There’s tech regulation. There’s also taxes. The Trump tax cuts from 2017 expire in 2025. If Joe Biden gets a second term, then potentially the richest Americans could see their marginal tax rate increase. That could see the capital gains tax increase. You could see the estate tax exemption decrease. So there are some elements of taxes. But for somebody like Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, that’s probably not something that actually really drives him as much as some of these tech regulations and free speech cultural concerns.
Marc Filippino
Yeah, Hannah, I mean, you’ve been covering the Federal Trade Commission, going after Big Tech for a while now. I mean, they must be thrilled by the idea of Lina Khan no longer heading the FTC.
Hannah Murphy
Right? I think it’s pretty much gospel among VCs, among founders, that you are very unhappy with this sort of antitrust clampdown, as obviously, if you’re a founder, that’s one of the ways that you might cash out if your business is bought. So that has obviously irked many in Silicon Valley. I think one point we haven’t really mentioned is just more on a kind of personal level, is that Musk and others around him kind of cast themselves as victims, despite being some of the richest men in the world fighting the, the big guy. They’re fighting the good fight. And there’s also this sense of victimhood with Donald Trump. He’s the victim of these terrible campaigns from the left. Perhaps they see each other in each other in that way.
Alex Rogers
The other thing that I would add is that it seems like they just think that Trump is going to win. And I talked to Trevor Traina, a Trump ambassador to Austria, and he told me that it’s increasingly obvious Trump is going to win and people want to position themselves favourably for the next four years. And so there are bets being made now among the Silicon Valley elite. Also on Wall Street. You saw Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone last week endorse Trump. They’re making bets that Trump is going to win. And they want to have a friend in the White House. This is not something that affects, for the electoral map; you know, California, New York are not in play. This is really a story about influence and the interesting cultural shifts that are happening in these deep blue areas.
Marc Filippino
You mentioned Wall Street, Alex, and at least for Wall Street, we’re used to corporate leaders. They’re supporting Republicans. It feels a little surprising, maybe I’m wrong here, to see more members of Silicon Valley come out and support Trump, given the kind of reputation that it has as a more leftist area.
Alex Rogers
Silicon Valley is still a blue, one of the bluest parts of the country. But what’s interesting is that you do have, though, a shift where compared to 2016, there are a lot of people like Jacob Helberg, a volunteer executive who talked to us, who gave $1mn to Trump, who said that when he publicly came out in support of Trump, there hasn’t been the same backlash that there was for other people, you know, four years ago or eight.
Hannah Murphy
I also think maybe there’s sort of a natural pushback against, you know, some of those Silicon Valley politics I was talking about, you know, seen as woke in quotes. You know, Musk has, has himself talked about like diversity and inclusion efforts. They didn’t necessarily agree with them. And if you spoke out previously, you were a sort of pariah. And now sort of the more that that has become part of Silicon Valley culture, the more that they felt under attack. And so this is sort of an outlet.
Marc Filippino
Hannah, we’ve already seen some splintering in the tech industry along partisan lines like, I’m thinking of social media offshoots like Truth Social that, you know, it’s Trump’s social media site that caters to conservatives. (Yeah) It started that, you know, that came out of the fact that he was banned from Twitter and Facebook following the January 6th insurrections. Could we see even more splintering in Silicon Valley after the election if Trump wins?
Hannah Murphy
Oh, absolutely. I mean, some of the, the measures that he will take will prove very controversial to someone, will be absolutely welcomed by others, depending on where you stand on issues such as free speech. You know, when it comes to regulation, perhaps the Valley would all by and large, welcome less scrutiny on antitrust, for example. But when it comes to these sort of flashpoints around free speech censorship, I expect that would be more splintering under Trump.
Marc Filippino
All right. We’re going to take a quick break at this point. And when we come back, we’re going to do Exit Poll.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CLIP FROM ‘THE GAS MAN’ PODCAST PROMO]
Marc Filippino
We are back with Exit Poll, where we talk about something that did not happen on the campaign trail and apply rigorous political analysis to it. Okay guys, so I want to talk to you about a story that is near and dear to my heart. It’s about pandas. So you know that there were pandas in the DC zoo until China, I guess you could say, took them back. It was a gift. They took the gift back. And then we recently found out a few weeks ago that the DC zoo is actually getting pandas again, which, I mean, just blew everyone’s mind because we were so sad when they left in the first place. Alex, Hannah, yay for pandas? Nay for pandas? I mean, we’ve talked about pandas on the show before. What do you guys think?
Alex Rogers
Yay! Of course, who doesn’t love a cuddly panda bear, chewing on some leaves? I mean, you’re talking about the political element of this?
Marc Filippino
Yeah, because. because it’s, it’s Chinese diplomacy with, you know, over, over pandas. Right. Like. . .
Alex Rogers
Yes, I am from DC. I actually met the pandas’ great-grandparents way back when, when I was a kid here going to the National Zoo. I am pro-panda. And any, any effort to bring pandas to our nation’s capital is a good thing. What more do you want me to say?
Marc Filippino
I mean, that’s fine. That’s fine, yeah. I just, I would just point out that one of our previous guests, Josh Chaffin, if you’re listening, very anti-panda. So, you know, it’s. . .
Alex Rogers
How, how can you be anti-panda?
Marc Filippino
I don’t know. I question that, but notice that you’ve been on the show twice now and he hasn’t been back. So Hannah, what are your thoughts on pandas?
Hannah Murphy
My thoughts on pandas? We’ve been talking about Silicon Valley elites, but actually pandas far surpass in terms of elitism. They are incredibly rare. Am I right? They’re endangered. They must be preserved. I don’t know if I can say the same thing for, for Silicon Valley elites. [Laughter]
Marc Filippino
All right. I want to thank our guests, Hannah Murphy, our San Francisco-based tech correspondent. Thanks, Hannah.
Hannah Murphy
Thank you.
Marc Filippino
I also want to thank Alex Rogers. He’s the FT’s US business and politics correspondent. Thanks, Alex.
Alex Rogers
Thanks, Marc.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Marc Filippino
This was Swap Notes, the US politics show from the FT News Briefing. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. By the way, do you have any, I don’t know, burning questions about the US election? If you do, check out the link in the show notes to drop us a voice message. We might just play your question on the show. Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor and Sonja Hutson. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson. I’m your host, Marc Filippino. Our executive producer’s Topher Forhecz and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Original music by Hannis Brown. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.
