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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
The writer is senior adviser, Sequoia Heritage
“Trump is good for people like you and me.” I first heard this refrain in 2016 while trying to raise money to ensure that the serial bankrupt from New York didn’t become leader of the free world. The speaker was a political refugee from cold war eastern Europe. He and his relatives had been given citizenship by the US; he had benefited from its welfare system and been educated in California’s public schools and colleges. He later went on to start and sell a technology company for billions of dollars.
At the time I was nonplussed by his comment and perplexed by his lack of empathy for the less fortunate. But his remark has echoed loudly again over these past few weeks as a handful of Silicon Valley financiers, including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, have expressed their support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Much as I disagree with their endorsements, I sympathise with some of their arguments. Here in California, the Democratic Party has exercised a monopoly for the past couple of decades that is largely financed by deep-pocketed unions representing teachers, prison guards and service workers.
The Trumpers aren’t alone in their frustration with California’s crippling regulatory regime, punishing tax code and sky-high home prices, which have sent both companies and individuals skittering out of the state. The challenge to free speech that has infected the state’s schools, universities and workplaces is equally dispiriting.
When confronted with the malleable question of character, the Trumpers will squawk about Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton and Whitewater real estate, or the philandering proclivities of (pick your favourite) Presidents Clinton, Johnson, Kennedy or Roosevelt. All politicians, they will argue, are flawed. But even Richard Nixon, crook that he was, had sufficient respect for the rule of law to resign following the Watergate scandal.
So why are these highly educated, absurdly successful people prepared to turn a blind eye to Trump?
I doubt whether any of them would want him as part of an investment syndicate that they organised. Why then do they dismiss his recent criminal conviction as nothing more than a politically inspired witch-hunt over a simple book-keeping error? Is it because they haven’t liked the tilt of the Federal Trade Commission since 2021 or do they believe that Trump will bolster the value of their bitcoin stakes? Perhaps they think he will give free rein to AI or maybe they believe Presidents Putin, Orban, Maduro and former President Bolsonaro are benign spirits. Or is it just because they hope Trump will add even more loopholes to America’s highly, discriminatory tax code and give them some plum government appointment?
These people have a handful of awkward questions to answer.
Would they employ a convicted felon in their own businesses? Would they tolerate abuse and predatory behaviour towards women in their offices or refuse to provide healthcare benefits that included abortions? Would they stay silent while Black, Asian-American and Muslim colleagues who they work alongside, are denigrated?
Would they refuse to pay contractors who have fulfilled all their obligations? Would they happily stiff banks or use lawsuits as a way to intimidate and bully? Are they prepared to pick and choose which election results they believe? And would they turn mute if their competitors’ offices were ransacked and pillaged?
Sadly, the Trump supporters in Silicon Valley are making the same mistake as all powerful people who back authoritarians. They are, I suspect, seduced by the notion that because of their means, they will be able to control Trump. And, I imagine they are also committing another cardinal error: deluding themselves that he will not do what he says or promises. That has not been the modus operandi of authoritarians over the centuries.
Fortunately, at least in Silicon Valley, Trump will not prevail. Despite the inflammatory tweets and podcasts of a handful of moneymen, and all the hubbub it has caused, few have joined their ranks. Rest assured, Trump’s backers in the three counties that house most of Silicon Valley companies are about as common as garden gnomes on the lawn of the White House. In 2020 Trump won 21 per cent of the votes cast between San Francisco and San Jose, the cities that bookend Silicon Valley. In 2016, the year he won the election that he says was stolen, he received 18 per cent. His share of the votes this year will be no different.
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