Former President Donald Trump raised $12 million at a fundraiser in California’s heavily Democratic Silicon Valley on Thursday, according to a member of the California Republican National Committee.
Harmeet Dhillon posted on X, “$12 million raised tonight! Amazing support for @realDonaldTrump. There were no empty seats in @DavidSacks and Jacqueline’s gorgeous home. Excited to see tech leaders step up.”
This was Trump’s first fundraising event since his conviction last week, demonstrating his ability to raise money and rally support despite Democrats’ best efforts to damage his candidacy by portraying him as a convicted felon.
of The New York Times The paper called the fundraiser a “landmark event.” report:
The fundraiser was co-hosted by Sacks and fellow venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, who also co-host the popular podcast “All In.”
by The Times, The fundraiser’s original goal was $5 million, but it has raised more than double that amount. About 25 people were scheduled to attend a dinner as part of the fundraiser, with about 50 more planning to attend a larger reception.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), whose list of potential vice presidential candidates is getting shorter and shorter, introduced Sachs to Donald Trump Jr. and convinced him to support Trump. Before joining the Senate, Vance worked in Silicon Valley and was a venture capitalist.
At the fundraiser, Sachs credited Vance with making the fundraiser happen, and Vance was reportedly “deeply involved” in encouraging his friends in the tech industry to get involved in the drive.
Sachs announced on X that he would be endorsing Trump in the 2024 election in a lengthy post pinned to his profile on Thursday. It read:
Why I support President Trump
As has been widely reported, this evening I will be hosting a fundraiser for President Donald J. Trump at my home in San Francisco.
Over the past few years, I have hosted events for presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and several members of Congress from both major parties. I donate to many people, but support only a few.
But today I am endorsing our 45th President, Donald J. Trump, as our 47th President. I do so based on four key issues that I believe are critical to American prosperity, security, and stability. The Biden Administration has strayed far on these issues, but I believe President Trump can get us back on track.
1. Economy
President Biden inherited an economy that was already recovering strongly from the COVID-19 shock of the second quarter of 2020. Demand was bouncing back and jobs were back. But he chose to continue the stimulus with unnecessary COVID-19 measures, about $2 trillion of which was passed on a party-line basis in March 2021, with trillions more to follow for “infrastructure,” green energy, and “inflation control.”
Biden implemented this policy despite early warnings from Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Larry Summers that it could lead to inflation. When inflation arrived, the Biden administration dismissed it as “temporary.” Indeed, inflation remains elevated, even after the fastest tightening cycle in memory.
As a result of Biden’s inflationary policies, the average American has lost roughly one-fifth of their purchasing power over the past few years. Additionally, Americans who need to take out mortgages, auto loans, or credit card debt face much higher interest rates, further limiting their purchasing power.
So is the federal government, which now has to spend more than $1 trillion a year on interest on its $34 trillion debt, and that amount is growing by $1 trillion every 100 days. This trajectory is unsustainable, but Biden’s 2025 budget calls for even greater spending.
Growth is already sluggish, from 3.4% in the fourth quarter of 2023 to 1.3% in the first quarter of this year. We cannot afford another four years of the Biden economy.
2. Foreign Policy / Ukraine War
President Trump left office with ISIS defeated, the Abraham Accords signed, and no new wars on the world stage. Three and a half years later, the world is on fire. President Biden has made several strategic choices that contribute to this situation.
Biden needlessly alienated Saudi Arabia in his first year in office before he realized it was an indispensable partner in the Middle East, and he also presided over a disorganized withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan (sound policy, terrible execution).
But his biggest mistake so far has been the Ukraine issue. His administration quickly began pushing for Ukraine’s NATO membership, despite the lack of consensus among NATO allies that such a move was a good idea. Predictably, this angered Russia, and the Biden administration stepped up its hardline stance at every turn, insisting that “NATO’s door is open and will remain open” when it comes to Ukraine. Biden himself provoked Russia by saying that he would “not accept anyone’s red lines.”
There was still a chance to stop the war in the weeks after the invasion, before too many casualties and destruction occurred. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators signed a draft agreement in Istanbul in which Russia would have withdrawn to its pre-invasion borders in exchange for Ukraine remaining neutral. But the Biden administration rejected that agreement, and also rejected Milley’s advice to seek a diplomatic solution in November 2022.
As the war of attrition continues, Ukraine faces ever-increasing casualties and damage to its infrastructure. Yet President Biden continues to allow the conflict to escalate, risking World War III. Every escalation that President Biden initially resisted – Abrams tanks, F-16s, ATACMs, allowing Ukraine to attack Russian targets – he ultimately acquiesced to. There is one escalation left: NATO forces directly fighting Russia on the ground. And European allies like Emmanuel Macron are already looking forward to this very scenario.
With Biden, our options are limited to fighting a proxy war to the last Ukrainian or fighting Russia ourselves. President Trump said he wants to prevent deaths in Ukraine and wants to end the war with a negotiated settlement. Ukraine will no longer get the agreement we discussed in April 2022, but we can save Ukraine as an independent state and avoid a world war.
3. Borders
As an immigrant to the United States myself, I certainly believe in America’s history of strengthening itself by welcoming talented people from other countries who seek freedom and opportunity. But that promise requires an orderly legal immigration process that values skills and the principles of U.S. citizenship, which has been a favored policy under President Trump.
Biden has effectively implemented an open border policy. On his first day in office, he rescinded Trump’s executive orders restricting illegal immigration, halted construction of a border wall and sold parts of it as scrap metal, resulting in a surge in illegal crossings and chaotic and dangerous conditions on the southern border.
President Biden (along with the hapless Kamala Harris and maligned Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas) has responded to growing concerns by gaslighting the American people that there is no problem at the border, despite the constant stream of footage of hordes of people stampeding across the border.
Once the situation became too serious to ignore or deny, Biden claimed he had no executive authority to do anything about it and blamed Republicans for not introducing legislation. But this week, after dismal poll numbers on the issue, Biden suddenly realized he did have executive authority after all. The executive orders he signed are a tepid, too-little-too-late effort to slow the wave of illegal immigration before the election. But Biden has shown he isn’t serious about the issue. If he wins a second term, the open border policy would be reinstated, allowing tens of millions more illegal immigrants to cross the border.
4. Legal Warfare
The bedrock of the political stability America has enjoyed for the past 250 years is a reluctance to tolerate attempts to jail political opponents in order to win elections, but since taking office Biden has pushed for selective and unprecedented prosecutions of former and future rivals.
Merrick Garland looked long and hard at the situation on January 6th and could not see a path to indict Trump, even after a one-sided congressional committee sent a highly biased referral to the Department of Justice. Then came reports of Biden’s frustration with Garland’s reticence. The result was the indictment of Jack Smith at the federal level and Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis at the state level, all of whom filed lawsuits based on novel legal theories never before seen and designed to ensnare Trump. In the New York lawsuit, Bragg reinstated a defunct bookkeeping misdemeanor into 34 felonies, arguing that it served a second crime that he never defined and that the judge never insisted on a unanimous jury agreement on.
I immigrated to this country as a boy because my parents opposed a political system in their home country that sought to resolve political differences by imprisoning its opponents. What a sad irony that the rule of law from which we fled is now rearing its ugly head in America or rather in that ugly place.
President Biden continues to insist that President Trump’s return to the White House threatens democracy, but his administration is the same one that has conspired with tech platforms to censor the internet, used intelligence agencies to hide his son Hunter’s laptop, and pursued arbitrary prosecutions of political opponents.
Conclusion: A/B testing
Voters have had four years of President Trump and four years of President Biden. In the tech industry, we call this an A/B test. Trump performed better on economic policy, foreign policy, border policy, and legal fairness. He is a worthy president for a second term.
