Former President Trump’s announcement of Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate has led to growing support for the Republican candidate among Silicon Valley conservatives, who have become increasingly united around the former president.
The 39-year-old former venture capitalist joins the slate of Republican candidates as a growing number of leaders in Silicon Valley, once considered a liberal stronghold, support Trump, especially in the wake of last weekend’s assassination attempt on the former president.
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 social platform X, who has traditionally backed Democrats.
“Elon has been signaling a pro-Republican stance in recent months,” said Bhaskar Chakraborty, dean of international business at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “He was leaning in that direction anyway, but this was the perfect opportunity to make it official.”
Like Musk, several wealthy tech leaders who once donated to Democrats are now backing Trump, joining a small contingent of conservatives in Silicon Valley and a growing group of cryptocurrency investors unhappy with the Biden administration’s approach to the nascent digital assets industry.
The group welcomed the decision Monday to accept Vance as the Republican nominee.
Jacob Helberg, a senior adviser to the CEO of Palantir Technologies, said in a post on X that the Ohio senator “would make a historic, uniquely qualified vice president.” Once a prominent Democratic donor, Helberg reportedly gave $1 million to the Trump campaign.
Investor Balaji Srinivasan called Vance “the perfect person to be vice president,” noting his background as a “successful technology investor” and his understanding of “the military, media, technology, finance and politics.”
Venture capitalist David Sachs, a longtime Republican donor who hosted a fundraiser for the former president at his San Francisco home in June, praised the Marine Corps veteran as an “American patriot,” adding, “This is the kind of guy we want on Mr. Trump’s side.”
“God bless JD, God bless Trump and God bless the United States of America,” he wrote to X.
Speaking at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, Sachs praised the pairing of Vance and Trump.
Sachs, Musk and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson were reportedly involved in a last-minute lobbying effort, pushing Vance behind the scenes. Axios.
Vance, known for his film-turned-autobiography “Hillbilly Elegy,” has ties to the technology industry but has been an outspoken critic of the power of big tech companies in politics. After graduating from Yale Law School in 2015, Vance joined Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm Mithril Capital. In 2019, he founded Ohio-based venture capital firm Naria.
Vance defended Trump’s policies in the Senate and became one of Trump’s most prominent supporters on Capitol Hill, but he was also a vocal critic of the former president ahead of his 2022 Senate run, calling him an “idiot” and “toxic” and describing him as “the American Hitler.”
In May, Vance said his comments about Trump in 2016 were “wrong.”
Vance is part of a growing populist movement within the Republican Party, but his criticism of tech companies has also put him on the side of some of the most progressive lawmakers in Congress, particularly on the issue of curbing the power of the big tech companies.
At a Bloomberg forum in February, Vance voiced his support for Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan, who has often been a target of Republican attacks.
“A lot of my Republican colleagues look at Lina Khan and say, ‘Lina Khan is fundamentally involved in evil things.’ I see her as one of the few people doing a pretty good job in the Biden administration,” Vance said.
But at the same time, Vance’s anti-big tech platform aligns with other right-wing figures who have criticized big tech companies for censoring conservatives online.
Those suspicions were further intensified when mainstream platforms like Twitter and Facebook banned Trump in 2021 after he spoke out about the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Twitter, which became X under Musk, reinstated Trump’s account after a change in ownership. Facebook, which is owned by Meta, also lifted its ban on Trump’s account.
Stacey Rosenberg, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, said voters will likely not pay much attention to Vance’s tech background and instead focus on his positions on social issues such as access to reproductive health care and gun rights.
But her background in venture capital could be an advantage in attracting additional funding from the tech industry and affiliated super PACs, she added.
A newly formed pro-Trump super PAC called America PAC has raised significant amounts of money from Musk’s inner circle over the past month, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.
Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Sequoia Capital partner Doug Leone and Valor Equity Partners CEO Antonio Gracias also donated $1 million.
Another Sequoia partner, Sean Maguire, donated $500,000, while Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, founders of cryptocurrency company Gemini and best known for founding Facebook, each contributed $250,000.
Currently the richest man in the world with a net worth of more than $250 billion, Musk reportedly plans to donate around $45 million per month to the U.S. PAC. The Wall Street Journal.
Rosenberg said the support from some tech industry leaders could be a sign they are betting on Trump winning.
“From a business perspective, there may be a kind of strategic element here of wanting to have a piece of the game, and that means showing support for whoever is likely to manage those contracts,” she said.
Chakraborty noted that the momentum in the 2024 race has “tipped dramatically” in Trump’s favor after last weekend’s shooting.
With less than four months until the election, the former president currently leads Biden by 1.7 points, according to The Hill/Decision Desk national polling average.
Democrats are in disarray after Biden’s poor performance in a late June debate, leading to calls for the 81-year-old president to drop out of the race, while Trump is emboldened by surviving an assassination attempt on Saturday and the dismissal of federal charges that he improperly stored classified documents.
“A lot of people in tech, finance and other industries will at least support Trump because they don’t want to be at odds with what they see as the new administration,” Chakraborty told The Hill.
