‘It’s not 2016 anymore’: Trump finds friends in Silicon Valley

CALIFORNIA – One March night in the US capital, Senator J. D. Vance left a conservative gala to join a group having dinner with Donald Trump Jr.

As the meal wrapped, Mr Vance decided, on a whim, to invite a friend – Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Sacks, whom he had just introduced at the gala dinner – to meet the former president’s son.

Soon, the three Republicans were getting to know one another for a half-hour or so in a private dining room of the Conrad Hotel.

It was there, at that impromptu post-dinner hang hours after Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, that Mr Sacks signalled that he was all in for Trump 2024.

On the evening of June 6, this time on his own California turf, it was Mr Sacks’ turn to host Team Trump.

The former president flew to San Francisco to attend a fundraiser at Mr Sacks’ US$20 million (S$26.9 million) home on the toniest street in the city’s smart Pacific Heights neighbourhood. The private event, the first campaign fundraiser since Trump’s criminal conviction last week, was expected to raise north of US$12 million, according to people involved in the gathering.

Beyond the money, the fundraiser in the beating heart of the liberal tech industry is also in some ways a landmark event, at least symbolically.

Four years ago, and certainly eight years ago, the Bay Area remained a haven for liberalism and offered little support for Trump. But that Barack Obama-era bonhomie between Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party has come close to disintegrating.

These days, entrepreneurs complain as much about President Joe Biden as they do about Ms Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, who has ascended to Darth Vader-like status in some corners of the technology industry.

To be sure, most of the tech industry’s elite maintain their liberal leanings on everything from immigration to climate change.

Mr Biden made his own trip in May to Silicon Valley, where he raised millions of dollars and was feted by internet icons, including venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and Ms Marissa Mayer, former chief executive of Yahoo.

But times have changed, and Republicans on a national level see an opportunity to make incursions with wealthy entrepreneurs who have drifted right following the Covid-19 pandemic and resistance to the social-justice movements of 2020.

“It’s safe to say that there’s a wellspring of support in Silicon Valley,” Mr Sacks wrote in a text to The New York Times, “especially given the backlash to the political prosecution of Trump.”

Mr Sacks had expressed a desire to friends to make the San Francisco event something of a statement. He hoped to portray Silicon Valley as a changed place – and San Francisco as no longer the liberal haven of the rockers Grateful Dead and poet Allen Ginsberg.

Over the last few years, Mr Sacks, a long-time associate of Tesla founder Elon Musk and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, has transformed from a prominent Silicon Valley executive into an unlikely media celebrity for would-be entrepreneurs, especially those leaning right, who listen to his popular All-In podcast.

He has also substantially increased his political involvement, hiring aides to steer his giving, setting up his own super political action committees and, as of late, building relationships at Trump’s Florida home base, Mar-a-Lago, links to which he lacked just a few months ago.

“There’s a tonne more latitude that people feel like they have now,” said Mr Saurabh Sharma, head of a conservative advocacy group called American Moment, which hosted the gala featuring Mr Sacks and Mr Vance. “It’s not 2016 anymore.”

The trip to San Francisco was Trump’s first to the famously left-wing city in at least a decade.

He has called San Francisco “horrible”, “filthy” and “drug-infested”, and has often invoked its home-grown political figures, such as Governor Gavin Newsom and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as exemplars of what he sees as liberal excesses.

Some attendees of Mr Sacks’ event flew in from out of town. The event at his home – nicknamed the Broadcliff by him and his wife Jacqueline – sold out its two ticket levels – US$50,000 per person and US$300,000 per person.

Several people who belatedly expressed interest in going learnt they would be unable to do so. Later, over the weekend, Trump will be hosted in Orange County in Southern California by another tech entrepreneur, Mr Palmer Luckey, a former Facebook executive who went on to co-found defence tech company Anduril.

People involved in the San Francisco fundraiser said the roughly US$12 million they expect to raise will beat their initial goal of about US$5 million.

About 25 people were expected to attend the dinner, and about another 50 or so were slated to attend a bigger reception. Trump flew to the event on June 6 night from Arizona, where he took part in a town hall in Phoenix, his first campaign event since his criminal conviction.

San Francisco police cordoned off several blocks surrounding Mr Sacks’ home, while a small group of Trump’s supporters rallied outside the barricades, waving flags and occasionally trading insults with passers-by.

Attendees of the dinner arrived in SUVs with tinted windows, some waving to the gathering as they drove past.

A few of the more famous Silicon Valley Republicans skipped the event.

Mr Thiel, who has been in Europe this week for the annual meeting of the Bilderberg Group, was not expected to attend, according to two people familiar with his plans. Neither was venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, a person familiar with his plans said.

The fundraiser drew heavily from leaders in the crypto industry. Mr Ryan Selkis, a politically active crypto entrepreneur, told people he planned to attend.

The industry has taken a recent beating from Mr Biden, whose veto last week of a crypto-friendly Bill drove a few attendees to the Trump gathering, according to a person involved in the event.

“As opposed to an event in Palm Beach, where it’s more likely a bunch of wealthy people who want to go to France or England, this event is a little bit more about the business community saying ‘Enough’,” said Mr Trevor Traina, a former ambassador to Austria under Trump.

Mr Sacks has had two primary sources of help. The first has been Mr Chamath Palihapitiya, an early executive at AOL and Facebook, who is now one of Mr Sacks’ so-called “besties” on their joint podcast and a former large donor to Democrats.

The other is Mr Vance, who lived briefly in San Francisco and worked as a venture capitalist at one of Mr Thiel’s firms. At the fundraiser on the evening of June 6, Mr Sacks saluted Mr Vance, saying that without his help, the event would have never happened.

Mr Vance, who was also at the event, co-founded a donor network popular with some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, called Rockbridge Network. He was deeply involved in urging his friends in the industry to turn out for the gathering.

Mr Vance has called Mr Sacks “one of his closest confidants” in politics. Mr Sacks helped launch Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ failed presidential bid alongside Mr Musk on social platform X in early 2023, and was slow to embrace Trump.

Mr Sacks said in the aftermath of Jan 6, 2021, that the riot at the Capitol had disqualified Trump from serving in elected office, but Mr Vance then spent upwards of a year trying to change Mr Sacks’ mind.

Mr Sacks has expressed to friends that he no longer thinks that being a Trump supporter in Silicon Valley is so provocative.

During Trump’s last trip to Silicon Valley for fundraising in the fall of 2019, organisers worked hard to disguise the host of the event, out of fear of a backlash, not informing guests of the precise location until very close to the day of the event.

Nowadays, Trump supporters in tech take pride – a sign in itself. Mr Ron Conway, a leader of liberal tech executives for decades, has grown alarmed by the trend and encouraged a few friends to skip the event, according to a person familiar with his thinking. Other Democratic veterans in tech have even questioned the hosts privately and effectively asked them if they had lost their minds.

Mr Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member from California who has worked in politics for decades, called the pro-Trump cohort of Republican givers “true, new gladiators”.

“I gave up on Silicon Valley years ago,” Mr Steel said. “There’s been a transformation – real money is coming.”

Mr Sacks had expressed an interest in turning the event into a content-creation opportunity, perhaps by pulling out microphones for a live taping of his and Mr Palihapitiya’s podcast.

That plan was scuttled. Still, the paper invitation to donors was sure to attach a rather specific honorific atop the names of these two professional venture capitalists: “All-In Co-Hosts.” NYTIMES