Yahoo Finance Billionaires in Silicon Valley are opening up to Trump. It's not just because of taxes.
Access to power and social issues are driving a tech tycoon pivot away from Biden
Donald Trump is set for a major stop in the 2024 money race on Thursday when he travels to Silicon Valley for a high-profile fundraiser co-hosted by investor David O. Sacks and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.
This is just the latest indicator of the ex-president's success in traditionally deep-blue Silicon Valley.
"SF Bay Area is shifting towards Trump," Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday.
But experts who have studied the role of billionaires in politics over recent decades said it shouldn't be a shock.
"The valley has been pivoting for a while," noted Northwestern University political scientist Jason Seawright in a recent interview.
"It isn't unusual for a group of people who've become affluent to align towards the party that defends wealth," added Seawright, who co-authored a book on billionaires and politics.
This tech-industry pivot is part of a larger embrace of Trump by billionaires and CEOs that has fallen into some familiar historical patterns.
Billionaires this go-around — like their predecessors in years past — seem to prioritize economic concerns as well as access to power as the top reasons for their support.
But other historical patterns have been broken. This current class of vocal billionaires led by Musk is much more likely than their predecessors, experts say, to focus on social issues that are not directly related to their bottom lines.
Trump will continue the charm offensive next week when he will participate in a moderated discussion at Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting of CEOs on June 13.
A hot fundraising ticket
Thursday's highly anticipated fundraiser is being co-hosted by Sacks and Palihapitiya, two billionaires who have been associated with the biggest names in Big Tech for decades.
They talked about their discussion to help Trump on a recent episode of their podcast in which they mixed financial and social topics with a clear interest in having the ear of the former president to discuss policy.
Sacks and Palihapitiya are just two examples of billionaires who are weighing in, with other Trump-friendly billionaires taking different approaches and focusing on different issues.
President Joe Biden is also relying on his own wealthy donors.
Earlier this week, Biden traveled to Greenwich, Conn., to raise money at an event hosted by former HBO CEO Richard Plepler. Biden told the crowd that his rival is "selling his presidency to the highest bidder down in Mar-a-Lago."
As for this week's Trump hosts, Palihapitiya described himself during the recent podcast as "an apolitical person" claiming his larger goal here is "to be an organizing principle" that can help guide the 2024 political conversation instead of the mainstream media.
Palihapitiya also described Trump's plans on things like cryptocurrency in positive terms and called it one of many issues "we have a chance to really double-click on."
Trump has promised to loosen regulations on digital currencies, a sector Palihapitiya has long touted. He suggested just this week that governments should perhaps hold digital assets.
Sacks, meanwhile, has been an outspoken Trump evangelist in recent months. He calls Trump "the once and future president" and hopes this week's event will lead to a new wave of support in Silicon Valley.
Both men downplayed the recent Trump conviction and said the former president had promised to appear on their podcast — which the two men co-host with investors Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg. Those investors say they are not donating or attending Thursday's event.
Sacks and Palihapitiya say they have tried to reach out to Biden but so far have not had any success. The duo has previously offered support (and podcast airtime) to figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy.
'He talks the language of billionaires'
Donald Trump appears to have made clear inroads with these high-profile supporters by convincing them he would be friendly to them and their bottom lines.
His pitch to billionaires around the country has focused on issues like taxes and business regulations, especially in the energy sector. Trump is promising less of both.
The former president has combined those billionaire dollars, which have been flowing in ever since he clinched the GOP nomination, with a surge in grassroots support in the last week following his conviction for falsifying business records.
It’s been a potent one-two punch that took in nearly $300 million in May, according to his campaign, and appears to have allowed him to significantly close a fundraising gap with Joe Biden.
"He talks the language of billionaires," said Darrell West, a political scientist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "He knows what buttons to push in order to get their support."
And West pointed to another factor at play here: "Billionaires want access."
In all, Trump’s charm offensive has clearly paid dividends. The New York Times reported this week that Thursday's Silicon Valley event is sold out, with attendees set to pay between $50,000 and $500,000 for tickets.
Notable exceptions to past norms
Professor Seawright said he has found that, in the past, "billionaires almost across the board are almost totally uninvolved in social issues."
That is clearly not the case this time.
Musk is the most prominent example of a business leader who has proven willing to weigh in on pretty much everything. The billionaire has also grown increasingly aligned with Trump in recent months though he has yet to publicly open his wallet for the former president.
Musk is also notable for taking social stands that some note could be against his economic self-interest.
He is broadly supportive of Trump even as the former president promises to remove government assistance for electric vehicles.
Musk has also taken a strong anti-immigration stance that is at odds with how business leaders often approach the issue and focus on the economic benefits that come with increases to the labor force.
Seawright noted that one of his previous studies looked at the political actions of the 100 wealthiest billionaires, and when it comes to Musk, "we've never found another person who behaves in a similar way."
And Musk is far from the only one willing to weigh in on topics seemingly beyond their bottom lines.
Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman is a longtime GOP megadonor and cited "the dramatic rise of antisemitism" as a reason for his decision to support Trump.
Indeed, the podcast in which Sacks and Palihapitiya discussed their support of Trump was an encapsulation of the many varied concerns at play here.
The nearly two-hour conversation spent considerable time on what many consider right-wing talking points, such as the "deep state" and recent congressional testimony from Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. At one point, Sacks accused Fauci of "a crime."
It also touched on the political dimensions of financial topics from artificial intelligence to the national debt to crypto.
As professor Seawright noted: "The balance among these things is much more complicated than it is for people who have less complicated financial lives."
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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