Tech Bro Billionaires Warm To GOP.
“Musk has always seen himself as the protagonist of his own science-fiction novel, on a hero’s quest to save humanity. It’s the legacy of a childhood as a geeky bookworm but also of his years in Silicon Valley during the great tech boom of the early 2000s. He and his fellow tech leaders were not just businessmen; as they saw it, they were visionary founders reinventing the world. They knew what to do and how to do it. The hundreds of billions of dollars that they accumulated along the way only confirmed the importance of their mission and validated their unique ability to carry it out.
Over the course of this election cycle, a group of these men have coalesced around a new mission: putting Donald Trump back in the White House. They are the Republican Party’s ascendant donor class, and they operate on a plane very different from that of the donors who preceded them. They have not only a seemingly limitless amount of money to help make this particular vision a reality but also their own media profiles and platforms to use toward that end. They are the opposite of private, dark-money donors, making a public show of their support for Trump and even sometimes announcing their donations on social media. It’s an ambitious and highly motivated group, powered by self-interest and self-regard and unencumbered by self-doubt.”
Big tech has historically been a left leaning enterprise heavily steeped in social justice and equity issues. Elon Musk appears ready to change the dynamic along with with a few others like Peter Thiel. The rank and file tech workers in the Silicon Valley remain overwhelmingly left of center but some of their leaders are taking a decidedly different direction with their politics and using their massive fortunes to sway the broader electorate. Who will win out is anyones guess.
