Silicon Valley has been, until recently, a rock-solid Democrat stronghold. That’s changing. Donald Trump is part of the reason for that change. The other?
Kamala Harris.
The latest Silicon Valley mogul to hop aboard the Trump train is 8VC Managing Partner Jon Lonsdale, who sat down with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo to explain Trump’s appeal — and Harris’s liabilities.
Investor and entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale reacted to Mark Cuban calling out Silicon Valley over its growing support of former President Trump, arguing that Kamala Harris’ policies will “break everything.”
“What you’re seeing is you’ve gone from almost none of Silicon Valley supporting Trump in 2016, a little bit more in 2020, and now I’d say probably half of the leaders I know who are builders in business are realizing, wait a second, there’s this kind of crazy, dangerous, far-left radical stream in our society. It’s going to break everything,” the 8VC managing partner said during an appearance on “Mornings with Maria.”
“It’s going to stop us from being builders, and we need to support the side that’s going to let our civilization thrive,” Lonsdale added.
That’s always been the trouble with leftist policies; they are deeply and fundamentally anti-growth, anti-business, and anti-prosperity. Kamala Harris’s policies (at least, what we know of them if you can keep track of her policy changes as they go by) include increasing taxation and regulation and attempting to make sure “everyone ends up in the same place,” which smacks of socialism.
These are not things that investment bankers or tech moguls want to hear.
Harris’s far-left record came in for major criticism from Lonsdale.
When Bartiromo asked Lonsdale whether Harris’ largely unknown policy agenda could be what’s pushing Silicon Valley towards Trump, the tech titan, whose venture capital firm manages several billion dollars in capital, quickly pushed back.
“I’ve been watching her for 20 years. And I think we’ve seen that she does not know how to ever push back on the far left. She raised her hand with [Vermont Sen.] Bernie Sanders to get rid of health insurance. She said she’d end the filibuster to get the Green New Deal passed. I mean, we could all say we don’t know what she’s going to do,” he argued.
That’s key. Kamala Harris is a Bernie Sanders “democratic socialist” (yes, I realize that this is a contradiction in terms; take it up with the daffy old Bolshevik from Vermont), and she always has been. She does look to be trying to moderate her positions as the election draws nearer, but I think we can all understand precisely how she would govern, given the chance.
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California being what it is, it’s unlikely the votes of any number of Silicon Valley moguls will tip the once-Golden State’s 54 Electoral College votes to Trump. But they do wield influence outside California and also control a great deal of financial resources. That’s not necessarily decisive; but in a close race, any influence can help tip the scale, and this one is shaping up to be a nail-biter.
Watch the interview below.
