Tech giants support Trump: A new era of political influence

Bill Kristol, the editor-in-chief of Bulwark, wrote on Monday that tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are the "new oligarchs" who supported Donald Trump to cement their influence in the Republican Party and control the U.S. administration.

Writes Kristol, a writer and commentator who is one of the most well-known American neoconservatives, very important donors for the Republicans and their candidate in this year's presidential elections are largely billionaires of the "new generation," who are far from conservatism in its old sense and are not interested in maintaining the status quo.

"It’s not that I had an excessively high opinion of the virtues or judgment of the super-wealthy. But I assumed that, having done well in America over the last few decades, they’d be a 'conservative' force in more or less upholding the current political and economic order," the author notes.

According to Kristol, it should be considered that Trump and his vice-presidential candidate were supported by "the new oligarchs: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and the tech bros, as well as some from a previous generation who’d been newly radicalized." They understood that now is the moment when they can likely ensure influence in a potential Trump administration.

The author warns that the combination of "oligarch arrogance" with "populist demagoguery" threatens not only America's political but also economic order.

Kristol recalls the speech of Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the Democratic convention in 1936, when he was officially nominated as the party's presidential candidate, and said: "new economic dynasties are hungry for power and reach for control over the government itself."

Saving a healthy, liberal, capitalist democracy will need "a recognition of the healthy elements of a social democratic tradition that some of us have neglected in recent decades (...). The defense of democratic capitalism is too important to be left to the capitalists," Kristol concludes.

In June, the "Financial Times" pointed out that a growing group of investors and tech company CEOs from Silicon Valley are following Musk's example and starting to support Donald Trump and finance his election campaign.

The British newspaper at the time assessed that, to a large extent, the heads of tech giants hope that a possible Trump administration will not fight against their monopolistic position, will not raise their taxes, and will cease dragging companies like Meta, Google, or Apple to court as part of competition protection policies.

However, the simplest explanation for this new trend is the growing conviction that Trump will win the presidential election and, therefore, it's worth gaining influence in his circles early, emphasized "FT."

According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk announced that he would allocate about CAD 61 million per month to his new super PAC, an unofficial committee supporting Trump that is not formally linked to his campaign. Fox News reported that the billionaire offers a high hourly rate—CAD 41—and additional bonuses to people who mobilize Republican voters.

Trump announced that if he wins the election, he will appoint Musk to lead a special ("government efficiency commission") tasked with developing a budget-cut plan.