Crypto News: Trump’s Silicon Valley supporters are all in

As the world knows, former president and current candidate Donald Trump is now a convicted felon. But, as Max Chafkin writes, that hasn't slowed the stream of Trump support from the tech world. Plus: Biden has a prices problem, Mexico votes this weekend, and Pixar goes back to what worked before. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

In 2016, when Peter Thiel appeared at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to deliver a speech praising Trump, his peers in Silicon Valley were briefly flummoxed. Trump's preening, braggadocious brand of nationalistic populism—with a bit of neo-Luddism swirled in, as this was a guy who famously never sent emails—was antithetical to everything conservatives in the tech industry stood for.

Ultimately, of course, and with Thiel's encouragement, tech came around to Trump, tacitly embracing his politics even as they sometimes posed as members of the #Resistance. Trump responded by more or less leaving them alone. His boasts about cracking down on social media went nowhere; the White House created exceptions to protect big tech companies from tariffs on their Chinese goods; and Thiel's Palantir won numerous government contracts. The left found all of this distasteful, but the tech industry's embrace of Trump turned out to be a very profitable trade for all involved.

Eight years later, the dynamic between Trump and tech feels similar, with an important exception: There's nothing tacit about Trump's Silicon Valley support this time. Minutes after Trump was convicted of falsifying business records, Shaun Maguire, a Sequoia Capital partner, posted a 3,600-word tweet titled "I just donated $300k to Trump," in which he crowed about Trump's immigration policies, complained about Democratic efforts to rein in tech and suggested there had been "extreme election interference" in 2020. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and co-host of the All-In podcast, chimed in, calling Maguire's donation an "act of courage" and noting that "after Biden's disastrous presidency, Trump has a lot of supporters in Silicon Valley."

Trump was familiar with the tech industry's riches while he was in the Oval Office. Photographer: Tom Brenner/Reuters

Thiel has stayed on the sidelines so far this cycle, but Trump's most enthusiastic supporter has been Thiel's old co-founder at PayPal. Elon Musk, the industry's wealthiest and most famous figure, has spent a large part of the past two years promoting various pro-Trump causes, while posting a steady stream of anti-immigration memes and conspiracy theories on his X social network. Naturally, Musk was ready with his own pro-Trump reaction to the verdict: "Great damage was done today to the public's faith in the American legal system," the chief executive officer of Tesla wrote. "If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter—motivated by politics, rather than justice—then anyone is at risk of a similar fate."

Expect more of this in the days to come. As Puck reported, Sacks and his podcast co-host Chamath Palihapitiya will host a fundraiser for Trump in San Francisco next week, with donors being asked to contribute as much as $300,000 per person. Back in 2016 similar fundraisers were conducted in private—and in some cases canceled if they became public—but Sacks and his peers aren't being shy about this one. They're bragging about the fundraiser on X, while dunking on pro-Biden technology figures who've had the gall to suggest that maybe Trump's making a hush money payment to a porn star is a bad thing. Expect to hear all about this on the next episode of All-In. It would be unsurprising if Musk showed up at the fundraiser, too, after flirting privately with Trump, according to reports published by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News.

Why are Trump's tech supporters so much more vocal this time around? Part of it is undoubtedly a sort of influence play–a way to court a large and extremely engaged audience on social media. Trump, famously, has proved himself a savant at understanding how to use controversy to his advantage, and figures like Musk and Sacks seem to be aping those tactics as a matter of personal enrichment and vanity. (Trump's website crashed after the verdict as donations streamed in, in case you were wondering if he was seeing this moment as a fundraising opportunity.)

But this isn't just an attention grab or a troll. The main thing pushing Trump's tech supporters toward him is that the Republican, for all his perceived shortcomings, is much friendlier to their interests than Biden. Over the past four years, the White House has favored a host of policies that are popular among working-class voters but that are anathema to the typical venture capitalist. Biden supports muscular antitrust prosecutions, has expressed strong pro-union sentiments (inviting Shawn Fain, the head of the United Auto Workers who regularly talks about unionizing Tesla, to the State of the Union address) and has seemed much more serious than Trump about limiting technology transfer between the US and China.

Yes, Trump has also sometimes sounded hostile to the tech industry, though it's hard to take his hostility seriously given his actions while in office and his tendency to be ideological-flexible when money is at stake. After years of expressing skepticism about digital currencies, Trump recently did a full 180 on the industry—undoubtedly with an eye on the tens of billions of dollars in a pro-crypto super PAC.

On the other hand, one thing working against Trump in his efforts to court wealthy technologists is that many VCs are just as fickle as he is. A big part of their support now is a sense that they're backing a winner. But the polls are close, and voters may prove more resistant to supporting a convicted felon than your typical contrarian podcaster is. If voters do move to Biden, it seems almost certain the tech industry will do what it has always done–adapt to the political moment.

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Stock markets are booming, regularly hitting new all-time highs. Unemployment is near a historic low, the economy is growing at a healthy clip, and inflation continues to drop toward normal. So why are Americans convinced their economy is in deep trouble?

Opinion poll after poll shows strong majorities unhappy with the economy and blaming President Joe Biden for it. Some of this is in the face of verifiable facts. A Harris Poll survey for the Guardian last month found that 55% think the economy is shrinking, 49% think unemployment is at a 50-year high (not a low) and 49% think the benchmark S&P 500 stock index is down for the year. It's a matter of fact that all these beliefs are wrong. The S&P was up about 12% for the year when the poll was conducted and almost 29% over the previous 12 months.

It's not only opinion polls. Surveys of consumer sentiment, as carried out by the University of Michigan and the Conference Board, show optimism lower even than in 2008, the year of the global financial crisis. Such negativity can in turn deter people from taking risks and raise the risk of a recession.

The standard metrics that give the economy a good bill of health have their flaws, but they're not fake (whatever the conspiracy theorists say). So how do we explain why most of the population feels just as bad as they do during a recession?

John Authers tries to answer that question here: Robust Economy Can't Shield Biden From Blame for Higher Prices

Sheinbaum. Photographer: Fred Ramos/Bloomberg

At a hotel in Acapulco in April, Claudia Sheinbaum gave a speech to a sea of bankers and financiers promising that Mexico under her watch would have a responsible approach to debt. She then headed to a rally where she assured residents of the beachside resort that their city would be rebuilt after the damage wrought by a Category 5 hurricane. The next day she was in the southern state of Chiapas, telling farmers there would be state support for coffee and corn production.

The candidate for the ruling Morena party is gunning for votes far and wide as she campaigns to become Mexico's first woman president in the June 2 elections.

At rallies people scream "Claudia!" at the top of their lungs and wave their phones in the hopes of snagging a selfie. Still, the former Mexico City mayor doesn't inspire the same level of fandom as her mentor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO. At campaign events, people wear T-shirts with a cartoon image of AMLO, ask her to sign a copy of his most recent book and give her letters to him thanking him for his service. Nevertheless, some see a female Ph.D. scientist as having the potential to win over a centrist portion of the electorate that the incumbent couldn't reach.

"It would take a meteorite of the kind that killed the dinosaurs" for Sheinbaum to lose, said Pedro Miguel, one of the founding members of the Morena party, back in September. "Not because of who she is," he said, "but because of what she represents."

Maya Averbuch explains what Sheinbaum represents, and what's unknown, here: AMLO Ran Mexico as a Maverick. His Protege Is Playing It Safe

Across the bay from San Francisco, some 400 miles up the coast from Walt Disney Co.'s headquarters in Burbank, sits the Steve Jobs Building, an industrial amalgam of glass and red brick that's home to Pixar Animation Studios. Between hula-hoop classes, lengths in the outdoor heated pool, sword-fighting tutorials and seminars on drawing the perfect goose, the workforce of about 1,000 employees who created Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and Up is scrambling to restore Pixar's status as the vanguard of computer animation technology and storytelling.

Starting with its first feature film, Toy Story, in 1995, Pixar enjoyed an uninterrupted run for almost three decades as a maker of movies that generated billions of dollars at the box office and won countless awards. Such was the threat from Pixar's success to Disney's animation business that, in 2006, Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger finalized a deal with Jobs, then Pixar's majority owner, to buy the company for $7.4 billion.

It proved to be one of the smartest acquisitions in Hollywood history. Pixar franchises including The Incredibles and Cars became revenue powerhouses for Disney, driving sales of movie and theme park tickets as well as merchandise. And even as rivals gained on the company—DreamWorks with Shrek, Illumination with Despicable Me—Pixar occupied a unique position in the American imagination. It was renowned as a pioneer of software breakthroughs that made animation feel more lifelike and as a creative force behind films that expertly bridged childhood and adult concerns about family bonds, the pain of grief and the need to find one's purpose.

That held true until 2018, when Pixar suffered a spectacular downturn. Thomas Buckley, in the latest Businessweek cover story, outlines how the studio is looking to make its comeback: Disney Is Banking On Sequels to Help Get Pixar Back on Track

Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, June 3, 2024. Illustration: Sean Dong for Bloomberg Businessweek

600,000

That's the number of people who have been displaced by deadly floods in Brazil, the worst in the history of its southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul. There are indications that severe weather events will become more common because of climate change.

"This verdict will have less than zero impact on my support."

Omeed Malik

President of 1789 Capital and fundraiser for Trump

A growing number of financial elites are throwing their weight behind Trump, too. Read the full story here.

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