Some conspiracies are real. For all the right-wing concern about some loony left shadowy elites trying to control the world and generally being up to no good, I think it’s a few of the mega rich and powerful folk who are clearly on the right - even if they occasionally decide they’re godlike being who operate at levels above such pathetic human ideologies - we might worry about in the immediate term.
A few months ago the Wall Street Journal reported that:
In April, Musk co-hosted a secret dinner of around a dozen business leaders in Los Angeles. The guests included Peltz; venture capitalist Peter Thiel; former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, chairman emeritus of News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal, according to people familiar with the matter.
This took place at David Sacks' massive house. Sacks and Musk worked together back in the early days of Paypal. Sacks is now, of course, yet another Silicon Valley venture capitalist.
Puck adds further names to the guest list- although I’m not certain if this refers to the same event or another similar anti-Biden “secret billionaire dinner party”:
Michael Milken himself was there, in fact, as were billionaires Rupert Murdoch and Peter Thiel. A few government types, including Steven Mnuchin, scored invites. There were also some less politically active titans of industry, such as Uber co-founder and former C.E.O. Travis Kalanick
Why are all these distasteful people taking the time to go party at each other’s houses? Basically in the service of political corruption via wealth.
Back to the WSJ’s reporting:
The discussion at times centered on how attendees could give money to Trump outside of public view.
Essentially, how best to funnel huge amounts of money into defeating the Democrats as a whole, given even America has some limits on this kind of thing. Plus, believe it or not, there was a time that giving millionaires to a uniquely unsuitable and unstable presidential candidate out of at best sheer personal greed, was something a few of even this posse might feel some shame about.
Anyway, the gatherings spread. Real X-Files smoking man stuff.
Peltz and Musk also told Trump of an influence campaign in elite circles that is already under way, in which Musk and his political allies host gatherings of powerful business leaders across the country to try to convince them not to support President Biden’s re-election campaign.
Whilst Puck’s reporting suggested that the gathering they wrote about was supposedly more anti-Democrat than pro-Trump as a person, we do now know that some of those folk are very invested in supporting Trump as a person; in fact as the most qualified person in the whole of the US to exercise increasingly absolute power over its citizenry.
In more recent times, particularly since the assassination attempt on their preferred leader, Donald Trump, the whole shadowy billionaires having secret meetings about corrupting the political process in favour of Trump with their vast wealth has become less of an amateur secret conspiracy and more a very public stating of preferences and pumping of vast sums of money in order to try and buy the election result that they want, alongside currying favour with the famously unreliable but perfectly able-to-be-bribed potential future president that they believe can make all their unhinged dreams come true.
David Sacks went from saying in 2021 that Trump had “disqualified himself from being a candidate at the national level again” to a public endorsement in 2024. Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen are amongst other public supporters and money shovellers.
Musk is one of the larger donors, having recently pledged to donate $45 million a month to a pro-Trump Super PAC (for the non-Americans amongst us, the relevance of a Super PAC here as far as I understand it is that it’s a workaround so very rich people can give way more money to political campaigns than they would technically be allowed to directly). The same PAC is receiving hefty donations from Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins, who it turns out are now heavily into cryptocurrency.
So what does one get for $45 million? Well, outside of a formal role in Trump’s government, it seems that you probably get to choose who the US Vice President is going to be. Unless it was a perfect coincidence that the day after Musk committed that money Trump announced that his pick was the multi-millionaire JD Vance, who happens to be someone these weird tech billionaires really like.
Despite being famous in the past for having written a book about the travails of being a poor White man in his memoir, which somehow I still haven’t read - Hillbilly Elegy - Vance actually spent many of his earlier years working as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist under the afore-mentioned arch-libertarian Peter Thiel.
In fact the illogically wealthy tech bros like JD Vance so much that mere hours after Trump named him as his VP pick we saw some more of those kind of VCs, Marc Andreessen - someone who has convinced himself that regulating artificial intelligence is Ackchyually “a form of murder”, - and his company’s cofounder Ben Horowitz, publicly express their support for this dangerous fool.
As far as I can tell, substantial motivation for this comes from Trumps likelihood of not getting in the way of whatever the latest cryptocurrency scam they want to run is.
As The American Prospect writes:
…to Musk and Thiel and a growing number of the Valley’s biggest players, any infringement on capitalists’ sovereignty is anathema
JD Vance very much sups from the same cup.
And it certainly seems to be buying them the outcome they want. See for example the extremely bizarre section of the Republican’s 2024 platform whereby they decry any attempts to limit the grift-filled world of cryptocurrency or any attempt to stop AI Hitlers coming to the fore:
Republicans will end Democrats’ unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency.
We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin, and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their Digital Assets, and transact free from Government Surveillance and Control. ….
We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.
Sure. it’s written in the style of a particularly unhinged kidnapper sending a ransom note, and maybe the founding fathers didn’t technically list the right to solving sudokus whilst the world burns as a fundamental human right as such, but I’m sure they would have if they weren’t busy with other stuff.
404 Media notes that of course there’s not really any shortage of uncontrolled AI bunkum flying around the world under Biden’s administration. Rather:
…Vance and Trump are not uniquely qualified to support the development of AI. They are simply the Republican nominees, and people at the head of AI companies and venture capital firms are excited about them because historically Republican administrations make them pay less taxes and do whatever they want.
The VP nomination happened even though Vance didn’t really get on well with Trump in the past which would normally disqualify him from taking a seat anywhere near the famously grudge-bearing snowflake who turns on even the people who truly trust him whenever it suits him.
Choice phrases Vance used to describe Trump in the past include “a moral disaster”, “America’s Hitler”, “a total fraud” and “reprehensible”.
But by 2020 this never-Trumper was publicly voting for Trump, whilst arguing that he too at least semi-believes some version of the Big Lie and wouldn’t have certified the 2020 electoral result but rather kept himself busy by firing every single civil servant instead. Very normal. Definitely not weird (or illegal). And in 2024 he’s standing as his best-buddy VP.
The thirst for power at the expense of everything and everyone else is truly a disgusting thing to watch.