\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThiel\u2019s an interesting one,\u201d a third GOP strategist tells me. \u201cHe\u2019s spread his bets. Some have paid off, and some haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe most important to these strategists: \u201cMost voters don\u2019t have a fucking clue who Peter Thiel is.\u201d He\u2019s behind the scenes, but very much still present in Republican politics.<\/p>\n
Thiel, like the Adelsons, \u201cdidn\u2019t just write checks,\u201d the first strategist explains. \u201cThey were involved, and they were present. And that\u2019s the bigger thing I can tell ya: The tech people that had the most influence were the ones that were present.\u201d<\/p>\n
Present, in this sense, means meeting privately with lawmakers and their staff. (It does not, in this context, mean giving an off-the-wall podcast interview to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, in which they discussed transhumanism and other topics.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Peter Thiels of the world have been doing this for a while,\u201d the first strategist says. \u201cElon Musk has not.\u201d Despite Musk throwing nearly $300 million toward supporting Trump in 2024, he \u201camassed influence, went to the White House, and didn\u2019t get everything he wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alongside Thiel, this strategist mentioned billionaire and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison as the next best example of how to play the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously the Larry Ellisons of the world and the Peter Thiels, they have deep policy issues that they care about. Now, it\u2019s not gonna affect their bottom line personally anytime soon. They\u2019re gonna shape policy for generations.\u201d Ellison and Thiel did not return requests for comment.<\/p>\n
For other Silicon Valley donors to become real players, this strategist said, they need to spread their donations across multiple candidates and organizations, consistently, cycle-to-cycle.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the technology guys and the Silicon Valley guys, the one thing that was consistent: They were disrupting old-school economies that have been involved for not 10 years or 20 years, but for generations.\u201d They thought they could do the same for politics. But, as the first strategist points out, \u201cthat\u2019s not a long term strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just about the Benjamins, either. The future of cryptocurrency\u2014the cashout option of choice for alumni of Trump\u2019s first administration and previous campaigns, as well as Trump\u2019s own family\u2014matters a whole lot.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrypto might be the glue that keeps the tech world, so to speak, glued to politics,\u201d a Republican operative close to the president tells WIRED. \u201cTrump was very, very smart by moving positively into the tech world in various forms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump and Vance are all in on crypto, and they have gone back-to-back as key speakers at the two most recent annual Bitcoin conferences. The industry made its presence known with lavish events at last summer\u2019s Republican National Convention.<\/p>\n
As long as the Trump family can keep making money off of cryptocurrency and the value of these currencies, memecoins, and other speculative digital assets keep growing, there will always be a reason for the donors to pony up again. Just this month, crypto billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss donated $1 million total to a super PAC supporting Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Bill Berrien. A representative for the Winklevoss twins did not return a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThiel\u2019s an interesting one,\u201d a third GOP strategist tells me. \u201cHe\u2019s spread his bets. Some have paid off, and some haven\u2019t.\u201d Maybe most important to these strategists: \u201cMost voters don\u2019t have a fucking clue who Peter Thiel is.\u201d He\u2019s behind the scenes, but very much still present in Republican politics. Thiel, like the Adelsons, \u201cdidn\u2019t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[5388,5387,742,1994,812,4366],"class_list":{"0":"post-11882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-billionaires","9":"tag-gops","10":"tag-message","11":"tag-peter","12":"tag-tech","13":"tag-thiel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}