As many as 73 million people reportedly tuned in to hear former President Donald Trump’s interview with Elon Musk this week, making it possibly the most listened-to interview in history. After Musk and other noteworthy Silicon Valley figures have thrown their support behind Trump this cycle, the conversation, which took place on X (formerly Twitter) could be just the latest evidence of growing support for Trump in the heart of liberal America.
Musk, who backed Biden in 2020, famously endorsed Trump just a few hours after he was nearly killed at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13. Musk’s simple post, which included a video of Trump pumping his fist in the air after narrowly escaping an assassin’s bullet, read, “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.” The post has amassed 219 million views.
According to Musk, his conversation with Trump and subsequent posts about it by other accounts have reached even more eyeballs – allegedly crossing one billion views just a few hours after the interview ended Monday evening. As part of the pair’s dialogue, Musk praised Trump for his actions following the shooting and reiterated his support for Trump’s agenda, which he has called “common sense.”
But Musk is hardly the only formerly Democrat tech visionary to back Trump this cycle, and in recent months the “conversion stories” of these high-profile individuals have become an important if underreported phenomenon in the 2024 election cycle. In addition to a reflection of just how much the Democrat Party has alienated some of its previously staunch supporters, this development reflects the erosion of the stigma around publicly supporting Trump that the corporate media and liberal establishment had worked so hard to build.
Other former Biden backers have offered even more detailed accounts of how they came to their decision to instead support Trump this year, with perhaps the most intriguing entry into this genre being a lengthy X post from former PayPal president and cryptocurrency pioneer David Marcus.
“I am crossing the Rubicon and backing the Republican Party and President Trump,” Marcus wrote on July 31, going on to explain how a series of events during 2019 and 2020, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the Hunter Biden laptop cover-up, served as a political awakening of sorts for him. That has since been followed by the growing extremism of the Democrat Party, which Marcus says “has dictated policies from which I’ve found myself estranged.”
“I believe we need a President who is unequivocally pro: America, the Constitution, business, Bitcoin/crypto, innovation, Israel, small government, legal immigration, free speech, meritocracy, and common sense — and anti: regulatory proliferation, illegal immigration, unjust wars, Iran’s current regime, and domestic groups that oppose American values,” Marcus concluded. “These issues are central to President Trump’s platform.”
In June, David Sacks, a venture capitalist and founder of Yammer, published his own conversion story and account of why he believes Trump is the clear choice this November. One by one, Sacks laid out how the Biden-Harris administration has failed the country on the economy, foreign policy, and the border.
Notably, Sacks also delved into the Democrat lawfare against Trump, warning about Biden’s “selective and unprecedented prosecutions of his once and future opponent from the moment he assumed office.”
“My immigration to this country as a young boy happened because my parents disagreed with the political system of their home country,” Sacks continued. “That government sought to solve its political disagreements by imprisoning its political enemies. What a sad irony that the lawfare we escaped has now reared its ugly head in America of all places.”
A month later, Sacks also spoke at the RNC convention, echoing many of his prior arguments for why the country needs Trump back in the White House. “The Biden-Harris administration has taken a world that was at peace under President Trump, and they lit it on fire,” Sacks said. “We still don’t know which puppet Democrat Party bosses will install as their nominee, but we know what their agenda will be: four more years of chaos and failure, both at home and abroad.”
Although not a Silicon Valley CEO or founder, renowned investor, hedge fund manager, and longtime Democrat Bill Ackman also endorsed Trump following the failed assassination attempt, promising a lengthy conversion story of his own which he has yet to publish. “Please keep an open mind on the upcoming presidential election,” Ackman wrote. “Bear in mind that your views on Trump have likely been dramatically affected if you have sourced your info on Trump from mainstream media or friends or family who have relied on mainstream media as a source of knowledge.”
To be sure, there have been a few Trump supporters among business and Silicon Valley elites going all the way back to 2016. While 95 percent of all political donations from tech employees went to Democrats eight years ago, figures like Peter Thiel became notable exceptions.
But now the chorus for Trump has become louder and far more numerous. The willingness of high-profile individuals to not only back Trump but go to great lengths to explain their reasoning – and by extension persuade others to see things the same way – feels like an entirely different phenomenon.
One of the most potent weapons the left has long wielded against Trump is the ability to use groupthink and cancel culture to intimidate into silence anyone with cultural influence who might publicly support him. That some high-profile individuals now feel compelled to not only support Trump but bear their souls online about it is perhaps an indication of a broader political awakening that extends far beyond the elite class to countless other voters who are fed up with the liberal establishment.
Most concerningly for Democrats, the mob mentality they created against Trump may now start to turn against them. If the left continues to see defections among the ranks of societal elites, their grip on American culture, not just the White House and Congress in 2024, may be in serious jeopardy.
Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
