There are some politicians in this world who are talented, some who are mediocre and incompetent, and there is a third type, called JD Vance. How should I put it? When his remarks about "a woman who doesn't raise children but only raises cats" aroused public anger, in order to smooth things over, he weakly made a cold joke, saying that he "has no problem with cats."
Now he's simply turning the tables, claiming Harris advocates eliminating the maternity tax credit, even though as a member of the Biden administration she supported a major expansion of the credit, a significant improvement over unanimous Republican opposition. Child poverty credits expire in 2022.
So how did this guy become the Republican vice presidential nominee? Who are his supporters? He has no ties to the religious right, and at most has expressed some (The Handmaid’s Tale)-style opinions on women and reproductive rights. He is a recent adopter of the MAGA worldview, and once worried that Donald Trump would become “America’s Hitler.”
Vance’s rise to prominence was driven by a small group of tech billionaires, led by Peter Thiel, who have invested heavily in Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign.
This clique obviously overlaps significantly with the tech industry that had a brief fascination with Robert Kennedy Jr. a year ago. Their enthusiasm for Kennedy waned as they realized the obvious: he was a freak, fine as a spoiler candidate but not a serious candidate for the presidency. On the other hand, Vance's rise - even his detractors don't seem to fully appreciate how bad a politician he is - is more unstoppable. It's theoretically possible to replace Vance, but Trump will probably stick with him.
In any case, you need to look at Vance as the embodiment of a group. If you look at the title of his memoir, you would think he represents the country people, but in fact it is those "technical men".
It would be unfair to say that Vance represents the entire Silicon Valley. The people behind him—mainly tech billionaires who firmly support the Trump-Vance combination—are a relatively small group, although each of them is rich enough to rival a country. So what do they have in common?
The first is right-wing political leanings, some of whom once called themselves laissez-faire but have come to terms with Trump, even though his promises of mass deportations and hints at prosecutions of political opponents are hardly laissez-faire.
Some right-wing tech figures have stooped to conspiracy theories, most notably Elon Musk, who has promoted the false claim that Democrats refuse to deport illegal immigrants because they believe they can win their votes.
As I’ve said before, the wealthiest people are surprisingly naturally drawn to paranoid politics, and not just in the tech industry. That’s partly because many billionaires have trouble avoiding surrounding themselves with sycophants and calling them out when they’re saying something stupid. It’s also because some people seem to harbor a weird resentment for the things money can’t buy: Since I’m so rich, why can’t I shape the world the way I want it to be?
The tech guy's support for Trump and Vance also seems to be closely tied to one specific thing: cryptocurrency. In 2017, David Sacks, a Trump-supporting tech mogul who gave a keynote speech at this month's Republican convention, told CNBC that "Bitcoin fulfills PayPal's vision of creating a 'new world currency.'" Last year, Thiel's Founders Fund invested $200 million in two cryptocurrencies. Also last year, Politico reported that Vance had introduced a bill that would allow banks to no longer refuse cryptocurrency customers under pressure from regulators. This year, he is circulating a draft of "industry-friendly" legislation that would "overhaul the way the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulate cryptocurrency markets."
What are cryptocurrencies? Speaking at a bitcoin conference on Saturday, Trump declared that most people have no idea what they are — a statement that is true and almost certainly applies to Trump, who once dismissed bitcoin as “a scam” against the dollar but now says it’s “left-wing fascists” who are “attacking crypto.”
The reality is that 15 years after its launch — an eternity in tech terms — Bitcoin remains economically useless: a 2022 survey found that transactions involving crypto assets were “very rarely payments outside the crypto ecosystem.” But there are two areas where it can be useful: money laundering and extortion.
But many crypto advocates now seem to believe that they can get crucial political support through Trump. They have successfully embedded some of their most important wishes into the 2024 Republican campaign platform: "Republicans will end the Democrats' illegal, un-American suppression of cryptocurrencies and oppose the creation of central bank digital currencies." (This is a short document for voters, so it's a strange thing to put in, and I'm sure few voters understand what these sentences are about.)
At the convention on Saturday, Trump appeared to go further than the party platform, calling for the creation of some kind of national Bitcoin reserve — a government bailout of a scandal-ridden industry that destroys value and the environment.
Oh, and on Monday, Vance will headline a fundraiser at the home of Mike Bilshea, CEO of digital asset company BitGo.
In short, the support of tech billionaires is a key reason why Vance is a vice presidential contender. He presents himself as a defender of working-class America. But behind his ruthless culture wars — behind his allegiance to common-sense icons like Mountain Dew — he is closely tied to a tech-world ethos that has nothing to do with populism.
