The Inevitability of Big Tech Supporting Trump
Right almost everywhere, but especially in America: Real power is about controlling the flow of resources. Assets. Money. Information. If you command the levers of production—who gets what, when, and how—you decide what the future will be and who has a say in it. Or in this case, you decide the future of the United States. On the eve of another presidential election, no one understands that better than CEOs and InvestorsSome of them have publicly declared their support for Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vancethis week.
Behind Big Tech’s calculated allegiance, says Jared Clemons, a professor of political science at Temple University, we can begin to make sense of what’s happening in the moment. “I try not to get too excited about politics. I know it’s really hard because you turn on the TV and it always seems like the world is falling apart,” he told me. “But none of this started happening overnight.”
Clemons calls himself a socialist, but “not in a crazy, conspiracy-theorist way,” he jokes. He believes the best way forward is a shared future where we abandon the vestiges of our capitalist past, which both Republicans and Democrats refuse to abandon. He wants people to understand that the old bureaucratic ways of governing are no longer serving us. (Clemons regularly tackles complex issues like this in his YouTube series, #Poli-Eye-Side.)
“I think the danger of looking back and saying, ‘Oh, there was a time when we had this, but now we don’t have it,’ is that it makes you reactive to me. It cuts off your imagination because you’re not thinking about what could have been,” he said. “You’re focused on trying to restore something from the past. You’re never going to get that back.” Clemons added that a better future is possible, but “we have to be willing to fail.”
JASON PARHAM: I want to start by following the money. This week at the Republican National Convention, Trump announced that his vice presidential running mate is JD Vance, an Ohio senator whose rapid but short-lived rise to power was largely funded by Peter Theil. Elon Musk has also publicly Trump’s supportas well as billionaire venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Big tech is support the MAGA movement this election cycle. What do you think about it?
JARED CLEMONS: The best way to understand the economy is through production—what we’re producing, what we’re circulating, how what we’re producing gets to people. Basically, what we buy. If you analyze politics through that lens, I think it’s much easier to understand, especially the motivations and incentives of the very wealthy.
What was one of the first things Trump did when he was elected in 2016? Really, the only major policy platform he had was a comprehensive tax cut, a big concession to corporations and the very wealthy, especially those with a lot of wealth in the stock market. Part of the reason you see so much support for him now is because those tax cuts are scheduled to expire in 2025.
