The Silicon Valley GOP glow-up that's stunning the local establishment
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Yuri Perelman from the Eagle showcases journalists Tara Palmeri and Teddy Schleifer at American University tracing back Silicon Valley’s conservative pivot. Driven by figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, this right-leaning tech tide is the newest challenge for local leaders to navigate. Tech wealth fuels local political clout, so this shift is poised to cause clashes.
American University alumna and journalist Tara Palmeri spoke about how tech billionaires in Silicon Valley are shifting towards the Republican Party at the third event of her four-part seminar series as a Sine Institute fellow on March 25.
Teddy Schleifer, a New York Times reporter who traced the rise of conservatism in the tech industry from its lowly origins in the late 2010s to the influence of figures like Elon Musk in today’s Trump administration, joined her.
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“Silicon Valley is such a power center, politically,” Palmeri said, referring to the tech industry there. “It has favored Democrats up until this moment — and they have unlimited wealth.”
Schleifer said Silicon Valley’s atmosphere was openly hostile toward conservatives in the tech industry during President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when his campaign held a Bay Area fundraiser in secret out of fear of the guests being outed and ostracized. He said it began to lighten up until the COVID-19 pandemic, when there was a growing sense of distrust toward the media and other institutions.
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Dissatisfaction with Joe Biden’s presidency was a strong catalyst for tech leaders to stop feeling intimidated over being conservative, Schleifer added. Despite this, endorsing Trump in the 2024 Republican primaries remained unthinkable due to the lingering stigma of his actions in office. Palmeri pointed out that it was much safer for them to endorse other Republican candidates, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
“The entire establishment thought Ron DeSantis could be the white knight,” Palmeri said. “They really didn’t want to go back to the chaos of Trump.”
Schleifer said he noticed a change in the spring before the 2024 election when Trump became the presumptive nominee. Even then, when Musk began to financially support Trump — creating several political action committees and eventually offering the campaign up to $250 million — he did so alongside former DeSantis staffers and without disclosing any ties to Trump.
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Schleifer said he believes it was originally the assassination attempt against Trump that led to this change in sentiment.
When Trump eventually won the election, Schleifer notes that there was for many in the tech industry, in addition to a personal shift to the right, a strong desire to be close to the president for personal gain in areas such as artificial intelligence that were not attainable during the Biden administration. At the same time, some individuals grew more conservative over time.
“[Zuckerberg] is genuinely more conservative than he was five years ago — things like a lot of the stuff he funded about [diversity, equity and inclusion] through his philanthropy were mistakes,” Schleifer said. “He feels like the left that he grew up with under the Obama era was wrong – and these are genuine beliefs that he has that are also politically convenient because now Trump is the president.”
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