Craft Ventures co-founder David Sacks said Monday on Fox News the Silicon Valley fundraiser for former President Donald Trump exceeded its goal by millions, noting “enthusiasm” within the typically liberal stomping ground.
Sacks appeared on “Jesse Watters Primetime” to discuss the recent fundraiser held for Trump last week in California’s left-leaning city of San Francisco. Fox host Jesse Watters began by questioning Sacks on the newfound support for Trump, asking how big the “anti-Biden movement” is among the investors. (RELATED: ‘I’ll Lose Friends For This’: Ultra-Wealthy Former Dem Donor Cuts Massive Check To Trump After Conviction)
“I think it’s getting surprisingly big, Jesse. When we agreed to do the fundraising for President Trump the goal was just to raise $5 million and we weren’t even sure we could do that because as you know, Silicon Valley is pretty much a liberal bastion. But we ended up raising $12 million. We had over a hundred people there and it really was a total love fest,” Sacks said.
“Then out in the streets, the San Francisco newspaper [had] been trying all week to gin up protesters and nothing really materialized at all, but hundreds of people came out to demonstrate in favor of President Trump and they were cheering all along his motorcade, even in San Francisco. So if that’s the enthusiasm gap in a liberal place like San Francisco, what does that tell you about the rest of the country?”
Sacks continued to state that the fundraiser hosted major investors who had “never” donated to Republicans or Trump, but have now felt alienated by the Biden administration due to regulations on tech policies such as AI.
“Well, we had a lot of people in that room who had never donated to Republicans before or to Trump. They were new donors or they have always been Democrat donors and yet they come out. I think I treat that to the fact that Trump is making inroads in Silicon Valley and also Biden is really alienating people. He’s really pursued a very hostile program toward innovation. He’s been very hostile towards crypto, he’s wanted to overregulate AI, he’s basically shut down all MNA,” Sacks said.
“So I think there’s a lot of people in technology who are asking what good is this for us? How does it help us to have another four years of President Biden? I think that Trump has basically declared that he’s the crypto president, he is in favor of innovation, he’s willing to listen — I think he listened extremely well to everybody in that room — and he wants America to do well. I think that people in tech who get to meet the president, get to get to know him, they see that he really cares. I think that they can be won over by him and I think they are being won over by him.”
Sacks later called out the White House’s AI summit in which they had Vice President Kamala Harris come out with a “hundred page plus AI regulatory plan,” calling it “absurd” as he stated that the blocks on AI for right now are going to “kill” innovation. Major names within the tech industry have been moving towards supporting Trump and making major donations to his campaign, with some previously supporting Democratic candidates.
Following the reveal of his guilty verdict within his New York trial involving alleged falsified business records, Sequoia Capitol partner and former Democrat donor Shaun Maguire announced a $300,000 donation to Trump’s campaign, stating within a social media post that he was willing to “lose friends” over his public decision to support the former president.
