#ramaswamy — Public Fediverse posts

Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican, is on the ballot today in Ohio. He spoke in favor of taking away some people's right to vote. Ramaswamy wants to raise the voting ago to 25:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/05/05/ramaswamy-trump-define-ohio-indiana-elections/89881096007/?tbref=hp
copy: @renewedresistance #politics #VotingRights #Ramaswamy #extremism

JD Vance has endorsed Ramaswamy as well.

https://www.ashlandsource.com/2025/10/16/vivek-ramaswamy-to-make-campaign-stop-in-ashland-on-friday/

3/x

#Vance #Ramaswamy #Politics #Ohio #USPolitics

Ramaswamy has been endorsed by Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5162524-donald-trump-elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-endorsement-ohio-governor-bid/

2/x

#Trump #Musk #Ramaswamy #Ohio #USPol #Politics

J.D. Vance spoke Sunday at Turning Point USA’s annual #AmericaFest conference,
where Erika #Kirk, widow of the group’s slain founder, endorsed Vance for president in 2028.

👉Vance demonized “the left,”
👉promoted Christian nationalism and right-wing populist conspiracy theories,
and, unlike other speakers,
👉refused to criticize far-right and antisemitic elements of the conservative movement like fascist personality Nick Fuentes. 

Other conference speakers were willing to challenge the movement’s bigots and extremists.
Podcaster Ben #Shapiro took on Tucker #Carlson for having provided Nick #Fuentes with an overly friendly platform from which to spread his poison.
(Carlson, also invited to speak, mocked Shapiro’s concerns.)
Former presidential candidate Vivek #Ramaswamy challenged Fuentes's bigotry along with racially coded ideas like “Heritage Americans” that have taken root in the MAGA movement.

But Vance, who has his eye on 2028, was apparently not willing to risk alienating anyone on the right,
-- demonstrating the concept of #NETTR
—“no enemies to the right”
—that has been at the center of the ongoing turmoil over Heritage Foundation President
Kevin #Roberts defense of Carlson’s promotion of Fuentes.

“President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self-defeating purity tests,” Vance said from the stage

https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/jd-vance-delivers-demagoguery-christian-nationalism-tpusa-fest-refuses-criticize-far

Of course the token #minorites in the #racist, #ChristianNationalist #TurningPointUSA movement feel left out and mistreated. Seriously, #BenShapiro. If you want to be a Nazi, move to #Israel. And #Ramaswamy, you'd fit right in with #Modi's cabal. I think you guys missed #CharlieKirk's point.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/us/politics/turning-points-americafest-ben-shapiro.html

Earle-Sears rallies with DOGE’s Ramaswamy in Virginia as early voting continues

CHESTERFIELD, Va. (7News) — Early voting began across Virginia on Friday, with candidates in both parties crisscrossing the…
#UnitedStates #US #USA #DepartmentofGovernmentEfficiency #doge #Earle-Sears #earlyvoting #election #ElonMusk #Musk #Ramaswamy #Republicans #unemployment #Virginia
https://www.europesays.com/2429367/

Xtian-panderers Kash, #Ramaswamy are not very convincing. I know y’all chow down on #Diwali jalebis. Just cut the shit and make the appropriate secular noises

In February, #Marc #Andreessen described the #Chatham #House group chats to the podcaster #Lex #Fridman as “the equivalent of [Soviet era] #samizdat”
“The combination of encryption and disappearing messages really unleashed it,” he said. The chats, he wrote recently, helped produce our national “vibe shift.”
They have rarely been discussed in public, though you can catch the occasional mention in, for instance, a podcast debate between #Mark #Cuban and the Republican entrepreneur #Vivek #Ramaswamy, which started in a chat.

But they are made visible through a group consensus on social media.
Their effects have ranged from the mainstreaming of the monarchist pundit #Curtis #Yarvin to a particularly focused and developed dislike of the former Washington Post writer #Taylor #Lorenz.

They succeeded at avoiding leaks (until, to a modest extent, this article) in part because of Signal’s and WhatsApp’s #disappearing #message features,
and in part because the groups had formed out of a mix of fear and disdain for journalists they believed were “out to get us,” as one member put it.
“People during 2020 felt that there was a monoculture on social media, and if they didn’t agree with something, group chats became a safe space to debate that, share that, build consensus, feel that you’re not alone,”
said #Erik #Torenberg, an entrepreneur who was the first employee of the tech community hub Product Hunt.
As #Krishnan was setting up a set of tech group WhatsApp chats at a16z, #Torenberg independently founded a group of tech chats on WhatsApp and some more political Signal chats.

“They’re having all the private conversations because they weren’t allowed to have the public conversations,” Andreessen told Torenberg on a recent podcast,
after claiming in the name of secrecy that he’d never heard of such groups.
“If it wasn’t for the censorship all of these conversations would have happened in public, which would have been much better.”
Their creations took off:
“It might not seem like it, because of all the sh*t that people still post on X, but the internet has fragmented,”
the Substack author #Noah #Smith wrote after my inquiries for this story spilled into public Saturday.
“Group chats are now where everything important and interesting happens.”

https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america

On the last Friday of September 2023, #Elon #Musk dropped in about an hour late to a dinner party at the Silicon Valley mansion of the technology investor #Chamath #Palihapitiya.

Musk’s visit was meant to be discreet -- Still skittish about getting involved publicly in politics, he told the guests he had to be careful about supporting anyone in the Republican nomination fight.

And yet here he was
— joined by Claire Boucher, the singer known as #Grimes and the mother of three of his children
— at a $50,000-a-head dinner in honor of the presidential candidate #Vivek #Ramaswamy, who was running as an entrepreneur who would shake up the status quo.

As the night wore on, Musk held forth on the patio on a variety of topics, according to four people with knowledge of the conversation:
his visit that week to the U.S.-Mexico border;
the war in Ukraine;
his frustrations with government regulations hindering his rocket company, SpaceX;
and Mr. Ramaswamy’s highest priority, the dismantling of the federal bureaucracy.
Musk made clear that he saw the gutting of that bureaucracy as primarily a technology challenge.

He told the party of around 20 that when he overhauled Twitter, the key was gaining access to the company’s servers

Wouldn’t it be great, Musk offered, if he could have access to the computers of the federal government?

Just give him the passwords, he said jocularly, and he would make the government fit and trim.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/musk-federal-bureaucracy-takeover.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The group at Mar-a-Lago brainstormed ways to terminate #FederalWorkers. One idea was to motivate them to quit, by forcing them to return to the office 5 days a week or, as #Ramaswamy suggested, moving #CivilServants to work on admin priorities like border security. Ramaswamy predicted to the team that many federal workers would not want to be part of an #immigration crackdown & would leave govt — a win-win situation.

#Musk #Trump #coup #law #Technocracy #kleptocracy #plutocracy #idiocracy #DOGE

#Musk had still not figured out the #legal structure for his effort or how it would work. He & #Ramaswamy …tried to answer fundamental questions, pressure-testing ideas w/prospective cabinet members & budget experts.

It was “spaghetti against the wall,” per 1 person in touch w/Musk at the time.

In the wk after the election, Smith gave Musk a presentation that amounted to a basic budget & civics lesson, explaining how #Congress appropriated funds & noting major items like defense & health care.

The group included #Musk; #Ramaswamy, who was then #DOGE’s co-leader; the #billionaire #HowardLutnick, who was running #Trump’s transition & would become his #commerce secy; & a health care entrepreneur, Brad Smith, who had worked w/Trump’s son-in-law #JaredKushner…. [but more importantly] Smith was a close business associate of #AmyGleason, who had worked at one of his companies as a chief product officer.

#coup #law #regulation #Technocracy #kleptocracy #Technofeudalism #NRx #DOGE #USpol

#Haley, #Ramaswamy both freaked out over their Elon T•••• criminal exposure and bailed. Middle-class brown kids turned scammers not used to / not granted the total impunity of apartheidists Elon T••••

#Haley, #Ramaswamy both freaked out over their Elon T•••• criminal exposure and bailed. Middle-class brown kids turned scammers not used to / not granted the total impunity of apartheidists Elon T••••

This is still about the racial class hierarchy Dixiecrats turned Republican have raged and fought to hold on to for the past 60 plus years. The last thing on earth, the white Christofascist patriarchy wants are clear-minded, educated, empowered #BIPOC organizing for a secure, equitable, justice society.

Trump Preps Order To Eliminate Department Of Education
#SamSeder #EmmaVigeland #MajorityReport #Politics #Project2025 #TrumpRegime #Broligarchy #Musk #Ramaswamy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Z3Yl4X3eE

The last and only remaining nuclear arms deal between the U.S. and Russia
—the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, otherwise known as New START
—is set to expire on February 5, 2026.

The deal capped the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the two nations could deploy, as well as the number of land and water vehicles used to deliver them.

Legitimate international disarmament would, of course, be a good thing.

But whether or not Putin would actually follow through on diminishing his nation’s nuclear stockpiles is unclear.

For decades, Russia has spent millions working to replace and upgrade its strategic and non-strategic nuclear systems.

As of early 2024, Russia possessed a total of 5,580 nuclear warheads,
the most of any country in the world, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The nonprofit organization argued that the war in Ukraine had drastically depleted Russia’s “conventional forces,” pushing it to deepen its reliance on nuclear weapons for its national defense systems.

“Russia’s nuclear modernization programs
—combined with frequent explicit nuclear threats against other countries in the context of its large conventional war in Ukraine
—contribute to uncertainty about the country’s long-term intentions and have generated a growing international debate about the nature of its nuclear strategy,” read a Bulletin’s column.

The global security group further argued that the U.S.’s ballistic missile system could stand in the way of Russia’s eventual nuclear disarmament,
claiming that the missile system “constitutes a real future risk to the credibility of Russia’s retaliatory capability.”

Some of Trump’s domestic decisions prior to entering the White House were reportedly “thrilling” to Russian mouthpieces.

#Margarita #Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT, mocked American politicians in December for their stupidity while claiming that some of Trump’s more unqualified choices for his cabinet
—such as one-time DOGE co-chair nominee Vivek #Ramaswamy and director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi #Gabbard
—are friendly faces that bring the Kremlin “lots of joy.”
https://newrepublic.com/post/190605/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-nuclear-weapons

T•••• is constitutionally barred from fed office. Uno reverse: T•••• strips citizenship from #Haley, #Ramaswamy

T•••• is a domestic terrorist who belongs in prison. Uno reverse: T•••• springs his villager Y’all Qaeda.

White power is a hell of a card

T•••• is constitutionally barred from fed office. Uno reverse: T•••• strips citizenship from #Haley, #Ramaswamy

T•••• is a domestic terrorist who belongs in prison. Uno reverse: T•••• springs his villager Y’all Qaeda.

White power is a hell of a card

T•••• is constitutionally barred from fed office. Uno reverse: T•••• strips citizenship from #Haley, #Ramaswamy

T•••• is a domestic terrorist who belongs in prison. Uno reverse: T•••• springs his villager Y’all Qaeda.

White power is a hell of a card

"A deep philosophical rift between the two billionaire leaders of the “Department of Government Efficiency” is one way to position Ramaswamy's exodus from DOGE! #DOGE #Ramaswamy #Musk #USA #fedgov

So T•••• 2’s “day 1 Muslim ban” is stripping citizenship from kids of work and student visas—millions of Americans, and maybe #Kamala, #Haley, Jindal, #Ramaswamy?

Let’s see the instant polls! :D

So T•••• 2’s “day 1 Muslim ban” is stripping citizenship from kids of work and student visas—millions of Americans, and maybe #Kamala, #Haley, Jindal, #Ramaswamy?

Let’s see the instant polls! :D

So why is Ramaswamy suddenly gone? Simple. Neither trump nor his co-president Musk is able to be near a brown or black face for an extended period. The suggestion that they might all be in the same political or social group is anathema to these two racist fascists.#racism #fascists #Ramaswamy #DOGE

Three lawsuits were filed in D.C.’s federal district court alleging Trump administration DOGE doesn’t comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).

FACA mandates federal advisory committees meet transparency requirements like having a charter, fairly balanced membership and a designated federal officer to call meetings. https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5095750-doge-sued-trump-administration-elon-musk-ramaswamy/ #FACA #Potus #Lawsuits #Doge #Musk #Ramaswamy

That was fast.

Via ‪Paul Krugman:

So #Ramaswamy is being run out of DOGE?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vivek-ramaswamy-expected-to-depart-doge/

👀 “Vivek’s base plan remains [the] same: to get accomplishments at DOGE [sic] and then announce a run for governor shortly,” said an #Ohio operative familiar with #Ramaswamy’s thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the former presidential candidate's intentions”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/17/vivek-ramaswamy-ohio-governor-run/

@Wileymiller They and their team are not elected officials and have no authority or power under law but this clown show will serve the purpose as directed - dismantle career public service jobs across the government [which means offices in all states] and eliminate experts who together perform critical services for our country in all sectors. #doge #musk #trump #ramaswamy #politics #maga #lies #democracy #civilservants #federalgovernment

The mediocrity of the MAGA movement:

"This current [MAGA] fight is between mediocre white people who want to get plum jobs without having to work hard & mediocre tech bros who want to profit off other people’s intelligence... Then there's Trump himself, the avatar for spoiled white morons who keep failing upward."
- @AmandaMarcotte

#Musk #ElonMusk #Ramaswamy #Trump #MAGA #Kakistocracy #Tech #Jobs #US #USA #Politics #USPol

The #MAGA party is at it again. They rail against immigrants taking #AmericanJobs and lowering wages. They want immigrants out so Americans can work low paying jobs while #Musk and #Ramaswamy want immigrants to work higher paying jobs that they can end up paying less than they would to Americans. And #Trump caves in to #PresidentMusk.

I like to put "ding dong" at the end of #Ramaswamy. Try it, it's #fun‼️🤩

#trump #presidentelonmusk #h1bvisa #maga #lauraloomer #ramaswamy

This is a big “ fuck you “ to his maga supporters, Trump sided with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy ;

“ President-elect Trump told The Post Saturday he supports immigration visas for highly skilled workers, appearing to side with Elon Musk in the roiling intra-MAGA debate on the issue.” https://nypost.com/2024/12/28/us-news/donald-trump-backs-h-1b-visa-program-supported-by-elon-musk/

#heathercoxrichardson #lettersfromanamerican #maga #lauraloomer #presidentelonmusk #ramaswamy #civilwar

The fight between traditional magas and the tech bro ( the new magas ) is getting so big that even the historian Heather Cox Richardson had to write about it, this from from her latest substack , very interesting; https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/december-27-2024?r=17qxua&utm_medium=ios

Le dernier clash 🇺🇸 #Bannon #Ramaswamy qui défendent "l'immigration choisie" pour les "skilled workers" se posant contre le "tech-libertarianism" de #Musk Et le #MAGA crowd qui a mis Musk et Trump sur le même piédestal Prêt à les suivre n'importe où

To the nativists, this may be a betrayal in policy terms.

But for the broader Trumpian approach to politics,
-- blaming Americans instead of scapegoating immigrants gives away the whole game.

Look at JD #Vance:
he catapulted himself to fame in 2016 through Hillbilly Elegy,
-- where he wrote the following about the white working class in rural Ohio:

“What goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south is about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible.

It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it.”

Vance has dropped that line of argument in recent years
and replaced it with attacking immigrants,
-- like those in Springfield, Ohio.

💥It’s a reflection of Trump’s entire project from day one:
he sells a world in which the country’s (and your) problems are the fault of immigrants,
the “enemy within”
— whoever.

🔥The tech oligarch position on this dramatically undermines that in a rhetorical sense,
and reveals the extent to which they are out of step with the people whose votes they just harvested.

(2/2)

https://c.im/@cdarwin/113723315172484166

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/who-got-duped-maga-activists-worry-that-nativism-and-tech-oligarchy-may-not-go-hand-in-hand

#Ramaswamy
#Musk #Sacks

#Loomer #Fuentes

#Sriram #Krishan #crypto #AI #czar

Who Got Duped?
-- MAGA Activists Worry That Nativism And Tech Oligarchy May Not Go Hand In Hand

Over the past few days, a fight has erupted within the MAGA right over legal immigration, specifically about ➡️whether the country should admit more high-skilled immigrants.
On the one side, you have opportunistic tech oligarchs like Elon #Musk and David #Sacks.
These are incredibly wealthy figures who are open about using their newfound influence in government to serve both their ideological and their private business interests.
On the other are figures like Laura #Loomer, Nick #Fuentes, and other nativist
(and often openly racist) online personalities who had been vocal Trump supporters long before the Silicon Valley right joined the coalition.

The two sides began to argue on Sunday, after Donald Trump appointed #Sriram #Krishan,
a partner at Andreesen Horowitz,
👉White House policy adviser on Artificial Intelligence
to work with Sacks, the Trump administration’s #crypto and #AI #czar.
This may seem like a relatively minor White House appointment.
However, Krishan has also been a proponent of 💥removing country caps on green cards and H1-B visas,
-- which allow American companies to hire foreign workers for certain specializations.

To the far-right, nativist influencers that have from the start glommed onto Trumpian scapegoating of immigrants,
Krishan’s position crossed a line.

Loomer, an anti-immigrant provocateur who traveled with Trump during his campaign, called it
“deeply disturbing.”

Sacks replied, perhaps not fully understanding his audience,
by noting that Indian immigrants face an 11-year wait for green cards.

This was catnip for Loomer,
who replied by suggesting that Sacks was in on a new version of the great replacement theory,
and spent the next several days making vile statements about immigrants,
accusing those who disagree with her on H1-B visas of hating Americans,
and demanding that senior Trump officials denounce their Silicon Valley allies.

Sacks, whose recent political positions have included strident opposition to American support for Ukraine, denounced the “crude” attacks.

Soon, other Trump-involved tech oligarchs,
like Elon #Musk and Vivek #Ramaswamy, jumped into the fray.

Musk wrote that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.
Think of this like a pro sports team:
if you want your TEAM to win the championship,
you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be.
That enables the whole TEAM to win.”

Ramaswamy swooped in on Thursday to explain his view that American companies were forced to hire foreign skilled labor due to a deficit in homegrown American culture itself.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ,
or the jock over the valedictorian,
will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy wrote,
adding later:
“More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers.”

As you might imagine, MAGA nativists of various stripes regard this Silicon Valley defense of skilled immigration with a paranoid and often racist eye.

#Fuentes, the groyper leader, described Ramaswamy’s position as an attempt to get
“500 million indians to move here.”

Others reacted to Ramaswamy’s premise that there may be something wrong with America.

Jeremy #Carl, a senior fellow at the nativist Claremont Institute,
pushed back in a gentler fashion while still suggesting that Ramaswamy’s vision would “destroy the things that actually make America great.”

In a very obvious and over-the-top way,
this imbroglio illuminates a real divide among the most vocal members of Trump’s coalition:
-- tech oligarchs who want foreign labor for their businesses,
-- and nativists who take Trump’s rhetoric on immigration very seriously and who in many cases want to apply it to nonwhite immigrants.

But there’s another thing that’s taking place here on a deeper level.

Ramaswamy explicitly (and Musk implicitly) laid their supposed inability to find engineering talent at the feet of American culture.

Ramaswamy was very blunt about this,
calling for “fewer Saturday morning cartoons.”

Musk complained that the number of
“super talented” and “super motivated” engineers in the U.S. is “far too low.”

(1/2)
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/who-got-duped-maga-activists-worry-that-nativism-and-tech-oligarchy-may-not-go-hand-in-hand

Trump-linked Strive files for ‘Bitcoin Bond’ ETF - The fund aims to offer exposure to MicroStrategy's convertible bonds, am... - https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-linked-strive-files-bitcoin-bond-etf #microstrategy #bitcoinbonds #bitcoinetfs #cryptoetfs #ramaswamy #btcetfs #strive #trump #mstr

Meanwhile #Haley, #Ramaswamy look at them and smirk: “Dorks”

The American Ream is the American Dream

Elon Musk’s DOGE partner #Vivek #Ramaswamy says they’ll scrutinize Biden's proposed $6.6 billion loan to Tesla rival Rivian
https://fortune.com/2024/11/29/vivek-ramaswamy-elon-musk-doge-tesla-rivian-biden-federal-government-loan-trump/

#Trump #Musk #Ramaswamy have huge ambitions no humility about what they are undertaking. What they have talked about amounts to wholesale attack on federal agencies designed to eliminate thousands of #regulations, reduce the federal #workforce by an order of magnitude that could cripple the delivery of vital services, effect cost savings that would amount to nearly 1/3 of the #federal #budget or the entire #discretionary part of the budget #government #economy #democracyhttps://wapo.st/4fHN3FA

"#Trump’s new #DepartmentOfGovernmentEfficiency or '#DOGE' will comprise of two clueless #TechBros. What targets, exactly, will #Musk and #Ramaswamy try to hit?"

#ChrisLehmann | DOGE shit

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/welcome-to-the-department-of-government-idiocracy/
#USpol #USpolitics #BigTech #SiliconValleyRight #MAGA

BIG NEWS! 🚀 President-elect Trump taps Elon Musk & Vivek Ramaswamy to head the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)! Expect disruption. #Trump #Musk #Ramaswamy #DOGE #GovernmentReform

Trump taps Musk, Ramaswamy to oversee ‘drastic’ changes to U.S. government

Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he is appointing #Elon #Musk and #Vivek #Ramaswamy to lead a new commission on cutting government spending and regulation,
handing an enormous portfolio to the billionaire who gave political and financial support to his presidential bid.

In a statement, Trump said that Musk and Ramaswamy would be leading the
♦️ “Department of Government Efficiency,”
an idea championed by Musk.

🆘 Trump said the department would operate outside of government,

while partnering with the White House and its budget office to provide recommendations for overhauling federal operations.

Musk has adopted the nickname “#DOGE” for the commission,
a reference to a meme-based cryptocurrency he also touted.

During the campaign, Musk called for the commission to find $2 trillion in cuts to the federal budget
— a goal even some conservative budget analysts have panned as “absolutely absurd.”


While details remain vague, the commission could have major repercussions for the operations of the U.S. government and millions of federal workers.

Republicans are poised to control both branches of Congress as well as the White House, giving the GOP an opportunity to pass into law an array of regulatory and spending changes.

Musk’s elevation to lead the commission comes despite concerns about his array of personal business interests with the federal government.

His companies in the auto and space industries have grown through government contracts and subsidies,
and he has long criticized government regulation of his firms.

Musk has emerged as a key Trump ally during the presidential election, donating more than $118 million to Trump’s campaign.


Ramaswamy rose to prominence as a candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.

During that campaign, he embraced extreme cuts to the federal government
— at one point calling for reducing the workforce by more than 75 percent.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/11/12/elon-musk-trump-doge-vivek-ramaswamy/

Elon Musk and Donald Trump have reportedly been speaking together frequently in recent months,
and their bitterly reactionary politics obviously align.

Within days, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk was committing a remarkable
$45 million per month to "America PAC",
a new pro-Trump super PAC that would
also be supported by Palantir cofounder Joe #Lonsdale, Mark #Zuckerberg castoffs Tyler and Cameron #Winklevoss,
and several members of what’s sometimes called the Paypal mafia,
a right-wing network of tech industry leaders with Peter #Thiel as its presiding majordomo.

If, two years ago The New York Times could make the dubious claim that tech giants like Musk were hard to pin down politically, there is no room now for even that level of credulousness.

It’s official:
Silicon Valley has been fully MAGA-pilled, and the tech authoritarians are bringing their money with them.

Trump unveiled as his VP pick Ohio Senator J.D. #Vance, a former Thiel employee and venture capitalist who owes his election to the Senate to a $15 million campaign cash infusion from Thiel.

For the tech industry, whose rightward swerve has been hard to ignore this campaign cycle, the Vance selection was sensational.

“We have a former tech VC in the White House,” crowed Delian #Asparouhov, a partner at Thiel’s Founders Fund who once drew notice for sharing a comic by the neo-Nazi cartoonist known as StoneToss. “Greatest country on Earth baby.”

Musk, who had reportedly been agitating privately for Trump to choose Vance, celebrated the pick on X.

“Resounds with victory,” he wrote.
Vivek #Ramaswamy posted wistful, supportive remarks about being drinking buddies with Vance at Yale Law School.

Using the term of endearment favored by his fellow mega-rich “All-In” podcast hosts,
Chamath #Palihapitiya celebrated the news: “A Bestie adjacent as the VP?!?!?!”

Thiel, who is infamous for his stated aversion to democracy, has claimed that he is sitting out this election,
but his baton has been passed to a gaggle of ornery venture capitalists and tech CEOs whom you may recognize from their grievance-laden X posts: #Lonsdale, David #Sacks, Shaun #Maguire, Marc #Andreessen, et al.

They are all very rich and control a lot of capital beyond their own.

They are also wielding increasing influence over the Trump campaign: Sacks spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/silicon-valley-trump-support-donations/

Trump is scheduled to appear this week at the so-called 🔸People’s Convention,🔸
”a conference organized by Turning Point Action, a political action committee headed by Trump sycophant Charlie #Kirk, who has recently come under fire for a series of racist remarks.

The usual assortment of Trumpists are on the bill: Donald Trump Jr., South Dakota Gov. Kristi #Noem, Vivek #Ramaswamy, Lara #Trump, Roger #Stone, Kimberly #Guilfoyle, and Steve #Bannon (assuming he’s not in prison).

Also listed as a speaker is Candace #Owens, who left the right-wing Daily Caller after coming under fire for promoting antisemitic notions.

She also has denied Covid existed and apparently excused #Hitler, saying,
“If Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well — OK, fine.”
She has questioned whether dinosaurs “roamed the earth until a great big meteor hit.”

Once upon a time, it would have been notable—and not recommended—for a presidential candidate to be hosted by a racist like Kirk or share the stage with such a fringe player as Owens.
Not anymore.

Now let’s dive a little deeper.

A month after the “People’s Convention,” Kirk’s Turning Point USA is holding
🔸The Believers Summit🔸in West Palm Beach, Florida, not far from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club.

Its aim is to deploy “biblical truths” to “counteract ‘woke’ narratives” and “to facilitate a God-breathed transformation in our nation.”

Speakers include David #Barton, who, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, has “long promoted the idea, now widely popular among the religious right, that the Founding Fathers never intended the separation of church and state but instead sought to construct a Christian nation.”

Also on the bill is John #Amanchukwu, a North Carolina pastor who preached against the Raleigh school district’s diversity and equality program, claiming it was “grooming children to be the next pervert.”
And then there’s Doug #Wilson.

Wilson is a leading Christian nationalist on the right.
In a 1996 monograph titled
🔹“Southern Slavery, As It Was” 🔹that he co-wrote, he observed, “Slavery as it existed in the South…was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence.”

He added, "There has never been a multiracial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.”

And there’s more: "Slave life was to [slaves] a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care."

His publishing house published a book in 2023 that, as Reason magazine put it, “advocates an ethnically uniform nation ruled by a 💥Christian prince💥with the power to punish blasphemy and false religion.”

The author, not surprisingly, had a history of associating with white supremacists.

Wilson promoted the book on an appearance with Tucker #Carlson.
He has also called for women to submit to male authority, especially in the bedroom, noting that the lack of such submission can lead to rape.

Wilson told Carlson, “As a Christian, I would like that national structure to conform to the thing that God wants, and not the thing that man wants.
That’s Christian nationalism.”

But it’s the thing that God wants as Wilson interprets it.
That’s fundamentalism.

In an interview in February with the Religious News Service, he envisioned 🔸a Christian republic🔸 in which people who embrace “loopy-heresy” would be barred from public office.

His dream world included a global alliance of Christian states that would exclude any nation that permits same-sex marriage or abortion.

So Trump associates with and legitimizes Kirk,
who has recently made racist remarks and who provides a pulpit for Wilson,
a Christian supremacist and somewhat of a slavery apologist.

For decades, there’s been an ugly swamp of bigotry, hatred, and intolerance on the right.

Republicans have often played footsie with its denizens. (See my book American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, which, alas, remains far too relevant these days.)

But Trump has enthusiastically leaped into this muck, bear-hugging and elevating extremists and miscreants.

And he seems poised to welcome them into a Trump 2.0 administration.

This ain’t a secret.
But it practically might as well be, if the media and the Democrats don’t tell the story of this ongoing crusade loudly and often.  
https://link.motherjones.com/public/35671544

How GOP Megadonor #Jeffrey #Yass Can Clean Up on #TikTok’s Forced Sale

The Pennsylvania billionaire has former TikTok detractors backing off a ban, but he’ll be sitting pretty if a US takeover happens. 

A top Republican donor, Yass publicly discouraged Trump from running in the 2024 election. Yass initially supported Florida Governor Ron #DeSantis before spreading his bets between Vivek #Ramaswamy, Chris #Christie, and Tim #Scott.

But as Trump once again steamrolled his primary competitors, Yass reached out and ♦️asked him to speak at a retreat for a powerful right-wing business PAC♦️, the #Club #for #Growth, which has pulled in $61 million in donations from Yass since 2010.

The Club for Growth also happens to be employing former Trump adviser Kellyanne #Conway to lobby on behalf of TikTok on Capitol Hill.

The retreat seemed to go exactly as planned.

Trump praised Yass as “fantastic,” and he emerged as a critic of a TikTok ban. “If you get rid of TikTok, #Facebook and #Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump posted last week on Truth Social.

“I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!”

Yass, meanwhile, is now a certified Trump crony.

The 68-year-old is the richest man in Pennsylvania, with an estimated fortune of about $28 billion derived from options trading and venture-capital investments
—including a sizable interest in TikTok.

Local politicos and activist groups have long faced off against Yass and his bottomless war chest in fights over education, social welfare, and unions.

Arielle Klagsbrun, deputy campaign director at the Action Center on Race & the Economy ( #ACRE ), described Yass as a “next generation #Koch brother…someone who is rigging the rules to privatize our schools while also not paying his fair share of taxes.”

“His disdain for teachers’ unions, in particular, is profound,” said Klagsbrun, characterizing Yass’s influence as “corporate #authoritarianism in our democracy.”

ACRE is pressing Pennsylvania elected officials to refuse to take money from Yass in the 2024 cycle.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/how-tiktok-funder-jeffrey-yass-can-clean-up-on-the-apps-forced-sale/

#Sondaggi #USA #Primarie #R
Sondaggio di American Research Group nel #NewHampshire:

Nikki #Haley: 40% (+7)
Donald #Trump: 40% (+3)
Ron #DeSantis: 4% (-1)
Vivek #Ramaswamy: 4%
Asa #Hutchinson: 1%

Data rilevazione: 12-15 gennaio
+/-: 27 dicembre-4 gennaio

Intervistati: 600

Nota: Vivek Ramaswamy e Asa Hutchinson si sono ritirati dalle primarie.

@OsservatorioEsteri

Not surprising after he got 4th place in Iowa

BREAKING: Vivek Ramaswamy drops out of the 2024 presidential race, endorses Trump

#USPol #Politics #News #Iowa #IowaCaucus #VivekRamaswamy #Vivek #Ramaswamy #Election #BreakingNews

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/vivek-ramaswamy-dropping-2024-presidential-race-rcna133875