How Tech Billionaires Became the G.O.P.’s New Donor Class
Elon Musk and a group of Silicon Valley allies have built a shadow campaign to put Donald Trump back in office.
Jonathan Mahler, Ryan Mac and Theodore Schleifer, NY Times
Last February, the billionaire financier Nelson Peltz summoned a group of about 20 wealthy, predominantly Republican donors and a handful of G.O.P. strategists to dinner at his $334 million waterfront estate in Palm Beach, Fla. There were plenty of people in the room who had publicly disavowed former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol — Peltz among them — but it was pretty clear now that he was going to be the candidate, and it was time to get onboard and figure out how to help him win. There were a lot of problems. An especially uncomfortable one was that a lot of donor money was going to paying Trump’s mounting legal bills rather than building a serious political campaign.
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U.S. Agencies Fund, and Fight With, Elon Musk. A Trump Presidency Could Give Him Power Over Them, by Eric Lipton, David A. Fahrenthold, Aaron Krolik and Kirsten Grind, NY Times
Musk, Thiel and the shadow of apartheid South Africa, by Simon Kuper, Financial Times
Five things to know about J.D. Vance’s ties to tech billionaires, by Bobby Allyn, NPR