JD Vance’s appearance in All-In Summit is the most comfortable I’ve ever seen him, but then he’s with the people he understands best: other VCs.
The All-In podcast appearances are referred to by business leaders as demonstrating synergy. Cohost David Sacks and Vance’s political fortunes are intertwined — if Trump wins, Sacks looks like a kingmaker and has a vice president who owes him a favor and will take his calls. If Vance loses, stay close to him true community — venture capitalists — gives him a valuable network to use for future campaigns.
“Donald Trump cares more about the details of public policy than almost anyone I’ve met in public life.”
Vance called Sacks “one of my closest confidantes.” (His other friends included Curtis Yarvin, an anti-democracy software developer, and VC Peter Thiel, about whom, more later.) Sacks wielded influence in the Republican party, first with his flop attempt at the coronation of Ron DeSantis as the Republican nominee and now Vance. In addition to his fundraising activities, Sacks’ All-In The podcast also hosts Donald Trump and is a place where Sacks regularly talks about his political views.
As far as I can tell, the purpose of Vance’s appearance on All-In, which was also cohosted by fellow Trump supporter and Silicon Valley SPAC king Chamath Palihapitiya, was to explain the anti-immigrant sentiment coming from the Republican party.
Vance’s look was almost disingenuous. According to Vance, anything bad you hear about former President Donald Trump is because the bad guys in the American media are busy lying about him. “The media doesn’t often tell you the truth about Donald Trump,” Vance said. “Donald Trump cares more about the details of public policy than almost anyone I’ve met in public life.” If you don’t believe him, Vance said, “I just encourage you to listen to what he’s actually saying.”
Yes, we are. On the same day the video of All-In interview was uploaded to YouTube, Trump debated Vice President Kamala Harris. When asked why he killed an immigration bill, Trump said the following, “First, let me respond to the rallies. He said people would start leaving. People didn’t come to his rallies, no reason to go. He went on to discuss how he had the “greatest rally in the history of politics.” Okay, but I might try another one plan for repealing Obamacare, Trump replied, “I have concepts of a plan.”
Thiel describes himself as “pro-Trump, pro-JD”
So much for Trump’s knowledge of public policy. As much as I enjoy quoting Trump, I’m less interested in what Vance looks like and more interested in what he does. All-In in the first place.
Vance played at being a man of the people, but he owed his place on Trump’s ticket to Silicon Valley billionaires. After all, he was a pet of Thiel, who put $15 million into Vance’s Ohio Senate campaign. (There are other wealthy donors, as well, including Oculus founder Palmer Luckey.) Thiel has said he’ll sit out the race, but Vance has said publicly that he’s trying to get Thiel “on the sidelines” and -donated to Trump’s campaign. (To himself All-In appearance, Thiel described himself as “pro-Trump, pro-JD” and said that although he didn’t donate money, “he supports them in every possible way.”)
In Thiel’s absence, fellow PayPal mafioso Sacks has moved aggressively into politics. Sacks hosted a $300,000-a-person dinner at his mansion to raise tech money for Donald Trump in July. That chamber wanted Vance as vice president, and it got him.
If you’re wondering why Sacks, already wealthy, is looking for more wealth and power, it’s worth remembering that VCs are middlemen. They need to raise money for their funds, and that’s easier if they look knowledgeable, impressive, connected. Sacks now hosts Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates on his show, and he’s quite comfortable with Vance. These kinds of political relationships can make fundraising easier or put him in the room with better founders. Even though Trump and Vance lost, he still made a strong statement.
Stopping immigration was key to the Trump campaign
That’s the “connections” part of this equation — but Vance’s real work is the “knowledge” part. All-In plays to people who consider themselves the tech intelligentsia. They want one of them to reassure them that despite Trump’s penchant for talking nonsense about immigrants eating housepets, he’s a reasonable person like them. Claiming that the media is unfairly biased against Trump is the kind of thing that plays out in these rooms, where people already believe in an unfair media bias against tech CEOs.
More specifically, the real reason for Vance’s appearance can be found near the middle of the podcast, when he begins to discuss immigration.
Silicon Valley is full of immigrants, from the top (the current CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM) to the bottom. Immigration is an important issue for this group of people. In 2016, when VC Marc Andreessen endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, he said, “The Valley wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be doing any of this if we didn’t have the amazing flow of immigrants that we’ve had. for the last 80 years. And the idea of choking on that just makes me sick to my stomach.”
Stopping immigration was key to the Trump campaign, as evidenced by signs reading “Mass Deportation Now” held during the Republican convention. During his last term, Trump targeted the H-1B program, the visas that many tech workers use to come to the US. Andreessen seems to have settled his stomach on this, as he now endorses Trump and had nothing to say about immigration on his own podcast when he explained his decision. Vance’s job is to reassure anyone who may still be feeling dizzy.
Any immigrant should pay attention to Trump’s mass deportation plans
Vance began by making the Republicans’ anti-immigrant stance palatable to anyone who feared it might be bad for business. “I generally agree, okay, we’re going to let some immigrants in,” he said. “We want them to be high-talent, high-quality people. You don’t want to let in large numbers of illegal aliens.”
According to Vance, his ticket is about letting in the right kind of immigrants and keeping out the wrong kind. He reminded the crowd that he is married to “son of legal immigrants in this country.” It’s just all the undocumented people who are ruining America, he said. And all the bad immigrants will be voted out Democrats. No, seriously, here’s what Vance had to say:
When someone like Chuck Schumer says, “Well, you know, we’re going to have an emerging Democratic majority because we’re going to have all these new immigrants and all these old Americans, well, they’re going to vote Republican. , but we’re going to replace them with a bunch of new people who vote for the Democrats,” like, a little sick.
Vance awkwardly tried to downplay the calls for deportation. “You try to take it one step at a time,” he said. “But the most important thing – and I think the deportations are focused, again, it’s important because eventually, we’re going to deport people – but the most important thing is to stop the bleeding.”
Any immigrant should pay attention to Trump’s mass deportation plans. Trump says he wants to deport 15 to 20 million people; the logistics of this must be daunting. People who are here legally can be taken involuntarily and detained or deported. It was very convenient for Vance to show up and address an industry full of foreign workers, minimizing the threat. There are shades of his mentor Thiel’s famous comment from 2016: take Trump seriously, but not literally.
We’ve actually had a Trump presidency since those comments, of course. And it suggests that Trump should be taken seriously and literally when he talks about cracking down on immigration. This is something he has already done!
And when Vance said All-In that he wouldn’t have certified the 2020 election — “I would have asked the states to submit alternate electoral rolls” were his words, echoing previous remarks — that’s something I’m inclined to take seriously and literally too . Vance was friends of a monarchy; his mentor Thiel wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” His running mate said, “Christians, get out and vote, this time. You don’t have to!” Vance clearly believes in proximity to power. I’m not sure he believes in much else, including democracy. And that seems to suit his friends in Silicon Valley.
