“Thiel’s an interesting one,” a third GOP strategist tells me. “He’s spread his bets. Some have paid off, and some haven’t.”
Maybe most important to these strategists: “Most voters don’t have a fucking clue who Peter Thiel is.” He’s behind the scenes, but very much still present in Republican politics.
Thiel, like the Adelsons, “didn’t just write checks,” the first strategist explains. “They were involved, and they were present. And that’s the bigger thing I can tell ya: The tech people that had the most influence were the ones that were present.”
Present, in this sense, means meeting privately with lawmakers and their staff. (It does not, in this context, mean giving an off-the-wall podcast interview to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, in which they discussed transhumanism and other topics.)
“The Peter Thiels of the world have been doing this for a while,” the first strategist says. “Elon Musk has not.” Despite Musk throwing nearly $300 million toward supporting Trump in 2024, he “amassed influence, went to the White House, and didn’t get everything he wanted.”
Alongside Thiel, this strategist mentioned billionaire and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison as the next best example of how to play the game.
“Obviously the Larry Ellisons of the world and the Peter Thiels, they have deep policy issues that they care about. Now, it’s not gonna affect their bottom line personally anytime soon. They’re gonna shape policy for generations.” Ellison and Thiel did not return requests for comment.
For other Silicon Valley donors to become real players, this strategist said, they need to spread their donations across multiple candidates and organizations, consistently, cycle-to-cycle.
“Most of the technology guys and the Silicon Valley guys, the one thing that was consistent: They were disrupting old-school economies that have been involved for not 10 years or 20 years, but for generations.” They thought they could do the same for politics. But, as the first strategist points out, “that’s not a long term strategy.”
The Crypto Glue Holding It All Together
It’s not just about the Benjamins, either. The future of cryptocurrency—the cashout option of choice for alumni of Trump’s first administration and previous campaigns, as well as Trump’s own family—matters a whole lot.
“Crypto might be the glue that keeps the tech world, so to speak, glued to politics,” a Republican operative close to the president tells WIRED. “Trump was very, very smart by moving positively into the tech world in various forms.”
Trump and Vance are all in on crypto, and they have gone back-to-back as key speakers at the two most recent annual Bitcoin conferences. The industry made its presence known with lavish events at last summer’s Republican National Convention.
As long as the Trump family can keep making money off of cryptocurrency and the value of these currencies, memecoins, and other speculative digital assets keep growing, there will always be a reason for the donors to pony up again. Just this month, crypto billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss donated $1 million total to a super PAC supporting Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Bill Berrien. A representative for the Winklevoss twins did not return a request for comment.