OPINION:
Silicon Valley is warming up to Donald Trump. The former president’s demonstration of courage under fire persuaded Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to stay out of the 2024 presidential contest.
“Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” the Facebook founder told Bloomberg. “On some level as an American, it’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy.”
This is a big deal. In 2020, Mr. Zuckerberg and his wife contributed $400 million to help elect Democrats with a massive mail-in voting operation. These “Zuckerbucks” created the edge President Biden needed to win tight battleground races.
Other influential tech voices have come out more fully in support of Mr. Trump. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, offered his formal endorsement after the July 13 near-assassination. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist who created the first true web browser, also announced his support for the former president last week.
Previously, Mr. Andreessen had backed every Democratic candidate since Bill Clinton, noting this was expected behavior among entrepreneurs in his sector. In the past several years, however, he noted the landscape shifted as the Democrats grew increasingly hostile toward small business — including what he calls “Little Tech” startups that venture capitalists fund in the hopes of helping them grow into larger players.
Noting Mr. Trump’s surviving an attempt on his life, Mr. Andreessen marveled at the “level of physical courage required to stick your head up out of Secret Service protection deliberately.” He had met with the former president days before the shooting and realized he would be better for Little Tech on the issues.
A few Big Tech incumbents are still trying to leverage their dominant market position to tilt the election in Democrats’ favor. Until it got caught doing so, Google intentionally buried Mr. Trump’s campaign website several pages deep in its search results, unlike searches for “Joe Biden” (now “Kamala Harris”), which yield immediate results.
When searching for news about the former president, Google still provides results only from left-leaning outlets owned by large corporate interests. This is a deliberate choice intended to silence opinions deviating from the Democrats’ narrative.
Lest there be any doubt about the search giant’s motive, WikiLeaks exposed the series of fawning emails then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt sent to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign staff offering strategic support and use of the company’s private jet.
More recently, Google’s Gmail service has been caught sending GOP campaign emails directly to spam filters — unlike equivalent messages from the Democratic National Committee. In 2022, the Republican National Committee sued Google over the discriminatory treatment of its communications, but a judge appointed by Mr. Biden tossed the lawsuit a year later, citing the search giant’s Section 230 immunity.
It may take a little legislative prodding to encourage the Mountain View, California-based company to realize what Mr. Musk and Mr. Zuckerberg have already figured out. Congress needs to fix the immunity provision some Big Tech giants are still abusing to interfere with free and fair elections.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.