Trump's new allies
Ahead of his debate with Joe Biden, some of the biggest names from Wall Street and Silicon Valley are lining up to back Donald Trump's bid for a second term.
Tomorrow’s high-stakes US presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump promises to be an unedifying, albeit possibly quite entertaining, affair.
The latest polls do not look good for the incumbent. But you don’t need to bury your head in the numbers to pick up on the vibes. And nowhere is that more evident than the hard-to-miss messaging from the big dogs on Wall Street and Silicon Valley's Sand Hill Road.
Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman, better known of late for his anti-woke political interventions than his investing acumen, is ‘likely’ in the tank for Trump. Activist investor Nelson Peltz was a Trump donor back in 2020 before being spooked away by the Capitol riots but is now back in the tent. The mercurial Cathie Wood of ARK Invest has also thrown her weight behind the Donald.
Even the traditional liberal stronghold of tech has seen swelling Trump sentiment, at least at the top of the org chart. The influential All-In Podcast, a bellwether for a certain flavour of right-leaning techie, had Trump on last week, with co-host and PayPal mafioso David Sacks being a particularly loud fan. Also on board are assorted VCs and investors, like Sequoia Capital partners Doug Leone and Shaun Maguire. We haven’t heard a clear endorsement from Elon Musk yet, but it doesn’t take an oracle to read the tea leaves.
