A few of Trump’s high-profile backers from Silicon Valley stayed largely quiet through the Trump-Musk flare-up on Thursday or tried to show consideration to different subjects, together with Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya, two tech trade veterans who’re additionally hosts of the enormously common All In podcast, which has featured pleasant interviews with Trump and a few of his cupboard appointees in latest months.
As of Thursday afternoon, Palihapitya was posting on X about crypto, whereas Sacks shared a latest New York Instances op-ed about AI coverage. However their fellow podcast hosts, David Friedberg and Jason Calacanis, posted what seemed to be cryptic references to the drama.
“China simply gained,” Friedberg wrote on social media. “There aren’t any true associates in politics—solely mutual pursuits,” Calacanis stated in a separate message. He adopted up with a meme portraying Musk as rapper Kendrick Lamar, who was lately concerned in a tense feud with fellow musician Drake.
“Can’t wait to see the All In podcast guys political opinions disappear in a single day,” Dar Sleeper, a former Tesla product supervisor, quipped on X.
Adam Kovacevich, a former Google government and the present CEO of the tech trade commerce group Chamber of Progress, says he thinks the present Musk-Trump riff doesn’t get on the coronary heart of what most tech enterprise leaders are actually involved about with the present administration.
“I don’t wish to overstate the rupture, however the overwhelming majority of individuals within the tech trade aren’t aligned with anyone proper now,” Kovacevich says. “Some may respect what Trump has finished, calling off SEC lawsuits in opposition to crypto and calling off the Biden order on AI, however on the similar time there’s nonetheless a number of angst about tariffs. That’s the only largest situation for tech proper now.”
A former Democratic operative who now works at a tech funding agency says that, whereas the Trump-Musk battle will certainly power some individuals to decide on a facet, it gained’t be an easy choice for a lot of of them. “This isn’t 2012—there are all these totally different strands making up the Trump alliance now,” says the operative, who requested to stay nameless as a result of they weren’t approved by their employer to talk to the media.
“The essential situation is that Elon was the gateway for individuals going from the historically Democratic tech trade in the direction of Trump and the Republican social gathering. And now the query is, will Elon be the gateway for the tech trade to come back again to the left?” the supply says.
Two sources who spoke to WIRED say that some traders and technologists may not be fast to embrace Musk as a result of they’re disenchanted by how he dealt with DOGE. “Lots of people put large religion in the concept DOGE may shake up the federal government,” the previous Democratic operative says, however the actuality is that Washington is a special world from tech. “It’s the least worst end result for a lot of, not the perfect end result for a number of.”
Because the solar started to set outdoors the White Home on Thursday, Trump and Musk have been nonetheless buying and selling barbs—and there’s little signal their battle will finish anytime quickly. In actual fact, this can be solely the start. As right-leaning tech investor Mike Solana put it on X: “And so, as foretold, the good tech proper/populist right-wing schism of 2025 begins.”
