Summary

Tech leaders who once backed Trump are fed up as his second term descends into chaos.

Venture capitalists and startup founders complain about erratic policies and feel burned by crypto bro schemes like $Trump coin, which tanked after launch.

Appointing David Sacks as “crypto czar” only fueled suspicions of cronyism, while proposed defense budget cuts leave companies like Anduril and Palantir reeling.

Even billionaire allies like Jeff Bezos are souring as tariffs and economic uncertainty hit their bottom line. “Everyone is annoyed,” says one disillusioned founder.

    • My personal thought was “Aww, poor tech-bro capitalists are learning what the actual, obscene fundamentals of their antisocial ideology have always been, and that they were in fact not high-IQ genius technocrats knowing better than anyone else how to run mankind”.

      But then I realised they most likely learned nothing and will claim that they, themselves, would never have been so stupid.

    • @dhork@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      4913 days ago

      My heart pumps purple piss for them.

      I admire your commitment to the cause, but you really should get that checked out…

  • @mrsjmccrimmon@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    21312 days ago

    “When tech people got involved in the government, they thought Trump was going to take more of a surgical approach and act less like a wrecking ball."

    What about his first term, insurrection and campaign and everything about and around him suggested it’d be anything other than a wrecking ball approach???

    • @fluxion@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      12912 days ago

      Billionaires have done a lot these past few years toward outing themselves as being just as stupid as any other random dumbass.

      • @blarth@thelemmy.club
        link
        fedilink
        7712 days ago

        They are. They just lack morals and empathy. They’re incapable of feeling shame for exploiting other humans.

          • manxu
            link
            fedilink
            English
            1312 days ago

            I think that’s the key. We attribute to them special qualities because we like to think in terms of cause and effect. But they all seem to have just been there at the right time with the right people and the right thing.

            They show us there is nothing special about them every time they try to do something new and miserably fail. Think the money Meta spent on VR, or the way Musk alienated users and advertisers on Twitter.

            We are basically beholden to lottery winners.

      • @Generic_Idiot@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        312 days ago

        Yeah well I’m not saying it’s entirely luck, but luck is certainly a significant factor in becoming a billionaire.

        Right place, right time, right resources at said place and time etc.

        They’re not super geniuses better than anyone else, they just had a lot fall their way, and had the work ethic/psychopathic tendencies to capitalise on it.

        • In about 2018, I think, a team of researchers put together a mathematical model of how markets work. What they found is that wealth just naturally accumulates to a few people. It’s inherent to how markets work, and it’s more or less at random; in their simulation runs, every person started out in an equal position.

          It’s all luck. It doesn’t even take being in the right place at the right time, although that helps. Since us humans operate on narratives and just-world fallacies, it’s really easy for us to construct a post hoc story about why a certain billionaire succeeded. But it’s all luck.

          (I remember that I read about this research in Scientific American, but I don’t have the link handy.)

    • @jj4211@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      1312 days ago

      His first term was pretty milquetoast during his term, at least in the ways that these stakeholders cared about. Yeah, he mucked with some trade relationships but largely backed down except for China, and China is a thorn in their side too. The economy basically looked similar to most presidential terms for the last 30 years (except for George W Bush, who had very subpar economic results). Yeah he did some horrible stuff and some incompetent stuff, but economically, his term was just fine (except for 2020, which derailed everyone).

      The 2020 election, January 6th, and Trump’s continuing behavior in the wake of that, and the PJ2025 associates that swarmed around him should have been the sign that he was too dangerous to risk. However they could have still thought that Trump’s behavior was more of a show for riling up a base, and his second term would still give them a chance to have him shuffle off to a golf course while the big boys got what they wanted like usual.

      This term, there just are no winners, at least domestically, and lots of losers.

    • YonderEpochs
      link
      fedilink
      612 days ago

      Naked greed has a way of making even the orangest turd seem to sparkle like gold.

    • @P1k1e@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      1212 days ago

      Oh no, they just don’t trust anyone who doesn’t think like them. They count on being able to read other folks for being bastards but empathetic people are unpredictable in that they don’t always choose what’s beneficial. Hell sometimes they literally inconvenience themselves! Why would they do that? It makes no sense!? How can they dominate the markets if they’re just…giving shit away for free?

  • SeaJ
    link
    fedilink
    5512 days ago

    It’s like they learned nothing from the first time he was president.

    • @Kbibble@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1512 days ago

      They all banked the first time he was president. It’s all us regular people who got boned.

    • @YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      211 days ago

      No, they learned plenty. Look up Peter thiel’s bullshit. They thought they could profit from dissolving our country. I’m fucking loving this personally. I hope they actually cancel social security. It will burn the entirety of the “Republican” party (using quotation marks because they are furthest thing from, like the “Democratic Republic of…”)

      Let it all burn. This country voted for acceleration, so it deserves it!

  • @CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1612 days ago

    I wonder how many of them voted for qon assholes like donvict for the tax cuts and to combat “DEI” at least a little bit (or at least dunk on the 13 trans people in college sports nationwide or whatever the fuck) but they didn’t want the monkey-flinging-shit level of batshit insanity that donvict has been doing…

  • Why does anyone think trump and musk will make things better for them? This administration only serve themselves at the expense of what’s left of the future of America.

    • @Zink@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      211 days ago

      You know that Carlin joke people like to reference that says to imagine how dumb the average person is and that half the people are dumber? Well apply that again and take the bottom half of the bottom half. Then sprinkle some of our anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-education, proud avarice and ignorance culture on top.

  • @tal@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    3213 days ago

    Several Silicon Valley executives I spoke to — some of whom requested anonymity for fear of retribution — echoed this sense of disappointment, in particular at the havoc the Department of Government Efficiency has wreaked throughout the federal government. “We were all on board for a more business-friendly presidency, but in the end, the whole industry of crypto and AI got rug pulled,” says the partner of a top-tier venture firm directly involved in the Trump administration. “The people surrounding Trump are all scamsters. They are getting rich off our votes, our dollars, and our time.”

    Well, there was an unforseeable outcome. Trump was so known for keeping salubrious company in the past.

    • @rocket_dragon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      712 days ago

      “We were all on board for a more business-friendly presidency

      “More business-friendly presidency” is WILD.

      Nearly every presidency of the last century has been pro-business, anti-worker. Federal protections for workers are nearly non-existent. Federal minimum wage is a joke. Wealth inequality is hitting all-time records.

      Oligarch ghouls are so high in their ivory tower they have now clue how ordinary families on the ground are struggling.

  • @tal@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    14
    edit-2
    13 days ago

    Steve Witkoff, for instance, a longtime Trump associate who was appointed as the United States special envoy to the Middle East, has been cashing in on his proximity to Trump to secure private deals, this person says. Witkoff’s son, Zach Witkoff, is the cofounder of World Liberty Financial, the crypto banking platform that launched Trump’s memecoin. Early in March, Steve Witkoff sent cryptocurrency advocates to the Middle East to promote World Liberty Financial’s latest stablecoin project, The Wall Street Journal reported. “Steve Witkoff is calling every sovereign government and saying, ‘You need to support this coin if you want to be in good standing with Trump,’” the person says. Witkoff did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

    That doesn’t seem like a great office to have a holder who is soliciting bribes from foreign countries to affect national policy.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Witkoff

    In November 2024, then President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would appoint Witkoff to be the United States Special Envoy to the Middle East…In addition to his Middle East portfolio, he also became Trump’s personal de facto envoy to Russian President Vladimir Putin.[5]

  • @Wilco@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    3412 days ago
    1. Support a corrupt and utterly idiotic wannabe dictator.

    2. Make that suprised Pikachu face when the guy you support turns out to be an idiot.

    3. Lose money because of the idiot.

  • Venicone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    4712 days ago

    suspicions of cronyism

    Are you fucking serious?

  • @atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    2412 days ago

    Several Silicon Valley executives I spoke to — some of whom requested anonymity for fear of retribution — echoed this sense of disappointment

    Things are fucked up when private citizens criticize the government anonymously due to “fear of retribution”.

    • @jaybone@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      212 days ago

      But he’s a tech bro, he’s in the “in crowd.” This so called retribution might just mean he can’t hang out at their club house anymore.