On the first night of the Republican National Convention, venture capitalist David Sachs took the stage to warn Republicans that “the world is on fire.”
The Craft Ventures founder focused primarily on foreign policy during his six-minute speech, a topic he often discusses on the All In podcast, which he co-hosts with fellow investors Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg.
And predictably, as is typical at political conventions, his speech was full of hyperbolic rhetoric placing blame on the state of the country and the world, and on the other party and its president, Joe Biden.
For example, Sachs said, “Every day there are new calls for escalation, and the world watches in horror as Joe Biden's insane policies bring us to the brink of World War III,” citing, in particular, the ongoing Houthi attacks in Yemen and Russia's advance into Ukraine. (Meanwhile, Democrats see the long delay in approving the latest military aid to Ukraine while Republicans fight over the package in the House as emboldening Russia.)
Sachs also lamented the state of San Francisco, a claim echoed by several other leaders of major tech companies, including Y Combinator's Garry Tan. “Democrat rule has turned our beautiful city's streets into hotbeds of homeless encampments and open drug use,” Sachs said. (Indeed, the city released data in May showing its homeless population at a 10-year low and in April showing its crime rate falling in 2023. But according to The New York Times, the city is on track to see its highest-ever drug overdoses in 2023.)
The speech was long overdue for Sachs, who has spent the past year trying to rally Silicon Valley to former President Donald Trump. In March, he attended a Trump fundraiser with Donald Trump Jr. and more than 100 lawmakers. In June, he co-hosted an event with Palihapitiya, inviting Trump supporters to their San Francisco home, where tickets reportedly cost $300,000 a pop.
He is working with a group of Silicon Valley investors who support Trump, including Sequoia's Sean Maguire and former PayPal employee Keith Rabois.
Former Republican presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy told me that Sachs is a strong Trump supporter when we ran into each other at the Republican National Convention. He described Sachs as the epitome of a highly skilled, legal immigrant (Sachs is originally from South Africa and moved to the US as a child) who opposes illegal immigration. “I think a lot of people in Silicon Valley want that and we need to bring it back,” Ramaswamy said.
The very fact that Mr. Sachs gained a prominent position at the convention was further evidence of how influential the PayPal Mafia has become within Mr. Trump's Republican Party, which announced on the same day that Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a protege of Peter Thiel, would be Mr. Trump's running mate.
But despite the tech industry's growing support for Trump, Sachs has still drawn the ire of other prominent Silicon Valley leaders, including venture capitalist and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who in a lengthy blog post accused Sachs of falling victim to “pro-Trump groupthink.”
The applause during the speech was lukewarm, perhaps a sign that while Sachs has made a name for himself in Silicon Valley as a huge Trump supporter, he remains relatively unknown among average Republicans.
He ended with a message of literal fire and brimstone, drawing more applause from the audience: “We need to bring order to our cities, order to our border, order to a burning world,” he said, urging the crowd to return Trump to the White House.