Crazy Rich Californians
Florida Man vs. The California Elite
Welcome. I usually like to write about Florida, but today, we look across this great land at the opposite coast. We are doing an anthropological study on a species known as the Californians.
As a Florida Man, I may hate to admit it, but California still has a grip on American politics. Today, I tell you the tale of a civil war in California. Today, I tell you the tale of two fundraisers. Today, I tell you about the crypto-elite. Today, I tell you about aristo-populism.
Today, I have the honor to introduce you to the Crazy Rich Californians.
Hurry up. We don’t have much time. Mr. Sacks is waiting. Come on in.
The Tale of Two Fundraisers
Before I get into this, I will note that the I began writing much of this before the disastrous debate on June 27 although I believe that the point that I am making here still has strong relevance.
A Night to Remember in San Francisco
You enter the glamorous mansion of billionaire David Sacks. Glasses of California wine are clinking. Some men are wearing suits. Some are wearing quarter-zips. Your name hardly matters in here. Your anonymity gives you power. You are like Clark Kent. Besides, you probably don’t want the San Francisco Chronicle outing you. Remember what Gawker did to Peter Thiel? Okay. That was a different type of “outing” … but same idea. You are somewhat of a Nick Carraway figure entering into the home of Jay Gatsby … except that we are in California instead of New York.
This night does not differ from many of the other social gatherings that you have had at the homes of tech moguls in the Bay Area. The faces stay the same. The crystals in the chandelier in the wine cave shimmer just the same. The conversation topics stay the same.
In hushed tones, people mutter … Who here is taking Ozempic? Had your Cybertruck gotten delivered yet? How was your daughter’s first year at Stanford? Are you cycling TRT yet? How was the same-sex wedding you attended last month in Yountville? Did you watch the South Park special End of Obesity? Trey and Matt are so smart!
Will the Nvidia bubble pop? Is the French Laundry still as good as it was a decade ago? What are we going to do about this Adderall shortage in California? What are they going to do about the tilting Millennium Tower on Fremont? What do we think about SBF and now Silicon Valley Bank? Are you still thinking about buying that place in Austin, Texas? What do we think about the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action? Are you still installing that infrared sauna in your house? Isn’t the encampment at Berkeley crazy? Was Twitter really that bad under Jack Dorsey? Would the Apple Vision Pro be a flop? What would happen to the chip industry if China invades Taiwan? Is Bryan Johnson really giving himself transfusions of his teenaged son’s blood? If so, who else is secretly doing it?
Oh no. The Winklevi are walking over to me. Think about something nice to say about crypto … fast.
But there is one difference. In a few moments, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee would be walking in: Donald John Trump. In 2016, you called him a racist and a misogynist. In 2020, you thought that he had the blood of hundreds of thousands of dead Americans on his hands for mishandling the pandemic. In 2024, you were donating $100,000 to the Trump campaign so that you and your wife could come and have dinner at David Sacks’s house in Pacific Heights for a few hours. With your help, Donald Trump racked up $12 million because of one dinner in San Francisco.
The changing tide in Silicon Valley:
I do not tell you a fictional tale. This night actually happened. On the night of Thursday, June 6, venture capitalists David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya held a massive fundraiser for Donald Trump at Sacks’s mansion in the hyper-affluent Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. Many prominent names in the tech industry came — David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jacob Helberg, the Winklevoss twins, and many others — but as I joked earlier, I bet that many attendees didn’t want their names publicly leaked. They would donate $50,000 to attend, but they did not want the rest of the industry to know. No pictures leaked from this night, but Trump did not need the publicity. What he needed was money, and he got it.
What did the tech moguls need in return? They have varied interests. Some want to ensure that the Trump corporate tax cuts do not expire in 2025. Some want laxer immigration laws for high-skilled tech jobs. Some want a clearer framework for cryptocurrency by the federal government. Some want to loosen the restrictions on the tech industry by the Federal Trade Commission. Some don’t even see tech as the biggest issue and want an administration who will more fervently support Israel.
Regardless of their personal aims, it is clear. In the 2024 landscape of Silicon Valley, you could now support Trump. In tech terms, that doesn’t mean a vote. Your vote does not matter in California. Instead, it means dozens of thousands of dollars in donations to Donald Trump and other Republican candidates across the country. To quote Saurabh Sharma — the head of the conservative advocacy group American Moment —“There’s a ton more latitude that people feel like they have now … It’s not 2016 anymore”.
You may not know the names of these tech billionaires and near-billionaires, but they know you. They have your data, and they know what to do to get Donald Trump to defeat Joe Biden in November. They have massive amounts of power. They are Crazy Rich Californians. They are going to use all their craziness and all their richness to usher Trump back into the White House, but another breed of Crazy Rich Californians lives down south of San Francisco. This breed abhors Trump and, consequently, supports Biden by default. Let’s meet them next.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
On the night of Saturday, June 15 — nine days after Trump’s fundraiser in San Francisco — Biden would hold a giant fundraiser 380 miles south on I-5 in Los Angeles. Biden did not have titans of the tech industry, but he did have the flashy names of Hollywood. The incumbent president even more than doubled the fundraising haul that Trump made in San Francisco. In Los Angeles, Biden raised approximately $30 million, but I believe that the Biden campaign thought that it was getting something even more valuable during this event: cultural relevance.
Unlike Trump’s event in San Francisco, I doubt that many attendees of Biden’s event in Los Angeles feared people knowing that they attended. Rather, many pictures flurried social media after the event ended. Many celebrities attended the event. The biggest names included: Jason Bateman, Jack Black, George Clooney, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jimmy Kimmel, Julia Roberts, and Barbra Streisand. Beyond Hollywood celebrities, Washington celebrities joined Joe Biden. Former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama joined the incumbent president.
Biden’s posts on social media
Biden clearly wanted people to know that he had this fundraiser. Why do I say this? Well, he (or, more accurately, his team) posted the following pictures on Instagram.
As we can see, the picture on the top includes from left to right: George Clooney, Joe Biden, Julia Roberts, and Barack Obama. The picture on the bottom shows Barack Obama and Joe Biden flanking Jack Black. Although all of the celebrities might deserve analysis for their presence at the event, I am going to focus the most on Black, but — before I begin discussing the celebrities — I want to go back a few days. What event was Joe Biden doing before the fundraiser in Los Angeles? Biden was taking pictures with other important people before this event.
Viral videos from the G7 Summit
Fewer than 48 hours before the fundraiser in Los Angeles, Biden was attending a different event in Italy: G7 Summit. The leaders of the countries in the G7 met in Fasano, Italy:
Joe Biden of the United States (president)
Fumio Kishida of Japan (prime minister)
Emmanuel Macron of France (president)
Giorgia Meloni of Italy (prime minister)
Olaf Scholz of Germany (chancellor)
Rishi Sunak of the United Kingdom (prime minister)
Justin Trudeau of Canada (prime minister)
From this meeting of world leaders, a viral video spread of Biden walking seemingly aimlessly in a field away from the six other leaders until Meloni pulled him back to take a picture with the rest of the leaders.
The video version of this incident joined an ever-growing collection of Biden looking increasingly senile ahead of the November election. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred to videos, such as these, as “cheap fakes”, terminology that the hosts on MSNBC quickly adopted. The defenders of Biden claim that right-wing figures on social media cropped the video to exclude the context of paratroopers to the right. This is correct, but the inclusion of Biden walking toward the paratroopers does not really make him look any better. Much later in the month, the suspicions that this clip elicited were corroborated by the disastrous debate performance on June 27.
The summit in Italy gives another outing in which Biden looked confused and aimless on the world stage alongside the leaders of the most powerful Westernized democracies. (I say “Westernized” and not “Western” as to include Japan.) Immediately after this event, Biden would be flying to Los Angeles for that star-studded event. He desperately needed a social media win.
Luckily, for Biden, he was not alone in weakness at this event. All of these seven leaders have terrible approval ratings in their home countries. I assume that they love getting out of their home countries for these diplomatic events just to get an escape — obviously, except for Meloni because the event was held in her home of Italy. In some ways, they all seemed like dead men walking. Biden may have been wandering aimless in a physical way, but the rest of them are doing it metaphorically in the political realm.
Elsewhere, Macron and Schulz are suffering because of poor performances of the establishment parties in France and Germany in the European Union elections, held between June 6 and June 9. The results shocked the French establishment so much that Macron shockingly decided to call for a snap election in France, held in two rounds on June 30 and July 7, which did not need to happen until 2027.
I can describe the rest of these leaders as dead men walking, but — since the G7 summit — we have had actual elections in two of these countries: the U.K. and France. On July 4, the United Kingdom held its general elections and Sunak’s Conservative Party had its worst result in its history, so Sunak no longer serves as the U.K.’s prime minister as of July 5. Labour Party Leader Kier Starmer has now succeeded him.
United Kingdom: The Conservative Party had a net loss of 244 seats — from 365 seats to 121 seats now. The Tories had their previous low in 1906 with 156 seats. The Tories also saw their lowest total share of the national popular vote too although the U.K. does not directly determine seats in the House of Commons on popular vote. In 2024, the Tories earned 18.6% of the popular vote, which beat the previous low of 25.0% after the 1997 election, the last time that the Labour Party took power from the Conservative Party.
France: As for Macron, he has not lost his position as Sunak has, but Macron’s party has lost massive power after France’s two rounds of elections, which took place on June 30 and July 7. Although the rival far-right party the National Rally did not earn a plurality in French Parliament, Macron’s party — Ensemble — lost its position as the plurality party to the further left New Popular Front, only founded on June 10, 2024. Furthermore, the National Rally still gained many seats and had the best showing in its history with gaining 53 seats to increase to 142 seats. Macron’s Ensemble party lost 86 seats to decrease to 159 seats, and the New Popular Front soared to 180 seats.
In response to the massive shift in seats, the French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal — of the same party as Emmanuel Macron — announced that he is stepping down from the premiership to make way for a new prime minister from the further left New Popular Front. I will clarify that Macron is much different from Sunak here because Macron did not lose his position despite his party’s dismal showing. France has a president, elected separately from parliament. Macron was already re-elected in 2022 and cannot run for another term once his expires in 2027 whereas Sunak serves at the pleasure of whichever party has a majority in the House of Commons.
Going back to Biden, he is actually is near the top of the list for approval ratings of these leaders. Here is the list from top to bottom.
Giorgia Meloni (Italy) — 40%
Joe Biden (United States) — 37%
Justin Trudeau (Canada) — 30%
Olaf Scholz (Germany) — 25%
Rishi Sunak (United Kingdom) — 25%
Emmanuel Macron (France) — 21%
Fumio Kushida (Japan) — 13%
Strangely, Biden has a historically terrible approval rating according to American standards, yet — out of the 6 other G7 leaders — only Meloni outranks him. Even for her, she probably won’t last long considering how quickly Italian prime ministers leave the post. Nonetheless, maybe that’s why Meloni chose to host the event in her home country. She was the only one who didn’t feel compelled to flee. The electorally moribund Sunak is considering leaving his home country altogether to find a Silicon Valley job in the United States once he leaves Downing Street.
Back to Hollywood
But on Friday, the G7 summit was all over, and Biden could get a win in some friendly territory in Los Angeles on Saturday night. Old pals like Obama and Clinton would join Biden. These are two leaders who found way more political success than any of Biden’s counterparts at the G7 Summit in Italy. I listed the seven leaders in the G7 and their abysmal approval ratings. Now, I am going to list seven of the big-name celebrities that joined Biden in Los Angeles and their ages. Biden is clearly seeking allies with relevance, and he is cratering with the youth vote right now. Therefore, he needs to find some celebrities hip with the kids. Here they are:
Jason Bateman — age 55
Jack Black — age 54
George Clooney — age 63
Jeffrey Katzenberg — age 73
Jimmy Kimmel — age 56
Julia Roberts — age 56
Barbra Streisand — age 82
If you are banking on impactful celebrities endorsements, then you want celebrities who still have an impact. These celebrities do not have the relevance that they once had. Jason Bateman is famous for his lead role on a highly acclaimed comedy on Fox that left network airwaves 18 years ago. It was revived in a subpar, reheated form on Netflix 11 years ago. George Clooney’s highest-grossing film is Ocean’s Eleven, which came out 23 years ago in 2001. Julia Roberts’s highest-grossing film is Pretty Woman, which came out 34 years ago in 1990. Barbra Streisand last entered the Billboard Hot 100 in 1996 with her song “I Finally Found Someone”. Jack Black is famous for his live-action role in 2003’s School of Rock and 2006’s Nacho Libre. Sure, he has voiced the titular, morbidly obese panda in the Kung Fu Panda franchise, but how many younger voters know that he is the one voicing Po?
Sanctimonious Hollywood celebrities are easy targets nowadays. I could skewer any of these people with little resistance from critics, but I am just going to focus on Jack Black.
The Jack Black Problem:
Jack’s Background:
I might be somewhat unfair to Jack Black here, but he is the one who prompted me to write about Biden’s Hollywood fundraiser.
For kids born in the 1990s, Jack Black became a fixture of the cultural canon. He starred in the acclaimed 2003 film School of Rock. He comprises one half of the comedy rock duo Tenacious D, which had its own film Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, released in 2006. Black also starred in the 2006 comedy Nacho Libre, in which he plays the protagonist friar who becomes a luchador in Mexico. Finally, as I already wrote, Black voices the titular panda in the Kung Fu Panda computer-animated series, whose first film came out in 2008.
Part of Black’s entire shtick came from his overweight physique and schlub persona. In School of Rock, he plays a slacker, unemployed guitarist who eventually becomes a music teacher at a prestigious private school. The character in Nacho Libre wears no shirt for much of the film, thereby exposing his corpulence complemented with an ill-fitting skintight leotard on the bottom half of his body. As for Po the Panda, although he is animated, his physique matches exactly that of Jack Black in human form in Nacho Libre.
All of this is fine. Hollywood needs overweight, lazy schlubs, and every actor needs a shtick. By the mid-2000s, Black clearly found his. Because of the success of his shtick, many of his movies have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars over the past quarter century. Here are his top 10 grossing movies. Black has done quite well.
Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) — $1.36 billion
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) — $962 million
Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) — $798 million
Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) — $665 million
Kung Fu Panda (2008) — $632 million
Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024) — $545 million
King Kong (2005) — $551 million
Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) — $521 million
Ice Age (2002) — $386 million
Shark Tale (2004) — $372 million
I will admit. I have only seen four of those movies, and they all happened to have come out in the 2000s: Ice Age (2002), Shark Tale (2004), King Kong (2005) and Kung Fu Panda (2008). Earlier in the article, I also referenced School of Rock (2003), Nacho Libre (2006), and Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (2006). I do have a bias here in that I had the highest likelihood of seeing a Jack Black movie during my own childhood. I was 10 years old when the first Kung Fu Panda came out, so perhaps Black is more relevant nowadays than I thought. The youngest voters in 2024 will have been born in 2006. Perhaps they will have nostalgia for the remake of Jumanji with Black that came out when they were 10 or 11 years old.
Jack’s Physical Appearance:
Regardless, a Biden-adjacent Twitter account called “Biden-Harris HQ” posted a video from the Hollywood fundraiser of Black’s speech. Joe Biden’s Instagram account also posted that picture with Jack Black and Barack Obama (included earlier in the article), so Biden world was obviously trying to tout this appearance by Jack Black. Sure, the campaign was trying to get the same sort of attention from pictures with Clooney and Roberts, but — from what I saw — they trotted Black out the most on social media.
As opposed to Clooney and Roberts, Black was obviously trying to draw sartorial attention to himself. Clooney was wearing a standard charcoal suit, and Roberts was wearing a black dress. Of course, nobody dared to wear a tie because … I don’t know. It’s California? President Biden didn’t even wear a tie.
Regardless, Clooney dressed normally while Black wore an intentionally provocative outfit with American flag overalls with a Joe Biden t-shirt underneath. It was the “Dark Biden” shirt with the laser eyes, and — finally — he wore bright red sneakers. As for his self-grooming, Black was not looking too good — at least as compared to his peer Clooney. (But is that an unfair comparison?) Black donned a scraggly beard with dominant streaks of gray as he nears the upper half of his fifties. At the same time, he looked like Karl Marx and Hagrid.
Jack’s Stand-up(?) Routine:
I am not trying to criticize Black with how he looked. I don’t really care about that. Rather, his appearance struck me because it communicated a lack of seriousness in the Biden campaign while Trump was hobnobbing with tech billionaire donors 390 miles north in San Francisco. I saw a funny man who was clearly not aging very well. I saw a man who dominated the box office with the schlub shtick two decades ago, but — unfortunately — the slacker guitarist archetype does not work as well at age 54. The ill-fitting shirt and overalls and the disheveled facial hair served as a metaphor for me of the impotence of the Biden campaign by the summer of 2024, but what he said sapped more of my former confidence in Biden’s re-election hopes. You can watch the video, but here is an excerpt:
A few days ago, my manager called me and said George Clooney and Julia Roberts wanted me to help out the President and speak here tonight, and I said, 'I am in. When and where?' And then they said, 'Jack, we know how busy you are. You don’t have time! Look at all the other events that are happening tonight that you already turned down: emcee at the Fliegelman bat mitzvah, the opening of the new Jack in the Box in Oxnard, judge at the second annual Imperial Valley Avocado Festival. You don’t see that on Meryl Streep’s résumé!'
I said, 'I know I turned them down, but my President needs me.' [Audience cheers.] Thank you. And then they hit me with the big one. They said, 'Jack, you can’t go. You have nothing to wear. Your good suit is in the cleaners!' Well, were they wrong, because I had this to wear, my kick-ass American flag overalls — most patriotic outfit of all time! And that shut them up. There wasn’t much they could say after that."
"And when the President wins in November, I’m pretty sure I'm going to get a sweet shout-out in his victory speech for what I gave up to be here. Because when democracy is at stake, Jack Black answers the call!1
Amid a suffering campaign, if I were a Biden supporter, I would want to see that Biden was able to bring out the big guns for fundraising and celebrity support. Black’s appearance and speech would denude me of any confidence. He was using “random” humor better left in 2005, and it is clear that the schlub shtick is not authentic anymore. When was the last time that Jack Black went to a Jack-in-the-Box in Oxnard, California? When was the last time that he went to Oxnard at all?
Furthermore, I do not buy that he did not have a “suit” to go to a big fancy Hollywood fundraiser with Clooney. Alternatively, Black claimed that he had to whip out the American flag overalls. Okay, I get it. It’s sarcasm. Haha. It’s a joke, but it makes me wonder how many insufferable Democratic bundlers in the crowd actually believe that Black is this schlub character.
Nevertheless, what bothered me most was this faux patriotism. He claimed that his overalls were the most patriotic outfit of all time. This kitschy fashion choice reeked of the sort of ironic “‘Merica” patriotism from the mid-2000s to mid-2010s performed by college-educated liberal millennials (or at least apolitical ones). This actually was all very 2012. I felt as if I were traveling back in time to some Obama fundraiser from then. It was the exact same Hollywood characters. Biden probably still thinks that they are relevant, but 2012 was 12 years ago. A lot has changed. As I already listed, Black was the youngest publicized celebrity there at age 54.
I am making an assumption here, but I conjecture that the out-of-touch Democratic donors in the audience truly think that sort of faux patriotism appeals to what they see as “Middle America” — the “fly-over states” upon which Biden, unfortunately, needed to rely to win re-election. At best, Black’s outfit and comedic bits were tacky, and — at worst — they were offensive. It felt like pandering — but completely misguided pandering. When we look at the caption on the Instagram post with Joe Biden and Jack Black, Biden used the photo op as a way to advertise the Dark Brandon meme shirts on his website.
Of course, Democratic presidential candidates have had cringe-inducing celebrity events for years and years. (Can we ever forget “Our Fight Song” from the 2016 DNC with Hillary Clinton?) Why was this one with Black any different? Jack Black probably appeared at Barack Obama events in 2008 or 2012. I think that Black’s appearance struck me because of its juxtaposition to Trump’s fundraiser with the Silicon Valley billionaires just a few days before in the same state of California.
Five days after Biden’s Hollywood fundraiser, Trump appeared on the All-In Podcast, hosted by Silicon Valley venture capitalists David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Friedberg — on June 20. On June 13, two days before the Biden fundraiser, Donald Trump appeared on Logan Paul’s popular podcast Impaulsive.
Okay, Logan Paul is not that important, but who bolsters a campaign more? Silicon Valley billionaires or irrelevant celebrities? People used to mock Trump because the celebrities who supported him in 2016 were weird B-listers and C-listers: Scott Baio, Ted Nugent, Dennis Rodman, Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan, etc. The Democrats had the real celebrities! On the night before the election, Jay-Z and Beyoncé performed a concert at a Hillary rally in Cleveland! Wee! Have you listened to Lemonade?
But is Kid Rock really that ridiculous? Of course, Jack Black is more “mainstream” than any of those Trump-supporting celebrities whom I listed. George Clooney obviously is, but I don’t think that Scott Baio goes around thinking that the voters will really listen to him. The Hollywood A-listers from the 1990s think that they can still make a difference, and Biden believes them.
Which Crazy Rich Californians Matter? When Does Celebrity Make a Difference?
I am not discounting the potential effect that the Crazy Rich Californians and the celebrities can have in elections. Heck, we elected a reality TV show host in 2016, and we will probably elect him again in 2024.
Firstly, I have drawn a distinction between Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. Silicon Valley has Crazy Rich Californians with actual money and power. They have hundreds of millions or billions. When we go south into Los Angeles, very few members of Hollywood reach Silicon Valley wealth unless they have produced major blockbusters as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have, but major actors can still have power. What they lack in money they make up for in name recognition and trust with the general public. Ultimately, very few people know David Sacks. Not many Silicon Valley billionaires really enter A-list celebrity status besides Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk.
I posit that a celebrity matters when s/he satisfies the criteria that I enumerate below this particular paragraph. Obviously, each of these criteria acts as a gradient and does not necessarily produce binary answers. Additionally, I am now including any celebrity under the abstraction of “Crazy Rich Californian” even though many of the celebrities who fit these criteria well do not necessarily hail from California or work in the California-centric industries of Hollywood in the south and Silicon Valley in the north. The terms “Hollywood” and “Silicon Valley” themselves serve as metonyms instead of strictly defined geographic areas. Yes, we can precisely define the general boundaries of the Hollywood neighborhood in Los Angeles, but the connotation of the term “Hollywood” transcends way beyond its little geographic slice of Los Angeles.
Schwerin Celebrity Endorsement Test for Impact (SCETI)
PRONGS OF THE SCETI:
PRONG #1: Large and diverse portions of the American population — particularly, the electorate — recognize the celebrity.
PRONG #2: The celebrity especially has impact in certain cohorts of the American population.
PRONG #3: The celebrity does not have a baked-in history of routinely supporting candidates of a particular party.
Further Exploration of the Prongs of the SCETI
PRONG #1: In the past two decades, this prong has waned in potency, or perhaps fewer American celebrities can satisfy the prong because of how much our culture has fragmented since the advent of social media in the mid-2000s. We no longer live in a mono-culture as we arguably did before the popularization of the Internet, but we still have widely known celebrities. A large amount of the population knows Taylor Swift, but — in light of the cultural change in the U.S. after social media — perhaps celebrities have a lower bar to satisfy this prong.
PRONG #2: Nevertheless, plenty of celebrities in the social media age have massive amounts of sway with niche but decently large slices of the population. This is where Prong #2 comes into play. Social media can facilitate a para-social relationship between the fan and the celebrity. The fan has a closer relationship with the celebrity. The difference is that the celebrities have fewer fans that they would have 30 years ago.
PRONG #3: Why does this matter? Well, we shouldn’t care much about the endorsement of someone who always endorses a certain party without fail. For decades, we can pretty much always expect Barbra Streisand to support the Democratic presidential nominee and Jon Voight to support the Republican presidential nominee. It’s already all baked in.
SCETI Case Studies:
Next, I want to analyze three prominent celebrity endorsements (or lack thereof) in the 21st century: 1) Oprah Winfrey, 2) Patrick Mahomes (along with Travis Kelce), and 3) Dwayne Johnson.
Oprah Winfrey:
Out of any celebrity endorsement in history, Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries may have had more impact than any other celebrity endorsement. She made her endorsement in December 2007, one month before Obama’s historic upset win in the Iowa caucuses. Oprah’s endorsement along with his Iowa victory created a preference cascade that gave marginal Democratic primary voters a permission structure to support Barack Obama over the previously presumed frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
Many Democrats questioned Obama’s ability to win a general election because of his ethnicity. In other words, people did not know if the American swing voters were “ready” to elect a Black president. Even Black Democrats questioned Obama’s ability, and Clinton had strong support among that cohort until later in the campaign.
After the election Craig Garthwaite and Tim Moore, economists from the University of Maryland, performed a study that found that Winfrey’s endorsement swung approximately 1 million Democratic votes toward Obama in the primaries. That swing could have been decisive in the primaries. It definitely made an impact.
I do not know now, but — during the run of her iconic talk show — she might have been the most famous woman in the United States. She definitely satisfies Prong #1. She is still one of the most famous celebrities but, probably, slightly less so.
As for Prong #2, Winfrey did have especially strong influence in certain demographics. She had the most influence with women, who typically comprise a majority of voters in the United States. Her daytime talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show drew millions of viewers every day, especially, with women who were homemakers or retired. It remains the highest rated daytime talk show in American history, and no new show can likely overtake it. She also had massive influence in the Black community.
She is the wealthiest Black woman in American history as well as the most famous, at least, at that time in 2007 — but African-Americans tend to only comprise 10-15% of the electorate, much smaller than women’s share of 52% of the electorate. I would contend that Winfrey created a permission structure, specifically, for white Democratic women to vote for Obama. This was a very impactful achievement since Obama’s chief rival was Clinton, a white woman herself and the would-be first female president in American history.
However, Prong #3 very much sealed the deal for Winfrey’s impact. Throughout the two decades of dominance on the airwaves with her talk show, she never endorsed a presidential candidate until Obama in 2007. She never got political, probably, because of the Michael Jordan adage of “Republican buys sneakers too”. I do not know if she ever said something to this effect or as bluntly as Jordan phrased it, but Winfrey had such a large fan base that it had a true cross-section of the United States — especially, of the female demographic. Despite the moderate gender gap in party support, 48% of women still voted for Republican President George W. Bush in the 2004 election, the one that preceded Senator Barack Obama’s first campaign, so she did not want to perhaps alienate nearly half of her loyal fan base.
This might be the most important factor. She was somebody whom millions trusted and idolized, and she waited two decades to make a political statement. If she was going to finally break her apolitical streak for Obama, then Obama must have been an extraordinary, transformative presidential candidate. In other words, the bar must have been high for her to break her multi-decade political agnosticism.
Mahomes/Kelce
The Kansas City Chiefs have two players who arguably satisfy the SCETI, quarterback Patrick Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelce, so I will analyze both of them here. The political world has interacted more with Kelce than it has with Mahomes, but I think that both deserve analysis. With respect to Kelce, we need to realize that he has not made an explicit political statement even if right-wing commentators often criticize him for doing so. Unfortunately, for Kelce, he tacitly engaged with politics when starred in a Pfizer commerical for the 2023 NFL season.
In the ad, he advertises the fact that Pfizer is offering a COVID-19 shot along with a seasonal flu shot. Kelce repeats the line “two things as once” and continues to do two things at once throughout the ad, such as grilling while he is mowing his lawn. Of course, the vaccine became political in 2021, so — by endorsing Pfizer — Kelce was making a Democratic-coded statement. On the other hand, Mahomes has not really done anything to the same scale from a political coding perspective as Kelce’s Pfizer ad.
Over the 2023 season, Travis Kelce may have surpassed Patrick Mahomes in fame because he began dating Taylor Swift. Before 2023, for casual football fans, Kelce and Mahomes may have had equal fame, with Mahomes narrowly edging out Kelce. Dating Swift did not increase Kelce’s celebrity any more with football fans, but Kelce’s fame extended to a large swath of women, who may have never engaged with football fandom before. Nonetheless, I would argue that Swift fans only see Kelce as an extension of her. They do not see him as an entity independent of her as NFL fans have because they knew him before he started dating her. For these women, the fact that he is dating Taylor Swift defines Travis Kelce’s identity — not his football prowess as a tight end.
Many conservatives seemingly have this fear that Kelce and Swift will come together and make a joint political endorsement of the Democrats in November. We have no hard evidence of this possibility beyond the fact that Swift did endorse Biden in 2020. She had never made a national endorsement before this one although she made an endorsement of Democrat Phil Bredesen against Marsha Blackburn in the 2018 U.S. Senate race in Tennessee. Bredesen had served as the Democratic governor of Tennessee from 2003 to 2011, which span over Swift’s younger years in Nashville. Bredesen ultimately lost to Blackburn because, at the end of the day, Tennessee is still a pretty right-leaning state even in a midterm environment favorable to Democrats in 2018.
Returning to the SCETI, Kelce and Mahomes clearly satisfy Prong #1. They serve as the biggest stars in the most valuable sports league in the world. They are arguably beginning a new dynasty after having won three Super Bowls in the span of four years. The Kansas City Chiefs won in 2020, 2023, and 2024 — only losing to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2021 and not advancing to the Super Bowl in 2022 after losing to the Cincinnati Bengals2 in the AFC Championship. Sure, the NFL fanbase skews male, but it transcends race and age, and Kelce has made that aforementioned foray into the female demographic.
As for Prong #2, they do have influence with a cohort of fans: the largest sports fanbase in the country. Kansas City also serves as a great market because the fans are probably disproportionately more Republican-leaning by living predominantly in the states of Kansas and Missouri. We could even expand beyond Kansas and Missouri and say that the Chiefs still have influence in the Midwest. The Kansas City Chiefs are much different than fanbases in more left-leaning areas, such as the San Francisco 49ers or New England Patriots.
Finally, Kelce and Mahomes do satisfy Prong #3. They do not have a history of delving into politics in a way that other sports stars do such as Lebron James, but Kelce and Mahomes do diverge here from my perspective. Sure, Kelce has never made any explicit political endorsement. Mahomes has not made an endorsement, but he said something perhaps just as telling and valuable during this 2024 presidential cycle.
On April 16, 2024 — Mahomes did an interview with the magazine Time. The interviewer Sean Gregory asked Patrick Mahomes about politics, to which Mahomes responded:
I don’t want to pressure anyone to vote for a certain president … I want people to use their voice, whoever they believe in. I want them to do the research.
Some people may not look into this statement at all because of its lack of an endorsement, but I disagree. When I saw this statement back in April, it immediately piqued my interest. I argue that a vocal lack of an endorsement reveals just as much as a positive endorsement for one specific candidate. What is Mahomes doing? He is refusing to endorse Biden.
You might say that he is refusing to endorse Trump too. My dear reader, you make a good point, but — for celebrities — endorsing the Democrat is the default, especially, in 2020. Back then, many Americans saw the stakes as so high because of both the pandemic and the BLM protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
As I have said before, not endorsing Biden (and definitely endorsing Trump) made you complicit in the deaths of 1) hundreds of thousands of Americans from COVID-19 and 2) the structure of white supremacy in the United States that led to Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd. Despite what Democrats are saying about the “death of democracy” under a second Trump term, American voters seemingly do not have that same sense of urgency as they did in 2020. If they did, then Trump would not be leading Biden by nearly 3 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average as of July 12.
Four years later, Mahomes’s explicit refusal to endorse either Biden or Trump signals a sea change in the political environment. For one, Mahomes likely knows that endorsing either nominee would alienate much of his fanbase. I would argue that endorsing Biden might even have a worse cost to his fans since they disproportionately are men who live in Kansas and Missouri. In 2020, Trump won Kansas by 14.6 points and Missouri by 15.4 points. This hunch by Mahomes again falls in line with the Jordan adage of “Republicans buy sneakers too”.
But Mahomes’s lack of endorsement more significantly reveals not his own preference but the preferences of everyone behind him. As a star quarterback, Mahomes serves as an ambassador for the Kansas City Chiefs, a brand worth $4.3 billion that stands as the 35th most valuable sports team in the world. Put simply, when Mahomes speaks, $4.3 billion in evaluation are riding on his every word. I assure you that the Chiefs organization has spoken to its players on how to speak about the contentious 2024 election. Mahomes’s statement in Time shows that the Chiefs organization knows that taking a stand would have massive financial consequences.
Furthermore, perhaps the choice even says that the default cultural stand is not anti-Trump anymore. It definitionally cannot be if Trump is winning the popular vote. Beyond just the popular vote, according to the cross tabs of the most recent NYT/Siena poll from July 3, Trump is winning 58% of male voters while Biden is only winning 31% of male voters. That’s a margin of 27 percentage points in Trump’s favor. Trump did win male voters in 2020, but he only won by 8 percentage points. Therefore, Trump has more than tripled his margin with American men.
Why has Kelce not made such a diplomatic statement yet? We still have 3.5 months until the election. He still easily could make a statement, but NFL franchises usually rely most on the quarterback as the ambassador. Kelce is a “fun” pop cultural figure while Mahomes must act diplomatically just as Bob Iger must represent Disney or Jensen Huang must represent NVIDIA. The quarterback position simply has different responsibilities than any other position even if the non-quarterback is a star in his own right as is the case for Kelce. In Foxborough, we cared about what Tom Brady said — not Rob Gronkowski or Randy Moss. In Denver, we cared about what John Elway said — not Shannon Sharpe3. In Gainesville, we cared about what Tim Tebow said — not Percy Harvin.
I could bring Mahomes back to Winfrey. In the Oprah example, she is important on her own while Mahomes is not necessarily important on his own. Oprah was a brand separate from any other brand. Because of her syndication status, she did not rely on one network to pay her. She had roots in every media market in the country, and no single media entity could ever extirpate here. Meanwhile, despite Mahomes massive, singular celebrity — he still depends on the Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL overall.
The brand of the NFL transcends him, and — even if Mahomes goes down as the most famous Kansas City player in perpetuity (as he very well might) — the Kansas City Chiefs brand will last much longer than Mahomes’s tenure in the league. Mahomes could even leave the team in the near future. Doing so would definitely hurt the success of the Kansas City Chiefs as it did when Brady left the New England Patriots, but the Patriots are still the third most valuable sports team in the world — four years after the departure of Brady.
Only the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees outrank the New England Patriots, and all three of those teams outrank any team outside of the United States. Looking at that list from Forbes starkly demonstrates how much wealth the American media market has. Even though soccer fans brag that nobody cares about football outside the United States, you have to get to #11 on that list to get to a non-American team with the soccer team Real Madrid from Spain. Out of the 50 most valuable teams, 39 teams come from one of three American sports leagues: NFL (30 teams represented), NBA (6 teams represented), and MLB (3 teams represented). These figures show just how much rides on what someone like Mahomes says.
Quarterbacks matter not necessarily because of themselves specifically. Perhaps Mahomes could swing some votes, but he speaks on behalf of people perhaps more powerful behind the scenes.
Dwayne Johnson
I will finally talk about “The Rock”, who draws parallels to Mahomes in that he made a statement that he would not make any endorsement in the 2024 presidential cycle. Out of all the celebrities whom I have analyzed so far, he has drawn the most speculation about a foray into politics. At some points, people proposed Winfrey, but Johnson has played into the rumors more than Winfrey ever has.
Johnson clearly satisfies Prong #1. His films have grossed $13.8 billion. He also stars in the 7th highest-grossing film franchise of all time, Fast & Furious, which has grossed $7.3 billion worldwide over its 11 films. That franchise has a much bigger global appeal, but it still has grossed $2.0 billion in North America. You cannot achieve those numbers as a film star without having a diverse, broad-ranging reach.
At a certain point, once you get to the stardom of Johnson, you lose specific impact with one niche group, but I think that Johnson still satisfies Prong #2 because he likely has reach in the male demographic as Mahomes would. Johnson’s identity transcends his films. He has become a symbol of masculinity with his physique, workout routines, history with wrestling, and bizarre diets. Who else eats 52 ounces of cod a day? Besides, he’s so handsome, and that should work for some people, right?
Prong #3 can get messy for Johnson. He has entered into the political world before. In 2000, he engaged in a bipartisan “Smackdown Your Vote” turnout effort by the WWE.
This vote turnout effort by the WWE perfectly encapsulates professional wrestling’s place in American culture in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. You have to remember that, during this time, Jesse “The Body” Ventura was serving his term as governor of Minnesota under the Reform Party label.
As a part of the campaign, The Rock spoke at both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention in 2000. Here is a video of him at the RNC in Philadelphia. At this time, The Rock was at his zenith of WWE fame and success. He came to the conventions as the reigning world wrestling champion.
After 2000, Johnson has had a strange voting history. Well, it’s probably strange for partisan political junkie hacks like me, but it’s completely normal for regular people. This is part of the reason that I think Johnson’s statements are so revealing. He serves as a weather vane for the vaguely apolitical, swing voter.
In 2008 and 2012, Johnson openly voted for Obama, but he did not endorse anyone in 2016, which means that he departed from Democratic loyalty. This choice in 2016 shows me that Johnson likely supported Obama as an individual and that Johnson never had any allegiance to the Democratic Party. Obama himself transcended politics and his party as a cultural force, the first presidential candidate to take advantage of social media.
Johnson’s involvement in 2020 shows us why his agnosticism in 2024 matters so much. He actively endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket in an interview with Biden and Harris on social media. This decision departs from 2008 and 2012 because Johnson just said that he voted for Obama. He did not make a “public endorsement” although is there a difference?
In the same month as Mahomes’s endorsement, Johnson made his statement on Biden in an interview on FOX News:
Am I happy with the state of America now? Well, that answer is no. Do I believe we're going to get better? I believe in that. I'm an optimistic guy and I believe we can get better…
The endorsement that I made years ago with Biden was what I thought was the best decision for me at that time … Will I be doing that again this year? That answer is no. I was then, the most followed man in the world, and am today, and I appreciate that… but what that caused was something that tears me up in my guts — which is division. That got me. I didn’t realize that then, I just felt like there was a lot of unrest and I’d like things to calm down.
This quote does not indicate any support for Trump, but the fact that he is revoking an endorsement of Biden reveals a large amount about the cultural climate of the United States. This situation differs from Mahomes because Mahomes had never made a political endorsement, so he is not signaling change. Conversely, Johnson stuck his neck out for Biden and Harris in 2020 but is now walking back. I would equate The Rock more to Winfrey than Mahomes because Johnson has a brand beyond his films. He is not a salaried employee of one company while Mahomes is. Even though Mahomes earns $45 million a year from the Kansas City Chiefs, he still fully relies on them as the source of that income. More money does not always correlate with more independence.
Again, I care about Johnson as a signal and not as a person who could sway an election, and Johnson and Mahomes signal a tide change away from the Democrats in 2024.
The George Clooney Problem
Before I transition to back to Trump’s newfound ties in Silicon Valley, I want to touch on Clooney’s notorious column in The New York Times from July 10 in which he called for Biden to step down as the Democratic nominee for the 2024 election. Clooney likely spearheaded that aforementioned fundraiser for Biden in Los Angeles back in June. When I first started writing this article, I saw Clooney as one of Biden’s biggest allies. After all, that event garnered $30 million for the Biden campaign, but Clooney’s column reneges on all of that support.
In the column, he corroborates the perception that Biden’s disastrous debate performance was not just an episode as Biden and his team claim:
It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.
Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign. The George Stephanopoulos interview only reinforced what we saw the week before. As Democrats, we collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, whom we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question.
This is shocking for someone who Biden trotted out on social media after the fundraiser. This is not Clooney spouting off on Twitter. Clooney is not one of those celebrities. He is not Roseanne Barr. Clooney is deliberate with every word that he says, and The New York Times does not just publish any column. Editors combed through every syllable of the column.
Clooney might be the biggest domino to fall against Biden. I do not say so because Clooney is like Winfrey in that he can sway votes. Again, Clooney speaks on behalf of the Hollywood elite who have served as fundraisers for Democrats for decades. If Clooney is saying this out loud on the pages of the paper of record, then everybody in Hollywood is saying this behind closed doors in wine caves. Many Biden hacks online dismiss Clooney as just an air-head celebrity. They’re starting to sound like Republicans with those sentiments, but we cannot dismiss Clooney, perhaps the most prominent Democratic bundler in Hollywood.
More importantly, Clooney and Obama are reportedly very close to each other. Reports now say that Obama did not stop the Clooney column, so Obama is no longer defending and protecting Biden behind the scenes. Although Obama did not explicitly green-light the column, his lack of a statement speaks more. As we have discussed, a lack of an endorsement is sometimes more important than an endorsement itself.
Besides, Clooney has already starred as a person who lays people off professionally in the 2009 film Up in the Air. Therefore, he is the best celebrity to put Biden out to pasture! The Trump campaign even made a clever video edit with Clooney from that movie alongside Biden and posted it on Truth Social.
Trump’s Aristo-Populists:
Finally, I want to go back to Silicon Valley and discuss the phenomenon of aristo-populists, another breed of “Crazy Rich Californian”. They have emerged since Trump’s rise on the national political scene as a purported “populist”. They try to take ownership of Trump’s perceived ideology and use it for their own political brands. An aristo-populist emphatically claims that he is advocating populist conservatism (adjacted to “Trumpism”) while he hides the fact that he comes from the financial establishment in the United States, usually, Silicon Valley.
Many of those people at the San Francisco fundraiser for Trump fall under the umbrella of aristo-populists. I am not questioning the authenticity of certain aristo-populists. I think that David Sachs, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel truly believe in Trump’s rhetoric. We can even lump Tucker Carlson into this bunch. No, he does not come from Silicon Valley. Instead, he comes from the Washington Beltway elite. He advocates populism, but he does not shy away from his elitist background. He openly brags about it and cites it as a reason why he hates the elites. He lived next door to them in Northwest DC, and that’s why he hates them. He knows them.
None of those men hide their wealth and elite status. Rather, I am questioning rather the aristo-populist politicians who do obscure their financially elite past. These people are important because Donald Trump is considering one of the most prominent aristo-populist as his vice presidential pick: Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio. I would also include Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri into this mix. I will analyze Vance at the end of the article, but I first want to acknowledge the origin of the term.
Aristo-Populism in Succession:
In the third season of the HBO show Succession, the sixth episode “What It Takes” chronicles the Roy family’s trip to a Republican political fundraiser in northern Virginia to determine the GOP nominee for the upcoming presidential election. The family’s network ATN had pressured the elderly incumbent Republican president into not running for re-election, opening up the Republican ticket to another candidate.
Justin Kirk plays one of the three potential picks, Jeryd Mencken, a dark horse populist Republican in Congress. He is vying for the endorsement of the Roys against the incumbent vice president Dave Boyer (most similar to Mike Pence) and the more moderate Latino alternative Rick Salgado (very similar to Marco Rubio).
Jeryd Mencken follows the mold of Josh Hawley and Blake Masters. He is clearly trying to intellectualize populism with a tinge of Christian integralism. He probably even went to a prestigious yet leftist university just as both Hawley and Masters went to Stanford. Mencken thinks that his rhetoric will appeal to the “people”, hence the identification of “populist”, but Mencken has a sort of repelling awkwardness and creepiness that might keep him from relating to regular Americans.
In one scene at the ornate fundraiser, Mencken gets in an argument with Boyar and Salgado over who best can take over the GOP mantle. The clearly establishment Vice President Boyar says that he and Mencken both agree “this is the party of the working class now”, which makes the Siobhan Roy (Logan’s daughter) laugh. Dave responds to Siobhan by asserting:
All the richest counties in America are blue. The Democrats and Tech hold all the wealth.
It is clear that Boyar and Salgado are adopting this populist attitude because of shifts in the GOP coalition while Mencken acts as if he is the authentic populist choice who is not just sticking his finger in the wind. When Salgado claims that he is proposing populist policies for working class families, Mencken says that Salgado had worshipped Reagan’s headshot for 30 years and now is “Tom Joad”. Siobhan then quips to all three of the Republican politicians:
I’ve just seen your thing quite a lot … YouTube provocateur. Aristo-populism.
Siobhan says other things that I do not want to type out here. She plays a liberal character who would hate any Republican. I do not agree with her entire outlook, but I think that the framing of aristo-populism is perfect. That Succession episode encapsulates what the Republican Party might look like after Trump leaves the scene.
J.D. Vance:
With the bolstering of the Trump endorsement in the Republican primary, J.D. Vance won the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Ohio to succeed the retiring Republican Rob Portman, but Vance had never held political office before then. Vance rose to fame because of his best-selling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture is Crisis. In the book, Vance documents the socioeconomic hollowing out of his home of rural Middletown, Ohio.
During Trump’s political ascent in 2016 and, eventual, victory in November — many commentators saw Vance as an oracle who could explain why Trump had so much appeal in the Rust Belt. Every news channel was inviting Vance to speak on the phenomenon. Trump won in 2016 because of the people with whom Vance grew up. Ironically, J.D. Vance emphatically did not endorse Donald Trump in 2016 and instead voting for third-party candidate Evan McMullin.
Vance served as an ambassador from fly-over country to the media elites. He presented himself as “one of the good ones” who escaped the medieval part of the country (or at least as the coastal elites see it). Vance earned his undergraduate degree from Ohio State but, then, earned his law degree from Yale, which allowed him to enter the halls of the American aristocrats.
Vance’s Journey into Elite Society:
He graduated from Yale in 2013 and, subsequently, went to San Francisco to work as a principal at Peter Thiel’s VC firm Mithril Capital. Despite Vance’s self-description as a “hillbilly” through the title of his memoir, Vance deliberately embedded himself with the Crazy Rich Californians by working in the Silicon Valley VC world. Sure, Vance hails from Ohio. He might even represent Ohio in the Senate now, but he is a Crazy Rich Californian at heart.
Because of his post-Yale redemptive pedigree, The New York Times and other elite outlets could comfortably speak the language of the elite. He was a corpulent white man from fly-over country, but he learned the language of the elites in New Haven just as a college student could learn to fluently speak Spanish during a study abroad semester in Madrid. However, he severed his ties with these elites once he chose to run a populist, Trump-adjacent campaign for Senate in Ohio in 2022.
Why does Trump value Vance as a potential VP pick?
Two years since his election, Vance has become one of Trump’s greatest allies in the Senate. Many people wonder why J.D. Vance has ended up on the short-list for Donald Trump’s VP picks alongside Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, and perhaps Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia as a last-minute addition.
The Trump campaign might claim that Vance helps Trump in the Rust Belt due to representing Ohio in the Senate and the nature of his ascent to celebrity status beforehand. That’s good window dressing, but — in reality — Vance is not very electoral successful in Ohio. Vance only won the Senate race in Ohio by 7.1 percentage points in a midterm that slightly favored Republicans. In 2020, Trump won Ohio by 8.0 percentage points in an environment that did not favor Republican. If Vance was running in a less right-leaning Rust Belt state, such as Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, he would have likely lost. He was lucky that Ohio has become so favorable for Republicans since Trump flipped the state from Obama in 2016.
Instead of helping in the Rust Belt, Vance clandestinely serves another purpose. He can speak the language of the Crazy Rich Californians who are now supporting Trump in Silicon Valley. Vance still knows the VC world, and — in fact — he was the one who organized much of that San Francisco fundraiser on behalf of the Trump campaign.
Doug Burgum also serves a style of aristo-populism. Burgum earned his undergraduate degree from North Dakota State, but he earned an MBA from Stanford. In 1984, he founded Great Plains Software in Fargo — which he never took geographically to Silicon Valley — and, in 2001, he sold the company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion. Fifteen years later, Burgum self-funded a successful campaign for governor of North Dakota. We do not exactly how much money Burgum has, but we can definitely characterize him as a Crazy Rich Californian.
Even though Burgum only lived in California when he was getting his MBA from Stanford, he still has ties to Silicon Valley, which is one of the reasons why Trump is considering him too. Just as Vance is trying to do, Burgum can get those fundraising dollars from his friends who are Crazy Rich Californians in Silicon Valley. Burgum just comes from a different generation as Vance. Born in 1984, Vance is comfortably a millennial while Burgum is comfortably a Baby Boomer, born in 1956. Doug Burgum was peers with Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison, and Bill Gates while J.D. Vance was in elementary school.
Despite Burgum’s net worth of hundreds of millions perhaps, we get these pictures of him posing as a cowboy with a horse and a cowboy hat at a Montana rodeo. It perhaps invokes Teddy Roosevelt, a scion of American society who also played cowboy in the state of North Dakota, but I would argue that Burgum’s “populism” is more authentic than Vance’s. Burgum never took his company out of North Dakota while Vance escaped Ohio the moment that he got into Yale and could get a job in San Francisco.
Glenn Youngkin and Marco Rubio still have some claim to aristo-populism. Youngkin has a net worth of about half a billion dollars from his time in the hedge fun world at the Carlyle Group, where he served as CEO from 2017 and 2020, when he launched his gubernatorial campaign in Virginia. Youngkin does not have ties to Silicon Valley in the same way. Rather, his wealth ties are on the east coast in the more established New York world, which we can characterize as East Egg in juxtaposition with Silicon Valley as West Egg.
Youngkin looks like a dad in an “upper-middle class” gate community with his quarter-zip fleece, but he secretly has hundreds of millions of dollars. Trump also likes Youngkin because of this. As for Rubio, he mirrors Salgado from Succession. After Rubio lost to Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries and Trump became president, Rubio became much more “populist” in rhetoric as a senator. Trump probably acknowledges this but, probably, is considering Rubio because he is a fluent and native Spanish speaker.
Regardless of who Trump picks, they all demonstrate the new trend of the GOP appealing to the Thiel-adjacent aristo-populism of Silicon Valley. Donald Trump has come a long way since he needed to win over evangelicals with his pick of Indiana Governor Mike Pence in 2016. Now that a contingent of Crazy Rich Californians accept Trump, he is going to seize that opportunity.
Conclusion:
This bifurcation of the Crazy Rich Californians reveals divide in the wealth that props up both political parties. Biden and the Democrats get Hollywood as they have for decades. Trump and the Republicans now get Silicon Valley, a newfound alliance. My contention is that the support of elites best comes from those who are in the shadows of a mansion in Pacific Heights. They serve as a constant stream of money and influence while Biden relies on again stars from the 1990s and 2000s, and he might be losing them.
Before the GOP could never step foot in Silicon Valley, now — it has changed. It’s not 2016 or 2020 anymore. The Crazy Rich Californians may change who they support, but they will always hold the power.
The Cincinnati Bengals ultimately lost to the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl.
I acknowledge that — in 2024 — Sharpe has much more cultural relevance than Elway because of his podcast, but I am making a point about the dynamics when they both played for the Denver Broncos during their successful run in the 1990s.