On the first night of the Republican National Convention, venture capitalist David Sacks took the stage to warn Republicans of “a world on fire.”
In his six-minute speech, the Craft Ventures founder largely focused on foreign policy — a common talking point for him on the All-In Podcast, which he co-hosts with fellow investors Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and David Friedberg.
And his talk predictably – as these things go for a political convention – was filled with amped-up rhetoric about conditions in the country and world and how the blame rests on the other political party and its president Joe Biden.
For instance, Sacks said, “Every day, there are new calls for escalation, and the world looks on in horror as Joe Biden’s demented policy takes us to the brink of World War Three,” specifically citing continued Houthi aggression in Yemen and Russia’s advancement into Ukraine. (Democrats, for their part, view the long delay in approving the most recent military aid for Ukraine, as Republicans fought about the package in the House, as emboldening Russia.)
Sacks also lamented the state of San Francisco, parroting similar talking points to several major tech leaders, like Y Combinator’s Garry Tan. “Democrat rule has turned the streets of our beautiful city into a cesspool of homeless encampments and open drug use,” Sacks said. (In fact, the city of San Francisco released data in May that shows homelessness at a 10-year low, and data in April showing crime down over 2023 rates as well. However, the city also hit a record high for drug overdoses in 2023, the New York Times reported.)
The speech was a long time coming for Sacks, who has spent the last year rallying Silicon Valley to former President Donald Trump’s side. Back in March, he attended a Trump fundraiser alongside Donald Trump Jr. and over 100 members of Congress. In June, he co-hosted his own with Palihapitiya, inviting Trump supporters to his San Francisco home, reportedly charging up to $300,000 a ticket.
He’s aligned himself with a coterie of other Silicon Valley investors who have come out for Trump, like Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire and fellow PayPal alum Keith Rabois.
Former Republican presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy told me that Sacks is a powerful Trump advocate when I ran into the former presidential candidate in the halls of the RNC. He described Sacks as a prime example of someone who was a highly-skilled legal immigrant (Sacks originally hailed from South Africa and moved to US when he was a child) who is opposed to illegal immigration. “I think a lot of Silicon Valley is hungry for that and that’s what we need to revive,” Ramaswamy said.
The very fact that Sacks scored such a prominent spot at the convention cemented yet another indication of how influential the PayPal Mafia has become in Trump’s GOP. Earlier in the day, the party announced Peter Thiel-protege Ohio senator J.D. Vance would be Trump’s vice presidential nominee.
But despite the increase in techie Trump support, Sacks has still drawn ire from other prominent Silicon Valley leaders, like VC and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman who accused Sacks of falling victim to “pro-Trump groupthink” in a lengthy blog post.
The applause was tepid throughout his speech: perhaps a sign that, although Sacks has made a name for himself as a major Trump booster in Silicon Valley, his name recognition among average Republicans remains low.
He got more applause at the end when he left the audience with a literal fire-and-brimstone message: “We need order in our cities, order at our border and order restored to a world on fire,” he said, telling the room to put Trump back in the White House.
