JD Vance Disses the ‘Big Tech Oligarchs’ Who Made Him

Karl B DeBlaker/AP
Karl B DeBlaker/AP

JD Vance told voters in North Carolina Wednesday to start knocking on doors and posting on social media to get out the vote for Donald Trump, because the campaign can’t count on the media or “big tech oligarchs” to help them.

Vance asked supporters in the crowd to take out their phones and either “take a selfie” or take a photo of him. “And I’m going to ask you to go to whatever social media you use, whether it’s Facebook or X or anything else,” he said, “and post that story.”

“Not just post a picture,” he instructed the crowd in Raleigh, the state’s capital, “but give one reason why you’re going to vote for Donald J. Trump.”

Before anyone could ask why, he answered: “Because we are never gonna get the media behind us. We are never gonna have the big tech oligarchs behind us.”

Vance must have suffered a momentary memory lapse about Trump’s bromance with tech industry leaders, including the world’s richest man who bought Twitter and renamed it X and whose endorsement of Trump followed his first confirmed assassination attempt.

Musk even promised to funnel $45 million a month into the pro-Trump America PAC, the Wall Street Journal reported—a sum he has publicly disputed.

Musk and major venture capitalist and top Vance donor David Sacks lobbied for Vance as Trump’s running mate, a selection they were eventually successful in getting.

And there was no mention of “tech oligarch” Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, who bankrolled Vance’s ascendancy to the Senate, then to the No. 2 slot on the GOP presidential ticket.

With no support from billionaires, Vance said, “Let’s march every single day. Let’s knock on every single door. Let’s make every phone call that we can. And let’s win this race and take this country back.”

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