A reply to David Sacks on his support of Trump

David Sacks recently raised money in San Francisco for Trump 2024.

Since Silicon Valley mostly opposes Trump, he may have seen this as a “contrarian” take that would fit his podcast brand. Sadly, rather than originality, Sacks’ letter awkwardly regurgitates pro-Trump groupthink. He makes four main points:

1. Trump’s legal troubles result from Joe Biden’s puppeteering (“lawfare”);
2. America’s economy is struggling due to Biden’s leadership (“the A/B test”);
3. Biden should fear Russia, and stop supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression;
4. Trump had an “orderly process of legal immigration” that Biden disrupted.

Let’s compare these claims to some easily knowable and known facts.

1) Joe Biden is not the reason Donald Trump is a convicted felon.

Which is more likely?

• Joe Biden controls the actions of diverse state and local judges and prosecutors, as well as citizen juries’ unanimous decisions — a charge for which there is no evidence; or –
• Donald Trump is actually just a criminal — a charge for which the evidence is abundant?

Trump was first convicted as a felon in New York City, his residence for the first 73 years of his life. The jurors were chosen by Trump’s attorneys and local prosecutors in a process supervised by a respected and experienced local judge. His 12 peers unanimously convicted him on every single felony count. As I have explained elsewhere, these serious crimes disqualify him from leadership in business, let alone the power of the presidency.

In courts, where lies are not allowed, Trump keeps losing. Trump has lost in front of four unanimous juries; state and local judges around the country; and even federal judges he himself appointed. He owes $90 million to a woman he assaulted and defamed. He owes hundreds of millions to New York State for financial fraud. His home state, New York, has curtailed his ability to engage in business or run a charity.

Trump’s criminality looks especially shameful when compared with Biden’s quiet courage and patriotism. Biden allowed himself to be deposed, something Trump never did. In an ongoing federal investigation of his only surviving son, Biden kept a Trump-appointed prosecutor in Delaware in front of a Trump-appointed federal judge. When a unanimous jury convicted Hunter Biden of felony charges, the President promised not to pardon him. If he loses this election in November, Biden will leave office peacefully and graciously, even as Trump has promised to weaponize the government against Biden and his family. All of this takes ethics and guts.

David is not just smearing Biden, he’s smearing all of those jurors and judges. David thus copies Trump’s overseas backers by directly attacking the foundations of American greatness. Courts and juries and elections are not perfect, but America is right to trust them. They are the best system we have for defending the rule of law against powerful criminals such as Trump.

2) America has a successful economy and President.

America today has the world’s greatest economy.

Recall that when Biden & Obama took office in 2009, the economy was in crisis. When they turned it over to Trump in 2017, they handed him unemployment below 5% and markets up more than 150% as the country entered the sixth straight year of economic expansion.

When Biden returned to the White House a mere four years later, the Capitol had been violently breached; the coronavirus was killing vastly more people than in America’s peer countries; crime was spiking; and Trump became the first president in a century to see negative net job growth.

Biden promised that if Americans came together, things could get better. He worked with both parties and the US Chamber of Commerce to pass critical recovery and infrastructure packages. His disciplined team got America vaccinated in the face of fanatical opposition. Over nearly four years, his steady approach delivered:

• Unemployment at a near-50-year low
• The Dow at an all-time high
• Crime near a 50-year low
• Wage gains that have exceeded inflation throughout 2024

According to the IMF, America is not only the world’s strongest economy but our growth this year will be more than double that of any other rich country.

Trump loses to Biden even more dramatically on debt and inflation. In his first term, Trump added more debt to America than any President in history, setting up inflation that is still a problem. By the end of 2019, before the virus had even hit, Trump increased our national deficit by about 50%, to nearly $1 trillion.

Trump 2024 is promising even worse, including deficit spending and trade wars that could trigger hyperinflation. As Biden’s anti-inflationary policies, including energy development, are beginning to work, David wants to go back to Casino Bankruptcy Don.

“In tech, we call this an A/B test,” David explains in comparing presidents 45 and 46, but he is reading the results backwards. In tech, we call this “being wrong.”

3) Another Trump term would be devastating for world peace.

If you hate war, today is the best time ever to have lived.

Under the international system America built after defeating the Nazis, nations that invade their neighbors pay consequences. As a result, there were fewer invasions, and fewer wars. Since FDR fought against the Nazis, to NATO and Reagan against the communists, to George H.W. Bush’s coalition to defend Kuwait in 1990, our leaders have defended this Pax Americana. In 1994, this peaceful US-led system was so credible that Bill Clinton persuaded Ukraine to voluntarily relinquish the Soviet-era nuclear weapons it possessed, in exchange for a mere promise (a treaty) with Russia and America that Ukraine would not be invaded.

Those promises meant nothing to Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB operative who has run Russia for the past quarter century. Putin hates Pax Americana because Russia wants to use its military might to seize assets from neighbors. While violently wiping out his domestic opposition, Putin started sending armed men abroad — including into Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, a constitutional democracy, and our European ally. Russia’s attack on Ukraine has already killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, displaced millions more, and driven up food and energy costs around the world.

Putin claims this is America’s fault, because anything other than a flaccid America somehow forces Russia to invade its neighbors. This kind of ignorant and naive anti-Americanism used to be the province of the radical left, but David happily transcribes it. David’s appeasement policy would make us less safe by returning us to the endless wars of the past.

4) Trump 2024 would make border chaos worse.

Both of America’s choices for President are old, but only one of them acts like an adult.

President Biden asked Democrats to give concessions to arch-conservative Jim Lankford (R-OK) to strike a deal that would be tough and adequately funded. The deal was about to pass, when Trump literally bragged about ordering congressional Republicans to prevent the deal from coming up for a vote. Trump 2024 wanted the deal to fail, so that they could seriously and literally campaign on a plan of military deployments into US cities, alongside mass concentration camps and deportations of suspected illegal immigrants.

David defends this tantrum-throwing toddler by saying, apparently without irony, that Trump’s border policy was “an orderly process” that elevated “the principles of American leadership.” That’s not what I remember. Trump cut legal immigration, including green cards and visas; called for a total ban on Muslims; loudly failed to build a wall; and separated children from their parents (many of whom still have not been reunited).

If you want order at the border, elect leaders who can work together to deliver. America’s border does better with competence and patriotism than with criminality and chaos.