Reid Hoffman Channels Sam Bankman-Fried

It is almost impossible in 2024 to be authentically outraged about money in politics but Reid Hoffman’s $250,000 donation to the Super PAC supporting Nikki Haley is uniquely disgusting.

However offensive some may find it that wealthy individuals can spend limitless amounts on groups that support the candidates they favor, there’s something particularly disgraceful about spending similar amounts to elect candidates one does not support.

But because tech entrepreneurs truly believe they understand who deserves not just to be elected, but even eligible to be elected, they seem to have no compunction about interfering with the process. By whatever means necessary.

The most shocking recent example of this mindset – to my mind, more disgraceful than any of the crimes for which she was convicted – is the revelation that Sam Bankman-Fried tried to launch a plan to spend $5 billion to bribe Donald Trump not to run again. This is sick. To my mind, it’s far more sinister, with effects far more wide-reaching, than defrauding investors to cover your trading losses.

By supporting a candidate who he himself says he would not vote for —Hoffman hosted a fundraiser for Biden in California last year—solely in the hope of defeating a candidate for a party to which he does not belong, Reid Hoffman is pulling a Sam Bankman-Fried.

“I agree with Jamie Dimon’s recent comments that Democrats should support Haley in the primary and Biden in the general election,” wrote Hoffman in a treacly “American Democracy“ post on his stupid social network. Got that? A Democrat wants Biden to win and wants to help pick the Republican he feels will help make that happen. Not a great message for Republican voters.

The sudden largesse on behalf of the Republican former governor of South Carolina and current Trump rival for the Republican nomination, reveals the arrogance of a guy whose sole achievement is building history’s most puerile and flavorless social network.

Hoffman has used his fortune in a variety of annoying ways. He and fellow billionaires formed Flannery Associates to create a city for people who are better than average, spending $800 million near the Bay Area to piece together thousands of acres of farms.

It’s been frequently observed that Trump’s enemies will stop at nothing to prevent the existential threat to democracy they believe he represents. More and more, the playbook to save democracy simply involves efforts to undermine democracy. These tactics are a lot more frightening than anything we witnessed on January 6 or on cajoling phone calls to Georgia or Michigan. Trump is a threat to democracy? Kick him off the ballot, prosecute his allies, arrest him multiple times, sue him constantly, remove him from the campaign trail.

And now we’re even seeing the same math play out among journalists. If a beloved example of DEI math is felled by her weird weakness on genocide and documented history of academic dishonesty, go after the family members of whoever you perceive to be her enemy. That’s journalism. By the same math Trump opponents use — gotta do whatever it takes to protect democracy, including undermining the democratic process.

Naturally, Haley’s Republican rivals have criticized the tactic. Ron DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin said, “It makes perfect sense that liberal Democrat billionaires would support Nikki Haley’s bid for the White House, because she is a liberal.” Trump senior advisor Jason Miller has been making fun of Nikki for the donation all over Instagram. I don’t know how much a gross rating point costs these days in New Hampshire or Iowa, but it’s possible that quarter million dollars hurt her more than it helped, especially among the high-purity, high-information voters who show up to vote in the first couple primary states.

It’s not realistic to ask for Political Action Committees to send back tainted money the way a candidate sometimes does for an Ed Buck. And SBF himself found himself the lucky beneficiary of a totally kosher, totally non-political decision by the US Dept of Justice not to prosecute him for the charges they’d filed for the millions in donations he’d made to Democrats. They’d already convicted him for the FTX fraud, so they showed uncharacteristic rachmanes and yeah, all the better if that decision avoided an uncomfortable public airing of just how many Democrats benefited from the money they already proved he’d stolen.

Cashing this check wasn’t just gross, it was bad politics. Whatever good the quarter million will do Haley’s cause, the harm from accepting it from someone as oily and unprincipled as Reid Hoffman will be worse.