Although the MAGA movement and much of the Republican Party are still loyal to President Donald Trump, major divisions within his coalition are growing increasingly evident.
Trump aggressively reached out to Silicon Valley tech bros in 2024, enjoying strong support from Tesla leader Elon Musk as well as billionaire donor Peter Thiel. But longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, host of the "War Room" podcast and former White House chief strategist in the first Trump Administration, is an outspoken critic of Trump's alliances in the tech world — including his connection to billionaire venture capitalist David Sacks, the president's artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency czar.
In an article Friday, The Verge's Tina Nguyen described the tensions between Trump's tech bro allies and MAGA Republicans who believe those alliances aren't serving him well, including Bannon.
"Washington lawmakers had barely finished processing the news that Congress would not put a state AI law ban into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) when a new rumor began trickling out of the White House on Wednesday: President Donald Trump would, indeed, sign an executive order that would ostensibly assign the federal government the ability to punish states for writing their own AI laws," Nguyen wrote.
"There was the possibility that it would be as drastic as the one that had leaked from the White House weeks before, which would have given David Sacks, billionaire venture capitalist and the White House's AI and crypto czar, immense influence over setting AI policy…. Steve Bannon's 'War Room'devoted a massive segment on Wednesday night, sounding the alarm that the order was still alive, and hoped to re-run the playbook that they'd used to kill last summer’s attempt at an AI moratorium."
Nguyen added, "Their argument against a moratorium has grown more nakedly far right ever since."
Tweeting her article on Friday, Nguyen noted, "It’s inevitable that Trump will sign some sort of executive order about AI pre-emption, simply because he’s stated that he wants it done. But the broligarchy's pursuit of a moratorium has made the concept politically radioactive. Case in point: MAGA hates it.
Many MAGA Republicans, Nguyen emphasizes, view AI technology as a recipe for major job losses.
"Recent polling indicates that a vast, bipartisan majority of Americans oppose the idea of a state AI law moratorium," Nguyen observes. "And few demographics are more hostile to the idea than the Republican MAGA base, who have long distrusted Big Tech and view AI as a threat to job security, traditional family values, and the mental health of their children. Backing a moratorium would be disastrous for potential Republican presidential candidates aligned with the MAGA base, such as Vice President JD Vance."
Read Tina Nguyen's full article for The Verve at this link.