How Trump triumphed with Tech—Part 3: Beyond 2025

I had written how tech helped Donald Trump win the US Presidential elections in 2016 and 2024. But mere winning elections is not enough for him now. When Trump won in 2016, he did a decent job with the economy and inflation. He tried to stop the madness at the border. Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the verge of signing a landmark peace deal, something unthinkable a few decades back. He started no new wars. It was of no avail as “chaos”, “racist” and “dictator” were some of the words that the media hurled at him, and they stuck. If Trump wants to secure his legacy in his next term, he'll have to rely heavily on tech.

A new era

The US mainstream media stands exposed in the age of new media. In the past the media got a “Trump bump” (higher eyeballs) during elections and across his first presidency, attacking him all day. This time the ratings of the anti-Trump news channels have crashed after the polls. They will have to think something different to sustain themselves. 

The celebrity endorsement fell flat on its face. There was a long line of national celebrities endorsing Kamala Harris one by one. It all came to naught. Nobody listens to celebrities anymore. There was a time when they had a certain mystique. You listened to them when you could. Now they are in your face 24X7 thanks to social media posts and videos. Nobody cares that much to change their politics over a celebrity. When Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala, the trend “Swifties for Trump” went viral with Swift fans donning Trump hats and T-shirts.

Academia is influential. They mainly back Liberals. Most of the American student protests are Leftist in nature. Trump is planning to crack down on the education department. Especially their funding and tax exemption status. The results of that remain to be seen.

A fair debate at last?

Most of the narrative across the world is Left leaning. They usually win all the arguments, though not necessarily the polls. The biggest change happened when Elon Musk took over a rabidly Left-wing Twitter turning it into a centrist right X. There is now a greater chance for every argument to be heard and sorted out purely on merit. Thanks to the success of X, other social media platforms may be forced to go to a more centrist space.

The trump card may well be podcasts, where it is difficult to do propaganda for 3 hours. You need solid argument and depth to go on for hours. This is where the Trump team scores. Trump, VP elect JD Vance, Dogemasters Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr… they all have become masters of the podcast. In comparison very few Democrats can talk in such a manner for hours on end.

Silicon Valley support

For his first term, Trump had very little tech support. This time he has Musk, who’s the biggest of them all. He has former VC Vance as his deputy. His longest backer is billionaire Peter Thiel. Apart from that he got support from the PayPal Mafia and VC firm Andreesen Horowitz.

Trump has the support of many tech leaders. That is very important because he is planning to reform and prune government departments. Silicon Valley leaders, tech and processes will go a long way in ensuring that.

In any case you can expect that the second Trump term will not be a repeat of his first term but something different. 

Tech my well have a big hand in that!