Posted by Skye on November 14, 2025, 6:32 am, in reply to "Not an Oligarchy...." Valued Poster
is that the 999 "aristocrats" will be dancing and dining in Trump's (and his donors') ballroom... while the rest of the country is working in the factories, coal mines, and such.
The Washington Post - The secretive donor circle that lifted JD Vance and is now rewriting MAGA'S future.
By Elizabeth Dwoskin, November 4, 2025
"You're gonna want to turn up the volume for this.
The Washington Post is out with exclusive reporting on a secret donor circle that is rewriting the MAGA movement's future. It is called the Rockbridge network. It was formed after a gathering in 2019 of right wing figures assembled by JD Vance and venture capitalists. The man behind JD Vance's rise, Peter Thiel. The group helped power Trump's reelection and is now positioning itself for the post Trump landscape. Their efforts are grounded in a controversial theory that an aristocracy is needed to move our country forward..."
"This is a movement...it's not a household name like a mega donor, Peter Thiel or Don Junior, but what it's done is create a network that will be critical to sustaining the MAGA movement. The MAGA movement, which is basically to ignite a network of powerful elite donors. It united the tech right, so the tech world, which historically had been somewhat alienated from politics, brought them into the MAGA fold. And then that donor network, which is secretive... very clubby... is very close to the Trump administration and those in power... is funding the efforts to organize the working class online that is starting to vote Republican and vote for Trump and will continue as long as they continue their efforts when JD Vance takes up the mantle...."
"But one would think (as someone who has been to the MAGA rallies) that the MAGA base DETESTS these people..."
"It is kind of strange... that when you talk to the creator of the Rockbridge network, Chris Buskirk, and I've asked him, what would you say to the person on the street who is in the No Kings protests, you know, that is upset and says you're ushering in a new generation of American oligarchs? And I was surprised by his answer. He said, No, we're not oligarchs, because in every society there's an elite. If it's an extractive elite, it's an oligarchy, but if it's a productive elite that's building the future, it's an aristocracy. And please call us that."
"This man's name one more time, the insurance guy from Arizona...?"
"His name is Chris Buskirk, and he's probably the most important political operative in America that no one's ever heard of."
"Max, you wrote the book on Peter Thiel. What is his end goal here?"
"Yeah, I mean, Thiel and his inner circle have been talking about what this phrase that I heard going back all the way to 2017, Trumpism beyond Trump. So this idea that the MAGA movement is very exciting, that there are things about Trump that they like, but that they want to harness it. And I think that you kind of hear it in Elizabeth's reporting, what they want to do is essentially use the MAGA movement to deregulate the tech industry."
So, basically... beyond Trump, "The plan is JD Vance. JD Vance is close to Peter Thiel, worked at one of Thiel's venture capital firms, was backed to the hilt by Peter Thiel during the Senate run, and the view is that he kind of, you know, like brings these two constituencies together. He's able to kind of bring the kind of Silicon Valley policy standpoint that the billionaire friendly policies... while also talking like somebody from the MAGA populist corner of the coalition. I think there are real questions as to how effective this will be. There are lots of divisions. You're bringing up some of them right now."
"Elizabeth, is this the group in the 2024 election that brought Elon Musk to the Trump table?"
"Well, David Sachs, who is a good friend of Peter Thiel, and is now the White House AI in Cryptozar, he played a big role actually in bringing Elon Musk to the fold. Elon Musk's own politics had been moving rightward for several years, and some of his friends, like Sachs, were becoming Trump supporters. Sachs hosted a fundraiser at his San Francisco mansion in June 2024... and I call that like the coming out party or the inflection point when the tech world really saw who's who in supporting Trump. And then you have, just shortly after the assassination attempt, late in July, you have someone like Elon Musk really coming out supporting Trump, and then creating this quiet group of donors, his own inner circle, to start putting money into the race. But what's really interesting is that we heard a lot in the 2024 election about Elon Musk's America PAC and the 290 some odd million dollars that he put in to reelect Trump... but what you don't hear a lot about is the network that Rockbridge created, Chris Buskirk, which was called, which was a super PAC, called Turn Out for America. And Turn Out for America put less money in than Musk, and was less heard about, but was actually one of the groups doing canvassing in the swing states for the Trump campaign, that was likely the most effective, and what sources told me was potentially more effective in turning out voters than America PAC, and that's because of the deep profiles that they had created on donors, on voters, on potential voters since 2019."
"This is where Ari Melbourne would quote Lil Jon and say... 'turn out for what??' My question is, this Buskirk guy who said 'and please call it an aristocracy'... Does he want the MAGA base to know that it's called an aristocracy... 'cause I vaguely remember a whole 'drain the swamp, down with the elites... when Trump was running back in the day."
"The messaging, I mean, I was wondering that myself, when I said, you know, what the question I literally asked him... 'what do you say to the person protesting on the street that they want no kings? What do you say to the working class person that wants this administration to represent them? And I was very surprised actually. But his answer was kind of, was almost, it was what Max said... It was an unbridled defense of unrestrained capitalism and the role that that can play in bringing back "middle class jobs", bringing back America's industrial base. The thesis that they want to put out, and I think we'll be exploring and learning a lesson from in the next couple of years, is whether that thesis, when you have these wealthy capitalists that are very closely tied to the administration, getting a lot of benefits to build their companies, in the name of reindustrializing America and recreating working class jobs that have disappeared. You know, these are the same people, by the way, who are pushing artificial intelligence, which is going to eviscerate jobs... So we'll see in several years from now, when it's time for JD Vance to run, whether this economic theory, this aristo populism, actually carries water or not."
"Yeah, but here's the problem. So, if they do this after wiping out Social Security and any sort of social safety net we have in this country, and when and if this science experiment does not work out, they're either going to say we're too big to fail, let's have the government bail us out... Or, if they don't, they're going to get on their rocket ship and head off to Mars, leaving rubble, rubble, and Earth behind them. This is extraordinary. I'm so glad we started covering it."
Call it the Rock Ridge Network
Posted by greenman on November 15, 2025, 8:00 am, in reply to "It worked for me...." Valued Poster
..after Blazing Saddles' fictional town.
Certainly Trump would fit as the Governor, and there are lots of thugs, hornswogglers and such at their beck and call... RESIST!
YIKES!
Posted by Sia on November 14, 2025, 11:55 pm, in reply to "It worked for me...." ADMIN
on November 14, 2025, 2:35 am
