2020 Democrats

Jack Dorsey Maxed Out His Donation to Tulsi Gabbard After the First Debate

The Twitter CEO gave the controversial Democratic congresswoman $5,600—and donated $1,000 to Andrew Yang.
Jack Dorsey walks with two people behind him.
By Antoine Gyori/Getty Images.

The first night of the June Democratic debates gave some of the lower-polling candidates the chance to break out on the national stage—and apparently, one of them made quite the impression on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. A FEC filing first reported Tuesday by Buzzfeed News revealed that Dorsey made a contribution of $5,600—the maximum amount legally allowed—to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard the day after the first debate. The Twitter CEO has also donated to candidate Andrew Yang, donating $1,000 on April 30. (“We don't comment on Jack's personal giving,” a Twitter spokesperson told Buzzfeed.)

The donations offer a rare glimpse of Dorsey's political leanings, which have remained somewhat inscrutable amid criticism from the left for going easy on President Donald Trump and from the right for supposedly “silencing” conservatives. (The CEO has admitted Twitter's biases are “more left-leaning” and has donated to Democrats in the past.) But given the candidates he's supporting, it's still hard to glean where exactly Dorsey’s political views lie. Of all the Democratic candidates, Gabbard's candidacy has proved perhaps the most ideologically conflicted, even mysterious. The Democratic congresswoman, who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016, has come under fire for her past anti-gay views and meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and her anti-interventionist views on foreign policy play well on the right as well as the left. Beyond Dorsey, many of Gabbard's other post-debate fans seem to have been conservatives; the candidate won the Drudge Report's post-debate poll, garnered news coverage from Breitbart News, and even had Ann Coulter saying, “Go, Tulsi!” “I think a lot of people would vote for her over Trump,” right-wing personality Mike Cernovich told Buzzfeed News after the debate. “MAGA people.”

Dorsey's support of Yang would seem more straightforward. Yang, a former tech entrepreneur, has a policy agenda driven by technology that's tailor-made for Silicon Valley; the universal basic income plan at the center of his campaign is specifically designed to help Americans adjust to a changing economy that's increasingly disrupted by AI and automation. (Yang has also not been without his share of conservative admirers—“I actually think Andrew Yang probably has more appeal in some corners of the right than Tulsi,” Republican strategist and Donald Trump Jr. adviser Andy Surabian told Buzzfeed—though Yang, like Gabbard, has a policy platform that includes progressive causes like Medicare for All.) It’s also understandable why he'd put his money toward Yang over frontrunners like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who's made breaking up Big Tech a central part of her platform.

While Gabbard has yet to weigh in on getting a financial endorsement from one of Silicon Valley's biggest players, Yang is clearly happy about making it on Dorsey's radar. “Thank you @jack for the support!” Yang tweeted in April. “I use at least one of your products every day.”

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