- Earlier this month, David Sachs posted an open letter on Twitter in support of Donald Trump.
- LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman criticized the letter line by line in a scathing post on Thursday.
- Hoffman said Sachs, the venture capitalist, was wrong about Trump “on almost every point.”
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman had some harsh words for venture capitalist David Sachs after he endorsed Donald Trump earlier this month.
In an open letter posted on X on June 6, Sachs praised the former president’s foreign policy and economic strategy, slammed President Joe Biden’s approach to the “legal wars,” and accused Biden of using the judicial system to disadvantage his political opponents in this year’s election.
Hoffman wasn’t buying it at all, writing in another post on the thread that Sachs’ support for Trump was “wrong in almost every way.”
“Since Silicon Valley is largely opposed to Trump, he may have viewed this as a ‘contrarian’ voice that would fit his podcast brand,” Hoffman said in a lengthy Medium post published the same day as his comments in the thread responding to Sachs’ letter. “Unfortunately, Sachs’ letter is less original and more of an awkward reiteration of pro-Trump groupthink.”
“Both of the candidates for president of the United States are older, but only one of them acts like an adult,” Hoffman added.
Hoffman refuted Sachs’ arguments point by point, pointing out that Trump was a convicted felon by a jury, comparing economic and crime data from the last two administrations and accusing Sachs of repeating pro-Putin propaganda in his defense of Trump.
“Voters have experienced four years of President Trump and four years of President Biden,” Sachs said in the letter. “In the tech industry we call it an A/B test. Trump has performed better on economic policy, foreign policy, border policy and legal fairness. He is the right president for a second term.”
In his own post, Hoffman sharply countered that Sachs was “interpreting the results the wrong way.”
“In the tech world, this is what we call ‘wrong,'” Hoffman wrote.
Sacks didn’t respond to Hoffman’s disapproval at length, but instead responded to X’s post by criticizing Hoffman for taking two weeks to write a rebuttal, and simply adding a “100” emoji as a sign of agreement.
Sachs’s endorsement of Trump, and Hoffman’s vocal condemnation of it, comes as a growing number of Silicon Valley elites are voicing their support for the convicted former president.
This isn’t the first time Hoffman has spoken out critically about the phenomenon: In an op-ed published in The Economist earlier this month, he blasted business leaders who support Trump, arguing that a Republican victory in 2024 could harm the economy and upend the legal system that American companies rely on.
Hoffman and Sachs did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
