Welcome back to The Stratosphere, I’m Teddy Schleifer.

Tonight, a tour of my favorite corner of Silicon Valley—its right wing. Could Elon Musk issue a formal endorsement of Trump later this summer, facilitated by Steve Wynn? What did Trump say behind closed doors at the biannual meeting of J.D. Vance’s Rockbridge Network last week? Could Peter Thiel talk himself into backing a Trump-Vance ticket?

Fresh, inside-the-room reporting on all of that—for Puck subscribers only, of course. (Stop using your mom’s account and sign up here.)

But first…

• Here comes the Shanahan attacks…: Last week I revealed the debate among Democratic operatives and their Silicon Valley allies over whether to go negative on Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s V.P. pick, or simply convince her to drop out. Well, the attacks have begun. Aides at the Democratic National Committee started a paid campaign this week in the San Jose Mercury News—Shanahan’s hometown paper, if you’ll indulge the dated reference—with digital banner ads featuring R.F.K. in a MAGA cap and Nicole speaking at a podium.

  I believe this is the first paid campaign solely targeting Shanahan. The ad copy reads, “Does Nicole agree with R.F.K. Jr. that January 6th wasn’t a ‘true insurrection’ and that we should consider pardoning convicted insurrectionists?” The R.F.K. campaign has already walked back much of their initial garbled January 6 statement, but I’ll take the aggressive targeting of Shanahan as a sign that the D.N.C. doesn’t believe in the “off-ramp” that some Silicon Valley knuckleheads prefer…

Sacks’ critics are wrong to write him off as just a juvenile shock-jock, even if his name-recognition in donor circles far outstrips the amount of money he has actually contributed. Sacks is a bona fide influencer, leveraging his network and audio platform—he’s hosted everyone from Dean Phillips to R.F.K. Jr.—to amplify his brand within Republican politics. Opening his Pacific Heights mansion to the 45th president was a natural next step. Invites aren’t out, and other logistical details remain T.B.D., but Sacks, who once considered serving on the Trump transition team, has been in touch with Mar-a-Lago over the last few weeks. A date isn’t chosen given Trump’s trial, but I hear the fundraiser could come together as soon as next month. Sacks’ co-host and bestie, Chamath Palihapitiya, is likely to be involved in any event, too.

Sacks’ political evolution, from max-out Hillary Clinton donor to DeSantis patron to Kennedy-curious, and finally to backing Trump, is not so dissimilar from the larger cultural transformation rippling through Silicon Valley. Sure, your average V.P. at Google still believes in climate change and H-1B visas and will show up at SFO to protest the Muslim ban, but at the highest and wealthiest echelons of the industry, cultural tastemakers like Marc Andreessen have gotten redpilled.

Many industry leaders have been emboldened by the diminished threat of cancel culture and by their more outwardly conservative peers. This ain’t 2016—getting lit up by leftists on Threads could actually be good for the brand. Others in Silicon Valley are frankly more unnerved by Lina Khan than Trump.“There’s a lot of tech people who are realizing that they don’t have to like someone to vote for them,” said Trevor Traina, one of the few Republican bundlers in the Bay, who Trump appointed as his ambassador to Austria.

Among them is Elon Musk, the increasingly right-wing centi-billionaire and close Sacks friend. Musk, I’m told, has made it known that he is considering either endorsing Trump after the summer, or at least making some kind of formal statement opposing Joe Biden, beyond his hourly diatribes on X. In that regard, I hear Musk has been courted assiduously by loyal Trump buddy Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas casino magnate who dined with Musk and Trump at Nelson Peltz’s place earlier this year. Another rabble-rouser in Musk’s ear has been fellow Silicon Valley apostate Joe Lonsdale, who has also encouraged Musk to get more involved in advocating for Trump and against Biden, I’m told by two sources. “To come out and say he’s pro-Trump, or anti-Biden specifically, in this race would be a big deal,” said a third person briefed on the Musk endorsement conversations.

Would Musk or Andreessen or Larry Ellison show up at Sacks’ palatial home, on Broadway, that he calls the Broadcliff? Invite and attendance lists will be revealing, not only in terms of how Trump is growing his donor footprint in Silicon Valley, but also for the signal to closet conservatives about the reputational cost of associating with the G.O.P. nominee. Back in September 2020, I spent a long afternoon driving around the South Bay, chasing tip after tip, trying to find the hush-hush, clandestine fundraiser that Sun Microsystems founder Scott McNealy was hosting for Trump in Palo Alto. Then, of course, Republicans in the area avoided broadcasting their movements. These days, they’ll probably just… tweet it out.

The industry’s curiosity has been fully reciprocated by Trump, who has expanded his outreach to potential tech donors with gusto. On Wednesday night, as I first reported, Trump addressed the biannual meeting of the Rockbridge Network, the Silicon Valley-inflected MAGA donor alliance. Rockbridge had booked the Mar-a-Lago ballroom and worked for months to get Trump as a keynote. Alas, as fate would have it, Trump was not actually there—he was up in New York, on his off-day in the middle of his criminal trial, thereby creating the amusing spectacle of 250 or so wealthy conservatives, including Rebekah Mercer and PayPal Mafia member Luke Nosek, flying into Palm Beach from all around the country, only for Trump to yammer on for 10 minutes via Zoom, with the video off. (Other speakers included Jets owner Woody Johnson and the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo; later in the evening, Donald Trump Jr. cozied up to the crowd in a fireside chat with Rockbridge co-founder Chris Buskirk.) Still, it was a major coup for the group.

Trump paying his respects to Rockbridge—the second time he’s done so since 2022—isn’t happenstance. Rockbridge members, who commit to spending $100,000 a year on network-approved programs, are cut from a younger, more entrepreneurial cloth than your average Republican, and wouldn’t be caught dead at a stodgy meeting of the American Opportunity Alliance or the Club for Growth. (They counter privately that Rockbridge is a glorified networking group full of millionaires, not billionaires.) Vance, one of its co-founders, is obviously ascendant, too, and in the running for Trump’s ticket. Trump has not been shy about informing V.P. aspirants and their allies that a candidate’s ability to fundraise is a not-insignificant force in shaping his decision. If Vance could bring Rockbridge donors to the table, that would certainly appear to be an asset in the G.O.P. veepstakes.

Unfortunately for Vance, one of the most significant megadonors in his corner—Thiel, his onetime boss and mentor, who put $10 million into his Senate campaign—has since cooled on politics. In 2016, Thiel’s endorsement of Trump at the Republican National Convention ignited months of coverage as everyone from Y Combinator to his own Founders Fund had to wrestle with Peter questions despite his comparatively measly $1 million donation. But Thiel sat out in 2020, and now the two are currently at odds. Last year, I reported on a tense phone call in which Trump tried to turn the screws on Thiel and get him to cut an eight-figure check to support his reelection—and there’s been no rapprochement in the months since. Thiel, I’m told, remains averse to engaging with the Trump campaign until at least the summer, with his family believing that it could be dangerous for him to engage. Several people familiar with Thiel’s political thinking have told me they doubt he’ll get involved.

Could that change if Trump chooses Vance, putting a close friend a heartbeat away from the presidency? “I don’t think Peter would let himself be a blocker,” said one person familiar with the dynamic. “If it looks like he’s going to be Trump’s choice, I would expect a lot of people who support J.D.—Peter, maybe David Sacks—to really encourage Trump to do that.”

Vance is actually probably closer with Sacks these days than he is with Thiel: At a conservative gala I attended last month, Vance boldly called Sacks “one of my closest confidants” in politics, and Sacks clearly wants Vance to be the V.P. nominee in a party he believes is “schizophrenic” on foreign policy, Sacks’ top issue. Regardless, there is real and growing frisson in Silicon Valley circles these days over the possibility that one of their own could be calling shots in the West Wing. Keith Rabois, another longtime Thiel pal and fellow Stanford Cardinal, just hosted a fundraiser in Miami for Vance on Saturday, I’m told, with his husband, Jake Helberg, the anti-TikTok activist who brought Mike Johnson to Silicon Valley earlier this month. “They’re all anti-Biden. The question is: Can Trump win? Is it safe to support him?” said the person wired into the Trump-tech conversations. “If the answer is yes and yes, then they’ll come onside, and there will be a lot of money to support him.”