Marc Andreessen tells Joe Rogan that Silicon Valley is divided in two after Trump’s victory

The co-founder of venture capital firm a16z, also known as Andreessen Horowitz, said social isolation remains a common punishment for those who think differently from certain left-wing circles in the tech mecca.

Andreessen said this year that the same fissures that have divided the country have caused a break in the once monolithic democratic strongholdas almost all demographic groups left the party to varying degrees.

“We’re going through the first profound political realignment probably since the 1960s,” Andreessen said in an interview with Joe Rogan published Tuesday, arguing that Republicans were now the party of common sense, no war, and the working class.

Fearing that he would be written off as a “crazy right-winger” for daring to celebrate that it was “morning in America” ​​now that Trump had won the election, co-creator of the world’s first mainstream internet browser said he—like many constituencies that traditionally supported the Democrats—actually defected from the party.

“I was a Democrat in good standing,” he said, having endorsed Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama in the past.

He even talked about the shock and sadness he felt during dinner with other Silicon Valley friends immediately after Trump’s first victory. They had all voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 – Andreessen herself included.

Despite the long-standing voting record, his decision to now endorse Trump over Kamala Harris in this year’s race has resulted in doors being figuratively slammed in his face.

“It’s actually true: There are now two kinds of dinner parties in Silicon Valley — they broke cleanly in half,” Andreessen told Rogan in a three-hour long podcast interview.

On the one hand, there are gatherings he can still attend, where he can bump into other first-time Trump supporters like Elon Musk.

But his presence is no longer welcome among what he called “the Kylites.”

“There are those where every person believes every single thing that was in New York Times that day … and that’s what they talk about at the dinner party,” Andreessen claimed. “And I am no longer invited to them, nor will I go to them.”

‘Lockstep compliance’

Andreessen’s abandonment of the Democratic Party stemmed primarily — but not exclusively — from what he called the Biden administration’s attempt to kill his business through the regulation of crypto, of which a16z is the largest venture capital firm.

Instead of the state leveling the playing field so it could focus on calling balls and strikes, he argued that federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) , and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), all sought to directly control the results in different ways.

He claims that the aim was to ensure that only a small number of large companies would survive and all agreed to be completely regulated and controlled by the government.

“We had meetings in the spring that were the most alarming meetings where (regulators) walked us through their plans: Basically just full government control,” he claimed. “They told us, ‘Just don’t even start startups, don’t bother it, there’s no way they can succeed, there’s no way we’re going to allow that to happen’.”

One tactic he claimed he personally witnessed was the federal government’s attempts to coerce his business partners and even his own partner’s father, an author and Trump supporter David Horowitzby pressuring the banks to completely revoke their access to the financial system.

Andreessen said the party no longer tolerated dissent within its ranks and instead demanded lockstep conformity enforced through cancellation culture, effectively reducing Democrats to a religious cult minus the possibility of redemption.

“You can call (it) ‘soft totalitarianism,’ which is just rules and power exercised arbitrarily, which simply suppresses everything,” he continued, citing de-banking as just one example.

If Democrats ever want to pull themselves out of the mess they’re in, Andreessen advised them to promote prominent far-left critics as did New York Congressman Ritchie Torres for leadership positions.

Assets has contacted the White House for a response, but has not received a response.

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