The group chats that changed America
A loose private network on Signal and WhatsApp helped usher in the new alliance between Silicon Valley and Donald Trump’s new right.
Hasnain says:
Ooooof. I have heard people talk about these group chats and elite cabals before, but oof. Especially that screenshot at the end.
“The tone was jesting, but “Marc radicalized over time,” Hanania recalled. Hanania said he found himself increasingly alienated from the group and the shift toward partisan pro-Trump politics, and he came to see the chat he’d established as a “vehicle for groupthink.” (A friend of Andreessen’s said it was Hanania, not Andreessen, who had shifted his politics.) The group continues without him.
Hanania argued with the other members “about whether it’s a good idea to buy into Trump’s election denial stuff. I’d say, ‘That’s not true and that actually matters.’ I got the sense these guys didn’t want to hear it,” he said. “There’s an idea that you don’t criticize, because what really matters is defeating the left.” He left the group in June of 2023.”
Posted on 2025-04-28T06:12:45+0000