If Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign was about hiding in the basement, his 2024 race is about driving away his supporters. The latest name to drop Biden from his voting and donation list is Jacob Helberg, whom the media calls a top Silicon Valley donor.
On May 17, Jewish Insider featured a story on Helberg’s political shift from his 2020 choice when he first started making major donations to political campaigns. He chose Biden and the Democrats in 2020, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to their campaigns. But after seeing what the Democratic Party has become over the course of time, Helberg has switched to conservative principles and has donated $1 million to President Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Coming from a Jewish family, the Democratic Party’s indifference toward Israel has seemingly become a turning point in Helberg’s view of America’s political divide. When the story of his donation to the Trump campaign made news, Helberg shared the link on X (formerly Twitter) with the message, “This one’s for Israel.”
On May 21, investigative journalism group Project Veritas posted an undercover video of Biden’s National Security Council Advisor Sterlin Waters admitting that Biden is holding on to openly denying support to Israel until November 2024 when he hopes to get reelected. Helberg reposted the video with a note of concern that Biden’s reelection will set an anti-Israel precedent that will last for a generation.
Helberg’s story was featured in The Washington Post and Yahoo Finance and they add that Helberg’s spouse Keith Rabois is a long-time conservative.
Helberg’s shift to Trump and Republicans follows that of Bill Ackman, American billionaire hedge fund manager, who is also of Jewish descent. Ackman has usually supported Democrat candidates but in January this year, he stated that Biden needs to step aside the presidential race. As cited in Yahoo News, Ackman said:
“If the Democrat party wants to have a chance of putting up a candidate who can compete with Trump, it needs to quickly get behind a strong, credible contender for President, and Biden needs to step aside.” Last month, Ackman announced that he is open to voting for Trump in 2024
In recent weeks, quite a few reports have made news showing that the support for Biden has also been on decline among the Muslim Americans, owing to his failure in stopping Israel’s bombing of Gaza. On May 14, Newsweek published results of a New York Times/Siena College poll showing that Trump leads Biden among registered Middle Eastern, North African, or Muslim voters in the swing states.