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Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

Not just "a big MAGA donor," the biggest single contributor. Greg Brockman donated $25 million.

I get downvoted every time I point out that this was entirely rational. This, downvoters, is why it was entirely rational. Does that mean I agree with it? Of course not. But investments are made to pay off, and this one certainly has for OpenAI.

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I'm wondering how much was to push towards supporting Israel during the college campus protests and any future (at the time) conflict with Iran and it's proxies post October 7th like a lot of other Jewish million/billionaires such as Bill Ackman that typically supported Democrats or liberal causes. Brockman doesn't seem to have anything publicly stating he's Jewish but "Brockman" has English/German/Jewish origins and his mother's maiden name was Feldman.

Didn't Musk contribute ~10x that in '24?

Actually, on further research, what I have wrong here is that Brockman was the largest single donor to the MAGA PAC after the election, contributing $25 million in September 2025 [1].

Which if anything seems worse.

1: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/867947/o...

Wow! As a North Dakotan, I am appalled. I thought Doug Burgum was the biggest disappointment from our state but looks like I was wrong.

Yeah, it surprised me when I found out. I can intellectually understand why average people choose MAGA and try and be somewhat understanding even if I find it distasteful. My conclusion is that if you aren't personally worth at least $5M or have the direct phone number of someone who can get a Trump admin official on the phone, then it was probably a bad choice.

Of those who meet that criteria, and especially those with MUCH more money and closer connections, it actually is an extremely smart choice. However, it represents a level of reprehensible naked self-dealing and complicity that I simply can't condone. It really is comparable to the looting if public goods and coffers during and after the fall of the USSR. Nationalism and patriotism are dead.

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