Alexis Ohanian shocks Washington with his pro-immigration statements

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Last night, I watched Alexis Ohaniana venture capitalist and co-founder of Reddit, stunned a room of Washington insiders by criticizing the Trump administration’s immigration policies. This happened to at least one senior administration official: Michael KratsiosDirector of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Science Advisor to the President Donald Trump.

Ohanian was inducted into the Consumer Technology Association’s CT Hall of Fame when he made the remarks at the annual Digital Patriots dinner. (CTA is widely known as the group that puts on the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.) But at the end of his acceptance speech, Ohanian, whose grandparents immigrated to America after fleeing the Armenian genocide, made what appeared to be spontaneous remarks calling for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. After a year of watching tech CEOs plead with Trump, this was a shock to the system. His full statements are below:

April 24 will be Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. It’s a sensitive word for some people here, but yes, it was genocide. (My ancestors) escaped and somehow made it across Ellis Island – uneducated refugees, refugees from a foreign war – and this country took them in. After a few generations, you got hold of me.

The other thing is: My mom overstayed her visa for about four years before I was born, and fortunately, ICE didn’t arrest her, because instead, she ended up getting a green card and became an incredibly proud American citizen. And so, the other thing I’ll also mention, is that if you like Reddit, you like the $30 billion market cap, thousands of American employees, a lot of innovation – because you know Reddit data basically provided all the LLMs with training data – if you like all of those things, please keep in mind that it was the son of an illegal immigrant who helped bring them to life. And please – I’m in D.C., and I can’t help it – we desperately need secure borders. This country definitely needs secure borders, and for many people here, they need a road.

And please, before we generalize, before we demonize, before we become evil, just remember that the people who value this country, often more than those of us lucky enough to be born here like me, are the ones who have had to make our own way. So let’s not lose sight of that.

Ohanian, who resigned from Reddit in 2020 and now runs the 776 Fund, has expressed similar views on social media, but his impact was different when he said it in person, in the faces of Kratsios, many other administration officials, and industry lobbyists who need to maintain good relations with the current administration. This is, after all, a White House whose massive economic decisions depend on little more than feelings and whether they like the person they’re interacting with.

Other honorees include consumer technology industry allies, e.g Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), and Representatives Jay Obernault (R-CA) and Ted Liu (Democrat from California), both of whom co-chaired the House Artificial Intelligence Task Force. Fun fact: According to Liu, only four members of Congress have computer science degrees, including him and Obernault. (Obernolt also holds an advanced degree in artificial intelligence and is the founder of FarSight Studios, a video game studio.)

Tim Apple doesn’t fall far behind Trump

Not every tech executive is critical of the Trump administration. In fact, this was the week that Tim Cook He announced that he would step down as CEO of AppleAnd while there’s a lot everyone can say about his relationship with Trump (including his time with Cook… He gave Trump a golden statue), the president has a long-standing habit of boasting about how many times powerful people have humbled themselves and begged for favors, and Cook – or as he called him “Tim Apple” – was no exception. As fondly told on Truth Social:

“For me, it started with a phone call from Tim at the beginning of my first term. He had a pretty big problem that only I, as president, could solve. Most people had paid millions of dollars to a consultant, who I probably didn’t know, but who’s to say he knew me well. The fee would be paid but the job wasn’t done. When I got the call I said, ‘Wow, it’s Tim Apple (Cook!) calling, how big is that?’ “My ass.”

He then goes on to describe how often Cook would “call me, but not very often, and I’ll help him where I can,” and suggested that he had given Cook and Apple “three or four big assists” over the years. “He makes these calls with me, I help him (but not always, because sometimes he’ll be too aggressive with his request!) and he gets the job done quickly, without giving a dime to these very expensive (million-dollar!) consultants around town who sometimes get it done, and sometimes don’t.”

It is not immediately clear which of Trump’s policies are included in the “big three or four aid packages.” But there are several recent examples of Trump clearly doing favors for Apple, including a tariff waiver last year Apple has committed to investing $100 billion In manufacturing iPhone parts in the United States. (Thanks to Trump’s “Emancipation Day” definitions, Apple was facing a $1 billion increase in production costs.)

These kinds of Truth Social posts about Tim Cook are unlikely to go away any time soon. In the press release announcing his departure, Apple noted that Cook, who will become the company’s CEO, “will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.” Trump still sets U.S. trade policy — sometimes recklessly — so Cook, who has earned a reputation as… Trump whispered talent in Silicon Valleyhe now had more time to spend calling Trump’s cell phone directly.

Redemption from Crenshawshank

The other day, I was thinking about how the political world treats the Internet, and social media in particular, as this shiny, mysterious new thing that only the most talented and intelligent politicians can master. Then I realized that using social media in politics is not entirely new. Barack Obama began using Twitter in March 2007, during his first presidential campaign – which was… 19 years ago.

First of all, remembering this makes me feel old. But second, it reminded me of news cycles, commentary, and general political theories about how Obama was an innovator of social media, using it as a messaging tool, a way to raise small-dollar donations (which was a record at the time), and a way to address voters directly. But then I started thinking about how Obama’s digital influence faded after he left office, despite his attempts to stay online. Remember the Netflix deal? and Spotify podcast deal? I haven’t done that yet.

I then began ranking all the politicians who have tried to prove their internet proficiency over the past two decades — from Hillary Clinton to Gavin Newsom, from… Ron Paul to Ron DeSantis — who have employed thousands of people in their 20s and spent hundreds of millions of dollars honing their online presence. (Trump is obviously the best at this, but remember he’s spent millions of dollars on… Building your own social media platform After he was fired from Twitter.) If you look at this history, rather than a series of ephemeral phenomena, a cyclical trend reveals itself: a politician becomes good at the Internet, perhaps even great, but then eventually collapses.

this week I posted a feature About one former internet lover: Rep. Dan Crenshaw, the Texas Republican who was once heralded as the internet-savvy leader of the post-Trump GOP, but was ousted from office in March. The piece raises the curtain on the downfall of the man who simply… Can’t log out (And it has some interesting details, too.) One takeaway was how successful it was on Twitter — but only during a period when Twitter had strict policies on hate speech and misinformation, was deleting people from the platform for harassment, and had a strict 280-character cap on posts. In other words, the platform was trying to prevent users from spreading lies about Crenshaw.

Online lies were Crenshaw’s Achilles heel. At one point, his 2018 campaign manager, Brendan Steinhauser, told me that Crenshaw would get particularly upset if someone was spreading lies about him online, and that he and his staff would have to ban Crenshaw from going online to defend himself: “He was very disciplined. But sometimes he wanted to say, ‘This guy is just lying about me.’ We say, ‘Of course he’s lying about you.’ It’s politics.” But we were definitely encouraging him not to punch. My observation: In the moment. The moment those things disappeared — i.e. the moment Elon Musk started messing with Twitter’s terms of use — allowed Crenshaw to be less disciplined than he had been before.

Brothers of shit

There’s a lot more that ended up in the newsroom for this article, but I spoke with Alex Bruesewitz, the Gen Z MAGA influencer who has arguably surpassed Crenshaw as the GOP’s top internet guy, and how he built his career through his relentless motivation. I found this quote from Bruesewitz — who, among other things, convinced Trump to launch a TikTok account and linked it to the podcast bros who helped Trump win over young white men — to be an illustration of MAGA influencer culture:

“I’m on the right wing of the Internet. It’s kind of a fraternity with memers, with random tweeters. So when they saw the congressman was going after me, they felt like he was going after all of us. So the gamers were piling on. So I tweeted something; and moments later, a meme account with 400,000 followers created memes of Dan that spread like wildfire. And it had a snowball effect from there.”

Certainly explains why This piece is about white supremacist memoirs at the Department of Homeland Security It was almost impossible to report!

I’ve officially decided that a TMZ Capitol Hill reporter is just as good at riling up the Washington media as MAGA influencers:

(For readers outside of DC, this piece is from DCist It is a good primer Why does tat have a bad reputation in the city?.)

Anyway, see you next week, unless you’re at a Grindr party on Friday.

April 22 update: A clearer transcript of Ohanian’s statements has been added.