Every asshole for himself

I’m not even the biggest fan of billionaire’s taxes, which can be a cousin of the slopulist idea that it’s possible to fund a generous welfare state by taxing only the very wealthy. But the lengths plutocrats who will not be materially affected by such a tax in any way will go to stop them remains embarrassing:

It was a holiday party at a crypto titan’s estate in Marin County, and Sergey Brin had a bone to pick with Gavin Newsom.

Mr. Brin, a Google co-founder and one of the world’s richest people, is a longtime friend of Mr. Newsom, the California governor. Both men attended each other’s weddings. But now Mr. Brin pulled Mr. Newsom aside to a different part of the property for a serious talk.

Mr. Brin told Mr. Newsom that he could not stand the state’s proposed billionaire tax. They were soon joined by Mr. Brin’s girlfriend, Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto, a Trump-loving gut-health influencer. 

“Gut health influencer.” Please kill me.

Even as she tried to defuse the tension — joking that she would let Mr. Newsom’s bad policies slide because he was handsome — she argued that the measure would wreck California’s economy.

Mr. Newsom, who had never seemed inclined to support the tax, came out the next month and pledged to defeat it. He declined to comment on the interaction.

The December confrontation, which took place at a party thrown by the billionaire Chris Larsen and was recounted by three people briefed on it, reflected Mr. Brin’s new war footing. He is growing more politically agitated, more willing to spend his estimated $273 billion fortune on elections and evidently more receptive to Republican points of view.

Mr. Brin, 52, long showed little interest in politics. When he did, he embraced liberal causes: He donated to a campaign to defend same-sex marriage in California in 2008 and backed President Barack Obama’s re-election bid in 2012. He called President Trump’s election in 2016 “deeply offensive” in leaked comments to Google employees and then joined a protest against Mr. Trump’s ban on immigrants from several predominantly Muslim countries. In 2021, he quietly started a nonprofit group that has spent at least $88 million on climate and environmental policy.

But now, like so many other leaders in the traditionally liberal bastion of Silicon Valley, Mr. Brin has shifted to the right.

With his outspokenly conservative girlfriend by his side, he has joined the ranks of tech executives courting Mr. Trump in his second term. Last May, he attended a fund-raiser featuring Vice President JD Vance and donated nearly half a million dollars to the Republican National Committee. In September, he told the president at a White House dinner that he was “very grateful” for the administration’s support of tech companies. This March, he was named to a White House tech council and donated to a Republican candidate for governor of California who has since earned Mr. Trump’s endorsement.

Mr. Brin is particularly rattled by the proposal for a one-time, 5 percent tax on California billionaires, and has emerged as Silicon Valley’s leading combatant of the measure. To escape the tax, he moved before a Dec. 31 deadline to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe (he now spends every other week at Google’s California headquarters, alternating with Nevada, a person familiar with the arrangement said). And he has spent $57 million to try to undercut the measure, including $9 million more disclosed on Friday.

Brin’s net worth is north of $200 billion. The tax will not affect his descendants for generations let alone himself. But it’s enough for him to embrace fascism. It’s revolting.