Bokhari: Paul Singer Is No Improvement on Jack Dorsey

Conservatives, it may be hard to hear this, but we might have to defend Jack Dorsey.

The hyper-progressive Twitter CEO may have spent the last four years reminding us why Silicon Valley hates conservatives, but his company is now in danger of a takeover by a far more sinister creature: billionaire vulture capitalist Paul Singer.

As Breitbart News reported earlier this week, Singer has purchased a “sizeable” stake in Twitter, and, as an investor, plans to pressure the company to oust CEO Dorsey. However much we may dislike Dorsey, this is not good news.

Singer, for those who don’t know, is the man whose money funded the infamous efforts of oppo-research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on then-candidate Trump in 2015 and 2016. The project, initially funded by the Singer-backed Washington Free Beacon, would later be funded by the DNC and Clinton campaign.

These efforts would result in the hiring of former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele and the creation of the “Trump dossier,” a document full of unhinged allegations about the President’s alleged links to Russia.

As Breitbart News reported in 2017, Singer was one of the main money-men behind the “Never Trump” movement of establishment conservatives furious about the prospect of Trump’s nomination:

The Free Beacon is funded in large part by the New York hedge fund billionaire and major GOP donor Paul Singer. The New York Times reports that Singer initially supported Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) for the Republican nomination, but later spearheaded a campaign to deny Trump the nomination even after Rubio dropped out of the race.

While supporting Republican establishment favorites such as Rubio and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Singer was a major backer of Common Core and was the founder of a super-PAC that has the express purpose of turning the GOP pro-gay marriage.

The Examiner reports that the Free Beacon was originally part of the 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization — the Center for American Freedom — but in 2014 became a for-profit organization. The Center’s original board of directors includes William Kristol, a prominent “Never Trump” activist.

Let’s compare Singer to Dorsey for a moment.

I’ve never met Dorsey myself, but I have met his current and former employees, some of whom are conservatives. They all say the same thing — Dorsey is an idealistic progressive. His outward image of a sandal-wearing, head-in-the-clouds Silicon Valley hippie is largely genuine.

He’s torn (or so my sources say), between a sentimental attachment to free speech and the constant guilt-tripping, outrage campaigns of Silicon Valley SJWs who demand more censorship. According to my insiders, it is not Dorsey, but people who serve underneath him, like Trust and Safety Chief Del Harvey, who are the primary force behind censorship on the platform.

Singer is different. He’s a globalist and a finance man, with a vested interest in the cozy relationship between corporations and politicians that is threatened by Trump and the populist movement. If he is successful in his push to remove Dorsey as CEO, it is unknown who he would support as a replacement. Would the Saudi Arabian royalty, also an investor in Twitter, get involved too? Either way, it’s doubtful that Dorsey’s replacement would be a friend to populism.

As Tucker Carlson eloquently explained in a segment last year, Singer’s model of “capitalism” is the classic globalist model: buy American companies, sell off their assets, purge their employees, and hoover up the profits from the skeleton company that remains:

“[T]he model is ruthless economic efficiency: Buy a distressed company, outsource the jobs, liquidate the valuable assets, fire middle management, and once the smoke has cleared, dump what remains to the highest bidder, often in Asia,” Carlson explained. “It has happened around the country. It has made a small number of people phenomenally rich. One of them is a New York-based hedge fund manager called Paul Singer, who, according to Forbes, has amassed a personal fortune of more than $3 billion.”

Carlson offered automotive parts supplier Delphi as an example.

“During the last financial crisis, a consortium of hedge funds, including Singer’s Elliott Management, purchased Delphi,” he said. “With Singer and the other funds at the helm, the company took billions of dollars in government bailouts. Obama’s auto-czar compared the tactics to extortion. Once they had the bailout money, the funds moved most of Delphi’s jobs overseas, and then either cut retiree pensions entirely or shifted the costs to taxpayers.”

Singer’s vast wealth depends on a form of predatory financing that is designed to gut blue-collar jobs and the American middle class.

To a progressive hipster like Jack Dorsey, the populist movement and the Trump movement are simply offensive — an affront to his snowflake sensibilities. For someone like Dorsey, seeing a MAGA hat hurts his feelings. It makes him sad.

But to Paul Singer, they’re more than a source of angst — they’re an existential threat to his entire model of doing business. If the populist movement achieves all of its goals, people like Singer will be finished. A distant memory. A footnote in the history of America’s corrupt neoliberal gilded age.

Conservatives rightly condemn Dorsey for his track record of censorship. But consider the following very carefully: is he really more dangerous than Paul Singer?