The Daily Signal - Why Former Obama Fundraiser Now Backs Trump

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Allison Huynh was a fundraiser for then-Sen. Barack Obama before he was elected president in 2008, but she now supports former President Donald Trump.  Huynh (pronounced like “win”) and her husband were attracted to Obama’s message of “hope and change” in 2007.  “It was the hope and the image that he projected” that led Huynh to not only support Obama herself in the 2008 election, but encourage others to do likewise.  As an entrepreneur and successful computer scientist in Silicon Valley in California, Huynh hosted fundraising dinners for Obama with tickets costing $50,000 a plate. But after Obama won the election and took office in 2009, Huynh says, disillusionment began to set in.  A Vietnamese immigrant, Huynh says the disillusionment “started with Barack Obama and this lack of logic in terms of how he led,” but it didn't end there.  Huynh calls diversity, equity, and inclusion “Marxist and doublespeak” because “equity is what you get when you work for something.”  Equity is not won because of the “color of your skin” or “identity politics,” Huynh contends. “This doesn't make sense. It erodes away from what it is to be an American, right?”  Asked why she is now supporting Trump, Huynh says that after meeting Trump, she found him “very open” to considering policies that serve tech entrepreneurs like her.  Huynh joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to share her story of disillusionment with the Democratic Party. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, July 18th. I'm Virginia Allen coming to you from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I had the opportunity to sit down with Allison Wynn. Allison and her husband were major Barack Obama supporters back in 2007. In fact, they hosted major fundraisers for him, dinners that were as much as $50,000 a plate. Wynn says that she and her husband were excited about the, the message of hope that they saw Barack Obama bringing, but when he was elected, quickly became

disillusioned with him and the Democrat Party. Today, Allison is backing former President Donald Trump for president. Allison is an entrepreneur. She's a successful computer scientist. And like I mentioned, she also is a former Barack Obama fundraiser. Stay tuned for my conversation with Allison right after this. This is Rob Lewy from The Daily Signal. In today's media landscape, it's more important than ever to have a trusted source of news and conservative commentary. That's why we are asking for your support. Your donation helps us continue our mission of delivering accurate, factual reporting on the issues that matter most to you. Whether it's $5 or $500, every contribution makes a difference. Visit dailysignal.com slash donate to help us keep Americans informed and fight for

conservative values. The Daily Signal is your voice for the truth. Well, I'm so glad to be joined here today by Allison Wynne. She's an entrepreneur. We are at the Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Allison, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Thank you, Virginia. Well, like I said, you're an entrepreneur. You're based in Silicon Valley.

You're a very, very successful in the tech industry. And you have a really unique story. You, for a long time, were actually a fundraiser for Democrat, party specifically for Barack Obama. Tell us a little bit about your involvement in that journey of saying, okay, I really like what I'm seeing from President Barack Obama. This was way back in, it was that 2008. What were the policies that you were seeing at that time that you thought, you know what, I want to stand behind and back these. Take us back. Well, for us, my husband and I at the time backed Barack Obama starting in 2007. I think we were one of the first major backers of

him before he broke into the scene in 2008. And it wasn't really any specific policies because he hadn't clearly defined them. It was more of the hope and the image that he projected, right? Which was when he was going to go into office, he was going to change the system and really empower young people and, you know, just really make innovative changes. And we didn't know specifically what they wore, but it was a very hopeful, positive image. And he didn't have that much experience. And so we felt like, you know, maybe it was time

to, like, really shake up the system. And that's what he promised. He was going to turn things upside down. I thought that was really exciting. He was very smart. He was a constitutional professor. And he had a great message. of hope. And the one message that really resonated with me was that there was no white America,

there was no black America, there was just one America. And I really felt that growing up in South Central Texas, where I was from, I grew up in a very modest, lower middle class environment. You know, I had hand-me-down clothes in the hill country. I was the youngest of seven. And this message of hope really resonated with me, right? That, you know, there's this president that was going to invest in young people. And so I wanted to support Barack Obama. And when he did become president, that did change. And what did that support look like?

What were the types of fundraisers that you and your husband were hosting? So we pledge our support for various different fundraising. I think there was one with like Gwyneth Paltrow. We encourage various different tech entrepreneurs to donate to have dinners. These are pretty large scale. Yeah, I think they were. I mean, back in 2007, 2008, it was like $50,000 per plate. I don't know, like how you would account for that with inflation.

Maybe like $100,000 or $150,000 per person. Yeah, but it really resonated with a lot of young tech entrepreneurs. and he got the support of Silicon Valley, and we were really excited about that. And, you know, his message got viral, and you could see that with the Hope poster. Every young person I knew in the dorm room bought the Hope poster, got it for free, right?

And then they put it in their dorm room, and it was this very infectious message of hope. So Barack Obama does become, obviously, president. He's elected. and at one point, I know that some point there was a point when you started kind of saying, oh, I don't know that this was quite what I thought it was going to be, but walk us through that journey. The first several years of his presidency, were you pretty pleased with what you were seeing?

No, I think he is great at messaging. He talks a talk, but he doesn't walk the walk, right? And so I became quite disillusion over time. Of course, the first administration and the second administration, specifically when we look at policies like Obamacare, right? And so the way that he talks about it in a very general way, the people that he hired for his administration were very, you know, public intellectuals who didn't necessarily have the detailed specific implementation for Obamacare.

So being in that Silicon Valley world, working with so many other tech entrepreneurs, were you one of the feud that you think was becoming disillusioned by what you were seeing back in 2008, 2009, 2010, or were there others? There were others, but Silicon Valley and the venture capitalist that works in Silicon Valley, the ecosystem, it's a herd mentality. And so no one wants to speak out. A lot of people were thinking, what I'm thinking, and for many years, didn't speak out as well, right? Because it's just, it's a herd mentality, right? And so I was very

disillusioned with Obamacare. When I did get a divorce many years later, just like a personal story, I did very well in my divorce. We did a settlement. But I was dropped off the family insurance plan very quickly. I had just a few days to get insurance and I was out of the enrollment period and therefore I had like this emergency and I ended up signing up for insurance for myself and my older daughter and it cost me more than $6,000 a month to do that. In addition, it was very difficult to sign up and figure out the right website to actually do that. So I had to do that. I actually got scammed in the process, which is very common, right?

And so there is this idea of Obamacare and universal health care, but the implementation and the very specifics is very lacking in a lot of gray areas, which allow bad players to come in and rip end consumers off, like me, whether it's on the scam side or overpricing. So was your disillusion meant strictly with now former president of Barack Obama? Or were you also becoming disillusioned with the Democrat Party as a whole? It started with Barack Obama. And I do feel that the country became more racially divided because of him, which is counterintuitive, right? Why do you think that is? Well, if you read his biography, he actually...

talks a lot about race and he said that the reason why he didn't do the things that he promised to do is because he was scared he was afraid that if he actually had that vision and went in there and shook off shook up Washington that there would never be a black president there would never be a woman president there would never be a POC president because as a black president. He had to be very careful and he was very scared to make any changes. And so that ruled his action, right? And so for me, when you're a leader, you need to lead. You need to have a vision and you can't look down. You go where you look. You go where you look. Right. And so when you ski, if you look down, you fall down. So you need to look straight ahead. What is your vision? What is your

direction and for me he had that direction before he was elected after he was elected he just looked down he was scared and he actually did say that in his biography and i think that really hurt african-americans i think that hurt people of color in leadership right because as an as an Asian American, I do things that I think is the right thing to do. And I don't do things because, oh, I'm scared what other Asian Americans would think of me or how other people would perceive African, you know, Asian Americans. Yeah. So at what point did you then shift to where now I know you're backing from President Donald Trump, but that's a pretty big shift that some people might say, well, I would maybe walk away from the Democrat Party and become an independenter.

But why moved to the other side of the aisle? What brought you there? That's a really good question, right? So it started with like, you know, Barack Obama and this like lack of logic in terms of how he led. And then when you see with like Kamala Harris and the emergence of DEU, eye that really kind of broke my bond with the liberals and the Democratic Party because that no longer made any sense, perhaps because I have a science background, and I came from a communist country, a Marxist country, and my friends who are from Cuba, from Vietnam, from former communist

country, were very opposed to these Marxist ideas. Let me explain. God says we're all born equal, right? And that is true. We're all born equal. But the idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion is very much Marxist and doubles speak, right? Because equity, we have to examine what does that mean? Equity is what you get when you work for something.

And so with the liberals and the dams, if you come into the country, illegally, you get equity. If you come into the country illegally and you smash and grab, you commit a crime, you deal fentanyl to our young children, you get equity. What does this mean? Why are you getting equity? You get equity when you don't qualify for a job just because of the color of your skin, just because of whatever random, you know, issues, identity, politics, this doesn't make sense. It erodes away from what it is to be an American, right? Like, we came to America as immigrants. My father stood in line.

He worked with the U.S. Air Force. We did our paperwork. We got our citizenship. We went to college. I went to Stanford University. I got my science degree, right? And then I contributed to some really amazing projects, ideas, to a company like Google, right?

And so as a result, I earn equity. This is how hard work and equity work in the U.S., whether you work at a fast food restaurant, an airline, a tech company, or you're a nurse firefighter, right? It's that hard work. It's that hard work. I don't differentiate that.

We're all born equal, but we have to work and make a contribution. And so this very idea of DEI or DIE or however you want to spin it, it's basically an Orwellian double speak that has allowed Marxist ideas to creep into America. And I'm absolutely opposed to that, considering my own background coming from a communist country, you know, my father's background as well. And I think it really erodes the fabric of America. And I do believe many of these ideas started during the Obama administration, right? And he has backed them with Biden.

He's an ardent supporter of that with Kamala, Harris with some of our very liberal, democratic mayors in California, such as Karen Bass, London Breed, many of their policies that have led to unsafe streets, which is now thankfully unconstitutional in our great country. We have a constitutional right to have safe streets. Why do people who come here illegally have more constitutional rights because of this idea of DEI. It doesn't make sense, right? Yeah. So why Trump, though? For me, when I met Trump, so you've met him in person. I did. I met him several times. And, of course, the mass media, the liberal media, like, oh, he's a fascist, he's on a revenge tour, this and that.

If he really is a fascist, a totalitarian dictator, why would he talk to someone like me who was originally not a supporter of Donald Trump, a big supporter of Obama? He was open to talking to me, and I heard him talk. He's very open, very funny. And originally he wasn't a supporter of cryptocurrency, and some of my friends had approached him on the idea of blockchain and cryptocurrency. In fact, 50 million Americans own some form of crypto, right? And so, yes, we've had some scandals with crypto, with Sam Bankman Fried, right?

But you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, and he understands this nuance. It's not just black and white, crypto, artificial intelligence, social, media, these are the new tools of our economy. Yes, there needs to be guardrails, but it can't be black and white, right? And he's willing to listen to people who are knowledgeable and be adaptable to it. That willingness to listen is huge in any leader. That's really critical. Now, as an entrepreneur yourself, how do you think the economy would fare? Would it improve during a second Trump administration. What do you think?

I definitely think it would improve. So my perspective is that you have to look at history to predict the future. So under the last Trump administration, the middle class did way better. Like people who were middle class did very well. During the Biden administration, the middle class did not do well. So if you look at historical. events to predict future events, I think we will do much better under Trump, right? Because he has policies, specific policies, for example, to get rid of federal income tax on tips. So in a gig

economy, like we're living in, right, there are the tech elites, there are the engineers, software developers, people working in the factory. But for the most part, there's a lot of of service workers and gig economy workers and they rely on tips and federal income tax on those tips can really erode their income. I think this is a great example of how he is really looking at young people who are a big part of this gig economy, people of color who are mostly the waiters, the waitress, the hairstylist. the nail salon tech that are living on tips, right? And some of these taxes, for $100 in tips,

you can be, you know, spending $40 of that on taxes, and then you get like $60, you get $60, right? It has to be practical, right? It has to be practical. And I love that the administration is looking out for the working class and the young people because that's the bedrock of our economy, no? Allison, I really appreciate you taking the time today

just to share your insights, to share your personal story. Thank you for joining the Daily Signal podcast. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me here. With that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new content from the Daily Signal podcast.

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