Jae C. Hong/AP Images
President Donald Trump sports a Make America Great Again hat.
- A principal at Founders Fund is getting dogpiled on Twitter for sharing a photo of himself wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat.
- Delian Asparouhov said in a tweet: "There are degrees to which certain symbols represent hate, i.e. I have no interest in wearing a swastika around town. Unfortunately in SF people think this symbol is closer to a swastika than what it represents, which is hope, for about half of America."
- People on Twitter railed on the tech investor for being "needlessly divisive" and "tone deaf."
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A San Francisco tech investor tweeted a photo of himself wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat, and people in tech are piling on the Trump supporter.
Delian Asparouhov, a principal at Founders Fund in San Francisco, said in a tweet on Wednesday that, for him, the hat represents hope for Americans.
"There are degrees to which certain symbols represent hate, i.e. I have no interest in wearing a swastika around town," Asparouhov said in a tweet.
"Unfortunately in SF people think this symbol is closer to a swastika than what it represents, which is hope, for about half of America."
The photo shows the tech investor wearing a sheepish smile under the red hat's brim. The tweet had 173 likes and 115 comments the next morning.
The top comment is from one of Asparouhov's coworkers, Michael Solana, a vice president at Founders Fund. He knocked the tweet as "needlessly divisive and incendiary."
"i agree there is something crazy and disordered about the reaction people in sf have to political ideas they don't share. just don't understand how this bridges that divide," Solana said in a tweet. "looking forward to learning more at the lunch table tomorrow..."
Asparouhov did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Founders Fund is staffed with other Trump supporters. Its cofounder, Peter Thiel, was one of the few tech moguls to publicly back his 2016 campaign. Thiel spoke at the party convention where Trump received the nomination and later joined the president's transition team as an adviser on tech issues.
People on Twitter railed on the investor for the performative tweet. They also disagreed with his take, which seemed to compare how people react to seeing the MAGA hat to how they treat the swastika, an emblem of the Nazi party.
Bobby Goodlatte, an angel investor who's backed Coinbase and Envoy, tweeted, "That hat doesn't represent hope. It represents hate. Enjoy the attention."
Shripriya Mahesh, a partner at Spero Ventures in Redwood City, California, said in a tweet: "The hat symbolizes a desire to return to the past. The glory days when America was great - when people of color knew their place, immigrants weren't 'running amok' and when the country wasn't at risk of becoming a majority brown country. It's fear, actually, not hope."
At least one person tried in earnest to engage Asparouhov in conversation.
Backstage Capital's founder Arlan Hamilton, one of the few queer black women in venture capital, asked Asparouhov to come on her podcast. The two are both investors in a fertility startup, Carrot, through their firms.
"I'd love to do a podcast episode with you to talk about this," Hamilton said in a tweet. "I'm fascinated, concerned, disappointed, you name it."
Welp here goes nothing
There are degrees to which certain symbols represent hate, i.e. I have no interest in wearing a swastika around town
Unfortunately in SF people think this symbol is closer to a swastika than what it represents, which is hope, for about half of America pic.twitter.com/ztNeQyN5oo
- DELIAN Asparouhov (@zebulgar) January 9, 2020What a clueless and tone deaf take. Disappointing.
- Aaron Gray 🏄♂️🏍🛶🎿 (@agray) January 9, 2020