A recent Washington Post exposé [link below] traces how a once-obscure Arizona entrepreneur, Chris Buskirk, has become a central architect of MAGA’s post-Trump future through a network of wealthy allies and data-driven organizing. In 2019, Buskirk joined Peter Thiel and JD Vance at a private Ohio retreat that birthed the Rockbridge Network, a secretive donor consortium designed to institutionalize Trumpism beyond Trump himself. Funded heavily by tech and finance elites, Rockbridge has since evolved into a powerful, behind-the-scenes machine — running analytics operations, online campaigns, and even film production — credited with helping Trump’s reelection and elevating Vance to the vice presidency. Its ultimate goal: to fuse business influence, working-class populism, and elite strategy into a lasting political movement.
Buskirk’s empire now spans multiple ventures that blur business and politics. His 1789 Capital firm — co-founded with investor Omeed Malik and joined by Donald Trump Jr. — markets “patriotic capitalism,” investing in “anti-woke” companies aligned with the Trump agenda, from rare-earth mining and defense AI startups to Tucker Carlson’s new media ventures. The group’s luxury offshoot, Executive Branch, is a $500,000-a-year D.C. club for Trump-aligned business elites. Buskirk calls this model “brains plus money plus base” — a deliberate effort to coordinate donors, intellectuals, and grassroots voters into one power ecosystem. Critics, however, see an emerging American oligarchy—unelected business elites gaining direct sway over government policy, including favorable deregulation and dropped investigations into affiliated firms.
Philosophically, Buskirk promotes what he calls “aristopopulism” — the idea that an industrious, patriotic elite should steward the nation’s destiny while remaining rooted in working-class interests. Drawing on historical analogies like Florence’s Renaissance guilds or the Scottish Enlightenment’s “Select Society,” he envisions Rockbridge as a 21st-century engine for national renewal. Supporters hail him as a pragmatic strategist who’s building durable MAGA infrastructure; detractors warn he’s replacing Trump’s populist promise with a closed circle of wealth and influence. Either way, Buskirk has succeeded in turning MAGA from a personality cult into an organized, elite-backed movement prepared to dominate American conservatism for years to come.
Summary of: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/11/04/chris-buskirk-maga-vance-post-trump/