News/Commentary

Tarlov says SVB bank was basically a MAGA bank, not a woke bank, cites Trump donor

March 15, 2023 | | Print Article

One of Fox News’ resident liberals made the questionable claim on Tuesday that Silicon Valley Bank wasn’t a “woke” bank — it was a “MAGA” bank.

Speaking on Fox News’s “The Five,” liberal Jessica Tarlov cited billionaire conservative Peter Thiel’s influence at SVB as proof.

“Peter Thiel was one of the top five biggest VCs there. Huge backer of Donald Trump, 2016, 2020. In 2022, he resigned from the board of META. He was one of the original board members so that he could back J.D. Vance, to join a Trump-aligned PAC for J.D. Vance and Blake Masters,” she said.

“It basically was [a MAGA bank],” she added.

As for all the “woke” activity that’d been seen at SVB, Tarlov bizarrely attributed that to the company’s white employees.

“If you look at who’s running that bank, it’s a bunch of white guys and three women. And the jobs that those three women have, by the way, are roles that traditionally women have H.R., the CMO, and then the chief risk officer, who obviously was not doing a great job there,” she said.

It was an interesting argument, for sure, but it seemed lacking in evidence. While it’s true Thiel was a participating venture capitalist, it’s not like he’d been a member of its so-called “diverse,” Democrat-loving board.

“SVB touted its diversity … noting in its 2022 proxy statement that 45% of its board are women, in addition to ‘other diversity’ like ‘one black’ member, ‘one LGQBT+’ and ‘two veterans,'” according to the New York Post.

“They donated to Obama, Clinton and President Biden, and to local Democratic congressional reps including Pelosi — as well as political action committees for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), a longtime member of the powerful Senate Banking Committee,” the Post reported.

Speaking with the outlet, one insider source said, “Everyone knew it was the go-to bank for woke CEOs. They knew they were aligned politically. The companies SVB loaned money to all had a woke agenda.”

Take the board’s director, Kate Mitchell, a 64-year-old Clinton mega-donor. The Post notes that Mitchell is such a leftist that following former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory, she visited a shrine in Kyoto for spiritual guidance.

“I prayed for me and us to get beyond our grieving and shock and to figure out how to engage and listen to what happened and come back together,” she told CNBC at the time.

Moreover, prior to the 2016 election, she’d celebrated how 97 percent of technology company employees’ donations were going to then-Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“Ninety-seven percent support of Clinton is mind-blowing and really suggests that we’re pounding the table. We think her business policies are going to be friendlier,” she said.

Next is board member Elizabeth Burr, a 61-year-old who reportedly said in an interview two years ago that she thought her job role was to force SVB to embrace so-called “diversity.”

Then there’s Garen K. Staglin, a 61-year-old who owns a vineyard that lies just 15 minutes away from one owned by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband.

“He gave the Biden Victory Fund $10,000 in 2020, sent $54,000 to Clinton’s Hillary Victory Fund in 2016 (on top of $25,000 the previous year), backed Obama with $35,800 in 2011 and gave the Democratic National Committee $10,000 last year,” according to the Post.

The “most politically connected” member of the board is reportedly Mary J. Miller, a 47-year-old who served as former President Barack Obama’s secretary for domestic finance at the Treasury Department from March 2012 to September 2014.

“In her role, she implemented the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation that set the regulatory framework in which SVB operates — meaning she would have expert insight into the thinking of regulators dealing with the now-shuttered bank,” the Post notes.

With all this in mind, does this sound like a “MAGA” bank?

The same kind of thing can be seen at Signature Bank, which has also collapsed. Indeed, last October the bank’s chair, Scott Shay, even hosted a pronouns webinar.

In the webinar, he and gender issues consultant Finn Brigham lectured bank employees about the need to “Know Your Pronouns.”

In fact, Shay reportedly began the webinar by bragging that Signature Bank was “the first bank in the United States to have an openly gay man on our board.”

Conservatives say it’s not hard to see how and why these “woke” banks failed …

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Vivek Saxena
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