# Who's Who Ten people explain more of this site than anyone else. They are the names the most pages link to, and between them they connect the White House, the courts, the money and Silicon Valley. Start with them, then work outward to the next ring. For the full roster of more than 3,000 people, see the [[People Hub]]. For a guided tour of the whole site, see [[Start Here]]. ## The ten ### The principal **[[Donald Trump]]** — The 45th and 47th President, the figure around whom the modern right's media, money, legal strategy and movements have reorganized since 2015. Connects to: [[Trump Family]] · [[Second Trump Administration]] · [[Trump Corruption News Log]] ### The operators **[[Stephen Miller]]** — White House deputy chief of staff for policy in both Trump terms and the driving force behind the administration's immigration agenda. Connects to: [[Tanton Network]] · [[US Immigration Timeline]] **[[Russell Vought]]** — Director of the Office of Management and Budget in both Trump terms and a leading architect of plans to bring the federal bureaucracy under direct presidential control. Connects to: [[Project 2025]] · [[Schedule F]] · [[How Federal Money Moves]] **[[JD Vance]]** — The 50th Vice President, a former Ohio senator whose political rise was funded, mentored and launched by Peter Thiel's network. Connects to: [[Peter Thiel]] · [[National Conservatism]] ### The strategist **[[Steve Bannon]]** — The former Breitbart chairman and 2017 White House chief strategist who fused economic nationalism and culture-war grievance into the MAGA program; host of War Room. Connects to: [[Breitbart News]] · [[MAGA]] · [[Media Ecosystem]] ### The money and the courts **[[Leonard Leo]]** — The Federalist Society co-chairman who controls a $1.6 billion-plus political network that reshaped the federal judiciary and funds conservative media and advocacy. Connects to: [[Federalist Society]] · [[DonorsTrust]] · [[Dark Money Ecosystem]] ### The Tech Right **[[Peter Thiel]]** — The PayPal and Palantir co-founder and Founders Fund investor who is the central node linking Silicon Valley money to defense tech and right-wing politics. Connects to: [[Palantir]] · [[Founders Fund]] · [[JD Vance]] **[[Elon Musk]]** — The SpaceX and Tesla chief, among the world's richest people, who led DOGE in 2025 and sits at the junction of tech money, government contracts and politics. Connects to: [[SpaceX]] · [[DOGE]] · [[Defense Tech Ecosystem]] **[[Marc Andreessen]]** — The Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz co-founder whose Techno-Optimist Manifesto helped frame Silicon Valley's rightward turn; a major crypto-political donor. Connects to: [[Techno-Optimist Manifesto]] · [[American Dynamism]] · [[Crypto-Political Machine]] **[[Curtis Yarvin]]** — The blogger, writing as Mencius Moldbug, whose case for replacing democracy with CEO-style rule became the Dark Enlightenment and spread through the tech right. Connects to: [[Dark Enlightenment]] · [[Mencius Moldbug]] · [[The Tech Right Hub]] ## The next ring **Money** - [[Charles Koch]] — Longtime head of Koch Industries and architect of the Koch political network. - [[Robert Mercer]] — Hedge-fund billionaire whose money backed Breitbart, Cambridge Analytica and the 2016 Trump campaign. - [[Rebekah Mercer]] — Runs the Mercer family's political operation and decides where its money goes. - [[Miriam Adelson]] — One of the largest individual political donors in American history. - [[Jeff Yass]] — Co-founder of Susquehanna International Group and among the largest individual donors in U.S. politics. **Media** - [[Rupert Murdoch]] — Founder of News Corp and Fox Corporation, who created Fox News in 1996. - [[Tucker Carlson]] — Former Fox News host, now an independent media figure with his own network. **Ideas and institutions** - [[Kevin Roberts]] — President of the Heritage Foundation and the architect of Project 2025. - [[Christopher Rufo]] — Manhattan Institute fellow who led the campaign against critical race theory. **Courts and law** - [[Clarence Thomas]] — The longest-serving justice on the current Supreme Court and its most conservative member. - [[John Eastman]] — Law professor who wrote the memo arguing the vice president could reject electoral votes in January 2021. - [[Cleta Mitchell]] — Election lawyer on Trump's January 2, 2021 call to Georgia's secretary of state, who then built the Election Integrity Network. **In government** - [[Mike Johnson]] — Speaker of the House since October 2023. - [[Pete Hegseth]] — Secretary of Defense and former Fox News host. - [[Susie Wiles]] — White House chief of staff and co-chair of the 2024 Trump campaign. - [[Marco Rubio]] — Secretary of State since 2025, formerly a senator from Florida. - [[David Sacks]] — Venture capitalist and former White House AI and crypto czar, now co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. **Tech and defense** - [[Alex Karp]] — CEO of Palantir since its founding in 2003. - [[Palmer Luckey]] — Oculus founder and co-founder of the defense company Anduril. - [[Joe Lonsdale]] — Palantir co-founder and founder of the venture firm 8VC. ## How this list was chosen The ten are the people with the most links pointing to their pages from elsewhere on the site, a rough measure of how many other stories run through them. The next ring is a curated selection of people who matter for one part of the story: the money, the media, the courts or the government.