Billionaire AOL co-founder Steve Case has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president because he thinks she "represents the best choice for the United States — and our best hope to remain the most innovative and entrepreneurial nation in the world."
"Donald Trump knows business, but his campaign has been backward-looking about the economy and oddly absent of ideas to spur growth of the jobs of the future,"
Case wrote in The Washington Post.
“Clinton understands what we need to help start businesses and will invest in education, advanced manufacturing and basic research," wrote Case, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at $1.3 billion, founded AOL in 1985.
"I think I get why Trump has been such a potent political force this year. I am well aware that millions of people are angry about their prospects and fearful that the forces of globalization and digitization have left them behind. I also recognize many are frustrated by politics and feel we need an outsider to shake things up," wrote Case, who is now focused on investing in tech outside of Silicon Valley as chairman and CEO of investment company Revolution.
"But I don’t think Trump is the answer."
Case said he's breaking his own personal rule to stay out of politics.
"I’ve been troubled by the hyper-partisanship that has defined our politics of late, and by the resulting gridlock that has set in. The United States faces many challenges, but in my view our greatest threat may not be external forces but rather our inability to work together to move our country forward," he wrote.
“I have concluded that I cannot sit on the sidelines this year,” he wrote. “At this pivotal time, the choice is too important.”
Case cited four reasons for his decision to endorse Clinton: the economy, immigration, technology and deficit control.
Trump also has been "largely silent" on technology issues, he said.
Clinton also boasts the support of Hewlett Packard executive Meg Whitman, Dallas Mavericks owner Marc Cuban, investing guru Warren Buffett and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, among others.
Meanwhile, one of those financial gurus bluntly says it doesn't really matter who wins the White House.
A Trump presidency wouldn’t be the blow to U.S. business that some fear, according to Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Bloomberg reported.
“If either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton becomes president, and one of them is very likely to be, I think Berkshire will continue to do fine,” Buffett, 85, said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.
The outcome of November’s presidential election is unlikely to change the fact that the U.S. is a “remarkably attractive place in which to conduct a business,” said Buffett, who endorsed Democrat Clinton at an Omaha rally in December. U.S. companies have enjoyed “terrific” returns on equity despite a sustained period of ultra-low interest rates, he added.
Buffett, who has criticized Trump in the past and scorned politicians’ pessimism about the country, looked past the current voter angst for a longer view of U.S. economic prospects.
“Twenty years from now, there’ll be far more output per capita in the United States in real terms than there is now. In 50 years, it’ll be far more,” Buffett said. “No presidential candidate or president is going to end that. They can shape it in ways that are good or bad, but they can’t end it.”
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).
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