Ideas | How the Democrats took Silicon Valley into Trump’s hands

But as CEO, you can’t fire 80 percent of my team. And by the way, I have to go hire someone to replace him. And other people in other companies do the same. And I can’t hire college kids, because I’ll get more recruits. And that’s how these companies were arrested.

Douthat: All this happens in 2016, when Donald Trump becomes the Republican candidate, which we will take as a decisive break in the next step of the Silicon Valley ideology. But in 2016, the Democratic Party as an institution really began to put serious pressure on Silicon Valley. You’re talking about constraints with volatile workers, not Washington, DC, involved. Only after the election will Silicon Valley be held accountable — through Facebook, through social media, through Russian defamation, through allowing the a disgrace for Trump to be elected. That’s when the Democratic Party in Washington began to pressure tech companies. Does that seem fair?

Andreessen: This is 100 percent true. This is absolutely true. I’m just saying that I passed the definition from ’13 to ’16 because when the big Democratic machine came in and decided that we were to blame for Trump, the overwhelming response to everything, except for Peter, it’s like, “Yeah. You got us. We’re guilty. We did it.” Because, you know, it’s like wall-to-wall coverage of the news. I read The New York Times every day, and I watch MSNBC every night, and I’m like, “Oh my God, what have we done? “

Douthat: Are you watching MSNBC every night at this time, Marc?

Andreessen: Yes, every night. Brian Williams. The last honest news left in America. The man you can trust, the man you can trust to tell you the truth. At eleven or eight here, every night, it’s, “Day 167 of the Trump administration with Russian spies in the White House.”

And it was just one hour of “The World Ends.”

Douthat: Don’t you have a business to invest in?