In the years that followed, Shanahan transformed her public image, emerging as a vocal supporter and wealthy booster for the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. She donated millions of dollars to the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a critic of vaccines, and joined his ticket as his vice presidential running mate.
Soto is also a supporter of MAHA, a movement that has found currency with wellness influencers whose views overlap on issues around food, motherhood, and pharmaceuticals. “I support it because I feel like women are especially gaslit about their health,” Soto told The Free Press. On TikTok, Instagram, and X, Soto’s content mixes MAGA politics with wellness tips and photos of home gyms, lux vacations, and parties. She advocates for eating meat to stave off depression, taking magnesium over getting therapy, and ridding your home of things like scented candles and sunscreen, which, she claims, without evidence, cause cancer. It’s unclear who her posts are geared toward: She has low follower counts, by influencer standards, and recently made her Instagram and X pages private.
Last May, Soto attended an event at the White House to mark the release of the MAHA Commission report about the state of US health. The room was high energy, mostly filled with influencers who spend their days talking online about pesticides and processed foods—the kinds of people who have traditionally felt shut out of mainstream health-policy conversations, a person who was there explains to me. The attendees clamored to take selfies and generate content. Soto later shared photos from the event on social media, some showing her standing alongside billionaire venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson and his wife, Genevieve. Soto had spent election night with the couple—both women donned matching MAHA T-shirts for the occasion.
While Brin makes few public comments about politics, Soto is overt, seeming to relish in shock factor. “I remember knowing very quickly from my conversation that she was very, very keen on the president,” a person who spoke with her at a party last year tells me. She has defended the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, criticised Islam, warned about the dangers of “trans ideology,” and the “disease” of Liberalism. In Trumpian style, she routinely attacks people she doesn’t agree with, branding California governor Gavin Newsom a “piece of shit” and describing Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Matt Mahan as having the “personality of a wooden spoon.” (Mahan, seizing on the moment, responded publicly that wooden spoons are “tough, trusted, and built to handle the heat.”)
Silicon Valley leaders’ rightward shift under Trump is now well-documented, but, according to one researcher who has studied it, also widely misunderstood.
