His business-associate source making the claim that Thiel had been hopeful that Donald Every Grievance At Once Trump’s 2016 Republican nomination would shift the party from “fake cultural wars” to “our economic decline” makes one wonder about the sanity of all involved. You have to be a special kind of anti-visionary to look at Donald Trump and think he’ll be the one to do away with his party’s obsession with spite and cultural revenge, and yet Thiel, alleged captain of industry, not only sold himself on that theory but followed it up by promoting even harder-right cranks after Trump failed to deliver.
Honestly, this feels like a shopped story. This feels like two of Peter Thiel’s close acquaintances went to a reporter with the story Peter feels super down right now and is questioning whether he wants to play in politics at all, along with—surprise!—a real big hint on what Thiel would like to see the party focus on if they want to see his wheelbarrows of money again.
Says Reuters: “He believes Republicans are making a mistake in focusing on cultural flashpoints and should be more concerned with spurring U.S. innovation – a major issue for him – and competing with China, the business associate said.”
Oh, so there we go then. Thiel, who is gay but still a Republican because money, is not happy that Republican candidates appear to be making vitriolic attacks on LGBTQ Americans the core of their 2024 campaigns. What he wants instead is Republican candidates who will “spur” his innovation, possibly through extremely targeted tax cuts or by putting the screws to foreign imports.
Indeed, say the sources, Thiel might still change his mind and choose some candidates to support in 2024. The source who “knows Thiel personally” even suggests that this new Thiel aversion to funding candidates doesn’t necessarily apply to candidates “who have worked for him,” such as Masters.
What we have here, then, is not necessarily a story about how a despondent Thiel is giving up on supporting Republican candidates because Republican extremism has gotten much worse than he thought it would. It sounds more like a story in which a conservative billionaire kingmaker is placing an order for Republican candidates willing to shut up a bit about those issues while instead promoting an economic and tax reform program centered around giving Peter Thiel more money.
If Thiel had serious reservations about supporting far-right, hoax-backing anti-democratic brickthrowers, he wouldn’t reliably be finding the worst of the bunch to write checks to. We’ll see, then, whether the megadonor’s new reluctance actually makes it to election season. I have a feeling the cynics will win this one hands-down.
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The past week seems to have packed in a month’s worth of news. Markos and Kerry tackle it all, from Joe Biden’s big announcement to Tucker Carlson’s early retirement from Fox News.
