Republican vice presidential hopeful JD Vance has appealed to PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel for help financially supporting the Trump campaign, calling on the billionaire in a Financial Times interview to “get off the sidelines” despite Thiel’s earlier vow that he would stay out of the 2024 election.
Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and former President Donald Trump on July 27, 2024 in St Cloud, Minnesota.
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Key Takeaways
- In an interview The Financial Times published Thursday, Vance said Thiel is “fundamentally a conservative guy” and that it was time for him to step into the race and support the Republican ticket.
- Vance and Thiel have a long-standing relationship—Vance told The Washington Post the billionaire was a “pretty good mentor” and the Vance-funded firm Narya Capital reportedly received Thiel’s backing in 2019—and he said he plans to “keep on talking to Peter and persuading him.”
- Thiel donated about $15 million to Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign, the largest amount of money ever donated to a single Senate candidate, and supported the Trump campaign in 2016 with $1.25 million in donations.
- Despite his one-time backing of the Trump ticket, Thiel later said he turned down a $10 million request from the Trump campaign last year and added he would be backing away from political funding in 2024.
- He told The Atlantic that voting for Trump “was like a not very articulate scream for help” and that supporting him was “crazier” and “more dangerous” than he expected.
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Crucial Quote
“They couldn’t get the most basic pieces of the government to work,” Thiel said of the Trump administration. “So that was—I think that part was maybe worse than even my low expectations.”
Key Background
Trump has won the support of several of the nation’s richest people and is continuing to try to woo big-money donors, including through his recent support of the cryptocurrency community.
More than two dozen billionaires had already contributed a combined $162 million into the Trump campaign as of mid-August, including financier Andrew Beal, Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, gambling empire mogul Miriam Adelson and Diane Hendricks, America’s richest self-made woman.
Contra
Billionaire donors to the Harris campaign have given it about $116 million so far. Among them are Michael Bloomberg, Reid Hoffman and Michael Moritz.
Forbes Valuation
Thiel was ranked as 277th-richest person in the world Thursday with an estimated net worth of $9.1 billion. He co-founded PayPal, is a partner of venture capital firm Founders Fund and co-founded CIA-backed big data startup Palantir. He was also an early investor in Facebook.
