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Billionaire Tech Investor Peter Thiel To Back Trump As GOP Presidential Candidate (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the influential-leaders dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Billionaire tech investor, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal Peter Thiel has agreed to back Trump as a California delegate in Cleveland this summer. He will be one of 172 selected Golden State delegates headed to the Republican National Convention. His support for Trump contrasts many other leaders, like A16z's Marc Andreessen who has voiced his distaste for Trump, tweeting: "OH: Trump is like an Internet comments section decided to run for President." In the past, Thiel, who is a libertarian at heart, has donated $2.6 million to Ron Paul in 2012 and added $2 million to a Super PAC backing Ted Cruz's former running mate ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina. He also gave $250,000 to Ted Cruz's bid for Texas attorney general in 2009.

24 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Lucas was right.... by beheaderaswp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause..."

    Enjoy the slide down my dear countrymen. It's Mr. Toad's wild ride from here on out. Enjoy the political litmus tests and loyalty oaths...

    --
    Another consultant who stuck it out.

    "We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
    1. Re:Lucas was right.... by sittingnut · · Score: 5, Insightful

      you think liberty was alive in a country that had clintons, bushes, obama, etc running it for decades?
      no wonder you live in movie delusions.

    2. Re:Lucas was right.... by msauve · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No more family dynasties. I'm done with Bushes, Clintons, Kennedys, Roosevelts, Harrisons, Adams, Madison/Taylors. With 320000000 people, Clinton and Trump (and the other runners) are the best the major parties can come up with? That says a lot about party politics in the US.

      Time for third parties to gain influence, as a step away from party politics.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    3. Re:Lucas was right.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Uh, yeah, the thunderous applause happened in 2008 for Obama.
      At least with Trump you aren't automatically called a racist and deemed wrong simply for disagreeing with him, which is why he'd be better than Hillary "war against women" Clinton.

    4. Re: Lucas was right.... by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Look at the energy plank in Sanders' platform. No natural gas, no nukes. Even the Commies supported industrial civilization, not going back to the Stone Age.

    5. Re: Lucas was right.... by gcswt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sanders is a magic bullet that lazy Leftists want to shoot and try to change everything from the top down. Real change comes local and works its way up. If you like Sanders ideas, you need to push them at a local level and change the culture there. You need to actually have conversations with moderates and Republicans and convince them it's the way to go, or god forbid, adjust your own ideas to gain support. The young always flock to a candidate that says all these magical things while calling everybody else names or tearing them down. It's hilarious to see the youth throw their votes away every cycle.

    6. Re:Lucas was right.... by thrich81 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The Roosevelts were kind of an anti-dynasty. The Theodore Roosevelt side of the family didn't support Franklin in his run for President, according to some PBS special I saw last year.. Also Theodore was a Republican and Franklin was a Democrat. They were among the best presidents of the 20th century, though, arguably #1 and #2. I'll take that dynasty.

    7. Re: Lucas was right.... by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sanders is a step along the road - not a shortcut to the end. It's a long road, and it will be a hike, not a quick skip and a jump. The problem is that too many young and overly idealistic sorts don't get that. Even if Sanders won, it's still far from over. You need to elect people who share the same bent at the local, state, and congressional levels too. Look at how the right wing took control of the Republican party - it certainly wasn't done simply by electing a president, it was done by electing candidates for Congress and elsewhere in primaries, getting involved in local party politics, and showing that they were a faction that couldn't be ignored. Eventually winning the party's presidential primary was almost a foregone conclusion, because in this cycle even the "moderate" ones had already veered hard right.to begin with.

    8. Re:Lucas was right.... by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      you think liberty was alive in a country that had clintons, bushes, obama, etc running it for decades?
      no wonder you live in movie delusions.

      What's your problem with Obama? It's not like he's from a political family dynasty.

      Quite the contrary. If a black guy named "Barack Hussein Obama" who had a muslim father can become the president of the United States, it gives me hope that freedom and democracy are alive and well in the US.

    9. Re: Lucas was right.... by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Interesting

      So why do you wanna be stuck in the 19th century (fossil fuels) and the early 20th (nukes) ? Sander's plank is that we, in the 21st century, should be using 21st century technology - progress in other words. Literally the opposite of what you're accusing him off.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  2. We need to help republicans... by martiniturbide · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...to have more decent candidates.

    1. Re:We need to help republicans... by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In a free market you can only expect sellers to rise to the level of their competition. Both parties are pushing absolute garbage because the voters don't demand better.

      Compared to someone like Cruz, I think we lucked out with Trump.

    2. Re:We need to help republicans... by gcswt · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Our election system isn't a free market. It's a market with only two sellers that control all the voting districts, funding & campaign spending rules. We need a voting system that lets us reject who is on the ballot rather than be forced to choose from two political monopolies.

    3. Re:We need to help republicans... by butzwonker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Perhaps both of you got it wrong. The US election system is a free market, it's just not the voters who buy the candidates (obviously) but rather the lobbyists.

    4. Re: We need to help republicans... by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Come now - Bernie is literally the LEAST Zionist candidate to ever run for president. His views are more in-line with the majority of Jews in America -which these days is decidedly anti-Zionist (at least the younger generation). Hell he had a major bouhaha in New York over that. While every other candidate showed up at the dinner for the Jewish Nationalists and pledged the absolute and unconditional support for Israel no matter what - Bernie refrained from going and made a speech saying support for Israel *cannot* be unconditional and should be made conditional on Israel accepting human rights requirements. So that an outcome can be reached which may actually be stable.

      Bernie is literally the only candidate in the US since the very creation of Israel to EVER suggest that support for Israel be contingent on them not committing atrocities. That makes him the least zionist candidate the US has had since 1948.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  3. I'm far older than most of you on /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    so I feel I can make an observation. I've noticed over the last 30 or so years that people have lost the art of public discourse. No one can disagree anymore without resorting to hateful vitriol, slinging insults, rioting in the streets. I don't get it. It's one thing to have a sense of justice, but quite another to act out.

    People confuse freedom with permissiveness. Freedom is the ordered pursuit of the good (or at least that's how I was taught). These days, if someone votes differently, acts differently, they are a bigot, a hater, a misogynist. It's time to restore decent public discourse.

    Peter has a right to back whomever he wishes, despite what we may think. We don't have to lambast him for his God-given rights. You would not want people to lambast you for your choices.

    1. Re:I'm far older than most of you on /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I absolutely expect that public figures get lambasted for their political positions. That's part of freedom: you get held responsible for your choices, particularly if you make them PUBLIC.

      Public discourse isn't about being nice. Or tolerant. It's about ideas, and if your ideas suck, then I get to call you out on that.

      I'm not interested in people saying "Oh, Mr. Trump, that idea isn't really a good one. Maybe you might want to change it a little, to make it more nice." I'm interested in calling a spade a spade, and a bigot a bigot. Because that's what much of the rhetoric absolutely is: blatant bigotry.

      We've tried to cover up bigotry behind nice phrases and accommodations for too long. Better for it to be out in the open than hidden in niceties.

    2. Re: I'm far older than most of you on /. by Pumpkin+Tuna · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Bull. Most of the morality and decency we have in Western civilization comes from the enlightenment and is in SPITE of Christianity, not because of it.

  4. Pretty disingenuous to call Thiel a Libertarian... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... if he's backing Cruz, Trump, Fiorina, and even Ron Paul.

    Nothing about the first three's positions have anything to do with Libertarian beliefs. The first is in favor of autocratic theocracy, the second is simply a demagogue with no actual beliefs other than saying whatever pops into his brain at the moment, and the third is a straight up Establishment Republican in favor of lots of regulation (just not on big business), no business taxes, and significant social dictates. Ron Paul only looks like a Libertarian; a closer examination of his policies reveal nothing more than an anti-internationalist foreign policy, long discredited economic views (a Gold Standard, really?), welded to a George Wallace view of social issues.

    Thiel's not a Libertarian. He's just a garden-variety Big Money Republican. He might be an interesting tech person, but his politics are pretty reprehensible.

  5. Ah yes... by SolemnLord · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Peter "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" Thiel.

    There's a man whose opinions I'm going to care about.

  6. They got the best one possible by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Republicans got a candidate that in the general election will bring in a huge number of Democratic votes - one poll shows Trump at 2x the support of minority voters as any other Republican candidate (like Romney) has had.

    Yes Trump will lose some women, but more because Hillary is running than because of Trump - and that doesn't really matter because again polls show Hillary losing as many male votes as Trump loses female. That part is a wash.

    Lastly Trump is finally a candidate who is not a political insider like Hillary.

    The Democrats had their chance to elect someone as good, Sanders, but they choose to go with the most ancient rapist-protecting white person they could find, so they are toast in the general election.

    The very first debate will seal the deal with Trump dancing verbal rings around Hillary.

    Some Republicans right now say they will not vote for Trump but Hillary is a rather powerful counterforce for that notion...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:They got the best one possible by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Hillary is probably the only candidate who could make someone like Trump able to win the election. She has even worse negatives and has just as many people who will never vote for her.

      We've somehow ended up with the two candidates with the highest negatives from people in general. For the Dems, that's because of their "superdelegates" originally supposedly setup as a quota system for minorities, but which coincidentally turned into ensuring the (D) party elite continue to control everything. For the Reps, that's because the candidates not name Trump split the non-Trump votes for too long across too many states because some guys named Rubio and (especially) Kasich refused to face reality and there are enough populist/celebrity (R) primary voters to form a sizable minority for anyone who tells them what they want to hear while pissing off their enemies in the left.

      Bottom line, I'm voting for who will select the next Supreme Court nominee. Trump will make a deal with a GOP Senate if he wins. Hillary will push another Obama-style appointee (albeit a rich one who can bribe her foundation?) through the Senate with her "mandate" if she wins.

      --
      The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
    2. Re:They got the best one possible by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm not actually sure which bias direction you're accusing me of, but nothing in my post was intended to convey that I don't have an opinion on the election. Quite the opposite and mostly very negative toward the two currently leading candidates.

      As far as the superdelegates... their purpose is widely suggested by party leaders to be for racial/minority diversity (So minorities don't have to compete with the elite party leaders for delegate spots anymore), but there are very few people who actually believe that.

      WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (D) Congress: Unpledged delegates are our party leaders and elected officials who actually can make up their mind at any point and change their mind. We separate those so that we don’t have elected officials and party leaders running against the activists, but want to make sure are helping to diversify our convention. That is something we take great pride in. A Native-American cancer survivor. Those people should have an opportunity to be delegates, too. And they shouldn’t have to deal with very well-known officials and party leaders. And that’s why we separate them.

      or

      Kendra Cotton (D) political director: Democrats have quotas for gender and preferences for minorities to become pledged delegates, but they don’t give them too much power.

      --
      The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
  7. How is it ... by garry_g · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... that with all Trump is known for, and who is supporting him, that he has a large following in the low-income parts of the people? The myth of "trickle down economics" has been shown to not work, as proven by the US economics, as well as world wide, with the gap between the wealth of the wealthy and that of the poor ever widening ... how can ANYBODY (apart from the very well off) vote for someone standing for the policies that Trump (and, for that matter, most of the other GOP candidates)??

    Just wondering ...