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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.

10 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 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.

    4. 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.

    5. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  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 *