How Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley funded the rise of JD Vance
Financial Times
The PayPal co-founder’s influence has marked Vance’s career, seeding him millions of dollars to launch Narya, before funding a successful campaign to win a US Senate seat in 2022. https://www.ft.com/content/408fb864-5831-4b1d-beef-fd1966b3beed
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Mother Jones:
Donald
Trump Was Peter Thiel’s Most Successful Investment
Now, you won’t hear about this in such explicit terms when Trump officially accepts the Republican presidential nomination. But Hulk Hogan’s unexpected appearance on Thursday, shortly before Trump takes the stage, makes the message unmissable. In fact, Hogan’s appearance, which would make him the third Thiel acolyte to be on stage at the RNC this week, is an effective middle finger to critics. In 2004, Peter Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook, money that quickly gave way to an unthinkable fortune for the right-wing billionaire. But it turns out that it was Thiel’s donation to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign—and his willingness to speak in support of Trump at the Republican National Convention at the time—that has produced perhaps the biggest dividends, transforming him into a genuine oligarch of American politics. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/peter-thiel-donald-trump-vance-hulk-hogan/
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The
billionaire who fueled JD Vance's rapid rise to the Trump VP spot — analysis
At Yale Law, Vance attended a talk by Thiel about technological stagnation and the decline of American elites. "He saw these two trends … as connected," Vance later wrote about his first encounter with Thiel in a 2020 blog post in the Catholic journal The Lamp Magazine. "If technological innovation were actually driving real prosperity, our elites wouldn't feel increasingly competitive with one another over a dwindling number of prestigious outcomes." Vance called Thiel's talk "the most significant moment" of his time at Yale. After Yale Law and a short stint at a corporate law firm, Vance moved to San Francisco to work as a venture capitalist. Thiel hired him to join his tech fund, Mithril Capital — all while Vance continued to work on his memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy." In 2019 Vance moved back to his native Ohio, where he started his own venture capitalist firm, heavily backed by Thiel and other elite tech investors. By then he was flirting with a potential run for elective office, and Thiel was encouraging him. By the time Vance finally took the plunge in 2021, he had been transformed from one of Trump's most vitriolic critics (he once called Trump "an American Hitler" in a private message to a friend) into one of his most effective defenders and fundraisers. Thiel brought Vance to his very first meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in February 2021, according to the New York Times. In the 2022 campaign, Thiel made $15 million in donations to Vance's SuperPAC, Protect Ohio Values, a staggering amount from a single individual for a Senate race, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks the influence of money on politics. But that wasn't all. Thiel also steered at least $200,000 to Vance's super PAC from a group he controlled called Per Aspera Policy, according to the Kansas City Star and OpenSecrets. Per Aspera is a dark money nonprofit, which means that its spending is used to influence elections, but it is not required to disclose its donors. In the same cycle, Vance's super PAC also received hundreds of thousands in contributions from the Mercer, Uihlein and Lindner families, all staples of mega-conservative political giving in recent years. It is not entirely clear what Thiel may have wanted in exchange for his largesse. (Thiel declined comment for this story.) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-trump-vp-peter-thiel-billionaire/
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Opinion
| With J.D. Vance as VP, Peter Thiel would finally have Trump right where he
wants him
J.D. Vance, a
Peter Thiel protégé, could help Trump reshape Silicon Valley's politics as VP.
Before Thiel announced that he
was taking a break from democracy, he introduced Vance to David Sacks, his old PayPal
Mafia colleague. Sacks promptly donated $1 million to a pro-Vance Super PAC and
hosted a fundraiser for him. Sacks and Vance later worked together to organize Trump’s only San
Francisco campaign fundraising event, aimed at nudging the candidate to further
embrace and deregulate cryptocurrency. Thiel has reportedly made more than $1.8 billion from
Bitcoin and other currencies.
Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time Thiel and his cronies
have tried to buy an outsize role in Trump’s legislative agenda. After all, it
was Thiel who rescued Trump’s 2016 campaign with a $1.25 million donation a week after the “Access
Hollywood” tape, in the apparent hope of gaining influence in a future
administration.
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Maddow:
"Thiel then pumped $15 million into a JD Vance for Senate race in Ohio that Mr. Vance otherwise had absolutely no shot at. It was the largest amount ever given to boost a single Senate candidate ever. And it worked. Peter Thiel created a Senate candidate out of whole cloth, especially once Thiel personally introduced Vance, personally introduced Vance to Donald Trump, literally walked JD Vance into Donald Trump’s office, and helped convince Trump to endorse Vance.
"Despite the fact that Vance, just a few years earlier, had called Trump reprehensible and called him immoral and absurd, who had wondered if Trump was, quote, ‘America’s Hitler.’ Nevertheless, holding Peter Thiel’s hand was enough to get JD Vance, Donald Trump’s endorsement. And now, just 18 months after Peter Thiel put him in the Senate. Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel has now got his guy, JD Vance, onto Trump’s ticket as his running mate."
Blogged by Kay Ebeling
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