What Peter Thiel Really Thinks of Donald Trump

Donald Trump and Peter Thiel

In a Vanity Fair report on Peter Thiel dinners, Nick Bilton writes:

During a recent interview with Fox Nation’s Uncommon Knowledge, Thiel told host Peter Robinson that he plans to endorse Trump for president in 2020. But according to two people who have spoken with him recently, he doesn’t think Trump is all that bright, an opinion he shares with many of his tech and Hollywood peers. When he has dined Trump (which apparently happened a couple of weeks ago), it wasn’t the typical conversation of a Thiel dinner, and instead focused on a whole lot of straw-man arguments about unimportant topics, and even gossip about other people, especially media personalities, whom Thiel has little interest in.

Three people who have spoken to Thiel recently told me that there is absolutely no way he sees Trump as an intellectual peer. As one of Thiel’s former dinner guests said, “Trump is a means to an end for Thiel. As human beings, they couldn’t possibly be more different,” the person observed. “I can imagine that a Trump–Thiel dinner is the exact opposite of how Thiel likes to dine: Thiel likes to opine and entertain differing viewpoints; Trump only wants to talk about himself.” 

-RW