Silicon Valley rebel breaks silence on Trump: He’s one Republican who’s not a ‘zombie’

by WorldTribune Staff, August 29, 2018

A tech billionaire who found himself ostracized by many in Silicon Valley after supporting Donald Trump’s candidacy in 2016 says he is sticking by the president.

Peter Thiel speaks at the 2016 Republican National Convention. / EPA

“I fully understand why people think of President Trump as a rude, mean person,” said Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies. “But I think that’s often better than telling beautiful lies about the way the country is working.”

Thiel said he was drawn to Trump’s candidacy because it took on what Thiel considers politics’ biggest problem – political correctness.

“I got to meet a lot of people running for president on the U.S. Republican side in 2016 and they all felt like zombies,” Theil said during an Aug. 27 event on entrepreneurship in Sao Paulo, Brazil. “They couldn’t say anything different other than programmed ideological soundbites.”

Trump, Thiel said, is “a very healthy corrective to that.”

Bloomberg noted that “Thiel’s tight relationship with Trump irked many in Silicon Valley, some of whom ditched deals with Thiel and groups related to Thiel because of his politics.”

Thiel responded by calling out Silicon Valley for being intolerant to diverse opinions and moving his residence and his personal investment funds to Los Angeles.

Thiel added that “with all the flaws, all the challenges the Trump administration’s had, I believe it was incredibly important to articulate certain things about how our political institutions and our society were not working as well as before.”


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