I try to avoid writing about politics because that tends to end in yelling and unwanted attention. However, I just couldn't ignore Peter Thiel's views on the upcoming US election.
Thiel has repeated several times that he won't be giving any money to Donald Trump's campaign this time around, not that he wasn't going to vote for him. In fact, I'm fairly certain that, at one point, he even said that he'd vote for whoever the Republican nominee was. However, that didn't stop everyone from losing their minds online after he said he was going to vote for, you guessed it, Trump.😲 Usually, the content matters more than the form, but here, I think how Thiel said it is a lot more important than the basic meaning of his words. This happened at the Aspen Ideas Festival and you can see Thiel's full interview here. I'm more interested in the beginning, when he was asked about his opinion of the election. By the way, this was when Joe Biden was still running.
So, he'll vote for Trump if you put a gun to his head, he thinks Trump is going to win, but he also thinks that whoever wins voters will have buyer's remorse, and referred to Trump's presidency as a 'clown show'. Of course, he added that that's something people might call it. Hmm, are these 'people' by any chance anxiety-riddled, obscenely wealthy, German-born venture capitalists?🙄 Then again, Thiel looks like someone who might like clowns, so maybe he meant it as a compliment?🤔 I thought people would make fun of it and even turn it into a meme or something. Instead, I found a bunch of tweets of people talking about Thiel's 'enthusiastic support' for Trump. Either everyone has a very odd idea of 'enthusiastic' or they have no reading comprehension. Given how many people talked about deactivating their PayPal accounts in protest, I'm inclined to think the latter. Still, it’s a testament to how much Thiel is universally loathed that everyone was too blinded by hatred of him to laugh at Trump’s presidency being called a clown show.
Thiel offered his unique brand of 'enthusiastic support' again at the All-In Summit
This time, he refrained from saying 'clown show', but repeated the buyer's remorse bit. And this with Vance as VP candidate. He also said that even though he wasn't going to give the campaign money, he would support them in every other way. By telling everyone that they'll regret voting for Trump? Naturally, since he also said the Democrats would try to 'fortify' (= steal) the election, no one noticed. Other highlights from this talk include: showing his ignorance of other countries' voting methods when he should've focused on voter ID laws and voter registration, which are a lot stricter than in the US; criticizing China's working conditions and then offering Vietnam as an alternative in a way that sounds like he's saying 'See? You don't need China. There's quasi-slavery over there, too!'; saying that AI isn't profitable yet; and saying that student debt should be forgiven, which is something the Republicans seem to be very much against.
So, what exactly is Thiel's goal here?🤔 Is he secretly funding Trump's campaign through Truth Social like he said people might do at Aspen and this is all an attempt to make people think he's not involved?😯 But why would he talk about that then? Was he hoping people would think that if he were doing it, he wouldn't be drawing attention to it? Or maybe he was feeling overconfident and thought the populace was too dumb to figure it out?😒 Yes, Vance publicly asked him for money, but that could’ve been just a way to keep up the charade. Because if he's really not giving them money, how are Trump and Vance reacting to these shows of support? Do they call him afterwards asking him WTF he meant by 'clown show' and 'buyer's remorse' and begging him to shut up? Is he even aware of what he's saying?🤔 Does he really believe he's being supportive?😯 Or, when it's all finished, he goes to his secret supervillain lair where he goes through the online chaos he unleashed and laughs maniacally to himself at all the cries of Evil Nazi, Tech Fascist, Serial Sugar Baby Killer, Russian Asset, and Boycott PayPal?😯😯
I really can't decide between intricately planned tech fascist takeover of the US government or simply a bored rich dude having a laugh at everyone's expense secure in the knowledge that he has the resources to leave the country when everything goes to hell.😐
By Danforth