Peter Thiel is (allegedly) having second thoughts.
The billionaire, right-wing megadonor reportedly has decided that he’s done bankrolling political candidates because Republicans are too focused on fighting cultural battles over abortion and transgender rights.
If true, he’s not alone. Billionaire GOP donor Thomas Peterffy similarly told the Financial Times in April that he had qualms about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ relentless crusade against abortion, drag queens and “woke” books. “I have put myself on hold,” he said. “Myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.” (A few days later, Peterffy wired $1 million to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s political action committee.)
It’s too soon to know whether this marks a widespread shift among the billionaire funders.
The trickle of discontent threatens to become a deluge. Other well-heeled GOP donors, including Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin, are also reportedly rethinking their 2024 contribution plans. Andy Sabin, chairman of Sabin Metal Corp., expressed similar reservations, telling Reuters, which also reported Thiel’s alleged decision to stop funding Republican campaigns, citing interviews with his associates, that “if it wasn’t for abortion and the book-banning, there would be no question I would support [DeSantis].”
It’s too soon to know whether this marks a widespread shift among billionaire funders, or whether it will even make any difference. Despite the qualms of the donors, Republican candidates continue to race to the right on culture issues, and the GOP donor class has a long history of getting back in line.
But all of this, if true, does raise a nagging question for Thiel and company: “What did you expect?”
For years, these donors funded candidates who rushed to embrace every meme and narrative of the culture war: from transgender bathroom etiquette and pronouns to variously nebulous and nonsensical attacks on “wokeness.” They backed candidates who publicly pledged to outlaw abortion, and supported Trumpists and Trump-like candidates who had played on racial distrust and gender anxieties.
For years, they nursed baby alligators and are now surprised to find out those baby reptiles have grown up — and are on the loose.
And Peter Thiel is apparently shocked, shocked, that those many-toothed monsters may be coming for him.
This would be the same Peter Thiel who bankrolled Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, whose political posts in a CrossFit chat room “lamented the entry of the United States into the First and Second World Wars, approvingly quoted a Nazi war criminal and pushed an isolationism that extended beyond even Mr. Trump’s,” New York Times’ Jonathan Weisman wrote.
During his failed Senate bid, Masters appeared to embrace the racist “replacement theory” and suggested that America’s gun violence problem boiled down to “Black people, frankly.” Masters suggested that all of the Army’s “woke” generals should be fired and replaced with “the most conservative colonels.”
When an interviewer asked the Thiel-funded Masters to pick a “subversive thinker” that people should know more about, he picked the “Unabomber.” “I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this,” Masters responded. “How about, like, Theodore Kaczynski?”








