Billionaire venture capital investor Peter Thiel promised to not give any money to Republican candidates for office in 2024 election, according to an interview published in The Atlantic Thursday.
Thiel said he consented to a series of long interviews with the author in part so that he could publicly make the pledge and therefore be more likely to honor it.
He hoped the article would “lock me into not giving any money to Republican politicians in 2024.”
“There’s always a chance I might change my mind,” Thiel continued. “But by talking to you, it makes it hard for me to change my mind. My husband doesn’t want me to give them any more money, and he’s right. I know they’re going to be pestering me like crazy. And by talking to you, it’s going to lock me out of the cycle for 2024.”
Thiel, who made his riches in part as a co-founder of PayPal
PYPL,
and Palantir
PLTR,
and an early investor in Facebook
META,
has been a high profile supporter of Republican candidates in recent cycles. In 2022, he gave $10 million each to Blake Masters, who failed to win as a Republican Senate candidate and to GOP Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who won his race.
He also made waves when he endorsed Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election and gave a speech that year at the Republican National Convention. He also donated $1.25 million to Trump’s successful bid for the presidency.
Thiel said that while he doesn’t regret supporting Trump, his administration was a disappointment.
“Voting for Trump was a like a not very articulate scream for help,” he said. “There were a lot of things I got wrong. It was crazier than I thought. It was more dangerous than I thought. They couldn’t get the most basic pieces of government to work.”
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