Undeniably curious, ecumenical in his taste in people, scourge of Gawker, the tech billionaire has captivated some of his ideological opponents with a series of TED Talk–like dinners. In the Los Angeles Game of Thrones, he’s Littlefinger
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 , 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.
The contempt one imagines Thiel has for Trump’s intellect leads to another question, this one about Thiel and his own political ethics. “Was Thiel ever really a supporter of Trump?” one entrepreneur who has spent time with Thiel asked me rhetorically. “Does he believe that chaos is a ladder he can climb? Thiel is playing chess while we’re playing checkers.” The entrepreneur, whose political views are essentially the opposite of Thiel’s, noted that talking to him is actually rather enjoyable.
Few who know Thiel are at all surprised at this hypocrisy—he’s known as a person who can say one thing at a private dinner, and something entirely different in a public forum. Thiel’s private dissimulations were on clear display recently during the Fox Nation interview, when Thiel talked about how much he hates politics, telling the host: “I would like us to be honest about how terrible politics is.
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