Billionaire businessman Peter Thiel blasted President Donald Trump’s practice of filling his administration with loyalists, calling it an “over-correction” from his first term in office.
Speaking with German journalist Mathias Döpfner during an episode of the “MD Meets” podcast, Thiel was asked if he regretted his support for Trump in 2016.
“Ten years later, how would you analyze his achievements? How would you analyze his failures? Where do you stand today with regard to the last two years, and the first term of the president?” Döpfner asked.
Thiel said that he should be asked the same question in 10 years, but added that he wished Trump had appointed “more competent people.”
“I think the two administrations kind of made opposite mistakes,” Thiel said. “You know, the first administration brought in all these people who couldn’t agree, and it was just all this internal fighting. The second administration I think had all these — they overcorrected for the mistake of the first term with all these loyalty tests.”
Thiel added that he thinks the administration is staffed by “not very smart, but very loyal people.”
The billionaire tech entrepreneur also said that he fears voters are growing fatigued with the Republican Party, similar to the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, but this time enough for voters to turn to Democratic Socialists.
“Hillary [Clinton], the establishment person, you know, barely beat Bernie Sanders. And then again, the establishment won in 2020 and ’24. I don’t know if they’ll be able to do it in ’28. And the Democratic Party is the more important party. That is the establishment party in the U.S. The Republican Party is always a little bit the anti-establishment one. So, if the Democratic Socialists take over the Democratic Party, that’s a much bigger deal. And that is like — I don’t know — the end of America.”
He added that while he welcomed the disruption of establishment politics brought on by Trump in 2016, he doesn’t “want disruption of the Democratic Socialist variety. That seems catastrophic.”
Thiel was one of Trump’s earliest Silicon Valley backers in 2016, donating $1.25 million to him through a combination of super PAC donations and funds given directly to the campaign, according to a report from The New York Times.
While Thiel did not donate to Trump’s 2020 or 2024 campaigns, he heavily bankrolled Vice President JD Vance’s run for U.S. Senate in 2022, donating $15 million to a pro-Vance super PAC, Protect Ohio Values, according to OpenSecrets.
Thiel has also made somewhat extremist statements about government and society in the past, including saying he no longer believed “freedom and democracy” were “compatible.”