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From left: JD Vance and Peter Thiel
Thiel, who supported Trump in 2016, has said he wouldn't donate to any campaign this year, although he could change his mind.
JD Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, wants gay tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who’s also Vance’s former boss, to help finance the Trump-Vance campaign.
Vice President Kamala Harris ended July with $219.7 million in cash while Trump had $151.3 million, according to Forbes.
Thiel, who donated to Trump’s 2016 presidential run, should “get off the sidelines” in this year’s race, Vance recently told Financial Times.
“I’m going to keep on talking to Peter and persuading him that — you know he’s obviously been exhausted by politics a little bit — but he’s going to be really exhausted by politics if we lose and if Kamala Harris is president,” Vance said in the interview.
“He is fundamentally a conservative guy, and I think that he needs to get off the sidelines and support the ticket,” Vance added.
Thiel spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention in support of Trump and contributed $1.25 million to his campaign. But Thiel did not donate to Trump in 2020 and has said he wouldn’t fund any candidates in the 2024 election, noting that he’d been disappointed in Trump’s presidency.
Thiel founded the tech firms PayPal and Palantir, and he was an early investor in Facebook. Since 2000, he has contributed $50 million to various candidates, and he was the 10th largest individual donor in the 2022 election. In that election, he donated to Vance’s campaign for U.S. Senate from Ohio, a race Vance won. Vance once worked for Thiel at a venture capital firm, Mithril Capital, and Thiel has been influential in Vance's career.
Thiel did not respond to requests for comment from Financial Times or other news outlets. At the Aspen Ideas Festival this summer, he said he would vote for Trump “if you hold a gun to my head,” but he ultimately would prefer Trump to President Joe Biden. There’s no record of him commenting on the race since Biden dropped out and Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee.
