- JD Vance is urging Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire who help fund his Senate run, to back Trump.
- Thiel backed Trump’s 2016 campaign but has stepped back from politics since 2022.
- “He’s going to be really exhausted by politics if we lose,” said Vance.
With little more than two months until Election Day, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio is urging his biggest financial backer, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, to get involved in the 2024 campaign.
“He is fundamentally a conservative guy, and I think that he needs to get off the sidelines and support the ticket,” Vance told the Financial Times this week.
Thiel, who cofounded both Paypal and Palantir and is known for his contrarian, conservative views, notably supported Trump in 2016 when few others in Silicon Valley would. He even spoke at the Republican National Convention that year, and remains one of the few openly gay people to do so. He donated $1.25 million to pro-Trump groups that year.
His involvement in politics deepened in 2022, when he poured tens of millions of dollars into super PACs to elect both Vance and Blake Masters, a close associate and co-author of Thiel’s book “Zero to One.”
Masters lost his Senate race to Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in Arizona, and lost a House primary this year to Abe Hamadeh.
Since the 2022 cycle, Thiel has publicly stepped back from politics, telling Fortune that though he would vote for the GOP presidential nominee, he did not plan to financially contribute to any candidates. He also said that financial contributions make little differences at the presidential level.
“They’ll get their message out or they will not get it out,” Thiel told the outlet. “They will convince people or they will not convince people. And an extra $1 million or $10 million does not make any difference.”
Vance indicated this week that the conversation with Thiel remains ongoing.
“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 told the Financial Times.
A spokesperson for Thiel did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.