Peter Thiel Dings Trump’s Loyalty Tests For ‘Not Very Smart’ Administration Officials

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel launched into the Trump administration’s loyalty test for appointing “not very smart” officials who are hurting the Republican Party’s chances in future elections.

Thiel made the comments on the podcast MD Meets with German journalist Mathias Döpfner, who asked if Thiel regretted supporting President Donald 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.

“My fast all answer is, you should ask me in 10 years or so, and we’ll see in 10 years how how it all works out,” Thiel said before adding 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. You got sort of, you know, an administration staffed by not very smart, but very loyal people. And so, there are all sorts of ways it can be criticized.”

Thiel said he was afraid that voters were growing tired enough of the Republican Party to turn to the Democratic Socialists.

“I worry in the United States that the kind of exhaustion with the Republican establishment that happened with the Bush family, that happened in 2016, we’re about to see with the sort of Clinton-Obama center-left establishment, and the last three elections, you know, 2016, Trump, the sort of anti-establishment person, won the Republican primary,” Thiel said.

He continued, “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 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.”

Although Thiel said he welcomed “disruption” in 2016,  he doesn’t “want disruption of the Democratic Socialist variety. That seems catastrophic.”

“I worry that the establishment Democratic Party has failed as badly as the establishment Republicans. And so, we are going to get this disruption, and there is there’s a risk that the U.S. will shift very far to the left. That’s the real disruption we’re going to get,” he said.

Watch above via MD Meets.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!