After spending years among Donald Trump’s most influential donors, Peter Thiel told a private audience in Nashville that, when it comes to the Iran war, “There were a lot of mistakes that were made.”
He was three talks into a lecture series titled “Antichrist” when he got around to it. Politico’s Decoded has followed the series since the fall, and it obtained audio of the October 12 lecture. His verdict came with little cushioning. “I’m skeptical of [the war], I think we should not have done it,” he said. He didn’t expect the aftermath to go better, either: “Maybe we’re going to lose the soft power war.”
The lecture took a stranger turn once he reached the International Criminal Court. He read the Cheney family’s attacks on Trump as “an attempt to buy favor with the [International Criminal Court] and avoid prosecution.” An arrest warrant, he warned, is “the sword of Damocles hanging over the Trump administration.”
For all the criticism, he kept one foot firmly on Trump’s side of the line. Politico reports he reiterated his support for the president, and it describes him as wanting to “protect the president.” The same lecture condemned neoconservatives and Middle East wars in general.
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Few critics can match his résumé.
Thiel was the first major tech investor to back Trump in 2016, and he spoke at that year’s Republican National Convention. Years later he became the largest financial backer of the super PACs behind JD Vance’s 2022 Senate win. Politico says Thursday’s Decoded has more from the lectures, including his views on Israel and predictions for 2028. Neither Thiel’s representatives nor the White House had responded to requests for comment.
The war began February 28 and has become a drag on Republicans heading into the midterms on November 3. A CNN/SSRS poll taken October 15 to 18 found 27% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, and two-thirds say his policies have made conditions worse.
Thiel has company inside Trump’s circle.
The Atlantic reported Tuesday that Donald Trump Jr. has opposed the war from the start and told his father so. His April 2024 post reads differently in hindsight: “Remember when they said Trump would get us into a full-blown war with Iran?”
Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a loyalist, has been making the case against the war in public for months.
In a June interview with Russia’s TASS news agency, she said “Trump has not won the Iran war.” A month later she wrote on X that the United States was fighting “an unnecessary war against Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz,” and told Trump to bring back the economy of 2019. American Bazaar’s review found her inflation figure for that year was accurate, though the national average for gas stayed above $2.
Featured image via X screengrab
