How Peter Thiel Became the Right’s Tech-Authoritarian Kingmaker

Offline with Jon Favreau

Peter Thiel isn’t as rich as Elon Musk or as notorious as Steve Bannon. But over the last 10 years he has grown from Silicon Valley’s oddball conservative to an ideological anchor of the Trump era. And, unfortunately for us, he thinks the country would be better off without voting. Bloomberg Businessweek reporter, Max Chafkin, has written a book about Thiel and his mind boggling worldview: The Contrarian. He joins Max to discuss what Thiel wants from the Republican Party, his mentorship of J.D. Vance, and how he's emboldening a huge swath of tech leaders to be openly MAGA.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

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