Billionaire investor Peter Thiel has reportedly spent the past few months distancing himself from President Trump, whose administration Thiel has described as “incompetent” during private gatherings with friends.
The PayPal co-founder and Trump booster told colleagues in January “there is a 50 percent chance” Trump’s presidency “ends in departure,” BuzzFeed reported Monday. Months later, Thiel told friends at an event in San Francisco he thought the administration was being run inefficiently.
“The night he won the election, I said President Trump would face an awesomely difficult task,” Thiel said in a statement when confronted about his comments. “Today it’s clear that resistance to change in Washington, D.C. has been even fiercer than I anticipated.”
Thiel, a standout speaker at the Republican National Convention last summer, was careful to note that he remains a close ally of Trump and supports the president’s agenda.
“We still need change. I support President Trump’s ongoing fight to achieve it,” he said.
Questions about Thiel’s support for Trump come less than two months after he and several other tech tycoons participated in a White House summit on cybersecurity and government IT modernization.
A source familiar with the June 19 meeting said Thiel offered words of encouragement and gave no indication that he was frustrated with the administration or the president.
