PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel says he’s worried about whoever Republicans put forth in 2028, even if it’s his ally Vice President JD Vance.
During an interview on the “MD Meets” podcast posted on Thursday, Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner asked Thiel whether he thinks Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be a better GOP standard-bearer in 2028.
“I am still a Vance partisan,” Thiel said. “I worry that it will be very hard for either candidate to win. And so, I don’t know, my pessimistic thought is that that’s the wrong question.”
Before he entered politics, Vance worked at Mithril Capital, a firm Thiel cofounded. In his new memoir, Vance wrote about Thiel’s effect on his life and called his mentor “possibly the smartest person I’d ever met.” During Vance’s heated 2022 Ohio US Senate GOP primary, Thiel donated $15 million to a pro-Vance super PAC, which, alongside Trump’s endorsement, helped propel the future vice president to victory.
Thiel, who has described himself as a libertarian, has become a GOP megadonor, though he mostly stayed away from the 2024 election. Earlier this year, Thiel made a $3 million donation to a group that has worked to propose California’s proposed one-time wealth tax.
In February, Trump told reporters that both men were “fantastic” and he didn’t have to worry about his successor. Speculation about who Trump will endorse and what other, if any, Republicans will enter the field will increase after November’s midterm elections, the traditional time when White House hopefuls begin to make their moves.
Instead of focusing on the GOP, Thiel told Döpfner that he’s more interested in what happens inside the Democratic Party. Thiel said that a potential GOP wipeout this November could lead Democrats to choose a democratic socialist as their nominee in 2028. Prediction markets widely expect Democrats to retake the House (which is in line with historic norms), but it remains to be seen which party will win the Senate.
“The Democrats will think that they will win no matter what in 2028,” Thiel said. “And therefore, there probably will not be, you know, as strong a firewall against — it won’t pull out all the stops to prevent a democratic socialist from winning.”
Thiel said a democratic socialist winning the nomination, which he gives a roughly 50% chance of occurring, would be like “the end of America.”
“The Democratic Party is the more important party,” he said. “That is the establishment party in the U.S. The Republican Party is always a little bit anti-establishment. So, if the democratic socialists take over the Democratic Party, that’s a much bigger deal.”
Before Trump won in 2016, a member of the Bush family had been on the ballot for either president or vice president in 1980 through 2004. Trump defeated former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush en route to winning the 2016 nomination. Since then, he has reshaped the GOP in his image.
The interview was conducted ahead of Thiel receiving the media company’s “Axel Springer Award,” which honors “individuals whose achievements have had a lasting impact on business, society, or technological progress.” Axel Springer, which, among other publications, owns Business Insider, Politico, The Daily Telegraph, and Bild, previously bestowed the recognition on figures such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
