Peter Thiel: Trump Represents a ‘New American Politics’

Billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel criticized the political Establishment for failing everyday Americans and said that Donald Trump represents a new, better era of politics for the country.

Trump points not only “towards a new Republican Party beyond the dogmas of Reaganism,” but also toward “a new American politics that overcomes denial, rejects bubble thinking, and accepts reality.” When all this is said and done, “the only important question will be whether or not that new politics came too late,” he said.

“For a long time, our elites have been in the habit of denying difficult realities.”

“We’re voting for Trump because we judge the leadership of our country to have failed,” Thiel said at press conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday. “This temptation to ignore difficult realities indulged in by our most influential citizens is what got us here today,” Thiel added. “No matter how crazy this election seems — it is less crazy than the condition of this country.”

Thiel recognized that “not everyone is hurting” — especially members of the elite Establishment club — but noted that “most Americans don’t live by the Beltway or the San Francisco Bay.”

“For a long time, our elites have been in the habit of denying difficult realities,” Thiel said. “They will be tempted to deny reality and inflate a bubble,” he noted, adding there was “something about the baby boomers has led them to buy into bubbles again and again.” Thiel claimed it was “insane but inevitable” that Beltway insiders actually thought the 2016 election would be Bush vs. Clinton Round 2.

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Thiel cautioned against letting controversies surrounding Trump detract from the candidate’s message. “His larger-than-life persona attracts attention” but “the big things he is right about amount to a much-needed dose of humility in American politics,” Thiel said.

He also criticized the media for its part in hyping those controversies. “They always take Trump literally — not seriously,” Thiel pointed out. His supporters, on the other hand “take him seriously, [but] not literally.”

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Unlike his enemies in the Establishment media, Trump’s supporters are taking him seriously because they “sense that the U.S. is very badly off-track,” Thiel said. Thiel pointed to failed free-trade policies, skyrocketing deficits, nearly two straight decades of war, stagnant middle-class incomes, the de facto bankruptcy of Social Security, and college tuition that rises faster than inflation as examples of just how badly off-track the country has truly gone.

Ultimately, Thiel said, Trump’s promise to make America great again is a promise to make America a “normal” country. “A normal country doesn’t have a half-trillion-dollar trade deficit,” said Thiel, nor does it “fight five undeclared wars.”

“No matter what happens in this election, what Trump represents isn’t crazy, and it’s not going away,” Thiel said.