Trump Ally Peter Thiel’s Op-Ed Turns Heads for Being ‘Beyond Nuts’

Peter Thiel, the billionaire supporter of Donald Trump, had much to say in an op-ed Friday in the Financial Times, resulting in some critical feedback.

In “A Time for Truth and Reconciliation”—a reference to post-Apartheid policies in South Africa—Thiel anticipates the Trump administration being fully equipped to, once and for all, expose the “deep state.” He mentions Jeffrey Epstein, the JFK assassination, and COVID-19.

“Trump’s return to the White House augurs the apokálypsis of the ancien regime’s secrets,” Thiel writes. “The new administration’s revelations need not justify vengeance—reconstruction can go hand in hand with reconciliation. But for reconciliation to take place, there must first be truth."

Thiel’s column drew a range of criticism, including from a columnist at the Financial Times, Edward Luce.

“Inside the mind of a Silicon Valley fanatic,” Luce reacted on BlueSky. “Peter Thiel makes Orwellian analogy between today’s liberal democracy and South African apartheid—and calls for a truth and reconciliation commission to uncover the crimes of America’s ‘Ancien regime.’ Beyond nuts.”

Andy Craig, a scholar at the Cato Institute, had a similar response.

“It reflects very poorly on FT to have published this crazy person rant,” he wrote on the same site. “Obviously he would have got it out there somewhere anyway, but there was no good reason to let it appear under their masthead. If it was by Peter Smith this would have gone straight into their crank submissions file.”

And Brookings Institute fellow Quinta Jurecic added that Thiel, “if he ever had it, has certainly lost it now.”