Out billionaire Peter Thiel on Thursday
pledged to support President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign.
Thiel, who said he was proud to be a
gay Republican at the 2016 Republican National Convention in
Cleveland, emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1977. He
currently serves as a tech adviser to the president.
Speaking
at The New York Times
Dealbook conference, the venture capitalist praised Trump's
economic policies and called the president “relatively successful.”
Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and
currently sits on the board of Facebook, in particular said that he
likes Trump's tax reforms and tariffs on China.
When asked about Trump falsehoods,
Thiel suggested that the current president is more truthful that the
past three. “Trump's inaccuracies are exaggerations of the truth,”
he
said, adding that past presidents committed the “lie of
omission.”
He also dismissed the investigation
into Russian government interference into the 2016 presidential
election, calling it a “wild goose chase” that will “backfire
catastrophically” on Democrats.
From the Dealbook conference stage,
Thiel also denied he's a vampire.
“I want to publicly tell you that I'm
not a vampire. On the record, I am not a vampire,” Thiel said,
referring to his interest in therapies that could extend the lives of
humans. The now-defunct gossip blog Gawker – which
Thiel helped shutter through a lawsuit he funded – once
reported that Thiel spends $160,000 per year to receive blood
infusions “from an 18-year-old based on research conducted at
Stanford on extending the lives of mice.”