Tech billionaire and Republican megadonor Peter Thiel, who has said that he won't support any candidates in the 2024 election, is now saying he'll support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — if he makes it to the general election — but is warning him that "focusing on the woke issue as ground zero is not quite enough" to base a platform on if he decides to run.
"I think DeSantis would make a terrific president if he's the Republican nominee," Thiel said on the Honestly with Bari Weiss podcast this week, The Washington Examiner reported Thursday. "I will strongly support him in 2024."
DeSantis, who has not yet entered the 2024 race, has often spoken out against "wokeness," saying that Florida is where it "goes to die."
He's expected to sign two bills that passed Wednesday, with one that will ban teachers from addressing transgender students by the pronouns they prefer and the other barring funds for college diversity programs.
DeSantis is already considered as former President Donald Trump's major competition for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination and is expected to launch his campaign in June.
But Thiel told Weiss that "the focus on identity politics, on the woke religion, is probably a distraction from stagnation. It's a distraction from economics."
Sources told Reuters last month that Thiel, who was an early Trump supporter before breaking away from him, has become disappointed with how culture wars have become a focus and that after the 2022 midterms decided to stop making donations to political campaigns.
Thiel backed several GOP Senate campaigns in the midterms, including for Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, and for Blake Masters, who lost his election bid in Arizona.
One of Thiel's business associates told Reuters that the billionaire believes Republicans are making a mistake with their focus on cultural issues and should be concerned with innovation and competing with China.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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