Peter Thiel on the Brink

Trump Favor Trading, Putin Risks It All, Coachella Supremacy

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to what’s new at Puck.

First up, Teddy Schleifer scoops the news that Peter Thiel is doubling down his political investment in J.D. Vance after securing a last-minute Trump endorsement in Mar-a-Lago. Could a win reinvigorate the billionaire’s national ambitions at a time when the G.O.P. is desperate for its next Adelson?

Then, below the fold, Julia Ioffe joins Peter Hamby on a new episode of The Powers That Be to discuss Putin’s violent new offensive in the east of Ukraine. And Matt Belloni gabs with Lucas Shaw about why concert ticket prices have never been higher.

The Peter Thiel D.C. Gateway Drug

With two weeks until the Ohio G.O.P. primary, Thiel is on a hot streak and doubling down on J.D. Vance. A win could invigorate the billionaire’s national ambitions. A loss could relegate him to Miami—and send thirsty Republicans reeling.

THEODORE SCHLEIFER

For years now, ever since he poison-pilled Gawker and stumped at the Republican National Convention for Trump, there have been two competing narratives regarding the political ambitions of Peter Thiel. The first, gobbled up by the press, seductively posits that the billionaire investor and entrepreneur aims to build a Silicon Valley power center in G.O.P. donordom to fill the void left by the late David Koch and Sheldon Adelson, thereby creating an anti-woke counterpoint to his liberal peers.

The second theory, which I often hear from Thiel’s friends, is that his interest in kingmaking has been somewhat exaggerated—that P.T., as he is known by his inner circle, has a narrow, mostly personal interest in the success of his two protégés, J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, whose U.S. Senate campaigns he has sponsored in Ohio and Arizona to the tune of $10 million each…

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