Peter Thiel Hates MAGA-America But Finances It
Peter Thiel is a dangerous fascist from Germany who lived in South Africa before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area and becoming an Ayn Rand devotee, a Ronald Reagan fan, an investor, a billionaire and a heavyweight financier for extreme right Republican candidates. A bossy bottom, Thiel married Matt Danzeisen in 2017 and at some point they adopted a child, Elanor Kristina. Thiel also has— as of March 8 had— a lover on the side, 35 year old model and social media influencer Jeff Thomas. Their somewhat undefined relationship— other than “kept man”— predated his marriage to Danzeisen. Last week Ryan Grim reported on Thomas’ sudden death, possibly a suicide, although with anything involved with Thiel, everything is murky and seemingly unknowable.
Thomas met Thiel in 2015 or 2016 at a party Thief threw at Coachella. Thomas set out to try to cure Thiel of the MAGA-sickness. “I was wondering,” he told Grim, “why he was being affiliated with someone like Trump, and investing in him, if he’s gay… I don’t side with him on a lot of political things, but I understand him. I’m trying to influence him in ways to show him my heart, and show him how it affects myself, certain individuals, himself.”
Grim wrote that “Thomas said that he felt like he had made strides with Thiel” but that the relationship between the two men wasn’t “typical… Thomas described himself as being in a ‘kept’ situation that made him uncomfortable. ‘It was stressful, he wanted me to get the nicest car, the nicest house. He wanted to kind of show his power, to kind of show that he had me in his dollhouse,’ he said. ‘It’s not like I was his boyfriend, really, I was just kind of his friend that was there for him when he needed, you know, whatever he needed.’ But Thomas justified it to himself as a fair trade. ‘If I’m gonna give up the relationships I have and give up my dreams right now, during Covid, or dating other guys or pursuing people, then I’m going to get a $300,000 car and I’m going to get a $13 million home [on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood Hills]. So those are the things that I see fit for me to give up my freedom,’ he said.”
Thomas figured that the relationship, and the house he was living in— a mansion at 8517 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood Hills listed at $13 million— could be a step toward a career in real estate. “It was something to do during the pandemic. I was kind of over my one bedroom apartment,” he said. “I did real estate in New York, and I was considering getting my license and doing investment— flipping homes and doing investment properties in LA and I figured that this could be maybe one of my first in my portfolio. … I knew I wasn’t going to be in it for the long run.”
Several of Thomas’s friends in Los Angeles said they often saw Thiel at Thomas’s home, and also saw Thomas at Thiel’s nearby home on Metz Place. (Unrelatedly, before Thomas moved in, the home was owned by leading figures in the bizarre NXIVM sex cult that was rolled up in 2021, according to property records.)
The parties Thiel and Thomas threw could get raucous, and Thiel himself would sometimes do the recruiting. Thiel, or someone using his Facebook account, reached out to one University of California, Los Angeles grad student, despite having no friends in common, and invited him to a party at Thiel’s house, describing the poolside scene. “Hot guys at a pool sounds like pretty idyllic gay activity to me,” the student responded, according to screenshots of the conversation obtained by The Intercept. They moved to a WhatsApp conversation using Thiel’s phone number.
“Well, it doesn’t stay idyllic too long,” Thiel’s account said, “but always lots of fun,” adding later, “Yeah, we know how to have some no holds barred gay fun.”
To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, there’s nothing wrong with no-holds-barred gay fun, and, indeed, the ability of consenting adults to engage in whatever private, victimless behavior they choose is one measure of a just society. It’s also what Thiel has been spending heavily to oppose.
…Thiel’s account, meanwhile, told the UCLA student he had little regard for most swaths of America in a direct message: “Feel like the only places in US are LA and NYC and Miami … and maybe SD and DC and Chicago … but that’s really it.”
“I told him to stay out of politics,” Thomas said. “And he did, and so he didn’t support Trump in 2020. He stayed out of it. I was like, OK, great. So I did my part, I influenced him to stay out of it.”
Thiel backed Trump in 2020 but was conspicuously less supportive than in 2016, when he famously spoke at the Republican National Convention. “I felt like I did something. And then he started getting back into politics and supporting Trump again and all that other stuff. And I’m just like, well fuck, there’s only so much I can do and say to influence somebody.”
Toward the end of last year, Thomas was hyping himself up to make an exit. “I don’t think it’s very satisfying, to be honest, to be kept,” Thomas said in October. “I saw the spark in me fade away, and it was toxic, and it was unhealthy, and I’ve had multiple talks with myself this year, about getting out of it, and I’ve actually discussed to him about it, like, I can’t do this anymore. You know, my mental health is at risk.”
Thomas moved out of the Franklin Avenue house and to Miami, though he and Thiel stayed in touch. Thomas attended a New Year’s Eve party at Thiel’s Venetian Island compound on Biscayne Bay.
