J.D. Vance is coaxing entrepreneur Peter Thiel to “get off the sidelines” and back Trump, but it appears Thiel remains noncommittal.

Thiel supported Trump in 2016 but says he didn’t anticipate how “crazy” and “dangerous” Trump’s administration would be.  Those are words that aptly apply to a potential Walz-Harris administration (Walz, as Kamala’s interview chaperone, deliberately listed first).

Peter Thiel is an über-wealthy tech mogul who is a co-founder of PayPal and data analytics-cum-A.I. company Palantir, and an early investor in Facebook.  Until recently, he has been forthcoming with contributions to Republican candidates for office, including donating $15 million to J.D. Vance’s Senate campaign.

Now, as anti-American socialists seek to usurp power, he’s becoming politically pusillanimous.  Even as the Kamala campaign is raking in the dumb dough, Thiel has rejected overtures from the Trump campaign.  Although J.D. Vance (who worked for Thiel) acknowledges his former boss may be “exhausted” by politics, he also admonishes that his exhaustion will become debilitating should Kamala win.

There are many reasons for that, but one in particular should be close to Thiel’s heart — keeping the fruits of one’s labor, and investment gains.  Kamala’s unconstitutional inclination to tax unrealized capital gains is tantamount to wealth confiscation. 

Actually, there’s a likely scenario where it amounts to expropriating money from “nothing.”  For example, one may be coerced into paying taxes on unrealized gains one year, but the next year, those assets may depreciate in value, so that over a period of time, there is no unrealized gain.  And no mechanism for refunding the seized money.

Even if the confiscatory taxes are unleashed “only” on those who’ve “made enough” (in the destitute words of socialist Obama), this process will have cascading effects that will devastate all our markets, our retirement accounts, and the economy in general.  If the so-called “billionaires tax” doesn’t become law, just broaching the subject of higher taxes puts the shivers up the quivering markets. 

One might reasonably entertain the notion that the pecuniary ramifications reverberating throughout our financial systems would be enough to entice Thiel (assuming that his “conservative” values are resolute) back into the political realm.  Why?  Well, he has long availed himself of legal tax-minimizing strategies, including amassing a multi-billion dollar stash in a Roth IRA.  

If Thiel was taken aback by the “crazy” Trump administration, it is because he focused on style over substance, on tweets (often necessary to circumvent legacy media) rather than results.  Results included income inequality declining under Trump’s policies and stock market outperformance compared to Biden-Harris.  Nor does that outperformance even consider the run-up between Election Day 2016 and Trump’s inauguration in 2017.   Indeed, the forward-looking markets absolutely surged after Trump’s election, well before Inauguration Day.

Actually, it is not Trump 45, but the Biden-Harris administration that has been crazy and dangerous.  And Harris, stringently clinging to her leftist values (while she waltzes with Walz through softball interviews and flip-flops on elemental policies), promises more insanity — along with her commie chaperone. 

Mr. Thiel can obviously do anything he legally wants with his money.  But given his concerns about a crazy and dangerous administration, the prospects of Walz-Harris should loosen the purse strings for the commonsense conservative candidates.  Mr. Thiel trusts J.D. Vance, so now it’s time to heed his former employee’s clarion call. 

For the sake of our free-market prosperity; for the sake of our republic, and for the sake of our resplendent Pale Blue Dot, it’s time for anti-socialists with the wherewithal to ante up.  If J.D. Vance says contributions will make a difference, this is not the time to idle on the sidelines.  Now is not the time for political parsimony, but to pass the money.  Once more into the Dems’ breach we must storm.

Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Image: Peter Thiel.  Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.