Billionaire Peter Thiel hosted about two dozen Republican donors at his 10,000-square-foot Miami compound on Wednesday night to raise money for Wyoming Republican Harriet Hageman, the Donald Trump–backed candidate running a primary challenge against GOP representative Liz Cheney. According to a person briefed on the event by an attendee, the gathering had the feel of a MAGA rally in miniature. Thiel introduced Hageman, who then launched into a stump speech about why Cheney needed to be defeated because of her disloyalty to Trump. “It was all about how the 2020 election was stolen and Cheney is a RINO,” the source told me. The source added that Donald Trump Jr. arrived with heavy security and spoke about how Republicans need “to take back the country.”
Thiel’s foray into the Wyoming Republican primary shows how devoted the secretive PayPal cofounder and early Facebook investor has become to the MAGA movement. In October, Politico reported that Thiel donated the maximum $5,800 to Hageman’s campaign. His support is helping Hageman, a Wyoming lawyer, close the significant fundraising gap with Cheney, who raised more than $3.6 million by the end of September, Politico reported last month. According to the outlet, Hageman reported having only $245,000 in the bank at the end of September.
The closed-door fundraiser also was in keeping with Thiel’s desire for secrecy. According to the source, attendees who arrived at Thiel’s waterfront home—which Thiel purchased in September 2020, according to records obtained by Insider last year, and had been used as the location for the 1996 season of MTV’s Real World—were instructed not to record any of the speakers’ comments with their phones. Staff circulated through the room to ensure the no-recording policy was followed.
A spokesperson for Thiel did not respond to a request for comment.
Thiel has become a major MAGA-world donor since taking the stage for Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2016, where he thundered, “When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom.” He has only ramped up as the 2022 midterms approach. Last year, it was reported he made a pair of $10-million donations to super PACs supporting his proteges: Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance and Arizona Senate hopeful Blake Masters. Helping to defeat Cheney, MAGA-world’s most reviled Republican, would be Thiel’s biggest victory this cycle.
— Inside Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Unlikely Rise and Precipitous Fall at Liberty University
— Eric Adams Pulls Crypto-Paycheck Stunt Hours Before Bitcoin Crash
— Dave Chappelle and “the Black Ass Lie” That Keeps Us Down
— Trump’s January 6 Cover-Up Is Unraveling Fast
— Florida Man Has Growing God Complex
— In 2024, Mike Pence Is Gearing Up to Go Rogue
— New York Attorney General to Trump, Ivanka, and Don Jr.: Don’t F--k With Us
— Inside This Cable News Giant’s Streaming Dreams
— From the Archive: It Came From Wasilla
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.
