Thiel aims to replace Bannon as conservative news kingpin
Billionaire US investor Peter Thiel is exploring starting a conservative news outlet, with backing from the powerful Mercer family and a cast of Fox News celebrities, according to revelations in Michael Wolff’s book and a report from BuzzFeed News.
Last May, Thiel was set to meet with former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes to discuss the idea, according to an excerpt from the book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. But two days before the scheduled meeting, Ailes fell, hit his head and went into a coma, and died soon afterwards.
Nonetheless, Thiel, one of Facebook’s earliest backers and a prominent conservative activist, has continued to pursue the idea, according to BuzzFeed, and is talking with the Mercer family about helping to back it.
A spokesman for Thiel to comment. declined
Robert Mercer, a hedge fund mogul, was a major backer of US President Donald Trump and bankrolled conservative news outlet Breitbart News. Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon is Breitbart’s executive chairman.
In November, he said he would step down from Renaissance Technologies, where he was co-chief executive officer, and sell his stake in Breitbart to his daughters, including Rebekah Mercer, who served on Trump’s transition team.
The Mercer family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ailes, who launched Fox News in 1996 but resigned in July 2016 after several women accused him of sexual harassment, had intended to bring star Fox presenters to the planned news outlet, Wolff writes. The potential talent included Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.
O’Reilly was also fired from Fox over allegations of harassment.
Thiel, who brought Trump some rare support from Silicon Valley during the 2016 election campaign and the early days of his presidency, was warned by another billionaire not to take any offers of Trump’s friendship too seriously. But Thiel ‘‘was certain of Trump’s sincerity when he said they’d be friends for life – only never to basically hear from him again or have his calls returned’’, Wolff writes.
Thiel also would back Bannon in any potential bid for the US presidency in 2020, as would other big conservative donors like casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and the Mercers, Wolff writes.
Bannon was a key source for Wolff’s book and was quoted making many disparaging remarks about the president and his family. On Thursday, Trump’s lawyers sent Bannon a cease and desist order to attempt to prevent him from making any more comments about the Trumps.
Thiel’s interest in journalism goes back to his college days at Stanford University, where he founded the Stanford Review, a libertarian newspaper. More recently, he funded a lawsuit that bankrupted media company Gawker, which had outed him as gay more than a decade ago. He has placed a bid for Gawker’s archives.
Thiel, who is worth a reported US$3.7 billion, rose to fame as the co-founder of PayPal.
He hit the headlines in New Zealand last year when it was revealed that he was granted citizenship in 2011 by then-internal affairs minister Nathan Guy, despite having spent only 12 days here as a resident – far less than the 1350 usually required.
Thiel had invested in Kiwi companies and donated US$1 million to Canterbury’s earthquake recovery. He was granted citizenship using a ‘‘public interest’’ exception.
Green MP Denise Roche wrote to the auditor-general in February, soon after Thiel’s citizenship was revealed, asking for an inquiry, but the auditor-general declined to investigate.