ASPEN, COLORADO — Billionaire Peter Thiel stunned a largely liberal audience Tuesday at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival with a warning that democratic socialists are taking over the Democratic Party.
During a panel discussion about the direction of humanity, Thiel lamented the cultural, technological and economic “stagnation” that has taken place in recent years, something he considered to be “very destabilizing” in the long term.
He argued that the “haywire” effects of that stagnation trickled into politics.
“My generation was the first one where things felt really stuck,” Thiel said. “I think millennials are doing less well than their boomer parents. It’s even more deeply felt in Gen Z.”
“And then, if we think about this in political terms, it’s what’s pushing us to try to find solutions outside this sort of very narrow, very narrow box,” he continued. “And then, there was the Republican version that manifested with Trump and a repudiation of Bush-neocon consensus.”
“And I think the Democratic version, to those of you who are, you know, the liberal Democrats in the audience, that I ask you to take more seriously, is I think there’s going to be a democratic socialist takeover in the Democratic Party,” Thiel said. “And it’s not just a irrational, angry outburst. It is this really, really deep frustration at this stagnation.”
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The billionaire’s comments drew audible gasps among the progressive attendees.
“And the Republican Party doesn’t matter that much because it’s the less important one. When the Democratic Party goes, this country is over,” Thiel added.
The comments come just weeks after three democratic socialist House candidates endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani swept their races in the New York primaries. And hours after Thiel’s comments, another Democratic socialist named Melat Kiros won the Democratic primary in Colorado’s first congressional district, unseating 15-term incumbent Diana DeGette.
Thiel, who first made waves on the political scene as a primetime speaker at the 2016 RNC convention, has become a prominent donor to Republicans in recent election cycles. He notably was a major backer of Vice President JD Vance during his 2022 Senate run.
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The PayPal founder also spoke passionately about the importance for the U.S. to lean into AI and repeatedly attacked those who he sees are obstacles to societal and economic progress.
“If we just have this economic stagnation, that’s the road towards total catastrophe,” Thiel said. “I’m extremely alarmed about a tendency to slow it down or stop [AI] because I think the alternative is not the world ending with a whimper. It is zero-sum, Malthusian, deranged politics. People get angrier and angrier. It’s not going to work.”
