Peter Thiel told The Atlantic that Donald Trump phoned him up to ask him to donate to his campaign. Thiel said he won't donate to any campaign.
John Lamparski/Getty Images; Curtis Means-Pool/Getty Images
After Peter Thiel told Donald Trump he wouldn't be donating any money to his campaign, the former president called him a "fucking scumbag," The Atlantic reported.
Thiel spoke to The Atlantic for an in-depth feature, in which he said he wouldn't donate to any politician for the next presidential campaign.
The PayPal cofounder and chairman of big data giant Palantir has earned a reputation for backing controversial Republican candidates.
Venture capitalist Blake Masters, who ran for a senate seat in Arizona in 2022, and JD Vance, the senator for Ohio, are often referred to as Thiel's protégés. The billionaire has given them more than $10 million each.
Sometime in April 2023, Trump managed to get Thiel on the phone after the latter had tried to dodge his calls for a while, The Atlantic reported.
The former president reminded Thiel that he'd given his support to both Masters and Vance, and asked him for a similar donation, per The Atlantic.
Thiel told the magazine that when he declined, Trump "told me that he was very sad, very sad to hear that."
Then a few months later, The Atlantic reports that word got back to Thiel of Trump's anger.
Trump called Thiel a "fucking scumbag" and had discouraged Masters from running for Senate again, according to The Atlantic's profile.
Trump's presidential campaign did not immediately respond to Insider's request for office, sent outside US working hours.
Also in the interview, Thiel slammed the Trump administration and said it "couldn't get the most basic pieces of the government to work."
The Silicon Valley mogul also refused to comment when The Atlantic asked him about Insider's report that Thiel was an FBI informant.
