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00:00Peter Teal is a walking contradiction. He got his bachelor's and juris doctorate from Stanford but speaks out about the horrors of higher education saying colleges as corrupt as the Catholic Church was 500 years ago. He's a staunch supporter of the free press. Yet he bankrolled a lawsuit to bankrupt an independent media company. But these were not. These were not journalists and most of all he's an immigrant libertarian who's the most public supporter of Donald Trump in all of Silicon Valley. What Trump represents isn't crazy and it's not going away. This is the story of how an openly gay immigrant genius libertarian billionaire went from tech contrarian to Silicon Valley's biggest Trump supporter. Peter Thiel was born in October 11th 1967 in Frankfurt West Germany to Suzanne and Clough still. Peter's family emigrated to Cleveland Ohio when he was once an Ayn Rand devote tea during his youth to attended Stanford University majoring in philosophy at Stanford experience left a really big part of who he decided to surround himself with. That's Lisette Chapman and I cover technology in venture capital here at Bloomberg. He and his Stanford friends made their first big splash in tech with PayPal after selling to eBay for one point five billion dollars. They would become known as the PayPal mafia for each incredible success. After PayPal for Teele that began with an early modest five hundred thousand dollar investment in Facebook and seek early means big risk but also big reward. He turned that initial five hundred thousand dollar investment into more than one billion dollars in cash. But Teele was just getting started with Facebook and he went on to make a whole bunch of wildly successful investments from space to air being B to one of the largest most powerful companies in the United States not the world. Of course that's Palantir the incredibly controversial secretive data mining startup he founded with his colleagues from paypal. It connects data silos and then allows non-technical people to search that information for patterns data like financial information feeds from video cameras biometric detail passport information flight manifest Pelletier doesn't talk much about how they collect this data. Who has access to it or what they do with it. But they have contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the CIA and the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission and several other federal agencies. It's the richest company you've never heard of valued at twenty billion dollars. But there are plenty of obscenely wealthy people in Silicon Valley. What makes him different is a complex ball of multiple contradictions. Take College for example . Even though college is extremely important for Teele there's something called the teal fellowship in exchange for dropping out and a promise not to pursue college. He'll give them one hundred thousand dollars to basically tell people that if you get a diploma you're safe. Otherwise you go to hell. You know you go to Yale or you go to jail. Also his relationship with the press. Here's another contradiction. He donated to free press initiatives including the Committee to Protect Journalists but he also secretly spent tens of millions of dollars bankrolling a lawsuit filed by Hulk Hogan over the publication of a sex tape and bankrupting the independently run Gawker Media . Why did he do this. Because in 2007 one of Gawker Media's blogs Valley Wag outed him as gay and with the lawsuit he found an opportunity to get back at them by funding the lawsuit that Hulk Hogan was able to bring that he wouldn't be able to do that without guilt. And finally Till's biggest contradiction his endorsement of Donald Trump when he was asked about his support for Trump. He was surprised at the outrage that came with it . For many of his colleagues in Silicon Valley who didn't want more of the establishment no matter how crazy this election seems it is less crazy than the condition of our country. After briefly supporting Carly Fiorina in the primaries Teele pivoted to trump donating one point to five million dollars to Trump and his associated super PACs. In October 2016 and he didn't just help Trump financially. He gave a full throated keynote speech supporting Trump at the Republican National Convention. I'm not a politician but neither is Donald Trump. He is a builder and it's time to rebuild America. When Trump was finally elected he was given the reigns to an enormous amount of power. I want to thank you for your special guest he was named the transitional advisor and in that role he did a lot of interviewing and a lot of vetting fill hundreds of cabinet positions and different jobs within the administration. But it turns out he'll support isn't unconditional talking to people who spend time with him. I have all he is no longer a great supporter of Tom Keene it was reported that Teele was unhappy with the direction of Trump's presidency. Ever since he's been mum making no public appearances no statements and staying out of the spotlight altogether. Although there have been suggestions that Trump could tap teal for a top intelligence post or ambassadorship there's no indication he'd accept. He described his relationship with Frank. He gets really involved and then runs away. Whether teal takes a new position or simply continues as a board director at Facebook and Fallon tier at just 50 years old. He's primed to wield some serious influence in technology and politics for decades to come .

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Peter Thiel Is Silicon Valley's Contradiction (Video)