CRAIG: This news update from The Washington Post may be of interest :

2:31 p.m. EDT

Vance urges Peter Thiel to ‘get off the sidelines’ and fund Republicans

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By Azi Paybarah

"Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance said Peter Thiel — his former employer, and a tech billionaire who spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2016 — should “get off the sidelines” and help Republicans win the White House, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

Vance made the comment during an interview with the outlet, and the candidate’s plea to his ally comes as Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign said this week that it had raised $540 million since last month’s launch. The Post also reported last week that her campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised three times as much as Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee in July.

“I’m going to keep on talking to Peter and persuading him that — you know, he’s obviously been exhausted by politics a little bit — but he’s going to be really exhausted by politics if we lose and if Kamala Harris is president,” Vance said of Thiel, who said in 2023 that he didn’t plan to make political donations this cycle. Vance added, “He is fundamentally a conservative guy, and I think that he needs to get off the sidelines and support the ticket.”

A spokesman for Thiel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“If you hold a gun to my head, I’ll vote for Trump,” Thiel said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June. But, Thiel added, “I’m not going to give any money to his super PAC.”

Beyond their work together in Silicon Valley, Thiel helped fund Vance’s Senate bid in 2022 and was among a network of some of tech’s biggest names who quietly campaigned for Vance to land on the Republican ticket, The Post reported in July."