J.D. Vance Is Openly Begging Peter Thiel to Save Trump

J.D. Vance is begging his old friend Peter Thiel to help Donald Trump win the 2024 election.

The co-founder of PayPal and Palantir has helped swing elections in the past, but previously stated that he would sit this one out. However, Vance is trying to capitalize on their long-standing relationship to get Thiel “off the sidelines” and funding the Trump-Vance campaign, according to the Financial Times.

“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 told the FT in an interview published Thursday.

“He is fundamentally a conservative guy, and I think that he needs to get off the sidelines and support the ticket.”

Vance was once Thiel’s pupil in Silicon Valley, and when Vance started his own fund, he was financially supported by the PayPal founder, whom he considered a mentor. When Vance ran for Senate in 2022, Thiel shelled out a record-breaking $15 million to secure his victory. Trump and Vance reportedly initially met through a meeting put together by Thiel himself.

The billionaire venture capitalist and Trump have fallen out in recent years, and Thiel did not financially support Trump in 2020. Last year, Thiel said he wouldn’t give “any money to Republican politicians in 2024,” but left the door open, saying “there’s always a chance I might change my mind.” Many have seen Trump’s pick of Vance as a nod toward Silicon Valley right-wingers like Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Elon Musk.

In July, after Trump announced his V.P. pick, Thiel hinted that he could be swayed. “I always try to resist getting swept up in excitement,” he told The New York Times. “But in spite of many misgivings I had earlier this year, it makes me more hopeful that a second Trump term will be better than the first.”

Donald Trump has begun pestering CNN’s Dana Bash to ask hard-hitting questions of Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz during their interview, which airs Thursday night at 9:00 p.m. E.T.

The interview was filmed around 1:45 p.m. according to The New York Times, so Trump started his day early by pushing for Bash to seize the opportunity to speak to Harris and Walz.

“Dana Bash of CNN has a chance at greatness today. If she gave a fair but tough interview of Comrade Kamala Harris, she will expose her as being totally inept and ill suited for the job of President, much as I exposed Crooked Joe Biden during our now famous Debate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “How cool would that be for Dana and CNN???”

“Also, the interview should not have Tampon Tim present to help with the inevitable Kamala stumbles, and under no circumstances should the transcript be allowed to be changed in any way, shape, or form,” Trump wrote, echoing right-wing critics who say Harris should appear alone and will use Walz as a crutch in their first major interview since receiving the Democratic Party’s nomination.

In Trump’s first interview after being nominated at the Republican National Convention in July, Trump and J.D. Vance appeared together in an interview with Fox’s Jesse Waters, who tends to go for sexist comments over hard-hitting questions. During the interview, Trump shyly deferred to Vance when asked whether he thought Joe Biden’s ouster was a “coup.”

“Dana and Jake were fair, but firm, in my CNN Debate with Crooked Joe. This is a chance for Dana Bash to reach REAL stardom, while at the same time doing a great service to our now failing Country,” Trump wrote. “Good luck, Dana, do the right thing!!!”

Bash moderated Trump’s debate against Biden in June. Although he had criticized Bash before the debate, afterward Trump had nothing but good things to say.

Trump’s pleas to Bash come after he went on a rageful social media rant, calling for his enemies to be jailed and even killed.

Donald Trump’s campaign team apparently does not want his microphone on when it isn’t his turn to speak in the next presidential debate.

Brian Fallon, a senior adviser to the Kamala Harris campaign, posted on X Thursday afternoon that Trump’s staff asked ABC News, which will be hosting the first presidential debate on September 10, to ignore Trump’s comments and keep the microphones off when it’s not his turn to speak. If ABC doesn’t enforce muted mics as a debate rule, the Trump team will reportedly pull out of the debate, Fallon said.

“We find the Trump’s team’s stance to be weak, and remain in discussions with ABC on the final rules,” Fallon’s post said.

Trump said earlier this week that he was fine with debate microphones being on, but added that the rules he agreed to were the same as his first debate in June against President Biden, where the mics were muted. Earlier reporting also noted that Trump’s team was the one to push for muted mics again this time around. If true, Trump’s staff might be trying to save the Republican presidential nominee and convicted felon from himself.

Unlike his debate with Biden, Trump will be verbally sparring with a former prosecutor almost 20 years younger than him. At the last debate, Trump appeared sharper and more alert than Biden, raising concerns about the president’s ability to win reelection and ultimately resulting in his withdrawal from the race. Biden’s campaign pushed for muted microphones at the time, probably hoping to give Biden an advantage.

Harris’s campaign doesn’t see such a need, and on Wednesday her co–campaign manager Mitch Landrieu mocked Trump, saying that his team “wants to shut him up.” Whether microphones are on or off, the September 10 debate promises to be lively and much different from the one in June, with Trump desperate for a victory against Harris as his campaign struggles to land any attacks against her or her running mate Tim Walz. But, the more he talks, the weirder he may come across on national television.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Donald Trump, but he’s still going to be on the ballot in North Carolina, hurting Trump’s prospects in the state.

The state’s board of elections voted 3–2 on Thursday to keep Kennedy on the ballot, saying that it would be too difficult to remove his name, as many ballots have already been printed. The board’s executive director, Karen Brinson, said North Carolina has already printed close to 1.73 million ballots in over 60 counties, with special ballots being prepared for overseas military members and the disabled.

Kennedy had asked the state to remove him from the ballot, but the board’s Democratic majority thought otherwise, overruling the two Republican board members. Last week, Kennedy said he was seeking to withdraw his name from battleground state ballots while staying on in other states, hoping to divert votes away from Harris and boost Trump.

North Carolina is only the latest battleground state that won’t drop Kennedy from their ballots. Election officials in Michigan and Wisconsin announced Tuesday that their states won’t remove him. According to polling averages from The Hill, Kennedy’s presence on both Wisconsin and Michigan’s ballots gives a slight boost to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

The quixotic ex-candidate is already part of Trump’s presidential transition team, helping to craft policy and select staff members should the Republican presidential nominee win in November. The move has drawn the ire of at least one major GOP donor in Eric Levine, who described Kennedy as “an anti-vax kook who sees conspiracies behind every tree and under every bed.”

Trump supporters, including Kennedy, are not likely to welcome the news that he could still pull votes away from Trump. They also might not think highly of whatever deal Kennedy may have struck with Trump in exchange for his endorsement. Much like they are stuck with Trump and J.D. Vance, the GOP is now stuck with Kennedy to their possible peril.

Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita has decided to take the team on a death spiral against America’s military, calling the office of the Army secretary a bunch of “hacks.”

“Reposting this hoping to trigger the hacks at @SecArmy,” LaCivita wrote Thursday afternoon, resharing a campaign video of Donald Trump at Arlington National Cemetery earlier this week.

Trump’s decision Tuesday to film at the military graveyard—and in Section 60, where recent military casualties are buried—violated federal law, which prohibits politically related activities in the cemetery such as taking photos and videos in support of a political campaign. The criminal behavior reportedly sparked a verbal and physical fight between Trump’s surrogates and an Arlington National Cemetery official who attempted to rein in the campaign’s videotaping.

In a rare statement, the Army sided with the cemetery official on Thursday morning, writing that the military organization believed the official had been “abruptly pushed aside” and “unfairly attacked” by Trump staffers.

“Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside,” an Army spokesperson said.

“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked,” they continued. “ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”

The Trump campaign claimed that they had been given permission to videotape by the families of fallen service members, but unfortunately for Trump, that doesn’t change federal law.

LaCivita’s words are unlikely to help Trump’s efforts to attract more veterans to his side. The Republican presidential nominee’s anti-military rhetoric has been a point of contention with current and former service members in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the reputed Vietnam-era draft dodger came under fire for arguing that the Presidential Medal of Freedom he awarded to one of his billionaire donors was “much better” than the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor. That comment struck a nerve with veterans, who connected Trump’s disrespectful rhetoric to a 2020 Atlantic report that caught the former president repeatedly referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.”