Billionaire Peter Thiel hosted about two dozen Republican donors at his 10,000-square-foot Miami compound on Wednesday night to raise money for Wyoming Republican Harriet Hageman, the Donald Trump–backed candidate running a primary challenge against GOP representative Liz Cheney. According to a person briefed on the event by an attendee, the gathering had the feel of a MAGA rally in miniature. Thiel introduced Hageman, who then launched into a stump speech about why Cheney needed to be defeated because of her disloyalty to Trump. “It was all about how the 2020 election was stolen and Cheney is a RINO,” the source told me. The source added that Donald Trump Jr. arrived with heavy security and spoke about how Republicans need “to take back the country.” Thiel’s foray into the Wyoming Republican primary shows how devoted the secretive PayPal cofounder and early Facebook investor has become to the MAGA movement. In October, Politico reported that Thiel donated the maximum $5,800 to Hageman’s campaign. His support is helping Hageman, a Wyoming lawyer, close the significant fundraising gap with Cheney, who raised more than $3.6 million by the end of September, Politico reported last month. According to the outlet, Hageman reported having only $245,000 in the bank at the end of September. The closed-door fundraiser also was in keeping with Thiel’s desire for secrecy. According to the source, attendees who arrived at Thiel’s waterfront home—which Thiel purchased in September 2020, according to records obtained by Insider last year, and had been used as the location for the 1996 season of MTV’s Real World—were instructed not to record any of the speakers’ comments with their phones. Staff circulated through the room to ensure the no-recording policy was followed. A spokesperson for Thiel did not respond to a request for comment. Thiel has become a major MAGA-world donor since taking the stage for Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2016, where he thundered, “When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom.” He has only ramped up as the 2022 midterms approach. Last year, it was reported he made a pair of $10-million donations to super PACs supporting his proteges: Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance and Arizona Senate hopeful Blake Masters. Helping to defeat Cheney, MAGA-world’s most reviled Republican, would be Thiel’s biggest victory this cycle.
Ted Cruz to Michael Dukakis, “Hold my beer” Senator Ted Cruz denounced the January 6 protest at the Capitol as a ‘violent terror attack.’ Therefore he must also see Trump supporters as terrorists. Tucker Carlson called out Cruz on his statement and Cruz immediately went into damage control mode. He said his phrasing was sloppy and he wasn’t calling thousands of peaceful protestors supporting Donald Trump terrorists. Who were the terrorists, then? Nobody was armed except for the guards and one of them murdered Ashlee Babbitt. Most of the protestors shuffled peacefully through the building and then left. This kind of waffling displayed by Cruz makes it worse. He says whatever is advantageous to him in the moment. In the past I have been charitable to Ted in some of my cartoons, but now I consider him in the same league with Lindsay Graham. Cruz wants to run for president again and he wants Trump out of the way. Therefore, he helped the Democrats with their ‘insurrection’ narrative and how it was supposedly instigated by President Trump. That way Trump can be banned from seeking office by means of the 14th Amendment. This would open the door for Cruz, but he forgot he would have to get a lot of votes from Trump supporters. He won’t be getting mine. — Ben Garrison https://grrrgraphics.com/
