Peter Thiel is, bar none, one of the most eccentric and frightening billionaires involved in conservative politics today. As a member of the Trump transition team, he's pushing Trump to put people into government with one single purpose: to break it forever and ever amen.
Rachel Maddow's report above gives you some great insight into who Thiel is, and how utterly bizarre his thought processes are. This is a guy who thinks death is an ideology, and is obsessed with finding eternal life on this earth through technology. And that is only the beginning.
Bloomberg reports that one of his closest associates is under consideration for the FDA, of all things.
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is considering a Silicon Valley investor close to billionaire Peter Thiel to head the Food and Drug Administration, according to people familiar with the matter.
Jim O’Neill, the Thiel associate, hasn’t been officially selected, according to the people, who asked to remain anonymous because the decision process is private, and the Trump team could still go in another direction.
O’Neill is a managing director at Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management, and last served in government during the George W. Bush administration as principal associate deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s also a board member of the Seasteading Institute, a Thiel-backed venture to create new societies at sea, away from existing governments.
O'Neill is a guy, by the way, who thinks drug trials are not really so necessary.
“We should reform FDA so there is approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety -- and let people start using them, at their own risk, but not much risk of safety,” O’Neill said in a speech at an August 2014 conference called Rejuvenation Biotechnology. “Let’s prove efficacy after they’ve been legalized.”
That Thiel-backed venture at sea is nothing more than a giant tax dodge. Thiel wants offshore companies to be offshore countries of their own, with no responsibility to any government and accountable only unto themselves.
Thiel, by the way, believes the last good time for this country was in the 20s, before women got the vote. It's all the fault of women that the country has gone to pot. And that's one of his least weird opinions.
Watch the Maddow report. It will tell you what you need to know about Thiel, and confirm that Trump is so utterly owned by these billionaires that he's just letting them pull the strings, lah-dee-dah, lah-dee-dah. Because what choice does he have? Thiel, Mercer, Koch et al gave him his fondest wish, and now he must repay the favor.
