Peter Thiel, Elated by the JD Vance Pick, Warms to Trump Again

The Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel’s relationship with Donald J. Trump turned ice-cold in the middle of 2023, when the former president excoriated Mr. Thiel on a private phone call over his unwillingness to support Mr. Trump’s re-election bid.

Now, after Mr. Trump chose one of Mr. Thiel’s closest political acolytes as his running mate, there appears to be a thaw.

Mr. Thiel is warming toward supporting the Republican ticket, he said in an interview on Friday, although he stopped short of making a formal endorsement. He also said he was not yet prepared to make a big donation to help elect Mr. Trump and his vice-presidential pick, Senator JD Vance of Ohio — remaining noncommittal and sounding dour about whether his money could make a difference.

“I always try to resist getting swept up in excitement,” Mr. Thiel told The New York Times over breakfast in Washington, making his first comments about the Republican ticket since Mr. Vance’s selection. “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.”

Mr. Thiel has been plain that he believed the first Trump term did not deliver on all of its promise. But he had to tend to his relationship with Mr. Trump in 2022 as two allies who once worked for him, Mr. Vance and Blake Masters in Arizona, ran in Republican primaries for Senate where the former president’s endorsement proved critical. Mr. Vance won, but Mr. Masters lost the general election to Senator Mark Kelly.

Mr. Thiel was the person who introduced Mr. Vance to Mr. Trump in early 2021, and yet Mr. Vance now has a far stronger relationship with Mr. Trump than Mr. Thiel does.