PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, a billionaire investor who poured at least $1 million into Donald Trump's presidential campaign and one of the Republican Party's most prominent supporters in Silicon Valley, told friends Trump's administration is "incompetent" and it could end in disaster, BuzzFeed reported Monday.
Thiel, a member of the executive committee of the President-elect's transition team, praised Trump during a tech summit at the White House in June, according to The Hill, and reportedly told the president, "the administration is doing very well."
But three separate sources said Thiel has privately started to sour on the president and his "increasingly pessimistic" views of the president have grown over time. At a private gathering in January, Thiel told friends, "there is a 50 percent chance this whole thing ends in disaster."
In response to the article, the investor told BuzzFeed he stands by the president.
"The night he won the election, I said President Trump would face an awesomely difficult task," Thiel said in a statement. "Today it's clear that resistance to change in Washington, D.C. has been even fiercer than I anticipated. We still need change. I support President Trump in his ongoing fight to achieve it."