'Beyond nuts': MAGA billionaire's 'doozy' Financial Times editorial draws instant mockery

The Financial Times on Friday published an editorial written by Donald Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel that drew instant mockery on social media.

In his article, Thiel demanded that the president-elect use his authority to get to the bottom of the COVID-19 pandemic — and compared the opportunity to past governments' failures to reveal the truth behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the death of billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Many critics were quick to lampoon Thiel for pushing conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination that have been the subject of multiple investigations and have come up with no concrete proof of a widespread plot to murder America's 35th president.

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Edward Luce, a columnist at the Financial Times, marveled at the column that his own paper decided to publish.

"Inside the mind of a Silicon Valley fanatic," he commented on BlueSky. "Peter Thiel makes Orwellian analogy between today’s liberal democracy and South African apartheid - and calls for a truth and reconciliation commission to uncover the crimes of America’s 'Ancien regime.' Beyond nuts."

"Peter Thiel, if he ever had it, has certainly lost it now," commented Brookings Institute fellow Quinta Jurecic.

"A former grad school colleague of mine was on Thiel's gravy train for years," commented Elliott Lusztig. "Sweet gig until Thiel pulled the plug. He keeps people around to help him with stuff like this, and my word, this is a doozy.

University of Washington biology professor Carl Bergstrom compared Thiel's editorial to the paranoid ramblings of anonymous internet cranks.

"Every now and then my mail includes a bizarre screed, sometimes typed on a blank postcard and heavily annotated in pen afterwards, always with strange capitalization, seldom with a return address," he commented. "I remember one claiming proof that the pope and Mossad created HIV. Anyway, here’s Peter Thiel."

Cato Institute scholar Andy Craig slammed the Financial Times for deciding to print Thiel's rant in the first place.

"It reflects very poorly on FT to have published this crazy person rant," he argued. "Obviously he would have got it out there somewhere anyway, but there was no good reason to let it appear under their masthead. If it was by Peter Smith this would have gone straight into their crank submissions file."