Buffett defends 'Giving Pledge' against Thiel and 'billionaire backlash'

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CNBC

Published Sat, Mar 21 2026 8:22 AM EDT


Warren Buffett is defending the philanthropic initiative he co-founded with Bill Gates almost 15 years ago as it faces what The New York Times calls a “billionaire backlash.”

Buffett wrote in an email to the newspaper, “I firmly believe in the Giving Pledge and consider it quite a success, though my physical limitations have eliminated my participation in the annual get-together. “I have continued to contact possible members but only on a minor scale in recent years. Bill Gates has continued major efforts.”

In 2010, Buffett said he and Gates hoped to “establish a new norm” with the Pledge, which is a “promise by the world’s wealthiest philanthropists to give the majority of their wealth to charitable causes in their lifetime of wills.”

But in a major article this week, the Times says that over the past two years, “there has been a growing backlash from the billionaires who are its target donors,” including a “quiet campaign by one pro-Trump tech billionaire to destroy it.”. Peter Thiel tells the Times he has privately encouraged around a dozen signers to cancel their pledges. “Most of the ones I’ve talked to have at least expressed regret about signing it.”

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/21/buffett-defends-giving-pledge-against-thiel-and-billionaire-backlash.html

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My dad had the Miles Davis "Live Evil" album (I think I still have it in a crate in the basement). It was this version -



Thiel is the personification of "live evil".

[underpants]

1. Buffet doesn't have to "defend" anything in any way connected to that freakish Nazi Thiel

[Blue Full Moon]

2. Thiel is evil.

Thiel is the Antichrist. His CIA tech and CIA funded company is named after the crystal balls that Sauron used to influence Saruman to become evil.

[LudwigPastorius]

5. Thiel is a disciple of Carl Schmitt, and believes in the destruction of democracy and rule by dictatorship.

https://peripateticpastor.com/2025/02/18/a-totalitarian-bent-of-mind-peter-thiel-carl-schmitt-and-political-theology/

Behind these thoughts—and not far behind them—is Carl Schmitt (1888-1985). It was Carl Schmitt who coined the term Thiel prefers, “political theology.” Schmitt brought together a distinctive idea of politics with an idea about executive power. For Schmitt, politics is by definition conflictual. It’s conflict that gives to politics its particular configuration.

-snip-

Because political life is conflictual, a matter of friends and enemies, executive power for Schmitt needs to be absolute. The effective ruler must be a “dictator,” a term Schmitt eagerly embraces. No “muddling through”; the effective ruler seizes power by declaring a “state of exception” and setting a firm direction for the state.

It will not surprise you that in 1933 Schmitt joined the Nazi party. Although he lived to 1985, he never apologized for his support of Adolf Hitler or for his open antisemitism. -snip- What distinguishes Schmitt’s political theology is its unabashed support for dictatorial rule.

-snip-

For Peter Thiel and others of his ilk this is the power to create a future unconstrained by government regulation and oversight. To do so, they need a biblical “lawless one,” the one who tears down the old so they can build the new. And for that purpose, the second Trump administration, augmented by Elon Musk and his minions, serves the purpose. All that would restrain the lawless one, liberal democracy, elections, the bureaucracy—all the katechonic elements of society—must be thrown off. In their place, the followers of Schmitt like Thiel and others propose a “unitary executive,” a barely disguised version of Schmitt’s dictator. Go fast and break things is the order of the day. We are watching it happen.

[Blue Full Moon]

6. Un American

He should have never been given our tech and funding. The CIA needs to be abolished. Kenndy said he was going to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds". After the Bay of Pigs which "George HW Bush" did to protect his Zapata oil rigs. One of our ships turned around and refused to fight because it was a CIA mission and not an act of the United States. The same year he created Zapata Iran's democratically elected president was going to nationalize the country's oil reserves. That is when the CIA had him assinated. Not long after the same occurred in Afghanistan. Which threw the country into a civil war. During the Nixon Administration satellites showed about 500 years of oil there.

[pat_k]

3. Too bad I don't believe in an afterlife or divine punishment.

If I did, I could perhaps comfort myself that these immoral, vile, evil people -- people hellbent on exploiting others and generally making the world a more terrible place for everyone else -- faced eternal damnation.

As it is, my only comfort is that such immoral, vile, evil people are probably utterly incapable of compassion, joy, or any other human experience that actually makes life worthwhile.

[SunSeeker]

7. Same. If divine punishment existed, Trump would not have survived covid. nt

[FakeNoose]

4. Peter Thiel would never give a dime to charity

He'll take it all with him when he goes straight to hell. I'm sure Warren Buffett and Bill Gates both know that.