Peter Thiel denies his past speeches about Silicon Valley may have “triggered” the alleged CEO assassin

Peter Thiel denies his past speeches about Silicon Valley may have “triggered” the alleged CEO assassin

Peter Thiel rejects the idea that any speech he gave in the past could have influenced the alleged assassin of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.

Speaking on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” the billionaire learned on Morgan’s air that suspected assassin Luigi Mangione had reposted words from a speech he gave about the heads of Silicon Valley companies. Thiel said it could be dangerous to express some views, but there should be no restrictions on expression.

“There’s always a part of me that thinks that it’s always very dangerous to express certain views, and there are all these arguments against free speech, that we should limit speech because it drives people all kinds of crazy will provoke species,” he said. “But I never thought it would be so triggering to say something like that.”

The speech that Mangione published was a speech by Thiel about Silicon Valley executives and their Asperger’s disease.

“Many of the great startups in Silicon Valley appear to be run by people with a mild form of Asperger’s,” Thiel said at the time. “I think we always have to turn this fact around and look at this as an indictment of our entire society. What does it say about our society when everyone who doesn’t have Asperger’s, who is socially well adjusted, is talked out of all original creative ideas before they are even fully developed?”

On Monday, 26-year-old Ivy League graduate Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a five-day manhunt following last Wednesday’s shooting outside New York’s Hilton Midtown. He is accused of second-degree murder, forgery of documents and three counts of illegal possession of a firearm and was refused bail.

The suspected assassin has become something of a folk hero in the weeks since the attack. Morgan asked Thiel what he took away from so many experiences that stood not behind the victim, but behind the perpetrator. The billionaire said it should tell people a lot about the state of society.

“I don’t think you should ever glorify murder, and man, it probably just tells us more about how crazy some of these people are that say these things… I don’t think it tells us much about this case, but it tells us we’re in a really crazy society.”

When asked about the killer’s motives, Thiel added: “I don’t think there’s anything heroic about them.”

Watch the full discussion between Morgan and Thiel below.

The post Peter Thiel denies his past speeches about Silicon Valley may have ‘triggered’ alleged CEO assassin appeared first on TheWrap.

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