Paypal founder and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Thiel spoke on the fourth night of the 2016 Republican National Convention.

"I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all I am proud to be an American," he said.

Maddow Rambles For Three Minutes on "Incredibly Radical" "Openly Gay" Republican Peter Thiel

The crowd erupted with a standing ovation that turned into a short chant of "USA! USA! USA!"

"I don't pretend to agree with every plank in our party's platform. But fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline," he said. "When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom. This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?"

"Instead of going to Mars, we invaded the Middle East," he said. "Donald Trump is right. It's time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country."
 

Good evening. I'm Peter Thiel.

I build companies and I support people who are building new things, from social networks to rocket ships.

I'm not a politician.

But neither is Donald Trump.

He is a builder, and it's time to rebuild America.

Where I work in Silicon Valley, it's hard to see where America has gone wrong.

My industry has made a lot of progress in computers and in software, and, of course, it's made a lot of money.