LendingTree CEO And Longtime Trump Supporter Doug Lebda Dies In ATV Accident

The founder and CEO of LendingTree died over the weekend.

CEO of LendingTree Doug Lebda died unexpectedly in an ATV accident.

He was 55 years old.

Fox Business had more details to report on Lebda’s death and a shared a statement from his company:

LendingTree, Inc. announced Monday its founder and CEO Doug Lebda died unexpectedly in an all-terrain vehicle accident over the weekend.

The board has appointed LendingTree’s Chief Operating Officer and President, Scott Peyree, to succeed Lebda, effective immediately.

“We are deeply saddened by the sudden passing of Doug. Doug was a visionary leader whose relentless drive, innovation and passion transformed the financial services landscape, touching the lives of millions of consumers,” the board of directors said in a statement.

The board said Lebda “dedicated himself to building a company rooted in consumer empowerment, championing a mission to simplify financial decisions and fostering economic opportunity for all” since its founding in 1996.

LendingTree is one of the nation’s largest online financial platforms, providing offers for loans, credit cards, insurance, and more through a network of approximately 430 financial partners. Lebda, who graduated from Bucknell University and earned his MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, was with the company for 26 years.

He founded the company with the goal of simplifying the loan-shopping process by creating a website that took the legwork out of running to multiple banks for information.

“Instead of physically going to multiple banks, customers could go to a website where the banks would compete for their business,” LendingTree’s website reads.

After launching nationally in July 1998, he led LendingTree through its IPO in 2000, the dot-com meltdown of 2001 and a sale to IAC/InterActiveCorp in 2003.

LendingTree’s 55-year-old CEO Doug Lebda dies in ATV accident: ‘devastating’ https://t.co/ejn433IYmL pic.twitter.com/zTcSFyJ4C6

— New York Post (@nypost) October 13, 2025

Per source, Doug Burgum doing a Zoom fundraiser for Trump next week hosted by Doug Lebda, the CEO of Lending Tree pic.twitter.com/6awHBO8mGR

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) June 19, 2024

A report by CBS News from 2016 revealed Lebda backed Trump in 2016:

The Great America PAC, a super PAC backing presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, released a partial inventory of its top-level supporters Thursday — a list that includes actress Stacey Dash and LendingTree founder Doug Lebda.

“The nomination process is over and regardless of other candidates one may have supported in the primary, it’s critical for the leaders in the country who believe in free markets to step up and rally behind Donald Trump and Great America PAC,” Stanley Hubbard, a co-chair of Great America PAC, said in a statement. “With our expanding list of supporters, we will have the financial resources to help Donald Trump win a billion-dollar campaign.”

Some high-profile Republicans are counted among Great America PAC’s supporters, including former “Clueless” star Stacey Dash, a conservative pundit who had previously dubbed Trump a “true conservative” and had defended him over the violent incidents at his campaign rallies.

“There’s a lot of talk about Donald Trump being violent, condoning it, or at least inciting it,” Dash wrote in a blog post in March. But, she asserted, “he’s not violent, he’s just ‘street.'”

Among some of the other well-known names are LendingTree founder Doug Lebda, who joined Hubbard as a co-chair of the committee earlier this month, New York businessman Robert Lapidus and oil executive James Volker.