There was a time, not long ago, when a presidential candidate’s spouse was required to shut down his charity because of the appearance of conflict of interest. Even that was not enough. Their daughter was advised to give up any political career that might intersect with politics and pursue a job as a kindergarten teacher. (I’m talking about Hillary Clinton and her family, of course.)
More recently, we were told that a son having a job with a foreign company during his father’s tenure as vice president was so corrupt that he deserved to be prosecuted and his father impeached.
Donald Trump Jr., megadonor Omeed Malik and several other investors are launching an invite-only club that costs more than half a million to join with an exclusive post-White House Correspondents’ Dinner gathering, according to an invite obtained by POLITICO and two people with knowledge of the venture, granted anonymity to discuss the private organization.
The “Executive Branch” is the brainchild of Malik and the president’s eldest son, and their partners at conservative fund 1789 Capital. It will be located in Georgetown.
Their goal, the people familiar with the plans say, is to create the highest-end private club that Washington has ever had, and cater to the business and tech moguls who are looking to nurture their relationships with the Trump administration.
The referral requirements and prohibitive pricing is meant to ensure the C-suite crowd can mingle with Trump advisers and cabinet members without the prying eyes of the press and wanna-be insiders. The price tag won’t be a problem for Trump’s cabinet — given it’s by far the wealthiest in history.
I don’t even know what to say. If you are a person who reflexively recoils against lefty language about oligarchy all you have to do is read that to recognize that they are right. There’s just no other way to see this. They aren’t trying to hide their intent.
I have long said that shamelessness is their superpower and if we’ve learned one thing, once these “norms” are broken it’s a free-for-all. I don’t know how to restore a normal respect for the rule of law and democracy but we’d better move quickly before people completely forget what those things are.
Speaking of oligarchy, how about this grotesque little cabal:
Chatham House, [is] a giant and raucous Signal group that forms part of the sprawling network of influential private chats that began during the fervid early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and which have fueled a new alliance of tech and the US right. That same week in Chatham House, Lonsdale and the Democratic billionaire Mark Cuban sparred over affirmative action, and Cuban and Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro discussed questions of culture and work ethic.
This constellation of rolling elite political conversations revolve primarily around the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and a circle of Silicon Valley figures. None of their participants was surprised to see Trump administration officials firing off secrets and emojis on the platform last month. I did not have the good fortune to be accidentally added to one of the chats, which can be set to make messages disappear after just 30 seconds.
But their influence flows through X, Substack, and podcasts, and constitutes a kind of dark matter of American politics and media. The group chats aren’t always primarily a political space, but they are the single most important place in which a stunning realignment toward Donald Trump was shaped and negotiated, and an alliance between Silicon Valley and the new right formed. The group chats are “the memetic upstream of mainstream opinion,” wrote one of their key organizers, Sriram Krishnan, a former partner in the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (typically styled a16z) who is now the White House senior policy adviser for AI.
That’s from the blockbuster Semafor expose by Ben Smith that delves into this “conversation” that’s apparently been going for years and is responsible for the red-pilling of silicon valley which wasn’t very hard. Privileged, white, very low EQ egomaniac tech bros were an easy mark.