The PayPal Mafia is taking over America’s government

On the night of December 7th San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, with its lakeside colonnade echoing a Roman ruin, turned into Mar-a-Lago, as Silicon Valley’s newly emboldened right-wingers gathered for a Christmas bash organised by the All-In podcast. The festive good cheer did not extend to everyone; The Economist was made to feel most unwelcome. But not before being privy to a riotous celebration of how a clique of billionaires—the so-called PayPal Mafia—helped clinch Donald Trump’s election victory and has taken Washington by storm.

The four venture capitalists that host All-In have a lot to feel smug about. In June two of them—David Sacks, a PayPal alumnus, and Chamath Palihapitiya—threw a fundraising event for Mr Trump when he visited San Francisco, which raked in $12m. On December 5th Mr Trump returned the favour by naming Mr Sacks his artificial-intelligence (AI) and crypto “tsar”. Mr Sacks accordingly wore a Russian fur hat to the event.

Alongside Mr Trump, the All-In podcast counts Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, two other PayPal mafiosi, as friends. From the stage there was jubilation over Mr Musk’s influence on the president-elect (“Being Elon Musk is a pretty fucking sweet deal”) and Mr Thiel’s patronage of J.D. Vance, the incoming vice-president. “The PayPal Mafia’s takeover of the government is now complete, so good work on that,” quipped Aaron Levie, the founder of Box, a cloud-storage firm (and a Democratic donor decidedly out of place).

The event featured giddy excitement over cryptocurrencies and defence-tech firms like Anduril and Palantir. But some of the loudest cheers—including a “hallelujah” from the stage—went to efforts to fix the budget deficit and rein in “out of control” government spending.

The hosts also made clear who was out of favour. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, was roundly mocked. He is Mr Musk’s nemesis. Mr Palihapitiya, with the future AI tsar at his side, described OpenAI as “the biggest disappointment of this year”, and heaped praise instead on Mr Musk’s xAI. Women were under-represented in the audience; one female entrepreneur walked out in disgust at the “male energy”.

But top of the hate list was “legacy media”. When your correspondent sought a word with Jason Calacanis, a co-host dressed as a jovial Santa Claus on stage, he flew into a rage, shouting: “Don’t talk to journalists!”. A few minutes later, he threw The Economist out.