If you’re boycotting PayPal because you hate Donald Trump, you’ve got the story wrong
Ever since PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel came out strongly in support of Donald Trump’s presidential bid, a number of Americans who despise Trump have announced on their social media pages that they plan to get revenge on both men by boycotting PayPal. But as it turns out, this approach is not in line with the facts. Not only have Thiel and PayPal had nothing to do with each other for about eighteen years now, the current leadership at PayPal is decidedly liberal.
Peter Thiel was one of six original cofounders of PayPal back in 1998. One of the other cofounders was current Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who hates Donald Trump. But that’s not the relevant part, because PayPal was acquired entirely by eBay back in 2002, negating the original ownership of the cofounders. PayPal has since been spun off into its own company, and it’s currently led by Chairman John Donahoe and CEO Daniel Schulman. Based on their personal and professional track records on political and social issues, these two men probably hate Donald Trump as much as you do.
For instance, although current PayPal Chairman John Donahoe’s own politics aren’t clear, his wife Eileen Donahue was appointed to the position of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council by President Barack Obama in 2009; she now serves as the Director of Global Affairs at Human Rights Watch. And PayPal CEO Dan Schulman announced earlier this year that PayPal was canceling its planned job expansion in North Carolina in order to protest against the state’s Republican led anti-LGBT laws.
If you want to punish Peter Thiel for his support of Trump, you might take a look at Thiel’s current company, Clarium Capital instead. But as it turns out, you may not even have to bother boycotting Clarium, because it apparently never did recover from the Bush recession. Meanwhile PayPal’s current leadership team, Donahue and Schulman, sound like the last men on earth who would want anything to do with Donald Trump or his extremist policies – and they’re the people running PayPal now. Don’t boycott them; they’re on your side.
