[...] Trump opened the event by boasting of how many would-be-attendees he had turned away at the suggestion of Thiel. “I won’t tell you the hundreds of calls we’ve had, asking to come to this meeting,” Trump told attendees. “And I will say Peter [Thiel] would sort of say, ‘You know, that company’s too small.’ And these are monster companies.”

Donald Trump Jr, whom the president-elect has said will run his businesses during the senior Trump’s administration, attended the meeting. Alex Karp, the CEO of Thiel’s own data analytics firm, Palantir, managed to get an invitation. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who founded the service Trump often uses to communicate with the public, did not.

Dorsey is said to be on the outs with the Trump camp after refusing the add emojis to Trump’s Twitter campaign hashtag #CrookedHillary. Gary Coby, a Trump advertising staffer, detailed the dispute on the blogging platform Medium last month; early Wednesday, Politico reported that Trump had taken revenge by excluding Dorsey. [...]

I don't know, but this seems so sick. I can't imagine there is no conflict of interest here. And it really doesn't look very democratic any more.