He also talked quite openly in a piece for The New Yorker (1). While many people I know in the Bay Area thought "wow that's neat!" when I spoke to siblings and friends from other parts of the country, one person's exact response was "what the fuck is wrong with that person?" It was a long piece, but there was enough there where people could find things to like and dislike about him and Y Combinator in general. Sometimes I think people in Silicon Valley aren't aware of the microcosm they live in.
I've twice had the pleasure of fundraising in pre-YC SFBA. I admire and respect what Paul and Sam built. I viscerally appreciate it. But stuff like this makes YC extraordinarily difficult to defend. Not worth defending. It's table-flip upsetting.
> Sam is providing a different perspective for looking at Trump's presidency, which he's made it clear he's not happy with.
Those quotes might be reasonable on the context of an essay by Sam aimed at providing a "different perspective on Trump's presidency" (though Sam's own comments here suggest to that they wouldn't be much better in that context, but that's another discussion.)
In the actual context they appear, they are normalizing of Trump a d suggest, at best, an extraordinarily naive approach to the media in his position.
Against Donald Trump? The word "super" doesn't capture it. But don't just look at me. Before the election, Paul Graham said that if Trump won, he would join the resistance.
(You misleadingly edited your comment after I wrote my response. I would not agree that I have a visceral distaste of anything conservative. In fact, I think that's an accusation more accurately leveled against Donald Trump.)
You don't need a "visceral distaste towards anything conservative" to have issues with a president who gets his political news from a guy who literally thinks that alien lizards control the world. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-news-source-a...
At worst, it confirms many people's fears of how those in Silicon Valley view the world.