Billionaire Bill Ackman has donated $10,000 to his latest worthy cause: an all-out rager for a bunch of University of North Carolina fraternity brothers who took down a Palestinian flag put up by protesters and replaced it with a U.S. flag.
Ackman, who also donated to pro-Israel video demonstrations at the George Washington University, was matched by at least two other $10,000 donations as of Thursday afternoon. By that time, the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity had raised $424,000 of their $450,000 goal.
According to the GoFundMe, donations will go to “throw this frat the party they deserve, a party worth of the boat-shoed Broleteriat who did their country proud.” It’s apparently to celebrate their victory over the “commie losers” who protested Israel’s continued military action in Gaza, where over 34,000 Palestinians have died in the last eight months.
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“I supported the frat boys because I was inspired by their patriotism in protecting our flag,” Ackman said in statement Friday.
On Tuesday, a few of the Pi Kapp brothers were photographed re-installing an American flag that had been taken down by pro-Palestinian protesters, who had raised a Palestinian flag in its place, according to the student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel.
“I cannot say that I am fully educated on the Israel/Palestine conflict,” Guillermo Estrada, one of the Pi Kapp brothers in the picture, said in a statement on X, “but it upset me that my country’s flag was disrespected in order to advocate for another.”
In typical frat vernacular, the GoFundMe tells of a heroic band “armored in Vineyard Vines and Patagonia” and “fueled by Zyn and White Claws” who triumphantly raised the banner amid the din of the protest. It had already been taken down by protesters and re-raised once, by UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts and his police detail, before protesters took it down once more and the fraternity brothers raised it again.
GoFundMe organizer John Noonan, who once worked as national security adviser to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), said in a May 1 update that thanks to the nearly 13,000 donors, he’d identified a “world class event planner named Susan” who “worked in the White House and knows what’s about.” That planner, Susan Ralston, appears to be a former Bush administration staffer who resigned once she was linked to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
According to Noonan, Ralston is already “hard at work” planning a rager for the ages for “our Noble Born brochachos.”
It was unclear whether any of the funds would go to other causes, such as aid to Israel or support for veterans, if the $450,000 goal was surpassed. The Daily Beast has reached out to Noonan, Ralston, and the fraternity for comment.
Noonan added in the update the GoFundMe had sent a representative to “ensure your donations do as God intended—to show these guys enough fireworks to blow their Oakley aviators straight off their faces.” The Daily Beast has contacted GoFundMe for confirmation.
“These boys... no, men, of the UNC Chapel Hill Pi Kappa Phi, gave the best to America and now they deserve the best,” Noonan wrote.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include claims that Ackman has not donated to counterprotests
