President Trump’s White House crypto czar, David Sacks, says that Executive Branch, the upcoming Trump-aligned private club in Georgetown that costs as much as $500,000 to join, will be free of stuffy Washington insiders and any worry “that the next person over at the bar is a fake news reporter or even a lobbyist” who “we don’t know and we don’t trust.”
Gareth Banner, the director of the parent company of the sleek new Ned’s Club downtown, says his club members are a bipartisan “top 5 percent in their sector professionally,” among them Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York.
The old guard Metropolitan Club, whose past members include six American presidents, still has “Martini Fridays in the Library” and “Trap & Field News” in the club bulletin. The Cosmos Club, which encourages camaraderie among what it trumpets as “the greatest minds of our time,” displays photos of members who have won the Nobel Prize, among them the late Henry A. Kissinger.
In a 2025 Washington firebombed by political and ideological differences, all four clubs are growing, have wait lists or both. While they have varied levels of snobbery and exclusivity, Executive Branch is an outlier because of the price of its access to the White House and its enrichment of the Trump family.
But all four clubs reflect the sorting of the city’s establishment into separate corners at a turbulent time.
“Everybody is so disoriented and depressed and untethered,” said Sally Quinn, the journalist, author and authority on social Washington who was married to the late Benjamin Bradlee, the storied editor of The Washington Post. “It’s comforting to know there’s a place where they know your name, you’re going to see your friends and you can always get a table. And that’s a lot.”
