WhistlePig founder offers $200M college campus for free with one big catch

The founder of a Vermont-based whiskey brand wants to give away a college campus that he bought during the pandemic — on the condition the new owner shares his vision for “the revival of our country and our civilization.”Raj Peter Bhakta is offering to gift the campus of 185-year-old now-defunct Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont — an asset he estimates would cost $200 million to rebuild — to a Catholic or Christian institution that shares his belief that a return to Western civilization “is predicated on a spiritual revival.”The 50-year-old WhistlePig and Bhakta Spirits founder credits his entry into the industry to President Donald Trump — who fired Bhakta when he was a contestant during the second season of “The Apprentice.”“I got into the whiskey business by getting fired by the sitting president of the United States,” Bhakta told Fox News Digital.After a failed congressional run involving an elephant and a mariachi band, he found himself “dead broke and alone” on a run-down Vermont farm during the 2008 recession.Identifying a gap in the high-end American whiskey market, he founded WhistlePig.Despite the brand’s ascent, Bhakta’s tenure at WhistlePig ended in a high-profile corporate showdown.Following a dispute with the company’s board, he sold his stake in WhistlePig in 2019, according to his website, and “embarked on a sabbatical in search of new discoveries in the world of spirits.”Armed with the proceeds from his departure, Bhakta launched his namesake spirits company in 2020.He then turned his attention to what he describes as the “epic, large-scale” disaster of American higher education.

In the summer of 2020, amid the uncertainty of COVID lockdowns, he purchased the shuttered Green Mountain College campus at auction for $4.5 million.That was much lower than its $20 million original asking price.“I bought this place, and then quickly learned that starting a college was a little bit more complic...