Saturday, September 23, 2023

Today Is The Seventh Anniversary Of The Secret Trade That Put Trump In the White House

Today Is The Seventh Anniversary Of The Secret Trade That Put Trump In the White House
How Sen. Ted Cruz and The Federalist Society Used the Shaping of the Supreme Court as the Price for Trump to get the GOP machinery behind him in 2016
Vicky Ward Investigates
Sep 23

READ THIS:
Seven years ago, on this date, a backroom trade occurred that would shift the future of the Presidency, the Republican party - and the Supreme Court, to where it all is today. Remarkably, very few people in the media paid much heed at the time.
Donald Trump, then the Republican nominee for President, who lacked the support of the financial and ideological center of his party, had been struggling in the polls against Hillary Clinton.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R. Tx) who’d come second in the Republican race, and who did have the support of the GOP establishment, had refused to endorse Trump at the Republican Convention.
Cruz’s chief worry, shared by the Federalist Society (Fed Soc), the conservative lawyers’ club he’d joined at Harvard Law School, was that Trump didn’t really care about the Supreme Court. The fear was that in Trump-fashion, were he elected President, he might nominate a bunch of cronies to the Court, who had not been groomed by the GOP establishment (aka Fed Soc). A guy atop Fed Soc called Leonard Leo and Sen. Cruz, were adamant that a list hand-picked by Leo was exclusively what Trump must select from. The greatest urgency was in the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. The Holy Grail for a new Conservative court would be something Cruz and Leo, both staunch Catholics, had long talked about: repealing Roe v. Wade.
And, under pressure in the polls, on this date seven years ago, Trump (or Trump’s campaign staff) agreed to do a deal. He announced he’d choose his next Justice exclusively from a list given to him by the Federalist Society. And, in return Sen. Cruz endorsed Trump on Facebook.
It was a Friday, a slow news day.
And, at the time few people reported on the import of what was happening.
But it WAS important. It led to a handpicked new Supreme Court - and the repeal of Roe V Wade.
As you’ll hear in my new Audible podcast series, Pipeline to Power, the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell absolutely understood the bigger ramifications.
Without Cruz and the Republican financial machinery, Trump did not stand much chance of winning the Presidency.
Here’s a transcript of a snippet of the audio around this:
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So, it’s now spring of the 2016 election year. The senate is stacked. Garland is off the table. Leonard Leo’s campaign engine is ready to hit go. They just need the right president - to nominate the right justice.
SOT TRUMP MAGA we will make america great again
So when Donald Trump started pulling ahead in the Republican primaries - all eyes were on him. The most unlikely presidential candidate the GOP has possibly ever had. Someone with no fixed ideology - other than an absolutely unwavering belief in himself and his invincibility.
SOT TRUMP (54:25): I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger.
Back at the Federalist Society, there was concern. Trump was unpredictable. And Steve Calabresi told us that some people feared that Trump would pick his friends for the bench.
Steve Calabresi: A lot of very undesirable people like Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie and that guy Corey Lewandowski. And, you know, some of the really seedy characters who hang Trump hung around with.
But not for the first time the Fed Soc network proved invaluable, in fact, unbeatable. Its influence and network turned out to be something Trump literally could not afford to ignore.
Don McGahn[1], Trump’s campaign council,[2] had been a Federalist Society member since his law school days. Here’s Lee Liberman Otis.
Lee: My understanding of what happened is that Don McGahn who was council to Trump's, presidential election effort, you know, called Jonathan Bunch, who was working with Leonard on, uh, on, on, uh, on various, uh, uh, things and was in particular in charge of the, you know, an effort to bring attention to state court, uh, activity, um, called on Jonathan and said, um, uh, uh, you know, do you have any suggestions for us, for the Supreme court?
Mcgahn met with Leonard Leo at McGahn’s offices at the law firm Jones Day in Washington, DC.[3] Leo gave him a list of 11 names of approved possibilities for the Supreme Court[4]. The media interpreted Trump’s move as a political message to conservatives.
CNN report on list:
(00:00 - 00:34) " look the reason Donald trump is putting these names out here I think is to send a signal to the rest of the party that they don't necessarily need to worry about him not being as conservative as they would like as they would like on some of these issues, especially at a time when he’s trying to rally the party behind him"
In May, Trump released the list of names[5]. Leonard Leo’s decades-long handiwork - was now in broad daylight on national television[6].
TRUMP SOT to Breitbart: you saw the 11 names I gave, and we're gonna have great judges, conservative, all picked by Federalist Society.
But Trump didn’t say he would pick exclusively from that list to replace Scalia. He just said that he liked “those kind of nominees.”
FedSoc didn’t trust Trump.
But Fortunately they had leverage.
Even after Trump became the Republican nominee. Because Senator Ted Cruz, a Fed Soc member, had come in second in the primaries - and he refused to endorse Trump[7]. Trump knew that he was vulnerable without the support of the mainstream Republicans.
So, with six weeks to go before the election, Senator Cruz proposed a trade.
In his book, Senator Cruz writes: “The price of my endorsement was explicit. I wanted a clear, unequivocal commitment that he would nominate Scalia’s replacement from a specified list, and ONLY from that list."[8]
Trump, in turn, would get Cruz’s supporters to get behind him..
On September the 23rd, Trump announced an updated Fed Soc approved list of possible Supreme Court justices. Critically - he said that he would ONLY go off of that list to replace Scalia[9].
Within minutes Ted Cruz endorsed Trump on Facebook.
NOW, the GOP machinery clicked in behind Trump.
Here’s Senator Mitch McConnell:
(SOT) Mitch McConnell to Kentucky FedSoc: (15:30) “The establishment of the list reassured a lot of skeptical Republicans, on the inside, and then by the fall on the outside and became the single biggest issue… to bringing our side in line along him and allowed him in part to win the election.”
In fact, no one I’ve spoken to believes Trump could have won the election without it.

 





How one billionaire family bankrolled election lies, white nationalism — and the Capitol riot

 

How one billionaire family bankrolled election lies, white nationalism — and the Capitol riot

Rebekah Mercer is “one of the chief financiers of the fascist movement,” says longtime GOP insider Steve Schmidt

By IGOR DERYSH

Senior News Editor

PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 4, 2021

our years before Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., pumped his fist to a supportive mob that would soon overrun the Capitol Police and hunt lawmakers through the halls of Congress, the former Missouri attorney general needed a deep-pocketed patron. Naturally, he called on the man who helped bankroll former President Donald Trump's rise: hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, whom he would soon describe as a friend while name-dropping him to court support from far-right figures like Steve Bannon, a longtime Mercer ally. It's unclear what came of Hawley's meeting with Mercer, but the Club for Growth, which has received millions from the Mercer family, and the Senate Conservatives Fund, which also got Mercer donations, quickly became Hawley's biggest financial backers, by far. Mercer's daughter Rebekah kicked in a near-maximum donation to his 2018 Senate campaign for good measure.

While Charles Koch and his late brother David have dominated Republican fundraising in recent decades, the Mercers' recent strategic investments in far-right candidates bought them a disproportionate level of influence in the Republican Party before culminating in an effort to subvert the election that fueled the deadly Capitol siege.

"The Mercers laid the groundwork for the Trump revolution," Bannon told The New Yorker in 2017. "Irrefutably, when you look at donors during the past four years, they have had the single biggest impact of anybody, including the Kochs." Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, sees it differently. Rebekah Mercer, he said in an interview with Salon, is the "chief financier or one of the chief financiers of the fascist movement, and that's what it is."

Hours after the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, killing five people and injuring dozens of police officers in a futile bid to stop the counting of electoral votes, Hawley joined with top Mercer beneficiaries in objecting to the results to back Trump's "big lie" that the election was somehow stolen. There was Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whose super PAC got $13.5 million from the Mercers during the 2016 presidential campaign — before the family dropped another $15.5 million to back Trump. There was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., defending the majority of the GOP House caucus voting to overturn legal election results after his Congressional Leadership Fund received $1.5 million from the Mercers. And there was Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who received $21,600 from the Mercers before speaking at the rally that preceded the riot and objecting to the results. Brooks was later named by "Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander as having helped orchestrate the event, though his office said he has "no recollection communicating in any way with whoever Ali Alexander is."

Alexander himself may have benefited from the Mercers' millions while working for the Black Conservative Fund, a small and mysterious group that received $60,000 from Robert Mercer in 2016. Though the group did not raise any money in 2020, it promoted the White House rally to tens of thousands of followers, according to CNBC.

The Mercers funded numerous key players who helped foment the Jan. 6 insurrection, though their full involvement remains unclear. Along with far-right candidates and groups, they have also funded the far-right social network Parler, which was used to coordinate the Capitol siege, and Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct London-based data firm that stole Facebook user data to help Trump's 2016 campaign target potential voters.

"As I discovered first-hand, the Mercers are exceptionally skillful at obfuscating and masking their political enterprises," David Carroll, a professor at The New School in Manhattan who sued Cambridge Analytica for his data in London, said in an email to Salon. "I marveled at how their ownership of Cambridge Analytica was effectively shielded from the U.K. courts where they were prosecuted."

Now that the Mercers have survived the scrutiny of the Federal Trade Commission and former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, Carroll added, "I would assume the family has doubled-down on investing in its own privacy."

Schmidt agreed that "it's hard to keep track of the money" the Mercers have doled out to their pet causes.

"In this movement, the money is a fundamentally important part of it. It fuels the movement and that movement is an extremist movement," he said. "Is there a better than even chance that the Mercer money is flowing, like so many tributaries, right into a larger seditious stream on this? Of course there is."

Lax laws surrounding dark money donated to nonprofit entities mean it will likely be "several years before the public will have a complete sense of how much the Mercers spent," wrote The Intercept's Matthew Cunningham-Cook.

Publicly available data shows that the Mercers helped fund numerous players who pushed the "big lie." The family donated $3.8 million to Citizens United, which is run by longtime Trump adviser David Bossie, who was tapped to lead the former president's legal challenges. Though the Mercers have pulled back their financial support in recent election cycles amid growing scrutiny, they donated $300,000 during this past cycle to the Republican National Committee, which joined Trump's legal battle.

The Mercers were also the top donors to Arizona Republican Party chairwoman Kelli Ward, a devoted Trump loyalist, The Intercept reported last week. Ward joined the lawsuit led by the Republican attorney general of Texas that sought to overturn the results of the election in multiple states and spoke at a December rally that featured Alexander to push Trump's election conspiracy theories. On Twitter, Ward promoted her appearance at a "Stop the Steal" rally alongside former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to invoke martial law to rerun the election, and posted the hashtag "#CrossTheRubicon," a phrase that refers to Julius Caesar marching his army into Rome to declare himself a dictator. The Arizona GOP also promoted Alexander's tweets, which included his declaration that he was "willing to give up my life for this fight."

"Live for nothing, or die for something," the party tweeted about a month before the Capitol riot.

More recently, Rebekah Mercer co-founded Parler, ostensibly a "libertarian" moderation-free social network that quickly became a megaphone for far-right figures like Alexander and fellow organizer Alex Jones, both of whom had been banned from mainstream social networks for spreading disinformation. Alexander, Jones and others used Parler to spread falsehoods about the election while others simply trafficked in white supremacist content, according to the Anti-Defamation League. "Holocaust denial, antisemitism, racism and other forms of bigotry are also easy to find," the ADL said.

Parler was used by some of the Capitol rioters to plan and coordinate the attack. The site was briefly taken offline by Amazon before finding a new host, though its apps have been removed from the Apple and Google app stores. Rebekah Mercer said in a Parler post that she started the social network to combat the "increasing tyranny" of our "tech overlords," slamming mainstream social networks over "data mining" — which is exactly what the Mercers' former company, Cambridge Analytica, exploited to steal Facebook users' personal data to help Trump in 2016. Although Mercer touted Parler's protection of user data, hackers were able to easily gain access to unsecured user data, which showed that Parler users had penetrated deep inside the Capitol and shared videos and photos of their crimes.

Before Trump, the family for years bankrolled Breitbart News, formerly run by Steve Bannon, who affectionately termed it the platform of the alt-right. Along with Breitbart, which received a $10 million investment from the family, the Mercers also funded Bannon projects like Glittering Steel, a film production company, and the  Government Accountability Institute, whose president authored the anti-Hillary bestseller "Clinton Cash" and later pushed discredited conspiracy theories about Joe Biden and his son Hunter's work overseas. Bannon's appointment to Trump's White House, after Rebekah Mercer pushed for him to take over Trump's campaign, was celebrated by the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party. Though Bannon fell out with Trump after a few months in the White House, both he and Breitbart aggressively pushed Trump's false narrative following the election.

The Mercers also funded conservative groups that helped push Trump's election lies and spread hate. An analysis by Georgetown University's Bridge Initiative, which researches the spread of Islamophobia, extensively detailed the Mercers' donations to groups that promote "racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism," and that have since moved on to pushing election conspiracy theories.

In 2017, the Mercers donated $200,000 to the Gatestone Institute, where Rebekah Mercer sat on the board of governors. The group spent years pushing anti-Islam writings before echoing Trump's baseless fraud claims following the election. That same year, the Mercers gave $1.725 million and another $500,000 the following year to the Bannon-founded Government Accountability Institute, whose research director Eric Eggers pushed unfounded fraud claims on Sean Hannity's radio show. In 2018, they gave $8.1 million to DonorsTrust, which later donated $1.5 million to the white nationalist group VDARE, which subsequently promoted conspiracy theories about the election.

"Any examination of the growth of the far-right today in the U.S. must take into account the role of the Mercer family," said Mobashra Tazamal, a senior research fellow at Bridge who authored the report, in an email to Salon. "Rebekah Mercer, in particular, has provided financial support to politicians who amplify white nationalist sentiments, and platforms like Breitbart and Parler that magnify far-right conspiracy theories."

Tazamal added that the Capitol riot should not be understood as "an organic event" but rather as a "coordinated attack."

"By strategically funneling millions into known hate groups, platforms amplifying racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, and politicians who pushed forth outright lies of a stolen election, Rebekah Mercer played a role in inciting the violence by providing material support," she said. "The billionaire family has used their extraordinary wealth to bankroll the rise of violent white nationalism in this country."

Rebekah Mercer defended herself in a 2018 Wall Street Journal op-ed, claiming that she "welcomes immigrants and refugees" and rejects "any discrimination based on race, gender, creed, ethnicity or sexual orientation," despite repeatedly funding lawmakers and groups accused of trafficking hate. She said she supported Trump "because he promised to tackle entrenched corruption on both sides of the aisle," even though he did far more to fill the swamp than drain it. She insisted that she had "no editorial authority" at Breitbart and argued that Bannon took the outlet in the "wrong direction," though The New Yorker reported that the family had invested $10 million in the outlet on the condition that Bannon would be placed on the company's board. The report also said that she is "highly engaged" with the site's content and "often points out areas of coverage that she thinks require more attention."

"She reads every story, and calls when there are grammatical errors or typos," a source told the outlet.

The Mercers were also the principal patrons for far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos. After Yiannopoulos was fired by Breitbart for comments defending pedophilia, he received a wire transfer from Robert Mercer's accountant, according to BuzzFeed News. "Rebekah Mercer loves Milo,"  a source told the outlet. "They always stood behind him, and their support never wavered."

Politico in 2016 dubbed Rebekah Mercer the "most powerful woman in GOP politics." Newsmax founder Chris Ruddy, whose outlet also pushed the "big lie," labeled Mercer the "first lady of the alt-right." Though her father signed the large checks, Politico reported, it's Rebekah Mercer who is "running the family operation" and whose "frustration" with the Koch brothers' donor network — in which the Mercers previously participated — led her to start a "rival operation."

Rebekah Mercer heads the Mercer family's foundation, which donated $35 million to right-wing think tanks and policy groups between 2009 and 2014, according to the Washington Post. It marked a massive shift for the family, which donated just $37,800 in 2006, including a $4,200 check from Robert Mercer's wife Diana to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign. The election of Barack Obama changed everything, leading the family to pump at least $77 million in political donations into conservative candidates and causes between 2008 and 2016. Though their early forays into politics in New York and Oregon were utter failures, and Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign crumbled under the weight of relentless attacks from Trump and general bipartisan disdain, their investment in Trump quickly paid dividends.

Rebekah Mercer reportedly led a major reorganization of Trump's 2016 campaign, connecting him with Bannon and former Cruz adviser Kellyanne Conway, who would replace Paul Manafort at the helm of the team. Mercer, who also served on the Trump transition's executive committee, pushed for Trump to hire Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who was forced to resign less than a month into Trump's presidency amid a criminal investigation and now spreads QAnon conspiracy theories online.

It's unclear why the Mercers fund so many far-right causes, though sources close to the family told Politico in 2016 that they "harbor a deep and abiding enmity toward the political establishment." Robert Mercer has been described as a "reclusive" former IBM computer scientist who made his fortune as co-CEO of the algorithmic trading company Renaissance Technologies. Sources close to him told The New Yorker that he is a conspiracy theorist who believes the Clintons had opponents murdered and were involved in a drug-running ring with the CIA. He has also described the Civil Rights Act as a mistake, arguing that Black people were better off financially before the passage of the landmark law, according to the same New Yorker report. Racism in the U.S. is "exaggerated," Mercer reportedly said, attributing most of it to "Black racists." He has likewise argued that climate change is not a problem and would actually be beneficial for the Earth, sources told the magazine.

"Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make," David Magerman, a former colleague of Mercer who later sued him for unlawful termination, told the New Yorker. "A cat has value, he's said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he's a thousand times more valuable."

Magerman warned in an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer that Mercer was "effectively buying shares in the candidate."

"Robert Mercer now owns a sizable share of the United States Presidency," he wrote.

While painting herself as a philanthropist who supports small government and personal responsibility, Rebekah Mercer, who reportedly home-schools her four children in a $28 million Trump-branded apartment in New York, described the state of the country in apocalyptic terms in a 2019 book first flagged by The Intercept.

"[W]hat is the state of [the American] experiment today?" Mercer asked. "'Now we are engaged in a great civil war,' said Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863. One hundred and fifty-five years later, it is barely hyperbolic to echo the Great Emancipator." She added, "We are not yet in armed conflict, but we are facing an ever more belligerent, frantic, and absurd group of radicals in a struggle for the soul of our country."

The report added that the Mercers own Centre Firearms, a company that claims to have the "country's largest private cache of machine guns," and has a  Queens warehouse filled with guns and "an Mk 19 belt-fed grenade launcher, capable of hurling 60 explosives per minute."

The Mercers' extremist sympathies set them apart from other big Republican donors like the Kochs, whom Schmidt described as transactional limited-government ideologues who "got none of what they were seeking" from their Republican funding.

The Kochs "wanted conservative governance," said Schmidt, who was senior strategist for Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. "They didn't get that. They got big government, they got big-spending, out-of-control government, led by the Republican Party. That's the complete opposite of what they invested in."

But the Mercers "invested in a different cause," he added.

"That cause is not a democratic cause. It's not a limited-government cause. It seems that the Mercers invested in chaos and they got exactly what they wanted. It seems like they invested in someone who didn't believe in American democracy, and they got someone who tried to burn it down."


By IGOR DERYSH

Igor Derysh is Salon's senior news editor. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and Baltimore Sun.

MORE FROM IGOR DERYSH 




Bob Mercer and Rebekah Mercer  (Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
Bob Mercer and Rebekah Mercer (Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)



https://www.salon.com/2021/02/04/how-one-billionaire-family-bankrolled-election-lies-white-nationalism--and-the-capitol-riot/

Koch Brothers EXPOSED • FULL DOCUMENTARY • BRAVE NEW FILMS (BNF)

 




WE DON'T MONETIZE OUR FILMS! As a result Google & Youtube don’t push our content or suggest it to viewers as often. It really helps us if you can subscribe AND hit the notification bell so you don’t miss our new releases! Billionaires David and Charles Koch have been handed the ability to buy our democracy in the form of giant checks to the House, Senate, and soon, possibly even the Presidency. The last time we exposed the Koch Brothers' dealings to the world we here at Brave New Films wound up in their crosshairs. They produced online ad campaigns attacking us, but, it takes more than a banner ad to slow us down. We've reissued Koch Brothers Exposed in an updated version, Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Edition, to shine a light on them. We've delved even deeper into where their money is going, who their money is hurting, and how much they are making during this whole process leading up to the 2014 Elections. Two years ago when we made this film very few people knew who the Koch Brothers were or what the Koch Brothers were doing. But now, we so strongly believe that everyone should know what is happening that with your help and donations we are able to offer the film for free. We want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to see the truth. (5:11) How the Koch Brothers use Citizens United to corrupt democracy (7:11) The Koch plan to re-segregate public schools (17:11) Koch University: Rewriting your Education Is your school on the list http://www.bravenewfilms.org/koch_get... (21:02) Kochs VS The Minimum Wage (25:09) Kochs & Voter Suppression (31:26) Koch Attacks on Unions (34:54) The Koch plan to dismantle Social Security (38:20) Kochs & The Environment (40:52) How the Koch Brothers Cause Cancer by dumping their toxic waste everywhere (50:08) FIGHTING BACK ABOUT BRAVE NEW FILMS Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films (BNF) are at the forefront of the fight to create a just America. Greenwald and BNF create free documentary films that inform the public, challenge corporate media, and motivate people to take action on social issues nationwide. Brave New Films’ investigative films have shined a light on the Trump administration, voter suppression, U.S. drone strikes, the prosecution of whistleblowers, and Wal Mart’s corporate practices. BNF's mission is to champion social justice issues by using a model of media, education, and grassroots volunteer involvement that inspires, empowers, motivates and teaches civic participation and makes a difference. #BraveNewFilms



Koch Brothers Infiltrating Major University

 




The Koch Brothers are using their money to corrupt a major university. John Iadarola and Taylor Lincoln break it down on The Damage Report. Follow The Damage Report on Facebook:


Kochland: How David Koch Helped Build an Empire to Shape U.S. Politics & Thwart Climate Action

 


Billionaire conservative donor David Koch died Friday at the age of 79 from prostate cancer. David Koch — who was worth some $42 billion — and his brother Charles poured massive amounts of money into funding climate change denial through conservative think tanks and politicians. The Koch brothers founded the political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity in 2004, which is credited with turning the “tea party” into a full-fledged political movement. They also backed “right-to-work” efforts, which aim to weaken labor rights and quash union membership. The brothers made their fortune running Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the United States. We speak with the business journalist Christopher Leonard, who just last week published a major new book examining the business dealings of the Koch brothers. It’s titled “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.”



Koch Brothers Exposed for Cancer Causing Pollution

 




The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur on a shocking report from http://kochbrothersexposed.com/ on how the right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers efforts to increase their profits may have increased cancer deaths in Arkansas.








Is Social Security going bankrupt? No. Should the retirement age be raised? No. Bernie refutes the lies about social security in a powerful new video.

The Dark History Of The Biggest Family Business In America

 

 




The Kochs & the Nazis: Book Reveals Billionaires' Father Built Key Oil Refinery for the Third Reich

 

 


In her new book, "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right," New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer explores how the Koch brothers and fellow right-wing billionaires have funded a political machine aimed at shaping elections and public policy. The book contains a number of revelations and new details. Mayer begins with revealing that the Kochs’ father, industrialist Fred Koch, helped build an oil refinery in Nazi Germany—a project approved personally by Adolf Hitler. The refinery was critical to the Nazi war effort, fueling German warplanes. Mayer joins us to discuss.



Hitler Kickstarted The Koch Empire. Also Stalin.

RECENT REVELATIONS OF CLARENCE THOMAS' FUND RAISING FOR DIRTY ENERGY KOCH DESERVES SCRUTINY! 


May be an image of 5 people and text that says 'NOLIE No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen @NoLieWithBTC Breaking: Clarence Thomas secretly participated in Koch network donor events, a group that has brought multiple cases before the court. This is a blatant breach of judicial ethics. One Bush-appointed judge just said it 'takes my breath away. propublica.org article claren...'

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