schlapp 3 cove strategies

brooks bros riot

SEE CPAC

SEE SEX SCANDALS

all purpose windup spox for trump (and corps presumably)

what kind of xian? when? why

anti-commie pending ) marxist)

no merri

rww Tag Matt Schlapp CPAC

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cPAC’s Matt Schlapp taunts reporter over layoffs at his publication — and it backfires instantly](https://www.alternet.org/send/cpac-matt-schlapp/)

Brad Reed Raw Story

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an 3 26

'Wrong answer': Conservative CPAC audience cheers impeachment - Alternet.org

'John Brennan's days as a free man are numbered': CPAC speaker - Alternet.org

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MMA

### Newsmax host discusses a Senate filibuster against the SAVE Act: “This is why people need guns in this country, because a government is willing to go 80% against the country”

03/18/26

March 17, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline

CARL HIGBIE (HOST): Alright, for more on the SAVE Act, I want to bring in my friend, CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp. Alright, this is huge that it passed this hurdle. But some people are saying that it's just not going to get anywhere because of the filibuster.

MATT SCHLAPP (GUEST): Yeah. So in the old days they used to have real filibusters. Filibuster means talk a bill to death. And you got to love the Senate, they decided that that would be too much work. So you just have to threaten to talk of bill to death. And that kills the bill. And Mike Lee's saying, hey, that shouldn't work anymore.

HIGBIE: Yeah, no, it's just unbelievable to me. And I — look, I think that they should just blow the filibuster and do this whole thing anyway because it's — like, I say all the time, this is why people need guns in this country, because a government is willing to go 80% against the country. It's unbelievable.

### Newsmax host: “America doesn't even buy oil from Iran, meaning we can walk away any time we want to and declare victory, which is what I think the president should probably do soon”

03/18/26 8:49 AM EDT

### Newsmax host Michael Savage proposes “internment camps” for “homeless bums”

03/17/26 11:47 AM EDT

### After declaring that “we kind of just won the war,” Newsmax's Greg Kelly says that Americans can “handle” higher gas prices

03/17/26

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MMA

On Newsmax, Matt Schlapp: “I'm not saying George Santos is a Santos, is a saint. But what I'm saying is that he's no more guilty than 40% of the people that are over there”

10/21/25

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MMA

November 25, 2024, edition of Newsmax's *Chris Plante: The Right Squad

CHRIS PLANTE (HOST): I've been a champion of getting rid of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for way more than a decade. You know, in the media universe that is an ever expanding universe that's exploding before our very eyes, I don't think we need to spend half a billion dollars or more to fund, let's face it, the NPR network is a total — it is a saturation propaganda network, 100% dedicated to the Democrat Party. It's like a foreign entity invaded the United States and set up this radio network.

MICHAEL FOLDI (CO-HOST): And you have a successful radio show with no support from the corporation.

PLANTE: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

FOLDI: Because people actually want to listen to it.

PLANTE: I could use $535 million dollars for my show.

...

PLANTE: All right. Also, you know, Sesame Street is a multi-billion dollar corporation, one of the most profitable outfits in the history of the world. And I think we're still funding them, too. You know, Big Bird can earn his own paycheck.

MERCEDES SCHLAPP (CO-HOST): And they've gone a bit woke, too.

MATT SCHLAPP (CO-HOST): Elmo.

===

an 2 24

what is happening in the hearts of former President Donald Trump’s supporters?

As an anthropologist who studies peace and conflict, I went to the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, to find out. I wanted to better understand the Make America Great Again faithful – and their die-hard support for Trump.

The event began on Feb. 21, 2024, in National Harbor, Maryland, with Steve Bannon’s routine, untrue banter about how President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election, and it peaked with an angry speech from Trump three days later. In between, I sat among the MAGA masses listening to speaker after speaker express outrage about American decline – and their hope for Trump’s reelection.

Everywhere I turned, people wore MAGA regalia – hats, pins, logos and patches, many with Trump’s likeness. I spent breaks in the exhibition hall, which featured a Jan. 6 insurrection-themed pinball machine featuring “Stop the Steal,” “Political Prisoners” and “Babbitt Murder” rally modes and a bus emblazoned with Trump’s face. Admirers scribbled messages on the bus such as, “We have your back” and “You are anointed and appointed by God to be the President.”

Those on the left who dismiss the CPAC as a gathering of MAGA crazies and racists who support a wannabe dictator do not understand that, from this far-right perspective, there are compelling and even urgent reasons to support Trump. Indeed, they believe, as conservative politician Tulsi Gabbard stated in her CPAC speech on Feb. 22, that the left’s claims about Trump’s authoritarianism are “laughable.” This is because CPAC attendees falsely perceive President Joe Biden as the one who is attacking democracy.

Here are my top three takeaways from CPAC about Trump supporters’ current priorities and thinking.

people pray during the opening ceremony of the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 22, 2024.

1. There’s a Reagan dinner – but CPAC is Trump’s party

Former President Ronald Reagan runs in CPAC’s DNA. Reagan spoke at the inaugural CPAC in 1974 and went on to speak there a dozen more times.

In 2019, the conservative advocacy group the American Political Union, which hosts CPAC, published a book of Reagan’s speeches with commentary by conservative luminaries. In the preface, Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Political Union, says he often asks himself, “What would Reagan do?”

CPAC’s pomp gala, held Friday, is still called the “Ronald Reagan Dinner.” But Reagan is otherwise hardly mentioned at the conference.

Reagan’s ideas of American exceptionalism have been supplanted by Trump’s populist story of apocalyptic decline. Reagan’s folksy tone, relative moderation and clear quips are long gone, replaced by fury, grievance and mean-spirited barbs.

2. There’s a method to the madness

Many commentators and critics, including groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, view CPAC as a frightening or bizarre gathering of white nationalists who have a nativist agenda.

In 2021, commentators said the CPAC stage was shaped like a famous Nazi design called the Othala Rune, which is a hate symbol. Schlapp denied this claim and said that CPAC supports the Jewish community, but various commentators took note of the uncanny resemblance.

This year, CPAC refused to give press credentials to various media outlets, including The Washington Post, despite the organization’s emphasis on free speech.

Some speakers, including Trump, have been known to regularly voice support for white nationalism and right-wing extremism, including speakers who promote the false idea that there is a plot to replace the white population. I discuss this idea in my 2021 book, “It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US.”

Indeed, the U.S.-Mexico border was a constant topic at this year’s CPAC, which included controversial anti-immigrant speakers such as the head of Spain’s far-right Vox party and a representative of Hungary, whose leader stated at the 2022 CPAC that Europeans should not become “mixed-race.” Hungary will also host a CPAC meeting in April 2024.

Many of the sessions have alarming titles like, “Burning Down the House,” “Does Government Even Matter” and “Going Full Hungarian.” There are right-wing, populist speakers like Bannon and U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Overall, the program is informed by a conservative logic that largely boils down to God, family, tradition, law and order, defense and freedom.

Of these, God looms largest. As a result, CPAC’s hardcore conservative Christian orientation is anti-abortion rights, homophobic and oriented toward traditional family structure and what it considers morality.

Schlapp co-wrote a book in 2022 that warns of the dangers of “evil forces” – what he considers to be progressives, the radical left and American Marxists. Schlapp’s book title even dubs these forces “the desecrators.” Such inflammatory language is frequently used at CPAC, including by Trump during his Saturday speech.

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, left, and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, speak during CPAC on Feb. 22, 2024.

Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

3. Trump believers think he is their savior

CPAC’s love of Trump is shocking to many on the left. But at CPAC, Trump is viewed as America’s savior.

According to his base, Trump delivered on abortion by appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. They believe that, despite evidence of mixed results, Trump had wide successes at securing the border and creating jobs. For example, during Trump’s time as president, the U.S. economy lost nearly 3 million jobs, and apprehensions of undocumented migrants at the border rose.

Trump’s CPAC speech, like his campaign speeches, harped on such supposed achievements – as well as Biden’s alleged “destruction” of the country.

Conservatives roll their eyes at liberal fears of Trump the despot. Like all of us, they acknowledge, Trump has flaws. They say that some of his comments about women and minorities are cringeworthy, but not evidence of an underlying misogyny and hatefulness, as many critics contend.

Ultimately, CPAC conservatives believe Trump is their best bet to defeat the radical-left “desecrators” who seek to thwart him at every turn – including, as they constantly complained at CPAC, social media bans, “fake news” takedowns, rigged voting, bogus lawsuits, unfair justice, and lies about what they call the Jan. 6, 2021, “protest”.

Despite these hurdles, Trump battles on toward the Republican nomination for presidential candidate – the hero who CPAC conservatives view as the last and best hope to save the USA.

Alexander Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University - Newark

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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rww 2 24

Former Trump aide Stephen Miller told the MAGA activists gathered near Washington, D.C. last week for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that conservatives must be willing to use power more aggressively against their opponents. He railed against district attorneys and other officials for not arresting teachers who violate new state laws that restrict teaching on race, gender, and sexuality.

Miller, an architect of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies, has been promising MAGA activists that if Trump returns to the White House, he “will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.” Miller’s America First Legal group is part of the far-right Project 2025, which has prepared a battle plan for the movement to “take the reins of government” in a new Trump administration. The Heritage Foundation, ringleader of the Project 2025 scheme, was at CPAC recruiting foot soldiers willing to carry out the plan.

In a recent article for Political Research Associates’ “The Public Eye” magazine, I noted that Project 2025 reflected a “movement-level, ideological shift away from a libertarian mistrust of government power and toward an authoritarian view of government power being used ruthlessly—whether as a righteous force wielded to advance a ‘biblical worldview’ or turned against an ‘administrative state’ supposedly captured by a radical Marxist left.”

Miller provided ample confirmation about the MAGA movement’s intentions, down to his dismissal of libertarianism as “a terrible ideology” that might be fine for academic debates but not in the real world, where he said public officials have a responsibility to “defeat evil.”

Excerpts from Miller’s appearance on a Friday, Feb. 23 CPAC panel:

Call it a mental illness, call it a spiritual failing, call it a moral deficiency, call it weakness, softness, or just being pathetic. There is something really broken in the conservative brain. They’re afraid not only of conflict, we know that. But there’s an even deeper fear, a deeper fear than all that, which is having power, and using power. Conservatives are addicted to the language of libertarianism, which is fine–you know, it’s a terrible ideology, but in an academic setting, okay, have these debates. …

You elect a state supreme court justice, you elect an Attorney General, and so on and so forth, to have an office with specific powers, duties, and responsibilities, with the expectation that they will use that authority to defeat evil, to protect the good, and to accomplish positive change in society. And you have to use that power fearlessly. …

A number of states, for example, have passed laws, saying that you can’t have this in the curriculum, or you can’t have that in the curriculum, and you can’t teach DEI and so on and so forth. Without exception, I can promise you, all the commies in the classroom changed the name of their lecture, changed one word, changed one little paragraph in the syllabus and did the exact same damn thing every single day because they’re communists and that’s what they do. Were they sued? No! Were they arrested if they broke a law and it’s applicable? No! Did any D.A. anywhere, if you’re talking about trans issues, think of arresting somebody for abusing children with trans ideology? No, we write blog posts about it. That’s what we do. So until we get serious, all the way down to the local DA, all the way up to the state A/G. and every office in between, including judges, electing people who have power and will use that power and measure their success by change in the real world, then we aren’t going to be able to beat the left.

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At CPAC, Steve Bannon says Trump will "drive the vermin out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue | Media Matters for America

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Matt Schlapp: "I don't even know if you call this an election. This is like the 2.0 of the American Revolution." | Media Matters for America

:{:{try for underdog status? pretend never prez bc fail? / fox/gop party of no, no policies?}:

rubber glue? compared himself to Navalny?!}:

an 2 24

Donald Trump said something at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday that stood out to experts on democracy and authoritarianism.

The former president has consistently cast himself as the victim of Joe Biden, even going as far as to compare himself to the man who was purportedly killed by Putin because he stood up to the leader politically.

But Trump took that even further at the CPAC event, referring to himself as a "political dissident" being persecuted by Biden's regime.

"I stand before you today not only as your past and future president, but also as a proud political dissident," he said on Saturday, adding, "I am a dissident."

This didn't go unnoticed by Trygve Olson, the author of the Lincoln Democracy Institute's research project, the "Democracy Index." He said the comment "might be the most disgusting statement of Donald Trump this week which is saying something."

"Nelson Mandela was a dissident. Alexander Navalny was a dissident. My friends who are imprisoned in Belarus are dissidents," he wrote. "You sir, are not a dissident by any stretch of the definition."

The democracy expert then continued:

"The fact you even claim to be insults those around the world who are (or have been) persecuted for political reasons."

Trump's "dissident" line was also highlighted by New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert in authoritarians, fascism, and propaganda. She compared the comments to something Benito Mussolini might say.

"Going strong since Mussolini: the tyrant as victim," she wrote. "Now Trump is a dissident persecuted by the 'Biden regime.'"

Political analyst Sarah Reese had this to say on social media.

"Trump claims that he is a political dissident. I don't think he knows what those words mean."

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an 2 24

critics are blasting CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, as the embattled head of the organization that puts together and hosts the event, Matt Schlapp, is attacking NBC News over its report that states: “Nazis mingle openly at CPAC, spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and finding allies.”

“Nazis appeared to find a friendly reception at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year,” writes Ben Goggin, NBC News Digital deputy editor for technology. “Throughout the conference, racist extremists, some of whom had secured official CPAC badges, openly mingled with conference attendees and espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories.”

“The presence of these individuals has been a persistent issue at CPAC. In previous years, conference organizers have ejected well-known Nazis and white supremacists such as Nick Fuentes,” NBC News also reported. “But this year, racist conspiracy theorists didn’t meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017.”

Schlapp is the head of the American Conservative Union. He and his wife Mercedes Schlapp were once described as the “Trump-Era ‘It Couple’.” Now he is facing a $9 million lawsuit over alleged sexual assault, including “aggressive fondling,” after Republican strategist Carlton Huffman, a staffer at the time for the failed Herschel Walker senatorial campaign, says Matt Schlapp groped him in January of 2023.

CPAC’s list of speakers last week included the far-right ultra-conservative president of Argentina, Javier Milei, who “gave Donald Trump on Saturday an ecstatic hug,” the AP reported. Donald Trump, calling himself a “proud political dissident,” delivered the keynote address at CPAC on Saturday. CNN described it as “lie-filled.”

Schlapp was both furious and dismissive of NBC News’ report.

“NBC’s claim that there was a Nazi presence at CPAC 2024 is false, misleading, and grossly manipulative—especially coming from a writer who has carried the water for Hamas in much of his reporting on the Israel-Gaza war,” Schlapp wrote in a statement posted by CPAC to X. “When we come across someone at CPAC peddling any kind of anti-semitism, we deal with them immediately. Knowing this, NBC weaved together lies and fabrications to create a false perception, and we won’t stand by idly while NBC engages in willful misinformation.”

In a separate post, Schlapp also wrote:

“Yawn. This is a tired old cliche. The Neo-Nazis in our midst are the ones controlling our college campuses and major institutions and grossly populate the newsrooms of corporate media, calling for an Israeli surrender.”

NBC’s Goggin responded:

“The Nazis introduced themselves to me at a mixer and said they were national socialists, started talking about skull measurements and pushing the conspiracy theory that all races were being controlled Jewish people. They were posting about their presence at CPAC online.”

He also provided photos and video:

IFrame Content

“Either CPAC is lying about having no idea about this, or they simply don’t have a grasp on who they approved to come to their conference…,” Goggin added.

“Nazis, antisemitism, the great replacement theory, [white supremacist Nick] Fuentes, have become so common among conservatives that I think attendees, even journalists, didn’t think too deeply about them being at CPAC. There was very much an ‘oh them’ attitude about the nazis.”

“It really illustrated how successfully extremists have shifted the Overton window. This year, they were expected, and their presence was tolerated,” he added.

Critics blasted CPAC.

“At CPAC, avowed Nazis mingled openly & spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, as speakers welcomed the ‘end of democracy.’ They are all saying the quiet part out loud. And most GOP lawmakers are silent (or cheering). This is how extremism is normalized,” warned Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Spitalnick “led a group that won a $25 million judgment against the neo-Nazis who organized the deadly 2017 Charlottesville march in Virginia,” The Times of Israel reported in 2022.

“Seriously, read this @BenjaminGoggin piece and tell me those of us ringing the alarm bells on increasingly mainstreamed Nazism are being hyperbolic,” Spitalnick added.

“CPAC denies the presence of Nazis at their conference this year, but when I reported that @cpac was teeming with white nationalists in 2022 there wasn’t a peep from Matt Schlapp about it,” wrote Texas Observer special investigative correspondent Steven Monacelli.

IFrame Content

Former U.S. Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), currently a candidate for Congress running to unseat U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), said: “I am appalled that Nazis were allowed to attend CPAC—an event Donald Trump headlined again this year. Make no mistake: the Republican Party and Trump have empowered white nationalists for years.”

Responding to the NBC News article, former U.S. government official Mike Walker wrote on X: “This is not Munich, 1933. This is Washington, DC, 2024.”

See the photos and video above or at this link.

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2 24 msnbc steele panel not place for ideas, up and comers, now just trump show, keep out all non rw media? but...

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AN 2 24 JOE CONASAN

Supporters of Donald Trump often complain about the "liberal elites" who have disrespected them. It is a feeling of cultural grievance that their idol constantly exploits, both to enrich himself with their donations and to defend himself against his critics.

Whenever Trump finds himself under pressure -- in a courtroom, an impeachment or an election -- he tells those credulous followers that it is not he but they who are the true targets of the Democrats, the "deep state," the media, the Republicans in Name

Only, the Biden White House or whomever. That was how he responded to the first impeachment brought against him in 2019 and that is how he answered the huge $83 million jury verdict delivered against him this week in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.

Trump makes this demagogic argument in full confidence that the MAGA cult will believe him -- and with certainty that they will never realize how deeply he is insulting them.

"In reality they're not after me, they're after you. I'm just in the way," he tweeted when Congress first voted to impeach him. But did that make any sense? It wasn't the MAGA voters who attempted to extort the president of Ukraine, attempting to trade American weaponry for his own political gain (and to frame a political opponent with a phony prosecution).

Surely most of Trump's fans would never consider such a brazen blackmail scheme. Unlike him, they don't have to worry about being impeached or prosecuted; they have neither the motive nor the opportunity to perpetrate the offenses that Trump repeatedly commits.

In the wake of the Carroll jury award, the former president's most devoted associates have adopted the same argument, adding their own frantic spin. Steve Bannon, the convicted fraudster pardoned by Trump in order to keep his mouth shut, and Matt Schlapp, the right-wing activist repeatedly accused of homosexual assault, declared that the verdict foreshadows "the end of America."

On the "War Room" online broadcast hosed by Bannon, Schlapp echoed Trump's baseless insistence that the Carroll lawsuit is a "very coordinated thing" and the product of a "weaponized government" -- when in fact it is simply a civil lawsuit brought by an aggrieved citizen. But Schlapp went still further, warning the MAGA audience that the judgment against Trump in favor of the woman he assaulted would portend their own ruin.

What the verdict proves, according to Schlapp and Bannon, is that the government "doesn't just intend to destroy your career and cancel you on social media, they mean to impoverish you and destroy any opportunity you have in the future. ... If these things continue to stand, all of this unconstitutional illegal activity, we've got nothing left, Steve. I mean it's run to the mountains, run to the catacombs time. ... This $83 million -- this is just the beginning. All of us will be paraded down this gangplank. We won't have our resources, we won't have our homes, we won't have our livelihood."

Why would a sane person put any credence in that hysterical rant? There was nothing "illegal" or "unconstitutional" in Carroll's courageous effort to hold Trump accountable for assault, which resulted in a flood of personal abuse against her that included hundreds of death threats. More to the point, only an infinitesimal fraction of Americans has any reason to worry about being held responsible for an aggravated sexual assault - because unlike Trump, few have ever been accused of rape or assault, let alone by dozens of women.

It is remarkable indeed how many of our fellow citizens are willing to be implicated in the sociopathic conduct of the former president, who tells them every day that they are just like him.

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Steve Bannon and Matt Schlapp say E. Jean Carroll defamation verdict signals the end of the country | Media Matters for America

mma 1 24

Following news that a session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting would be focused on the World Health Organization’s preparations for a potential epidemic of a currently unknown pathogen dubbed “Disease X,” right-wing media figures pushed conspiracy theories about a supposed plan to kill off “excess population” and fearmongered over the possibility of another pandemic and lockdowns. Some sought to capitalize on the fear by selling “medical emergency kits” that contain an unproven COVID-19 treatment.

For years, the WHO has been preparing for so-called “Disease X” — a potential undetermined pathogen that could cause a future epidemic

- At the World Economic Forum’s January 2024 annual meeting at Davos, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus spoke about the need to prepare for an “unknown Disease X.” In the lead-up to the event, Ghebreyesus and the WHO claimed that Disease X could potentially result in “20 times more fatalities” than COVID-19. World Economic Forum, accessed [1/17/24]

- Disease X is a placeholder name for a currently unknown pathogen that the WHO uses for hypothetical epidemic prevention planning. The WHO adopted the moniker “Disease X” in 2018. It stems from a series of epidemic prevention plans that began in 2015 in response to the 2014 Ebola crisis. WHO, accessed [3/1/20; The Economist, 3/23/18]

## Right-wing figures and social media users have fearmongered and spread conspiracy theories about Disease X

- On his Infowars show, Alex Jones claimed that Disease X was a “virus scare power grab” by entities that he claimed “want control of our bodies.” In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Jones suggested there is a “Globalist Plan to Launch #DiseaseX to Install World Government.” Twitter/X, [1/17/24; Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 1/17/24]

- On Newsmax, disgraced Conservative Political Action Conference chair Matt Schlapp speculated that Disease X was a scheme to kill off “excess population”

because they “want less people.” Schlapp stated: “I think they must know something, and I’m not going to discount the fact that probably Disease X is a thing and could happen, and some people — as evil and dastardly as it sounds — thinks killing millions of people actually could be good for the rest of us who survive.” Additionally, host Chris Plante said that at the meeting, “globalists at Davos ... might not be preparing for imaginary situations, but rather assembling their next global power grab.” Newsmax, *Chris Plante The Right Squad*, [1/17/23; CNN, 12/16/23]

- Conspiracy theorist Russell Brand posted an episode of his Stay Free livestream titled “‘Disease X Is Imminent!!’ The Next Pandemic Is Here?!” In the episode, Brand claimed that a supposed vaccine for Disease X was being developed “using technology that potentially caused the last pandemic, in a facility that also produces bioweapons.” Rumble, *Stay Free*, [1/15/24]

- Conservative podcast host Graham Allen, whose show Dear America is exclusively on Rumble, suggested in a livestream that Disease X is a plan “to stop a Trump presidency and/or possibly take over the world.” Later in his stream, Allen’s co-host highlighted a user comment reading “COVID was a test run” for Disease X, and Allen agreed. Rumble, *Graham Allen’s Dear America*, [1/17/24, 1/17/24, accessed 1/10/24]

- Users in private right-wing Facebook groups spread conspiracy theories about Disease X, sharing right-wing media coverage and claiming that “genocidal depopulation” and “lockdowns” are coming. Users shared right-wing articles and videos — including from The Gateway Pundit, Russell Brand, and Rumble videos — stoking fears about Disease X in groups with tens of thousands of members. Facebook, accessed [1/18/24]

- Conspiracy theories about Disease X and imminent lockdowns also spread on far-right platforms such as Truth Social, Telegram, and 4chan. Conspiracy theorists and QAnon figures fearmongered that “Preparing for Disease X” was a top priority of the meeting in Davos, with QAnon influencer Jordan Sather writing on Truth Social, “TRY ANOTHER SCAMDEMIC YOU GLOBALIST SCUM.” On 4chan, users claimed that “Disease X is officially spreading, lockdowns incoming” and that “this time … restrictions will never be lifted.” On Telegram, anti-vaccine figure Sherri Tenpenny suggested that a vaccine for Disease X is under development. Truth Social, [1/11/24; 4chan, 1/16/24, 1/16/24; Telegram, 1/15/24; PolitiFact, accessed1/18/24]

## Right-wing figures are using fear of Disease X to sell “medical emergency kits”
- Dr. Peter McCullough, who has spread conspiracy theories about COVID-19, used Disease X to promote an “emergency kit” that sells for $300 and includes ivermectin, which is an unproven COVID-19 treatment.McCullough is the “chief science officer” for The Wellness Company, a right-wing media-associated company that sells supplements. Discussing Disease X during a media appearance, McCullough said, “Wellness Company’s got a wonderful kit at home you can have.” Twitter/X, [1/17/24; The Daily Beast, 12/1/23; The Wellness Company, accessed 1/18/24; NIH, accessed 1/18/24]

- The Gateway Pundit used Disease X to promote The Wellness Company’s “medical emergency kits.” In a “sponsored message” titled “‘DISEASE X’ — Are The Globalists Planning Another Pandemic?” The Gateway Pundit urged readers, “Don’t be caught unprepared for whatever the WEF has in mind” and “Don’t regret not acting today” in purchasing The Wellness Company’s emergency kits. The post stated, “The Wellness Company and their doctors are medical professionals that you can trust and their new medical emergency kits are the gold standard when it comes to keeping you safe and healthy.” The article also noted that Gateway Pundit would benefit from the sale of emergency kits. The Gateway Pundit, accessed [1/17/24]

- The Wellness Company also sponsored an article in Breitbart, which encouraged readers to start “stocking up” on medications included in the “medical emergency kits.” The article urges readers to “protect you and your family from drug shortages, ‘Disease X,’ or whatever comes your way,” and it quotes anti-vaccine figure Dr. James Thorp, who claims that the WEF is “threatening us that there’s another pandemic coming.” Breitbart, accessed [1/18/24; Real Clear Politics, 2/24/23]

- The Telegram channel for Steve Bannon’s War Room promoted a Gateway Pundit article that included promotion of The Wellness Company’s emergency kits. The post urges readers: “Before The Next Crisis Hits – Prepare With A Medical Emergency Kit (Includes Ivermectin and Z-Pak).” Telegram, [1/12/24; The Gateway Pundit, 1/12/24]

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well it is the beast!

https://www.alternet.org/satans-publication/

August 28, 2023

Natalie Allison @ Politico: CPAC vice chair resigns amid turmoil.
Isaac Arnsdorf and Beth Reinhard @ The Washington Post: CPAC urged to probe more sexual misconduct claims against chair Matt Schlapp.
Ian Millhiser @ Vox: The edgelord of the federal judiciary.
Alex Bollinger @ LGBTQ Nation: Marjorie Taylor Greene calls trans people a “cult” that’s “corrupting our children.”
David Edwards @ Raw Story: Kari Lake wants ‘a street fight, a fist fight’ after judge set Trump’s trial date for March 2024.
Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Lacking evidence, McCarthy defends plan for Biden impeachment inquiry.

Tags: James Ho Kari Lake Marjorie Taylor Greene Matt Schlapp Round-Up CPAC

an 5 23 no lnx

CPAC’s longtime treasurer unloads in resignation letter: 'Cancer has been metastasizing'

David BadashandThe New Civil Rights MovementMay 25, 2023

The longtime treasurer for the American Conservative Union, the organization that hosts the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), has quit and issued a damning resignation letter citing how the organization is handling funds for the defense of its chairman, Matt Schlapp, accused by a GOP operative of sexual assault.

Bob Beauprez, a former GOP Congressman, personal friend of Schlapp, and American Conservative Union (ACU) board member and treasurer, wrote the board in March saying, “I cannot deliver a financial report at the upcoming board meeting with any confidence in the accuracy of the numbers,” as New York magazine‘s Ben Jacobs reports.

When the lawsuit was filed the board fronted Schlapp $50,000 to hire an attorney. Beauprez “wrote he was blindsided when Schlapp told him that he had raised another $270,000 from donors to ACU and its related foundation, ACUF. His shock grew when he said ACU’s lawyer told him in February at CPAC that the money ‘was already either dispersed or invoiced.’”

RELATED: Male Staffer Sues Matt Schlapp for $9 Million – Lawsuit Alleges ‘Sexual Battery’ After ‘Aggressively Fondling’ Groin Area

“I have to admit that I feel like I’m in the dark,” Beauprez told the board. “I have received no further information about what additional costs have accrued since then … I assume any monies paid are either coming from Matt personally or from ACU/F. But, again, I don’t know, and it is most unsettling.”

In January, a Republican political aide in his 30’s working at the time of the alleged assault for the Herschel Walker campaign, filed a lawsuit against Matt Schlapp for $9.4 million. It accuses Schlapp of “aggressively fondling” his “genital area in a sustained fashion” while the two were alone in a car, as The New York Times reported.

The Daily Beast also reported the staffer was suing “for battery, defamation, and conspiracy.”

“In a letter, the staffer’s attorney, Tim Hyland of Hyland Law, called Schlapp a ‘sexual predator,’” The Daily Beast added.

Schlapp, through an attorney’s statement, has declared the allegations he “groped” and “fondled” the male staffer’s crotch without consent after buying him drinks at two different bars, “false.”

Meanwhile, New York magazine’s Jacobs notes that Beauprez also said he told the board during its March meeting, “there was no mention of the case, no status update, no summary of expenditures to date, no word regarding acceptance of coverage from either our D&O [directors and officers] insurance company, or Matt’s personal liability carrier, no opportunity to ask questions, etc., etc. I thought this was not only inappropriate, but unconscionable.”

He pointed to their “fiduciary obligation to be made aware of what, how, and why monies are being spent, especially involving a corporation insider such as the chairman.”

READ MORE: DeSantis Says He Will Turn ‘Woke Military’ Away From ‘Gender Ideology’ and Reach ‘Settlement’ in Russia’s War Against Ukraine

Beauprez alleged that when some “have sought answers to some of what seem to be obvious and necessary questions … we have been accused of ‘not having Matt’s back’ and ‘trying to stage a leadership coup.’”

He also warned the organization’s “operating procedures are in direct conflict with our own bylaws,” which could lead to invented “charges” by a “rogue DA.”

NEW YORK reports that Beauprez “also said Schlapp refused to give any specific information about the finances of the 2023 CPAC conference held in March.”

“Matt always responds in much the same way, ‘It looks like we made about $500,000, maybe more.’ I hope that’s roughly accurate, but I’d like to also see the financial data upon which Matt has reached this conclusion.”

“A cancer has been metastasizing within the organization for years,” Beauprez concluded. “It must be diagnosed, treated, and cured, or it will destroy ACU/F. You simply cannot survive like this.”

RELATED: Watch: Matt Schlapp Gets Pulled Away From Reporter at CPAC Asking About the Sexual Assault Allegations Against Him

In 2021, citing unnamed sources, the conservative website The Dispatch reported, “federal investigators are currently looking into possible criminal campaign-finance misdeeds at ACU during Schlapp’s tenure. As part of the investigation, the FBI has interviewed former and current ACU employees about the financial dealings of the organization and its leaders.”

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'Fine with it': CPAC goers attribute lack of attendance to 'lengthy booze lines' and 'fatigue' from midterms ›

‘Are you uncomfortable?’: Details emerge in groping allegations by male staffer against CPAC’s Matt Schlapp ›

'Gropers On Parade': Matt Schlapp ruthlessly trolled for hosting CPAC party at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago ›

Dinner at the Alitos

Kavanaugh's extracurricular activities come at a time of increasing concern about the relationship between Supreme Court Justices and right-wing activists seeking to influence the court.

In the 2014 case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the craft store argued that it had the right to exclude birth control from its healthcare plan under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Reverend Robert Schenck, a former anti-abortion activist who headed the group Faith and Action until 2018, told the New York Times last month that he learned the result of Hobby Lobby weeks in advance of its public release by the court.

In a letter from Schenck to Chief Justice John Roberts, Schenck claims that, in June 2014, he was "informed by a donor to the Capitol Hill-based non-profit organization I led that she and her husband would be dining at the home of Justice and Mrs. Alito." The donor, Gayle Wright, suggested "that in their table conversation, she might be able to learn the status of the [Hobby Lobby] case." After the dinner, the donor called him and shared that the majority opinion in the case would be favorable to Hobby Lobby and written by Alito.

Schenck says he ultimately shared this intelligence, which proved correct, with the president of Hobby Lobby, Steve Green. Schenck said he was interested in information about the case because he thought it could help him recruit Green as a donor.

The New York Times "found a trail of contemporaneous emails and conversations that strongly suggested [Schenck] knew the outcome and the author of the Hobby Lobby decision before it was made public." Wright and her husband watched the oral arguments in the Hobby Lobby case from "seats in the courtroom reserved for guests of Justices Scalia and Alito." In an email to Schenck, Wright referred to Scalia and Alito as "Nino and Sam."

Alito confirmed he had dinner with the Wrights, but denies he shared information about the Hobby Lobby case.

The Wrights became friends with Alito and other Justices at Schenck's urging. Schenck said he encouraged wealthy donors like Wright "to invite some of the justices to meals, to their vacation homes or to private clubs." He also "advised allies to contribute money to the Supreme Court Historical Society and then mingle with justices at its functions." The Wrights made large donations and became trustees. This influence campaign was known as "Operation Higher Court."

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Congressman Hank Johnson (D-GA) have introduced legislation that would require the Supreme Court "to adopt a binding code of conduct, and mandate the Supreme Court adopt more robust rules governing disclosure of gifts and travel paid for by outside parties." The legislation would "also require disclosure of the identity of funders of amicus briefs, and block amicus filers from making gifts or providing travel to court of appeals judges or Supreme Court justices."

an 12 22 also gorka ? and?

On Friday night, November 9, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, according to Politico, attended a “private holiday party” in the home of Conservative Political Action Conference Chairman Matt Schlapp. Kavanaugh’s decision to attend, reporter Lydia Wheeler writes in Bloomberg Law on December 12, “raises questions about when a justice’s personal relationships cross a line and become problematic.”’

One of the other people who attended Schlapp’s party, according to Politico, was MAGA Republican Stephen Miller, who was a policy adviser for the Trump Administration. Miller heads the America First Legal Foundation, a group that, Wheeler notes, “has interests in cases now pending before the Court.”

Kavanaugh’s decision to attend Schlapp’s party comes at a time when the High Court is suffering from historically low approval ratings. The Court’s unpopularity to a variety of things, including its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade after 49 years in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Other controversies that have dogged the High Court in recent months range from efforts by Ginni Thomas (wife of Justice Clarence Thomas) to overturn the 2020 presidential election results to allegations that Justice Samuel Alito or his wife leaked the Court’s decision in 2014’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby before it was officially announced — an allegation that Alito has vehemently denied.

Wheeler notes that “Democrats have recently renewed calls for sitting Supreme Court justices to follow a formal judicial code of ethics.”

Tonja Jacobi, a professor at Emory University Law School in Atlanta, told Bloomberg Law, “Supreme Court justices should be extraordinarily careful in not only having no actual ethical difficulties, but having no appearance of an ethical conundrum as well…. The legitimacy of the Court at the moment is taking a severe beating.”

Charles Geyh, a professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of law, implied that Kavanaugh was showing very poor judgement by attending Schlapp’s party. Geyh told Bloomberg Law, “This is the worst possible time for this.”

===

anti-macho? an 922

Political commentator and author Mercedes Schlapp along with her husband, Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) Chairman Matt Schlapp, are frequent guests on right-wing media outlets such as Real America's Voice.

On Sunday, the couple appeared on Steven Bannon's War Roomand claimed to the show's namesake host that President Joe Biden's signature aviator sunglasses are left-wing "propaganda" props designed to make Biden seem tough.

"First, don't listen to the mainstream media because what they're trying to do is sell the propaganda that the Democrats are on the rise again," Schlapp said. "You'd know that when you see Joe Biden put on his aviator sunglasses and they give him this look of strength. And it's so – it's such a lie and so it’s so critical to just not let that get you down.”

Schlapp's allegation follow's Biden's Thursday speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in which he warned of the imminent and existential dangers that former President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again movement poses to the democratic future of the United States.

CPAC selected Hungary's authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to be the keynote speaker at its conference on August 4th.

Watch below or at this link.

===

early and important booter of jan 6?

https://www.justsecurity.org/74622/stopthesteal-timeline-of-social-media-and-extremist-activities-leading-to-1-6-insurrection/

timeline

October 19, 2020

Prominent conservatives circulate misleading information suggesting that Trump voters are being targeted for violence, animating extremist groups. The DFRLab found that the sourcing for the claims, which were spread by leading Republican figureheads like Matt Schlapp, failed to withstand basic scrutiny and that QAnon conspiracy-theory-adjacent accounts were the first to post the material on social media.

(Source: Twitter)...

November 3, 2020 (Election Day)

Early morning on election day, Posobiec tweets the hashtag #StopTheSteal.

(Source: Twitter)

A subsequent DFRLab analysis of tweets using the hashtag #StopTheSteal between approximately 9 p.m. ET Nov. 2 through 5 a.m. ET Nov. 4, finds that among its top promoters were accounts used by the Philadelphia GOP, Human Events publisher Will Chamberlain, Trump-supporting actor James Woods, Islamophobic activist Pamela Geller, conservative writer Carmine Sabia, and online influencers Posobiec and Mark Dice.

( NICE GFX Source: Jean Le Roux/DFRLab)

As predicted, Election Day ends with many states still counting legitimately cast votes and no definitive election result.

November 4, 2020

In the early morning hours following Election Day, Trump falsely declares premature victory to his supporters at the White House. He makes several unsubstantiated claims about supposed voter fraud, calling it “a major fraud on our nation.” He then calls for vote counting to stop.

(Source: ABC News)

Several prominent right-wing social media influencers begin promoting the Stop the Steal effort, includingnewly elected Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene,American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp, and far-right media personalities Mark Dice and Michelle Malkin. Greene leverages the effort to fundraise for her congressional campaign fund.

(Source: Marjorie Taylor Greene for Congress)

Multiple Facebook groups emerge rallying around the Stop the Steal effort. One group, founded by pro-Trump organization Women for America First, called “STOP THE STEAL” gains hundreds of thousands of members before Facebook shuts it down on Nov. 5. Before deletion, the group hosted an events section, which publicized rallies organized by multiple groups occurring across the country.

(Source: Stop The Steal)

That same day, conservative activist Ali Alexander updates his Stop the Steal website to prompt visitors to input their contact information for future organizing. The website receives significant traction on Facebook, according to analysis conducted using the Facebook monitoring tool CrowdTangle.

(Source: CrowdTangle)

Meanwhile, protests reach a fever pitch across the United States.

In Arizona, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar and far-right social media personality Michael Cernovich rile protesters, including several who openly carry firearms, outside the Maricopa County Elections Department. Far-right extremists are reportedly present, including militia movement groups and QAnon supporters. Reuters reports that some attendees said they joined the protest after seeing tweets about the event posted by Cernovich, who drove seven hours from California to speak at the protest. Trump supporters would continue to gather at the elections department for days.

(Source: Twitter)....

NOVEMBER 2020

Between Election Day and well past November 7 when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are declared the winners of the 2020 Presidential election,Republican Attorneys General — past and present — were sowing doubt in the election:

November 5: Former Florida Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi holds a press conference with Rudy Giuliani and Corey Lewandowski.

November 5: RAGA tweets “Don’t let #LawlessLiberals corrupt the election process.”

November 5: RAGA tweets “.@RepublicanAGs have boots on the ground in PA, NC, NV, AZ, WI, and MI to defend the rule of law. Don’t let #LawlessLiberals corrupt the process!”

November 6: Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes announces he will take time off to travel to Nevada in search of election fraud.

November 8: Former Nevada Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt and Chairman of the American Conservative Union Matt Schlapp hold a press conference in Las Vegas, NV.

November 8: Former RAGA Chair West Virginia Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey tweets “Excited to weigh in with my colleagues at the US Supreme Court about the critical role state legislatures play in setting time, place, and manner restrictions on voting and why the PA Supreme Court cannot usurp that role. The Trump campaign is correct to fight to get this right!”

November 9: Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, after spending a weekend in Nevada, says “voting problems occurred there.”

November 9: RAGA, along with 10 Republican Attorneys General, file an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to throw out legally cast mail-in votes in Pennsylvania.

November 17: Former Nevada Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt says 15,000 people voted in multiple states.

===

BIG PROMOTER OF DEFENSIVE VIOLENCE?

CSPAN?

https://warroom.org › 2022 › 02 › 19 › matt-schlapp-on-his-amazing-new-book-the-desecrators

Matt Schlapp on His Amazing New Book "The Desecrators"

[Daily Command Brief

Newsletter

Never miss the signal when the noise is thick. Stephen K. Bannon will deliver it right to you when it matters most.]

https://www.amazon.com/Desecrators-Defeating-Cancel-Culture-Reclaiming/dp/1505120098

the enemy is no longer hidden in the dark but instead operates in broad daylight. Its attacks on Americans are clear and intensifying: cancel culture, wokeness, public shaming, urban violence, “whiteness,” and critical race theory. The enemy also seeks to undermine the sacredness of human life, failing to provide basic protection for the lives of the unborn. This enemy is called the Desecrators. The Desecrators tear down not only monuments but human nature, the biblical-natural conception of marriage, the family, parental rights, fact-based education, traditional moral values, and the Church. The Desecrators are taking over the media, publishing, educational institutions, corporate boards, labor unions, amateur and professional sports, foundations, and professional associations ranging from the American Medical Association to the Chamber of Commerce. They leave nothing untouched.

In this powerfully provocative book, Deal W. Hudson and Matt Schlapp provide firsthand accounts of the Desecrators’ actions and intentions, including their remarkably angry and uncharitable treatment of President Donald Trump, which Hudson and Schlapp uniquely observed. The authors also describe how Catholics have been stifled for years because many bishops have failed to confront pro-abortion Catholic politicians. But fortunately, there is hope. As Hudson and Schlapp lay bare the Desecrators’ path of destruction, they also lay out a plan for the faithful to turn things around. Here is a book that will embolden all people of faith and good will to make their voices heard once again in the public square and political realm by countering the enemy with reason, faith, and hope. Here is a vision to build up rather than tear down.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“I have valued Matt’s help ever since we met as I was preparing to run for president. He and his wonderful wife, Mercedes, are DC insiders who love their country and assisted me in many ways as we won and began to change Washington and the world. This important book, coauthored by Deal Hudson, describes a path to end the desecration of our great U.S.A.”

— President Donald J. Trump

“American Marxists seek to change and destroy every founding principle of our American experiment. They have invaded virtually every aspect of our culture and our institutions, and they are determined to prevail. American patriots must actively fight against the Marxists’ destruction of American ideals. And we must win. Matt Schlapp and Deal Hudson‘s The Desecrators details the actions of the American Marxists, how we can fight back, and what we must do to save America from desecration. A must read!”

—Mark Levin, author of American Marxism

“The unraveling of America is now at a furious pace, and this is just the book to capture what has been happening and why. Unlike reformers of the past, today's activists seek not to improve but to tear down: their anarchist thumbprints are everywhere apparent. Both of the authors have had a distinguished career in politics and in Catholic circles, and the poignant anecdotes they share gives the book a personal touch. They cover much ground, and they do it with considerable flair.”

—Bill Donohue, PhD, president, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

“As the authors remind us that Jesus is at the heart of all that is sacred, we must remember to follow His example and pray that the desecrators turn away from the anxiety, division, and unbelief they have sown. This book is a clarion call in this critical hour.”

—Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Deal Hudson and Matt Schlapp perceptively read the moment and expose the nature of the threats to foundational American and human ideals, including the assault on life itself and the most innocent among us. There is no one better to outline where we’re headed and how the obstacles can be successfully overcome than these two visionary men of faith, who so generously share their insight. The Desecrators is filled with both urgency and vital hope for the America future generations will inherit.”

—Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List

“In this must-read book, Deal Hudson and Matt Schlapp analyze what Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter once called ‘the culture of disbelief’ and Richard John Neuhaus decried as the ‘naked public square.’ The systematic attempt to marginalize people of faith and thereby undermine America’s Judeo-Christian foundations is not new, but its codification as cancel culture is. The authors urge that we reaffirm the faith of our founders and, most critically, provide a realistic plan to win.”

—Ralph Reed, political consultant

“If you want to know how to live as a patriotic Christian American today, fully aware of the dangers of our times and yet strengthened by hope, The Desecrators is the book to read. It will ground you in reality; it will make you want to jump up and fight for what is right; it will challenge you, in the spirit of the Founders and of the martyrs, to give your all for America and for the Gospel!”

—Fr. Frank Pavone, national director, Priests for Life

President, National Pro-life Religious Council

"The Desecrators is an admirable counter-revolutionary tract which will prove exemplary to many forthcoming counter-revolutionary declarations, in the coming years. Indeed, it has already affected the way in which I am writing my own."

—Timothy J. Gordon, co-author of Rules for Retrogrades: Forty Tactics to Defeat the Radical Left

About the Author

Matt Schlapp is married to Mercedes Schlapp, and they are raising five daughters outside of Washington, DC. Matt is Chairman of CPAC, which hosts the largest annual political conference in America and has brought CPAC to Japan, Australia, Korea, and Brazil, with plans to ramp up in Jerusalem, Hungary, and many other countries. CPAC scores the votes of all elected legislators and engages in politics and media regularly. Schlapp is a conservative voice who battles on all major media platforms and advises conservative elected offices across the country.

Deal W. Hudson, PhD, is the host of Church and Culture on the Ave Maria Radio Network.Hudson is the former editor of Crisis Magazine and former head of Catholic Outreach for the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush. A convert to Catholicism at the age of thirty-four, Hudson taught philosophy for fifteen years before entering the world of Catholic publishing and politics.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ TAN Books (February 22, 2022)

Feb 19, 2022Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union, has written a new book called "The Desecrators," about the forces working to undermine Western Civilization. He says he found out that he was working on the wrong side of the political divide when the very corporationshe was working with as a lobbyist started trying to destroy the Judeo-Christian culture and the roots of America.

https://www.amazon.com › Desecrators-Defeating-Cancel-Culture-Reclaiming › dp › 1505120098

Amazon.com: The Desecrators: Defeating the Cancel Culture Mob and ...

As Hudson and Schlapp lay bare the Desecrators' path of destruction, they also lay out a plan for the faithful to turn things around. Here is a book that will embolden all people of faith and good will to make their voices heard once again in the public square and political realm by countering the enemy with reason, faith, and hope.

https://www.bookdepository.com › Desecrators-Matt-Schlapp › 9781505120097

The Desecrators : Matt Schlapp : 9781505120097 - Book Depository

Feb 22, 2022The Desecrators by Matt Schlapp, 9781505120097, available atBook Depository with free delivery worldwide. We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. ... As Hudson and Schlapp lay bare the Desecrators' path of destruction, they also lay out a plan for the faithful to turn things around. Here is a book that will embolden all people ...

https://www.barnesandnoble.com › w › the-desecrators-matt-schlapp › 1140562068

The Desecrators: Defeating the Cancel Culture Mob and Reclaiming One ...

Feb 22, 2022As Hudson and Schlapp lay bare the Desecrators' path of destruction, they also lay out a plan for the faithful to turn things around. Here is a book that will embolden all people of faith and good will to make their voices heard once again in the public square and political realm by countering the enemy with reason, faith, and hope.

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Amazon.com: The Desecrators: Defeating the Cancel Culture Mob and ...

In this powerfully provocative book, Deal W. Hudsonand Matt Schlapp provide firsthand accounts of the Desecrators' actions and intentions, including their remarkably angry and uncharitable treatment of President Donald Trump, which Hudson and Schlapp uniquely observed. ... The book calls out the destruction of private property by Antifa and ...

https://www.goodreads.com › book › show › 59702176-the-desecrators

The Desecrators: Defeating the Cancel Culture Mob and R…

https://www.overdrive.com › media › 8794364 › the-desacrators

The Desacrators by Matt Schlapp · OverDrive: ebooks, audiobooks, and ...

Feb 11, 2022As Hudson and Schlapp lay bare the Desecrators' path of destruction, they also lay out a plan for the faithful to turn things around. Here is a book that will embolden all people of faith and good will to make their voices heard once again in the public square and political realm by countering the enemy with reason, faith, and hope.

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The Desecrators: Defeating the Cancel Culture Mob and ... - TAN Books

https://www.c-span.org › video › ?513283-118 › discussion-destruction-history-holiness-cpac

Discussion on "Destruction of History and Holiness" at CPAC

Jul 10, 2021Mercedes and Matt Schlapp, along with Ave Maria Radio's Deal Hudson, engaged in a talk titled, "Columbus, the Constitution, and the Consecrated: The Left's Destruction of History and Holiness" at ...

https://world-wire.com › the-desecrators-book-trump-recommends

The Desecrators book - Why did Donald Trump Recommend it?

Mar 2, 2022In this powerfully provocative book, Deal W. Hudson and Matt Schlapp provide firsthand accounts of the Desecrators' actions and intentions, including their remarkably angry and uncharitable treatment of President Donald Trump, which Hudson and Schlapp uniquely observed. The authors also describe how Catholics have been stifled for years ...

according to CNP's website, "CNP Action, Inc. is the 501(c)(4) sister organization of the Council for National Policy. Founded in 1987, CNP Action, Inc. serves as an advocate for conservative principles such as limited government, free economic enterprise, traditional values and a strong national defense. It promotes issues or specific pieces of legislation through regular Action Sessions and publications."^[21] Beginning in April 2020, this organization began involved with strategies to reopen U.S. states despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemicCNP Action Organized "Pro-Trump" Doctors To Legitimate Reopening Efforts

Associated Press reported on a May 2020 conference call between CNP Action and a senior staffer for Trump's reelection campaign, originally obtained by Center for Media and Democracy. In the leaked meeting, these operatives discussed "recruiting 'extremely pro-Trump' doctors to go on television to prescribe reviving the U.S. economy as quickly as possible" despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.^[22] When asked about these efforts by AP, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh asserted he took no issue with contradicting the government's infectious disease experts. Murtaugh explained, "Our job at the campaign is to reflect President Trump’s point of view... We are his campaign. There is no difference between us and him."^[22]

CNP Action Helped Coordinate COVID-19 Lockdown Protests

In April 2020, CNP Action "hosted weekly conference calls to coordinate coronavirus response tactics", working together with organizations including FreedomWorks, Open the States, ReOpen PA, The Save Our Country Task Force, and Tea Party Patriots.^[23] The stated goal of Tea Party Patriots was to "share the stories of people who have been affected by the lockdowns, to show that we must be concerned with both sides of this crisis."^[23]

CNP also shared information through email about attending in-person events, including an Eagle Forum-organized car protest at the Alabama Capitol Building and a lockdown protest at the Pennsylvania state capitol.^[23]

ref

https://www.prwatch.org/comment/45372

alex k may 15 2020

shadowy right-wing nonprofit is helping coordinate coronavirus response strategy and promoting the lockdown protests.

Working alongside close allies that have helped coordinate the protests, including Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks, Council for National Policy Action (CNP Action) has been hosting conference calls and publishing action memos around reopening states' economies.

CNP Action is the 501(c)(4) nonprofit affiliate of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a coalition of far-right political advocacy and think tank figures that has worked largely behind the scenes since its founding in 1981. CNP’s membership includes conservative Republicans and right-wing extremists who work together to shape policy. Trump allies, including senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and former chief adviser Steve Bannon, were CNP members as of 2014. Vice President Mike Pence and Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow have also been members, according to a recently published book by Anne Nelson.

Since last month, CNP Action has hosted weekly conference calls to coordinate coronavirus response tactics. The first call featured Moore, who founded the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation’s Ed Meese, and Al Regnery, chairman of CNP’s Conservative Action Project and the cousin of prominent white nationalist William Regnery.

Moore has called the lockdown protesters "the modern-day Rosa Parks" for "protesting against injustice and a loss of liberties."

The email announcing the second call, which featured ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson and State Policy Network CEO Tracie Sharp, links to information about an April 21 car protest at the Alabama Capitol Building in Montgomery, organized by the anti-LGBTQ group Eagle Forum. The forum's founder, the late Phyllis Schlafly, was a CNP member, and several current staffers are part of the CNP-connected "Save Our Country Task Force."

The announcement directed readers to the private Facebook page of the group ReOpen PA, which was one of three groups that organized an April 20 lockdown protest at the Pennsylvania state capitol. The other two groups' Facebook pages have been deactivated.

In an announcement of the third call, CNP Action directs allies to send links to op-eds, articles, and social media posts to a TeaPartyPatriots.org email address, indicating that the group is involved in CNP's organizing efforts. "The Save Our Country Task Force will send it out for others in the coalition to share and cross-promote for a multiplying effect," the announcement says.

"We need to share the stories of people who have been affected by the lockdowns, to show that we must be concerned with both sides of this crisis," states the Tea Party Patriots Action website.

The Save Our Country Task Force is an overlapping group, tied closely to ALEC, that's chaired by Trump economic adviser Art Laffer and includes Moore and CNP's president Bill Walton, a trustee of the Heritage Foundation, in its leadership. Laffer sits on ALEC's Board of Scholars and co-authors ALEC’s annual “Rich States, Poor States” publication with Moore. Last year, Trump gave Laffer, a former Ronald Reagan adviser and a supply-side economics evangelist, a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

On the May 4 call, Robert Alt of the Charles Koch-funded Buckeye Institute spoke, and his remarks were posted online.

An announcement for the fourth weekly CNP Action call links to the ReOpen PA Facebook page as well as to a "Zoom Grassroots Briefing on #ReOpenAmerica with Steve Moore and [conservative pollster] Scott Rasmussen." Moore and FreedomWorks have been helping coordinate on-the-ground lockdown protests.

The announcement links to the Open the States website, a project of Convention of States Action, which has also helped coordinate protests. "Check out the Open the States online community to connect with other Americans concerned about how the COVID-19 response is affecting our communities and liberties," it states.

The call took place on May 11 and featured Mercedes Schlapp, a lobbyist and senior advisor to Donald Trump's campaign, and her husband, Matt Schlapp, a lobbyist and the head of the American Conservative Union. No one mentioned the protests, but the speakers disputed the severity of the coronavirus. In one exchange, Walton and the Schlapps tried to downplay the risks of the deadly virus.

WALTON, introducing a caller's question: We're now discovering, as the science rolls out, that there are tens of millions more people infected with this virus than previously imagined.... It's decidedly reduced the lethality of it.

MERCEDES SCHLAPP: ...I think that the reality is, is that when they looked at the modeling...it depends what assumptions you put into the modeling to see, and so I think the thing is, let's go from millions of deaths to having more like, if you can get it down to not millions of deaths we're in better position.

MATT SCHLAPP: ...Even if you’re in some of these really, really serious demographic categories, the survival rate is so high, so we should feel optimistic about it instead of pessimistic.

The call largely revolved around what the Trump campaign is doing to win the election in the face of the current crisis.

CNP did not respond to a request for comment.

Extremists at the Center for National Policy

The Southern Poverty Law Center published a leaked full roster of CNP from 2014, which identified 413 members. "The list is surprising, not so much for the conservatives who dominate it," wrote Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok, "but for the many real extremists who are included."

At the time, populating CNP's executive committee, board of directors, board of governors, and general membership were a :{number of extremists:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: from hate groups such as the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council and Liberty Counsel; the neo-Confederate League of the South; and the anti-Muslim Center for Security Policy.

On the board of governors was Michael Peroutka, who was on the board of League of the South and appeared on a white nationalist radio show. Also involved with CNP were Liberty Council’s Mat Staver, who has tried to re-criminalize gay sex; Alan Sears of the anti-LGTBQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom; Tim Wildmon, president of the anti-LGBTQ hate group the American Family Association; and conspiracy theorists Jerome Corsi, who was investigated in the Trump-Russia probe, and Joseph Farah.

The recent CNP Action announcements link to a Liberty Counsel initiative led by Mat Staver called ReOpen Church.

CNP's founders include multiple members of the conspiracist John Birch Society and Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and ALEC.

As of 2018, the most recent tax year on record for CNP, the board of directors included Tony Perkins, who was president at the time, and Kenneth Blackwell of the Family Research Council. The current board of governors and general membership rosters are unknown.

Perkins will be a speaker during next week's CNP Action call on May 18.

Billionaire Funding

In 2018, CNP Action had a small budget, having spent $127,000 and received only $95,000 in contributions. Bill Walton was chairman, and Blackwell, Adam Brandon-the president of FreedomWorks-and Perkins were directors.

CNP is a much larger operation, having spent $2.9 million and taken in a total of over $3.2 million in 2018.

Richard DeVos, the father-in-law of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is a former president of CNP, and his family foundation has funded the group. DeVos's parents' family charity, the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, are regular donors, having given money in the 2018 fiscal year, the most recent on record.

The family foundation of Robert Mercer gave $75,000 to CNP from 2013-14. Another right-wing political megadonor, Foster Friess, has been part of CNP and likely funded the organization.

Tim Phillips, a Tea Party organizer and president of Koch's Americans for Prosperity, was listed as a member of CNP's Board of Governors in 2014. The Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which is now defunct but was run by the Koch family, donated $75,000 to CNP from 2011-12.

Institutional donors include the Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation, and Judicial Watch, as well as from the donor-advised fund sponsors the National Christian Foundation and National Philanthropic Trust.

November 6: Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes announces he will take time off to travel to Nevada in search of election fraud. Former Nevada Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt and Chairman of the American Conservative Union:{ Matt Schlapp:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}::{ hold a press conference in Las Vegas, NV.:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

November 9: Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, after spending a weekend in Nevada, says “voting problems occurred there.”

:{November 9: RAGA, along with 10 Republican Attorneys General, file an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to throw out legally cast mail-in votes in Pennsylvania.:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}:

November 17: Former Nevada Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt says 15,000 people voted in multiple states.

===

bad code

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-allies/

Trump is rewarding more than two dozen current and former administration officials and others with prestigious government appointments on his way out of office – including his current Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao, his former campaign manager and Senior Counselor, Kellyanne Conway, and campaign surrogate, lobbyist Matt Schlapp.

Also on the list, a billionaire hotelier reportedly linked to "a possible pay-for-play scheme" with the RNC.

The nominations, announced Tuesday, appear to mirror reports that say the president is preparing a flood of pardons, even to people who have never asked for them, merely because he can.

Trump nominated Kellyanne Conway to the Board of Visitors to the United States Air Force Academy. The Board acts as a board of governors, and "inquires into the morale, discipline, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods and other matters relating to the Academy which the Board decides to consider."

Conway, according to the Office of Special Counsel, has broken federal law so frequently she was recommended for "removal" from her White House position by the federal watchdog agency. Trump ignored the recommendation.

Trump nominated Secretary Elaine Chao to be a Member of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The appointment carries a six-year term.

Also nominated to the Kennedy Center is Lynn Friess, wife of major Republican donor Foster Friess.

Lobbyist Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union, which operates the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), was nominated by Trump to be a Member of the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board. According to Bloomberg the LoC Trust Fund Board "operates as a federal board governing funds donated to the Library of Congress. The Board deposits the incoming money with the Secretary of the Treasury and the librarian of the Library of Congress may distribute the money. LoC Trust Fund Board holds the power to invest, reinvest, and retain investments as well."

Schlapp's wife, Mercedes Schlapp, was a White House communications official who left to work for the Trump campaign. Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Also on today's list, billionaire hotelier, real estate developer, GOP donor, and failed ambassador nominee Douglas "Papa Doug" Manchester. Manchester was nominated to the Kennedy Center Board as well. A scathing January 2020 article detailed his lavish lifestyle and divorces, including from a Russian immigrant. That article suggested she had "a profile on a website for seekers of Russian brides."

Last year CBS News "uncovered a possible pay-for-play scheme involving the Republican National Committee and President Trump's nominee for ambassador to the Bahamas. Emails obtained by CBS News show the nominee, San Diego billionaire Doug Manchester, was asked by the RNC to donate half a million dollars as his confirmation in the Senate hung in the balance."

There are 26 nominations in total, just today.

1120 an

ric :{Grenell:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{ and :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Matt Schlapp:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{ :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:fled in a van when asked by Jacob Soboroff to present evidence of their claims of voter fraud.

:{Oracle cheers net neutrality rules rollback -:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: Axios

:{:(style="border-color:#70757a;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-3px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

wow BS, huh? ~?

july 2020

:{Schlapp probably thought he was too big to fail. The Conservative Inc. maestro is also one of the best paid lobbyists in Washington, thanks to his proximity to power. His primetime tub-thumping for the Republican Party and especially for Trump, was quite alright with his Fortune 500 clients as long as it opened the right doors when high-stakes regulatory and trade issues came knocking. But then, Black Lives Matter.:(style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}:

:{The Swamp is called a Swamp because there are a lot of hungry creatures in it ready to feast on flesh when the opportunity presents itself. Schlapp and his wife :(style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px;background-color:#ffff66;"):}:Mercedes have parlayed their influence with the White House into a personal partisan empire. But when Matt started talking out against BLM at the exact moment when corporations started caving to protest pressure, his two streams of income—GOP influence peddler and high paid corporate flack—collided.

On Monday night, Comcast, which owns NBC Universal, dropped the Schlapp’s lobbying firm Cove Strategies.

“He’s no longer representing us as an outside lobbyist,” a Comcast spokeswoman said Monday :{by phone to a Bloomberg News reporter:(style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}:, without elaborating. According to :{Judd Legum at Popular Information:(style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}:, which has been checking the records, Schlapp had a $120,000 a year contract to represent the cable giant in Washington.

This follows his dumping by Verizon and Abbott Industries last week, which paid him a combined $480,000 a year, to do their bidding on Capitol Hill and the White House. Wal-Mart is also reportedly distancing themselves from the Schlapps but their Cove Strategies firm still has a $200,000 contract.

In June Matt Schlapp, who along with Mercedes, is a regular contributor to Fox News, accused Black Lives Matter of being “hostile to families, capitalism, cops, unborn life and gender.” Much like many commenters on the Right, he has also sounded off on BLM’s efforts to remove historical statues they find offensive.

But Matt is no ordinary rightwing pundit, he has a job to do and now his politics are getting in the way of making mega corporations rich and competitive. He is what Tucker Carlson complained about in his monologue last night: a tool of a Republican Party that no longer represents the American people and has lost sight of what is key to saving the country from ultimate collapse: rebuilding a middle class through jobs and supporting families and civic and faith institutions that support, not rip away at, human dignity.

One needs no reminder that Wal-Mart :{was responsible:(style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: for eliminating and displacing some 400,000 U.S. jobs that went overseas from 2001 to 2013, and has, by importing cheap goods from China, contributed to the massive trade deficit with that country.

One needs no reminder that like all big fish with lobbyists like Schlapp, Comcast and Verizon have helped crush their smaller competitors, :{including local municipal broadband efforts:(style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: so that the leviathans can keep a lock on the Internet and cable markets. Let’s not forget that Comcast’s dominating media assets have promoted the bias that has kept conservative voices at the margins.

And those are just a few of Schlapp’s clients. Others, according to Legum, include:

Oracle. The computer software giant pays Schlapp $200,000 per year. The company does not appear to have publicly commented on the Black Lives Matter movement. Oracle CEO Safra Catz was a member of the :{Trump transition team:(style="box-sizing:border-box;border:0px;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: and is a major Republican donor.

Samsung. The electronics manufacturer pays Schlapp $80,000 per year. The company does not appear to have publicly commented on the Black Lives Matter movement.

eHealth. The private online insurance marketplace pays Schlapp $200,000 per year. The company does not appear to have publicly commented on the Black Lives Matter movement.

Schlapp is also the head of the American Conservative Union, which puts on the super donor-sponsored CPAC each year. While CPAC flings out the red meat about Trump “draining the swamp” and “American values,” Schlapp gets to have it both ways. Pretty swampy. But perhaps he’s met his match, a bigger fish than he, and it’s hungry.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, executive editor, has been writing for TAC since 2007, focusing on national security, foreign policy, civil liberties and domestic politics. She served for 15 years as a Washington bureau reporter for FoxNews.com, and at WTOP News in Washington from 2013-2017 as a writer, digital editor and social media strategist. She has also worked as a beat reporter at Bridge News financial wire (now part of Reuters) and Homeland Security Today, and as a regular contributor at Antiwar.com. A native Nutmegger, she got her start in Connecticut newspapers, but now resides with her family in Arlington, Va.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/state-of-the-union/swampy-schlapp-gets-whacked-over-blm/

Oracle, Cisco break ranks, support repeal of net neutrality rules

www.sfchronicle.com › business › article › Oracle-Cisc...

:{:(style="border-color:#70757a;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-3px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{:{May 9, 2017 - :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Cisco Systems of San Jose and Oracle of Redwood City have broken ranks with a significant swath of Silicon Valley :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{— including companies ...:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Missing: cove ‎strategies ‎schlapp

Fastest-growing Washington lobbying firms benefit from ...

www.opensecrets.org › news › 2019/12 › lobbying-fir...

:{:(style="border-color:#70757a;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-3px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{Dec 5, 2019 - Tapping into the Trump network. Cove Strategies, a Virginia-based lobbying firm founded in 2009 by conservative lobbyist Matt Schlapp, has ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

====

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/montana-gop-lawmakers-made-fortunes-at-tech-giant-oracle-and-became-its-best-friends-in-dc

salon

montana Republicans Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Greg Gianforte share a tight financial and legislative history with each other and with the tech giant Oracle that goes back years. That relationship has netted each of them several million dollars and made Gianforte one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

Both have also used their offices to support legislation and other initiatives for which Oracle spent significant time and money lobbying, and from which the company stood to gain financially — including through defense contracts.

Additionally, both are up for election this year: Daines is running for re-election to the Senate, in a tight race with current Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, while Gianforte is trying to move from the House — where he serves as the state’s lone representative — to the governor’s mansion.

Gianforte made his fortune from RightNow Technologies, a Bozeman-based tech company he co-founded with his wife in 1997, where Daines served as an executive for 12 years. In 2011, Gianforte sold the company to Oracle for $1.5 billion, at the time holding between 20% and 25% of the company’s stock, which was valued at between $300 million and $400 million, according to statements he made to the Billings Gazette.

that sale sent 100 jobs to Texas, according to a report in the Missoulan, but Gianforte stayed, working in a consulting capacity until March 2013, per his LinkedIn page.

The sale went a long way toward making Gianforte the wealthiest member of Congress, a title he held until last year when he was displaced by appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., whose husband is CEO of the New York Stock Exchange

The Gianforte Family Trust holds more than $190 million in assets, as of its 2018 tax filing, and supports a number of ultra-conservative organizations and efforts, including helping to build a creationist museum in Glendive, Montana, that depicts humans coexisting with dinosaurs.

Daines reported that between 2011 and 2012, when he stepped away from the company to run for Senate, RightNow and Oracle paid him a combined $550,882 in salary. He also reported earning between $2 million and $10 million over those two years, according to disclosures.

Since 1998, Daines and Gianforte, through their company Genesis Partners, have shared a stake in a Bozeman office complex called Genesis Business Park, which rented space to RightNow and subsequently Oracle. The complex currently hosts an Oracle campus, which Gianforte told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in 2015 had a 10-year lease, which is apparently set to expire next March.

Between 2015 dna 2018, Daines pulled in between $485,000 and $5.1 million per year in rent from the office park, and 2012 through 2014 earned between $100,001 and $1 million, according to his federal disclosure forms.

Gianforte reported earning between $50,000 and $100,000 from rent and capital gains through Genesis Partners, per his disclosures.

In fact, Daines officially filed his candidacy for Senate from the Oracle offices in Bozeman, which he had leased to the company. From the Missoula Independent:

Critics have since speculated that [Daines’] years at the company and the money netted by executives through the Oracle purchase were the springboard from which Daines launched his political career. In fact, according to a February 2014 article in the Billings Gazette, Daines officially filed his candidacy for the U.S. Senate from his iPhone while at the Bozeman offices of Oracle.

While in congress, Daines and Gianforte have pushed legislation that would benefit Oracle, including bills lobbied on by Oracle, federal reports show.

Daines introduced an amendment to a 2017 spending bill (SB 2943) that included spending to “ensure higher quality cybersecurity” for Department of Energy and Pentagon nuclear command and communication systems. Oracle had previously been awarded DOE contracts to do software work for the National Nuclear Security Administration, as well as DOD contracts for electronics and communications equipment.

Oracle reported that it lobbied on that bill for those specific issues, expending nearly $2 million on lobbying that quarter alone, government disclosures show.

The Montana legislative duo also supported billions of dollars in federal government procurement on which Oracle had lobbied.

Daines also voted to allocate billions of dollars for procurement as part of the fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAAs), Gianforte effectively voted in favor of the 2017 and 2020 NDAAs, both of which Oracle lobbied on.

Specifically, Oracle lobbied on issues related to IT, cloud and cybersecurity procurement policies, spending nearly $2 million lobbying on both, according to disclosures.

Furthermore, Daines used committee markups in 2015 and 2016 to increase funding for cybersecurity measures by nearly $2 billion, while Oracle touted its cybersecurity work with the federal government — specifically the Pentagon.

Daines also worked to boost cybersecurity innovation in the private sector, introducing legislation to get cybersecurity interests a seat at the table of a Workforce Advisory Board.

Oracle, whose complete cloud services division took in about $27.4 billion per year, lobbied on “cloud computing issues” throughout Daines’ time in Congress.

Daines similarly supported millions of dollars in funding for artificial intelligence (AI) programs, which Oracle stood to benefit from substantially, as the company offered an array of products incorporating AI and machine learning.

Daines has routinely advocated for private sector advantages on those issues, while Oracle promoted its government collaborations and spent millions lobbying for spending increases, including nearly $2 million for AI.

Daines and Gianforte both supported rolling back net neutrality, which Oracle publicly supported — and though many tech companies share the same interests, Daines and Gianforte used their offices to oppose policies supported by Oracle competitors, most specifically Google.

One such measure was the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, which held website operators liable for third-party content that promotes sex trafficking. According to the Verge, Oracle publicly supported that bill in an effort to harm their competitors, specifically Google:

Why Oracle would come out so publicly in favor of the bill is less obvious, since the law lacks even a tenuous connection to their business model. However the company’s animosity towards Google is well-documented, from its $9 billion lawsuit over Android, to Oracle’s funding of the Google Transparency Project, which put out a report earlier this year claiming that Google had bought academic influence through grants. In a bizarre way, Google has become the favorite target of those who support SESTA.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported in 2015 that Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock had met with Oracle competitors Google and Facebook ahead of his 2016 re-election bid, apparently in an effort to lure more tech competitors to Montana’s Northern Rocky tech apparatus. Bullock defeated Gianforte in that election, and is now running against Daines in one of the nation’s most closely-watched Senate races.

Daines once sent a letter to Google voicing concerns about their personal health information protection mechanisms, requesting the company provide information on the subject. Coincidentally, Oracle also criticized its chief rival’s data collection, and played a key role in launching an Australian government probe into Google over its collection practices.

In 2017, Daines called on Oracle CEO Safra Catz to join a tech jobs summit that he hosted.

Gianforte co-sponsored and voted in favor of an Oracle-backed immigration bill, the Fairness For High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019, on which Oracle lobbied, according to federal disclosures.

Gianforte also supported intelligence authorization legislation that Oracle lobbied on, voting in favor of an intelligence authorization act in 2018, 2019 and 2020, per Senate records.

In addition to the millions of dollars that Daines and Gianforte made from their business relationships with Oracle, including ongoing rent, the company has contributed financially to the two lawmakers’ election campaigns.

Daines for his part has taken over $56,000 in campaign contributions from Oracle over his career, making the company one of his top 10 contributors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Oracle employees have contributed $10,700 to Gianforte over the course of his two congressional bids.

Daines currently appears to hold a lead over Bullock in this year’s Senate race, and President Trump is expected to easily carry Montana. But the state has a history of being politically unpredictable, and Democratic Sen. Jon Tester successfully held his seat in 2018.

Gianforte faces a tougher challenge against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney, in a race currently rated as a “toss-up” in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.

Gianforte first won his House seat in a tight 2017 special election, after former Rep. Ryan Zinke joined Trump’s cabinet for his spectacularly scandal-studded stint as secretary of the Interior. On the eve of Gianforte’s election he made worldwide headlines for body-slamming Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs, and was convicted of assault in Montana state court the next month (after winning the election). The judge handed down a fine and sentenced the representative-elect to community service and anger management therapy.

As a result of the terms of the settlement, Gianforte gave the Committee to Protect Journalists $50,000, about 1/4,000 of his total estimated net worth.

620

Bill Number Congress Number Client Bill Title

H.R.425 116 Samsung Group Supporting Veterans in STEM Careers Act

S.153 116 Samsung Group Supporting Veterans in STEM Careers Act

H.R.3055 116 Samsung Group Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2020, and Further Health Extenders Act of 2019

S.1699 116 Samsung Group STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act

H.R.2740 116 Abbott Laboratories Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Defense, State, Foreign Operations, and Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, 2020

S.340 116 Retrophin Inc CREATES Act of 2019

H.R.2960 116 Samsung Group Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2020

S.1790 116 Samsung Group National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020

H.R.2500 116 Samsung Group National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020

S.3157 115 Samsung Group STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act

H.R.6147 115 Samsung Group Interior, Environment, Financial Services and General Government, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, 2019

S.2987 115 Samsung Group John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019

H.R.5895 115 Samsung Group Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2019

S.2082 116 Samsung Group Support Technology and Research for Our Nation's Growth and Economic Resilience Patents Act of 2019

S.2470 116 Samsung Group Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2020

H.R.3666 116 Samsung Group STRONGER Patents Act of 2019

H.R.5515 115 Samsung Group John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019

S.2580 116 Samsung Group Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2020

S.2975 115 Samsung Group Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2019

S.3073 115 Samsung Group Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2019

H.R.4952 115 Samsung Group Improving Seniors Access to Quality Benefits Act

angela Flood :{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:inherit;display:inline-block;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;text-rendering:auto;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}:	Retrophin Inc
Stephen Replogle :{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:inherit;display:inline-block;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;text-rendering:auto;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}:	Abbott Laboratories Comcast Corp eHealth Inc Oracle Corp (Oracle America)* Samsung Group (Samsung Electronics America)* Seasonal Employment Alliance Twin River Management Group Verizon Communications Walmart Inc
Matthew Schlapp :{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:inherit;display:inline-block;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;text-rendering:auto;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}:	Braeburn Inc Comcast Corp eHealth Inc Harbinger Capital Partners (Ligado Networks)* Oracle Corp (Oracle America)* Samsung Group (Samsung Electronics America)* Seasonal Employment Alliance Twin River Management Group Verizon Communications Walmart Inc

angela Flood :{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:inherit;display:inline-block;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;text-rendering:auto;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}:

Retrophin Inc

Stephen Replogle :{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:inherit;display:inline-block;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;text-rendering:auto;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}:

Abbott Laboratories

Comcast Corp

eHealth Inc

Oracle Corp (Oracle America)*

Samsung Group (Samsung Electronics America)*

Seasonal Employment Alliance

Twin River Management Group

Verizon Communications

Walmart Inc

Matthew Schlapp :{:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:inherit;display:inline-block;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;font-stretch:normal;text-rendering:auto;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}:

Braeburn Inc

Comcast Corp

eHealth Inc

Harbinger Capital Partners (Ligado Networks)*

Oracle Corp (Oracle America)*

Samsung Group (Samsung Electronics America)*

Seasonal Employment Alliance

Twin River Management Group

Verizon Communications

Walmart Inc

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/firms/summary?cycle=2019&id=D000049818

Groups That Have Retained Cove Strategies in 2019 gn: baseline; box-sizing: inherit;">

Client	Total	Subsidiary (Lobbied For)	Industry
Abbott Laboratories	$190,000	-	Pharm/Health Prod
Braeburn Inc	$20,000	-	Pharm/Health Prod
Comcast Corp	$120,000	-	Telecom Svcs
eHealth Inc	$200,000	-	Insurance
Harbinger Capital Partners	$120,000	Ligado Networks	Telecom Svcs
Oracle Corp	$200,000	Oracle America	Electronics Mfg/Eqp
Retrophin Inc	$80,000	-	Pharm/Health Prod
Samsung Group	$80,000	Samsung Electronics America	Electronics Mfg/Eqp
Seasonal Employment Alliance	$200,000	-	Business Assns
Twin River Management Group	$120,000	-	Casinos/Gambling
Verizon Communications	$160,000	-	Telephone Utilities
Walmart Inc	$210,000	-	Retail Sales

https://www.opensecrets.org/news**/2019/12**/lobbying-firms-benefit-from-trump-ties/

For many well-connected Washington lobbying firms, business is booming after President Donald Trump’s 2016 election.

At least 22 lobbying firms saw revenue more than double in the Trump era compared to the previous three years, with many signing high-dollar contracts with big-name clients, an OpenSecrets analysis found.

The reasons for the revenue spikes vary. Some lobbying firms simply received a bigger check from existing clients or took on new ones as businesses were eager to influence the new administration. Others grew their team, recruiting well-connected lobbyists who brought their existing clients to their new firms. Some firms touted connections to the Trump orbit, luring clients who wished to have the president’s ear.

Tapping into the Trump network

**Cove Strategies**, a Virginia-based lobbying firm founded in 2009 by conservative lobbyist Matt Schlapp, has been thriving since Trump took office. Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union since 2014, is a vocal Trump defender on cable networks and regularly lobbies the president’s office. Trump frequently appears at the organization’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Schlapp’s wife, Mercedes Schlapp, served as Trump’s strategic communications director for two years and has now joined Trump’s reelection campaign.

The couple enjoy close access to the president, which in turn helped boost Matt Schlapp’s lobbying business. Cove Strategies’ revenue surged to $1 million in 2017 and has reached $1.3 million so far this year. The company is representing Verizon Communications on telecom and tax issues, and is lobbying on behalf of Walmart and several pharmaceutical companies. Ligado Networks, which filed a petition to urge the Federal Communications Commission to modify the company’s license so it could support 5G services for certain users, hired Cove Strategies to lobby the president’s office on mid-band spectrum and 5G issues.

D.C.-based firm **Fidelis Government Relations**’ revenue had never topped $500,000. But in 2017, the company brought in $1.2 million, more than tripling the revenue from the previous year.

The revenue hike came after Terry Allen, the company’s only lobbyist, partnered with Bill Smith, congressional chief-of-staff to now-Vice President Mike Pence for 12 years. Smith, who told Politico in 2016 that he offered Pence informal advice on his transition to VP, has been actively lobbying the vice president’s office on behalf of a handful of clients.

This analysis of fastest growing lobbying firms does not include some Trump-tied firms that didn’t exist before 2017 but are thriving under Trump, such as Ballard Partners....[hockey stick graf]

...

**Baker and Hostetler**, which already employed several “revolving door” lobbyists who previously held government positions, saw record-high revenue in 2017 after Jim Murphy, former political director of Trump’s presidential campaign, joined as a senior advisor. The same year, the company also represented social media giant Facebook and the powerful trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America with six-figure contracts.

**Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP**, the decades-old law firm of Trump’s longtime personal attorney Marc Kasowitz, also witnessed substantial business growth in recent years. The company hired former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who served as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, to represent Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE Corp on national security-related issues last year.

The hire came after U.S. intelligence suspected that the Chinese-government-tied company posed a cybersecurity threat. The company told OpenSecrets earlier this year that Lieberman was not advocating for ZTE but was merely making recommendations for the tech company.

Hopping on the wagon of firms selling Trump connections, **Federal Advocates**, which only had a bare bone team of lobbyists in 2016, gained huge profits in the Trump era. Michael Esposito, president of the firm, has more than two dozen clients. The formerly self-proclaimed “Democratic lobbyist,” who pitched himself to then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign, is now touting his connections with the Trump administration and the Republican National Committee leadership despite lack of evidence, The Washington Post reported.

The company saw its business quadruple since 2016, bringing in $3.2 million worth of contracts in 2017 from 33 clients including retail giant PetSmart Inc and the National Cannabis Industry Association. That is more than three times the $907,000 it earned in 2016. It picked up multiple revolving door lobbyists, including former Rep. Christopher Carney (D-Pa.) as the firm’s vice president. Carney left the company in October to join national law firm Nossaman.

Revolving door hires benefit some firms

It’s not only the Trump-tied lobbying firms that saw a boost in their revenue. Some firms also brought on board lobbyists with rich experience working for the government.

**Clark Hill PLC**, an international law firm, was hired by nine clients for a total amount of $618,000 in 2016. The following year, the firm saw a sevenfold increase in revenue, taking on 41 clients for $4.4 million. The company is now representing KBR Inc., a construction company that expressed interest in helping Trump build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In 2017, the firm hired Kevin Kelly, former staffer for then Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Ma.) and staff director of the Senate Appropriations Committee for almost a decade. Kelly immediately started to represent 34 clients, some of whom were clients when he worked for Washington lobbying firm Van Scoyoc Associates. Since joining Clark Hill, Kelly has lobbied on behalf of a variety of interest groups, ranging from higher education institutions to the public sector of Koch Industries.

Lauren Lipin, Kelly’s former colleague at Van Scoyoc Associates, joined Clark Hill PLC the same year, bringing several clients from her old job. Also a “revolver,” Lipin served as legislative assistant to Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Ma.) between 2009 and 2013.

The company recently recruited Anthony Campau, a former member of Trump’s transition team and chief-of-staff at the White House’s regulatory review office, to oversee its government regulation unit. Campau’s knowledge in policy making, Kelly said in a statement, would “enable us to help the firm’s clients in a way that few firms at the Federal level can offer.”

Also taking on big-name clients in recent years is **Hance Scarborough LLP**, a Texas-based lobbying firm with only $70,000 worth of contracts from four clients in 2016. The firm saw an exponential revenue increase over the past three years, bringing in $710,000 in 2017 and $1.6 million Kent Hance (D-Texas), who switched to be a Republican after stepping down, formed the firm in 1994. The former Texas congressman served as the chancellor of the Texas Tech University System and returned to lobbying after his retirement from the position in 2014.

Former Rep. Jim Turner (D-Texas) joined the firm in 2017, immediately bringing in his former Texas-based clients as well as national and international organizations. Turner’s former legislative director, David Pore, rejoined the company with Turner in 2017 after five years as the firm’s attorney, lobbying on behalf of several groups including Pore’s previous employer, the Association of Texas Professional Educators.

Jay Stewart, the firm’s managing partner, said clients that Turner and Pore brought with them helped with the firm’s business. “More clients is better for any firm, because … that’s where you find future businesses with existing businesses,” Stewart said. “But we did not merge with (them) … for the purpose of gaining access to their clients.”

Hance Scarborough expanded its businesses in recent years. In 2018, the firm deployed multiple lobbyists to influence Congress on behalf of General Motors on automobile-related issues, including manufacturing, tax credits and trade deals.

**Skadden Arps**, an influential law firm that settled with the Department of Justice earlier this year over its work with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Ukraine, is back on the rise, reviving its influence and building a team of revolving door lobbyists. After dropping to $100,000 in 2016, the company’s lobbying revenue bounced back to $1.4 million in 2017 and $1.5 million in 2018.

**Hall Render**, a national law firm with an expertise in health law, expanded its lobbying operation in 2017. John F. Williams, former press secretary of the House Government Reform Committee and the company’s only registered lobbyist at the time, was joined by Andrew Coats, who had served as the legislative assistant to former Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and the company’s counsel. The increased business that year also allowed the firm to bring on board another lobbyist, Williams said.

Williams said the business growth in 2017 reflected the acknowledgment of the firm’s expertise among its clients. “That just seemed to be the year everything clicked,” he said.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/whats-behind-lobbyist-attempts-to-block-casinos-on-native-land

Donald Trump threw his weight against a bipartisan House bill last week that would affirm the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s right to 321 acres of land in Massachusetts.

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act, or H.R. 312, was introduced by Rep. William Keating (D-Mass.) and co-sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats. Supporters of the act said entitling the 2,600-member tribe to promised, federally recognized land upheld tribal sovereignty and protected the tribe’s economy by enabling the tribe to build a casino on the land.

The House voted in favor of the bill, moving the tribe one step closer to building a $1 billion proposed casino on the land. But the president’s opposition warrants a look into his past links to casino magnates and the gambling industry. The bill now heads to the Republican-controlled Senate.

Trump made known his opposition to the bill in a tweet on May 8, calling it “a special interest casino Bill” and urged Republicans to back out, leading the House to temporarily delay the vote. The president has a long history of challenging tribes’ right to build and operate casinos on reservations.

The chaos that transpired over the legislation exemplified the gaming industries’ complex and costly tug-of-war over casino regulations on tribal land. This is not the first time interest groups, lobbyists or the president have challenged tribes’ protected federal status as sovereign nations to block the construction of competitive casinos.

Significant funding flows into the political fight from all sides. Last year, gambling groups spent a total of $32.53 million, deploying over 300 lobbyists. The Arizona-based Gila River Indian Community led the pack with $2.58 million in spending. Federal lobbying in the gaming industry precipitously increased 112 percent between 2000 and 2018.

Tug-of-war over casino regulations

Federally recognized tribal nations have the right to self-determination and the ability to oversee their own internal affairs on reservations, including the construction of casinos in many states across the U.S.

But gaming facilities on reservations are not immune from federal regulations.

Some tribes must establish compacts, or agreements, with states before building casinos. These states then claim a percentage of the profits from the casinos. The National Indian Gaming Commission, established in 1988, is tasked with monitoring casinos on reservations too.

The ambiguity that can come with federal oversight has often resulted in tension between casinos, Congress and tribal nations over what rules to play by. When it comes to fine-tuning regulations, lobbyists play a significant role.

The Mashpee Wampanoag were among the first Indigenous people to come in contact with colonizers in the seventeenth century. Of the 69 tribes that once composed the Wampanoag Nation, the Mashpee Wampanoag remain one of three surviving tribes today, following decades of colonization and genocide. Despite its over 12,000-year history, the tribe continues to live without a reservation.

The U.S. government did not “re-acknowledge” the Mashpee Wampanoag as a tribe until 2007, well after the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Last year, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke determined the Department of Interior would not consider the 150 acres of land in Mashpee and 170 acres of land in Taunton, Massachusetts as the Mashpee Wampanoag’s reservation, reversing an Obama-era decision.

“If a federally recognized tribe does not have land over which to exercise its tribal authority, then what good is the government authority you have?” said Kathryn Rand, dean and professor of law at the University of North Dakota. “You have to have a place to exercise that authority.”

Rand, who also co-founded the Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy, said the rescinding of the tribe’s land dealt a blow to their proposed casino and sent the economy into a tailspin.

“The tribe started work on its casino, including seeking financing,” she said, “When the [DOI] Secretary changed his mind, the tribe was left with overwhelming debt.” She estimated the debt at $440 million.

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe saw the proposed casino as a key “economic driver.” Casinos can provide needed revenue for public services and other vital infrastructure on reservations, at times accounting for a sizeable portion of a tribe’s revenue.

This is not the first time Congress has stepped in to preserve a tribe’s reservation from being taken away.

In 2015, Gun Lake Tribe underwent a similar struggle. Congress introduced and eventually passed the Gun Lake Trust Land Reaffirmation Actto affirm that the land could be held in federal trust, but not without a grueling fight. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled the decision constitutional in 2018.

Steven Light, co-founder of the Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy and professor at University of North Dakota, said “it is arguably not the best thing for Congress to be legislating on bills specific to one tribe or another because what that suggests is that sovereignty [can be] compromised and politicized.” Instead, the DOI’s responsibility is to fulfill the federal government’s promises to all tribes, he said.

Lobbyists representing Twin River Worldwide Holdings welcomed the DOI’s decision to un-acknowledge the land previously considered the Mashpee Wampanoag’s reservation. The private company has two casinos — Twin River Casino Hotel and Tiverton Casino Hotel — near the disputed site in Rhode Island. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who co-sponsored H.R. 312, said that Twin River was adverse to the competition from the new casino, according to the Washington Post.

Twin River paid revolving door lobbyist Matt Schlapp, who is the chairman of the American Conservative Union and a devout Trump supporter.The opposition’s ties to Trump go even deeper. The president of Twin River once served as an executive at one of the casinos owned by Trump in Atlantic City too, based on findings published by the Washington Post.

Schlapp leads the lobbying firm Cove Strategies, which Twin River Management Group paid $30,000 in 2019 for lobbying related to the bill. Schlapp’s wife, Mercedes, holds a position in the White House as the director of strategic communications.

Twin River Management Group also paid the firm Black Diamond Strategies $30,000. Although there is no record indicating he lobbied on H.R. 312, revolving door lobbyist Rick Wiley is a political consultant with Black Diamond Strategies and played an influential role in Trump’s campaign as the political director during the presidential primaries. Doug Davenport, a former strategist for Trump’s campaign, lobbied on behalf of Black Diamond Strategies as well.

Rep. Keating called out Trump’s “well-documented alliance with the [Rhode Island] casino lobbyist” in a tweet last week.

Tribes also have accelerated their involvement in federal lobbying. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe spent $150,000 on lobbying in this year. Last year, they spent $420,000.

“In the American political system, money talks,” Light said. “Political responsiveness is generated through access and influence, which is linked to fiscal resources and lobbying.”

In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Indigenous Peoples of the U.S. last month, Mashpee Wampanoag Vice Chairwoman Jessie “Little Doe” Baird said that the loss of the Mashpee Wampanoag’s status had devastated their economic development.

“The damage done to our Tribe during the years in which the status of our reservation has been thrown into doubt is beginning to reach catastrophic levels,” Baird said.

The denial of land rights to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe harkened back to termination policies in the mid-twentieth century when the federal government terminated the status of numerous American Indian tribes and nullified preexisting promises to tribes bound by treaty, said Rep. Raúl Grijalva(D-Ariz.) said on the House floor.

That said, money from casinos is not a panacea for the steep economic hurdles many tribal nations face. Some Indigenous leaders have called for alternate revenue streams given the limitations of the gaming industry.

Nor do all tribal nations have a casino. Of the 567 federally recognized tribes, about 42 percent operate gaming facilities, according to 2016 data from NIGC. That means the majority — 329 tribes — have no casinos.

Not all casinos are created equal either, and profit varies widely depending on location and tribe. Of all the gaming revenue audits obtained by the NIGC in 2017, 57 percent of casinos brought in under $25 million.

Lobbyists put ‘political pressure’ on DOI

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is not the only tribe to run into issues with the DOI and lobbyists.

Last year, the Mashantucket Pequots Tribe filed a lawsuit against the DOI and MGM Resorts International alleging that the agency intentionally delayed any decision over a proposed casino. This would be the third casino owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe. The Mohegan Tribe, also located in Connecticut, joined the lawsuit.

MGM Resorts International, a company with plans to build a casino in Springfield, Massachusetts, lobbied against the construction of the the Mashantucket Pequots’ proposal, and may have been influential in the DOI’s lack of a clear verdict, according to an investigation of Zinke’s calendar by Politico.

Judge Rudolph Contreras allowed the lawsuit to proceed in February, stating that the “plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that significant political pressure was brought to bear on the issue and the Secretary may have improperly succumbed to such pressure.”

MGM Resorts International spent a record-breaking $1.9 million lobbying on issues related to gambling in 2018, up from $570,000 just two years before. The company paid Ballard $80,000 during the first quarter this year. Last year, he received $320,000.

MGM’s registered lobbyists include Brian Ballard who served as a fundraiser for Trump’s presidential campaign in Florida and later became a member of Trump’s transition team. Filings show MGM Resorts paid Ballard Partners $80,000 in the first quarter this year for lobbying on issues related to gambling on tribal land.

Revolving door lobbyist Gale Norton, who served as Interior Secretary in the George W. Bush administration from 2001 and 2006, lobbied for MGM Resorts International about the “Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Connecticut gaming amendments,” according to lobbyingrecords. She also served as counsel for Shell Oil.

Spending on lobbyists by the Mashantucket Pequots Tribe decreased from $380,000 in 2004 to just $84,000 in 2018.

The motivations behind steady efforts by lobbyists to challenge tribe’s right to hold federal land in trust can extend well beyond the gambling industry. Federally recognized tribal land accounts for about 2 percent of the country’s land, but holds about 20 percent of gas and oil. When a lobbyist successfully chisels away at tribal rights to self-determination over their own affairs, fossil fuel interest groups inch closer to accessing tribal land.

In 2016, Energy Transfer Partners lobbied to extend a $3.8 billion pipeline through sacred land on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota, despite widespread resistance from Indigenous organizers.

Trump eventually reversed the Army Corp of Engineers’ decision to halt construction of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, made under the Obama administration. The case is now stuck in the courts.

Trump has a lengthy history with casinos. Trump owned casino ventures, including Trump Castle, Trump Plaza and Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City in the 1980 and 90s. All ended in bankruptcy but Trump walked away with significant profit.

Currently, the Mashantucket Pequots Tribe owns two casinos, one of which Trump attempted to block in his days as a casino owner. In 1993, Trump challenged the constitutionality of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in court in an attempt to eliminate competition from the the Mashantucket Pequots Tribe’s Foxwoods Resort Casino. Trump sued the federal government, arguing he was being discriminated against.

“I love to compete but I like to compete on an equal footing. I’m competing and paying hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes,” said Trump during a hearing. All the same, a New York Times report later uncovered that Trump claimed $814 million in losses while forking over no money in income taxes.

Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics.

For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: info@crp.org

American Conservative Union Foundation

According to its website, the ACUF was established in 1973 to “educate voters, office-holders, and opinion leaders as to why conservative principles work better to solve the myriad of complex and dynamic problems facing Americans today and to equip them to become better and more effective problem-solvers by implementing conservative values within their communities.” [5]

ACU PAC

ACU Political Action Committee is the ACU's political arm and “supports candidates for office who reflect the conservative principles on which the ACU was founded.” According to the ACU website, “a successful, well-funded political action committee keeps the American Conservative Union relevant and influential on the issues of greatest importance to our membership, both at the national and state levels, in general and primary elections.” [6]

Stance on Climate Change

The ACU has historically opposed efforts that would limit carbon dioxide emissions for the purpose of combatting climate change. For example, ACU supported HR 3409, a bill that would prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions: [7]

“ACU opposes EPA’s attempt to use the issue of global warming to control American manufacturing and supported this bill,” ACU notes.

Climate science denialists and fossil fuel advocates have been given regular forums as part of the CPAC conferences in recent years. ACU has also sponsored climate science denial conferences organised by the Heartland Institute.

Funding

The following data is based on publicly available 990 forms and by data collected by the Conservative Transparency project. Note that not all individual values have been verified by DeSmog. [8]

View the attached spreadsheet for additional details on :{American Conservative Union and ACU Foundation funding by year (.xlsx):(style="font-weight:700"):}:.

Donor	American Conservative Union	American Conservative Union Foundation	Grand Total
The Lynde and Harry:{ Bradley:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:Foundation		$945,000	$945,000
National Christian Charitable Foundation		$390,000	$390,000
Mercer Family Foundation	$250,000	$120,000	$370,000
WellspringCommittee	$240,000		$240,000
National Rifle Association Foundation		$108,520	$108,520
Judicial Watch	$108,000		$108,000
:{Exxon:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: Mobil		$90,000	$90,000
Armstrong Foundation		$62,500	$62,500
American Petroleum Institute	$58,500		$58,500
The Vernon K. Krieble Foundation	$30,000		$30,000
The Randolph Foundation		$20,000	$20,000
DonorsTrust		$19,750	$19,750
Americans for Tax Reform		$14,500	$14,500
Donors Capital Fund		$12,000	$12,000
Bill and Berniece Grewcock Foundation		$10,000	$10,000
Castle Rock Foundation		$10,000	$10,000
American Values		$10,000	$10,000
John William Pope Foundation	$5,000		$5,000
Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation		$4,000	$4,000
Joyce and Donald Rumsfeld Foundation		$2,000	$2,000
William E. Simon Foundation		$2,000	$2,000
The Roe Foundation	$2,000		$2,000
Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty	$1,325		$1,325
Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking	$1,000		$1,000
Grand Total	$695,825	$1,820,270	$2,516,095

990 Forms...

Key People

Board of Directors

Name	:{2000:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2001:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2003:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2005:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2006:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2007:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2008:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2009:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2011:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2012:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2013:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2014:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2015:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2016:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2017:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2018:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	Description
Alan M. Gottlieb	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Becky Norton Dunlop	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Michael R. Long	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Morton C. Blackwell	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Muriel Coleman	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Ron Robinson	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Carolyn D. Meadows				Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Van D. Hipp, Jr.				Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
John Bolton						Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Matt Schlapp						Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Charlie Gerow									Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Vice Chairman
Amy Frederick												Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Secretary
Bob Beauprez												Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Treasurer
Luis Fortuno												Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Ned Ryun												Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Ron Christie												Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
John Eddy													Y	Y	Y	Y
Thomas Winter						Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y		Y	Y	Y
Ed McFadden														Y	Y	Y
Ed Yevoli														Y	Y	Y
José Cárdenas														Y	Y	Y
Kimberly Bellissimo														Y	Y	Y
Larry Beasley														Y	Y	Y
M. Zuhdi Jasser														Y	Y	Y
Matt Smith														Y	Y	Y
Mike Rose														Y	Y	Y
Peter Samuelson														Y	Y	Y
Jackie Arends															Y	Y
Priscilla O'Shaughnessy															Y	Y
Sabrina Schaeffer															Y	Y
Terry Schilling															Y	Y
Stephen E. Biegun																Y
Grover G. Norquist	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
James V. Lacy	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Fred L. Smith, Jr.										Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Tom DeLay						Y	Y	Y				Y	Y	Y
Kellyanne Conway												Y	Y	Y
Alberto R. Cardenas				Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Joe Bast						Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Lew Uhler								Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
David A. Keene									Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Jameson G. Campaigne, Jr.									Y	Y	Y	Y	Y				Secretary, ACU
Carly Fiorina										Y	Y	Y	Y				Chairman, ACUFoundation
Anne Northup												Y	Y
Mark Stephens												Y	Y				Member-at-Large
Suhail Khan						Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Paul Erickson										Y	Y	Y
Allen Roth	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Floyd Brown	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y						Western Center for Journalism
Jeffrey Bell	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y						Capital City Partners
Serphin Maltese	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Cleta Mitchell		Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y						Foley &Lardner, LLP
Kirby Wilbur		Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y						Washington State Republican Party
Joseph A. Morris				Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y						Morris & De La Rosa
Larry Eastland						Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y						Global Public Strategies, Ltd
Donald J. Devine									Y	Y	Y						Second Vice Chairman, Donald Devine Company
Asa Hutchinson										Y	Y						The Asa Hutchinson Law Group
M.J. Mintz	Y	Y			Y	Y	Y	Y	Y								Of Counsel
Wayne R. LaPierre Jr.	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Tracie Sharp						Y	Y	Y
Lewis Uhler	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y										Roseville, CA
John Berthoud						Y											Alexandria, VA
Charles Black	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y												Washington, DC
Craig Shirley	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y												Alexandria, VA
Duncan Hunter	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y												Washington, DC
James Arthur Pope	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y												Raleigh, NC
Jesse Helms	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y												Raleigh, NC
Robert Luddy	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y												Captive-Aire Systems
Tom Pauken	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y												Dallas, Texas
Charles Jarvis					Y												Fairfax, VA
Star Parker					Y												Los Angeles, CA
Beau Boulter	Y	Y	Y	Y													Arlington, VA
M. Stanton Evans	Y	Y	Y	Y													Washington, DC
Steve Moore			Y	Y													Washington, DC
L. Brent Bozell, III	Y	Y	Y														Alexandria, VA
Camille Kampouris		Y	Y														New York, NY
Louis Jenkins	Y	Y															Baton Rouge, LA
Ralph Reed, Jr.	Y	Y															Duluth, GA

ACU Foundation Board of Directors

Name	:{2010:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2011:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2012:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2013:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2014:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2015:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2016:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2017:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	:{2018:(style="font-weight:700"):}:	Description
Carolyn D. Meadows	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Millie Hallow	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Van D. Hipp, Jr.	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Colin Hanna				Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Jonathan Garthwaite					Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
José Cárdenas					Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Kimberly Bellissimo					Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Matt Schlapp					Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Willes K. Lee					Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Thomas Winter	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y		Y	Y	Y
Charlie Gerow							Y	Y	Y	Vice Chairman
Niger Innis							Y	Y	Y
Randy Neugebauer							Y	Y	Y
Adam Laxalt								Y	Y
Mary Matalin								Y	Y
Amy Frederick				Y	Y	Y	Y			Secretary
David A. Keene	Y			Y	Y	Y
Tim Goeglein				Y	Y	Y
Carly Fiorina					Y					Chairman, ACUFoundation
Cleta Mitchell	Y	Y	Y	Y						Foley & Lardner, LLP
Alberto R. Cardenas		Y	Y	Y
Robert Luddy		Y	Y	Y						Captive-Aire Systems
Roger Noriega				Y						Visión Américas
Richard H. Collins	Y	Y	Y
Tom Tripp	Y	Y	Y							Secretary
Robert Lamutt	Y

Staff & Personnel

mma

Over the past year, Sean Hannity and the cast of Fox News figures have deployed numerous theories in an effort to discredit and lay groundwork for an authoritarian response to the Mueller investigation. From referring to the investigation as “witch hunt” to claiming collusion isn’t a crime, the extended Fox News universe has tried it all.

When it comes to Trump's former National Security Adviser, Fox figures have taken to accusing the FBI of duping Michael Flynn into lying. Pro-Trump media have spent most of 2018 floating conspiracy theories about Flynn's guilty plea.

Those conspiracy theories have now been debunked. A federal judge did not throw out Flynn's guilty plea on Tuesday. Flynn and his lawyers instead conceded on the record that he knowingly lied to the FBI and did not believe his rights had been violated. Fox News personalities were forced deploy new spins on the situation. Each propagandist took their turn trying out new theories, seemingly throwing everything at the wall to see what might stick.

Just before the hearing,Fox guest Matt Schlapp compared Flynn's actions to "pulling off mattress tags, jaywalking, parking tickets."

Things really picked up speed after the hearing. Fox legal analyst Gregg Jarrett claimed that Judge Emmet Sullivan begged Flynn to throw out his guilty plea, and when he didn’t, the judge began to lash out at Flynn. As Matt Gertz explained, this makes no sense. Lou Dobbs took a simpler route, simply bashing the judge. And fittingly, Fox & Friends utilized the most convenient strategy: virtually ignore the issue entirely. Fox & Friends dedicated less than five minutes to the Flynn case during their Wednesday broadcast.

Gertz summed up Fox’s efforts: “If Fox propagandists had any standards or capacity for honesty, the Sullivan and Flynn saga might cause them to re-examine much of their unhinged Mueller coverage. They don't, so it won't -- and it's on to the next conspiracy theory.”

Where do we go from here? Fox is already floating a pardon for Flynn.

avuncular happy warrior often on pbs newshour, 11/18 not lately" jumped the shark? nah, just fox gig

https://www.mediamatters.org/people/matt-schlapp

11/18 random grab

Tags ››› Matt Schlapp

Matt Schlapp: Gillum's call to "count every vote" means "count the votes of people who are not legally allowed to vote"

Video ››› November 9, 2018 10:35 AM EST ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

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CNN host calls out Matt Schlapp for "fearmongering" about migrant caravan as "marauding bands" of invaders

Video ››› October 22, 2018 10:36 AM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

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Conservative media rally around Kavanaugh amid second allegation of sexual misconduct

Blog ››› September 24, 2018 5:14 PM EDT ››› ZACHARY PLEAT

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Conservative media figures reacted to a New Yorker story that a second woman reported Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh for sexual misconduct by digging in on their support for him and demanding that Republicans hurry up and confirm him.

The New Yorker reported on Sunday evening that Deborah Ramirez, who attended Yale University with Kavanaugh, said that according to her recollection, “Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away”:

Ramirez said that, when both she and Kavanaugh were freshmen at Yale, she was invited by a friend on the women’s soccer team to a dorm-room party. She recalled that the party took place in a suite at Lawrance Hall, in the part of Yale known as Old Campus, and that a small group of students decided to play a drinking game together. “We were sitting in a circle,” she said. “People would pick who drank.” Ramirez was chosen repeatedly, she said, and quickly became inebriated. At one point, she said, a male student pointed a gag plastic penis in her direction. Later, she said, she was on the floor, foggy and slurring her words, as that male student and another stood nearby. (Ramirez identified the two male onlookers, but, at her request, The New Yorker is not naming them.)

A third male student then exposed himself to her. “I remember a penis being in front of my face,” she said. “I knew that’s not what I wanted, even in that state of mind.” She recalled remarking, “That’s not a real penis,” and the other students laughing at her confusion and taunting her, one encouraging her to “kiss it.” She said that she pushed the person away, touching it in the process. Ramirez, who was raised a devout Catholic, in Connecticut, said that she was shaken. “I wasn’t going to touch a penis until I was married,” she said. “I was embarrassed and ashamed and humiliated.” She remembers Kavanaugh standing to her right and laughing, pulling up his pants. “Brett was laughing,” she said. “I can still see his face, and his hips coming forward, like when you pull up your pants.” She recalled another male student shouting about the incident. “Somebody yelled down the hall, ‘Brett Kavanaugh just put his penis in Debbie’s face,’ ” she said. “It was his full name. I don’t think it was just ‘Brett.’ And I remember hearing and being mortified that this was out there.”

Ramirez acknowledged that there are significant gaps in her memories of the evening, and that, if she ever presents her story to the F.B.I. or members of the Senate, she will inevitably be pressed on her motivation for coming forward after so many years, and questioned about her memory, given her drinking at the party.

And yet, after several days of considering the matter carefully, she said, “I’m confident about the pants coming up, and I’m confident about Brett being there.” Ramirez said that what has stayed with her most forcefully is the memory of laughter at her expense from Kavanaugh and the other students. “It was kind of a joke,” she recalled. “And now it’s clear to me it wasn’t a joke.”

Another classmate told The New Yorker that he heard about the incident at the time and that he was told Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself to Ramirez.

The new reporting follows a week of right-wing media attacks on Kavanaugh’s first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, who says Kavanaugh attempted to rape her when they were in high school. Ford has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee this coming Thursday, but after this new allegation, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has called for that hearing to be delayed.

At least one right-wing pundit, Ann Coulter, became unhinged on Twitter following the publication of Ramirez’s story:

Other conservatives called Ramirez’s accusation fake, criticized the timing of her going public, demanded Republicans stand by Kavanaugh anyway, and painted Kavanaugh as the true victim of these alleged sexual assaults.

Conservatives allege Ramirez’s account is part of a Democratic conspiracy

Fox & Friends co-host Anna Kooiman: “Is this a drip, drip, drip … by the Democrats trying to delay everything until the midterm elections and really fire up their base saying Republicans are bullies?”

Conservative talk radio host Erick Erickson: “It seems more and more likely that the Blasey Ford delays were not to let her drive across country, but were to allow the Ramirez hit to get out. This is all coordinated and none of it is credible.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel: “The left made a mistake with this Ramirez story. … It strongly suggests the Ford delay demands were about cooking this up. Destroys credibility all around.”

Fox Business anchor Dagen McDowell: “I think that this -- the timing is suspect and people have [a] right to question this second accuser coming forward.”

Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh: “Democrats were stalling last week to give themselves more of an opportunity to conjure up another accuser against Brett Kavanaugh,” and “they whipped together another accusation.”

Conservatives use latest accusation to demand Republican senators stand by Kavanaugh

Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk: “Senate Republicans: DO NOT CAVE! If you were up for this nomination I bet many of you would have plenty of these fake accusations come up. Stand by our guy. Do not waver.”

NRATV’s Dan Bongino: “Hill Democrats are consumed by raw hatred. Their capacity for evil knows no limits anymore. Correspondingly, the Hill Republicans shamefully showed weakness & cowed to their demands. … Hill Republicans let us down again.”

The Rebel’s Amanda Head: If Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Republicans “don’t fight these allegations and #ConfirmKavanaghNow we will lose midterms, we will lose 2020, and what’s worse, we will lose any chance at seeing a conservative majority SCOTUS in our lifetime.”

Federalist co-founder Sean Davis: “Senate Republicans have a simple choice: stand up to a coordinated Democrat smear campaign and confirm Kavanaugh, which will energize GOP voters and preserve House/Senate majorities, or buckle under Democrat lies and give up congressional GOP majorities for a decade or more.”

CRTV’s Michelle Malkin: If Senate Republicans “refuse to man up & stop coordinated Dem smear campaign once & for all, the consequences reach far beyond the electoral landscape.”

Trump campaign adviser Katrina Pierson: “#ConfirmBrettKavanaughNow.”

One America News Network host Jack Posobiec: “Raise your hand if you think the GOP should stop playing games and hold the Kavanaugh vote Monday.”

Conservatives complain Kavanaugh is the real victim here, not Ford or Ramirez

Fox News host Laura Ingraham: Accusations against Kavanaugh are “a left-wing cabal, a left-wing conspiracy all coming together, swarming together.”

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum: “‘Sickening’ was the word I heard most often this weekend to describe what is happening. Innocent until proven guilty is how we do this in America.”

Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe: “What is happening to #JudgeKavanaugh is wrong and terrifying.”

Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly: “Republicans are becoming terrified of the Kavanaugh situation because they know the media will embrace every lurid accusation without scrutiny, and no one will be held accountable for ignoring due process.”

Independent Women Forum’s Julie Gunlock: “What Ms. Ramirez and her enablers have done is odious. She’s destroying the life of a good man based on her own hazy memory of an event that happened decades ago when she was admittedly drunk.”

Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk: “These are POLITICAL HIT JOBS against a sterling person.”

American Conservative Union’s Matt Schlapp: “This Kavanaugh confirmation has transformed into a disgrace. How is it when Dems win their SC noms get an easy time, but ours get mauled.”

Daily Caller’s Amber Athey: “I have no words for how sickened I am by how the left and the establishment media are weaponizing non-credible sexual assault claims to destroy a human being.”

Matt Schlapp on report of sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh: He "is the victim here"

Video ››› September 20, 2018 3:58 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

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Fox guest whines about Democrats' treatment of Brett Kavanaugh while praising GOP boycott of Merrick Garland

Video ››› September 13, 2018 11:21 AM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

Don't buy right-wing media's gaslighting: Brett Kavanaugh is a threat to abortion access

Blog ››› July 12, 2018 2:54 PM EDT ››› JULIE TULBERT

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Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Following President Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, right-wing media have attempted to downplay the odds that, if confirmed, Kavanaugh would cast a deciding vote on abortion rights. In reality, Kavanaugh’s background demonstrates that he will most likely be key to overturning or further gutting Roe v. Wade -- and such an outcome would have devastating consequences for abortion access in the United States.

On July 9, Trump nominated D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court to fill a vacancy left after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement in late June. Kavanaugh’s name was included on a list put out by the White House that was “preapproved by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.” According to New York magazine, this list was “extremely important to Trump’s relationship with the conservative movement and particularly with conservative Christian leaders.” Subsequently, anti-abortion groups praised Kavanaugh’s nomination as an opportunity to finally overturn Roe v. Wade and put an end legal abortion. And despite right-wing media’s gaslighting, Kavanaugh's record demonstrates that he will likely do just that.

Kavanaugh’s record on abortion suggests he’ll gladly overturn Roe or further curtail abortion rights

In 2017, Kavanaugh dissented in a case involving an unaccompanied pregnant immigrant teen (called Jane Doe) who was in federal custody and wanted to have an abortion. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement was prohibiting Doe from leaving the facility to have an abortion because the agency did not want to “facilitate” the practice.

As BuzzFeed News’ Zoe Tillman explained, Kavanaugh said in his dissent that the original order stopping the abortion was “in line with Supreme Court cases that said the government could have an interest in ‘favoring fetal life’” and “that it was not an ‘undue burden’ for the US government to say it wouldn’t ‘facilitate’ abortions for teens in custody.”

ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser further argued that “Kavanaugh’s approach” in the case, which would have required Doe to obtain a sponsor in the United States, “very well could have let the Trump administration run out the clock until she could no longer obtain a legal abortion” if the search lasted past Texas’ 20-week cut-off after which abortions are impermissible.

Beyond the substance of his opinion in the Jane Doe case, others have pointed to Kavanaugh’s reliance on “coded language” as evidence of his underlying intentions about abortion rights.

HuffPost’s Laura Bassett pointed out that in his decision, Kavanaugh used “coded language that’s only ever employed by anti-abortion activists” by referring to “abortion on demand.”

NBC’s Heidi Przybyla also noted that “code” words like “abortion on demand” are “widely understood to be a signal for … views on Roe.” This language also mirrors that used frequently by right-wing media to fearmonger about abortion and to spread misinformation.

Kavanaugh’s decision in Doe’s case, as well as his previous comments on abortion-related matters, also demonstrate that he might leave Roe on the books while still obliterating abortion rights.

As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern explained, Kavanaugh has already proved that “he can pretend to adhere to Roe while hollowing out its core holding” as evidenced by his finding that the Trump administration did not place an “undue burden” on Doe’s ability to obtain an abortion.

Kavanaugh also praised former Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s dissent in Roe during a speech in 2017 -- which Rewire.News’ Jessica Mason Pieklo noted made sense, given that Rehnquist’s dissent in Roe and Kavanaugh’s dissent in the Jane Doe case both “fundamentally den[y] reproductive autonomy all while purporting to be respecting the bounds of the law.”

Here’s what abortion access will probably look like with Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court

Even before Kavanaugh was officially nominated, right-wing media were already claiming that a Trump-nominated justice wouldn’t be that bad for abortion access. However, with Kavanaugh on the court, a decision gutting or overturning of Roe is likely and would have devastating consequences.

Although some (including Trump) have argued that overturning Roe will only return abortion regulations “back to the states,” this would functionally outlaw abortion across large parts of the country.

As the Center for Reproductive Rights’ Amy Myrick told Kaiser Health News’ Julie Rovner, “We think there are 22 states likely to ban abortion without Roe” due to “a combination of factors, including existing laws and regulations on the books and the positions of the governors and state legislatures.”

Reva Siegel, a professor at Yale Law School, wrote for The New York Times that returning the issue to the states would be disastrous because already, “27 major cities are 100 miles or more from the nearest abortion provider, and we can expect these ‘abortion deserts’ in the South and the Midwest to spread rapidly” if states are given free rein.

Independent of how abortion is regulated, economic and logistical barriers that already impede access will only grow worse in a world without Roe. As Carole Joffe, a professor in the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program at the University of California, San Francisco, explained:

Geographic areas without access to abortion place an extreme burden on the disproportionate number of abortion patients who are poor (50 percent are below the official poverty line and another 25 percent are classified as low income). Besides having to pay for the procedure, they need the funds to pay for lodging (some states have waiting periods of 24 hours or more, necessitating overnight stays), child care (about 60 percent of abortion patients are already parents) and of course for the travel itself. And this journey also involves confronting one or more days of lost wages as well.

Historian Rickie Solinger wrote for Vox that people seeking abortions “will be forced to flout the law to achieve personal dignity and safety,” but those “with economic resources will continue to have more options and access than others.”

Regardless of state regulations, conservatives have recently attempted to push federal regulation on abortion. As author and lecturer Scott Lemieux explained for Vox, “a Republican government with slightly larger Senate majorities than it has now would be able to pass national abortion regulations” that could outright or effectively ban abortion.

Yet right-wing media are acting like Kavanaugh’s nomination is not a big deal for abortion access and attacking those who are concerned as “overreacting”

Despite the threat that Kavanaugh poses to abortion rights, right-wing media have been busy gaslighting viewers in an apparent attempt to paint Kavanaugh as a “moderate” or otherwise suggest he wouldn’t overturn Roe:

Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich said on Fox News’ Outnumbered she was not “as a woman … worried about” Roe being overturned or losing access to contraceptives, and called such fears “scare tactics.”

Fox News contributor Byron York claimed on America’s Newsroom that because Kavanaugh “talked a lot about the role of women in his life” and “has two daughters,” he wouldn’t pose a threat to women’s rights.

Fox News host Brit Hume said on Tucker Carlson Tonight that “if Roe v. Wade were reversed, it would not mean that abortion would become illegal across this country.” He argued that saying otherwise “is hysterical and overstated.”

The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland wrote that “overturning Roe v. Wade will not criminalize abortion,” but instead would mean that “the question of abortion, and any limits on abortions, would return to the states and in most cases the legislative branch.”

The Wrap reported that Fox News host Jeanine Pirro said that she thinks Kavanaugh “will follow precedent” in any decision impacting Roe v. Wade.

On Fox News Channel’s Hannity, host Sean Hannity mentioned the “fearmongering has already begun” around Kavanaugh’s nomination. Fox’s Gregg Jarrett agreed, saying that “the left is already conjuring up the hysteria, claiming that this means abortion will be outlawed in America,” which he called a “lie perpetuated by the left.”

The Heritage Foundation’s John Malcolm said on Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs Tonight that Democrats were “trotting out, as they always do, scare tactics with respect to Roe versus Wade.”

American Constitution Union’s Matt Schlapp told Stuart Varney on Fox Business Network’s Varney & Company that “most conservatives and constitutionalists believe” that without Roe, abortion regulation “goes to the states,” which he claimed was just a continuation of what is “already happening” with abortion regulations.

On Fox News Channel’s The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino, Judicial Crisis Network’s Carrie Severino downplayed Trump’s promise during the 2016 presidential campaign that he would appoint “pro-life justices” as only “shorthand” used “during the campaign” and that he “can’t actually ask any nominee … how they would rule on a specific issue.”

During a segment on Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto, the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, who also serves as Trump’s judicial nominations adviser, pointed to a book Kavanaugh wrote about the principle of stare decisis -- the idea that Supreme Court’s previous rulings should be followed -- and said that Kavanaugh’s record shows “he does believe that the courts need to consider precedent.”

Responding to a clip of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) talking about the danger Kavanaugh poses for women’s rights, Fox News host Laura Ingraham said, “So, Brett Kavanaugh is essentially -- we’re supposed to believe … -- standing at a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic and barring women from going in.” Guest Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) argued that if there was a concern about women’s rights, “how about protecting a woman when she’s in the womb as an infant?”

On Fox News’ Fox & Friends, National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch characterized concerns about abortion access as advocates claiming that Kavanaugh’s nomination “means that women by some magical force field are going to be prevented from going and seeking health care.” She continued that “abortion is not health care, nor is it a constitutional right.”

Everything right-wing media tried to blame for the Trump administration’s family separation policy

Blog ››› June 22, 2018 4:53 PM EDT ››› BOBBY LEWIS

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Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

As President Donald Trump’s administration implemented a new “zero tolerance” prosecution policy at the border that led to unprecedented and systematic separation of immigrant families and locking kids in cages, right-wing media flailed around trying to blame the administration’s policy on anybody or anything except Trump.

The president’s media enablers blamed Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, “the law on the book,” Democrats in Congress, the media, the families themselves, and even “the Illuminati of K Street” for the Trump administration’s policy:

Blaming the families themselves

Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt claimed that families “are choosing to be separated” by coming to the United States in the first place. Co-host Steve Doocy agreed, saying “the part that is troubling ... is the conscious decisions the parents are making” in trying to bring their children to America.

Recently pardoned felon Dinesh D’Souza rhetorically questioned whether the “deported aliens” were “the ones choosing to separate their families.”

Fox’s David Bossie said that if parents “don’t become criminals, they’re not separated” from their children.

Fox’s Tomi Lahren said, “If you do not want to be separated, do not cross the border illegally. Follow our laws, follow the process. That's the best way to ensure that your family stays together.”

Blaming former presidents

Radio host Rush Limbaugh claimed that family separation at the border "is an entirely manufactured crisis. It’s entirely manufactured. This has been going on for years. It happened during the Obama administration."

American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp declared, “Obama and Trump have [the] same child protection policy.”

Turning Point USA Communications Director Candace Owens falsely claimed that “these policies were in place” during the Obama administration.

Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk falsely stated, “All of this happened for 8 years under Obama.”

CNN commentator Ben Ferguson shared an image on Facebook that claimed that policies of separating children from “illegal parents” had been in effect since 2009.

Breitbart claimed Trump’s “new ‘zero tolerance’ policy worked during the presidency of George W. Bush,” referring to an initiative that began in 2005 and has not worked.

Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs stated that “previous presidents, including Bush and Obama, long ignored” family separation at the border until Trump “mov[ed] to stop” the practice.

Fox’s Sean Hannity claimed, “This is nothing new and took place in previous administrations as well.”

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said that family separation has been “standard procedure for decades” when you “pick up a group of a hundred people and you have no idea who the hell they are.”

Blaming a nonexistent law

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro fallaciously argued that Trump is simply “enforcing the law on the books.”

Fox’s David Bossie claimed that Trump is just “following the law,” ignoring the reality that separation is a Trump administration policy, not the law.

Fox host Sean Hannity also said that “it is the law.”

Blaming media, claiming they were using family separation as a distraction

Fox’s Brian Kilmeade said that Trump’s media detractors “had to reach for something else” after Trump “put a lot of the skeptics to bed … and they found it with the so-called separation of kids and parents.”

Rush Limbaugh claimed that media is inundating Americans with “manufactured crises” like family separation to distract from the Department of Justice inspector general report and strong economy.

Fox’s Tucker Carlson, host of one of the most racist hours on television, said that reporting on family separation is just the media pursuing their goal “to change your country, forever.”

NRATV commentator Dan Bongino claimed that media reporting on family separation is “propaganda, nothing more.”

Hannity accused the media of harboring an “obsession” with “the so-called policy” of separating children from their parents in order to mislead Americans.

Twitter troll Bill Mitchell predicted, “Every Sunday news show will be about Trump's #FakeNews ‘concentration camps’ and NOTHING about the OIG.”

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s propagandist Boris Epshteyn devoted his “must-run” segment on family separation to attacking the media for their “politically driven” attempts “to make it seem as if those who are tough on immigration are somehow monsters.”

Blaming Democrats, claiming they were using family separation for political ends

According to The Gateway Pundit, Democrats “would rather the problem persist so they can continue to wring their hands over another manufactured crisis to distract from the damning IG report and robust economy.”

Fox Business’ Stuart Varney complained that Democrats “hijacked” a hearing on the IG report “within seconds of it beginning,” and “poured out [their] scorn for President Trump” instead.

Fox’s Trish Regan commented that Democrats “would much rather cry on television like [Rep.] Elijah Cummings [D-MD] did” than stop family separation, because “it plays to any hatred they can gin up, as we go into ‘18, for Donald Trump.”

National Review’s David French wrote, “I have a feeling that for some partisans, it’s fascism to impose the policy and fascism to try to end it -- at least so long as the GOP is in charge of the process.”

Right-wing media are rallying to defend the Trump administration’s inhumane separation of families at the border

Fox's Jeanine Pirro suggests both that there were "more votes than people" in Florida and that a "truckload" of ballots were destroyed

Video November 9, 2018 10:54 AM EST

Matt Schlapp: Gillum's call to "count every vote" means "count the votes of people who are not legally allowed to vote

https://www.alternet.org/trump-backer-rants-about-his-first-amendment-rights-after-host-accuses-him-using-fancy-rhetorical

CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on Wednesday battled conservative Matt Schlapp over the legal implications of Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and onetime campaign chairman both landing on the wrong side of the law, after Michael Cohen struck a plea deal with the Southern District of New York on the same day Paul Manafort was convicted of eight counts in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Asked if Cohen’s plea deal impacts his support of Trump, Schlapp insisted the only thing made clear by the deal is that the president’s personal attorney, like Manafort, “had an elaborate scheme to not pay their taxes and committed a lot of financial crimes and in Cohen's case, because they had him over a barrel.”

“I believe what happened is Michael Cohen pled to charges that are actually not crimes according to the FEC but that are an attempt to try to do anything to connect Cohen's wrongdoing to potential wrongdoing by Trump, and I think it’s a travesty,” Schlapp argued. “I don't believe that the transactions associated with these two people are FEC crimes and I believe that Michael Cohen pled guilty to crimes in the plea deal that aren't in fact crimes,” he later said.

“What I think you're doing is a lot of fancy rhetorical footwork,” Camerota replied.

“I'm answering your question,” Schlapp shot back.

“My question to you was does at all affect your support of Donald Trump knowing these things?”

Schlapp rehashed the conservative talking point that he knew “Donald Trump had an extravagant life-style” and “nobody in my party or nobody of the folks that made up the Trump coalition were naive to the fact of the life he had.”

“So you were okay with those things?” Camerota asked, referring to Trump’s payouts to multiple women who claim they’ve had affairs with the president.

“No, I never said I was okay with those things,” Schlapp claimed, before complaining that Camerota was treating him with less respect than she had with her previous guest.

“I would like this interview to be along the same tone as Elizabeth Warren just had,” Schalpp whined. “Ask your questions and let me answer them.”

“I'd like that, Matt, but you have to answer my questions and not redirect,” Camerota said.

“I get to do whatever I want,” Schapp insisted. “I have a First Amendment right to answer.I will answer any question you pose to me. If you're going to turn this into a morals case against Donald Trump what the reason for the special counsel was to determine whether or not there was collusion with Putin's government, I think that that is the ultimate redirect and I think it bastardizes the very reason for this investigation.”

Schlapp continued to claim Trump’s payout, which Cohen facilitated, was not a crime, prompting Camerota to explain it’s a campaign finance law violation.

“It is not,” Schlapp argued. “It is not. Name a person in this country who has been prosecuted for this alleged crime that you say occurred. Name the name.”

“Michael Cohen,” Camerota said.

“Michael Cohen was not prosecuted,” Schlapp said, splitting hairs.

“Let's move on,” Camerota remarked. “You're saying Michael Cohen just pleaded guilty to a non-crime which seems like bad legal advice.”

Watch below:

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Meet the Schlapps, Washington’s Trump-Era ‘It Couple’

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Matt and Mercedes Schlapp at home in Alexandria, Va. To some Republicans, the Schlapps are a conservative “it couple.” To others, they’re opportunists.CreditT.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

By Elizabeth Williamson

April 30, 2018

WASHINGTON — Matt Schlapp, the pro-Trump chairman of the American Conservative Union, had a remarkable on-air clash not long ago with his old friend Michael Steele, an anti-Trump former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

At issue was Mr. Schlapp’s defense of Ian Walters, the conservative union’s communications director, who told an audience: “We elected Mike Steele to be the R.N.C. chair because he’s a black guy. That was the wrong thing to do.”

Mr. Steele invited Mr. Schlapp on his radio show the next day and berated him: “Do you know how that sounds to Americans? And do you know how they then equate that level of stupidity to conservatism?” Mr. Schlapp apologized, and pointed out that Mr. Walters had, too. But he chastised Mr. Steele for being “critical of some of the more conservative aspects of the Trump phenomenon,” adding, “You need to have some grace.”

Mr. Steele blew up: “I’ve spent 41 years in this party, 41. I’ve taken crap you have no idea about.” And finally: “There’s only one word I can say and I can’t say it on this air.” The two men haven’t spoken since.

“I find myself shaking my head,” Mr. Steele said in an interview, “and saying, ‘Who is this person?’”

Mr. Steele is not the only one in Washington asking that question. Today Mr. Schlapp and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, the director of strategic communications at the White House, are the most visible in the city’s cadre of conservative Republicans who, faced with a populist Trump juggernaut, chose to scramble aboard.

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The Schlapps and their children in the Oval Office with President George W. Bush and with President Trump.CreditT.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

This past weekend they aired their disgust at the comedian Michelle Wolf’s takedown of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. “It’s why America hates the out of touch leftist media elite,” Ms. Schlapp tweeted from a limousine en route to an exclusive after-party organized by NBC/MSNBC.

(Asked about the couple’s own membership in the elite, Mr. Schlapp responded, “I mean, I’m not trying to act like I’m driving a garbage truck in Des Moines.”)

To some Republicans the Schlapps are a conservative “it couple.” To others they’re opportunists. Either way, they’re symbolic of a deep rift within their party.

Business is in the meantime booming at Cove Strategies, the lobbying and public relations firm the Schlapps founded in 2009 (Ms. Schlapp stepped away from the business when she took her White House job). Their lobbying income alone has surged in the year since Mr. Trump took office, to more than $1 million in 2017 from $600,000 in 2015. Koch Industries — Mr. Schlapp is a former chief Washington lobbyist for the corporation — was Cove’s first client. He said there was even more income from Cove’s strategic communications work, which he declined to reveal.

Ms. Schlapp has been a board member and paid strategic communications consultant for the National Rifle Association, a role she gave up the month she entered the White House. In 2015 she earned $60,000 from the N.R.A. for an average of one hour of work per week, according to N.R.A. tax filings, and $45,000 in 2016.

“I hate losing friends, which I have lost,” Mr. Schlapp said, acknowledging the ire the couple’s support for Mr. Trump has drawn from some fellow Republicans. He spoke in a cafe near his office in Alexandria, Va., where the Schlapps just bought a $3 million home to go with their weekend retreat, Victory Farm, a 30-acre idyll in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

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Letters from Mr. Bush in Mr. Schlapp’s home office. The Schlapps met in the Bush White House.CreditT.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

Ms. Schlapp, 45, who was mentioned early on as a potential replacement for Hope Hicks, the former White House director of communications, predicted in 2015 that Mr. Trump is “really going to struggle if he goes and continues to push a very strident immigrationpolicy that doesn’t show in any way that we can in fact find a legal path for these individuals who are here, for these undocumented immigrants that are here.”

Now Ms. Schlapp describes herself as representative of “Hispanic voters that absolutely agree that there should be no illegal immigration,” and is working with Stephen Miller, the White House senior adviser for policy and an immigration hard-liner, to promote Mr. Trump’s tough agenda.

“As a conservative, let’s be honest, what’s there for me to be disappointed about?” Mr. Schlapp, 50, said over dinner one recent night with his wife and their five daughters in a favorite Tex-Mex restaurant. Ms. Schlapp’s cellphone beckoned every few minutes as Mr. Schlapp, who said he had gained some 50 pounds during the campaign, ordered a green salad and offered to split an entree with his wife. He looked weary. The Schlapps had spent the weekend schlepping to multiple performances of their daughter Viana’s school play, in which she played Liesl in “The Sound of Music.”

As they ate, the couple placed Mr. Trump’s appointments of conservative judges near the top of his list of accomplishments, along with cutting taxes, rolling back regulations and reducing the size of government. On Twitter last week, Mr. Schlapp called the Trump agenda “conservative nirvana.”

Going ‘All-In’

The Schlapps met in the George W. Bush White House, where Ms. Schlapp, who is known as Mercy and grew up in Miami as the daughter of a Cuban émigré, was a liaison to Hispanic and specialty news media outlets. Mr. Schlapp rose to the role of White House political director. He grew up in Wichita, Kan., where he was a top-ranked tennis player and taught Charles Koch’s son Chase how to play.

Mr. Schlapp, who had a preference for apparel emblazoned with the leprechaun mascot of his alma mater, Notre Dame, was nervous about asking the glamorous Mercy for a date. But the couple bonded over dinner at Morton’s, a Washington steakhouse, where Ms. Schlapp ordered a slab of beef. “I thought: ‘I’m going to like this girl. She didn’t get bird food,’” Mr. Schlapp said.

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Mr. Trump was the star of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, an event that Mr. Schlapp helped revitalize.CreditPete Marovich for The New York Times

There was a time when the Schlapps were fed up with Mr. Trump. In 2015, when Mr. Schlapp assumed the chairmanship of the American Conservative Union, which the conservative standard-bearer William F. Buckley Jr. helped found, it was in such dire financial straits that he worried he wouldbe presiding over its demise.

So he and his staff worked to revitalize the annual Conservative Political Action Conference by moving it to a glitzier venue and signing new sponsors. In 2016 he invited a crowded field of Republican presidential candidates to speak at CPAC, insisting that they take questions from a journalist.

But as the Republican front-runner, Mr. Trump wanted more speaking time than the others, and no reporter questions. Mr. Schlapp refused and Mr. Trump abruptly backed out, leaving Mr. Schlapp to try to appease conservatives furious that Mr. Trump had been invited in the first place. Others were disappointed that Mr. Trump had bailed. Mr. Schlapp parried with his critics on Twitter until the wee hours, when “Mercy took my phone away.”

But as Mr. Trump closed in on the presidency, the Schlapps drew closer to Mr. Trump, who despite his no-show at CPAC had contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the group in earlier years. By the end of the campaign, the Schlapps were making some 30 press appearances a week for Mr. Trump. Before falling asleep each night, the couple would lie in bed rehearsing how they would explain this or that Trumpian tweet or uproar on TV the next morning.

There was one setback: Ms. Schlapp seeing her husband defend Mr. Trump on Fox News after an “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced of the candidate boasting of grabbing women’s genitals. Mr. Schlapp did condemn Mr. Trump for “inexcusable talk” and evoked his wife, “who has been in situations where it was hard for her to be an attractive woman in the workplace.” But he concluded it would be terrible if Mr. Trump lost: “Hillary Clinton gets elected, Bill Clinton is right back in the Oval Office.”

Ms. Schlapp, watching, was shocked to see her husband appearing alongside a tearful and outraged Clinton surrogate, who accused him of defending sexual assault. She called him on his cellphone. “You’re benched,” she said.

Image

The Schlapps at CPAC in 2017. “I hate losing friends, which I have lost,” Mr. Schlapp said, acknowledging the ire the couple’s support for Mr. Trump has drawn from some fellow Republicans.CreditMike Theiler/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The couple escaped to their Virginia farm, where they say that Viana, their eldest daughter, mentioned what they had said all along: Despite Mr. Trump’s personal failings, the Clintons posed the greater danger to the nation.

Ever since, Mr. Schlapp said, “we’ve been all-in.” But he said he still can’t bear to watch his televised defense of Mr. Trump that day.

Mr. Trump appeared at CPAC as president in 2017 and in February was again the star of the three-day conference, attended by about 10,000 people and underwritten by a multitude of sponsors and exhibitors, some of them former Cove Strategies clients.While Mr. Schlapp said not all participants are pro-Trump, prominent “Never Trump” conservatives like John Kasich, George Will and Bill Kristol were not invited to speak. Mona Charen, a conservative writer, was booed and escorted out by security for her safety after she criticized pro-Trump Republicans’ failure to condemn the president’s sexual predations.

‘I’m Not Delusional’

At the Tex-Mex restaurant, the couple had paused to pray before dinner. How do they square their faith and values with their support for the man on the “Access Hollywood” tape?

“I’m not delusional on who Donald Trump is,” Mr. Schlapp said. “But I think there’s great virtue in the fact that he aggressively fights for the things I care about.”

“Everyone assumes that Donald Trump changed our politics, that Donald Trump has perhaps coarsened our society,” he said. “My view is that he’s a function of what’s happening in society.”

Ms. Schlapp karate-chopped the table for emphasis, and the cutlery jingled.

“I always think back about Matt’s sister, whose husband lost his job,” she said. “They live in the Midwest; he was in the oil industry for a long time. I remember when the whole Donald Trump phenomenon happened she said, ‘I want to send a message to you people in Washington.’”

“She said it was a ‘screw you’ message,” Mr. Schlapp interjected.

At home recently, the Schlapps prepared for a night out while pondering their status as political lightning rods. “Are we?” Ms. Schlapp asked her husband. “Maybe you are.” He laughed uneasily.

“I don’t have that many friends left,” Mr. Schlapp said.

Ms. Schlapp smiled. “We have each other,” she said.

Kenneth P. Vogel and Kitty Bennett contributed reporting

wiki

Mercedes Schlapp (née Viana) (born December 15, 1972)^[1] is an American lobbyist, and columnist. Since September 2017, she has served as White House Director of Strategic Communications.

Personal life

Schlapp is a first-generation Cuban-American raised in Florida, whose father was jailed for six years by the government of Cuba. She is married to Matt Schlapp, the chair of the American Conservative Union.^[2] The Schlapps have five daughters and attend a Catholic church.^[3]

Career

Media

Schlapp worked on local and national political campaigns, as well as the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns for George W. Bush, and was Director of Specialty Media in his administration.^[4] Later she was a Fox News contributor and a columnist for several publications including U.S. News & World Report and The Washington Times.^[5][6][7][8]

Lobbyist

Together with her husband Schlapp founded Cove Strategies, a lobbying firm based in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2009.^[9] Since Trump entered the White House, the income of the firm surged (from $600,000 in 2015 to more than a $1 million in 2017).^[9] Koch Industries was the firm's first client.^[9]

NRA

She was a board member of the National Rifle Association before joining the White House.^[10] She was an aid consultant at the NRA, earning $60,000 from the NRA for an average of one hour of work per week in 2015, and $45,000 in 2016.^[9]

Trump administration

On September 12, 2017, President Donald Trump's administration announced that Schlapp would serve as Director of Strategic Communications.^[11] Prior to joining the Trump administration, Schlapp made numerous statements that were strongly critical of Trump.^[12]

Schlapp attracted attention when she and her husband left the White House Correspondents Dinner early in April 2018, saying that she was disgusted comedian Michelle Wolf’s jokes aimed at Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.^[9][13] In a limousine en route to an exclusive NBC/MSNBC afterparty, she tweeted that Wolf's comedy routine is "why America hates the out of touch leftist media elite".^[9] In May 2018, Schlapp defended White House aide Kelly Sadler after she joked that John McCain's opposition to CIA Director nominee Gina Haspel was irrelevant because "he’s dying anyway".^[14][15]

Political positions

Schlapp has stated an opposition to same-sex marriage, calling President Barack Obama’s decision to support it a "political ploy".^[16][17]

References

:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ (subscription required)https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KLJG-KV7
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "The Hon. Matt Schlapp". American Conservative Union. Retrieved 2016-06-11.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ The ACU (2015-02-27),, retrieved 2016-06-11
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Mercedes (Mercy) Viana Schlapp", ffrwculpeper.com/Founding Fathers Republican Women.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Mercedes Schlapp". www.usnews.com. Retrieved 2016-06-11.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Mercedes Schlapp: CNN Debate Was 'Montessori School' 'Unstructured:{':(style="padding-right:0.2em"):}:". NewsBusters. Retrieved 2016-06-11.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Mercy Schlapp stories". Fox News. Retrieved 2016-06-11.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Mercedes Schlapp | Stories - Washington Times". www.washingtontimes.com. The Washington Times. Retrieved 2016-06-11.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_Schlapp#cite_ref-:1_9-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_Schlapp#cite_ref-:1_9-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_Schlapp#cite_ref-:1_9-3) ^e(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_Schlapp#cite_ref-:1_9-4) ^f(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes_Schlapp#cite_ref-:1_9-5) "Meet the Schlapps, Washington's Trump-Era 'It Couple:{':(style="padding-right:0.2em"):}:". The New York Times. 2018-04-30. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-05-17.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Woellert, Lorraine (February 28, 2018). "Missing from the gun debate: Trump's own experience with concealed carry". Politico. Retrieved April 29, 2018. Mercedes Schlapp, his director of strategic communications, was a board member of the NRA before joining the White House.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Greenwood, Max (September 12, 2017). "Mercedes Schlapp joins White House as senior communications adviser:{":(style="padding-right:0.2em"):}:". thehill.com. Washington DC: Capitol Hill Publishing. Retrieved April 29, 2018.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Darcy, Oliver. "Top White House communications aide has history of rhetoric strongly critical of Trump". CNNMoney. Retrieved 2018-06-18.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Stelter, Brian. "Here's how people reacted to Michelle Wolf's White House correspondents' roast". CNNMoney. Retrieved 2018-05-17.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Hart, Benjamin. "Five White House Staffers Leak Meeting About White House Leaks". Daily Intelligencer. Retrieved 2018-05-17.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "The White House's John McCain death joke controversy, explained". Vox. Retrieved 2018-05-17.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Schlapp, Mercedes (May 11, 2012). "Churches Feel Persecuted by Obama". U.S. News & World Report. U.S. News & World Report L.P. Archived from the original on March 1, 2018.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Riley, John (September 12, 2017). "Anti-LGBTQ activist Mercedes Schlapp joins White House Press Office". Metro Weekly.

https://www.alternet.org/grifter-chief-has-administration-full-thieves-fixers-and-money-grubbers

not just Trump’s cabinet secretaries who are living high on governmental largess. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski set up a “consulting firm” calledLewandowski Strategic Services last year and quickly signed a contract for $20,000 a month working for Community Choice Financial, a payday lender based in Ohio. Lewandowsky quickly called for the firing of Richard Cordray, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had issued strict guidelines regulating the payday lending industry. Cordray was forced out of the CFPB three months later.

Most recently, Lewandowski showed up in Belgrade, Serbia, with two former Trump campaign aides who run Turnberry Solutions, a lobbying firm headquartered in the Capitol Hill townhouse where Lewandowski resides. Lewandowski denies any connections to Turnberry Solutions, which is named after a golf course in Scotland owned by President Trump. He also denies that he is engaged in lobbying for foreign governments, despite reports that he attempted to set up a phone call between Trump and Serbian President Aleksander Vucic, according to sources in a Serbian opposition party cited by Mother Jones.

Lewandowski appears to have arranged a contract between the BGR Group, a lobbying firm chaired by veteran Republican political operative Ed Rogers, and Poland’s state-owned arms contractor,Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ), a conglomerate of 60 Polish defense companies. The contract is worth $70,000 a month, according to the Daily Beast. Two months after the lobbying contract was signed, BGR Group made a subcontracting agreement with Jason Osborne, one of the two lobbyists for Turnberry Solutions, headquartered in Corey Lewandowski’s townhouse.

And then there’sMatt Schlapp,Chairman of the American Conservative Union, and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, the director of strategic communications at the White House. These two griftoids are also making out like bandits riding on Trump’s money train. Schlapp’s political consulting and communications firm, Cove Strategies, nearly doubled its income from $600,000 a year to over $1 million after Schlapp decided to back Trump in 2016 and invited him to the annual CPAC Convention, the annual gathering of wingnuts put on by the American Conservative Union in Washington.

Schlapp and his wife were pictured on the front page of the New York Times recently in their new $3 million home in Alexandria, Virginia. The Times reported that the happy couple also owns a 30-acre vacation retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains they call Victory Farm.

maddow town hall brooks reunion said 3 WH, 2 koch?

Matt Schlapp
- Government: Head of the White House’s Office of Political Affairs
- Industry: Executive Director of Federal Affairs, directing lobbying in "the Washington office of oil-and-gas conglomerate Koch Industries, the latest example of high-level administration and congressional staffers making post-election leaps to the lobbying world." [26]

Bush aide leaving to join Koch Industries

By Josephine Hearn - 01/31/05 08:00 PM ET

Top White House official Matt Schlapp is joining the Washington office of oil-and-gas conglomerate Koch Industries, the latest example of high-level administration and congressional staffers making post-election leaps to the lobbying world.

Schlapp has headed the White House’s Office of Political Affairs since 2003, after having served two years asdeputy director of the office under Ken Mehlman, who left to lead the president’s reelection campaign and now chairs the Republican National Committee.

Sarah Taylor is expected to replace Schlapp.

Schlapp will be executive director of federal affairs, a new position created atop Koch’s current Washington lobbying staff. He begins Feb. 21.

Although Koch has been active in lobbying for passage of the energy bill and its political action committee spent more than $1 million in the last election, the privately held company is perhaps better known in Washington for the Koch family’s support for conservative causes, including its role in the founding of the libertarian Cato Institute, the grassroots anti-tax group FreedomWorks/Citizens for a Sound Economy, and George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. David Koch, one of Koch Industries’ heads, was the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate in 1980.

Leaders of Koch’s Washington office have typically played a role in conservative activism. Wayne Gable, managing director of federal affairs and the Washington office’s current head, sits on the board of conservative nonprofit organization Americans for Prosperity, which is headed by his predecessor Nancy Mitchell Pfotenhauer.

Before coming to the White House, Schlapp was a regional political director for Bush-Cheney 2000 and, before that, chief of staff to Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.).

A native of Wichita, where Koch is based, Schlapp received a master’s degree in public administration from Wichita State University. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Notre Dame.

Kelly Sadler told Trump that Mercedes Schlapp was a leaker in the ...

https://www.axios.com/oval-office-leak-kelly-sadler-mercedes-schlapp-trump-0b622a...

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:{May 27, 2018 - Sadler, :{Mercedes Schlapp:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, Raj Shah, and John Kelly all gathered in front of the Resolute Desk for a conversation with Trump about the leaking ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

POLITICO Playbook Power List: Mercedes Schlapp

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2018/politico-power-list.../mercedes-schlapp/

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{:{Mercedes Schlapp:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: doesn't have an easy gig as the White House strategic communications adviser. She must contend with a president who serves as his own ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Mercedes Schlapp called Kelly Sadler a 'b---h' after being accused of ...

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/.../mercedes-schlapp-called-kelly-sadler-a-b-h-...

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{May 30, 2018 - Top White House director of strategic communications :{Mercedes Schlapp:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: reportedly referred to White House communications aide Kelly Sadler ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Who Is Mercedes Schlapp? White House Strategic Communications ...

www.newsweek.com/who-mercedes-schlapp-white-house-strategic-communications-d...

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{May 12, 2018 - The White House strategic communications director said “you can put this on the record … I stand with Kelly Sadler,” in response to the aide's ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Meet the Schlapps, Washington's Trump-Era 'It Couple' - The New ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/us/politics/schlapp-trump.html

Apr 30, 2018 - Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, conservatives who scrambled aboard the Trump juggernaut, have made money, lost friends and become a ...

White House aide who mocked McCain pushed out over tensions with ...

thehill.com/.../390906-white-house-aide-who-mocked-mccain-pushed-out-over-tensio...

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{White House aide who mocked McCain pushed out over tensions with :{Mercedes Schlapp:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:: report. By Luis Sanchez - 06/05/18 09:27 PM EDT. 526. AddThis ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Matt and Mercedes Schlapp Bought $3 Million Home - The Cut

https://www.thecut.com/.../matt-mercedes-schlapp-whcd-elites-usd3-million-home.htm...

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{May 1, 2018 - Matt and :{Mercedes Schlapp:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, the couple who walked out of the White House Correspondents' Dinner because of “elites,” just bought a $3 ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Kathy Griffin proud of attacking Matt, Mercedes Schlapp at White ...

www.foxnews.com/.../kathy-griffin-proud-attacking-matt-mercedes-schlapp-at-white-ho...

May 13, 2018 - The controversial comedian Kathy Griffin lashed out at White House aide Mercedes Schlapp and her husband, Matt, on Twitter Saturday, ...

2009-	Cove Strategies Revolving Door Personnel: (3)		Firm lobbying profile
2005-2008	Koch Industries Revolving Door Personnel: (6)	Executive Director of Federal Affairs	Client lobbying profile Major Donor profile
2000-2000	Bush/Cheney 2000 Revolving Door Personnel: (26)	Regional Political Director
2000-2005	White House Revolving Door Personnel: (558)	Deputy Director of Political Affairs	Agency lobbying profile
	Tiahrt, Todd Revolving Door Personnel: (5)	Chief of Staff	Member profile

Client	Subsidiary (Lobbied For)	No. of Reports
Biotechnology Industry Organization	-	6
Comcast Corp	-	6
Royal Dutch Shell	Shell Oil	6
Alcatel-Lucent	-	4
American Hotel & Lodging Assn	-	4
AO Smith Corp	-	4
Bexar County, TX	-	4
Blue Cross/Blue Shield	-	4
Blue Cross/Blue Shield	Wellpoint Inc	4
Boston University	-	4
Coca-Cola Co	-	4
Dominion Resources	-	4
Dow Chemical	Dow AgroSciences	4
Duke Energy	-	4
FMR Corp	-	4
Greater New York Hospital Assn	-	4
Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound	-	4
Nextera Energy	NextEra Energy	4
Nielsen Co	-	4
Private Equity Growth Capital Council	-	4
Real Estate Roundtable	-	4
Sapphire Energy	-	4
Syngenta AG	Syngenta Corp	4
Time Warner Cable	-	4
United Parcel Service	-	4
US Travel Assn	-	4
Western Growers Assn	-	4
American Assn for Justice	-	3
American Assn of Nurse Practitioners	-	3
Council for Opportunity in Education	-	3
eHealth Inc	-	3
Innocence Project	-	3
National Assn of Health Underwriters	-	3
National Breast Cancer Coalition	-	3
National Hydropower Assn	-	3
National Indian Gaming Assn	-	3
Retail Industry Leaders Assn	-	3
Sempra Energy	-	3
United Steelworkers	-	3
Wal-Mart Stores	-	3
XpressWest	-	3
AARP	-	2
Aerospace Industries Assn of America	-	2
AFL-CIO	AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Dept	2
AFL-CIO	AFL-CIO Bldg/Construction Trades Dept	2
AFL-CIO	-	2
Afognak Native Corp	-	2
Agricultural Retailers Assn	-	2
Agriculture Energy Coalition	-	2
AIDS Institute	-	2

1 2 3 4 5 6 ...27 Next

cove

Matthew A. Schlapp

Principal

Matt Schlapp has nearly twenty years of government, corporate and political experience which led him to join his wife in founding Cove Strategies, a legislative, communications and political consulting firm.

Schlapp’s executive branch experience started in President George W. Bush’s first administration where he became a deputy assistant to the president, and his political director. During his tenure at the White House, Schlapp advised the President, the Vice President, members of the cabinet, senior White House staff and has extensive contact with Members of Congress and federal agencies.

Schlapp’s Capital Hill experience started in 1994 where he worked for 5 years as a press secretary, chief of staff and campaign manager. He transitioned from the Hill to the presidential election in 2000 in Austin, where he served as a regional political director.

After the 2004 cycle, Schlapp joined Koch Industries, headquartered in his hometown of Wichita, Kansas, as Vice President of Federal Affairsat Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC. In this role he directed the major federal public policy strategies on environmental and energy policies, financial markets, legal reform, and international and domestic tax issues.

Matt grew up in Wichita, Kansas. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in public policy from Wichita State University. Matt’s held a board position for the National Association of Manufacturers and currently serves on the boards for the American Conservative Union, St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Hugo Wall School of Urban and Public Administration at Wichita State University, and the University of Kansas Washington Intern Program and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s political affairs committee. Matt and his wife, Mercy, met while working at the White House, where she served as the Director of Specialty Media. Matt and Mercy have five young daughters.

Mercedes Viana Schlapp

Principal

Mercedes Viana Schlappis co-founder of Cove Strategies, a governmental and public affairs firm based in Alexandria, Virginia. She works as a consultant for clients from Fortune 500 corporations and nonprofit organizations. Mercedes serves as the interface between the clients and Spanish-language media outlets, develops media strategy including message development and implementation plans and works on Hispanic coalition-building efforts. She identifies the most effective ways to reach targeted audiences nationally and/or locally.

With more than 10 years of experience, Mercedes has developed strong regional, national and international relationships with reporters in the Spanish press. Mercedes served in theWhite House for President George W. Bush as a spokesperson for Spanish-language media outletsin the United States, Spain and Latin America as well as worked with other specialty media outlets including religious press.

In 2006 Mercedes hosted the Republican National Committee’s cutting-edge web show, In the Know, where she delivered current Republican news and interviewed Republican political leaders and policy makers for both Spanish and English audiences. In addition, Mercedes serves as a media surrogate and political commentator on the radio and recently appeared on Univision and Hannity’s Americaon FOX News.

Stephen Replogle

Principal

Stephen Replogle is a Principal with Cove Strategies with extensive political, legislative, and coalition experience while serving in the executive branch, the United States Congress, in campaigns and advising fortune 500 companies.

Most recently, Mr. Replogle served as a senior federal relations advocate for Walmart. He directed and advised successful legislative campaigns in policy areas including labor, immigration, education, financial services, energy, tax and trade. These successes were based on the detailed development and precise implementation of targeted congressional and agency legislative and public policy strategy, strategic messaging, and coalition building.

In public service, Mr. Replogle worked in the United States Senate as Senior Policy Advisor to three currently serving members of Senate Leadership, Senators Jon Kyl, Lamar Alexander and John Thune. In these positions, he advised the Conference Chairman, as well as members of the Republican Conference, on issues relating to fiscal, social, and international policy matters. Also during his Senate tenure, he served as the primary liaison for the Senate Republican Conference to House Leadership, the White House, other Departments and outside industry interests.

Prior to the Senate, Mr. Replogle served as Legislative Advisor and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for the U.S. Department of Commerce. Key policy responsibilities ranged from technology, intellectual property, economic development, international trade as well as serving as the primary liaison for the Secretary of Commerce to all governors and local elected officials. Mr. Replogle also served as a coalitions advisor to the Bush/Cheney 2004 Presidential campaign and as staff on the 2004 Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Additionally, over the past 10 years, Mr. Replogle advised fortune 500 clients on public affairs strategies as an Associate for DCI Group, as a Political Advisor for the Georgia Republican party, and as an intern in the White House Office of Political Affairs. In 2011, Washingtonian named Stephen Replogle on of the Top Forty Lobbyists under Forty.

Frank F. Sadler

Frank Sadler has worked both in the private and public sectors for almost a decade. Most recently, Frank was engaged as a strategic advisor for a 501(C)4 organization. As a strategic advisor, Frank made decisions on how to best utilize and allocate the organization's national budget to better educate voters through a variety of media including direct mail, and radio and television advertisements. He also created metrics to measure the impact of those efforts and has been in charge of constructing an implementing voter turn-out projects. Frank has also worked as a senior development associate at Koch Industries, both fundraising for and providing strategic guidance at non-profits aligned with free market ideals. Prior to Koch, Frank worked for United States Senator George Allen in a multitude of roles to eventually become his deputy national finance director. Frank is a graduate of Hamilton College in upstate New York and is getting his masters degree in economics from American University.

Dow Chemical	$60,000	-	Chemicals
Motion Picture Assn of America	$80,000	-	TV/Movies/Music
Verizon Communications	$10,000	-	Telephone Utilities
Wal-Mart Stores	$110,000	-	Retail Sales