ronna mcdaniel r n c

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merri ok

KIRK SHIVVED HER --> GOTV FAIL INSHALA

see fake electors w/ rudy?

see autopsy

SEE RNC 2

rnc gop authoritarian: bail on debates and Jan. 6 of persecuting “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” BOSSIE WROTE?

covid pos 1020

:{:{---

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an 11 24 gotv fail

Many political strategists, over the years, have argued that as important as messaging is to a political campaign, the things that matters the most in the end is turnout.

With Election Day 2024 only a day away and countless national and battleground state polls showing a very close race, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump are both trying to fire up their parties. But according to the Washington Monthly's Bill Scher, Harris will have the advantage if the race ultimately comes down to turnout.

"Every national and battleground state poll shows a statistical dead heat, with neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump holding a lead outside the margin of error," Scher explains in an article published on November 4. "Many factors could determine the outcome of a race this close. One of those factors is the relative strength of the competing campaigns' get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations…. In a contest where one or more states may be decided by less than a percentage point, the rational strategic decision is to invest money and talent in an effective turnout operation."

Scher adds, "All available evidence indicates that Harris did that and Trump did not."

On June 20, the Washington Monthly published an article by Scher headlined, "Donald Trump's Get-Out-The-Vote Plan is Bonkers." Scher detailed the GOP's get-out-the-vote efforts, which were greatly influenced by far-right Turning Point USA and its leader Charlie Kirk.

"The plan was premised on eschewing swing voters in densely populated suburbs and cities in favor of chasing ultra-conservative 'MAGA' types who mainly live in rural areas and don't reliably vote," Scher explains. "Then-Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel gave Turning Point the cold shoulder, and some Republicans warned the plan smelled like a grift. Turning Point's Charlie Kirk fought back and publicly pressed Trump to shiv McDaniel. Trump obliged, and McDaniel quit under pressure in February 2024."

Kirk's get-out-the-vote plan, Scher emphasizes, has not served Trump well.

"Doing things the old-fashioned RNC way — with door-knocking efficiently concentrated in more densely populated areas where more swing voters live — meant behaving like a responsible adult," Scher argues. "Following Kirk's strategy of digging up stray MAGA voters in far-flung places allowed Trump to indulge in his darkest impulses."

Scher adds, "We can't say yet who will win. But, almost surely, if Trump wins, it will be despite his GOTV team, not because of it."

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pension is msnbc?! nope!

3 24

NBC insiders upset over Ronna McDaniel hiring as Maddow reaction awaited: report - Alternet.org

ronna forced out 3 24 replaced by election denier and dtr in law lara who says will pay legal bills, tho others deny longtime operative? lacivita?

'Hot water all around': Ex-federal prosecutor says Trump’s Michigan call 'almost certainly' a crime - Alternet.org

dec 2023? call she was on criminal

How Trump’s 'humiliation' campaign reduced RNC chair 'to a laughingstock': professor - Alternet.org

trump rhet?

'Horrifying': RNC official blasts 'worst fundraising year' in three decades - Alternet.org

===

mich adv 10 24

Michigan voting machines

Smith will argue that Trump, outside his official presidential duties, tried to persuade political allies in Michigan to sway the election in his favor.

Among the evidence he will introduce: The former president held a meeting, “private in nature,” with Michigan legislators at the White House.

Smith also wrote that “In mid-December, the defendant spoke with RNC Chairwoman [Ronna McDaniel] and asked her to publicize and promote a private report that had been related on December 13 that purported to identify flaws in the use of [redacted] machines in Antrim County, Michigan. [Redacted] refused, telling the defendant that she already had discussed this report with [redacted] Michigan’s Speaker of the House [Chatfield], who had told her that the report was inaccurate. [Redacted] conveyed to the defendant [redacted] exact assessment: the report was ‘f—— nuts.’”

Nevada

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charlie Kirk’s shadow RNC event highlights centrality of 2020 election lies to the conservative movement

The “Restoring National Confidence” summit trained state and local GOP leadership to fight so-called election fraud, drawing those who “make the party work” closer to Turning Point’s brand of politics

WRITTEN BY BOBBY LEWIS

PUBLISHED 02/02/24

“The RNC meeting is largely a waste of time,” Turning Point co-founder Charlie Kirk began his January 29 podcast. “And we can complain from the outside, or we can create an alternative.”

Kirk was speaking from the first day of a two-day event organized by Turning Point Action, the Restoring National Confidence (aka “RNC”) summit in Las Vegas. He said it was “competing right up against the RNC,” which also held a winter meeting in the hotel next door.

Tapping into what Politico reported as widespread dissatisfaction with the Republican National Committee, Kirk’s shadow summit joined conservative activists and media figures with local GOP chairs and Republican committee members for pro-Trump organizing. This included efforts to “secure” elections amid widespread suggestions that Trump’s second term was stolen from him, making the summit yet another display of the everlasting influence of 2020 election lies.

“The purpose of this meeting is not to shame the RNC or anything like that,” Kirk claimed. “It’s to challenge them and to say why haven’t you done this. Be better. Why haven’t you engaged the grassroots? Why haven’t you secured our elections?”

The longer-term effect of Kirk’s RNC summit will be to pull these activists and officials closer to Kirk’s politics. By organizing the future nuts and bolts of Republican electoral politics, Turning Point and Kirk -- and their worsening records of extremism -- could emerge as an additional center of gravity, alongside Fox News, in influencing the Republican Party.

War Room host Steve Bannon cast Kirk’s event as critical to Trump’s re-election: “If we had had this meeting, of Turning Point and what you’re doing right now, in January of 2020, Donald J. Trump would be starting the fourth year of his second term.”

“Think of what’s happened to our nation because this didn’t take place in January 2020 and we depend upon the RNC, who is too incompetent to assist President Trump’s campaign in closing the deal,” he continued.

“We won in 2020,” Bannon falsely insisted. “We’re going to win again.”...

an 2 24

it isn't hard to understand why Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel quit using "Romney" in RNC correspondence.

Her uncle is Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), whose outspoken criticism of former President Donald Trump has infuriated far-right MAGA Republicans. And McDaniel obviously didn't want to remind fellow Republicans that she is a member of the Romney family — especially in light of "War Room" host Steve Bannon, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and other prominent MAGA figures pushing for her to be ousted as RNC chair.

In an opinion column published on January 31, MSNBC's Ja'han Jones describes the "MAGA mutiny" that is "causing chaos" for McDaniel at the RNC.

The right-wing Washington Times, on January 26, published an article on the RNC's fundraising woes — and Jones finds the article's timing "curious" in light of the fact that it came "just ahead" of a Turning Point USA gathering in Las Vegas that was billed as a chance to "hold the RNC accountable."

"Charlie Kirk, one of the founders of Turning Point, was among those who opposed McDaniel's reelection in 2023, and his group's conference seemed to have a similar goal of making her life difficult," Jones explains. "It certainly platformed people, like Lindell and Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who have been deeply critical of her."

Jones continues, "McDaniel even theorized, back in 2022, that Kirk and Turning Point want to 'take over the RNC.' By the look of things, it's hard to disagree. But this week, the MAGA movement's pressure on McDaniel hasn't been confined to Kirk's conference."

The MSNBC columnist notes that far-right MAGA Republican Laura Loomer tweeted, on January 29, that a "grassroots ambush" was awaiting McDaniel at the RNC's winter meeting in Las Vegas.

"Loomer is a conspiracy theorist and self-described Islamophobe, so take her statements with a grain of salt," Jones argues. "But she does seem to be part of a growing chorus of criticism that McDaniel is facing — the MAGA mutiny lives on, evidently. That's not ideal for a political party under any circumstance, and certainly not in an election year."

*Ja'han Jones' full MSNBC column is available at this link.

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'Failing miserably': Scathing op-ed hails RNC chair as 'worst employee of the year' - Alternet.org

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'Huge, systematic plot’: Trump’s Detroit audio 'sounds like a classic case of bribery': experts - Alternet.org

12 23 an

as Donald Trump's legal troubles continue to aggressively mount, The Detroit News issued a bombshell report by Craig Mauger revealing audio recordings Thursday of the former president pressuring two Michigan county GOP canvasser's not to certify the 2020 election results.

Per Mauger's reporting, Trump and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told Wayne County canvassers Monica Palmer and William Hartmann on the November 17, 2020 call that "they'd look 'terrible' if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county's election results, according to the recordings."

Special counsel Jack Smith's former colleague Karen Friedman Agnifilo and former special counsel at the Department of Defense, Ryan Goodman, during an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett, insisted the recordings are "damaging" to Trump, and "powerful for Smith.

"[Trump] said, from Craig's reporting, that it would be 'terrible' if these two canvassers signed the documents," Burnett emphasized, noting the MAGA hopeful "continues to say, 'We've got to fight for our country. We can't let these people take our country away from us.' How big of a deal is this recording now that we know some of what's on it, Karen?"

Agnifilo replied, "For a prosecutor, there's nothing better than a defendant's own words on tape doing and saying the exact thing you accused them of doing. So for Jack Smith, this is extremely powerful evidence of Donald Trump's corrupt intention, and his pressure campaign on the local level, which is part and parcel of what he's charged with in this sweeping Jack Smith indictment — the January 6 indictment — there's a whole section on there on the pressure campaign to the states, including Michigan. And so this is just direct evidence for Jack Smith and will be front and center at the trial. I also think that the fact that he's saying, 'We'll get you lawyers. We'll pay for your lawyers' — In some ways, I would argue that that's evidence that he knows what he's asking them to do is illegal. And so I think it's extremely powerful evidence for a prosecutor."

Burnett asked, "Ryan, what's your takeaway?"

Goodman replied, "Similarly, I think that this is very damaging information against Donald Trump. The one line that also stuck out to me is Ronna McDaniel on that call says quote, 'Do not sign it, we will get you attorneys.' So, who's the 'we'? It's her and they're on the call with somebody else — President Trump at the time. 'We'll get you attorneys' means they're all aware that they're, at minimum, skating the line of illegality, if not going right over it. It fits in with the pattern of conduct that is the theory of the case for Jack Smith. And it's not only the pattern of conduct that's in the indictment in which Donald Trump is pressuring Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, pressuring [former] Arizona [Congressman] Rusty Bowers (R). But also [former Vice President] Mike Pence, which is a key part of the case, and here is the same kind of pattern of conduct. What is the president doing? He's pressuring the individual to do something that is completely outside the bounds of their legal authority to throw the election. I think that's the way in which Jack Smith will present it to the jury, and it's as Karen said, the fact that it's the defendant himself on audio, makes its incredibly credible for the jury."

Watch the video below or at this link.

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date?

How Trump’s 'humiliation' campaign reduced RNC chair 'to a laughingstock': professor - Alternet.org

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an 11 23

the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unsealed documents containing U.S. Representative Scott Perry's (R-PA) interactions and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Politico reports.

Per Politico, Perry's conversations with former U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) official Jeffrey Clark — who was indicted alongside former President Donald Trump and 17 others the ongoing Georgia election case — "are perhaps the most revealing."

During one conversation, the news outlet reports, "Perry told Clark that Trump was upset with Clark for using the Justice Department to defend [ex-Vice President Mike] Pence against a lawsuit brought by another House member, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)."

The Texas lawmaker "was seeking a court ruling declaring that Pence had the power to unilaterally reject Biden's electoral votes, but DOJ’s civil division — then under Clark’s leadership — stepped in to defend Pence against the suit, which failed," the report notes.

The Pennsylvania GOP leader texted Clark on December 30, 2020, "POTUS seems very happy with your response. I read it just as you dictated," to which the former DOJ official replied, "I'm praying. This makes me quite nervous. And wonder if I'm worthy or ready."

Perry said, "You are the man. I have confirmed it. God does what he does for a reason."

Politico listed the "extraordinary web of communications between Perry, who is now the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, and key figures in Trump's orbit," including:

A Dec. 12, 2020, text exchange with Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel discussing efforts to challenge Joe Biden’s victory in the election.*}:

A series of exchanges between Perry and a former DOJ colleague, Robert Gasaway, between Dec. 30, 2020, and Jan. 5, 2021, in which Perry embraced a plan to have then-Vice President Mike Pence “admit testimony” prior to the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. Perry agreed to “sell[] the idea” with a call to Trump, Pence and Trump adviser John Eastman, but Perry later alerted Gasaway that Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, “will not allow access.”

A description of numerous exchanges between Perry and top Trump administration officials, including Clark, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, senior adviser Eric Herschmann and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, a former House colleague of Perry.}:

*Politico's full report ishere.

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https://boingboing.net/2023/05/25/rnc-chairperson-thinks-global-economic-chaos-will-help-the-republican-party.html

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100k$

https://www.alternet.org/ronna-mcdaniels-hair-and-makeup-have-cost-gop-donors-nearly-100000/

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woke? commie?! pseudo-pop

an tom d 2 23

Steve Fraser: The Republicans Face Off Against... Yes, Communism!

Recently, at a well-publicized dinner, our former president — the one who encouraged a coup d’état to keep himself in power after losing an election — expressed his latest fear. “The problem we have,” he said ominously, “is that we are headed toward communism. We are beyond socialism. A lot of people say, ‘Well, not really.’ Of course we are.” And then he added, “If you do something spectacular, they don’t talk about it. If you do something not so good, they’ll make it into a travesty. If the other side does something bad, really bad, you’ll never find it. There’s never been a period of time like that in our country’s history.And that’s the way communism starts. And… we’re not gonna let it happen.”

OMG! A new red scare in America, as in my childhood when anti-communism was a part of everyday Republican politics? Did someone revive the Soviet Union when none of us were looking? Have Xi Jinping’s confederates infiltrated this country’s business class? Who could even begin to explain it? Hmm, let’s see… how about TomDispatch regular and historian Steve Fraser, author of Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property: Capitalism and Class Conflict in American History, who (like Donald Trump and me) lived through those red-scare years of the 1950s.

Admittedly, running against Communism was once the norm in America. With that in mind, take a little voyage of — dare I call it nostalgia? — with Fraser and meditate a bit on what a truly strange world we now live in, one of remarkable extremes of weather, income inequality, and politics. After all, one of our two major parties has gone certifiably mad (and, at least in some parts of the country, that very madness has attracted voters in a big-time fashion).

Oh, and I think I can already hear Marjorie Taylor Greene calling me a “liar” for what I just wrote… or is that my imagination? Who can tell anymore? Tom

The Specter of “Woke Communism”:How Corporate America Became the Bogeyman of Today's Anti-Communist Crusaders

Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and perhaps the next president of the United States, is waging war against something he and many others on the right identify as “woke communism.” DeSantis even persuaded the Florida legislature to pass a Victims of Communism law, mandating that every November 7th (the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia), all public schools in the state must devote 45 minutes of instruction to the evils of the red menace.

You might reasonably ask: What menace? After all, the Soviet Union fell apart more than 30 years ago and, long before that, communist parties around the world had dwindled in numbers and lost their revolutionary zeal. The American Communist Party was buried alive nearly three-quarters of a century ago during the McCarthy hysteria of the 1950s.

How then can there be a muscular rebirth of anti-communism when there’s no communism to face off against? The Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank, explains the paradox this way: the powers that be of the present moment, including “education, corporate media, entertainment, big business, especially big tech, are to varying degrees aligned with the Democratic Party which is now controlled by Woke Communism.”

All clear now? A “cold civil war”is afoot, so we’re assured by DeSantis and crew, and if we don’t act quickly, “woke communism will replace American justice… the choice is between liberty or death.”

Naturally, Donald Trump has joined the chorus, declaiming that the Democratic Party functions as a cover for “wild-eyed Marxists.” People like Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, formerly considered proud defenders of capitalism, are now censored as socialists. Steve Bannon, right-wing populist organizer and one-time Trump adviser, has attacked the Business Roundtableand venture capitalists like Larry Fink of Blackrock, the largest asset management firm in the world, because he’s determined to defend a “government of laws, not Woke CEOs.”

At the January gathering of the Republican National Committee, angry thatRonna McDaniel had held onto her position as its chairperson, right-wing activist Charlie Kirk put the matter in stark class terms: “The country club won today. So, the grassroots people who can’t afford to buy a steak and are struggling to make ends meet, they just got told by their representatives at an opulent $900/night hotel that ‘We hate you.’”

How surpassingly odd! Somehow, the “spectre” invoked nearly 200 years ago by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto, reflecting his urge to see the exploited and impoverished mobilized to overthrow capitalism, now hangs out at country clubs, corporate boardrooms, and the White House — all the redoubts of capitalism.

Listen to DeSantis. At a rally in Sarasota during the 2022 midterm elections, he got his loudest applause for denouncing corporate America — and not just for assaulting the Walt Disney company’s criticism of the state’s “don’t say gay” policy. He went after Wall Street, too, noting that the “masters of the universe are using their economic power to impose policies on the country that they could not do at the ballot box” and promising to “fight the Woke in corporate America.” A recent Gallup poll signals that he might be onto something, since the percentage of Republicans unhappy with big business has soared....

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leader fight lindell harmeet d

https://www.alternet.org/rnc-meeting/

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an ah 12 22

No one can accuse the January 6 Select Committee’s final report of not being comprehensive; the report, which National Public Radio (NPR) has published in its entirety on its website, is 845 pages long. One of the many things the Committee covers in the report is the fake electors plot of late 2020, which found MAGA Republicans in swing states circulating bogus Electoral College documents in an effort to give electoral votes that now-President Joe Biden legitimately won to Donald Trump.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark the morning after Christmas 2022, attorney/columnist Philip Rotner examines what the January 6 Committee’s final report has to say about that plot and lays out some reasons why it makes a strong argument for criminally prosecuting Trump.

“On December 14, 2020,” Rotner explains, “Republican operatives in at least five states — each of which had already officially certified Joe Biden as the winner — forged and submitted to Congress and the National Archives fake Electoral College certificates purporting to certify Donald Trump, not Biden, as the ‘duly elected’ winner. The left-leaning watchdog group American Oversight first blew the whistle on the fake elector scheme in March 2021, but it wasn’t until Rachel Maddow devoted a series of shows to it in January 2022 that it really captured public attention.”

The attorney/columnist continues, “The fake electors were hardly the worst of what Trump visited on us. For sheer journalistic sex appeal, a scheme by a bunch of unknown, bumbling state functionaries to phony up some documents just can’t compete with a president siccing an armed mob on the Capitol. But the fake elector scandal, while not the most shocking of Trump’s predations, has long looked like the straightest route to cracking open the entire 2020 election scheme, and to getting Donald Trump indicted and convicted of a crime — at least until the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents scandal was revealed, but that’s another story.”

Rotner stresses that if Trump was a “knowing participant” in the “fake elector scheme,” that would be damning whether or not he honestly believed that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

“Even if he really, truly believed the election was stolen, it would not be a defense to criminal charges for participating in a fraudulent scheme to submit forged documents as the official results of state presidential elections,” Rotner argues. “To the contrary, his belief that he was stealing back a stolen election would be highly incriminating proof of his motive, not a defense…. If it can be proved that Trump intentionally participated in the scheme to try to pass off forged documents as official state documents, and then use the phony documents to overturn an election, it wouldn’t make any difference why he did so. The act of participating in the scheme, in and of itself, regardless of his purported reasons for doing so, would still run afoul of all kinds of state and federal criminal laws.”

Rotner continues, “The path to prosecuting Trump for the fake elector scheme — either as a standalone crime or as a crucial element of a larger conspiracy to overturn the results of a presidential election —became much clearer last week with the publication of the final report of the House January 6 Committee.”

The January 6 Committee’s final report, according to Rotner, shows that “the scheme went all the way to the top, right up to Trump himself” and that “while some of the lower-level participants in the scheme — most likely some of the state-level GOP operatives who actually signed the phony certificates — may have been duped into believing that that it was acontingencyplan, the higher ups who created and executed the scheme knew better."

“According to the report, by December 8, 2020 — less than three weeks after (attorney Kenneth) Chesebro first laid the groundwork for the scheme in a November 18 memo — ‘President Trump had decided to pursue the fake elector plan and was driving it,’” Rotner notes. “By mid-December, Trump had enlisted the assistance of RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in the scheme,worked with Rudy Giuliani on its implementation, and been informed that litigation would be filed in four states ‘to create a pretext to claim that it was still possible for the fake electors to be authorized retroactively.’ So, it appears that the previously missing link — the link between the fake elector scheme and Trump himself — is no longer missing. Trump not only ‘participated’ in the fake elector scheme, he orchestrated it.”

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Miss Piggy': RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel blasted by conservatives following reports of lavish spending

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

December 15, 2022

Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman who is fighting a tough battle for re-election over years of major GOP losses, is now being accused of mismanaging the party’s finances after...

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an rnc irrelevant

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https://www.mediamatters.org/kellyanne-conway/rnc-has-done-great-job-foxs-kellyanne-conway-repeatedly-praised-rnc-without

disclose pay 800k$ ?

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an 12 22

Although Ronna Romney McDaniel is Sen. Mitt Romney’s nieceand a fellow Republican, Romney has been much more nuanced in his conservatism. Romney hasn’t been shy about calling out the extremes of the MAGA movement and pushing back against former President Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The 49-year-old McDaniel, on the other hand, has been a Trump loyalist and an in-your-face culture warrior.

Regardless, some people in the Republican Party believe that she isn’t enough of a fighter. And according to Politico reporters Natalie Allison and Meridith McGraw, McDaniel’s critics are being increasingly vocal about their desire to oust her as chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC).

“Ronna McDaniel’s path to another two-year term leading the Republican National Committee faces a major obstacle: Some of the loudest voices in the conservative movement are calling for her to go,” Allison and McGraw explain in an article published by Politico on December 19. “As she seeks a rare fourth term as RNC chair, McDaniel is facing fierce criticism from a horde of right-wing media figures who reach millions of GOP faithful. Now, McDaniel has to hold down her support on the committee for five weeks as a grassroots army rages against her.”

The Politico reporters continue, “Since the midterms, RNC members say their inboxes have been clogged with hundreds of e-mails each week — and the uproar has now turned to the RNC’s spending on events, private travel, luxury accommodations and other expenses in an election cycle that didn’t deliver strong GOP wins. McDaniel’s top opponent is Harmeet Dhillon, an RNC committeewoman from California and election law attorney who has represented Donald Trump.”

The movement to oust McDaniel as RNC chair has grown increasingly “contentious,” according to Allison and McGraw. And one of her most vocal critics is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.

At a Turning Point USA gathering in Phoenix on Saturday night, December 17, Carlson said of McDaniel, “You’re flying on private planes with the money that, like, sweet, terrified Republican voters have sent to you from the middle of the country. And you’re losing elections. No. If you win elections, well, we can talk about it. If you’re losing, get out. We cannot reward incompetence.”

On January 27, 2023, the RNC will be holding its election for leader. According to Allison and Meridith McGraw, letters of support for McDaniel “number as many as 107 of the RNC’s 168 voting members.” But Dhillon is hoping to pull some of those 107 over to her side.

Roger Villere, an RNC committeeman who is backing Dhillon, told Politico, “She was elected three times without opposition, and we’ve lost all three times, all three cycles. You could say she’s spending that money to help us win, but we’ve been losing.”

The Politico reporters note that Fox News’ Laura Ingraham is among the media figures who has been turning up the “right-wing heat” on McDaniel. Ingraham has called for a “changing of the guard” at the RNC.

“A host of other conservative media figures, some of whom are longtime McDaniel critics, have also joined forces in recent days to bash her leadership or to promote Dhillon,” Allison and Meridith observe. “They include Charlie Kirk, Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly, Dan Bongino, Lou Dobbs, Kurt Schlichter and Erick Erickson. McDaniel has received on-air support from commentators such as Hugh Hewitt and Kellyanne Conway.”

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2022 red trickle it's baaaa-aa--c-c-c-k! blake, swoboda2?

The Republican Party, trapped in a right-wing media bubble that bolsters its most extreme and alienating factions, blew its opportunity to make big gains in the 2022 midterm elections. And the party shows little sign that it is interested in changing course.

The Republican National Committee announced on Tuesday that it is commissioning a post-election review of the party’s dismal performance and launching a new “Republican Party Advisory Council” to help direct its strategy going forward. Both bodies are stocked with representatives of the GOP’s most extreme elements.

On the council, diehard Trumpists are repped by the former president’s longtime adviser Kellyanne Conway, Christian nationalists by evangelical leader and anti-LGBTQ bigot Tony Perkins, and fascists by Peter Thiel disciple Blake Masters. And the review will be co-chaired by Harmeet Dhillon, an election lawyer, 2020 election conspiracy theorist, and Fox regularwho has made at least 314 appearances on the network since August 2017, including at least 56 this year.

Dhillon discussed the review in yet another appearance on the network on Wednesday night and telegraphed that it would do nothing to disturb Fox personalities or their viewers. Prime-time host Laura Ingraham introduced her by celebrating that “someone with common sense is going to be leading the GOP’s autopsy." [vid ingr]

dhillon used the opportunity to debut “some very specific ideas of things that we need to change in order to win,” which were purely mechanical. She complained that “we are not doing what the Democrats do, which is making sure that we hunt down every Republican ballot and get it to the polls,” and said that the party needs to “get smart” about funding its candidates, pointing in particular to how Masters was “ripped off by Senate leadership.” She further called for moving the RNC’s functions “out of D.C. and back into the country” and conducting “more lawfare.”

She also nodded along as Ingraham said that “the America First folks at the RNC have to be more powerful and stronger than the old establishment types.”

In a Twitter thread after the appearance, Dhillon called for an “Elon-style review of consultants & culture” to weed out anyone who is not “totally energized & psyched to elect Republicans popular w/our base.”

Dhillon’s diagnosis is not that GOP primary voters picked bad candidates like Masters who failed because they creeped out the electorate, but that they selected good candidates like Masters only for the party establishment to knife them in the back. Her solution is to purge dissenters and shrink the size of the party’s tent down to true believers who are ensconced within the right-wing media bubble.

This doesn’t make sense. The GOP had popular outgoing governors who spent their years in office cultivating a more moderate brand – but the base wanted and nominated extremists to succeed them who ended up losing to Democrats. It put forward extremists for key swing state Senate and gubernatorial races who were popular with Fox hosts but couldn’t make the sale with voters.

The party simply can’t admit that it ran bad candidates because that would amount to an indictment of its base and the right-wing propagandists who influence their votes. No one should expect the GOP to exit its bubble any time soon.

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an 11 22

Embattled Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel is launching two advisory groups in an effort to expand the party’s appeal to voters and examine what went wrong in the wake of stunning, historic midterm election losses – and she’s turning to some of the right’s most extreme leaders to perform the investigations.

Political analysts on both sides of the aisle generally agree that Donald Trump, Trumpism, the party’s lurch to far right wing extremism including white nationalism, white supremacy, Christian nationalism, antisemitism, authoritarianism, fascism, and the “Big Lie” of stolen elections hurt, not helped candidates in the 2022 midterms.

McDaniel has now tapped some of the very purveyors of that failed extremism to lead the shrinking party’s efforts to broaden its outreach and correct its errors.

“The RNC is tapping nearly a dozen people to serve in what it’s calling a ‘Republican Party Advisory Council’ – a group that includes former Donald Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, evangelical leader Tony Perkinsand a pair of Senate candidates who ran this year,” Politico reports.

Perkins is a far right wing religious extremist and anti-LGBTQ activist who decades ago reportedly had ties to white supremacist groups, which he has denied. For decades he has been president of the Family Research Council, which appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups.

Deeply embedded in Republican theocratic politics, Perkins was appointed twice by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent federal government body that has a history of advancing the agenda of America’s Evangelical Christian movement.

He is also a past president of the highly-secretive far Christian right organization, Council for National Policy (CNP).

CNP’s members are believed to include far right activist and lobbyist Ginni Thomas, whose attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results have been the subject of numerous reports. Also, Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, which has faced allegations of racism, and far right conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi.

...

Other members of the Council for National Policy include two other heads of organizations that appear on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups: Mat Staver, the founder of Liberty Counsel; and Tim Wildmon, President of the American Family Association.

“The panel will also include former Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, who in the wake of his loss has called on the party to move on from ‘consultant one-size-fits-all strategies,'” Politico reports.

Masters is a “Big Lie” purveyor who has also promoted the white nationalist conspiracy theory of the “Great Replacement,” which falsely claims immigrants – people of color – are “replacing” white Americans.

Separately, Politico adds, the RNC is commissioning an investigation into what went wrong, commonly referred to as an “autopsy” to ensure in future elections the same decisions are not made. That work will be lead by current RNC members.

---

fox paul pelosi raw

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/its-just-unfair-ronna-mcdaniel/

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel protested on Sunday after a Fox News host suggested that her party might bear responsibility for the attack on Paul Pelosi.

During an interview onFox News Sunday, host Shannon Bream confronted McDaniel with a Washington Post column that blamed Republicans for Pelosi's violent attack.

Bream noted that the paper called the attack the "all-but-inevitable conclusion on Republicans' increasingly violent and threatening rhetoric toward their political opponents."

"What do you make of that accusation?" Bream asked McDaniel.

"Well, I think that's unfair," the Republican Party chair answered. "I think this is a deranged individual. You can't say people saying let's fire Pelosi or let's take back the House is saying go do violence."

"It's just unfair," McDaniel continued. "And I think we all need to recognize violence is up across the board. Lee Zeldin was attacked. We had an assassination attempt against Brett Kavanaugh. And Democrats didn't refute — didn't repudiate that. Joe Biden didn't talk about the assassination attempt against Brett Kavanaugh."

[plastic key chain 1" cat ears on two fingers]

According to McDaniel, the man who attacked Pelosi would have been released already if he had attacked someone else.

"This is what Democrat policies are bringing," she charged. "But of course, we wish Paul Pelosi a recovery.We don't like this at all across the board.We don't want to see attacks on any politician from any political background."

Watch the video below from Fox News or at this link.

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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) took a shot at Republican Party Chair Ronna McDaniel after her party performed poorly in the 2022 midterm elections.

During a Sunday appearance on Fox News, host Sean Duffy asked Noem to comment on McDaniel's future as RNC chair.

"Listen, Sean, we need to win," Noem replied. "I mean, that's just the fact. Our kids' future depends on it. So, you know, we really all have a responsibility to message what Republican policies bring to this country."

"And I don't know a party that can continue to lose like we have and keep their jobs," she added. "Everybody needs to evaluate what we are doing. Is it effective and are we messaging truly that our policies work?"

Watch the video below from Fox News or at this link.

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stop the steal?

trms 2 22 shows her flailing begging gop to vote while trump says elections rigged

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/rnc-chair-mocks-joe-biden/ fetterman sent out

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/rnc-head-repeatedly-appears-steve-bannons-podcast-cast-doubt-elections-recruit-poll

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day 4 "aside" RNC ronna directly involved in fake elector scheme?!

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testified without subpoena?!

gaz.com? ryan king oddly oK?

Today's Digital Newspaper

The Gazette

RNC coordinated fake electors at Trump's 'direct request': Ronna McDaniel

By Ryan King The Washington Examiner

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel confirmed Tuesday that former President Donald Trump was involved in lawyer John Eastman's fake elector scheme.

During a brief excerpt from her deposition played during the Jan. 6 committee hearing Tuesday, McDaniel explained that Trump called her and put her in touch with Eastman, who then engaged with the RNC about the scheme over the following months.

"He turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of these legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states. I think more, just helping them reach out and assemble them," she said. "My understanding is the campaign did take the lead, and we just were helping them in that — in that role."

Eastman, who was a visiting professor of conservative thought and policy at the University of Colorado-Boulderduring the 2020-21 academic year, was providing legal advice to Trump's allies about efforts to challenge the election. The House Jan. 6 select committee has battled Eastman in court for weeks, seeking his emails to gain insights about what advice he had been giving to Trumpworld. Eastman turned over roughly 1,000 pages of emails in April, and the committee ordered that he turn over hundreds more earlier this month.

McDaniel's testimony before the committee helped members establish the direct role Trump played in the fake elector plot.

During the hearing Tuesday, the panel honed in on some of Eastman's scheming to put forward an alternative slate of electors for key battleground states. The goal was to challenge the election results in select states and have an alternative slate of electors on standby in case those legal challenges were successful.

Amid the fallout of the 2020 election, Trump's own White House Counsel’s Office said the plan was "not legally sound," according to the panel.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has long teased that the committee had evidence of Trump's involvement in a plot to supplant official electors with those who favored the former president to tip the election to him.

“We’ll show evidence of the president’s involvement in this scheme,” Schiff hinted during an interview with CNN Sunday. “We’ll also, again, show evidence about what his own lawyers came to think about this scheme.”

Part of the plan appeared to revolve around Congress and states decertifying the 2020 election results. Once the election results were decertified, the theory was that the fake slate of electors could be used to give Trump the victory.

All of this culminated with then-Vice President Mike Pence's refusal to decertify the election on Jan. 6, 2021. A mob of angry protesters had stormed the Capitol earlier that day, but Pence ultimately participated in the certification of then-candidate Joe Biden's electoral triumph over Trump.

Gazette.com Coloradosprings.com Gazettepreps.com Best of the Springs OutThereColorado.com

The Colorado Springs Gazette, L.L.C., 30 East Pikes Peak Ave., Suite 100 Colorado Springs, CO | Terms of Use | Privacy PolicyPowered by BLOX Content Management System from TownNews.com.

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aha GOP cognitive dissonance: beleive they say in democracy, but realize they cannot win in mktplace of ideas, demographic shift, and they are inherently winners (b/c blessed by god?); thus if # say they lost election, it must be b/c dems cheated [tammany hall machine pol hillary corrupt]; or like eastman/rudy will pretend to beleive voter fraud if enable hold on to power // auth fascist disable norms, institutions and shared sense of reality/ empirical fact THUS BIG LIE has fundamentally crippled/corrupted body politic, peril to democracy (heads on slender thread of norm , as maddow says, like Bowers to uphold norms despite unprecendented pressure [// Lady Ruby personally and publically [jumbotron rally and presumably twt soc media]

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testified day 4 praise RR on election day transfer miracle; dtr term ill, big pathos; xian // VP staff/lawyer in basement 1/6?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/donald-trump-rusty-bowers/ attack cohen ctr-punch BS?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/arizona-gop-lawmaker/

An Arizona Republican lawmaker is speaking out about the pressures he faced from former President Donald Trump, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and the former president's allies amid Republicans' attempts to overturn the presidential election.

According to NPR.org, Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) recently testified and shared details about his conversations with Giuliani where he claimed undocumented voters were responsible for casting illegal ballots. He also claimed votes had been cast on behalf of a substantial number of deceased individuals.

But instead of just running with Giuliani's claims, Bowers and other Republican legislators requested he provide solid evidence to back the tall accusations. "In my recollection," Bowers said of Giuliani, "he said, We have lots of theories we just don't have the evidence.'"

Bowers also recalled how Giuliani also "pressured him to call the Arizona legislature back into session — a unilateral move Bowers said he cannot do — to recall the electors that would be going to President Biden after Biden beat Trump in the state."

"It is a tenet of my faith that theConstitution is divinely inspired," he said, growing visibly emotional. "I would not do it."

He noted that the former president also echoed similar sentiments but he didn't believe the evidence they provided to back their claims "merited a hearing."

"You are asking me to do something against my oath, andI will not break my oath," he said he told Trump and Giuliani, to which the former New York mayor said: "Aren't we all Republicans here? I would think we'd get a better reception."

Trump-supporting lawyer John Eastman also contacted Bowers by phone as he echoed Trump and Giuliani's demands. "His suggestion was that we would do it, and I said I can't," Bowers said, adding that Eastman pressured him by telling him to "just do it and let the courts sort it out."

In addition to pressure from Trump's allies, Bowers also noted that the former president's supporters also expressed concern about the outcome of the election. He revealed, per NPR.org, that "his office was subject to over 20,000 emails, thousands of voicemails and texts from those who believed he was wrong to not recall the electors."

"Up until recently, it is a new pattern in our lives to worry what will happen on Saturdays," he said of his family. "Because we have various groups come by."

Bowers has also faced a litany of accusations including being called "a pedophile and corrupt politician" as video trucks drive through his neighborhood and threaten his neighbors."It was disturbing," he said emotionally as he recalled what transpired.

3% gun on hip verbally threat neighbor "I knew I had to get close" to WHAT?!

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an 4 22 nl lnx twt

'You have nothing to offer': the GOP's Orwellian debate pledge whips up a frenzy on social media

Brandon Gage April 14, 2022

The Republican National Committee announced on Thursday that it is withdrawing from the Commission on Presidential Debates and that presidential candidates must pledge to only participate in debates that are sanctioned by the party.

“Debates are an important part of the democratic process, and the RNC is committed to free and fair debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates is biased and has refused to enact simple and common-sense reforms to help ensure fair debates, including hosting debates before voting begins and selecting moderators who have never worked for candidates on the debate stage," RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a press release.

"Today, the RNC voted to withdraw from the biased CPD, and we are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people," McDaniel added.

"The GOP is not walking away from debates. We are walking away from the Commission on Presidential Debates," the party tweeted later in the day. "It is biased and does not serve the interest of the American people."

According to The Wall Street Journal, "the RNC plans to form a working group to sanction debates based on input from presidential campaigns and criteria that may include timing, frequency, format, media outlet, candidate qualifications and the 'best interest of the Republican Party.'"

At face value, the RNC's move is a capitulation to former President Donald Trump's complaints that the debates he participated in with other GOP primary contenders in 2016 – as well as those with Democratic presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden – were unfair and rigged against him.

The bulk of Trump's ire was rooted in the moderators calling him out for outrageously false and provocative statements, such as when he directed the white nationalist Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by" during his one-on-one with now-President Biden in 2020.

The RNC's decision thusly adds credence to the possibility of Trump running for president again in 2024. If he does, the GOP is clearly attempting to manipulate its primary processes to favor Trump.

It also puts out an undeniable Orwellian vibe, which the Twitterverse noted in response to the Republican Party's edict

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-bossies-resolution-blows-up-in-rncs-face-will-he-be-new-face-of-gop/

Longtime right-wing Republican activist David Bossie reportedly pushed the recent Republican National Committee resolution that accused the House committee investigating Jan. 6 of persecuting “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” The resolution, which also censured Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republican members of the committee, has drawn widespread criticism and stirred conflict within GOP circles.

Bossie, a longtime right-wing propagandist and collaborator with former Trump aide Steve Bannon, had reportedly been working with Wyoming GOP Chair William “Frank” Earthorne to get the RNC to kick Cheney and Kinzinger out of the party completely. The censure language in the resolution that ultimately passed was a compromise reached behind closed doors.

The RNC is also planning to fund a primary challenge against Cheney, with Bossie calling it a “one-two punch” against her.

Bossie was elected to the Republican National Committee representing Maryland in 2016, the same year he served as deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump. There was a bit of a falling out between the two in 2019 over a Bossie fundraising scheme, but in 2020, after refusing to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump turned to Bossie to help lead the campaign’s efforts to challenge the outcome of the election. Bossie is reportedly leading RNC efforts to assert greater control over any 2024 presidential debates.

Bossie, listed as president and board chair of the group Citizens United, has written several books and produced multiple films attacking Democratic candidates. It was Citizens United’s effort to run an anti-Hillary Clinton film during the 2008 campaign that led to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling that weakened campaign finance laws and ushered a flood of dark money into U.S. elections.

During the 2016 Republican convention, Bossie and Bannon helped launch what Bannon called a “Christian war film” seemingly designed to incite fear and anger among the GOP’s conservative Christian base.

Vanity Fair reported last week that sources told the magazine that Bossie is making a bid to take over the RNC from current chair Ronna McDaniel, though Bossie denied that ambition. According to Vanity Fair, a “veteran Republican operative close to the RNC” downplayed Bossie’s chances, saying, “The reason Ronna got reelected was the members were really worried that some Trump grifter, like Bossie, was going to take over.”

In 2018, Bossie was briefly suspended from Fox News after telling a Black fellow panelist, “You’re out of your cotton-picking mind.”

Tags: David Bossie Ronna McDaniel Capitol Insurrection Election 2020 Election 2022 Election 2024 House select committee on Jan. 6 Citizens United republican national committee Republican Party

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/conservative-national-review-slams-the-rncs-cheney-kinzinger-censure-as-morally-repellent-in-a-blistering-editorial/

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pissed off and lying about being quoted exactly by NYT? such usual target she thinks it will work?

Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel is outraged at The New York Times, claiming – falsely – that the paper's article on her resolution that claims January 6 participants were merely engaging in "legitimate political discourse" is "completely false" and "the worst type of baseless political propaganda."

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we got compromise version, orig stronger, expulsion from party?

comm dr 2 22 an

Progressives expressed outrage Friday after the Republican National Committee formally declared the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election "legitimate political discourse."

"Mark this day for future reference."

"January 6th was not "legitimate political discourse"—it was a violent insurrection on our Capitol," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) tweeted in response to the RNC declaration.

"I didn't know if I'd make it out alive," she added. "Some didn't. We cannot let the GOP whitewash what happened."

The New York Times reports the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted overwhelmingly Friday to censure Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for their participation in the Democrat-led bipartisan commission investigating the January 6 attack.

The RNC censure resolution accuses Cheney and Kinzinger of "participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse," and of "utilizing their past professed affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes."

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)—a member of the special House committee investigating the January 6 attack—told the Times that "The Republican Party is so off the deep end now that they are describing an attempted coup and a deadly insurrection as political expression."

"It is a scandal that historians will be aghast at, to think that a major political party would be denouncing Liz Cheney for standing up for the Constitution and not saying anything about Donald Trump's involvement in the insurrection."

Karen Hobert Flynn, president of the progressive advocacy group Common Cause, said in a statement that "January 6 was an insurrection that left people dead and scores of seriously injured in its wake. It was not legitimate political discourse no matter what the GOP says."

"It was a violent attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and ignore the will of the people," she continued. "It was a dangerous and irresponsible attempt to try to intimidate Congress with an angry racist mob assembled and then set loose by a man who had just lost the presidential election."

"With today's vote, the Republican Party has just endorsed violence as a legitimate form of political expression," Hobert Flynn added. "Their vote to legitimize violence is anti-democratic. There is no room for ambiguity when it comes to an attack on the peaceful transfer of power and our democratic system of government."

Cheney responded to the censure by posting a video showing supporters of Trump's "Big Lie"—the fallacious belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen—savagely assaulting Capitol police officers and violently storming the U.S. Congress in a bid to stop lawmakers from certifying President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory.

Daniel Ziblatt, a professor at Harvard University and author of How Democracies Die, tweeted: "I have spent a lot of my career studying what happens when conservatives fully go off the rails. This is one of those moments."

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ENFORCER: how does he have infl on RNC?

an 2 22https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/liz-cheney-censure/

an RNC committee Thursday evening unanimously passed a resolution to censure GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. The resolution will be voted on by the full RNC, all 168 Republican National Committee members, Friday.

That resolution – submitted by Trump "dirty trickster" and GOP "shady partisan hit man" David Bossie – makes false claims about President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats,

"The Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress have embarked on a systematic effort to replace liberty with socialism; eliminate border security in favor of lawless open borders; create record inflation designed to steal the American dream from our children and grandchildren;neuter our national defense and a peace through strength foreign policy; replace President Trump's 'Operation Warp Speed' with incompetence and illegal mandates;and destroy America's economy with the Green New Deal."

The resolution also promotes the lie that participants in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were merely "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."

It calls for the RNC to "immediately cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party for their behavior which has been destructive to the institution of the House of Representatives, the Republican Party and is inconsistent with the position of the Conference."

Read:...

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an 11 21

no lnx

Revealed: Fox's Judge Jeanine orchestrated payments for ‘command centers’ that could blow up Trump’s defense

Travis Gettys and Raw Story November 03, 2021

Fox News host Jeanine Pirro orchestrated campaign payments for 'command centers' at DC hotels that could blow up Donald Trump's executive privilege claims.

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and the city's former police chief Bernie Kerik had been paying for hotel rooms and travel related to their efforts to overturn Trump's election loss, but the pair grew concerned by early December as the bills piled up, reported the Washington Post.

"How do I know I'm gonna get my money back?" Kerik thought at the time, as he recently told the newspaper.

Kerik knew that Giuliani hadn't been reimbursed for his expenses or paid for his services, but their friend Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News host beloved by the twice-impeached one-term president, called Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and asked her to help them out.

McDaniel spoke to Kerik by phone but refused to give him money, and instead recommended that he ask the Trump campaign to reimburse his expenses, according to the former police chief and a GOP official.

The campaign cut its first check to Kerik in mid-December with Trump's approval, according to a former senior campaign official, and eventually paid more than $225,000 for hotel rooms and suites at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., that served as a "command center" for efforts to overturn the election results ahead of Jan. 6 riots.

Those payments, according to legal experts, could undermine Trump's claims of executive privilege over documents and testimony related to the U.S. Capitol riots sought by the House select committee investigating the insurrection.

"[This] further undermines a wildly broad assertion of executive privilege," said Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor. "Executive privilege is typically limited to the protection of communications involving a president's official duties — not to those relating to personal or political campaign matters."

Former Justice Department official John Yoo, who advised former vice president Mike Pence's staff that there was no legal basis to deny the certification of Joe Biden's election win, agreed that the payments could upend Trump's defense.

"If he acts as a president, he gets these things we talk about — executive privilege and immunity," Yoo said. "But if he's acting as a candidate, he's deprived of all of those protections."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/donald-trump-jr/

rnc bot 300K$ of books

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ronna confronted that NC runoff lost in adv/

riggleman

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump-republicans-2649073595/

recall gingrich took out Wright tho had (had?) done worse?

an 1020 rnc bought 1m$ books hannity

part of pension plan?

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an 920

evidence suggests the Republican National Committee poured more than $400,000 into Sean Hannity’s latest book

Roger Sollenberger / Salon September 23, 2020

The Republican National Committee spent hundreds of thousands of dollars last month on books by Donald Trump Jr. and Fox News personality Sean Hannity, federal records show. The RNC’s August…

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an 520

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel repeatedly voted by mail — before suing California for expanding the practice Igor Derysh / Salon

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/rnc-chairwoman-claims-all-mail-ballots-proposal-would-vastly-expand-opportunities-for-fraud-as-experts-say-dems-benefit-from-early-voting-opportunities/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/the-rnc-gave-massive-contracts-to-companies-linked-to-its-chairwomans-husband-and-political-backers/

no lnx

The RNC gave massive contracts to companies linked to its chairwoman’s husband and political backers

Written by Mike Spies, Jake Johnson / Pro Publica March 15, 2020

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

The Republican National Committee has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to contractors closely connected to the organization’s chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel.

One contract went to her husband’s insurance company. Two others went to businesses whose executives recently donated to Ronna for Chair, a largely inactive political action committee that McDaniel controls. She had set it up in 2015, when she successfully ran for chair of the Republican Party in Michigan, her home state.

The companies won the contracts soon after McDaniel became the party’s top official. She was picked for the position by President Donald Trump after the 2016 election.

The RNC vendor payments and PAC contributions, detailed in federal tax filings and campaign finance reports, mirror a trend of transactions with favored contractors and employees previously reported by ProPublica.

The RNC conflict-of-interest policy states that employees “should avoid even the appearance of impropriety,” such as steering work to “members of an employee’s family” and businesses “with which the employee has a financial relationship.”

An RNC spokesman, Mike Reed, did not make McDaniel available for an interview. In a statement, he said ProPublica’s reporting was an attempt to make “innocuous RNC spending items seem scandalous,” and he accused ProPublica of harboring “a severe bias against conservatives and President Trump.”

Under McDaniel, the RNC is generating and disbursing record amounts, bringing in about $240 million last year and spending just over $190 million. And public scrutiny of its spending is increasing. ProPublica reported last month that in 2019 the RNC obscured payments to its chief of staff, who executes vendor contracts and is part of a tight network of operatives who have reaped financial rewards during the Trump era. This week, The New York Times reported that since 2017 the tiny circle, including a husband-and-wife duo of former RNC chiefs of staff and Trump’s campaign chairman, Brad Parscale, have billed the campaign, the RNC and other Republican groups some $75 million.

During McDaniel’s first year as chairwoman, the RNC hired a large, privately held insurance brokerage firm called Hylant to conduct an insurance review and liability assessment. Reports filed with the Federal Election Commission show that the RNC specifically paid Hylant’s Detroit branch almost $40,000 for the company’s services.

The president of that particular office is Patrick McDaniel, the husband of the RNC’s chairwoman.

Reed, the party spokesman, told ProPublica that the Hylant contract “did not violate any RNC policy,” despite the organization’s written guidance about awarding business to members of an employee’s family. Reed said the RNC’s then-treasurer “solicited and signed off on” Hylant’s services. He did not not address who recommended Hylant or why the work was done out of the company’s Detroit office. Reed added that McDaniel’s husband “does not own this company and he received no financial benefit from this work.” Neither Hylant nor Patrick McDaniel returned messages seeking comment.

The two companies whose executives made contributions to McDaniel’s PAC had not received work from the RNC before she became chair.

Less than a week after McDaniel took over the party in January 2017, the RNC made its first monthly payment to the Templar Baker Group, a small political consulting outfit in Michigan headed by Robert Schostak, who chaired the Michigan Republican Party before McDaniel. Since she has been at the RNC, campaign finance reports show, Templar has been paid more than $550,000 for “political strategy services.”

Schostak is also a partner in MadDog Technology, a firm that is chaired by Peter Karmanos Jr., who helped found Compuware, once Michigan’s leading computer technology company. Last year, according to FEC filings, the RNC paid MadDog $50,000 for “website services.”

During McDaniel’s first month as RNC chair, Karmanos and a political spending entity used by the Schostak family contributed $10,000 each to McDaniel’s PAC, federal tax filings show.

Reed, the RNC spokesman, did not describe what services Templar and MadDog provided the organization, but he said they were “invaluable.” When asked about McDaniel’s relationship to Schostak and Karmanos, and the timing of their PAC contributions, he said that ProPublica was “trying to connect dots to come up with something scandalous.” Moreover, he added, McDaniel “has no financial relationship” with MadDog and Templar.

Reed also disputed that the vendors had not worked with the RNC before McDaniel became chair, an assertion that is contradicted by FEC reports. When asked to explain the discrepancy, he referred to Kim Jorns, who, he said, “has worked with the RNC prior to the Chairwoman’s tenure.”

Jorns is an employee at Templar and previously was an RNC staffer, serving as regional political director in the 2016 election cycle. She didn’t return a message seeking comment.

Karmanos and Schostak did not respond to requests for comment.

Last year, Ronna for Chair received no contributions, but it continued to spend money, a practice that is legal and common among elected officials.

McDaniel was reelected as chair of the RNC in January 2019, with Trump’s endorsement. Two days earlier, her PAC paid $5,000 to Kathleen Berden, a voting member of the RNC, a volunteer position. Reed said the PAC paid Berden because she “whipped votes” for McDaniel’s reelection. He would not address why McDaniel needed Berden’s services or whether it was appropriate for McDaniel to pay a volunteer RNC voting member to influence fellow voters.

When reached for comment, Berden declined to elaborate on her work for McDaniel.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/why-the-alternative-universe-of-trump-loyalists-wont-be-broken-by-the-bolton-bombshell/

no lnx

Why the ‘alternative universe’ of Trump loyalists won’t be broken by the Bolton bombshell

Written by Alex Henderson January 28, 2020

When President Richard Nixon announced his resignation on August 8, 1974, he was being inundated with Watergate headlines and realized that many right-wing Republicans in the U.S. Senate would join Democrats in voting to remove him from office; Nixon, in other words, quit because he knew he would inevitably be fired.

But President Donald Trump, in contrast to Nixon, has been able to count on fiercely loyal Republicans no matter how scandal-ridden he becomes. Republicans, during Trump’s impeachment, have adamantly rallied around the president — and journalist Susan B. Glasser, in a January 28 article for The New Yorker, argued that even John Bolton’s bombshell allegations aren’t swaying diehard Trumpistas.

Bolton, former national security adviser in the Trump Administration, alleges in his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” that Trump tied military aid to Ukraine to an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, according to multiple reports. Trump and his cult-like defenders have maintained there was no such “quid pro quo” — that investigating the Bidens was never a condition of military aid. But in a leaked manuscript of Bolton’s book, the New York Times reported over the weekend, Bolton alleges Trump and his allies made it clear to the Ukrainian government that there would be no military aid without an investigation of the Bidens.

Trump loyalists, Glasser notes, have been quick to defame Bolton.

“The attack on Bolton was swift and predictable: Bolton was a disgruntled former employee, a neocon, a money-grubber with a two-million-dollar book to sell,” Glasser explains. “The president himself led the mob, beginning to tweet and retweet anti-Bolton statements.”

The Republican National Committee (RNC), Glasser observes, has been “sending out official talking points attacking Bolton.” And many Senate Republicans, she writes, are still opposed to featuring Bolton or any other witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial — no matter how damning Bolton’s allegations are.

“At any other moment in Washington in my lifetime, I would have predicted with absolute confidence that the Bolton revelation would force Republican senators to switch their position and support witnesses — and not just a few, but almost all of them,” Glasser asserts. “But this is now, and the unthinkable and inconceivable have become increasingly routine. Here it was: the proverbial smoking gun, right in the middle of the trial — crucial evidence that Trump, his advisers, his lawyers and his enablers on Capitol Hill knew about and were trying to suppress.”

Glasser concludes her New Yorker piece on a somber note, lamenting the fact that no matter what Bolton has to say about Ukraine, Trump’s loyalists and sycophants aren’t budging an inch.

“Monday proved once again that this alternative universe has become the new normal in Trump’s GOP,” Glasser writes. “It is not the exception but the rule. The post-Bolton-bombshell Republican Party will be largely the same as the pre-Bolton-bombshell Republican Party.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/here-are-5-huge-lies-republicans-are-telling-about-the-new-report-on-the-russia-probe

no lnx

Here are 5 huge lies Republicans are telling about the new report on the Russia probe

Written by Cody Fenwick December 10, 2019

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s new report on the origins of Crossfire Hurricane, commonly called the Russia investigation, blew up many of the right wing’s favorite talking points and conspiracy theories about the FBI. At the same time, it exposed real failures of procedures meant to protect American citizens against undue surveillance and exposed the need for serious law enforcement reforms.

But most Republicans seem unfazed that the report undercuts President Donald Trump’s repeated accusations of “treason” and a “witch hunt,” and they show no genuine interest in pushing policy to generally make law enforcement more responsible. Instead, they’re trying to pin the blame on the Obama administration and bias against Trump, even though these claims actually distract from the genuine problems uncovered.

So instead of grappling with the complicated facts of the report, Republicans are just lying about what it says. Here are five huge lies you should be on the look out for, and why they’re false:

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Trump on the IG report: "It is incredible. Far worse than I ever would've thought possible. It's an embarrassment to our country, it's dishonest. It's everything that a lot of people thought it would be, except far worse."

Embedded video

This is absolutely not true. Trump has accused the FBI of “treason” for its investigation of members of his campaign, an accusation that was always ludicrous. Obviously, the report didn’t find anything “far worse” than treason — the worst finding seems to be that an FBI lawyer falsified a piece of evidence in an application for surveillance, making Carter Page’s activities look more suspicious than they otherwise would. This is quite bad, if true, but it’s far milder than much of what the FBI’s critics have claimed.

And in contrast to what Trump has been saying for more years now, the report said: “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open” investigations of Trump associates.

Ronna McDaniel

@GOPChairwoman

The mainstream media cannot dispute this fact:

Comey’s FBI repeatedly misled the FISA court and omitted key facts about the phony Steele Dossier, which launched the 2-year, $35M Russia investigation.

This should have never happened!

In fact, the media can dispute this fact, because it’s not true. The work of Christopher Steele did not “launch” Crossfire Hurricane, as Horowitz made perfectly clear. It explained that the officials working on the investigation “did not become aware of Steele’s election reporting until weeks [after the investigation began] and we therefore determined that Steele’s reports played no role in the Crossfire Hurricane opening.”

Senator John Cornyn

@JohnCornyn

It confirms that the Obama Justice Department spied on an American citizen by misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court into issuing 4 separate warrants. https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1204151940202020864 …...

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/gop-demanded-500k-donation-from-trump-bahamas-ambassador-during-his-senate-confirmation-hearings/

no lnx

GOP demanded $500K donation from Trump Bahamas ambassador during his Senate confirmation hearings

Written by Brad Reed / Raw Story November 18, 2019

Newly uncovered emails reveal that the Republican National Committee demanded that President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas donate $500,000 ahead of his Senate confirmation hearings.

CBS News reports that RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel asked billionaire Doug Manchester for more cash at a time when his confirmation as Bahamas ambassador had seemingly stalled.

“Would you consider putting together $500,000 worth of contributions from your family to ensure we hit our ambitious fundraising goal?” she asked him in an email.

Manchester replied and told McDaniel that he’s “not supposed to” be donating to the RNC at the same time he’s up for an ambassadorship. All the same, he said his wife would send along a check for $100,000.

He then asked McDaniel to put pressure on the Senate GOP to move his confirmation hearing along.

CBS News investigative reporter Jim Axelrod confronted Manchester about the emails and told him that “you know what this looks like.”

Manchester responded defensively and insisted that his wife’s contribution had nothing to do with getting confirmed by the Senate.

“Well — it looks like it to you,” he said. “But it’s not the facts. My wife gave out of separate funds and she in fact loves Donald Trump.”

The RNC said it was inappropriate for Manchester to link the donation to his ambassadorship nomination and added that it has since returned the money donated by the family this year.

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no lnx

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/29/payday-lenders-discussed-raising-money-trumps-campaign-fend-off-regulation-audio-reveals/

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Business

Payday lenders discussed raising money for Trump’s campaign to fend off regulation, audio reveals

To ensure Democrats don’t block weaker industry rules, payday lenders said they needed access to Trump.

Renae Merle

October 29, 2019 at 9:41 AM EDT

Billing himself as one of President Trump’s top fundraisers, Michael Hodges told fellow payday lenders recently that industry contributions to the president’s reelection campaign could be leveraged to gain access to the Trump administration.

“Every dollar amount, no matter how small or large it is” is important, Hodges, founder of Advance Financial, one of the country’s largest payday lenders, said during a 48-minute webcast, obtained by The Washington Post.

“For example, I’ve gone to Ronna McDaniel and said, ‘Ronna, I need help on something,’ ” Hodges said, referring to the chair of the Republican National Committee. “She’s been able to call over to the White House and say, ‘Hey, we have one of our large givers. They need an audience. … They need to be heard and you need to listen to them.’ So that’s why it’s important.”

The Sept. 24 webinar sponsored by Borrow Smart Compliance, an industry consultant, gives surprisingly frank insight into the payday lending industry’s strategy to push for weaker government regulations by forging a tight relationship with the Trump administration and the president’s campaign. The payday lending industry, made up of businesses that make short-term loans to consumers at high interest rates, is awaiting new rules that could weaken Obama administration requirements. Those rules include a requirement that the companies must ensure consumers can afford to repay the money they borrow.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the chair of the Financial Services Committee, is an industry “hater,” and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) would pose a big threat if elected president, Hodges and three other industry insiders said during the talk. They called Trump their “ultimate backstop” against attempts to defeat legislation the industry wants.

“When Trump was elected, the needle moved in our favor — finally,” Max Wood of Borrow Smart Compliance said during the webinar.

How Trump appointees curbed a consumer protection agency loathed by the GOP]

“If you need something and we may need something … then it would be good to be able to pick up the phone and call someone that could get the president’s attention,” Wood said during the webinar. Contributing to Trump’s campaign will help keep the president in office, he said, and “it will give [Hodges] access in the event that we need to have access to the president.”

In an interview, Wood acknowledged posting the YouTube video but then referred questions about fundraising to others who took part. The video, which had about 40 views as of Friday afternoon, was removed shortly after The Post asked Wood about it.

The major focus of the call appeared to be fundraising, which the industry insiders said would be critical to maintaining access to the Trump administration. Hodges encouraged others to donate to Trump’s campaign and referred to his efforts to bolster his standing with the administration.

“If I can show the campaign that Tina and I have brought in net new givers to the campaign, meaning whether it’s $100, $50, $25, $15,000 or $50,000 if they didn’t give last time, that is a boost to us as fundraisers,” Hodges said, referring to his wife.

Hodges said on the webinar that he has made more than $1 million in campaign contributions to help Trump since 2016. In an interview, Hodges said he is an “enthusiastic” supporter of the president but had never used his status to ask the administration for help.

Trump is systematically backing off of consumer protections, to the delight of corporations]

“When I am talking about access, I am not talking about the administration. I haven’t lobbied the administration,” he said in an interview. He said his support of the president is not connected to pushing any specific industry agenda. “I have not gone over to the White House because of Ronna McDaniel. … That just has not happened.”

But during the webinar, Hodges said it would give him a “boost” if he could show that he had brought in donors who had never given before, even if their contributions were small.

“That is important to the campaign, which means it’s important to the president, which means it’s important if you ever had to call on anyone for anything in the administration,” he said during the call. “That’s how those things work.”

The White House declined to comment for this report. Trump’s reelection committee did not return a call for comment....

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Ilhan Omar 9/11: Republicans are distorting her September 11 ... - Vox

https://www.vox.com/2019/4/11/.../ilhan-omar-911-islamophobia-republicans

21 hours ago - Republicans are taking Ilhan Omar's comments on 9/11 out of context to smear her. It's Islamophobia, plain and simple. ... Here's Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniellabeling her both “anti-Semitic” and ...

Fox News, Crenshaw, RNC Attack Ilhan Omar for 9/11 Comments

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-crenshaw-rnc-attack-ilhan-omar-for-911-co...

2 days ago - Ilhan Omar Calls Out Fox News and GOP for 'Dangerous Incitement' Over ... On Tuesday, the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel ... Last month, Fox host Jeanine Pirro went on an Islamophobic rant, ...

interesting, recycled/applied to social media:

Trump has faced derision for his rant on Tuesday about Google search results being "rigged" against conservatives — likely motivated by a Fox Business interview between Lou Dobbs and the right-wing YouTube celebrities Diamond and Silk.

But Trump is eager to prove he is right about a grand Google conspiracy to silence right-wing content. As proof, he shared a video on Wednesday noting a key example of anti-GOP censorship: his own State of the Union address.

"For years, Google promoted president Obama’s State of the Union on its homepage," says the video. "When President Trump took office, Google stopped."

[twit] There's just one problem: it isn't true.

As Buzzfeed News reports, screenshots of Google's search page taken on January 30, 2018 clearly show a link labeled "Live! Watch President Trump's State Of The Union Address On YouTube." One of the screenshots was even posted by a Trump supporter to the pro-Trump Reddit board /r/The_Donald, captioned "Google homepage linking to the GEOTUS [God-Emperor Of The United States] address."

It is true that Google did not provide a link to Trump's first address to Congress in 2017. However, as a Google spokesperson told BuzzFeed, “We have historically not promoted the first address to Congress by a new President, which is technically not a State of the Union address. As a result, we didn’t include a promotion on google.com for this address in either 2009 or 2017."

The fact that the video was easily debunked as a hoax did not stop it spreading in right-wing circles. It was swiftly picked up by Gateway Pundit, InfoWars, the Russian propaganda network RT, and was also shared by Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

Trump has frequently complained that the size of his audience for major events is being suppressed or even just covered up. Immediately upon taking office, he accused mainstream news outlets of lying about the size of his inauguration crowds.

More broadly, Republicans have been waging a crusade for years against what they claim is "liberal bias" in mainstream media, which has increasingly spread to accusations against big tech platforms as well. There is little basis for these claims, but persecution narratives have staying power — regardless of evidence especially when the President of the United States lends them legitimacy.

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ronna mcdaniel r n c

Michigan voting machines

Nevada

charlie Kirk’s shadow RNC event highlights centrality of 2020 election lies to the conservative movement

Miss Piggy': RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel blasted by conservatives following reports of lavish spending

evidence suggests the Republican National Committee poured more than $400,000 into Sean Hannity’s latest book

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel repeatedly voted by mail — before suing California for expanding the practiceIgor Derysh / Salon

Ilhan Omar 9/11: Republicans are distorting her September 11 ... - Vox

Fox News, Crenshaw, RNC Attack Ilhan Omar for 9/11 Comments

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel repeatedly voted by mail — before suing California for expanding the practice Igor Derysh / Salon