Club For Growth billionaires finance fascist Republican politicians
A recent study by the Center for Responsive Politics, reported by the Guardian, reveals that 42 Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn the January 6 election results received a combined $20 million in funding from the Club for Growth (CFG). The CFG is a billionaire-backed conservative consortium dedicated to advancing the interests of the financial oligarchy by backing anti-tax, anti-regulation and pro-charter school politicians.
In his bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election and install himself as president-dictator, Donald Trump had the backing of substantial sections of the Republican Party, including many recipients of CFG donations over the years.
Within the last two weeks, two Republican representatives, freshman Colorado Congresswoman and QAnon adherent Lauren Boebert and Maryland Representative Andy Harris, were stopped by Capitol Police trying to enter the floor of the House, each with a gun on their person. Both voted to reject the Electoral College vote on January 6, hours after pro-Trump fascists had overrun the Capitol in a bid to stop the official counting of the votes, and both have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from the Club for Growth. Broebert set off a newly installed metal detector outside the House chamber on January 12, while Harris is under investigation by Capitol police after trying to enter the House floor with a pistol on January 21.
The CFG has been the primary financial backer of Harris since his election in 2010, giving his campaign roughly $345,000 over that time. As of October 6, Federal Election Commission Reports revealed that Club for Growth’s Super PAC, Club for Growth Action, had spent $706,000 on ads and pamphlets attacking Boebert’s opponent.
The current head of the CFG is former Indiana Republican Representative David McIntosh, who has led the organization since 2014. CFG money has been instrumental in electing leading Republican senators over the last decade, including Ted Cruz (Texas), Marco Rubio (Florida), Ben Sasse (Nebraska), Josh Hawley (Missouri), Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) and Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania).
In 2018, the CFG spent millions on negative ads targeting the opponents of Cruz and Hawley while giving generously to their respective campaigns, with Cruz receiving $234,832 while Hawley received $299,301. The CFG spent $3 million on attack ads against Hawley’s Democratic opponent, Claire McCaskill, while in Texas, it helped Cruz fend off a challenge by Beto O’ Rourke, spending $1.2 million on negative ads against the Democratic challenger. Cruz and Hawley led the Republican campaign in the Senate to reject the Electoral College vote as submitted by the various states, and both voted against accepting the results of the election in the hours following the attempted fascist takeover of Congress.
In the 2016 presidential campaign, the CFG initially opposed the candidacy of Trump, donating millions to his opponents, but after Trump bested Rubio, Cruz and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul in the primaries, the organization quickly shifted to supporting Trump. As McIntosh recalled in a 2019 interview with the Daily Beast, “it was critical for the survival of the Club for Growth to pivot from having opposed Trump in the presidential primaries to being affirmatively supportive of Trump in the policy battles.” McIntosh added, “If they’re a Never Trumper, we’re not going to support them.”
This pivot to Trump and the fascistic politics he embodies is representative not only of the fascistic turn of the Republican party, but of substantial sections of the ruling financial oligarchy, which are turning toward fascism to defend their wealth in the face of growing militancy and anti-capitalist sentiment in the working class.
The Club for Growth was founded in 1999 by Stephen Moore, former Wall Street Journal writer, Heritage Foundation economist and adviser to Trump. Moore founded the CFG along with Thomas Rhodes, Harlan Crow and Richard Gilder. Since its founding, the CFG has played an outsized role in US politics, donating millions of dollars primarily to Republican candidates, while running negative advertisements against their opponents.
As of 2018, the latest data available, the CFG’s board of directors includes:
* Kenneth Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state and member of the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Center.
* Howard Rich, chairman and co-founder of Americans for Limited Government. Rich donated $225,000 to a super PAC that bought ads promoting the candidacy of another QAnon fascist, freshman Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
* Virginia James, the widow of Club for Growth co-founder Richard Gilder. James has donated millions of dollars to far-right causes, including $250,000 in 2020 to the Charles Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity.
Since 2005, the CFG has released an annual scorecard that ranks politicians on their adherence to the CFG’s goals and announces a “Defender of Economic Freedom” award to those who score above 90 percent. For the 2018 congressional cycle, the CFG awarded 25 Republican politicians with scores above 90 percent, while four US senators and three representatives received perfect scores.
Those who received perfect scores from the CFG included two Arizona representatives, Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, both of whom voted to overturn the election results and were instrumental in leading and organizing “Stop the Steal” rallies in Arizona following Trump’s electoral defeat, as well as the rally outside the White House on January 6. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Biggs received over $55,000 from the CFG between 2015 and 2020.
The biggest donors to the CFG are billionaires Richard and Liz Uihlein, owners of Uline Packaging, and billionaire Jeffery Yass, who co-founded the Susquehanna International Group, an options trading company. The Center for Responsive Politics revealed that Richard Uihlein donated $27 million to the CFG in 2020 and $6.7 million in 2018, while Yass donated $20.7 million to the CFG in 2020 and $3.8 million in 2018.
The Uihleins have played a leading role in mobilizing and organizing politically disoriented and fascistic elements against coronavirus-induced lockdowns. In April, the Uihleins, along with Stephen Moore, secretly organized an unsuccessful recall campaign against Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers, along with multiple protests at the state Capitol against any restrictions to stop the spread of the virus.
WBEZ in Illinois revealed on January 12 that Richard Uihlein gave nearly $4.3 million to the political action committee of the Tea Party Patriots, including $800,000 this past October. The marchtosaveamerica.com website, before it was taken down after the January 6 coup attempt, listed the Tea Party Patriots as one of the 11 groups “participating in the March to Save America,” as part of the “#StopTheSteal coalition.”
The Uihleins also funneled $800,000 into two Midwest Senate races, supporting Republicans John James in Michigan and Joni Ernst in Iowa. Ernst has fought against any restrictions on business to halt the spread of the virus, labeling it a “hoax.” Salon reported last October that James, along with Vice President Mike Pence, was photographed with the head of the American Patriot Council, Grand Rapids resident Ryan D. Kelley.
Kelley, who gave thousands to James’s 2018 and 2020 campaigns, organized the “Well-Regulated Militia” American Patriot Council rally on June 27 in Lansing to protest coronavirus restrictions and “government tyranny.” One of the attendees at the rally was Adam Fox, the alleged leader of the Wolverine Watchmen, which, according to the FBI, was planning to kidnap and assassinate Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. FBI affidavits allege that Fox used the rally to recruit accomplices.
Trump’s acting secretary of defense disarmed D.C. National Guard 48 hours before the fascist assault
A recently published memo issued by former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller two days before the January 6 fascist assault on the US Capitol confirms that the leadership of the Pentagon deliberately disarmed National Guard soldiers on the eve of the coup attempt. The memo ensured that soldiers would be unable to protect themselves, much less the Capitol, allowing thousands of pro-Trump neo-Nazis and white supremacists to overwhelm the Capitol Police, who themselves had been deliberately underdeployed.
The memo, dated January 4, 2021, was in response to a request by Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy for D.C. National Guard support. The memo, along with FBI documents that have been reported over the past two weeks, directly contradict claims made by McCarthy after the failed coup that the Pentagon had “no intelligence” showing that the Capitol was the target of a potentially violent attack.
The memo approved the use of only 340 National Guard soldiers and imposed extraordinary limitations. It stated:
This memorandum responds directly to your January 4, 2021 memorandum regarding the District of Columbia request for District of Columbia National Guard (DCNG) support in response to planned demonstrations from January 5-6, 2021. You are authorized to approve the requested support, subject to my guidance below and subject to consultation with the Attorney General, as required by Executive Order 11485.
Without my subsequent, personal authorization, the DCNG is not authorized the following:
* To be issued weapons, ammunition, bayonets, batons, riot control agents or ballistic protection equipment such as helmets and body armor.
* To interact physically with protesters, except when necessary in self-defense or defense of others.
* Prohibited from sharing “equipment with law enforcement agencies” or seeking support from any non-DC National Guard units.
* Forbidden from conducting “searches, seizures, arrests, or other similar direct law enforcement activity.”
* Forbidden from using “Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance assets” or to conduct “Incident, Awareness and Assessment activities.”
* No helicopters or “any other air assets.”
This general stand-down order stands in stark contrast to the deployment of federal military police during antipolice violence protests in D.C. on June 1. On that occasion, on the approval of McCarthy, two military helicopters, a BlackHawk and a Lakota with a Red Cross emblem, flew low over protesters across from the White House, whipping up dirt and debris. The dangerous and threatening maneuvers broke several Federal Aviation Administration and international laws that forbid the use of medical helicopters for crowd dispersal.
Miller’s directive made clear that the D.C. National Guard chain of command went through McCarthy and Miller and that a 40-person “quick reaction force” was to be deployed only as a “last resort.” If the quick reaction force was deployed, McCarthy was directed to inform Miller immediately.
The leaking of the memo follows a revealing interview last week in which the D.C. National Guard Commander Gen. William J. Walker stated that prior to the January 6 attack on Congress, the Pentagon had stripped him of his normal authority to dispatch troops to the Capitol. Walker told the Washington Post that he had to wait for approval from McCarthy and Miller, delaying the arrival of the soldiers for roughly four hours.
Miller was appointed to head the Department of Defense after Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper on November 9 as part of a purge of the top civilian leadership at the Pentagon. Esper drew Trump’s ire when he publicly opposed Trump’s threat on June 1 to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy active duty soldiers to major US cities to put down antipolice violence protests, beginning with elements of the 82nd Airborne, which were put on stand-by outside Washington D.C.
Esper, along with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, argued against Trump’s demand to invoke the act, fearful of provoking mass popular protests that the government would not be able to control.
It can hardly be an accident that Trump loyalists installed at the Pentagon shortly after Joe Biden had been declared the winner of the presidential election played a central role in the nearly successful coup of January 6, which was engineered by Trump in an attempt to halt the certification of the Electoral College vote by Congress and unconstitutionally retain power.
The Miller memo is the latest revelation to confirm that the January 6 event was a fascist coup orchestrated by the White House and coordinated with the highest levels of the Pentagon, the police and the Republican Party. It was not, as some maintain, simply a spontaneous action, doomed to fail, of wild-eyed Trump sycophants.
The advanced planning that went into the coup is further underscored by the release of security footage this past Friday showing the suspected pipe bomb culprit in the act. The Washington Post revealed surveillance video taken on the eve of the coup, between 7:30 and 8:30 pm, which shows an individual in a light sweatshirt placing two pipe bombs, one at each national committee headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties.
Significantly, despite numerous reports of potential violence, including an FBI warning that same day, the bombs were not discovered for some 18 hours, at approximately the same time the crowd was breaching the Capitol on January 6. They were found, not by the FBI or the police, but by a civilian. Both bombs had timers and were considered “live” when found.
The use of bombs as a diversionary measure to lure police away from the Capitol is the same tactic that was discussed by far-right Michigan Militia members and Boogaloo Bois who plotted to kidnap and kill Governor Gretchen Whitmer last summer. Their conspiracy was exposed, and the ringleaders arrested in October.
Also over the weekend, video and court filings were released detailing the plan carried out by right-wing militias and vigilante groups in the lead-up to the assault. On January 5, the FBI’s Norfolk, Virginia office issued an intelligence report warning of violent activity in connection with the upcoming January 6 event.
The Washington Post revealed that these warnings included a detailed map showing the layout of tunnels connecting the Capitol complex, while another map was headlined “CREATE PERIMETER.”
The court filings show how several far-right groups, including the Proud Boys, whose leader was outed as a “prolific” federal informant last week, engaged in concerted action to overrun the Capitol Police just before 1:00 p.m. Among those leading the assault were former Army combat veteran Jason Biggs, former Marine Dominic Pezzola and William Pepe. Biggs was seen coordinating Proud Boy actions on January 6 and was charged with obstruction, entering restricted grounds and disorderly conduct, while Pezzola and Pepe have been charged with conspiracy.
Assistant US Attorney Erik Kenerso wrote that Pezzola’s actions showed “planning, determination, and coordination.” Kenerson alleges that Pezzola obstructed and impeded police protecting the capitol by removing metal barricades and breaking windows, although Kenerson notes that “Pezzola was not the only person trying to break windows and forcibly enter the Capitol at that time, but he appears ... first to breach a window so successfully that he and other rioters could enter the Capitol through it.”
One Oath Keeper facing conspiracy charges is Ohio bartender and Army veteran Jessica Watkins. Prior to storming the Capitol, Watkins was confirmed by Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes in an interview with the Post to have played an “important role” in threatening antipolice violence protesters in Louisville last fall.
Every day, new revelations emerge pointing to the coordinated action of police and military personnel in the attempted coup. A recent analysis by CNN found that of the 150 people facing federal charges so far for their role in the Capitol assault, 21, or 14 percent, are current or former members of the military. An ongoing tally compiled by the Appeal has confirmed at least 39, but possibly 42, current or former police officers also participated.
Among those seen at the Capitol with a bullhorn was the fascistic radio and podcast host Alex Jones. It was revealed over the weekend that Jones, who has hosted Rhodes, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Boogaloo Bois on his show, contributed $96,000 to help fund the January 6 rally at the Ellipse. At that event, then-President Donald Trump, Donald Trump. Jr., Rudy Giuliani and Republican Congressman Mo Brooks incited the crowd to storm the Capitol. Jones worked closely with major Trump donor and Publix supermarket heiress Julie Jenkins, who donated $300,000 to the event.
Anti-Trump PAC: Current GOP ‘No Different’ from ISIS
A recently released video clip from the left-wing MeidasTouch PAC brands Republican Party members as “traitors” unworthy of being called conservatives while describing the GOP as “no different” from the ISIS terror group.
The statements came from MeidasTouch co-founder Ben Meiselas on the PAC’s podcast in an over two-minute clip published Friday. In one tweet, the video was introduced with a message referring to the Republican Party as the “GOP terrorist party.”
On today’s MeidasTouch Podcast I sound off on people calling the GOP terrorist party “Conservatives.” NEVER AGAIN call these terrorists Conservatives.pic.twitter.com/TbtXKQ9eek
— Ben Meiselas (@meiselasb) January 30, 2021
Flashing pictures of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) each with the label “traitor,” the video includes Meiselas stating “there is nothing conservative about them whatsoever.”
The video has gained nearly half a million views on Twitter alone, with the hashtag “#GOPDomesticTerrorists” trending on app as a result.
Without providing evidence, Meiselas insinuates that these Republicans support both “insurrection” and “terrorist attacks” against the US.
“It is not conservative to support insurrection and terrorist attacks against the United States of America,” he stated.
He also blamed conservatives for the hundreds of thousands of Chinese coronavirus deaths in the US.
“It is not a conservative decision when you claim to support life, but allow more than 400,000 Americans to needlessly die from Covid [coronavirus],” he said.
He then contrasted the GOP with the Democratic Party, which he deemed the true patriots.
“The Democratic Party’s the party of people who are careful, considerate, who love this country, and who are truly patriotic,” he said.
Meiselas then claimed that he sees no difference between the current GOP and the ISIS terror group known for beheadings and other cruel executions of innocents, including journalists and aid workers.
“I don’t want to call this current GOP conservative anymore,” he said. “They’re no different in my mind than ISIS.”
Meiselas reiterated the claim in another tweet.
“STOP calling them ‘Conservative’ groups! If they contribute to Hawley they are TERRORIST groups. No different from ISIS to me.”
STOP calling them “Conservative” groups! If they contribute to Hawley they are TERRORIST groups. No different from ISIS to me. https://t.co/tZHUSTitzQ
— Ben Meiselas (@meiselasb) January 28, 2021
Meiselas then demanded these conservatives be referred to as terrorists when mentioned.
“We call ISIS ‘Islamic Terrorists’ and as Joe Scarborough said, we either call them the ‘Trump terrorists,’ the ‘GOP terrorists,’ the ‘GOP insurrectionists,’” he said. “But they don’t earn the title ‘conservative’ anymore.”
In another video clip published by the group this week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is described as a supporter of domestic terrorism.
📺 NEW VIDEO
Marco Rubio supports domestic terrorism. #RadicalRubio pic.twitter.com/jINM3fTZRP
— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) January 29, 2021
The group intends to bring its message of holding “GOP traitors accountable” to the US Capitol through a large jumbotron parked at Union Station in Washington, D.C., near Congress.
MeidasTouch launched as a blog early last year which brothers Ben, Brett, and Jordan Meiselas operated. Shortly thereafter, it grew into a viral video powerhouse amassing nearly a million followers across the major social media sites.
The videos come as some Democrats continue to target conservatives and paint Trump supporters as the worst of criminals, despite having repeated calls for “unity.”
In another recent video created by left-wing novelist and MeidasTouch supporter Don Winslow, citizens are called upon to become cyber detectives to monitor and report fellow citizen Trump supporters to authorities while comparing the work of this “army of citizens” to that which led to the capture of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
The clip, which received over 4 million views, claims the greatest threat facing America today emanates from “radical extreme conservatives, also known as domestic terrorists” hidden among us.
On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) dubbed members of Congress who seek to protect themselves with firearms the “enemy.”
“We will probably need a supplemental for more security for members when the enemy is within the House of Representatives, in addition to what is happening outside,” she said.
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
Left-wing Columnist: Put the Republican Party on Domestic Terror Watch List
Left-wing columnist Harold Meyerson has published a column at the American Prospect, a prominent liberal publication, in which he suggests that the entire Republican Party belongs on the domestic terrorism watch list because of the presence of members like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
He writes:
Go to Greene’s Twitter account and you’ll find her liking tweets that called for shooting Nancy Pelosi and executing FBI agents for their “deep state” persecutions of Donald Trump. I suppose the equivalent of that would have been Democratic members of Congress applauding the shooting of House Republican Whip Steve Scalise—except, no Democratic members of Congress did that; rather, they all expressed horror and condemnation.
But the Republicans’ indulgence of the Greenes in their ranks—and there are many such—is of a piece with their overwhelming refusal to hold Trump responsible for the insurrection at the Capitol, much less their own current colleagues, such as Arizona’s Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, who also encouraged the January 6 rioters. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution says that no government official can hold office “who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” That surely applies to Trump, but it increasingly appears that it should apply to most Republican members of Congress as well.
Similar thoughts are finding their way into opinion pieces in mainstream publications. The Washington Post, for example, recently published an op-ed titled “What the 1798 Sedition Act got right — and what it means today.” The column said that the danger of “misinformation” meant that free speech was not enough to sort out fact from fiction, and that opponents of the Sedition Act “were wrong to conclude that the truth would necessarily prevail in an open exchange of information.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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