It's no shock that some in the GOP were never going to like Donald Trump, no matter what. These folks claim their opposition is out of principle, so then why are they helping Joe Biden win the presidency and helping Democrats take back the Senate? It's about the money. I know I'm preaching to the choir. You've seen what these people have done. It's been going on for years, and the Lincoln Project isn't the only group that does this sort of stuff. The Democrats are willing to pay it would seem. I mean, the opposition still defies reality.
I wasn't a Donald Trump fan. I rapidly become one, though because, at the end of the day, he wasn't worse than Hillary Clinton. There was no way I was voting Democrat in 2016—and I wanted Lady Macbeth to lose badly. Trump was our best bet. Not only that, but he earned it. He blew away a field of what was considered to be loaded with some heavyweight GOP candidates. He exposed the divide between the base and the party leadership, especially on trade and immigration. We're a right-wing populist party now. There's nothing wrong with that—nothing. Eighty-five percent of what Trump has done is what conservative Republicans have advocated for since Reagan. The Lincoln Project's founders claim to be these folks, by the way.
Trump has transformed the judiciary, cut taxes, gutted job-killing regulations, started to rebuild our military, created millions of jobs, and reduced unemployment numbers—before COVID hit—to record lows across the board. Consumer and small business confidence have hit their highest marks in years under his administration. Markets like Trump. The base likes Trump. The party is Trump. And we have this annoying band of total losers hogging the media light—because they're Trump-deranged as well—to make it seem like this small, small sliver is somehow half of the GOP. It's not. The old ways are gone. The Republicans who hailed from the old order are gone. They've been defeated or retired, mostly the latter since none of these folks have the stomach for the nasty fight that is ahead. Let's call it Mitt Romney syndrome, the pure inability to go for the political kill due to weakness. Mitt has proven to be one of the most useless Republicans in the Senate, by the way. A man who betrayed us by voting with Democrats for one of the articles of impeachment against Trump in their politically motivated theater that engulfed the nation for months. Mitt should have been expelled from the GOP over this, but that's a rant for another time.
The New York Post recently published a piece about the Lincoln Project's founders, which ripped into these guys, quoting a National Review description of them as being three unemployed political operatives and one lawyer executing a shameless grift project. We touched upon John Weaver's Russian antics, which boomeranged on the group. The Lincoln Project has attacked Trump for being Putin's puppet—yeah, I know these guys claim to be Republicans—while ignoring that one of them had to register as a foreign agent of Russia for his past lobbying activities. Granted, the gig didn't last long as he backed out of it, but please—the self-righteousness of it all. It's appalling. The tax issues plaguing other co-founders might also be a reason for the 180-degree turn here regarding who they support, right? Ebony Bowden has more:
Co-founder Weaver, a political consultant known for his work on John McCain’s and John Kasich’s presidential campaigns, registered as a Russian foreign agent for uranium conglomerate TENEX in a six-figure deal last year, filings with the Department of Justice show.
[…]
Weaver backed out of the lobbying gig in May 2019 and called it “a mistake” in a tweet in which he denied having taken any money from TENEX.
Still, that hasn’t stopped him from ironically railing against Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and his “rogue ties to Putin backed thugs in Ukraine & elsewhere.”
According to IRS filings exclusively obtained by The Post, the Republican operative — who has also repeatedly called Trump a “tax fraud” and a “tax crook” on Twitter — also has an outstanding $313,655 federal tax lien against his Austin, Texas, home.
This March, an Austin shopping mall also filed a lawsuit against the children’s clothing store that Weaver and his wife own, according to court documents obtained by The Post, just months after Weaver mocked the president’s own string of failed businesses.
Weaver’s fellow Lincoln Project founder Wilson also has an interesting financial past. According to IRS documents, the GOP strategist has an outstanding $389,420 federal tax lien against his Tallahassee, Florida, home, and his bank moved to foreclose on the property in 2016.
Wilson, a best-selling author with 1 million Twitter followers, has never disclosed the money woes publicly, allowing him to sneer online about Trump’s decision never to release his own taxes — at one point calling him “Brokeahontas,” despite the fact that American Express had taken Wilson to court for his own unpaid $25,729 credit card bill the year before, documents show.
[…]
The devastating National Review piece dismissed the outfit as “little more than the most brazen election-season grift in recent memory” and a “ragtag band of three otherwise unemployed strategists plus one lawyer.”
Oh, and of course, these guys didn't offer comment. But hey, if you're broke, you have to find a way to make bread somehow. This is America, but please—don't sell us this nonsensical tale about "country over party." It's insulting. We all know this is because you guys need money. Maybe you should have switched parties beforehand?
Last Note: Need I say more?
You can’t make this stuff up.
— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) August 7, 2020
h/t @redsteeze pic.twitter.com/0Us1eqx7CU