Personally, I’m going to miss Rick’s The New Abnormal podcast he did with Molly Jong-Fast. It may not be off the table, but they did miss the last episode date, so we will see.
Those blinders you have on must be lined with lead. There is NO difference between Trump directing his super-PAC money toward companies he and his confidants own and the Lincoln Project doing the same thing. In both instances the super-PAC is getting something for its money – whether it’s tv production work on a commercial or a venue for holding a soiree. The only difference is whether the check is being cut to the Trump Organization or Summit Strategic Communications (owned and operated by LP Treasurer Reed Galen).
What makes all of this unethical is that those who run the PAC have every incentive to pay inflated rates, ignore other vendors of these services, and set low standards of accountability for the supplier. And both PACs hide behind gimmicks to avoid public reporting of how dollars are ultimately expended. The donors who fund these PAC deserve, at the very least, a full accounting of how their donations are being used to achieve the goals of electing/defeating Trump.
Then someone should have written a law to make PAC’s accountable and thus make this behavior unlawful.
Do you really think the people who donated to these PAC’s were so naïve? They didn’t care as long as they thought it helped there cause and that this was the accepted way to go about cheating to win.
I don’t ‘dislike’ the Lincoln Project, my God, where would you even get the idea? But when corporate executives start shipping buttloads of cash to off-book entities controlled by those same executives, it just smells a lot like Enron. And the LP imploded even faster than ENR, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I’m with the doctor on this. You guys are so ready to believe anything bad about conservatives that it takes little proof to convince you. Maybe all the allegations in this thread are true and maybe the allegations against Hunter Biden are true. I hold all of them as dubious without solid proof.
The main plank of the Republican platform these days (such as it is) has been “Scam money off the rubes before the next guy does it”. The term “Principled Republican” is an oxymoron. If there are any Republicans who would NOT engage in grift and schemes to rip off the public, they are long gone, or are currently being attacked for “not being pure enough”
In short, little evidence of corruption is needed, because this is what Republicans are
Because of this, you would actually need some extraordinary evidence if you were to present to me an honest Republican. It is so unusual a sight, that you’d have to work hard to prove it.
It’s like if I pointed out a man in the street who had been recently released from his 7th prison stint for robbery, fraud and car theft. And I said to you “there is a dishonest man”. I would not have to provide you with extraordinary evidence beyond his past history.
I have nothing personally against the Lincoln Project or its founders (well, I guess Weaver’s shown himself to be a slimeball). I agree with the goals of the organization. And I think that any Republicans who are willing to break with Trump are to be lauded.
But I do think that several people in this thread are minimizing and excusing behavior here that they wouldn’t in any other situation. It’s certainly odd to see some presumably liberal posters rushing to the defense of a Super-PAC, an entity created to skirt traditional campaign donation regulations. I raised the comparison with Trump’s use of Super-PACs he controls to direct funding toward his properties and companies, and the only response is that’s, “different.”
This is largely poppycock. Before the entrance of Trump the Republicans were hardly different from Democrats. I live in Boston where it wasn’t too long ago that three consecutive state Speakers were convicted of some sort of fraud.
Trump, of course, changes things and any corruption in his orbit is possible, even likely. It is going to take the GOP a long time to erase the stink of Trump. Reagan was able to bring them back after Nixon but there was much less popular support for Nixon.
The LP, though, is not Trumpist and I want to see some proof they were doing anything unwarranted.
They were doing the same self-dealing bullshit that Trump pulled whenever he charged the secret service top dollar to stay in one of his properties while “protecting him”
They were soliciting donations, and then funnelling the donations to their own companies.
Same as it ever was; Republicans fleecing the rubes.
Take the money taken in and divide it by the number of ads. Compare that to other political ads. I think they gave their donors a deal, especially in quality of the ads.