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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsinteresting article on a major string puller behind trump
Last month, when President Donald Trump toured a Boeing aircraft plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, he saw a familiar face in the crowd that greeted him: Patrick Caddell, a former Democratic political operative and pollster who, for forty-five years, has been prodding insurgent Presidential candidates to attack the Washington establishment. Caddell, who lives in Charleston, is perhaps best known for helping Jimmy Carter win the 1976 Presidential race. He is also remembered for having collaborated with his friend Warren Beatty on the 1998 satire Bulworth. In that film, a kamikaze candidate abandons the usual talking points and excoriates both the major political parties and the media; voters love his unconventionality, and he becomes improbably popular. If the plot sounds familiar, theres a reason: in recent years, Caddell has offered political advice to Trump. He has not worked directly for the President, but at least as far back as 2013 he has been a contractor for one of Trumps biggest financial backers: Robert Mercer, a reclusive Long Island hedge-fund manager, who has become a major force behind the Trump Presidency.
During the past decade, Mercer, who is seventy, has funded an array of political projects that helped pave the way for Trumps rise. Among these efforts was public-opinion research, conducted by Caddell, showing that political conditions in America were increasingly ripe for an outsider candidate to take the White House. Caddell told me that Mercer is a libertarianhe despises the Republican establishment, and added, He thinks that the leaders are corrupt crooks, and that theyve ruined the country.
Trump greeted Caddell warmly in North Charleston, and after giving a speech he conferred privately with him, in an area reserved for V.I.P.s and for White House officials, including Stephen Bannon, the Presidents top strategist, and Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law. Caddell is well known to this inner circle. He first met Trump in the eighties. (People said he was just a clown, Caddell said. But Ive learned that you should always pay attention to successful clowns. ) Caddell shared the research he did for Mercer with Trump and others in the campaign, including Bannon, with whom he has partnered on numerous projects.
The White House declined to divulge what Trump and Caddell discussed in North Charleston, as did Caddell. But that afternoon Trump issued perhaps the most incendiary statement of his Presidency: a tweet calling the news media the enemy of the American people. The proclamation alarmed liberals and conservatives alike. William McRaven, the retired Navy admiral who commanded the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, called Trumps statement a threat to democracy. The President is known for tweeting impulsively, but in this case his words werent spontaneous: they clearly echoed the thinking of Caddell, Bannon, and Mercer. In 2012, Caddell gave a speech at a conference sponsored by Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog group, in which he called the media the enemy of the American people. That declaration was promoted by Breitbart News, a platform for the pro-Trump alt-right, of which Bannon was the executive chairman, before joining the Trump Administration. One of the main stakeholders in Breitbart News is Mercer.
more at:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency?mbid=social_twitter
NewRedDawn
(790 posts)used to be on Tweety all the time. A real piece of work who used to tear in the Clinton's and he was the "liberal" side of the arguments.
mdbl
(4,973 posts)I was more interested in Mercer, the guy with the money.
brush
(53,767 posts)who is the political animal in family. She's the on who got trump to name Bannon to his campaign.
It's long but worth reading to be aware of these rich, spoiled wingers who have stepped in when the Kochs and Adelson sat out helping to fund the trump campaign.
UTUSN
(70,683 posts)CADDELL was credited with supposedly masterminding Jimmy CARTER's win (the pre-ROVE), who like Tweety and G.E. RUSSERT, for years kept trading off the label of being Democrats while they were bashing all things Democratic. CADDELL is a bitter bitter sour jerk, perhaps from the many LOSING campaigns he was supposed to win for his candidates. Among his LOSING was the "New Coke".
Tweety we know about. David RUBENSTEIN was a CARTER staffer and then went on to be vilified here as one of the co-founders of The Carlyle Group, but he is the one who FIRED Shrub from Carlyle for being a buffoon without anything to contribute beyond dirty jokes at Board meetings, and, after all, is a big humanitarian donor.
I need somebody to explain Jimmy CARTER to me. I get it that he was an "outsider" type. I was elated for my Democratic candidate to win back then, but was left with generally disappointed. CARTER with his Bible broke the separation of religion from government paradigm, among other things. Yet I have defended and revered him and sort of feel sorry to see him always standing apart from the other ex-presidents.
heaven05
(18,124 posts)fascists, racists are in power now. Our america vs their ameriKKKa is what it is. Now will their ameriKKKa and our america end up in the same place as that 1st Reich? Seems so...happened once, BIG TIME, who says it wasn't going to happen again? Who said can't? Well it's happened again.