The Washington Post is reporting that the Koch network of wealthy donors and industries will be opposing the Malignant Loser's run in 2024. The network, which is spearheaded by the right-wing "Americans for Plutocrat Prosperity," has been a powerful money-raising engine for right-wing candidates and causes, most infamously for the "Tea Party" astroturf movement. They reportedly spent over $69 million in the 2022 midterm elections alone. In today's statement from the group, they suggested that the Malignant Loser was yesterday's news:
“The best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter,” Emily Seidel, chief executive of the network’s flagship group, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), wrote in a memo released publicly on Sunday. The three-page missive repeatedly suggests that AFP is taking on the responsibility of stopping Trump, with Seidel writing: “Lots of people are frustrated. But very few people are in a position to do something about it. AFP is. Now is the time to rise to the occasion.” (our emphasis)
The Koch network joins other wealthy Republican donors who are looking beyond the Malignant Loser, including the pro-big business "Club for Growth" and individual billionaires like Kenneth Griffin and Stephen Schwartzman who have turned away from the man who ordered the violent insurrection on January 6 2021. More importantly to them, they see the Malignant Loser as being responsible for the loss of the Senate, the House (until 2022) and the White House, undermining Republicans' ability to gut Federal programs (prominently Social Security and Medicare) and to lower taxes on the wealthy and major corporations:
"The industrialist [Koch] brothers assembled an influential network of groups that have sought to have a major impact in the political process. Sunday’s memo expressed frustration with the direction of American politics in the Trump era. 'The Republican Party is nominating bad candidates who are advocating for things that go against core American principles. And the American people are rejecting them,' Seidel wrote. 'If we want better candidates, we’ve got to get involved in elections earlier and in more primaries.'”
We'll see if their involvement matters in the year ahead.
