Those Burned Bridges Are Hard To Repair

Arizona's zealous Trumpist election denier Kari "Dry" Lake is seeking the Senate seat currently occupied by kooky turncoat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, and also sought by Dem Rep. Ruben Gallego. Lake ran a scorched earth primary campaign for Arizona Governor last year against a host of Republican candidates, including some with ties to the late Sen. John McCain. She managed to alienate a solid core of his followers while spouting vicious nonsense about her opponents. When she lost the Governor's race to Dem Gov. Katie Hobbs, in Trumpian fascist fashion she refused to concede and spread conspiracies about her loss, going to court multiple times and losing with her baseless claims.

Lake's problem, aside from her radicalism and cult behavior, is that she burned many bridges to groups of long time Arizona Republicans by her nasty attacks on McCain and Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who rejected the Malignant Loser's demand that he sign a false slate of electors. Those bridges won't be easy for her to rebuild despite her current charm offensive with them, according to reports:

"The outreach, made over the course of several weeks through in-person meetings and phone calls, is a welcome sign to Washington Republicans, who would like to see Lake broaden her MAGA base in the once reliably red state and help them retake the U.S. Senate in 2024. But Lake’s effort to reassure political rivals and onetime supporters in this desert state has been met with skepticism, according to interviews with half a dozen Republicans familiar with her conversations who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the private talks.

Most cite her refusal to acknowledge her electoral loss — even up to today — as well as the relentless demonization of members of her own party, including former Arizona governor Doug Ducey and the late U.S. senator John McCain (R-Ariz.)."

Lake has contacted her former primary rival, top GOP donors and past supporters, party officials and activists, and even a former senator as she tries to persuade them to coalesce around her. But Lake’s appeals for support have so far contained no actual apologies — and some Republicans say they are not likely to forgive her any time soon, complicating her path to victory in a state home to many moderate Republicans and independents whose support is key to winning. And as she continues to pursue a so-far unsuccessful legal battle to overturn her 2022 loss to Gov. Katie Hobbs (D), national Republicans fear she may continue pursing the same type of conspiracies and election denialism that harmed her previous campaign."  (our emphasis)

There were reports last summer that Lake had virtually moved into the Malignant Loser's Merde O'Lardo estate, apparently trying to boost herself as his 2024 ticket mate. Lake belongs to the same delusional and demagogic Trumpist cohort as House of Representatives bomb throwers Marjorie Traitor Greene, Lauren "Bobo" Boebert and Matt Gaetz. As is theirs, her main goal is to always please the cult leader, the Malignant Loser; everything else is secondary, even at the cost of an election, past and future.

(photo: Lake, here seen auditioning for Trump wife #4 / Mario Tama, Getty Images) 

 

The "Turning Point" Grift Of Charlie Kirk

MAGA faithful are being routinely fleeced by hundreds if not thousands of groups purporting to aid the MAGA movement in it's political goals. Their cult leader the Malignant Loser is first among the fleecers. One hugely profitable money vacuum is Turning Point run by right-wing provocateur and hustler Charlie Kirk. The group focuses its attention largely on a younger demographic, to get out their voted and hooking them with a toxic mix of xenophobia, bigotry and misogyny that the movement was built on. To no one's surprise, Kirk himself is doing quite well financially while producing slim to no results, as the Associated Press reports:

"The Make America Great Again political movement has been lucrative for Kirk, the 29-year-old CEO and co-founder of the conservative youth organization, Turning Point.

The nonprofit rocketed to prominence by latching on to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and has raised roughly a quarter-billion dollars since, much of it spent cultivating conservative influencers and hosting glitzy events. The organization also enriched Kirk and his allies, according to an Associated Press review of public records, which found top Turning Point officials collected pricey salaries, enjoyed lavish perks and steered at least $15.2 million to companies that they, their friends and associates are affiliated with.

But for all that money, the group has struggled to help Republicans win general elections. That’s particularly true in Turning Point’s adopted home of Arizona, where their slate of deeply conservative candidates in the longtime Republican stronghold lost statewide races last year, among them Kari Lake’s unsuccessful bid for governor."

Active primarily in purple state Arizona, the organization is trying to branch out into two key battleground states in 2024: Georgia and Wisconsin. There's serious question among big MAGA donors what the return on their investment will be, given the organization's track record:

"While Turning Point isn’t the first organization to draw scrutiny over spending, it has become a unique source of frustration for some Republicans. They point to its support for far-right candidates who struggled in marquee races, as well as the hefty sum they now seek to do work that is already being done by veteran operatives. That sets up a potential clash between competing wings of the conservative movement that could complicate the GOP’s effort to hold a House majority while reclaiming the Senate and White House next year."  (our emphasis)

The results of Kirk's grift might not be good, but he's doing well financially:

"Compensation also soared, with Kirk’s climbing from $27,000 in 2016 to more than $407,000 by 2021, tax records show. Millions of dollars more were paid out to a cluster of companies linked to a handful of group leaders and their allies, according to tax documents and business filings.

Kirk bought three high-end properties, all worth over a million dollars, which include his new Spanish-style mansion near Phoenix, as well as a nearby apartment and a beachside condo on Florida’s gulf coast."

Looking on the bright side, the money that Kirk and his friends pocket and spend on luxury homes is money not spent on the MAGA candidates they're supposedly working for. But it's all in a good day's grift.

(photo: The master grifter and his pupil/ Shutterstock)

 

Grifter O'Keefe Under Investigation For "Looting" Former Group

 

Grifting fascist ratf*cker James O'Keefe (III!) is under investigation for looting his former grift, the ironically named grifting fascist outfit "Project Veritas." (All these right-wing pathological liars just love to proclaim they're all about "truth.")  The Nation has the exclusive:

James O’Keefe, the founder and until this past February CEO of the right-wing nonprofit Project Veritas, is currently under investigation by the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office.

While the exact nature of the investigation is not yet public, the timing would suggest that it relates to O’Keefe’s alleged financial improprieties during his tenure as the group’s chairman and CEO. Back in February, O’Keefe was accused of spending “an excessive amount of donor funds in the last three years on personal luxuries” by the conservative nonprofit’s own board of directors, amid their very public feud over the management and future of Veritas. Westchester DA Miriam Rocah’s probe follows a raft of civil lawsuits, criminal investigations, and six-figure court losses that have trailed the group under O’Keefe’s leadership—including a still-active federal investigation into the theft of property belonging to President Biden’s daughter Ashley Biden.  [snip]

Attorneys for Project Veritas also filed a civil complaint against O’Keefe in federal court this past May, accusing the ostensible investigative reporting outfit’s original hidden-camera sting artist of breaching his contract and fiduciary duties to the group, among other counts. Despite that pending litigation, made public alongside a detailed new timeline reiterating the board’s own version of its disputes and grievances with O’Keefe, Veritas says that the organization did not prompt the Westchester DA’s investigation into its former leader via a formal criminal referral.  (our emphasis)

Because "veritas" is in their name, we can take their assurances to the bank that they didn't sic the DA on O'Keefe III!  Grifters turning on each other;  who'd have guessed!?

The "Project Veritas" CEO that definitely did not sic the DA on O'Keefe III is none other than Hannah Giles.  Remember her?

Giles’s assumption of leadership at Veritas reflects an attempt at continuity for the group, which was launched over a decade ago following the tactical successes of the infamous hidden camera stings against the liberal community-organizing group ACORN by her and O’Keefe. By April 2010, O’Keefe and Giles’s early one-off collaboration would result in the complete dissolution of ACORN’s network of local advocacy groups, whose “get out the vote” efforts had helped to enfranchise millions of low-income and minority voters in underserved communities.

She seems nice.  Punching down in the service of White supremacy must be in their mission statement somewhere.

These grifters are part of a network of grifters, working to advance the authoritarian MAGA/ Christofascist Republican agenda using any means necessary.  One of the former board members of the group is connected with un-indicted coup whisperer Steve "Crumb Bum" Bannon, which tells you all you need to know.

These excerpts are only a small fraction of The Nation's reporting on the infighting, litigation and scandals besetting this nest of rats over the past few years, culminating in the current investigation and potential charges against O'Keefe.  It's worth a read.

(Photo:  Grifter O'Keefe III and now- CEO Hannah Giles, typecast as "pimp and ho" from their infamous 2009 ACORN takedown)

Fleecing The MAGA Rubes, Cont.

 

 

For a cohort of the population, if you put the name of the Malignant Loser on something, you can sell it for a tidy profit.  The Malignant Loser himself is a practitioner of this type of grift (see, Trump University, "Stop the Steal," etc.).  Now some enterprising thieves in Colorado have joined in fleecing the MAGA rubes with "Trump Bucks":

In the recesses of the internet where some of Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters stoke conspiracies and plot his return to the White House, suspected con artists have been mining their disappointment over the last presidential election for gold.

They’ve been peddling “Trump Bucks,” which are emblazoned with photos of the former president, and advertising them online as a kind of golden ticket that will help propel Trump’s 2024 bid and make the “real patriots” who support him rich when cashed in.  [snip]

NBC News has identified the Colorado-based companies behind the Trump Bucks as Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots and reviewed dozens of social posts, online complaints and hundreds of misleading ads for the products. Additionally, NBC News has found at least a dozen people like Amann who say they invested thousands of dollars after watching the pitches on Telegram and other websites that strongly suggested that Trump himself was endorsing these products.  [snip]

Since 2020, when Joe Biden defeated Trump in the presidential election, internet hucksters have been selling pro-Trump products like coins, checks and cards and marketing them as novelty items.

The fine print on the websites offering these items usually notes that they are memorabilia.

But on social media and in promotional videos — many featuring faked celebrity endorsements — the sellers have tapped an audience that believes Trump’s ouster was part of a great conspiracy and that by investing in the Trump Rebate Banking System, or TRB for short, Trump will reward their loyalty by making them rich. 

Those who buy these items, the ads from Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots suggest, will be rewarded when Trump unveils a new monetary system that will turn these products into legal tender worth far more than the purchase price...

The patriots rubes have been trying to cash in their Trump bucks at banks and have found them to be as worthless as their cult leader himself, like this Alabammy (where else!?) geezer:

“I saw all these ads on Telegram that had Trump pushing coins and checks that he endorsed and how you can cash them in after a year and make a profit,” the grandmother, who lives in Mobile, told NBC News. “I was told how you can go to Bank of America or Target or Amazon to cash them in.”

About six months ago, the grandmother said, she gathered up the Trump Bucks and commemorative coins she had purchased and drove 60 miles east to the nearest Bank of America branch she could find in Pensacola, Florida.

There, she said, she was greeted by a teller who told her she’d been scammed.

Of course, we have no sympathy, zero, for these morons. Their endless credulity, coupled with the moral- and- character flaws that attract them to the Malignant Loser, is what got us the present day Republican/ Seditionist/ Shooters Party and their cult leader in the White House for 4 awful years.  We only wonder if the Malignant Loser is also wetting his beak in this grift. 

(Image:  Fool's gold Trump Bucks/ Dan Anderson for NBC News)

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

...Creating a durable political majority won’t be easy, but Democrats have a better shot at doing so. As research by the political scientist Alan I. Abramowitz shows, they represent a broader swath of middle-ground opinion than Republicans do, and President Biden’s program, with its emphasis on problem-solving, is built for coalition-building.

House Republicans hope to block this possibility by destroying Biden’s presidency through investigations and by creating governing crises with such maneuvers as resisting a debt-ceiling increase. But none of this expands their base.

Republicans are limiting their realignment possibilities by orienting their strategy, particularly in the House, toward keeping their large far-right faction happy. But the GOP has little room to grow on the right — only five House Democrats represent districts Donald Trump carried in 2020. Its vulnerabilities are in the more moderate districts, particularly the 18 GOP House districts that Biden carried. Six of them are in New York, five are in California, and they largely have a suburban character.  [snip]

In the meantime, the outcome of the 2020 and 2022 elections suggests a realignment opportunity for Democrats. To make it happen, they need first to tend to their own base, halting Republican gains among Latino voters (modest in most places, larger in Florida and Texas) and restoring Black turnout to something closer to 2020 levels. But to end the electoral deadlock, they need to renew themselves among working-class voters of all races, including White defectors from the old FDR alliance...

And the Democrats have a plan for that.

The bad:

The man suspected of carrying out a deadly shooting in Monterey Park was identified Sunday afternoon, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said.

The man, Huu Can Tran, 72, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a white van in Torrance as officers closed in, Luna said.

When law enforcement searched the van they recovered "several pieces of evidence" that linked the suspect to both the Monterey Park scene and a second scene in neighboring Alhambra, Luna said. A handgun was also found in the van, he said.

Luna said two community members disarmed the suspect at a dance hall in Alhambra. He described the community members as heroes and said they saved lives.

He said the weapon recovered at the Alhambra dance hall was a "semi-automatic assault pistol" with an extended large-capacity magazine attached.

Officials continue to investigate the motive...

No one is safe anywhere, anytime in America.  Sic transit gloria.

The ugly: 

Gregg Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht are best known as the election deniers behind True the Vote, a Texas-based nonprofit responsible for amplifying conspiracies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

But soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, they shifted some of their focus to the war effort, jumping into the fray with an inspiring idea — to bring a mobile hospital to the region to care for victims of the conflict.

They called it The Freedom Hospital.

Phillips solicited donations on conservative media platforms, linked up with American veterans working in Ukraine and traveled to the region in March to meet with local officials. The Freedom Hospital’s website announced it was halfway to its goal of raising $25 million.

“Our recent project, The Freedom Hospital, in Ukraine helps old folks, women and kids near the fight receive healthcare,” Phillips wrote on the conservative social media site Truth Social on June 5.

But that was one of a series of misrepresentations from Phillips and The Freedom Hospital about the operation’s donations and accomplishments, according to a joint investigation by ProPublica and The Dallas Morning News. The Freedom Hospital never got off the ground, and, through their lawyers, Phillips and Engelbrecht now say they never raised significant amounts of money for the project.

They never brought the mobile hospital to the region...

Shocked not shocked MAGA grifters would grift off the suffering of others.