Koch boys have a sad

August 3, 2018August 2, 2018 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I’m not quite sure I believe this. I imagine they will kiss and make up at some point. Via Politico:

The Republican National Committee is sending a warning shot to major GOP donors not to play ball with the powerful Koch political network, escalating a fight between President Donald Trump’s allies and the Kochs.

The move follows a weekend retreat in Colorado at which Koch network officials criticized the Trump administration, hinted they would work with Democrats, and announced they would not help a Republican candidate in a key 2018 Senate race.

“Some groups who claim to support conservatives forgo their commitment when they decide their business interests are more important than those of the country or Party,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel wrote in a memo to party contributors on Thursday afternoon. “This is unacceptable.”

In the memo, McDaniel notes that the RNC has long expressed concerns about the Koch network, which has developed its own data program for Republican candidates to use. The Koch data program rivaled the one that had been created by the RNC.

No collusion here

December 28, 2017December 27, 2017 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Seems like we’re nailing down that Russia-Trump collusion theory!

Special counsel Robert Mueller has begun to question Republican National Committee staffers about the party’s 2016 campaign data operation, which helped President Donald Trump’s campaign team target voters in critical swing states.

Two sources told Yahoo News that Mueller’s team is examining whether the joint RNC-Trump campaign data operation — which was directed on Trump’s side by Brad Parscale and managed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — “was related to the activities of Russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the American electorate.”

The FBI has been scrutinizing Kushner’s contacts in December 2016 with the Russian ambassador to the US and the CEO of a sanctioned Russian bank.

The special counsel’s office declined to comment on its ongoing investigation. Multiple requests to various current and former RNC officials on Wednesday went unanswered. A source close to one of the Trump campaign’s data firms said they were “unaware of anyone being questioned.”

It is not surprising that federal investigators have begun to examine the possibility that Russia and the Trump campaign helped each other during the election. Investigators have been looking into whether Russia provided the campaign with voter information stolen by Russian hackers from election databases in several states, and whether the Trump campaign helped Russia target its political ads to specific demographics and voting precincts.

Update on Melania’s cribbing – the ballerina did it!

July 21, 2016July 21, 2016 ~ odd man out ~ 3 Comments

I was updating Swamp Rabbit on the screw-up at the RNC, where Melania Trump made a speech that was partly cribbed from Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 DNC.

“You were part right,” I said. “Melania rejected the original speech, written by two guys who used to work for George W. Bush. Then she apparently did a rewrite with Meredith McIver, an ex-ballerina who helped Trump write some of his books. Yesterday, McIver took responsibility for the plagiarized sections.”

Swamp Rabbit gnawed on a carrot. “But why would the ballerina want to crib from a speech by Obama’s wife, of all people? Republicans think Obama is the Great Satan.”

“It’s complicated,” I said. “The ballerina said she put in the Michele stuff, almost word for word, then forgot to remove them from the final draft.”

The rabbit spit into the swamp. “That don’t make no sense. Why did she put them in there in the first place?”

I shrugged. “Because Melania liked Michelle’s speech. I think it gets back to what I said yesterday — Trump is too cheap and disorganized to hire reliable staffers, or to check on what they’re up to. He doesn’t understand it’s dangerous to let cronies and family members make campaign decisions. He has the attention span of a gnat, and he’s too vain to own up to mistakes.”

“So are you,” Swamp Rabbit said. “You thought Melania might be the victim but she’s the one did the cribbing. She let the ballerina take the fall instead of owning up to it. She and her freaky husband deserve each other.”