Trust Fund Babies = Breitbart Funders Mercer Family & Their Rightwing F
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The Breitbart funder Mercer's are liars and America hating traitors.
Rightists are their useful idiots, not their allies.
How one billionaire family bankrolled election lies, white nationalism —
and the Capitol riot Rebekah Mercer is “one of the chief financiers of
the
fascist movement,” says longtime GOP insider Steve Schmidt
Four years before Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., pumped his fist to a
supportive
mob that would soon overrun the Capitol Police and hunt lawmakers through
the halls of Congress, the former Missouri attorney general needed a deep-pocketed patron. Naturally, he called on the man who helped bankroll former President Donald Trump's rise: hedge-fund billionaire Robert
Mercer, whom he would soon describe as a friend while name-dropping him
to
court support from far-right figures like Steve Bannon, a longtime Mercer
ally. It's unclear what came of Hawley's meeting with Mercer, but the
Club
for Growth, which has received millions from the Mercer family, and the
Senate Conservatives Fund, which also got Mercer donations, quickly
became
Hawley's biggest financial backers, by far. Mercer's daughter Rebekah
kicked in a near-maximum donation to his 2018 Senate campaign for good
measure.
While Charles Koch and his late brother David have dominated Republican fundraising in recent decades, the Mercers' recent strategic investments
in far-right candidates bought them a disproportionate level of influence
in the Republican Party before culminating in an effort to subvert the
election that fueled the deadly Capitol siege. Advertisement:
"The Mercers laid the groundwork for the Trump revolution," Bannon told
The New Yorker in 2017. "Irrefutably, when you look at donors during the
past four years, they have had the single biggest impact of anybody,
including the Kochs." Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, sees it differently.
Rebekah
Mercer, he said in an interview with Salon, is the "chief financier or
one
of the chief financiers of the fascist movement, and that's what it is."
Hours after the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, killing five people
and
injuring dozens of police officers in a futile bid to stop the counting
of
electoral votes, Hawley joined with top Mercer beneficiaries in objecting
to the results to back Trump's "big lie" that the election was somehow
stolen. There was Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whose super PAC got $13.5
million from the Mercers during the 2016 presidential campaign — before
the family dropped another $15.5 million to back Trump. There was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., defending the majority of the
GOP House caucus voting to overturn legal election results after his Congressional Leadership Fund received $1.5 million from the Mercers. And
there was Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who received $21,600 from the Mercers
before speaking at the rally that preceded the riot and objecting to the results. Brooks was later named by "Stop the Steal" organizer Ali
Alexander as having helped orchestrate the event, though his office said
he has "no recollection communicating in any way with whoever Ali
Alexander is." Advertisement:
Alexander himself may have benefited from the Mercers' millions while
working for the Black Conservative Fund, a small and mysterious group
that
received $60,000 from Robert Mercer in 2016. Though the group did not
raise any money in 2020, it promoted the White House rally to tens of
thousands of followers, according to CNBC.
The Mercers funded numerous key players who helped foment the Jan. 6 insurrection, though their full involvement remains unclear. Along with far-right candidates and groups, they have also funded the far-right
social network Parler, which was used to coordinate the Capitol siege,
and
Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct London-based data firm that stole
Facebook user data to help Trump's 2016 campaign target potential voters.
"As I discovered first-hand, the Mercers are exceptionally skillful at obfuscating and masking their political enterprises," David Carroll, a professor at The New School in Manhattan who sued Cambridge Analytica for
his data in London, said in an email to Salon. "I marveled at how their ownership of Cambridge Analytica was effectively shielded from the U.K.
courts where they were prosecuted." Advertisement:
Now that the Mercers have survived the scrutiny of the Federal Trade
Commission and former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation,
Carroll added, "I would assume the family has doubled-down on investing
in
its own privacy."
Schmidt agreed that "it's hard to keep track of the money" the Mercers
have doled out to their pet causes.
"In this movement, the money is a fundamentally important part of it. It
fuels the movement and that movement is an extremist movement," he said.
"Is there a better than even chance that the Mercer money is flowing,
like
so many tributaries, right into a larger seditious stream on this? Of
course there is."
Lax laws surrounding dark money donated to nonprofit entities mean it
will
likely be "several years before the public will have a complete sense of
how much the Mercers spent," wrote The Intercept's Matthew
Cunningham-Cook.
Publicly available data shows that the Mercers helped fund numerous
players who pushed the "big lie." The family donated $3.8 million to
Citizens United, which is run by longtime Trump adviser David Bossie, who
was tapped to lead the former president's legal challenges. Though the
Mercers have pulled back their financial support in recent election
cycles
amid growing scrutiny, they donated $300,000 during this past cycle to
the
Republican National Committee, which joined Trump's legal battle. Advertisement:
The Mercers were also the top donors to Arizona Republican Party
chairwoman Kelli Ward, a devoted Trump loyalist, The Intercept reported
last week. Ward joined the lawsuit led by the Republican attorney general
of Texas that sought to overturn the results of the election in multiple
states and spoke at a December rally that featured Alexander to push
Trump's election conspiracy theories. On Twitter, Ward promoted her
appearance at a "Stop the Steal" rally alongside former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to invoke martial law to rerun the election, and posted the hashtag "#CrossTheRubicon," a phrase that refers
to Julius Caesar marching his army into Rome to declare himself a
dictator. The Arizona GOP also promoted Alexander's tweets, which
included
his declaration that he was "willing to give up my life for this fight."
"Live for nothing, or die for something," the party tweeted about a month before the Capitol riot.
More recently, Rebekah Mercer co-founded Parler, ostensibly a
"libertarian" moderation-free social network that quickly became a
megaphone for far-right figures like Alexander and fellow organizer Alex
Jones, both of whom had been banned from mainstream social networks for spreading disinformation. Alexander, Jones and others used Parler to
spread falsehoods about the election while others simply trafficked in
white supremacist content, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
"Holocaust denial, antisemitism, racism and other forms of bigotry are
also easy to find," the ADL said. Advertisement:
Parler was used by some of the Capitol rioters to plan and coordinate the attack. The site was briefly taken offline by Amazon before finding a new
host, though its apps have been removed from the Apple and Google app
stores. Rebekah Mercer said in a Parler post that she started the social network to combat the "increasing tyranny" of our "tech overlords,"
slamming mainstream social networks over "data mining" — which is exactly
what the Mercers' former company, Cambridge Analytica, exploited to steal Facebook users' personal data to help Trump in 2016. Although Mercer
touted Parler's protection of user data, hackers were able to easily gain access to unsecured user data, which showed that Parler users had
penetrated deep inside the Capitol and shared videos and photos of their crimes.
Before Trump, the family for years bankrolled Breitbart News, formerly
run
by Steve Bannon, who affectionately termed it the platform of the
alt-right. Along with Breitbart, which received a $10 million investment
from the family, the Mercers also funded Bannon projects like Glittering
Steel, a film production company, and the Government Accountability
Institute, whose president authored the anti-Hillary bestseller "Clinton
Cash" and later pushed discredited conspiracy theories about Joe Biden
and
his son Hunter's work overseas. Bannon's appointment to Trump's White
House, after Rebekah Mercer pushed for him to take over Trump's campaign,
was celebrated by the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party. Though Bannon
fell out with Trump after a few months in the White House, both he and Breitbart aggressively pushed Trump's false narrative following the
election. Advertisement:
The Mercers also funded conservative groups that helped push Trump's
election lies and spread hate. An analysis by Georgetown University's
Bridge Initiative, which researches the spread of Islamophobia,
extensively detailed the Mercers' donations to groups that promote
"racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism," and that have
since
moved on to pushing election conspiracy theories.
In 2017, the Mercers donated $200,000 to the Gatestone Institute, where
Rebekah Mercer sat on the board of governors. The group spent years
pushing anti-Islam writings before echoing Trump's baseless fraud claims following the election. That same year, the Mercers gave $1.725 million
and another $500,000 the following year to the Bannon-founded Government Accountability Institute, whose research director Eric Eggers pushed
unfounded fraud claims on Sean Hannity's radio show. In 2018, they gave
$8.1 million to DonorsTrust, which later donated $1.5 million to the
white
nationalist group VDARE, which subsequently promoted conspiracy theories
about the election.
"Any examination of the growth of the far-right today in the U.S. must
take into account the role of the Mercer family," said Mobashra Tazamal,
a
senior research fellow at Bridge who authored the report, in an email to
Salon. "Rebekah Mercer, in particular, has provided financial support to politicians who amplify white nationalist sentiments, and platforms like Breitbart and Parler that magnify far-right conspiracy theories." Advertisement:
Tazamal added that the Capitol riot should not be understood as "an
organic event" but rather as a "coordinated attack."
"By strategically funneling millions into known hate groups, platforms amplifying racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, and politicians who
pushed forth outright lies of a stolen election, Rebekah Mercer played a
role in inciting the violence by providing material support," she said.
"The billionaire family has used their extraordinary wealth to bankroll
the rise of violent white nationalism in this country."
Rebekah Mercer defended herself in a 2018 Wall Street Journal op-ed,
claiming that she "welcomes immigrants and refugees" and rejects "any discrimination based on race, gender, creed, ethnicity or sexual
orientation," despite repeatedly funding lawmakers and groups accused of trafficking hate. She said she supported Trump "because he promised to
tackle entrenched corruption on both sides of the aisle," even though he
did far more to fill the swamp than drain it. She insisted that she had
"no editorial authority" at Breitbart and argued that Bannon took the
outlet in the "wrong direction," though The New Yorker reported that the
family had invested $10 million in the outlet on the condition that
Bannon
would be placed on the company's board. The report also said that she is "highly engaged" with the site's content and "often points out areas of coverage that she thinks require more attention." Advertisement:
"She reads every story, and calls when there are grammatical errors or
typos," a source told the outlet.
The Mercers were also the principal patrons for far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos. After Yiannopoulos was fired by Breitbart for comments
defending pedophilia, he received a wire transfer from Robert Mercer's accountant, according to BuzzFeed News. "Rebekah Mercer loves Milo," a
source told the outlet. "They always stood behind him, and their support
never wavered."
Politico in 2016 dubbed Rebekah Mercer the "most powerful woman in GOP politics." Newsmax founder Chris Ruddy, whose outlet also pushed the "big
lie," labeled Mercer the "first lady of the alt-right." Though her father signed the large checks, Politico reported, it's Rebekah Mercer who is
"running the family operation" and whose "frustration" with the Koch
brothers' donor network — in which the Mercers previously participated —
led her to start a "rival operation."
Rebekah Mercer heads the Mercer family's foundation, which donated $35
million to right-wing think tanks and policy groups between 2009 and
2014,
according to the Washington Post. It marked a massive shift for the
family, which donated just $37,800 in 2006, including a $4,200 check from Robert Mercer's wife Diana to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign. The
election of Barack Obama changed everything, leading the family to pump
at
least $77 million in political donations into conservative candidates and causes between 2008 and 2016. Though their early forays into politics in
New York and Oregon were utter failures, and Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign crumbled under the weight of relentless attacks from Trump and
general bipartisan disdain, their investment in Trump quickly paid
dividends. Advertisement:
Rebekah Mercer reportedly led a major reorganization of Trump's 2016
campaign, connecting him with Bannon and former Cruz adviser Kellyanne
Conway, who would replace Paul Manafort at the helm of the team. Mercer,
who also served on the Trump transition's executive committee, pushed for
Trump to hire Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who was forced to
resign less than a month into Trump's presidency amid a criminal
investigation and now spreads QAnon conspiracy theories online.
It's unclear why the Mercers fund so many far-right causes, though
sources
close to the family told Politico in 2016 that they "harbor a deep and
abiding enmity toward the political establishment." Robert Mercer has
been
described as a "reclusive" former IBM computer scientist who made his
fortune as co-CEO of the algorithmic trading company Renaissance
Technologies. Sources close to him told The New Yorker that he is a
conspiracy theorist who believes the Clintons had opponents murdered and
were involved in a drug-running ring with the CIA. He has also described
the Civil Rights Act as a mistake, arguing that Black people were better
off financially before the passage of the landmark law, according to the
same New Yorker report. Racism in the U.S. is "exaggerated," Mercer
reportedly said, attributing most of it to "Black racists." He has
likewise argued that climate change is not a problem and would actually
be
beneficial for the Earth, sources told the magazine. Advertisement:
"Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how
much
money they make," David Magerman, a former colleague of Mercer who later
sued him for unlawful termination, told the New Yorker. "A cat has value,
he's said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on
welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than
a
schoolteacher, then he's a thousand times more valuable."
Magerman warned in an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer that Mercer was "effectively buying shares in the candidate."
"Robert Mercer now owns a sizable share of the United States Presidency,"
he wrote.
While painting herself as a philanthropist who supports small government
and personal responsibility, Rebekah Mercer, who reportedly home-schools
her four children in a $28 million Trump-branded apartment in New York, described the state of the country in apocalyptic terms in a 2019 book
first flagged by The Intercept.
"[W]hat is the state of [the American] experiment today?" Mercer asked.
"'Now we are engaged in a great civil war,' said Abraham Lincoln at
Gettysburg in 1863. One hundred and fifty-five years later, it is barely hyperbolic to echo the Great Emancipator." She added, "We are not yet in
armed conflict, but we are facing an ever more belligerent, frantic, and
absurd group of radicals in a struggle for the soul of our country." Advertisement:
The report added that the Mercers own Centre Firearms, a company that
claims to have the "country's largest private cache of machine guns," and
has a Queens warehouse filled with guns and "an Mk 19 belt-fed grenade launcher, capable of hurling 60 explosives per minute."
The Mercers' extremist sympathies set them apart from other big
Republican
donors like the Kochs, whom Schmidt described as transactional limited-government ideologues who "got none of what they were seeking"
from their Republican funding.
The Kochs "wanted conservative governance," said Schmidt, who was senior strategist for Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. "They
didn't
get that. They got big government, they got big-spending, out-of-control government, led by the Republican Party. That's the complete opposite of
what they invested in."
But the Mercers "invested in a different cause," he added.
"That cause is not a democratic cause. It's not a limited-government
cause. It seems that the Mercers invested in chaos and they got exactly
what they wanted. It seems like they invested in someone who didn't
believe in American democracy, and they got someone who tried to burn it
down."
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