Trump's Political Operation... A Joke

Who gives Trump his political advice? I mean the day to day stuff? Whoever it is is definitely an amateur. See that tweet below? You won't see the generic one-size-firs-all endorsement on Trump's Twitter feed. He took it down when someone mentioned to him that though Steve Stivers' district is also in the Columbus area, he isn't the faceless candidate Trump is going to flying into Columbus to back this weekend. Tuesday is the special election between state Senator Troy Balderson (R) and Franklin County recorder Danny O'Connor (D). Trump's clown and his original tweet was featured yesterday in the Columbus Dispatch and was all over local TV news coverage last night. He's never met Balderson and doesn't know who Stivers, chair of the NRCC, is either. The tweet was up for just about 10 minutes before someone came into Trump's cave and told him to take it down. They replaced it with some inauthentic bullshit calling Balderson "true talented."

I had a feeling that when Bannon went on a rampage warning Republicans in Congress as well as candidates not to accept any Koch money or face "punishment," that it could be traced back to Señor Trumpanzee. And sure enough... just hours later, the Trump-conrtroled RNC puppet, Ronna Romney, chimed in with the same message! "I am contacting you to let you know how we are responding-- and how the President has responded."

We work with our primary data vendor-- Data Trust-- to help gather, scrub and build the largest data set that has ever been created so that our analytics are incredibly accurate.

Unfortunately, while we were building these state-of-the-art capabilities, the Koch Network built their own competing data platform (i360). They have sold this data platform to some Republican campaigns, but that data is often not shared with our data eco-system and therefore does not benefit other Republican candidates including the President. This is why we contract exclusively with Data Trust-- because we know they are a vendor who we can count on to help work with us, not against us, to grow our data capabilities.

From the beginning, the RNC had concerns about any outside entity building a data operation to compete with ours because we knew they could potentially weaponize that data against Republicans if their business interests conflicted with electing Republicans.

Sadly, our concerns were recently proven true.

In closing I want to be very clear: the RNC proved in 2014 and 2016 that the Party is the only entity which can be trusted with the data Republicans candidates need to win up and down the ballot-- and this week proves why it is NECESSARY that the Party keep building on our successful operation.

The Koch political operations don't necessarily give money to candidates. They do independent expenditures for their favored candidates, often attacks on Democrats. And, legally, they can't discuss those campaigns with the candidates. So do Republican candidates get "punished" by Trump if the Koch brothers run TV ads against Democrats or for Republicans? So far they're spending millions in Wisconsin (against Tammy Baldwin) and Missouri (against Claire McCaskill). Did Trump tell Ronna what to do about that yet?


UPDATE

This morning, The Hill reported that Bannon was still on his anti-Koch warpath. He referred to them as con artists and their operation as "a conscious scam." He also said that Paul Ryan "should have been removed" as Speaker as soon as he announced he was retiring from Congress and that Ryan is retiring "because he never supported" Señor Trumpanzee. He said he would like to see Mark Meadows or the Ohio ex-wrestling coach enmeshed in a couple of sex scandals become the GOP leader instead of Ryan. He also denigrated Mitch McConnell (again).

Bannon argued the Koch network had lost some of its biggest donors after backing a number of losing candidates during the 2012 election cycle.

Now, he alleged, it was run by “con artists.”

“The Koch network is a conscious scam,” he insisted. “It’s an open secret in conservative circles that they are a scam, ok? And that’s why no big donors are with them anymore. They are fleecing these smaller donors…because these guys haven’t gotten the word. But it’s a total scam.”

Bannon also insisted, “Those aren’t donors. Those are marks. This is a con job.”

James Davis, a spokesman for the Koch network, responded: “We just had our largest summer seminar ever with more than 500 attendees. Our discussion focused on uniting the country to help remove barriers that are preventing people from reaching their potential. Toward that end, we look forward to working with anyone whenever possible, to help people improve their lives.”

If Bannon’s opprobrium for the Koch network is particularly sharp, it is only part of a broader picture where he argues that the GOP has not yet changed to reflect the enthusiasm for Trump among the party’s base.

“The apparatus-- the donor class-- by and large I think still opposes President Trump, particularly the larger donors,” he complained.