In 1998, her husband under siege for engaging in sexual trysts with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, First Lady Hillary Clinton lashed out from behind the circled wagons. There was, she declared, a “vast right-wing conspiracy” laser- focused on destroying the Clinton Presidency. The notion, which was originally put forth by a White House staffer in 1995, was not something HRC could flesh out to Today Show host Matt Lauer. Instead, she cryptically opined it was a “great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it.”
The backlash was as swift and feverish as it was predictable. Whatever shadowy conspiratorial elements of anti-Clinton fervor working diligently in the background, there were plenty of public faces available to unabashedly promote the same agenda. Everyone from OGs on the fledgling Fox News network to Rush Limbaugh, already a seasoned hand at tribal insurrection, to the Drudge Report, responsible for unearthing the Lewinsky scandal in the first place, fired back she was losing her marbles and flailing wildly as Rome burned around her.
And why not? After all, modern White House history recounted few images less appetizing than a President carrying on with a young intern entrusted to his care and guidance. Whatever political enemies such a ghoul had cultivated, pointing out their underhandedness in the midst of the chickens his already well-documented sexual peccadillos welcomed home to roost, seemed less enlightening about a growing menace than merely an effort to distract and change the subject.
Near two decades later, during her own presidential campaign, HRC connected the dots between what she recognized in 1998 and what it had created by 2016…. “a basket of deplorables.” That the tag received similar quick and relentless push back was hardly surprising. However, the coordinated power available to seize on the diss in 2016 was confirmation that the charge laid out in 1998 was indeed true. In both cases, because of her own shortcomings, speaking her truth ultimately hurt HRC more than it helped. Yet and still, that result didn’t subtract from the truth itself, which produced Fox/AM’s first President at HRC’s expense, following the ugliest campaign in US history, exceeded only by his current re-election efforts.
Almost 25 years has provided the time necessary for a once ragtag collection of fanatical reactionaries to evolve and coalesce into a force that this Administration now allows to vet virtually everyone they hire and every judge or official they appoint. Horrifying is not strident enough a modifier to aptly cover that reality. On everything from pushing “herd immunity” as guiding Covid policy to Handmaid’s Tale sensibilities about a woman’s domain over her own body, a relatively smooth functioning mass of regressive nasties enjoys unfettered access to translate Trump’s capricious whims into a governing structure bent on taking the US backwards as fast as possible. Any doubt about that won’t survive viewing a cache of videos recently secured by the Washington Post. They clarify the obvious, but accentuate both how influential Fox/AM favorite sons like Charlie Kirk now are, and how extreme they expect both personnel and policy to become in a second Trump term.
The network of groups now calling the shots for fait accomplis Trump signs his illegible scroll to all have one thing in common: they make a mockery of laws designed to regulate 501-C non-profit organizations. Granted tax-exempt status under the premise they pursue no partisan political aims, every one of this network of dark money and influence has only one shared aim: directing the GOP agenda and ramming it forward by any means necessary. The Council for National Policy (CNP) – with noteworthy members such as Rudy Guiliani and Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and an energizer bunny often at the center of pushing for the appointment of some of the looniest job candidates – is prominently featured in the trove of videos, and appears to be a lynchpin responsible for organizing many of the documented gatherings that brings together various right wing groups to ruminate on doing whatever it takes to confront its enemies – i.e. any non-MAGA interest.
Attendees constitute a who’s who of past and present Fox/AM darlings, from current It Boy Kirk to past hucksters like disgraced Jack Abramoff buddy, Ralph Reed, who never met a congregation he didn’t want to politically empower while fleecing them silly. Anyone who questions whether or how the wretched core has been radicalized should take in the videos. “This is good vs. evil,” declared CNP committee president, Bill Walton, “we have to do everything we can to win.” That literally none of the speakers caught on video would respond to WaPo inquiries for comment clarifies both utter disdain for mainstream journalism, as well as a tacit recognition the videos caught a degree of frankness they were loath to share with outsiders.
Mail-in voting is a shared obsession. The assumed, if unproven, fraudulent intent of “the left” behind the initiative justifies any and all responses, whatever it takes. These days Trump is tweet storming in capital letters to get rid of ballot harvesting because IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD, but back in February Reed, whose latest gig is heading up the tax-exempt Faith and Freedom Coalition, promised loudly “our organization is going to be harvesting ballots in churches!”
At an August meeting in Northern Virginia, Kirk was giddy Covid’s unchecked summer spread had closed down campuses because it kept up to half a million students from voting. To his audience’s delight Kirk exhorted universities to “please keep campuses closed…. Like, it’s a great thing.” Indeed, voter suppression was presented in various CNP meetings as righteous work, not for the faint-hearted. J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department official and obsessive voter roll purger, who like many in W Bush’s Administration saw riches in the rightest non-profit universe and now leads the Public Interest Legal Foundation, urged activists to tough out “accusations that you’re a voter suppressor, you’re a racist and so forth.” Head high and all that. Just get the job done.
In fact, they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. One of Trump’s signature lines back in 2016 was “I’ll hire the best people.” Best or worst, it’s the CNP network that now fills the slots, which it recognizes as its most important work. The clueless chaos of this Administration has opened the doors of opportunity to those who are simply able to help make the trains run on time. That Trump uses The Five talking points to guide his job interview criteria suits CNP just fine. In August, Trump deputy Paul Teller explained to a CNP-gathered audience of activists that an organization called the Conservative Action Group meets every Wednesday morning in a “little secretive huddle” at the White House. According to CNP member Rachel Bovard, such get togethers reflect a cozy relationship with the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. Makes sense when you consider that, as CNP vice president, Kelly Shackleford boasted on one of the videos: “Some of us literally opened a whole operation on judicial nominations and vetting. We poured millions of dollars into this to make sure the President has good information, he picks the best judges.”
And what do unacceptable personnel choices look like? That’s easy, whistleblowers such as Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. “All of these people that led the impeachment against President Trump shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” scoffed Bovard at yet another presentation. Indeed, it’s doubtful any others cut from such a mold will remain in a second Trump term. Those that do will surely be purged with haste. Promises made, promises kept. By then, to paraphrase the late great Eddie Van Halen and co., we won’t be talking bout representative government cause it will be “rotten to the core.” The ruin of ignored vast right-wing conspiracy.