Popular Information - Drunk Giuliani
I have a slightly alarming fact to share with you. As you may know, Popular Information uses the Substack platform to publish this newsletter. Substack publishes a leaderboard of the top newsletters, across various categories, ranked by total revenue. Popular Information ranks tenth in the politics category. Not bad! But four places ahead, in sixth place, is a newsletter by Alex Berenson. Who is Alex Berenson? He is one of the leading sources of COVID disinformation on the internet. OK, I get it. In a list of the world's injustices, this would rate very low. But the fact is Berenson has more resources at his disposal to spread dangerous misinformation about COVID than Popular Information has to uncover the truth. Since the start of the pandemic, Popular Information's reporting resulted in the nation's largest restaurant chain providing paid sick leave to all its employees, improved working conditions for cable technicians, and pressured large corporations to return tens of millions of taxpayer dollars intended for struggling small businesses. You can help expand our capacity to do this work with a paid subscription. It's just $6 per month or $50 for an entire year. By supporting Popular Information, you are lifting up information everyone can trust. We've been awarded a 100% rating by NewsGuard, an independent organization that evaluates media outlets for credibility. To stay completely independent, Popular Information accepts no advertising. This newsletter only exists because of the support of readers like you. In a hearing Monday morning, the January 6 Committee laid out an extraordinary scene in the White House as the results came in on Election Night in 2020. On the one hand, many of Trump's closest and most loyal advisers were telling him that there was no evidence of fraud and he should not declare victory. Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, advised the president that he "should not go declaring victory until we had a better sense of the numbers." Bill Stepien, Trump's campaign manager, told Trump that it "far too early" to declare victory. Stepien called the cadre of Trump advisors urging caution, a group that allegedly included Jared Kushner, "Team Normal." Facing off against Team Normal on Election Night was a "definitely intoxicated" Rudy Guiliani. The former mayor of New York City regaled Trump with wild claims of election fraud and urged Trump, on the basis of these unsubstantiated claims, to declare victory that night. Trump listened to Giuliani, who went on to assume a central role in Trump's ill-fated effort to overturn the election results. “This is a fraud on the American public,” Trump said at 2 AM on November 4, 2020. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.” What's astounding is that 19 months later — after numerous lawsuits and audits failed to uncover any evidence of meaningful fraud — the leadership of the Republican Party is still on Giuliani's side. Top Republicans refuse to acknowledge that Trump and Giuliani's claims of fraud were baseless. Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who many believe will be the next House Speaker, refused to acknowledge that Biden's election was legitimate last week. Under questioning from ABC News' Jon Karl on Thursday, McCarthy repeatedly refused to say whether Trump was wrong about the election being stolen and said there were "a lot of problems with the election process."
The arrest of a former Congressman that McCarthy referred to involved Democratic primary elections between 2014 and 2018. It has absolutely nothing to do with the 2020 presidential election. McCarthy refuses to cooperate with January 6 Committee, receives financial backing from major corporations McCarthy was subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee but refuses to comply. He claims that the Committee, which is investigating an attack on the United States Capitol inspired by Trump's lies about election fraud, is "not exercising a valid or lawful use of Congress’ subpoena power." McCarthy, through his attorney, describes the entire investigation as an "attempt to use the full force of the federal government to attack perceived political rivals." Nevertheless, McCarthy — who voted to overturn the election on January 6 — continues to receive financial support from corporations that claimed to be deeply disturbed by the January 6 attack. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, a massive coalition of health insurers, issued this statement in January 2021:
On April 12, 2022, however, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association donated $5,000 to McCarthy's leadership PAC, the Majority Committee. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association also donated $15,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, a multi-candidate committee dedicated to reelecting all Republican House objectors. Cigna, another major health insurer, issued a statement in January 2021:
McCarthy "hindered a peaceful transition of power" by voting to overturn the election on January 6. But Cigna donated $5,000 to McCarthy's Majority Committee on December 14, 2021. Other corporate PAC donors to McCarthy and his leadership PAC since January 2021 include American Airlines, Comcast, Ford, FedEx, HomeDepot, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Procter & Gamble, Truist, USAA, and Walmart. The $250 million ripoff The false claims of election fraud did not keep Trump in the White House. But they were an extremely effective fundraising tool. According to the January 6 Committee, the Trump campaign raised $250 million to fight "election fraud." Supporters were bombarded with "as many as 25 email solicitations a day" to donate to the "Official Election Defense Fund." The Committee determined that the "Official Election Defense Fund" never existed. Almost none of this money was used for election-related litigation. Instead it was transferred to a new entity, the Save America PAC, which distributed millions to organizations affiliated with Trump staffers and Trump hotels. "The Trump campaign knew these claims of voter fraud were false, yet they continued to barrage small dollar donors with emails encouraging them to donate to something called the Official Election Defense Fund. The Select Committee discovered no such fund existed." #January6th “We found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for,” Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said. “So not only was there the big lie, there was the big ripoff.” |
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