Pure arrogance, but based on what?

In September of 1990 when I got a job in the upstart Fox Broadcasting Company (pre-Fox Sports and Fox News), one of the first things I noticed was how some people believed they had to “dumb” things down for their audience. Think about the inflated sense of self it takes to assume you’re smarter than millions of people simply because of where you work.

I experienced that attitude throughout my dozen years in Hollywood and that sense of disdain for those who consume their products resulted in simplistic and insulting programming like “Honey Boo Boo” and almost everything on TLC. Do you really think these people would create demeaning productions of those in their industry or neighborhood? No, but they seek out the easily exploitable so they can laugh at us behind our backs and boost their fragile egos.

In the world of politics, we have an elected class that has no problem lying to our faces. Because of abused Constitutional protection, they believe they’re smarter than the public and they’ll have a portion of the media class that will cover for them. We can easily point to many in city councils, state legislatures, and even on Capitol Hill who clearly aren’t the brightest or emotionally stable our nation has to offer but they managed to get elected with something that’s coveted by all grifters: trust.

Watch any news or opinion show, local and national, and observe the formula they all use. You’ll never watch those shows the same way again.

After their opening monologues, they introduce a guest, start out with an elongated summary of the topic (to assure us all about how much THEY know) and end it in a way the guest has to respond with “I agree with you…”. The host is thereby validated by the invited expert on the topic. This also validates the host’s value to his or her employer.

However their “values” are only as good as the company cutting their check.

We’ve seen many who were once reporting for a conservative network jump to a liberal one and their rock-solid values suddenly dissolve. “Christian conservative” Alisyn Camerota anchored for Fox News before jumping to CNN. Kaitlan Collins blogged for the conservative Daily Caller out of college, became a White House correspondent and now host at liberal CNN. Shepard Smith anchored at Fox News before coming out with “fagitude” and moving to CNBC. That didn’t last long.

Kinda’ makes you wonder what their values really were prior to their change of venue.

Unlike politicians with elections and term limits, media personnel are imposed on the public and their bios are normally concealed by their employers. How they got to their current positions could be embarrassing once revealed. Experience, lack of, nepotism, sexual fast-track; all are at play when it comes to the media ladder.

News and opinion broadcasts are splattered with hosts showing us pictures of their wives, children, moms, dogs, family celebrations, vacations, etc. They’re just like us so we must appreciate them in return.

Oh, and don’t forget to buy their latest new book!

Equally as insidious are the politicians and officials who find those convenient parachutes once they’re forced out of their government jobs and suddenly realize their sweet paychecks have ended.

We have a conservative nonprofit who absorbs newly out-of-work Republicans despite the damage they may have done to the base. Vice President Mike Pence got a “fellowship” with the Heritage Foundation shortly after leaving office. Former Trump border czar Ken Cuccinelli also wound up there until he could get another lucrative gig doing what he did after he was Virginia Attorney General: securing state delegates around the nation AGAINST Donald Trump in 2016. Yes, he’s doing it again now and people like him continue on because they assume we’re all too stupid to notice and donor dollars pay well.

Former politicians and officials get paid “contributor” gigs at CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and broadcast news, no matter why some are no longer employed and compensated by taxpayers (government pensions notwithstanding). Andrew McCabe, John Bolton, Jennifer Palmieri, Marie Harf, Stephen Moore, John Brennan, Kellyanne Conway, William Barr, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Claire McCaskill and Kayleigh McEnany get to blab away uncontested, simply because they’re considered experienced “experts” who can attempt to redirect an ignorant consumer base towards a preferred and approved narrative.

Why do we have such a political and social chasm between men and women voters?

Well, if you have smug media professionals targeting women with intellectually stimulating programming like “The Today Show”, “Good Morning America”, and “The View”, it’s easy to understand why so many see things differently that the rest of the voting blocks. They trust the information is true despite how ridiculous and error-ridden. They specifically look down on their female audience and play to hyper-emotion over substance.

While talk radio is crowded enough with whiners like Dan Bongino, Mark Levin, Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon and other small market wrist-slitters, everyone and his brother now has a podcast. You know, a product some people pay for to use only once. Talk about a racket.

Podcasts are another vehicle for former politicians, celebrity wannabes and pundit types to fortify your trust in them and others who hope to get a more lucrative media job by out-shocking the competition. They serve as the potential bench of future “talent” to be inflicted on the nation simply because of a dubious social media reach.

Why do we have so many “fact checkers”? Again, because almost all media jobs are dependent on consumers trusting THEM. Anything that may cast doubt on what we’re being told or have been told by the overpaid has to be squelched by all means necessary. Media people seldom admit they’re wrong about anything. The Washington Post and New York Times have not given their Pulitzer Prizes back despite their Trump “Russia collusion” coverage being proven bogus. Whenever the media is proven wrong, their contrition seldom matches the initial air horns. Retractions are buried and on-air corrections take up a couple of sentences before the end of the broadcast.

It’s enough to question just how much all of these people, who get paid to share with us their abundant wisdom, really know and really care about us.

There is an on-air persona and an off-air.

Many of these people are truly horrible and genuinely believe we must believe what they say because their lofty salaries depend on it. While they claim to feel the pain their preferred politicians inflict on us, they’re quite comfortable while telling us all is not that bad. They’re the first to agree on the need to start and/or perpetuate a war their prep-schooled children won’t have to participate in. They’re the first to tell us it’s hot in the summer and drinking water is a good idea because they assume we’re that stupid and they’ll save lives. They can afford an electric car as a status symbol to save the planet while their gas range is off limits. They can and will start race violence in the streets (always great video) and go home to a secured, gated community with appropriate protective measures.

They consider themselves of extraordinary value and we should be damn grateful they exist.

And whenever we’re told about something that “the public doesn’t know” (as if we’re expectedly stupid), it’s because those who are lavishly paid declined to inform the American people for whatever partisan objective.

For them to call us “everyday”, “average” or “ordinary”, that translates as we are exploitable, expendable and don’t you forget it.

Don’t get me started on “workers”….

Most recently, Tea Party Patriots is offering an online “letter” that will be sent to President Trump on how and when he should re-open the United States economy after the Coronavirus pandemic.

Unlike a lot of petitions that just require the signer submit their email address, the Tea Party Patriots form also requests the signer’s physical address, phone number and if that signer would like future email updates. There is no direct solicitation for a donation, but that’s surely to come. What makes the Tea Party Patriots similar to other so-called conservative nonprofits is its being led by someone who portrays herself as a staunch supporter of President Trump.

The problem is that was not always the case….

How could conservative leader Jenny Beth Martin, preaching “consistency”, ever support someone like Donald Trump after what she said in front of the world in 2016?

Granted that was a unique election cycle but once the Republican nomination cycle was settled, that whole thing about rallying around out nominee should have gone into traditional effect. But too many unelected “leaders” declined to support Donald Trump, in some cases right up until Election Night, but since have declared themselves champions of the president and dictate to us when we need to ramp up that support.

Donald J. Trump has proven to be one of the most conservative presidents in our nation’s history and has withstood daily political and media attacks that would have sent many of these unelected leaders to a doctor’s office for stress reduction medication before curling up in a fetal position.

To date, few if any of our unelected leaders have issued a very public apology for the electoral damage they did to candidate Trump in 2016. Hillary Clinton and her supporters continue to ignorantly assert she really won the election because she won the popular vote by 2,868,686 votes. Imagine how many more votes Donald Trump might have earned had sore-loser, Cruzers sincerely rallied around the nominee instead of continuing to pummel him after the Republican convention formalities just because he didn’t meet their lofty definition of who is a conservative.

More frustrating are those so-called conservatives who did everything they could to derail Donald Trump’s campaign and were later absorbed into the administration.

The irony of the Tea Party Patriots “letter” to President Trump is who they claim to represent.

We, the undersigned, are job creators and job seekers. We are employers and employees. We are parents and grandparents concerned about the economic impact of this shutdown. We are struggling small business owners; managers who have recently laid off valuable staff or are fearful we may have to lay off our employees. We are innovators and inventors. Above all, we are Americans. And we know America can, and will, survive this economic interruption, with your guidance and leadership.
— Tea Party Patriots letter to President Trump

Tea Party Patriots is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit.

Nonprofits seldom “create” anything physical to sell like “job creators”. All they appear to do is utilize one tool God gave them: the mouth. As of their latest available IRS filing, the only “employees” they have are a select few and when you look at how much they bring in from donations from hard-working Americans and retirees, how much they pay themselves compared to the bang-for-the-buck, eyebrows should appropriately be raised.

If Jenny Beth Martin wants to borrow the “trust but verify” line from President Ronald Reagan, let’s go there.

Nonprofits need to raise money. We get that.

Opportunism is NOT a “conservative” trait and when unelected leaders speak for us and demand our loyalty via donor dollars, they should be consistent when it comes to loyalty.

Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots became a staunch supporter of President Trump despite the disunity she and others fostered through most of 2015 and 2016. She and others still have yet to acknowledge the error of their actions during that historic process, still have the nerve to tell all of us when and how to ramp up support for the president and it always appears to come back to being all about them.

President Trump doesn’t need to have a stack of letters delivered to the White House for a photo op and we all know that’s where this is going. One thing that appears to be consistent is Jenny Beth Martin’s Tea Party Patriots having a well-documented history of NOT putting donor money where their mouths are.

When the Tea Party Patriots threw its support last month behind Matt Bevin, the underdog conservative challenger trying to unseat top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell, President Jenny Beth Martin vowed the group would be “putting our money where our mouth is.”

So far, its super PAC has mustered just $56,000 worth of mailers in Kentucky on Bevin’s behalf — less than half the amount it has paid Martin in consulting fees since July.
— Washington Post, 4/26/14

Nonprofit exploitation of current events will happen, whether we’re talking the Tea Party Patriots, MoveOn.org or the Red Cross. The difference is most nonprofits don’t attempt to take credit for things they vehemently opposed, and later fundraise off it. It could be argued that the Tea Party Movement would have evolved to be an even more potent force as it was originally a collection of Republicans, Democrats and independents who were “taxed enough already”. When the liberal media labeled the Tea Party as “conservative” which was certified after opportunists co-opted that coalition of fed up Americans for their own self interests, conservatives became involuntarily linked with the words and actions of those opportunists.

The United States will recover from this recent challenge. We always do, despite the roadblocks erected by friend and foe.

But once Donald Trump was elected president, they’re the first to tell us why WE must support him.

Kellyanne Conway is one who made it into the White House.

For those looking for an in with Trump, White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway is a good bet. The first woman to run a winning presidential campaign, she has proved herself a convincing voice in the President’s ear. Although Conway has become a less frequent presence on cable news, she remains a tireless defender of the administration, never shying away from a fight.
— Fortune, 9/24/19

It wasn’t always that way….

During the primaries, Conway had helped run Keep the Promise, a Ted Cruz super pac, and that Trump had criticized Cruz’s wife’s appearance. “And yet Conway still goes to work for that man?”
— The New Yorker, 10/17/16

Kellyanne Conway was often quite critical of candidate Trump, especially when she could continue to raise personal facetime exposure on #FakeNews television.

…
One other important note: Kellyanne Conway is NOT the first woman to “run” a presidential campaign. She was essentially the late closer.

Without Corey Lewandowski’s leadership out of the box, who knows? Conway wasn’t the starter or middle relief. She inherited a gift: a brilliant candidate who took all the incoming flak from the Democrats and their media, literally did all the legwork and getting the enthusiasm needed was nothing that required the coordination of a campaign manager.

Conway is another of those whose convictions can be bought as long as there’s a professional and monetary benefit. It could be argued that the sentiments of her husband George today were pretty close to hers, that is until she could jump ship to the frontrunner and eventual winner.

Had Donald Trump lost the 2016 election, do you really think Kellyanne Conway would accept blame for the loss or would she pin it on the candidate and those who ran the campaign before her?

Then again, we are talking about those whose principles can be bought so having it both ways comes with the territory.

As he threatens to shut down the southern border, President Donald Trump is considering bringing on a “border” or “immigration czar” to coordinate immigration policy across various federal agencies, according to four people familiar with the discussions. Trump is weighing at least two potential candidates for the post: former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, according to the people, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the conversations publicly.
— Associated Press, 4/2/19

This is yet ANOTHER clear case of those who are supposed to be doing due diligence in vetting, failing on an epic scale.

Ken Cuccinelli should be nowhere near a position in an administration he tried, nationally, to derail.

Cuccinelli was successful in stealing Donald Trump’s delegates in Virginia and tried to do so nationwide.

Anti-Trump delegates disrupted the opening day of the Republican National Convention on Monday in a futile effort to force a vote to change convention rules to allow them to cast votes for someone other than presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a leading supporter of a roll call vote, threw his credentials to the floor and walked out, claiming party leaders rammed through the voice vote in favor of the convention rules.
— USA Today, 7/18/16

UPDATE

It’s unfortunate that President Trump is still not being properly advised as to whom is being brought into his administration as Cuccinelli is just one in a long line of Republican opportunists who’ve been rewarded, despite the damage they caused in 2016.

President Trump plans to install Ken Cuccinelli II as the new director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, placing the conservative activist and former Virginia attorney general at the head of the agency that runs the country’s legal immigration system, administration officials said Friday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has vowed to block Cuccinelli from getting confirmed for any position.
— Washington Post, 5/24/19

‘You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in”

Too many uninformed conservatives (who have the ear of our candidates because they donate to them) believe millennials should be running our campaigns because they have ‘less responsibilities’ and can devote more time to what has to be done on the ground. Not sure where that wisdom came from but it’s too bad the consistent bad results aren’t the massive red flag they should be.

Greg Bannon ran for United States Senate in North Carolina and lost.
Roy Moore ran for United States Senate in Alabama and lost.
Chris McDaniel ran for United States Senate in Mississippi and lost.
Corey Stewart ran for Governor and United States Senate and lost.
Paul Nehlen ran for United States Congress in Wisconsin and lost.

Now what do you think these candidates all have in common?

Arrogance, condescension and a group of North Carolina political operative millennials whose only real accomplishments are separating Republicans from their wallets.

Campaign millennials locate marks, demand and are paid top dollar despite actual accomplishments.

I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothing, participation trophies! While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they EARN a real trophy. I’m not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best… cause sometimes your best is not enough, and that should drive you to want to do better.
— James Harrison, former Pro Bowl linebacker

That’s assuming they really tried their best. Sadly, the “participation trophy” mentality has infected Republican politics.

Moore’s campaign paid two companies more than $730,000, according to Federal Election Commission records. It paid another $130,000 in total to a GOP consultant and another firm that lists his home in D.C. as its mailing address.
— Daily Beast, 2/28/18

These companies, despite a record of achievement, have successfully gotten a stranglehold in Virginia Republican politics and maybe even got Corey Stewart to part with a generous lump sum from a previously, well-earned warchest to feed the millennial losers.

Another Cruzer who sucked money out of Stewart’s campaign was a so-called “social media marketing” company with a very unremarkable website. Again, despite a prior track record of success, it (he?) was paid consistently.

Corey Stewart ran Donald Trump’s Virginia apparatus so we all know where he’s coming from. With that, why would he become associated with ANYONE associated with the very same Ted Cruz campaign that tried to steal Trump delegates in Virginia?

In August, U.S. Army veteran Spence Rogers sold his house in Tampa, Florida and bought an RV, and set off with his wife and three children for a cross-country adventure. Rogers, his family and the RV ended up in Iowa — a state he had never before visited — and instead of sightseeing, he signed on to be Cruz’s deputy director for Iowa.
— CBS News, 1/15/16

Sorry, who does that to their family?

Prior to Stewart’s gubernatorial run, Bob personally sat down with Corey. It ended with him saying he wanted Bob to work on his campaign. However in a subsequent phone call, Rogers didn’t seem to want him on the campaign, said he already had people shooting video with their “tablets” and iphones, and the directive of the candidate was never observed. The pattern of condescension from self-important millennials, despite an ROI of accomplishment is a cancer conservatives need to starting purging.

Stewart’s campaign was managed by Spence Rogers whose outfit, Grow To Win, collected $73,600 for his services. The Stewart campaign used Rick Shaftan’s Atlantic Media and Research for their TV and radio buys, spending $217,631 in the losing effort.
— Bearing Drift, 6/8/18

Why is this important? Again, the level of documented unprofessional behavior without favorable results.

Stephen Lonegan aide Rick Shaftan was fired after an explicit tirade to Talking Points Memo about Mr Booker’s unwillingness to ‘take advantage of the perks of office’ during interaction the Newark mayor had with a vegan from Oregon, concluding he tweets like ‘a gay guy.’
— Daily Mail, 10/12/13

Granted, Shaftan is older but has set the bad example and should have never been considered for races of monumental importance.

Fritsch made a series of controversial social media posts that drew negative attention to Stewart’s campaign. Another Stewart campaign aide, Rick Shaftan, has a history of social media posts that includes calling the NAACP a “more violent” version of the KKK and saying only a “fool” would start a business in a black neighborhood.
— Richmond Times-Dispatch, 9/17/18

Why anyone who supported Ted Cruz, especially when he and Ken Cuccinelli were trying to steal Donald Trump’s well-earned delegates, would be hired by staunch Trump conservative candidates is beyond logic.

And too many of the people absorbed into their campaigns in paid positions are more about flaunting themselves and instead of updating supporters on the state of the campaigns, are more about posting Facebook live videos of themselves going from one event to another and producing amateurish vertical videos for what are, in some cases, multi-million dollar national campaigns.

We’ve since had negative dealings with some of these people and we’d hope that any Virginia Republican in the future really take a look at their track record before cutting checks to any of these rude, condescending punks. Did we say we had negative dealings with some of them?

In sports, any team in rebuilding mode seeks personnel with a winning record. Very, very few teams hire coaches who can’t point to recent winning accomplishments, but in the world of politics our candidates are given poor advice as to who to hire and end up with consistent losers at the helm.

Here’s yet ANOTHER example.

Joe Arpaio ran for United States Congress in Arizona and lost.

How often do you see Democrat campaign “consultants” make it all about them during the campaign?

It could be argued that had these “Team Arpaio” consultants spent more time promoting the candidate instead of themselves, the outcome may have been different.

Many of us remember, before places of employment were transformed into millennial safe spaces, a time when younger workers would sit and listen during conservations in the workplace. It was because older employees were experienced and the youngsters thus had little of value to offer that conversation. But today, we’re told to value them despite their lack of experience and the results permeate throughout society, including our political campaigns.

Like so many other examples we’ve documented, until conservative Republicans learn to vet those they elevate and pay, we’ll continue to look the fool after losing another winnable election cycle.

As one millennial posted above, “rich people are often stupid. As an indicator valuable.” – and there’s no shortage of millennials who are clamouring to take their money.

Let’s stop losing important elections that affect our daily lives and freeze out political predator opportunists.