BY  SCOTT LEMIEUX

ON MAY 2, 2024 

It is unclear what political impact RFK Jr.’s ridiculous campaign will have, but one thing it will do is get a lot of cranks and cronies lucrative no-work jobs:

As the presidential election was heating up in February, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign made an announcement to staff: Charles Eisenstein, the director of messaging, would spend weeks in Costa Rica, “reconnecting with spirit.” While there, he recorded a podcast interview in which he said some of his boss’s ideas were “actually repugnant” but that Kennedy was still the best candidate.

In recognition of his sojourn in the Central American country, Eisenstein took a pay cut for working less: rather than earning $21,000 a month, he started billing the campaign $14,000. 

The episode highlights the unusual nature of the Kennedy operation, which even by the standards of freewheeling political campaigns stands out for its eclectic mix of characters, poor financial planning and what some staffers describe as a dysfunctional, unprofessional atmosphere.

Kennedy, 70 years old, has surrounded himself with aides and advisers who have little political experience and, in some instances, histories that might have raised eyebrows on other campaigns. Former staffers complained that some top officials are more focused on raising their own profiles than helping the candidate, among other concerns. As a result of the disorder, several people have quit.

“I had felt left behind by both parties and thought someone like RFK could be the answer,” said Kiera Hall, who left the campaign recently and said she doesn’t know whom she will vote for. Kennedy’s campaign was rife with “grifters and opportunists,” she said. “If someone’s going to do that to their campaign, how do I know they won’t do that in their administration?”

No wonder Silicon Valley tech bros were RFK-curious before inevitably going back to Trump — real kindred spirits here in a lot of ways, granting that Trump takes a lot more for himself. 

And one reason he’s become pro-insurrection is that it’s his own staffers who have been or might be in the clinker if sedition is actually punished:

Kennedy largely aligns with Democratic policies but is more in line with Republicans on such topics as immigration and guns. He also recently indicated he would be open to pardoning Donald Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a promise Trump has made. Several staff and consultants on the Kennedy campaign were either at the Capitol on Jan. 6, made sympathetic comments about those convicted, or questioned the results of the 2020 election.

Ah, the great opportunist-grifter-fascist cycle of life.

……………

Also by Scott Lemieux:

Russian ratfucking in 2016 was hugely consequential

BY  SCOTT LEMIEUX

ON MAY 4, 2024 

Hope Hicks testified yesterday that the Trump campaign initially saw the release of the Access Hollywood tape as an existential threat to his campaign:

Gasps were heard in the overflow courtroom when Hope Hicks was called as a witness on Friday in Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, an audible sign of the anticipation as Mr. Trump’s former press secretary and White House communications director took the stand. Her testimony ended the trial’s third week in dramatic fashion.

In nearly three hours on the stand, Ms. Hicks described the impact on Mr. Trump’s campaign of the so-called “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump bragged about grabbing women’s genitals. As soon as the tape was disclosed in October 2016, Ms. Hicks said, she knew it would be “a massive story.”

This also was the only point at which elite Republicans seriously considered abandoning Trump. What bailed Trump out, of course, was the intervention of Russian intelligence and Julian Assange:

Trump and his goons and apologists have been remarkable effective at selling the idea that “Russiagate” was somewhere between a hoax and a triviality, although this is plainly false. But this is the starkest example of its importance: “Russiagate was a hoax” depends on pretending that #2 and #3 were independent events. when #3 was in fact a (highly successful!) strategic response to #2. Precisely because the Podesta inbox was leaked right after the Access Hollywood tape, it is impossible to even try to isolate the effects of either like one can with the Comey letter. But it is enormously likely that without the hack and strategic leak that Clinton wins. And indeed the impact of the Comey is related to the Russian/Wikileaks ratfucking, by keeping up a constant stream of stories implying that Clinton was corrupt linked to emails. 

And it’s also important to observe here that the media treating “Donald Trump admitted to sexual assault on a live mic” and a bunch of stories like “Chelsea Clinton did not have a high opinion of David Brock” as scandals of roughly similar importance is not inevitable, but was a choice the nation’s elite political press made. Which needless to say is why they also have serious incentives to downplay the impact of Russian ratfucking — they were, after all, willful collaborators.