Mega-donor urged Bannon not to resign

[Mr. Sparkle]

Source: Politico

The man credited with honing Donald Trump’s populist message and guiding him into the White House has grown frustrated amid continued infighting in the West Wing, so much so that in recent weeks a top donor had to convince him to stay in his position.

Five people, including a senior administration official and several sources close to the president, tell POLITICO that Bannon, one of Trump’s closest advisers, has clashed with the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who’s taken on an increasingly prominent portfolio in the West Wing. Bannon has complained that Kushner and his allies are trying to undermine his populist approach, the sources said.

Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, a longtime Bannon confidante who became a prominent Trump supporter during the campaign, urged Bannon not to resign. “Rebekah Mercer prevailed upon him to stay,” said one person familiar with the situation. Another person familiar with the situation, a GOP operative who talks to Mercer, said: “Bekah tried to convince him that this is a long-term play.”

snip ..

The “big fight is between nationalists and the West Wing Democrats,” said a person familiar with Bannon’s thinking.

“You have these New York interlocutors who are just not political and who want to think that they’re above the way Washington thinks, but if anybody is allied on delivering on things that Trump ran on, it’s Bannon and Reince and the vice president,” said the Republican who has spoken to Bannon recently.

snip ..

“If Bannon leaves the White House, Bekah’s access and influence shrinks dramatically,” said the GOP operative who talks to Mercer.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/bannon-resign-mercer-trump-236939

[Snarkoleptic]

1. Actually, Bannon was NOT demoted!

[tanyev]

2. "West Wing Democrats" LOLOLOL

[Hortensis]

5. Lol! Well, Bannon/Mercer ARE far right of 85% of conservatives.

They're like their far-left counterparts who insist Sanders is really just a typical Democrat corporatist pretending to be a radical (and of course, he and many of his followers insist Democrats are really just corporatist conservatives).

But, in spite of these ubiquitous ideological insults, these far-right nutcases who rode Trump into power really DO make normal hard-right Republicans look relatively moderate in comparison.

Mercer really seems to be another Howard Hughes billionaire fruitcake, only one who wants government "shrunk down to the size of a pinhead." He much prefers cats to people, so one could not expect him to be dissuaded by the millions of deaths that would ultimately occur as a result of removal of stabilizing structure.

And look at his chosen agent, Bannon. Judging by his own statements and the people he quotes, Bannon wants to force all western governments into collapse, starting with ours, of course -- in order to destroy secularism and liberalism and rebuild as white supremacist, fascistic, Christian nationalist states. He's open to joining with right-wing Muslims to rid the world of secularism, though.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

10. Very interesting HuffPo HighLine article on Mercers (w Breitbart/Bannon)

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/mercers/
Long interesting article with fascinating details. (emphasis added to excerpts below)

The Blow-It-All-Up Billionaires

When politicians take money from megadonors, there are strings attached. But with the reclusive duo who propelled Trump into the White House, there’s a fuse.

Last December, about a month before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Rebekah Mercer arrived at Stephen Bannon’s office in Trump Tower, wearing a cape over a fur-trimmed dress and her distinctive diamond-studded glasses. Tall and imposing, Rebekah, known to close friends as Bekah, is the 43-year-old daughter of the reclusive billionaire Robert Mercer. If Trump was an unexpected victor, the Mercers were unexpected kingmakers. More established names in Republican politics, such as the Kochs and Paul Singer, had sat out the general election. But the Mercers had committed millions of dollars to a campaign that often seemed beyond salvaging.

That support partly explains how Rebekah secured a spot on the executive committee of the Trump transition team. She was the only megadonor to frequent Bannon’s sanctum, a characteristically bare-bones space containing little more than a whiteboard, a refrigerator and a conference table. Unlike the other offices, it also had a curtain so no one could see what was happening inside. Before this point, Rebekah’s resume had consisted of a brief run trading stocks and bonds (including at her father’s hedge fund), a longer stint running her family’s foundation and, along with her two sisters, the management of an online gourmet cookie shop called Ruby et Violette. Now, she was compiling lists of potential candidates for a host of official positions, the foot soldiers who would remake (or unmake) the United States government in Trump’s image.

...

Robert’s middle daughter Rebekah shares similar political beliefs, but she is also very articulate and, therefore, able to act as her father’s mouthpiece. (Neither Rebekah nor Robert responded to detailed lists of questions for this article.) Under Rebekah’s leadership, the family foundation poured some $70 million into conservative causes between 2009 and 2014.[1] 1. According to The Washington Post, the family donated $35 million to conservative think tanks and at least to $36.5 million to individual GOP races. The first candidate they threw their financial weight behind was Arthur Robinson, a chemist from Oregon who was running for Congress. He was best known in his district for co-founding an organization that is collecting thousands of vials of urine as part of an effort it says will “revolutionize the evaluation of personal chemistry.” Robinson didn’t win, but he got closer than expected, and the Mercers got a taste of what their money could do. In 2011, they made one of their most consequential investments: a reported $10 million in a new right-wing media operation called Breitbart.

That the family gravitated toward Andrew Breitbart’s upstart website was no accident. The Mercers are “purists,” says Pat Caddell, a former aide to Jimmy Carter who has shifted to the right over the years. They believe Republican elites are too cozy with Wall Street and too soft on immigration, and that American free enterprise and competition are in mortal danger. “Bekah Mercer might be prepared to put a Democrat in Susan Collins’ seat simply to rid the party of Susan Collins,” a family friend joked by way of illustrating her thinking. So intensely do the Mercers want to unseat Republican senator John McCain[2] 2. Some have speculated that McCain may have angered the Mercers in 2014, when the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, on which McCain was the ranking member at the time, asserted that Renaissance had used complex financial methods to underestimate its taxes by $6 billion. Renaissance has told The New York Times its tax practices are lawful. that they gave $200,000 to support an opposing candidate who once held a town hall meeting to discuss chemtrails—chemicals, according to a long-standing conspiracy theory, that the federal government is spraying on the public without its knowledge. In short, unlike other donors, the Mercers are not merely angling to influence the Republican establishment—they want to obliterate it. One source told me that, in a meeting with Sheldon Adelson and Robert Mercer a few years ago, the casino mogul asked Robert if he was familiar with certain big Republican players. According to the source, Robert shut him down. “I don’t know any of your fancy friends,” he replied, “and I haven’t got any interest in knowing them.”

....

[Hortensis]

13. Yes. "The Blow-It-All-Up Billionaires." Obliterate

the Republican and Democratic establishments, thus destroying our government. That's them.

Who knows, in spite of Mercer's denial of global warming, perhaps he sees the destruction of a major industrial polluter ("he wants it to all fall down...&quot as a way of taking care of that problem, as well as happily obliterating a couple hundred million sponges on the worthy wealthy like him.

After all, this is a person who believes that exposure to nuclear radiation has made Japanese who didn't die of it healthier. He's disgusted that we didn't steal the Iraqi people's one big natural resource, oil, leaving the nation to sink into destitution. He believes the Clintons have murdered a bunch of people, and god knows what other demented Hill-hate, probably all of it.

New Yorker: "Several former colleagues of Mercer’s said that his views are akin to Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Magerman told me, “Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.”

From what I've read, it sounds like this creep is several critical parts short of a human being. A very nasty and dangerous man.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. Clearly, Ms. Mercer Is A Buffoon

Why does my spidey sense detect a silverspoon twit?

[Solly Mack]

15. I believe the "real" family money was made after she was born but she assumed the role

of silver spoon twit quite readily.

Upper middle class to 1%. Always entitled, and now with power money.

[Dorn]

4. Isn't this a conflict of interest?

Imagine you work for Apple's president and I am a big investor in Microsoft. You decide to leave, but I convince you to stay.

Hmmm, what might I want ?

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

6. Mercer is of a hedge fund family...

... so what does daddy want?

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-11/rebekah-mercer-daughter-of-major-donor-named-to-trump-role

[still_one]

7. The whole Mercer family is garbage. I hope a lot of bad things happen to these evil people

[MedusaX]

8. Big Daddy Mercer

Is on the hook for some big IRS $$$$$

However, 45 can encourage the IRS to focus on things other than collecting from Mercer...


It is interesting to note that the private employee investment fund (Medallion) associated with Mercer's Renaissance Technology Fund significantly outperforms Renaissance... which consistently outperforms all of its competitors.....

How? Why through the use of technology and a network of the biggest baddest supercomputers on the planet...,,
And of course some good old fashioned Russian Luck....
Like bringing Alexi Kononenko on board and then experiencing greater & more consistent gains than ever before....
And of course, making great investments in telecommunications companies owned by an oligarch (Mikhail Fridman) who happens to own alfa bank

[turbinetree]

9. Every time I hear the word Mercer's I think of John Roberts, Samual Alito, Clarence Thomas,

Anthonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy-------------Dark Money

[PatrickforO]

11. The sooner Bannon is forced out the better.

Because 'Bekah' Mercer is a very, very dangerous right wing-nut. He's out, she loses influence. Everybody wins.

[Initech]

12. Follow the money, follow the money.

The sooner the big billionaire donors are arrested for conspiring to commit treason the better off we'll be.

[KittyWampus]

14. The big fight is between "nationalists" & Democrats? White Supremacists, they mean.

Nationalists is just a euphamism for White Supremacists.