Historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote a fascinating column about Steve Schmidt’s recent revelations about important political figures. Like the good historian she is, she connects the dots.
At home, a big story broke over the weekend, reminding us that the ties of the Republican Party to Russians and the effect of those ties on Ukraine reach back not just to former president Trump, but at least to the 2008 presidential campaign of Arizona senator John McCain.
Late Saturday night, political strategist Steve Schmidt, who worked on a number of Republican political campaigns including McCain’s when he ran for president in 2008, began to spill what he knows about that 2008 campaign. Initially, this accounting took the form of Twitter threads, but on Sunday, Schmidt put the highlights into a post on a Substack publication called The Warning. The post’s title distinguished the author from those journalists and members of the Trump administration who held back key information about the dangerous behavior in Trump’s White House in order to include it in their books. The post was titled: “No Books. No Money. Just the Truth.”
Schmidt left the Republican Party in 2018, tweeting that by then it was “fully the party of Trump. It is corrupt, indecent and immoral. With the exception of a few governors…it is filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party’s greatest leaders…. Today the GOP has become a danger to our democracy and our values.” Schmidt helped to start The Lincoln Project, designed to sink Trump Republicans through attack ads and fundraising, in late 2019.
The apparent trigger for Schmidt’s accounting was goading from McCain’s daughter Meghan McCain, a sometime media personality who, after years of slighting Schmidt, recently called him a pedophile, which seems to have been a reference to the fact that a colleague with whom Schmidt started The Lincoln Project was accused of online sexual harassment of men and boys. Schmidt resigned over the scandal.
Schmidt was fiercely loyal to Senator McCain and had stayed silent for years over accusations that he was the person who had chosen then–Alaska governor Sarah Palin as McCain’s vice presidential candidate, lending legitimacy to her brand of uninformed fire-breathing radicalism, and about his knowledge of McCain’s alleged affair with a lobbyist.
In his tweetstorm, Schmidt set the record straight, attributing the choice of Palin to McCain’s campaign director and McCain himself, and acknowledging that the New York Times had been correct in the reporting of McCain’s relationship with the lobbyist, despite the campaign’s angry denial.
More, though, Schmidt’s point was to warn Americans that the mythmaking that turns ordinary people into political heroes makes us unwilling to face reality about their behavior and, crucially, makes the media unwilling to tell us the truth about it. As journalist Sarah Jones wrote in PoliticusUSA, Schmidt’s “broader point is how we, as Americans, don’t like to be told the truth and how our media so loves mythology that they work to deliver lies to us instead of holding the powerful accountable.”
Schmidt’s biggest reminder, though, was that the director of the 2008 McCain campaign was Richard (Rick) Davis, a founding partner of Davis Manafort, the political consulting firm formed in 1996. By 2003, the men were representing pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Yanukovych; in July 2004, U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov was murdered in Moscow for exposing Russian government corruption; and in June 2005, Manafort proposed that he would work for Putin’s government in former Soviet republics, Europe, and the United States by influencing politics, business dealings, and news coverage.
From 2004 to 2014, Manafort worked for Yanukovych and his party, trying to make what the U.S. State Department called a party of “mobsters and oligarchs” look legitimate. In 2016, Manafort went on to lead Donald Trump’s campaign, and the ties between him, the campaign, and Russia are well known. Less well known is that in 2008, Manafort’s partner Rick Davis ran Republican candidate John McCain’s presidential campaign.
Schmidt writes that McCain turned a blind eye to the dealings of Davis and Manafort, apparently because he was distracted by the fallout when the story of his personal life hit the newspapers. Davis and Manafort were making millions by advancing Putin’s interests in Ukraine and eastern Europe, working for Yanukovych and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Schmidt notes that “McCain spent his 70th birthday with Oleg Deripaska and Rick Davis on a Russian yacht at anchor in Montenegro.”
“There were two factions in the campaign,” Schmidt tweeted, “a pro-democracy faction and…a pro Russia faction,” led by Davis, who—like Manafort—had a residence in Trump Tower. It was Davis who was in charge of vetting Palin.
McCain was well known for promising to stand up to Putin, and Palin’s claim that she could counter the growing power of Russia in part because “[t]hey’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska” became a long-running joke (the comment about seeing Russia from her house came from a Saturday Night Live skit).
But a terrific piece in The Nation by Mark Ames and Ari Berman in October 2008 noted: “He may talk tough about Russia, but John McCain’s political advisors have advanced Putin’s imperial ambitions.” The authors detailed Davis’s work to bring the Balkan country of Montenegro under Putin’s control and concluded that either McCain “was utterly clueless while his top advisers and political allies ran around the former Soviet domain promoting the Kremlin’s interests for cash, or he was aware of it and didn’t care.”
Trump’s campaign and presidency, along with Putin’s deadly assault on Ukraine, puts into a new light the fact that McCain’s campaign manager was Paul Manafort’s business partner all the way back in 2008.
Note: Richardson has a list of sources at the end of her post. For some unknown reason, WordPress did not permit me to copy her notes. I inserted some but not all. Open the post to check the links.
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I wonder how many received or is getting Rubles from Russia.
How many Rublublicans?
Palin around with Putin
This is serious. A paper money trail for those who choose to follow it. Most of it leading back years to Putin. But also to China and Saudi Arabia. Any money port in the storm satisfies these jackals. Obvious why it is mandatory to bulldoze public schools, public libraries, voting rights, reproductive rights, healthcare/pandemic, ecosystem, affordable housing and so much more. A multi-layered perfect storm constructed quite deliberately and systematically. Designed to destroy the democracy that stands in the way of a final klepto-capital kingdom. Knowing what we are up against allows us to plan accordingly.
While the House passed Biden’s $40 billion dollar aid package to Ukraine, there were 57 no votes cast by Republicans, and none from Democrats. A number of Republicans appear to have no problem that Putin invaded a sovereign nation without any provocation. Some conservatives have been vocal about the no votes. Their so-called rationale is that we have hungry children in our country so we should not be sending aid to Ukraine.
Maybe those people are more concerned that American citizens can’t buy food for their babies than sending more weapons to Ukraine to bring us closer to WWIII and feed Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
Okay, okay, this is Republicans we’re talking about. But whatever their motivation, voting against sending Ukraine enough money to end homelessness in this country twice over was the right thing to do.
Still waiting for a single comment from you condemning Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
If you think those Republicans want to spend money on hungry children or any other social needs, I have a bridge to sell you—bargain price.
GREAT example of false framing, of what is known as the either/or or false dichotomy fallacy, Dienne. Do you write some of these yourself, or do you get them all from Russian state media? (Of course, there is no such thing now as Russian non-state media.)
Bernie Sanders and AOC supported funding for Ukraine.
Is dienne77 now accusing them of not caring about homelessness?
There is something very off when the very same person who voted to prevent a Democratic president from nominating a Supreme Court Justice whose presence on the court would cause them to start issuing decisions that the Republicans wouldn’t like is now making ugly innuendoes about how Bernie Sanders and AOC don’t care about homelessness like the Republicans do.
Voting against aid to Ukraine because you want to make sure the rich pay low taxes??
Should any of us be surprised that is something that our resident genocide-defender is defending?
What next? Will our resident Trump/Putin defender start defending cutting budgets for Medicare or clean water or public schools because “then there will be money for the homeless”?
Will our resident Trump/Putin defender oppose free college for all – Bernie’s signature program, because “that will be money for the homeless”?
Should anyone be surprised that our resident Trump/Putin defender is amplifying right wing talking points in which Republicans always say we CANNOT AFFORD Medicare for All because that money should be used something else. Like “homelessness”. Or cutting taxes on billionaires.
Typical right wing argument. Always lecturing that we CANNOT AFFORD something.
Bernie and AOC know that argument is just right wing talking points.
NYCPSP, you are right that Republicans play a shell game. We can’t spend money on X because we need it for Y. But we can’t fund Y because we need it for Z.
Diane,
I am less concerned about Republicans (who clearly identify themselves as supporting racist, anti-poor, pro-rich billionaire approved policies) than I am about the posts by those who in the past would have been clearly identified as “useful idiots” who are used by the far right to help empower the far right agenda.
Bob Shepherd pointed out the false framing and asked a good question: “Do you write some of these yourself, or do you get them all from Russian state media?
Here is a quote from the Russian propaganda news source this person seems to worship:
“The four representatives who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, all voted for the Ukraine war funding. They represent, not socialism, but the “left” wing of the State Department and CIA. They do not speak for the working class but for the privileged sections of the upper middle class, where the war frenzy of the US ruling class has found firm support.”
^^^https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/05/12/qdsd-m12.html
This site is so full of pro-Putin narratives blaming Democrats (never Republicans, never Putin) for everything bad in America.
It is no wonder that the person above has been completely brainwashed. The article also includes other gems like:
“The aims of the war are now clear. The bloodshed in Ukraine was not provoked to defend its technical right to join NATO, but rather was prepared, instigated and massively escalated in order to destroy Russia as a significant military force and to overthrow its government. Ukraine is a pawn in this conflict, and its population is cannon fodder.”
“The Democratic Party has emerged as the war party of American imperialism. There is no distinction in that regard between the “CIA Democrats”—those who entered Congress in 2018 direct from the CIA, the Pentagon or the State Department—or those nominally adhering to the “left,” the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.”
Brainwashing. Most of us can see it, but there are other folks who are susceptible to this.
Bob Shepherd, maybe reading that link will help answer your question!
Insanity. This is what happens when schools stop teaching critical thinking skills to students — they believe the evidence-free nonsense they read on these Russia-propaganda sites.
Thanks for the link, NYC PSP. Yup. The Putin party line. Meanwhile, the devastation from Putin’s war of choice continues minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day. Breathtakingly criminal. Laying waste unnecessarily because of one old man’s imperialist delusions.
I’ve had a many-decades-long interest in new religious movements/cults throughout history, ever since a high-school girlfriend fell into the clutches of Scientologists. Leftist Putinism in the U.S. and elsewhere is just another cult. And the Enlightened Master is never wrong to the cultist, no matter how extreme he (it’s usually but not always a he) becomes. Ideologues are able to “rationalize” anything, absolutely anything, and cultists cannot be argued down. There are still Heaven’s Gate followers who are waiting for the Mother Ship to come pick them up, too.
We have hungry Republican politicians (aka, children)
Odd the hungry children were suddenly the issue.
Yeah, very weird to have Republicans concerned at all abou tthis.
Rand Paul just blocked the $40 billion is aid to Ukraine. Russian oligarchs have been sending dark money to politicians, particularly the Republican Party.https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/09/gop-operatives-funneling-russian-money-trump-latest-foreign-straw-donor-scheme/
This also goes into the context around Schmidt.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/lincoln-project-steve-schmidt-john-weaver
FLERP, did you read Schmidt’s article? He said that Rick Davis picked Palin, not him.
When I read something that alleges what Schmidt says below, I always have a problem.
Does anyone else see the three words I’m talking about?
Schmidt’s “broader point is how we, as Americans, don’t like to be told the truth and how our media so loves mythology that they work to deliver lies to us instead of holding the powerful accountable.”
HINT:
Results of 2020 presidential election.
Biden: 81,284,666 votes
Trump: 74,224,319 votes
I also have a problem with “our media so loves mythology that they work to deliver lies to us”
I think that allegation is total BS except:
While Schmidt’s apparent opinion may be correct when it comes to media OpEds and opinion pieces, it doesn’t apply to most news reporting where bias may be noticeable but not the lies. Most if not all traditionally news sticks to the facts and not lies. Spreading lies seems to be what social media does best.
Lloyd, you make a good point.
I suppose “deliver lies” isn’t quite accurate. But the media’s reporting legitimizes and amplifies lies.
The supposedly mainstream (or “liberal”) media reports as “fact” that a Republican who they present as totally credible says something (which happens to be a lie). Then the media reports as “fact” that someone on “the other side” – who is often presented as some partisan with an agenda – “disagrees” or “takes issue”.
The right wing media reports the facts that Republicans are saying as absolutely true, and anyone who disagrees with them is a liar.
When the mainstream media does this “both sides” reporting, what many folks hear from the media is “one side says that the Republicans tell the truth and the Democrats are liars, the other side says that it’s impossible to know.” It isn’t surprising that Republican lies gain so much credibility and Democrat truths lose credibility with that kind of reporting.
It also shocks me how often the media presents stories using the right wing framing. If you only amplify the cherry picked facts that support the Republicans and leave out all the other facts that contradict whatever narrative the Republicans want to amplify, it is tantamount to “delivering lies”.
I suppose the more accurate way of putting is that the media no longer prioritizes delivering truth.
Diane’s superb skills at headline writing are evident in her many posts. The following headline writer has a similar skill and the topic tangentially relates to the post above.
“Mike Flynn believes he’s being ‘persecuted’ because he’s getting fined by the U.S. Army for being on Russia’s payroll.”
Agreed!
Thanks, Linda. I learned headline writing in my first job out of college as an editorial assistant at a small political magazine. The most common was “Five Minutes to Midnight in….” Fill in the blank. Brazil? Venezuela? Chile? Always South America, for some reason.
“Five minutes…” – a great beginning to your success.
In 2008, in her first major public address after being selected as her party’s vice presidential candidate, Ms. Palin revealed her astonishing degree of ignorance of evolutionary biology, saying,
Sometimes these dollars go to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good—things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not!
A day or two later, her running mate, Senator John McCain repeated this talking point. The bit about the fruit flies wasn’t just another piece of rural idiocy from the former beauty queen. It was written for her by McCain’s campaign. What she said was the campaign’s official line.
This leads one to wonder: How does someone get to be a United States senator or the governor of one of our fifty states without knowing that fruit flies are the most common subjects of genetic research and that much of what we know of genetic mechanisms comes from studying them? Anyone with the slightest interest in science, with the slightest curiosity about how the universe around them works, would surely know that. Anyone who occasionally read books or magazine or newspaper articles about scientific topics would know that. We are at a point in the history of our species at which we have sequenced the genomes of ourselves and of many of the creatures with which we share this planet; when we are developing genetic therapies for the over 4,500 diseases with a known genetic component; when we have developed techniques allowing for the creation of genetic chimeras, creatures with genes borrowed from other species; when we are at the brink of controlling our own evolution and possibly, even, of creating new human subspecies. And yet, at such a time, those who would lead us know nothing, NOTHING AT ALL, about genetics, not even what is known by, say, someone who has recently completed an elementary school science curriculum, someone who is as informed as a third grader.
So, the Repugnican embrace of ignorance (“I love the uneducated,” says Donald Trump) is nothing new.
McCain ran on, in part, a Constitutional Amendment to ban all abortion. But then he waffled on this and expressed his support for exemptions for rape, incest and life of the mother and accused his primary opponent George Bush, Jr., of opposing those.
There are no intellectual requirements for being a Senator or governor.
Its not even clear that either office precludes brain death.
In fact, the facts would suggest otherwise.
The founders made lots and lots of mistakes. This was one of them.
Bob: I had the same reaction when Proxmire (I think it was he) complained about a government grant studying the “sex habits of butterflies.” Turns out my first cousin was an entomologist who studied exactly that for DuPont, trying to attract specific insects using synthetic fermions to select pests while leaving beneficial insects alone.
Politicians are fond of making hay with some hair brained statement, then going blithely on like they were never foolish.
Well said, Roy!