The Plutocrat-funded Organizers Behind the Astroturf Anti-lockdown Demonstrations
We begin with the revival of the phony grassroots Astroturf movement behind the Tea Party whose co-founder Mark Meckler is now one of the organizers behind the anti-lockdown demonstrations against Democratic governors. Joining us is Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the new corporate watchdog group True North Research who served as a senior advisor in all three branches of the federal government and has an op-ed in today’s New York Times, “Who’s Behind the Reopen Protests?: They are anything but spontaneous“. We discuss how these Astroturf organizers and their plutocratic backers are back at it again but this time it’s not just the Koch brothers but the DeVos family sponsoring demonstrations in Michigan. Then there is one of Trump’s biggest backers Robert Mercer who is behind the Convention of States, which seeks to convene a Constitutional Convention to rewrite the Constitution as a plutocrats wish-list. They recruit activists at gun shows while their offshoot Meckler’s Citizens for Self-Governance, promotes these demonstrations online so that their recruits show up at these demonstrations heavily armed. With America facing three calamities; a deadly contagion, an erratic president and a well-funded right-wing infrastructure, the hacks and hirelings of the plutocrats at Fox News and in the Republican Party appear determined to divert popular anger away fromTrump’s bungling into reactionary populism which blames Democrats for the economic hardship from the lockdowns rather than the virus.