—
They owe their Dark-money donors.
Trump knows that he owes them — that he owes his regime to the NRA’s record-breaking Ad campaign:
On Monday, President Donald Trump gave an address on the Las Vegas shooting on Sunday night that left at least 58 people dead and more than 515 people injured, according to The New York Times. The address, though measured, failed to address gun violence as well as the disturbing trend of mass shootings in America. In a time when America needs to have a conversation on gun safety legislation more than ever (this is the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, after all), Trump's seemingly calculated silence on gun violence has many people wondering, how much did the NRA donate to Trump?
In April, just a few months after Trump became president, he gave a speech to the NRA that firmly cemented his alliance to the organization and gun rights groups. Trump said, according to PBS:
You have a true friend and champion in the White House.
[...] it only made sense that Trump would give a glowing address to the organization [NRA] that donated about $21 million dollars to his presidential campaign, according to NBC News.
www.romper.com — Oct 2, 2017
With Dark-money Ads like these, no wonder the GOP stands in the way of new Disclosure Bills:
According to a report by Open Secrets and Trace, the NRA gave $30.3 million to Trump's campaign. A month before the election, NBC reported that $9.6 million (of the then-$21 million contribution) had been spent on ads and spreading a pro-Trump message, while the majority — $12 million — had been spent towards attacking his opponent Hillary Clinton, the most the NRA has ever spent on an election in history. So, where is the NRA getting all this money? According to the NRA’s website, a one-year membership costs only $40, but, in 2015, The Washington Post reported that the NRA had about five million members, equaling out to $200 million a year, just from membership dues. That’s not even counting donations or any other type of fundraising efforts.
[...]
www.bustle.com — Oct 2, 2017
First there was No Russian money! — until the NRA was forced to admit at least 20 Russian donors:
In the 2016 election cycle, the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action — its dark money affiliate — reported spending over $35 million on election-related activities (more than any other dark money group) without the reporting the source of its funds. Curiously, the ILA leapfrogged its way to the top of that list, after spending a mere $13 million the previous cycle and $9 million the cycle before that. We can only wonder where the influx of funds is coming from.
[...]
First the NRA stated categorically that it did not accept money from Russian donors for election-related purposes. Then it said it had a single Russian donor. And then it acknowledged that 20 Russian citizens had collectively donated just over $2,500, mostly in “membership dues and additional magazine subscriptions,”and “only for lawful purposes.”
[...]
Even if we take at face value the NRA’s blanket denials that there was any Russian money spent on its effort to support the Trump campaign, the fact that the American public knows so little about who funds campaign spending is a problem that the NRA has helped to create. For years, the NRA aggressively pushed for donor secrecy, fighting against any rules that require additional disclosure of the sources of campaign funds. That disclosure that was intended, in the words of the Supreme Court, to allow “the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.
www.nbcnews.com — May 4, 2018
What ever happened to the Russian spy, Maria Butina’s NRA infiltration case, anyway?
What was the NRA’s relationship with the Trump campaign and Russia?
Since the 2016 presidential election, there have been numerous but vague data points indicating the Russians might be trying to infiltrate the National Rifle Association as a way to connect with Republicans and Trump’s campaign.
Mueller’s report, however, didn't shed any light on the subject, despite media reports that the special counsel was poking around on the subject.
[...]
McClatchy later reported that FBI counterintelligence investigators were investigating whether Torshin laundered money from Russia through the NRA to help fund Trump’s campaign — the NRA spent $30 million to support Trump in 2016, triple what it spent supporting Mitt Romney in 2012.
Despite the investigators’ interest, however, the gun rights group was not mentioned a single time in Mueller’s report. And Butina's case was handled by prosecutors in Washington, not Mueller’s team.
www.politico.com — April, 19, 2019
That seems disquieting. Mustn’t mess with the NRA, apparently.
—
Well here are a couple of Senators willing to call out Republican stonewalling for what it is ...
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to "immediately" call the Senate back into session to pass a gun safety bill.
"Mitch McConnell should bring the Senate back into session immediately to pass HR 8, the gun safety bill that has already passed the House. That's a first step to addressing our serious gun violence epidemic," Sanders tweeted.
Sanders' Senate colleague Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) called on McConnell to do the same on CBS's "Face the Nation."
[...]
The bill Sanders is calling for a vote on, H.R.8 or the "Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019," would require a background check on every gun sale or transfer.
It was passed by the Democratic-controlled House in February.
thehill.com — Aug 4, 2019
2014 Cycle donations from the NRA:
McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) |
Senate |
$9,900 |
That we know of. It seems that Moscow Mitch’s money-man “constituent” Oleg Deripaska — besides moving his Aluminum plant Rusal to Kentucky, thanks to Moscow Mitch’s insistence on passing at least 1 Bill — Oleg will have Millions left over to direct to the NRA’s dark-money fund ILA. Or, however else that Putin sees fit for 2020 …
When President Trump’s Treasury Department proposed lifting sanctions on companies tied to the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in December Secretary Steven Mnuchin vowed that the firms would be forced to “significantly diminish Deripaska’s ownership and sever his control.”
But, the New York Times is now reporting that Treasury’s promises were illusory: “The deal contains provisions that free [Deripaska] from hundreds of millions of dollars in debt while leaving him and his allies with majority ownership of his most important company.”
[...]
This is a dark twist in a sub-plot of Trump administration’s love story with the Russia of Vladimir Putin. Deripaska has been called “Putin’s favorite industrialist” and also had contentious and longstanding ties to now-jailed former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Manafort — who had received $10 million loan from Deripaska — offered to give the aluminum magnate “private briefings” on the state of the presidential race in the summer of 2016.
[...]
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell held together a coalition of 42 Republicans, including erstwhile Russia hawks Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), to keep the lifting of sanctions on track.
www.rollingstone.com — Jan 22, 2109
It is truly a disgrace that this weasel gets to single-handedly hold the American people hostage, to his special interests Agenda — however secret and self-serving (and foreign scripted) they may be:
Hold an UP or Down Vote on HR 8, ‘Mr Kentucky Reaper’. The American people are being mowed down on a daily basis because of your stonewalling NRA-complicity.
The cost of Mitch’s NRA-Protection racket is TOO DAMN High!
Enough already Dammit. Hold the damn Vote!
Let the American Victims of this NRA-enabled violence decide.
—