The Trump campaign has begun its final election push: A fascist disinformation campaign featuring an array of outright hoaxes and faked videos. It will have widespread Republican support and, once again, the support of ultra-rich Republican donors whose cash reserves are doing just fine during an uncontrolled nationwide pandemic and who do not give a damn about any of Trump's sabotages of government as long as he lowers their taxes yet again.
Politico reports that the newest Republican donor weapon will be a super PAC white supremace-ly named "Preserve America." It will be headed by Swift Boat propagandist Chris LaCivita, one of the Republican strategists who pushed hardest into the party's new reliance on hoaxes and misinformation. It is "expected" to be funded by the fascism-promoting Sheldon Adelson and Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus.
The exact rationale for the super PAC is somewhat blurred, at least in Politico's reporting. It is supposedly meant as counter to "frustration within [Trump's] orbit" over Trump's campaign going dark on television again while being easily outspent by the Biden campaign, a possible sign of emerging cash problems. If that were the case, however, Trump's filthy rich fascist supporters could simply hand Trump's super PAC more money rather than founding their own version. Politico says "senior Trump aides" have been annoyed that the Trump super PAC, America First Action, has been unsuccessful in their attacks on Democratic challenger Joe Biden—well, yes, but you can't claim that America First has been doing anything but amplifying blowhard Trump's own attacks. You can blame the angry Hate Pumpkin for those failures.
The usual reason for establishing one of these mega-funded new super PACs this close to an election—one to be headed by a notoriously ethics-averse partisan hack, no less—is to mount attacks so vile and toxic that the candidate's own campaign and committees need to be distanced from them, but this is the Trump team we're talking about. There's no attack so racist, so dishonest, or so outright fraudulent that Trump's own collection of grifters and family members wouldn't do it themselves.
What could LaCivita possibly produce that Trump will not sloppily embrace on his own Twitter feed? Unless LaCivita intends to go full flag-waving neo-Nazi on Sheldon Adelson and Bernie Marcus' dime, there's no attack too "low" to be funded by Trump's own team.
So, to be honest, this smells vaguely like a grift of some sort. Or a fight between Republican billionaires, one in which they all are in complete agreement that Trump's lawbreaking, corruption, and fascism is an acceptable price to pay for tax cuts but nonetheless have found themselves split on just what racism should be included in which ads to properly rile up supporting rubes.
What we do know is that "Preserve America" is producing commercials themed around "law and order," which is to say commercials that portray protests against police violence as a threat to America and that suggest Biden is secretly in league with anti-police radicals, and so on and so forth. That and the name, which strongly echos white nationalist themes of "saving" America from an uprising of minority groups, both suggest the new team intends to produce race-baiting attacks masquerading as pro-police segments.
Funded by some of the top names in Republicanism, of course. Just in case you were unclear on whether Republicans were merely tolerating Trump's racism, dishonesty, and corruption as opposed to actively conspiring with it.
