FAKE NEWS ALERT: GOP donors over moon with Trump ... by gimleteye

Today, the narrative pushed by GOP operatives is that top Republican donors are frustrated with Congressional leadership and withholding donations because the Republican Congress is face-planting and can't get anything done.

It's a fake narrative. FAKE NEWS.

In fact, the GOP donor class is over the moon with Trump. It can say one thing and do another with ease, as a result of Citizens United, the US Supreme Court decision that turned the campaign finance in the US into a corporate piñata.

"The establishment wing of the Republican Party is reportedly being hit by a surging revolt from their donors — from whom the establishment gets its financial lifeblood — amid the failure of GOP leadership to get its agenda through Congress. According to Politico, mega-donor Thomas Wachtell urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to “just do something” at a recent L.A. dinner. McConnell reportedly responded by noting that passing legislation takes time, but such a plea was not greeted favorably by attendees."

Breitbart quoting Politico: neat. What is the evidence that the GOP donor class is over the moon with Trump?

Consider: Trump's Department of Interior Chief Ryan Zinke (yes, the one taking private jet trips at taxpayers' expense) hired as deputy assistant secretary, Todd Willens, who during the W. administration managed under cover of darkness to have Everglades National Park removed from the list of endangered world heritage sites.

An Interior Department official who removed the Everglades from the United Nations’ endangered-sites list during the Bush administration is back.

The Interior Department announced last week that Todd Willens, a longtime Washington-based lobbyist and congressional staffer, will take an assistant deputy secretary job under Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

In 2007, Willens urged the United Nations World Heritage Committee to remove Everglades National Park from the list of endangered natural and cultural sites over the objections of the committee’s scientific advisory group.(Official who nixed Everglades from UN endangered-site list gets Trump job), July 11, 2017 Miami Herald

By all accounts, long-serving DOI staffers are profoundly demoralized; music to polluters' ears. Zinke is one of the nation's top environmental officials charged by Trump to reverse policies acknowledging the reality of and responding to threats from climate change.

Then, there is EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who has turned the federal regulatory agency into a sophisticated workshop for regulatory dismantling.

Who would benefit from a decision like Willen's, Zinke and Pruitt: Big Sugar in Florida, that's who. What we know from Big Sugar's donation program is that oligarchs control Florida's GOP establishment by nesting third party political action committees like Russia dolls. By the time these committees fill with millions of dollars, aimed to support GOP candidates from Marco Rubio to Rick Scott and others -- from favored state legislators to county commissioners -- the trail leading back to the donors has either disappeared or been smudged beyond recognition.

Big Sugar oligarch Pepe Fanjul embraces FL Senator Marco Rubio following the kickoff of Rubio's GOP presidential nomination campaign. Trump derided Rubio and FL GOP voters agreed. Rubio carried scarcely a quarter of the primary vote in 2016.

Zinke this morning is in South Florida where protesters will greet his arrival. The battle to protect the Everglades continues on another front: fracking. Both the oil industry and Big Sugar share the aim to de-legitimize the protections afforded national parks and to put public lands to more "useful" purposes like generating corporate profits from polluting activities.

That's why the disinformation campaign can work: have one group of puppeteers say that GOP donors are withholding money, scaring the bejesus out of any Republican who might moderate the party's relationship with Trump -- the most chaotic president in US history -- and his anti-environmental objectives while plowing massive dollars into deep and dark political action committees to guarantee that so long as Trump is president, the sun is shining.

US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse put it succinctly:

Dark money destroyed the integrity of our public debate. Secret front groups pollute the political discourse. Each year our planet sets new heat records, but Republicans refuse to acknowledge reality and continue to give billions in handouts to the fossil fuel industry. It’s a national disgrace.

Honestly, could Republican oligarchs from the polluter class have it any better than right now?