Adventures In Trump-World: Ohio

JD Vance sold his soul to Satan... and the guy makes my skin crawl. He's running for the open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio now, which has a plethora of terrible choices and one truly wonderful one (Morgan Harper, the only progressive in the race.) But my antipathy towards Vance isn't the only reason I was so attracted to the ad (above) Club for Growth started running against him in October. If you haven't already, please watch it; it's only 30 seconds and no DWT reader will find anything offensive about it.

Keep in mind that some of the wealthiest and most despicable Nazis in America finance Club for Growth's fascist campaigns:

• Richard Uihlein- $27 million

• Jeff Yass- $19.2 million

• Thomas Klingenstein- $3 million

• Virginia James- $3 million

• Richard Gaby- $2.3 million

Trump is unlikely to ever endorse Vance, even though Vance is one of the candidates from the Peter Thiel stable and Thiel has offered Trump millions of dollars personally to back his puppet candidates. (So far, Thiel, a billionaire German Nazi, attempting to take over Congress, has put $10 million directly into the effort to elect Vance.) But Trump has demanded Club for Growth stop running the ad. Club for Growth has devolved into a Trump-worshipping organization but they have their own Nazi in the Ohio race-- a Jewish Nazi no less-- Josh Mandel, and the ad has proven, according the polling, extremely effective for Mandel. Trump wants them to stop running it because he fears that it is damaging him... but it's now being run with greater frequency than ever.

With the candidates buying endorsements from Trump world whores, the big names around Trump are spread all over the map in this primary. Steve Bannon, Kristi Noem and Peter Navarro sold their backing to Jane Timken. Bernie Moreno bought endorsements from Kellyanne Conway, Richard Grenell and Katrina Pierson. And aside from Club for Growth, Thiel has also bought Vance endorsements from Trump's Trade Rep, Robert Lighthizer, from Tucker Carlson, Josh Hawley and from top Indiana fascist Jim Banks. What an ugly, ugly primary!

Anyway, this morning, Alex Isenstadt blew the whistle on Trump's attempts to get Club for Growth to stop running the ad. Last month Trump called Club for Growth President David McIntosh, an informal Trump advisor who has also personally endorsed Mandel, "to, wrote Isenstadt, "complain about a TV advertising campaign the conservative organization was running targeting Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, and asked McIntosh to take the ads down. The commercials attacked Vance by using footage of him from 2016, when he described himself as a 'Never Trump guy' and called Trump an 'idiot,' 'noxious' and 'offensive.' The message was designed to hurt Vance in a Republican primary centered on fealty toward the former president. Vance, like others in the race, has cast himself as a staunch Trump ally. But according to three people briefed on the call, Trump told McIntosh the commercials could have the effect of driving down his popularity in Ohio, which he won by 8 percentage points in the 2020 election. Prior to the call, Trump had been stewing over the ads and had complained about them to people in his circle."

Even if Trump knows, or at least senses, he's never going to actually run for office again, Ohio is a big target for his grifting efforts and the ad boxes him in when it comes to the immense sums of money Thiel is dangling in from of his nose, not just for Vance but for the other clowns Thiel is running in other states. After Trump made his pitch on the phone, McIntosh said he "would look into the matter." Isenstadt reports that yesterday McIntosh upped the ad buy from $1 million to $1.5 million, a major slap in Trump's face!

[I]n a statement saying the Club for Growth was “desperate to stop J.D.,” because he doesn’t share the group’s “globalist pro-China trade agenda,” Vance campaign manager Jordan Wiggins noted that the Club for Growth had worked against Trump in the 2016 presidential primaries.

Trump has remained in touch with McIntosh since last month’s call, and the anti-Vance commercials haven’t arisen again during their conversations, said a person familiar with the talks.

Still, the Club isn’t the only advertiser using Vance’s anti-Trump statements against him. This week, one of his rivals, investment banker Mike Gibbons, began running commercial targeting Vance with many of the same lines used in the Club’s spots.

But it isn’t the first time there have been tensions between the Club and the former president or people in his political orbit. This summer, Trump advisers blamed McIntosh for encouraging Trump to get behind a losing candidate in a nationally watched Texas special election.

The relationship between Trump and the anti-tax organization is long and complicated. During the 2016 election, the Club spent millions of dollars in a failed effort to prevent Trump from winning the Republican presidential nomination. But in recent years, the group and its president, McIntosh, have emerged as staunch allies of the former president, targeting his Republican critics and lining up behind many of the candidates he’s endorsed in GOP primaries.

In Ohio, though, Trump has yet to endorse in the Ohio contest, while the Club has thrown its support to former state Treasurer Josh Mandel, who is seen as the frontrunner. The primary has developed as a Trump loyalty contest: This spring, the candidates sat down with Trump in an “Apprentice”-style boardroom meeting where they auditioned for his support.

Vance, who now says Trump “proved” him “wrong” as president following his initial criticism of Trump as a candidate, is among those trying to win him over ahead of Ohio’s May 3 primary. This spring, Vance traveled with his mentor and political benefactor, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with the former president.