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POLITICO NIGHTLY: Good news for the biggest unvaxxed group
Wednesday, January 26, 2022
RSN: Mort Rosenblum | Now or Never
25 January 22
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EDITOR’S NOTE – If you’re new to these dispatches, this one is different. As a lifelong reporter, I aim to analyze, not advocate. But this a cri de coeur to help readers persuade the persuadable before it’s too late. Feel free to share it widely. Please.
That’s not how democracies work. A year later, Donald Trump’s fat-slob Rasputin explained his chilling strategy to author Michael Lewis. “The Democrats don’t matter,” he said. “The real opposition is the media, and the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
Today the stench is sickening. Without a massive turnout in primaries and general elections, I believe American democracy is over.
This is no hair-on-fire hyperbole. Thomas Homer-Dixon at Royal Roads University in British Columbia, who has studied violent conflict for 40 years, warns Canada to prepare for a rightwing dictatorship and civil upheaval on its southern border by 2030 or sooner.
“We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine,” he wrote in the Toronto Globe and Mail.
I have covered coups d’état since the 1960s. Violent overthrows quickly succeed or fail. Far more insidious are those that creep up on free people who don’t react until it is too late.
Trump weaponized rifts among societal sectors, families and friends that have been widening for years. But the Constitution is still intact. This is not a civil war but rather a creeping coup that may succeed because of ignorance and apathy.
Too many Americans with the attention span I of fruit flies overlook blatant treachery, if not treason, and dereliction of duty. High crimes and countless misdemeanors go unpunished. In a country corrupted at the top, everything on down is up for grabs.
Voters can filter out the tower of babble that obscures actual news, but even well-intentioned watchdogs often bark up the wrong trees. Too many focus on the present, ignoring the essential background.
A few examples illustrate the damage done by a megalomaniac who stamps his name on everything he can.
- Trump politicized the pandemic and let it run rampant. He thwarted global efforts to contain it. Americans died lonely, painful deaths before he left office. Biden is now blamed for the inevitable impact: soaring inflation, broken supply chains and new Covid-19 variants.
- Trump capitulated to the Taliban, leaving Biden no options. The Afghan president fled, sparking panic. U.S. forces flew 123,000 people to safety, a stunning feat. Biden, who has tried to end the war since 2008, is blamed for what Trump calls the worst debacle in history.
- Trump escaped impeachment for withholding arms to Ukraine to extort dirt on Biden, who now rushes weapons to Ukraine because Vladimir Putin has amassed troops on the border to see whether America is as rudderless as it seems from the outside.
- Trump survived a second impeachment after he fired up a murderous mob to sack the Capitol, intent on overturning his electoral loss. Republicans shrug that off even after a dozen domestic terrorists, with more to come, are charged in a well-planned insurrection.
And now a Trumplican Party, savaging the Republican principles of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower, is working fast to corrupt the electoral system at every level. Newspapers and (truthful) networks provide ample detail. But far too many people pay little attention.
A soundly defeated president, or someone possibly worse, may well win in 2024 to reign over America with kangaroo courts, a rubber-stamp Congress, state legislatures eager to edit the Bill of Rights, and schoolboards that tell teachers what young Trumplicans need to know.
In 2004, with much less at stake, British journalist Andrew Marr made the point in a book, “My Trade.” A lot of people he knew shunned newspapers and tuned out news to focus instead on their own busy lives and local affairs.
“This is not good enough,” he wrote. “We are either players in open, democratic societies, all playing a part in their ultimate direction, or we are deserters.”
It is now or never.
During a half-century of pursuing elusive objectivity as an Associated Press correspondent and editor of the International Herald Tribune, I value my hard-won credibility. My analyses are based on trusted sources rather than my opinion.
This one is different. It is long because detail and context matter. I’ve written about some of this before, but I’ve added fresh reporting to it. Please keep reading and pass this along. The link is at mortreport.org. Send me your thoughts: mort.rosenblum@gmail.org.
Trumplicans won’t listen, but independents and Republicans will. The key is a thundering turnout of voters who realize that ballots for write-ins or also-rans are wasted.
William Lederer explored mass gullibility to political flimflam 60 years ago in “A Nation of Sheep.” Now, as bad shepherds lead a nation to the edge of a precipice, that new mantra again: Wake the Flock Up.
The crux is accountability. In a country where no one is supposed to be above the law, Trump ties justice in knots with legal tactics, stonewalling and contempt beyond any precedent.
Goebbels once said Nazis could not have seized power without radio, a steady drumbeat that subliminally shapes opinion. Now there is also TV, the internet, prostitute newspapers and people who embrace “social” media but think “social” democracy means Stalin.
Trump has upgraded Hitler’s grosse Lüge, the Big Lie. He accuses those who cite facts of doing the lying. News media reinforce this, if not intentionally, by not explaining how crises of the moment took shape. Each president plays the hand that is dealt. Obama left Trump the booming economy he boasts about. He left Biden serial calamities.
Americans like to gamble on new faces, yet this is no time for on-the-job training. Consider the risks of undercutting Biden too soon. If no barn burner, he is a seasoned steady hand in turbulent waters he knows well.
When checks and balances work as intended, presidents can lobby Congress for legislation or block laws with a veto that can be overridden. They don’t decide about abortion rights or other domestic issues on which so many voters focus. The main purview is foreign policy.
Despite all of America’s military might, it loses today’s “unconventional” wars, creating endless enemies bent on vengeance. Neither China nor Russia will provoke all-out war (at least not on purpose). No one would survive a nuclear High Noon.
Its greatest strength is congressional and popular support for a president who merits it. Allies rally around, and adversaries don’t push too hard. Serious diplomacy must be private. Bearding any “strongman” in public, let alone Xi Jinping or Putin, hardens his position.
Running the free world is no job for amateurs, ideologues, religious fundamentalists – or unhinged narcissists. Had Democrats won a majority in Congress, Biden could have restored sanity and stability while grooming a successor for 2024. Now Plan B is up in the air.
Voting is now more important than ever, all down the ballot. Democrats need a thumping midterm win. If America decides to change horses before then, odds are strong it will get a Trumplican horse’s ass in 2024.
Bannon’s strategy targets the most vulnerable part of representative democracy: people who oversee voter eligibility, ballot counts and certification in swing states. Zealots threaten death to nonpartisan city clerks and state officials, claiming they stole Trump’s presidency.
New state laws and gerrymandering target Democrats. In Florida, one of 12 states where governors appoint the secretary of state, Ron DeSantis wants an election police force that can arrest poll workers for doing their jobs -- helping voters to vote.
The threat is clear in Arizona where deviant politicians slithered out of snake dens to join Trump at a fact-free rally. “We gave Biden every tool he could want,” he said. “He’s incapable…Our country is being totally destroyed.” And enough voters believe him to sway elections.
I was reluctant at first to evoke Hitler. For all his demagogy, Trump showed few signs of reckless disregard for human life until he let a pandemic cripple the nation that he was sworn to protect. Based on interviews with experts, I estimate he is directly responsible for at least 500,000 deaths in America. Does the actual number matter?
U.S. law says death by depraved indifference is murder, even if not explicitly intended. Brazilian legislators are pursuing President Jair Bolsonaro for crimes against humanity. He did far less damage. Trump belongs in federal housing but not the White House.
Trump himself told Bob Woodward he knew of the danger early but played it down. On January 31 in 2020, during trade talks and before he needed a scapegoat, he lauded Xi Jinping for his effective, transparent fight against a new coronavirus.
In February, he was furious when Nancy Messonnier did her job at the CDC, warning the public of a coronavirus that threatened “severe” disruption to American life. In mid-March, he tweeted that Covid was disappearing after a handful of infections.
He pitted red states against blue and muzzled the CDC. He refused World Health Organization test kits and squandered billions on bogus dead ends. Remember his suggestion to drink bleach? Michigan goons plotted to execute the governor for trying to keep people safe.
Epidemiologists say well over a million Americans died before 2021. Their rule of thumb is that because of misdiagnosis actual epidemic deaths are double the official count – worse if someone wants to minimize them. They fault Trump for refusing a federal response with emergency powers to test, trace, isolate and provide states with medical necessities.
Laurie Garrett’s book, “The Coming Plague” exposed the threat 30 years ago, the first of her four books on global health. She worked in China for years where her brother is a renowned specialist. In a hourlong NPR interview just before omicron struck, she was blunt.
There is still worse to come, Garrett said, because of “ the sheer scale of government incompetence, lies and refusal to take public health into consideration…in so much of the world.”
Asked about the United States, she snorted. “That,” she said, “would take two hours.”
Garrett traces the outbreak to wild animals in that Wuhan wet market. That has been the pattern since HIV-AIDs in the Congo. As climate change and deforestation shrinks habitats, she expects new pandemics as Covid-19 eventually settles into a lower-level endemic stage.
Local authorities hid the first cases from Beijing late in 2019. That’s how China works. Ambitious officials compete for favor by withholding bad news from the top. Xi Jinping imposed a strict lockdown in January. After courageous doctors defied his secrecy, he shared gene sequences and protective gear to curb a global spread.
Until immunizations and a cure are found, the only protection from mysterious new pathogens is not to catch them. Simply closing borders is futile. Viruses mutate fast. Unless all countries are protected, all are at risk.
In past deadly outbreaks, global experts turned to the gold-standard CDC in Atlanta and the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, where Tony Fauci has worked since 1968. Public guidance shifted as doctors learned more about mysterious pathogens.
Obama posted health attachés in vulnerable places, including Wuhan. He equipped hospitals and stockpiled protective gear so doctors could act fast if cases reached America.
Among the handover briefings Trump ignored was a thick file on preparedness, at home and abroad. He recalled health experts whose personal contacts would have seen what was coming, and he let the emergency supplies dwindle.
Today, Fauci travels with a Secret Service guard because of death threats. Lara Logan likened him on Fox “News” to the Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele. Tucker Carlson called him “an even shorter version of Benito Mussolini.” Bannon said he should be beheaded.
Covid-19 is a blip compared to climate collapse. If less directly, and over a far longer term, Trumplicans endanger billions, not millions, of lives across the world.
Trump’s push for fossil fuel hastened the time until humans cede Earth to cockroaches and jellyfish. The Paris Accords in 2015, a step in the right direction, set non-binding goals to reduce carbon emissions. Rich countries agreed to compensate poor ones for the economic impact. Trump opted out, giving coal and oil producers an excuse to renege on promises.
Republicans and those two faithless Democrats killed Biden’s ambitious green agenda. If Trumplicans take control, the country best placed to do the most to keep Earth habitable is likely to ignore the most important challenge in human history.
—
Nothing shows American misperceptions of the real world like the collapse in Afghanistan. Polls attribute Biden’s precipitous drop to what news stories from Washington or New York almost invariably call a chaotic, deadly withdrawal. Like Covid-19, that was all Trump.
Previous Mort Reports detail how Trump’s capitulation to the Taliban and President Ashraf Ghani’s abrupt departure made the initial panic unavoidable. But U.S. forces organized an airlift that flew 123,000 people to safely within weeks, a stunning military achievement.
It was, as Anthony Blinken said, “an extraordinary feat of logistics and coordination under some of the most challenging circumstances imaginable.”
Because Americans turned a rabid raccoon loose in the Situation Room, there is much more.
Every president inherits triumphs and failures. George W. Bush left economic collapse after needless wars that cost trillions and increased the terrorism he pledged to eradicate. Obama made his own mistakes but built the booming economy for which Trump claims credit.
Before 2017, Iran agreed to forego nuclear weapons and reengage with the world. Now Iran has enriched uranium to a terrifying level. Dialogue with China and Russia had limited conflict. Kim Jong-il was ostracized in his hermit kingdom. Palestine held out hope for an accord with Israel.
Trump trashed all of that, appealing to a racist base by demonizing Obama. He is not given to three-syllable words, but his Arizona rally was laced with the verb, denigrate. That was not lost on gun-packing rural dwellers who frequently use a similar sounding word.
The rally was in Florence against the backdrop of federal and state prisons, the inside of which neither he nor legislators who took part in the Capitol insurrection are likely to see. His endorsements for state offices smack of a tinpot dictator sanctifying like-minded cronies.
One indirect ally was not there. Krysten Sinema is supposed to be a Democrat. But her ad campaign across Arizona attacks Biden, and she promises to lower taxes.
—
A Trumplican drumbeat depicts Biden as a doddering old fool. Comedians depict him that way for laughs. Under the circumstances, it’s not funny. This is no time for a president who needs on-the-job training.
At his two-hour press conference last week. Biden answered each question with hard facts folded into folksy responses. He listened politely when a Newsmax shill asked why so many people say he has lost his mind. “I don’t know,” he said and moved on.
The usual Fox hounds declared his performance an embarrassing shamble. One said he kept yelling at reporters. In fact, he flashed a bit of steel only once, replying to a stupid question. Why, he replied, did you go into journalism if you aren’t interested in facts?
He sparked a storm when asked how he would respond to a Russian attack in Ukraine. Later, he clarified: any incursion will provoke a NATO response. Televised press conferences now play to the public, not reporters off camera probing arcane policy points. Putin knows that.
As elections approach, Republican hopefuls abandon their principles for Trump’s blessing. For instance, Nikki Haley said in 2016 Trump’s bluster would lead to violent tragedy, calling him everything she tells her children not to be. Now she heaps praise.
Watch the video of Ted Cruz groveling at Tucker Carlson’s feet, trying to unsay the Capitol assault was a violent terrorist attack. “It was sloppy, dumb phrasing,” Cruz said, A year ago, he denounced it in those same terms multiple times when that fit the national mood.
Trump assailed “Lyin’ Ted” in 2016, calling his wife ugly and claiming his father helped assassinate JFK. At an Indiana rally, Cruz berated an utterly amoral sniveling coward whose every other word is a lie, a narcissist at a level America has never seen. Echoing Halley, he said, “The idea of my two daughters coming home and repeating any word this man says horrifies me.”
And he concluded with this: “We are not a proud, boastful, self-centered, hateful, mean-spirited nation.” Now he sucks up to the man who personifies exactly that.
Without a resounding rejection of Trump and the elephants he rode in on, America had better prepare for an autocratic dis-United States living in what Bannon intends: a zone flooded with shit.
Mort Rosenblum has reported from seven continents as Associated Press special correspondent, edited the International Herald Tribune in Paris, and written 14 books on subjects ranging from global geopolitics to chocolate. He now runs MortReport.org.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
'Voting rights is not just about election day; it's a 365-day mission.' (photo: Nathan Posner/REX/Shutterstock)
Republican legislature told by appeals judges to redraw new districts over probable violation of Voting Rights Act
The ruling is hugely consequential, a blunt assessment of the way lawmakers use their power to draw district lines to dilute the influence of Black and other minority voters.
Pending lawsuits in North Carolina and Texas similarly allege that lawmakers illegally drew districts on the basis of race.
About a quarter of Alabama’s population is Black but there is only one congressional district in the state where Black voters make up a majority.
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Plaintiffs who sued in September argued it was possible to draw a second district where Black voters made up a sizable enough portion to elect the candidate of their choice.
A three-judge panel agreed on Monday, saying the state plan probably violated section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. That provision of the law outlaws voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race.
“Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” Stanley Marcus, a judge on the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit, wrote for an unanimous panel.
“ The appropriate remedy is a congressional redistricting plan that includes either an additional majority Black congressional district, or an additional district in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.”
Marcus, who was appointed by Bill Clinton, was joined in the opinion by Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer, both nominated by Donald Trump.
The Alabama attorney general, Steve Marshall, a Republican, said the state would appeal to the US supreme court.
The panel ordered state lawmakers to come up with a new plan in 14 days, and pushed back the deadline for qualifying for the ballot from 28 January to 11 February. If Republican lawmakers cannot come up with a new plan in that time, the court said it would appoint a special master to draw one.
The seventh congressional district in Alabama, which stretches from Birmingham to the rural Black Belt, has consistently elected a Black Democrat to Congress for 30 years. Nearly 56% of the voting-age population in the district is Black. The state’s other six districts have all been represented by white Republicans.
The plaintiffs in the case, including four voters, two state senators and several civil rights groups, argued that Alabama Republicans packed as many Black voters into the district as possible – about a third of Alabama’s Black population – in order to weaken their influence in other district across the state.
The new map also split Black communities elsewhere in the state, to dilute the influence of Black voters.
“It’s past time for Alabama to move beyond its sordid history of racial discrimination at the polls, and to listen to and be responsive to the needs and concerns of voters of color,” Tish Gotell Faulks, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, said in a statement.
The case is likely to be the first redistricting case the supreme court considers in this redistricting cycle, a process which occurs once every 10 years.
While the supreme court has said it can do nothing to stop partisan gerrymandering, district plans that make it harder for minority voters to elect the candidate of their choosing remain illegal under the Voting Rights Act.
Nicholas Stephanopolous, a professor at Harvard who studies redistricting, tweeted that the case offered a “textbook” example of the kind of discrimination outlawed by the Voting Rights Act.
“If this doesn’t violate section 2, nothing does,” he said.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a press conference in the District Attorney's office at the Fulton County Courthouse in downtown Atlanta, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. (photo: Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP)
Fulton County DA Fani Willis has been granted permission to seat a grand jury to aid the probe, which launched after Trump told Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” over 10,000 votes
Willis made the request last week writing in a letter to the court that the move was necessary for “investigating the facts and circumstances relating directly or indirectly to possible attempts to disrupt the lawful administration of the 2020 elections in the State of Georgia.”
Willis has been unable to interview several witnesses, she noted, as they have refused to cooperate unless issued subpoenas. A grand jury has the power to subpoena witnesses, and to recommend criminal prosecutions. She added in her letter that a grand jury is necessary because it can be impaneled for as long as it takes for the investigation to run its course, and that the grand jury would be tasked with focusing on this matter alone.
Trump responded to the Willis’ request last week with a lengthy statement calling the investigation a “political witch hunt.”
The criminal investigation was launched a few weeks after Trump told Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to swing the election in his favor. Trump didn’t “reportedly” ask Raffensperger to rig the election in his favor — it’s on tape. “The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” he added. “Because we won the state.”
Willis is also scrutinizing is a Nov. 2020 phone call between Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and the secretary of state, in which Graham asked him if he could toss out mail-in ballots in certain counties, according to Raffensberger. She’s also examining the sudden resignation of U.S. Attorney Byung Pak a day after an audio recording in which Trump called him a “never-Trumper” was made public.
Power grid. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The Department of Homeland Security is warning that violent domestic groups and racially motivated extremists may attack the electric sector.
“DVEs have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target given its interdependency with other infrastructure sectors,” the alert said.
DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis issued the alert to the electric sector Monday, following requests from power companies to take stock of increased threats from domestic violent extremists in 2020 and 2021.
The alert comes as DHS and federal investigators strain to keep up with the threat of domestic violent extremists, and continue to work to charge participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection. The head of DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis John Cohen told lawmakers in recent testimony that, nearly one year after the riot on Capitol Hill, the threat landscape from domestic violent extremists “is one of the most complex, volatile, and dynamic that I’ve experienced in my career.”
DHS has been buckling down on efforts to share more intelligence on domestic violent extremism with the private sector and state and local partners, according to Cohen. Over the last year and a half, the FBI has been pushing more resources to domestic terrorism investigations. And the FBI has more than doubled its domestic terrorism caseload since spring of 2020, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
White supremacists expressed interest in “wreaking havoc” on the power grid if President Donald Trump were to lose re-election in 2020. And last year, four men with ties to racially motivated extremists were charged with conspiracy to damage the property of an energy facility in the United States, after using assault-style rifles in an attempt to explode a power substation.
DHS intelligence suggests that domestic violent extremists will continue to plot attacks against electrical infrastructure in the U.S. that “may result in physical damage.” Conversations from domestic violent extremists online in recent months have focused on encouraging lone wolf attacks, as well as attempts to inspire individuals with little or no training to go after electric infrastructure—including with firearms, improvised incendiary devices, hammers, and power saws.
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon pictured in 2019. (photo: Thibault Camus/AP)
‘War Room’ is at the center of a fledgling network monetizing what some employees saw as ‘Trump propaganda.’
Not many news outlets were paying attention — except for one focusing on his every word.
It wasn’t Fox News or Newsmax. It wasn’t even Breitbart News, the far-right website Bannon once led, using it to help remake the GOP and elect Trump.
The coverage came from an upstart network run by a little-known media mogul in Colorado, a felon with a record of unpaid taxes and a family history marked by tragedy and violence. The mogul, Robert J. Sigg, found news value in Bannon’s mission to the desert, which ultimately resulted in fraud charges.
When Bannon launched his own talk show in the fall of 2019, calling it “War Room,” he quickly handed over its distribution to Sigg.
More than two years later, the arrangement has paid off for both men. Sigg used “War Room” as a springboard for an expanded network of conservative hosts — bringing him the commercial opportunity he sought.
The network, Real America’s Voice, helped sustain Bannon despite his removal from YouTube, Spotify and other mainstream platforms. It brings his show into as many as 8 million homes hooked up to Dish satellite television, many in rural, conservative areas without reliable cable coverage.
The rise of Real America’s Voice, built around Bannon and distant from the traditional power structures of cable television and talk radio, reveals how the country’s fractured media landscape has empowered unconventional actors following market incentives toward more and more extreme content.
“We were told fairly regularly we were Trump propaganda,” said a former Real America’s Voice producer, who, like about a dozen other current and former employees of Sigg’s business, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisal. “That is what our role was. That was the message from the top: ‘We’re a Trump propaganda network.’ That’s where the money was.”
That market was left open when Fox News and Newsmax pulled back from topics most motivating to Trump’s base, said Bannon, such as resistance to vaccines, cries of voter fraud and unproven ideas about federal agents provoking the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol.
“War Room” focuses on those topics. Its influence comes not just from the number of people watching, which is difficult to measure across platforms, but also from the audience’s willingness to take political action, whether marching against vaccine mandates or running for local office. The show, broadcast live six days a week from Bannon’s Capitol Hill townhouse, is the gathering point for the pro-Trump movement — with Bannon embracing the role of a wartime general leading followers into 2022, or what he calls the “valley of decision.”
“Breitbart was very powerful, but this is five times more powerful,” Bannon said in an interview with The Washington Post following a recent show, which featured four candidates courting Trump’s base and a tech entrepreneur-turned-critic of coronavirus vaccines.
He credited the show’s reach to its little-known distribution partner. “They get it out everywhere,” Bannon said of Real America’s Voice, which he said gives him a cut of advertising revenue, though he declined to specify his earnings, saying, “I’m not doing this for money.”
Bannon has never shied away from idiosyncratic backers — whether hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer, whose family funded Breitbart, or exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui.
But his latest patron may be his most unusual yet. Sigg, whose criminal record includes a federal conviction for bank fraud, built his media business on weather news and outdoor sports. He has given large sums of money to Democrats.
Sigg did not respond to requests for comment. A network spokesman, Mark Serrano, did not respond to numerous specific questions but said in an email: “The market for real, honest news is growing, and will continue to grow so long as the mainstream media continue to abandon any and all semblance of journalistic integrity.”
Sigg’s news venture makes possible more expansion, including into cryptocurrency. Last summer, he discussed turning the network’s footage from Trump rallies into non-fungible tokens, according to people familiar with his comments.
Despite his ambitions, Sigg’s operation remains small and unpolished. An internal email reviewed by The Post said correspondents lacked “TV 101 skills.” A former manager said he became incensed in the fall of 2020 after learning that the network was taking feeds from Fox News and other outlets without crediting them, calling Sigg and his fellow executives “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.”
But Bannon warned not to bet against Real America’s Voice. “They knew us,” he said. “And they knew we were quality content.”
'Scrappers’
In a studio outside Denver, next door to a youth prison, 15 or 20 people put Real America’s Voice on air. Many are in their 20s or 30s and earn about $30,000 per year, said current and former employees.
Their boss is Sigg, 57, who presents himself as a highflying media executive. An examination by The Post of state and federal records sheds light on a winding path to his new perch, one marked by arrests and civil lawsuits.
Today, Sigg wears a designer Hermès belt and flies on private jets, according to images reviewed by The Post. He has a hands-on management style, said people who have worked for him, which extends to dictating individual shots and “huffing and puffing and yelling” about mistakes, as one former employee recalled. Then, he stalks around the office handing out $50 bills to people he had dressed down the day before, according to people who have witnessed his behavior.
A since-deleted online bio cites Sigg’s long record in advertising and television media, including at a firm conducting sales for Dish, whose revenue he helped expand by $250 million before leaving in 2004. A year later, Sigg pleaded guilty to bank fraud as part of what authorities described as a multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud scheme. Sigg falsely verified someone’s employment for a loan application and received a $1,000 check for his role, according to a plea agreement. He was ordered to pay restitution and sentenced to five years of supervised release.
By that time, Sigg had faced legal problems stretching back decades, according to Colorado court records, including drug, assault and harassment charges, as well as civil claims involving disputes over money. Between 1997 and 2010, he amassed more than $235,000 in unpaid federal taxes, according to a lien filed against him in January 2012 and withdrawn within weeks.
Later in 2012, Sigg’s family came under a public spotlight when his 17-year-old son, Austin, kidnapped, killed and dismembered a 10-year-old girl. He was sentenced to life in prison. The elder Sigg said at the time, “This horrible event is a tragedy for both the families, as well as the community.”
At least two of Sigg’s adult children now work for his company, Performance One Media, which was registered in Colorado in 2006, records show, a year before his old firm filed for bankruptcy protection. His daughter handles human resources, according to current and former employees, and his son works with Real America’s Voice, a Performance One subsidiary. They did not respond to requests for comment. A former employee said, “You can’t go to HR, because it’s the owner’s daughter you’d be talking to.”
Bannon, who was charged with contempt of Congress this past fall after defying a Jan. 6 committee subpoena, said he was untroubled by Sigg’s criminal record, calling him and his business partners “scrappers from the cable business.”
In his bio, Sigg presented himself not as a scrapper but as a savant with “unprecedented standards.” For years, he specialized in weather news, not politics, marketing a Performance Once subsidiary, WeatherNation TV, as an alternative to the Weather Channel. To satisfy its audience, WeatherNation avoids discussion of climate change in its forecasting, said current and former employees, with one saying, “They’re conscious of catering to people who don’t want to hear about climate change.”
When DirecTV dropped WeatherNation in 2018, Sigg accelerated his move to digital platforms and search for other content, said a former employee. “You could call them highly entrepreneurial,” said a person who met with Sigg’s team at the time. “They were thinking, 'We’re going to get every church in America on our network.’ Church didn’t work out, but then they were like, 'Hey, we could do this news thing if we can find the right niche.’ ”
The niche they chose was at odds with their previous political giving. Sigg had donated tens of thousands of dollars to Democrats including Sens. Charles E. Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, federal records show. Performance One Media’s chief operating officer, Robert Schwartz, gave $2,700 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2015.
But in 2019, the company’s executives gravitated to Trump. Howard Diamond, who describes himself on LinkedIn as Performance One Media’s CEO, gave several thousand dollars backing Trump that year. Another executive, Michael Norton, gave several thousand the following year.
According to a former employee, “They went out looking to catch Bannon’s wave.”
‘No more fake news’
Bannon’s wave appeared to be surging in 2019 — cresting at the U.S.-Mexico border, where his crowdfunding campaign promised to realize a trademark Trump initiative.
A year later, Bannon was indicted on charges of defrauding donors, accused of using nearly $1 million, from more than $25 million raised, for personal expenses. He pleaded not guilty and received a pardon from Trump.
Before drawing legal scrutiny, the effort gained the attention of Sigg’s network, Bannon said. At the time called America’s Voice News, the network had a website by August 2018, according to an archived version.
When “War Room” began in the fall of 2019, focusing on Trump’s impeachment, Sigg jumped at the chance to broadcast it, Bannon said. Other networks, from Newsmax to the Salem Radio Network, also picked up “War Room,” but Bannon said he chafed at their narrow time slots. Sigg, he said, was “much more flexible, and I need those big blocks.”
With Bannon locked in, Sigg set out to recruit more pro-Trump talent in 2020, current and former employees said, while also making personal investments in the president’s adopted state. Already the owner of a hilltop home overlooking Denver, Sigg purchased two waterfront estates in Lake Worth, Fla., each for more than $1.5 million, property records show. They lie about five miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club.
Sigg found help from well-connected people. He took to the skies with Gina Loudon, a Women for Trump co-chair. A photo she shared on Instagram in July 2020 shows Sigg on a plush corporate jet. “No more fake news coming your way …” Loudon wrote in another post about their travels.
The same month, Loudon shared a photo of herself in the Oval Office with John Solomon, the columnist whose misleading claims about corruption in Ukraine helped shape Trump’s policy that led to his first impeachment. According to Bannon, Solomon arranged a White House meeting in which Trump said Sigg’s network, America’s Voice News, sounded too much like Voice of America, the U.S.-funded international broadcaster, inspiring executives to change the name.
The network debuted in September 2020 as Real America’s Voice, available not just on Dish, according to a news release, but also on Pluto TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV and Google Play. Neither Solomon nor Loudon, who has her own show on the network, responded to requests for comment.
Other talent included Eric Greitens, the former Missouri governor who resigned in scandal and is now mounting a Senate bid. His show, called “Actionable Intelligence,” was shot in Washington, relying on network staff who worked from a 10th-floor office on K Street, according to current and former employees.
For “Actionable Intelligence,” which ran from October 2020 to February 2021, Greitens was paid $19,000 through Bentley Media Group, the company behind Solomon’s website, according to a financial disclosure filed last year by the former governor. Greitens continued contributing to Real America’s Voice, and was compensated directly by the network, he said in an interview with The Post. He did not identify those earnings on the disclosure required for his Senate bid.
When asked about the discrepancy, he said he did not have the forms in front of him but that his aides would follow up with “every detail.” His aides did not provide any details.
Current and former Real America’s Voice employees said they had little insight into whether the network was profitable or being propped up by the company’s weather programming. Serrano said that and other matters were “proprietary.”
If the network is making money, it’s because of Bannon’s show, current and former employees said. “It’s not even close in terms of the advertising money he brings in,” a former employee said. “Even election coverage was below Bannon.”
“War Room” airs twice each weekday and once on Saturday, producing about 17 hours of content each week from the Capitol Hill townhouse once known as the Breitbart Embassy. The basement, where a producer and a sound engineer join Bannon beneath an ornate chandelier, is strewn with books, newspapers and knickknacks, including zinc supplements branded with the “War Room” logo.
In early 2020, the show’s focus shifted from Trump’s impeachment to the coronavirus. Bannon was attuned to the pathogen earlier than most, predicting a pandemic in a show on Jan. 25, 2020. More recently, he has provided a platform for disputed claims about vaccine injury and warned of a “war on the unvaccinated.” Anti-vaccine outrage is “beyond totemic” for Trump’s base, said Bannon, who told The Post he is unvaccinated. “It’s almost defining.”
After Trump’s defeat on Nov. 3, 2020, the show became a clearinghouse for false claims of mass voter fraud, as Bannon birthed what he calls the “3 November movement,” turning allegiance to Trump’s assertion of election theft into a litmus test for Republican candidates. The day before the Jan. 6 riot, Bannon told viewers, “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”
Bannon’s message sometimes takes on religious tones, promising viewers “divine providence” if they “commit.” Among those commitments is patronizing My Pillow, whose CEO, Mike Lindell, is a leading purveyor of election falsehoods and among the sponsors of “War Room.”
A “War Room” appearance can move money to political causes. Caroline Wren, a Republican fundraiser, went on the show recently to argue that the GOP establishment had misused funds by neglecting legal challenges of the 2020 election. In the days after, she received more than 400 messages from viewers asking how to reorient their political contributions, she told The Post, including from several donors who had given more than $1 million supporting Trump’s reelection efforts.
Bannon said his audience depends on Sigg’s network and the show’s radio distribution. The audio on Apple Podcasts, even though it ranks in that platform’s top 100 shows, is “kind of an afterthought,” Bannon said. On a recent show, he said his removal from YouTube about a year earlier had expanded his reach. “When it was taken down on YouTube, the show got 10 times bigger,” he argued.
Whether or not the numbers bear out that claim, his ejection from mainstream platforms held value for Bannon, who is now “preaching to the choir” on platforms with even less scrutiny, said Jeremy Blackburn, a computer scientist at Binghamton University who has studied deplatforming. There is also value for platforms still giving him a megaphone and reaping the advertising rewards.
Representatives of those platforms offered varied reasons for carrying Real America’s Voice, despite moves by other services to cut off “War Room.”
Dish offers a “broad range of content that will appeal to the many different interests of our customer base,” a spokesman said. A spokeswoman for Pluto TV, which says it has more than 54 million monthly active users, said, “We do not partake in any editorial decisions or moderation.” A Google spokesman did not respond to a question about why Google-owned YouTube removed “War Room” even as it remains on Google Play through Real America’s Voice.
Bannon leaves his show’s distribution to Sigg and the others at Real America’s Voice, he said, because they know the market.
They have no other motives, he said, musing, “I’m not even sure they’re conservatives.”
Albeiro Camayo, Colombia. (photo: Twitter/@federicorios)
Although the Colombian State and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia signed a Peace Agreement in 2016, at least 1,295 social leaders have been murdered over the last six years.
At around 15:00, the El Cabuyo and La Primavera neighborhoods were forced to participate in meetings arranged by paramilitaries who mobilized nearby their zones.
When the criminals were in the La Primavera neighborhood, activists demanded respect for the civilian population and managed to expel them from the territory with the help of Indigenous guards.
Shortly after, however, the armed groups came back with reinforcements and started opening fire against authorities and community leaders, among whom was Camayo.
Among the criminals who attacked was the "El Paisa," who previously murdered environmentalist Breiner Cucuñame and Guillermo Chicame, who was a member of the Indigenous guard at the Las Delicias neighborhood.
Although the Colombian State and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a Peace Agreement in 2016, at least 1,295 social leaders have been assassinated over the last six years.
To counteract violence increasing in northern Cauca, Indigenous communities urged the State to expand its presence in the zone and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to support pro-peace strategies.
Jessica Hernandez, a Maya Ch'orti' & Binnizá woman and University of Washington researcher, writes in her new book about why Western environmentalism needs to include and center Indigenous perspectives. (photo: Moises Olivares)
A Q&A with Jessica Hernandez, a Maya Ch’orti and Binnizá-Zapotec environmental scientist.
A decade ago, Mexico granted Monsanto, a United States-based agricultural corporation, along with several other major companies, permission to buy land near Hopelchen in the Yucatan peninsula. The move went against Mexico’s constitution, which affirms for Indigenous people the right to be consulted in land use and economic decisions. Monsanto and the other companies first deforested the land, then started growing soybeans using chemicals and pesticides. The chemicals started making the bees sick. In Mayan Ich Eq tradition, beekeepers believe they feel what the bees do. So, when the insects became sick and started dying, the people did as well.
The situation is a reminder, says Jessica Hernandez, a Maya Ch’orti and Binnizá-Zapotec environmental scientist, that Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and rights are not respected, even when codified into law. It is also a reminder of what is lost when Indigenous knowledge and science is ignored.
Hernandez chronicles the Mayan Ich Eq community’s fight to protect the bees and their people in her new book, Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science. In an interview with Grist, she talks about the urgent need to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into modern conservation, as well as respect tribal communities’ long-standing protection of the world’s biodiversity.
But the book isn’t just a how-to on fixing the conservation field, or relatedly, the climate crisis. It was also an opportunity for Hernandez to uplift stories that are often silenced or ignored, through translated interviews with her own family members, forced from their lands by conflict, and Indigenous land protectors across Central America. Next up, she hopes to publish the book in Spanish to make it accessible to more people.
Q. Why do you think Fresh Banana Leaves is needed now and what inspired you to write it?
A. Oftentimes, Indigenous knowledge is just nowhere to be found. There have been scholars who have advocated for the inclusion of Indigenous science [in academia], but oftentimes, when we talk about Indigenous knowledge and how that can help us heal our planet, especially as we undergo climate change, it’s limited. It’s a privilege to be able to write about it so that especially the younger generation can see themselves reflected, and understand that our knowledge also holds power and strength when it comes to healing our planet.
Q. You describe your family’s struggle with being forced from their ancestral lands, and the impact of that trauma on your environments. Can you talk about that experience?
A. My father was forced to join the Central American civil wars in the 1970s. It was an Indigenous resistance movement against oppression and oppressive tactics. But the army was using all this violence and technology that was provided by the United States and Canada. In order for him to survive, he had to leave his ancestral lands [in El Salvador].
We can see that parallel today, because a lot of Central Americans are having to flee their lands because of climate change impacts and ongoing violence.
Q. Why do you use the phrase “healing landscapes” instead of environmental justice?
A. Environmental justice is built on scholarly work in academia. Oftentimes when I talk to my elders, they don’t see their work as environmental justice because they always remind me that they don’t have an option. They don’t have a choice to do certain things. One of the reasons why I use healing is that even in our native languages, there are no words for conservation. We view it more as healing our environments or protecting them. Given the times that we’re living in, in order for us to heal our environments we also have to heal ourselves, especially from the ongoing oppression that we continue to face.
Q. You say that ecological grief is often overlooked in the climate change discourse. What does that mean, and why do we need to focus on it more?
A. Ecological grief ties back to the kinships that we hold as Indigenous peoples with our plants and animal relatives. The example I provide in the book is the milpas. The milpas are a central kind of holistic agricultural system that we have been able to maintain since time immemorial. Everybody takes care of the milpas, even children and elders. There is this kinship that is built around the milpas. And because of climate change impacts – flooding of the milpa or if you have extreme heat – there is a psychological grieving. You’re mourning or grieving the plant and animal relatives that you lost because of those extreme weather conditions. That grief comes from the fact that you are building a relationship with those animals and you consider them your relatives as well.
Q. In the book you highlight the community-based forest management happening in part of the Zapotec nation in Oaxaca, Mexico as a success story, compared to other more traditional outsider-run projects. What makes the Zapotec forestry initiative work, and what lessons does it provide scientists and conservation groups?
A. When we talk about conservation we forget to include the Indigenous peoples who will be impacted by the denial of gathering those resources. In many marine protected areas, for example, you are not allowed to fish, because they’re trying to conserve the marine ecosystems there. Other protected areas are led by scientists who don’t have a relationship with Indigenous peoples or who are only focused on protecting the animal, without looking at the holistic system.
It goes back to ecological grief.
We have that strong kinship with our forests, with our trees, because they’re part of us. It ties back to our creation stories and our ancestors. With the [Zapotec] forestry initiative, it [worked] because our people were integrated in the process and we were able to use Indigenous knowledge to manage and steward that forest. It’s holistic management, and integrated Indigenous peoples from the start.
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