The Republican Party’s first-ever midterm convention is quickly becoming a Trump-style grift.
Puck reports that the National Republican Campaign Committee, which is hosting the September event, is asking for House members to pay a minimum of $25,000 to attend the two-day event in Dallas with a guest, with higher packages costing as much as $100,000. On top of that, the event is taking corporate sponsorship dollars, which are going to a nonprofit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors.
All this is for a convention that doesn’t include any actual party business, since no candidates are being nominated like in presidential election years. The whole thing appears to have been planned haphazardly, with invitations only going out in the last few weeks to Republican leaders and lawmakers, many of whom have other commitments.
“It’s yet another opportunity to shake down corporate America,” one Republican strategist told Puck, adding that it has turned into a “shit show.”
“Nobody understands why we’re doing a midterm convention. It’s just another show that Trump is going to put on to remind the voters that he is sitting there, and maybe they don’t want to be reminded of that,” the strategist added.
The convention is also taking place on September 9 and 10, right before the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The images out of the event are going to be of the wealthy Republican elite partying right before commemorating one of the biggest tragedies in American history.
That’s a bit on the nose for President Trump’s second term, which has seen him focus on lavish, unnecessary projects and celebrations rather than the Americans struggling due to his unnecessary war in Iran and mismanagement of the economy. This convention, much like his Freedom 250 celebrations this summer, will most likely end up being an expensive, sparsely attended dumpster fire benefiting only himself and his wealthy allies.
President Trump has hailed his takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as an economic boon for the storied venue, claiming the historic theater “would be in financial ruin” without Trump, and that not putting his name on the building would “cause donors to flee.”
New reporting from The Washington Post shows that the center is on track to fall $100 million short of its profit goal directly because of Trump changing the name to the Trump-Kennedy Center. It expects to miss its budget target by 70 percent and contributed revenue by 25 percent, a projected $23 million deficit.
“The center took a huge hit when the takeover happened,” an anonymous source close to the situation told the Post. While ticket sales plummeted after Trump’s officials launched their anti-woke takeover at the beginning of his term, things got even worse after the name change last December. “It was just an absolute fiscal cliff. Donors disappeared, ticket sales disappeared, artists disappeared—like it was doomsday.”
This all comes as the center is multiple months late in delivering its independent audit during Trump’s first year of leadership.
The Trump-appointed Kennedy Center board tried to close the center for two years beginning in July, but that decision was blocked by a U.S. district judge who argued that the board’s decision was “ill-informed and seemingly preordained.” Earlier this month, the board again voted to close the center for two years so that it can renovate the building in Trump’s image—and add Trump’s name back.
Trump has put this once iconic venue through absolute hell. His initial takeover, fueled by a right-wing spite for “woke” culture, led many high-level acts to cancel and donors and patrons to flee. But the name change—which hasn’t even officially, legally happened—may have been the true coup de grâce.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are expanding their probe of Jared Kushner’s alleged foreign corruption to include his suspicious purchase of land in Albania from a suspected gangster.
In April, ranking member Jamie Raskin launched an investigation accusing Kushner of serving as “Special Envoy for Peace” in the Middle East, while soliciting millions of dollars from Gulf monarchies. Kushner never responded to the letter.
