Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experience Shirpa on today's Quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Parker Thayer, investigative researcher at Capital
Research Center. The folks that bring you influence, watch the
trackers of the nonprofit organizations across the country, across the
globe and what they do and who funds them. On
that line, who's behind the political theater of no Kings
and is it working? Parker, Thank you so much for
joining us in this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Oh it's good to be back, Matt.
Speaker 1: Always glad to have you along with us here as
we break down where the money is coming from, where
it's going and so many places, Oh yeah, so many places. Indeed,
before we get started, though, on today's Quest for Knowledge,
I did want to recognize an individual. I had an
opportunity to talk to over the weekend in Phoenix, Arizona,
late last week, I should say, a very nice gentleman.
If he's listening in today, he said, he and his
son tune in dutifully to the Federalist Radio Hour. And
they always consider themselves to be sherpas, experience sherpas as well.
It's always good to have an experienced sherpa along with us,
and I think Parker there is that experienced sherpa when
it comes to tracking these nonprofits. So let's begin with
what we saw over the weekend. Of course, what the
accomplice media pandered to the big crowds of No Kings,
the Democrat politicians across the country who turned out for
this political theater. Who is really behind this, Parker's let's
begin there.
Speaker 2: That is a great question, I think, is it. I
like to number them as if they're movies. I think
we're in like No Kings, five six. There seem to
be as many of them as there are fast and
furious movies.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: So No Kings is a complicated question when you're talking
about out funding flows. Traditionally, when you see, you know,
protests happening, it's usually you know, in one place, maybe
you know, some group wants the university that they're at
to divest from fossil fuels or something like that, and
so they go and they, you know, march around one
location with one clear goal. No kings has no clear goal.
They don't like kings, and they all protest about it,
except I mean, ironically, one of the things that they
protest mainly over, especially this past weekend, was the removal
of kings. They have kind of morphed into this anti
war movement. Not even there's not even a necessarily an
indication that the US is involved in a war right now,
but that you know, that point is neither here nor there.
One of the things that they don't like is that
we have removed Maduro, who was essentially the king of Venezuela,
and that we blew up Kamane, who was essentially the
king of Iran. They don't like that we blew up
these kings. They're against kings except when we remove them.
But the goal of no kings is very vague. It
is mostly a protest movement of being non conservative and
against Donald Trump. That is that those are about the
two most clear goals of no Kings, and since it's
so wide in scope and wide in location, No King's
protests happen all over the country, there's not a very
clear you know, this group was behind the protest. But
in the case of No Kings, I think the most
clear group behind it is a group called Indivisible. Indivisible
is a kind of a professional organizing group. It's one
of the members of what you might call the protest
industrial complex. I've seen some people call it. I usually
call it megaphone philanthropy, which is there are It's a
nonprofit group has five or one C three status. Indivisible
Civics is the official legal name of it, although they
also have a dark money quote dark money five oh
one C four that they operate alongside. And I think
they also have pack divisions, which is Political Action committee.
So it's a network, but it is essentially one nonprofit. Uh.
It's run by a lady by the name of Leah Greenberg.
I think there's also they have a decent sized staff,
but these are all professional organizers. Ezra Levin is another
name you might remember or recognize who is running indivisible
and what Indivisible is doing is a set They're not
really running the protests they are in that they're setting
you know, they are working with people on the ground
to set up you know, locations and times and maybe
conduct trainings with one or two people to actually run
these protests and you know, kind of shepherd the protesters around.
But in a lot of ways, No Kings is kind
of an amalgamation of all of the left leaning activism
groups in the country, kind of all screaming in rage
all at the same time. No Kings works with a
coalition of I think hundreds of different nonprofit and some
for profit and some pack organizations that are have you know, combined.
I think Fox News just reported the other day. Az
Renomani reported that there's a coalition of five hundred groups
behind this, with something like billions in revenues. Now, is
all of that revenue going to No Kings? Definitely not.
But the scope of that of the network of groups
that's behind No Kings makes it very hard to actually
trace what is and isn't funding for No Kings. It
can be confusing for the person who's not you know,
plugged into money and politics in this way. So it
is run by Indivisible, but there's dozens hundreds of groups
involved with it, and essentially there are the professional organizers
who work for these groups who make a living in
megaphone point per or the protest industrial conflex, whatever you
want to call it. And then, as we saw from
this weekend, and as we've seen it No King's Protest repeatedly,
there's not exactly a lot of enthusiasm. Most of the
people showing up to these protests are how to put
this delicately, well, let's not put it delicately. They're old.
They're really old.
Speaker 1: Right, most of them are. Most of them are baby boomers,
and who don't seem to have, like to quote from
an officer and a gentleman, they have no place else
to go, and this seems to be it. Let's delve
into that a little bit more. But to me, I
would define this movement and these protests as a gathering
of the profoundly mentally ill. A lot of these folks.
Most of these folks, though some are just really truly
are paid to be there in protest. They don't really
have a dog in the fight other than they're cashing
a check at the end of the day. But that said,
this is just a mass concentration of Trump derangement syndrome,
a group of people that really don't understand what a
constitutional republic is. And as you mentioned before, there are
people who really don't understand what a king is.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're opposed to it, but they don't really understand it.
And when we removed two actual as close to actual
kings as you can get, and they didn't like it
at all. Yeah, it's there are As you mentioned that,
the average age of these protests is like sixty. I mean,
this is not what we saw in the For example,
everyone remembers the Summer of Love quote in twenty twenty. Sure,
horrible time to be in America. Things were not safe.
There were protests it seemed like every other day. And
these protests were mostly populated by young people. Angry young people.
That was who was at these protests. The angry young
people aren't angry anymore. They seem to be actually relatively content.
They're not showing up these demonstrations in nearly the same
way or the same numbers. There's no you know, these
no King's protests aren't evolving into riots almost for the
most part. I think there's a few rare exceptions in
these cases, which is good not to, don't get me wrong,
that's good, right, but I think the left probably would
prefer that there were more riots. They seem to historically,
they like the tactic of the riot, and they don't
seem to be able to marshal those forces into the
field anymore. And it's because they have. As I mentioned,
there there's no enthusiasm for these protests. It is very
much AstroTurf, and they're relying upon essentially people who don't
have anything better to do. You know, you and I
we don't really understand, you know. And lots of people
in the conservative movement see these, you know, large protests
and they you know, they say clearly these protesters must
be being paid, and some of them are. I don't
want to I don't want to give any misleip. There
is a massive industry for paying people to organize and
show up to protest. That's a huge industry. But most
of the people at the No King's protests simply have
nothing better to do. And people in the conservative movement
often have jobs to go to, they have important things
to do, they have families to raise. The people at
the No King's protest visually you can see they don't
have any of those things going on, and there's a
lot of mental illness, and among the young people who
are showing up, and there's a lot of nothing better
to do among the older people who are showing up,
and Indivisible Civics and the nonprofit networks that are kind
of orchestrating the whole thing, and you know, providing the
small amounts of funding here and there around the country
that are needed to make these things happen. They're more
than willing to catch in on whatever amount of enthusiasm
they can, as small as it is. So you know,
it's you end up with this huge for lack of
a better word, maybe Star Trek fans will get the reference,
but you end up with a board. It's a giant,
hive mind organization. That's what That's what No Kings is.
It's hard to point to one leader aside from Indivisible,
It's hard to point to one leader or one mastermind.
It's kind of the collective outrage of a large, a
professional class of left leaning activists who have been totally
shot out from the control rooms of power in America
for several years now, and they're very angry about.
Speaker 1: It, very angry indeed. I mean that's what marks this
movement in general. And that's I guess, as you mentioned
that there's there's not a lot of violence that we've seen,
although we saw some of that once again in Los Angeles.
Perhaps a different crowd, different string string of this group.
Speaker 2: If there are there are a lot of the hard left,
the hard left, you know, kind of people for Socialism
and Liberation, which is an organization types those groups. They
loved the Summer of Love, they love twenty twenty. They
are desperately hoping that that sort of thing happens again.
But you know, the younger people that they relied on
to make those things happen just aren't here. They're not there,
and so these protests are very boring, and they happen,
I don't I think most people probably didn't even realize
that the No King's protests were happening this weekend. You know,
it is interesting to see that the hard left groups
are starting to try and make something happen as their
favorite dictators all get either kidnapped or blown up.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, I guess that's the question. Then, ultimately, as
I asked before, I mean, is this stuff working? Clearly
the usual suspects in corporate media are all on board.
Look at these huge crowds, and I guess that's another
question too. I don't know if you've tracked that. You
certainly do track the people behind it and the money,
But are these crowds that they're showing. I have seen
some indication that in some places AI manipulation is involved.
Are these getting through, these no Kings demonstrations really getting
through to actual Americans with jobs?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. And you know, I'm a very
plugged in person, you and I both are, and I
didn't and you know, I'm also doing a trying to
stay away from social media for lent this year. But
even with their things going on, with those things going on,
I don't think I heard about these. I knew that
they were happening, I didn't hear any details about them.
I saw a few photos that was about the extent
of it. These crowds. Are they big relative to you know,
other political crowds of the past. Potentially, But even if
they are, it doesn't seem like anyone's particularly excited about them.
It's it's frankly, it's a little disappointing. You know, it
would give me more to write about. So I do
think there's a huge interest in, you know, inflating these
numbers and this, you know is it would not be
the first time that left leaning groups have tried to,
you know, inflate the appearance of public support when they
don't really have it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing sorrows money. Is there a lot of sorrows
money involved in.
Speaker 2: This sore at we at Capital Research Center, we have
a saying there we like to say we do love
talking about George Soros. I'm probably the one of the
leading experts on George Sorros in the world. The left
has many soros Is. They have many people who are
funding all of the same stuff as him, who have
just as much money as him, probably more, who are
also funding these things. For example, with Indivisible Civics, you
have one of their biggest donors is what's called the
Fidelity Investment's Charitable Gift Fund, which has given them something
like ten million dollars over the years. These are anonymous donors,
usually extremely high wealth are high net worth people. This
is a Fidelity Charitable Investment or Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift
Fund is what's called a donor advised fund. Some of
your listeners might be familiar with it. It's essentially just
a bank account that you can direct your charitable giving through.
So you deposit your charitable donation in a DAFT, which
is a charity, You get your charitable deduction for that contribution,
and then whenever you like, you tell the DAFT to
administer that money to whoever you want. So a lot
of the money behind Indivisible is coming from donor advised
funds like this, so it's really hard to trace who
the money is coming from. This goes back to those
many Soros as I was talking about. There's a lot
of donors, but Soros is also involved in this deeply,
lots of money to Indivisible, specifically in the past. But
then we talk about the board and the network of
organizations surrounding No Kings and surrounding it invisible. That is
kind of that was already there and is being used
because the Left has a professional organizing infrastructure already in place,
something that the Right really doesn't have, not nearly at
the scale at least. The Left kind of just used
the existing infrastructure and kind of stapled No Kings onto
that and said, hey, look, this is No Kings now
this nationwide network, this is no Kings, even though you know,
two years ago it was a vast network of very
disparate organizations that had many different goals. Now they all
have one goal, which is no Kings, which isn't really
a goal, that's just something you say. But yes, Soros money.
It's people who have heard of the Arabell Advisors network before.
That is all over the No Kings protests. The people
who are doing the local organizing, they all have various
state affiliate organizations which are all funded by large network,
all of the usual suspects. So basically everyone is funding
No Kings in some way or another, which makes it
very hard to trace what actually is being spent on
this protest. But I would guess it is, you know,
a not insubstantial amount of money, thing like tens of
millions of dollars.
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Speaker 1: I'm curious too, how many of the very wealthy Ola
Garks in the phrasey Island she of the Bernie Sanders
of the world. I'm talking about the JB. Pritzkers, people
who have a lot of money on the left, who
also have very big aspirations about higher political office. Is
there any money coming from the Pritzkers and crews out there?
Speaker 2: I don't know about the Pritzkers. Let's see, I have
a short list of organizations here. We have money from
the Sandler Foundation, which is the money of the late
Herb Sandler. I think his wife may also have now passed,
but the Herb Sandler gave them lots of money in
past years and he was essentially he made his money
off of the madeoff scam. Really wow, So I believe
it was the made off scam. I'd have been one
of the other scams, but I know that they had
a I'm fairly confident it was them.
Speaker 1: Well, we do know Bernie made off, made off with
a lot of Americans money, of course.
Speaker 2: Yes, Let's see. In recent years though, we've got some
of the top donors. The Schmidt Family Foundation, which I
believe and I should verify here real quick, but I
believe is the family of foundation of Ron Schmidt or
Rob Schmidt. Let me see, I can confirm this really quick.
But he is one of the investors in Google. So
we've got the Schmidt Family Foundation behind this. We also
have the Merle Chambers Fund, another you know, kind of
a more famous big money pocket. Also, everyone has heard
of the Tides Foundation before. They're giving Indivisibal Civics twenty
thousand dollars in twenty twenty four, which isn't you know,
is an enormous amount of money, but that is they
are funding it. And again, the way that nonprofit financing works,
you'll often not hear about the story until after it
has already happened. You might notice this trend with, for example,
the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which bought all
the mansions. We didn't find out they were buying the
mansions until after because form nine nineties or IRS disclosures
for nonprofits are backdated by two years, So what's happening
now in twenty twenty six, we won't actually see the
finances of those organizations unless they voluntarily disclose it until
twenty twenty eight. So it's you know, Indivisible could be
getting one hundred million dollars right now as opposed to
the five million dollars they received last year or not
last year in twenty twenty four, and we just wouldn't
we wouldn't know about it. So it's a little bit
hard to trace funding flows in nonprofits because of that.
But in twenty twenty four, let's see some other big donors.
Obviously Fidelity Charitable Investments Give Fund, which I mentioned at
Donor Advised Fund. They also have a decent amount of
money coming to them from the Freedom Together Foundation, which
I don't know the donor behind that one actually, but
they got six hundred thousand dollars from the Freedom Together Foundation,
which is based in New York and seems to be
Oh it's Barbara pickour Is on the board, who is
a more famous donor on the left, and lots of
other people who I think deep Hok Pergarva, who used
to be in the Biden administration if I'm remember incorrectly,
but I could be wrong about that.
Speaker 1: No, I think you're right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's on the board of this of the Freedom
Together Foundation. It was formerly known as the JPB Foundation,
which so it is the Barbara Pickour Foundation. Essentially JPB
stood for I think it was John Paul Barbara or
pick Hour something like that, so that that is the
donor behind the foundation. But there's a lot There are
a lot of donors giving various amounts of money, and
a lot of them are also just doing it anonymously,
so it's impossible to tell who is funding no counts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's has been the difficult part about tracking that,
and it takes time, no doubt about that. As you mentioned,
we don't have this in real time time, and so
it becomes extremely difficult. But we do know about a
lot of these groups in their past and where their
commitments have been, and it is safe to assume that
they are back again in many of these cases. Our
guest today is Parker Thayer, investigative researcher at Capital Research Center.
They're the great group behind my go to in tracking
the nonprofit charity sector, and that is called influence. Watch
whatever you're looking for online, you can follow the money
there and the connections the associations, and you'll find that
a lot of these groups have ties on the left
to the Obama administration, which is the Biden administration. The
Biden administration, of course, took in a lot of the
folks from the Obama administration, because some would say that
it was really just Barack Obama's third term and in
the auto pen presidency era. I don't think that is
a conspiracy theory by any means. How much of this
really is astro turfing. And again, I know it's impossible
to track the money, but there are Indeed, the left
keeps saying, no, this is not the case at all,
and then of course you get the fact checkers from
the media. But you do know you have tracked some
of this money going to wages for people to protest.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean there is a whole industry they
like to call it community organizing that essentially they exist
to a big portion of what their work is is
doing get out the vote work. But in order to
get people to get out the vote, they have to
get them to show up to a protest, or they
can be registered to vote. They can go, can give
their information, their phone number, their emails to people who
can then use put that information into databases where all
these people can be tracked and make you know, they
can make sure that that person votes. They can bombard
them with text messages and calls until they do. You know,
this is a big part of what the No King's
Protest is doing. I'm actually signed up for just for
research purposes. I'm suffering so all of you don't have to.
I am signed up for the No Kings Protest text messages.
So I have been invited numerous times to come out
to the No King's protest in my area. I did
not decide to go, believe it or not. But yeah,
there are these the community organizers, the protest industrial complex,
the megaphone philanthropy industry. It's a very real thing. People
do get paid to show up to protest. Now, it's
not always at the scale that some people assume that
it must be. Because, you know, us being productive members
of society, we have jobs and things to do and
families to raise. We don't understand how people could just
take a whole day and go and protest and not
think about it twice. But you know, these people, for them,
protesting is a free source of entertainment. You know, this
is I mean we've already commented about the you know,
the average age of these protests this past weekend and
the No Kings movement as a whole. For them, I mean,
this is essentially just a retirement home outing.
Speaker 1: Like bowling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is free bowling night, except instead
of bowling, you go and you stand around and wave
signs at things. So you know, it's it is there
is there? The truth is always kind of in between
what the left and the right. We'll say about things often,
and you know, some more conspiratoryly minded people assume that
all of the note Kings protesters are getting paid and
they're all, you know, everyone's handing out fifty dollars checks.
It's not quite that, but it's also not anything near
what the media insisted is that this is all some organic,
you know, organic protest movement that just emerged from the
ashes of people's tiers and spoiled hopes because you know,
Trump is so evil. That's not what's happening here. This
is a professional organization led by professional people. Who make
their livings organizing protests or organizing you know, get out
the vote groups, organizing demonstrations. That is, that is an
industry for the left. That is a there is a
group of people who exist and that is they you know,
they study the tactics of this. They have there are
think tanks that come up with strategies for them. These
are not just people, you know, out on a limb.
There's a support system. There's of funding, their funding funding channels,
and they are you know, kind of the shepherds of
the left's moms. That's about the closest analogy you can
come up with.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, I think that's a good way of
saying that. And for those who remember their recent history,
the forty fourth president of the United States started out
in this business. Barack Obama was a community organizer and
you worked in a project vote. He certainly did. And
and that leads us to the other point when we
talk about the efficacy of this or or not. My
colleague this week Breonna Lyman wrote a piece and the
headline is the only mid term strategy lamer than no
Kings is Goop's plan to do literally nothing. So she
goes into the But one of the things that is
noted is this, you know, is looks for possible stress
to a lot of Americans, you know, a lot of
common sense, rational human beings, like are you kidding off?
For all the things we talked about, they look at
you know, what has gone on in Iran over the
last nearly fifty years, and these people are talking about
no Kings. What has gone on in Venezuela with Maduro
and these people are talking about no Kings. You know,
we have a leftist elite in this country that live
like kings and they're saying no Kings. But this is
a pretty good way to get people to register to vote,
to tap into their anger. And that's really what this
is at the end of the day, isn't it. Maybe
they'd like a few more riots, but ultimately this is
about November twenty twenty six and the desperate move from
the left to do anything they can to weaken Donald
Trump in the MAGA movement this country.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, the No Kings movement seems heavily focused on
shall we say data collection? Uh. When you sign up
for your no Kings protests, you hand in your phone
number and you tell them you know your address and
et cetera, and all this information. You know that they don't.
They're collecting that information to make sure that you're registered
to vote, and if you're not, they're going to harass
you until you do. And once you're registered, they're going
to harass you until you vote. You know, data collection
is a huge part of all of the you know,
the reason that this one of the reasons that this
this protest industrial complex exists is just data collection because
the Left relies upon kind of lower propensity voters when
it comes to election cycles, and so they have a
vast network logistically to kind of wrangle their their they're
voter herders or their their voter wranglers. They have propensity voters.
You know, people who are younger often really don't vote
at the same rates. But the No Kings movement, as
we've seen, it's not reaching those same people. So I
think they're really I think they're very much interested in
getting out the vote with these protests, and obviously, you know,
they're starting to appeal to kind of older liberal voters
and trying to which is a very hyperpensity base, and
trying to reach them with these nonprofits, which you know,
it makes an interesting question about the purpose of the
nonprofit sector, which is supposed to be nonpartisan, but that's
a whole nother discussion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: Without the ability to you know, you just mentioned the rights,
without the ability to get that enthusiasm and to get
the you know, the the violent agitators that we saw
in the Summer of Love out and mobilized. You know,
No Kings ends up being basically a PR operation. And
this is why they're so insistent on the size of
the crowds. They're so insistent that this is the biggest
protests ever to happen, even though it's just kind of
a whole bunch of very small protests happening at a
thousand different locations. For the most part, you know, No
King seems to be a PR operation, and and that's
they have a catchy slogan, No Kings is catchy, but
it doesn't mean anything. It really they really don't have
much of a goal. They're only one of their main
goals seems to be opposing the removal of kings like
Maduro and and the Iyatola as you just mentioned. So
it's it's confusing, and they're they're doing they're doing their
best to do their data collection and their usual, their
usual you know, kind of get out the vote minded activities.
But the problem is they're not reaching the people that
they want to. And so I think that we're going
to see soon in the in the near future, I
think No Kings is going to jump the shark. I
think they're going to start reaching a level of on authenticness.
If that's a word. I don't think that's actually a word,
but I'm going to use it.
Speaker 1: I authentically think it is a word.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think it would be inauthentic. Well here we
are debating grammar anyway, inauthenticness the astro turf aspect of
it is going to shine through more and more the
closer and closer we get to midterms, and they're going
to be trying to kind of reclaim some of that
momentum that they feel they had back in twenty twenty,
and it's just it's not going to be there. And
so it's the tactics are going to get more and
more preposterous, you know, the rhetoric is going to get
more and more over the top, if that's even possible.
So it's going to be interesting to see what happens
with No Kings in the near future. But my guess
is they get more shrill, they get more more obviously
astro turf, they get more obviously artificial.
Speaker 1: How how is that possible? How can how can they
be more shrill? Oh and one day and how many?
How many cats were left at home during the past
weekend for these poor people.
Speaker 2: But you know, maybe that's what this is. Maybe No
Kings is just an operation by the Cat Sitters Union
of America to try to try and beef up their
own business.
Speaker 1: Follow the money, that's right.
Speaker 2: You know. One thing I've I've learned studying the left.
You know, I read what they write every day. I
read I follow their social media's, I sign up for
all their email campaigns, I read their tax forms. The
thing that I've learned is to never underestimate how insane
they can be. Every time I think I have found
the most ridiculous thing that I will read that day,
I usually find something even more insane. And No Kings
is going to be no exception to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt about that. Well, you had me at
Fonsie in a leather jacket. You talked about jumping the shark.
That's where that phrase comes from. Actually, though, to set
the record straight, when Phonsie in Happy Days jumped the
shark in his leather jacket and briefs, that was at
the height of the show's popularity, and it stayed popular
for a while. This really, though, is I can see
this on the way down. Yeah, I think this is
definitely descending. But so is it just a matter of
time before the left and the scientists, the experts were
supposed to follow religiously faithfully, they're going to release some
sort of virus again. I mean this twenty twenty six,
of course, smacks of twenty twenty and I mean that
by the desperation. Maybe there's not the cover of COVID
to act under, but the leftist movement in America is
doing whatever it can by any means to make sure
that they a cripple the Trump administration and ultimately put
it in prison and thereby taking out the MAGA movement
so that they can, you know, regain power again. Do
you see this movement becoming increasingly desperate, increasingly theatrical, of course,
as we get closer and closer to the November mid terms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, definitely increasingly theatrical. That is one of the
I've been shocked. Since twenty twenty four, the nonprofit industry
has frankly been a little disappointing. I mean, these are
the people we saw that materialize the Summer of Love
out of thin air in twenty twenty, right, you know,
they were leading media and PR operations like we've never
seen before now, you know, partially because there are one
of the main new social media platforms, of course, Twitter
or x formerly Twitter is now not owned by someone
who will censor everyone. That seems to have kind of
stymied their efforts to replicate that. But yeah, the nonprofits,
they got desperate in twenty twenty four. One of the
things that I write about a lot is the get
out the vote operations, and you know, Capital Research Center,
we have a forthcoming report on what happened with nonprofits
and elections and just with you know, election related advocacy
in general in twenty twenty four. And one of the
things I found was that from twenty twenty to twenty
twenty four, the get out the vote industry, the nonprofit
get out the vote industry, got bigger, It got much bigger,
while even while traditional pack spending actually declined during those years.
So the left, they have not given up on the
tactics that worked for them in the past. The problem
is just that people aren't buying it anymore. You know,
we met the enthusiasms, not there people, so aw what
happened in twenty twenty They lived through the fervor of
it all. Some people were taken up by it, you know,
and kind of consumed by the rage campaign that kind
of dominated the country for months on end. And then
afterwards nothing changed, and then there was a democratic administration
and the problems that they wanted fixed weren't really fixed.
It turns out that they were being lied to and
they now they know this. So the left is still
pour all the left's donors are still convinced that the
same tactics they used in the past will continue to work,
and they're pouring In twenty twenty four, they poured money
into the same old tactics, and then Donald Trump won
the popular vote. So there, we haven't seen their tax
forms from post twenty twenty four yet. Twenty twenty five
will be the next year, and then the year after
that will be twenty twenty six. We'll finally see their
tax forms from that year. So it's hard to say
what's going on in those board meetings and in those
you know, in those zoom calls, but you have to
imagine that they're trying. They're trying to rewrite the playbook,
but they just don't know how because they've been relying
on the same playbook since the nineteen sixties. So it's
it's going to be really interesting to see what happens
with No Kings, and you know, they will get more
theatrical and even more you'll see that they really don't
have any they're so they're so rattled by their loss
in twenty twenty four that they just I don't think
they really know what to do yet. And No Kings
is kind of there, you know, their first step back
into being the machine that they once were. They're still
trying to reclaim their former glory as it were, or
you know, I would say disign, but.
Speaker 1: Let me play consultant for a moment for the.
Speaker 2: Let's let's advise them. Let's let's tell those things what
they can do.
Speaker 1: You better exactly here you go. And I'm really serious
that they won't listen to me, of course, because because
I'm a conservative and I believe in making America great again,
and so they don't want anything to do with that.
But here's the thing that they ought to do. They
ought to shut the hell up stop this nonsense of
no kings, because I think that hurts their cause ultimately
with the average person, because they're looking at these nuts
out in the street going, oh my god, I don't
want to go back to that again. That's why twenty
twenty four happened. What they should talk about keep concentrating
on is affordability, which is a huge lie because they're
Marxist and they're never going to make anything affordable.
Speaker 2: They're going to make at least lie about it.
Speaker 1: And they have and that part is effective. And really
what they need to do is just rely on the
Rhino Republicans that control Congress right now, particularly in the Senate,
to not do a damn thing, and then what you
would have is you would have what you have right
now a growing number of conservatives who say, listen, I
was all in on twenty twenty four. I saw the vision,
I saw the change, I saw the possibilities, and once
again we have bought and paid for rhinos who won't
do anything, just like the left found out in two
thousand to a far you know, radical left found out
in twenty twenty. So you lose engagement and that's where
you win at the polls. And that's what happens oftentimes
in midterms, the disillusionment, do you. But they won't do that,
will they, because they're just so tied into this, you know,
this chaos. And you can only keep an anarchy going,
a really good anarchy going, for so long, can't you.
Speaker 2: Exactly? Yeah, great. You raise a great point here, which
about the confusion of the No Kings movement and the
discord in their message, which you know, though on the
one hand, you would think that it would be an
enormously electorally, you know, beneficial strategy to focus on. You know,
there is gridlock in Washington, d C. The current administration
isn't getting things done that they said they were going to,
you know, and there are they could try and you know,
tell all kinds of lies and spin a big story
about that, but they can't because they're also simultaneously trying
to present the idea that Donald Trump is acting as
a king and a dictator and is unilaterally declaring things
into being, and you know, is a one man show
running the country and we must oppose Kings. So you know,
they've kind of, you know, they've walked themselves into a
corner that they really don't know how to get out of.
And they have you know, this No King's message, which
is not really I don't think going to be you know,
very compelling for many people, especially when it comes to
actually voting. But it does get the older, you know,
the older liberal demographic out. They seem to like it
for whatever reason. So they've you know, they could be
focusing on other things, but the No Kings has soaked
up so much of their attention and their their messaging
and their focus that they they're kind of stuck with
one path one you know, one central point of their
message now, which is that they don't like Kings. But again,
I don't think the average person actually thinks that Donald
Trump thinks that he's a king. I don't think anyone
really thinks that. But they like saying it, and so
they're going to keep saying it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the consistency of message is very
very important obviously, But you know, as we have found
out over the last several years in this country, once
again as conservatives, you got to Thank god the unhinged left,
because without the unhinged left and what they are doing
to turn off voters, Republicans may never have a chance
to win electorally. It's just the sad state of affairs
going on in America today. Thanks to my guest today,
Parker Thayer, Investigative Research excellent investigative researcher at Capital Research Center,
you've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio out.
I'm Matt Kittle, Senior elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of
freedom and anxious for the fray.