The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency
How Robert Mercer exploited Americas populist insurgency.
Last month, when President Donald Trump toured a Boeing aircraft plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, he saw a familiar face in the crowd that greeted him: Patrick Caddell, a former Democratic political operative and pollster who, for forty-five years, has been prodding insurgent Presidential candidates to attack the Washington establishment. Caddell, who lives in Charleston, is perhaps best known for helping Jimmy Carter win the 1976 Presidential race. He is also remembered for having collaborated with his friend Warren Beatty on the 1998 satire Bulworth. In that film, a kamikaze candidate abandons the usual talking points and excoriates both the major political parties and the media; voters love his unconventionality, and he becomes improbably popular. If the plot sounds familiar, theres a reason: in recent years, Caddell has offered political advice to Trump. He has not worked directly for the President, but at least as far back as 2013 he has been a contractor for one of Trumps biggest financial backers: Robert Mercer, a reclusive Long Island hedge-fund manager, who has become a major force behind the Trump Presidency.
During the past decade, Mercer, who is seventy, has funded an array of political projects that helped pave the way for Trumps rise. Among these efforts was public-opinion research, conducted by Caddell, showing that political conditions in America were increasingly ripe for an outsider candidate to take the White House. Caddell told me that Mercer is a libertarianhe despises the Republican establishment, and added, He thinks that the leaders are corrupt crooks, and that theyve ruined the country.
Trump greeted Caddell warmly in North Charleston, and after giving a speech he conferred privately with him, in an area reserved for V.I.P.s and for White House officials, including Stephen Bannon, the Presidents top strategist, and Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law. Caddell is well known to this inner circle. He first met Trump in the eighties. (People said he was just a clown, Caddell said. But Ive learned that you should always pay attention to successful clowns. ) Caddell shared the research he did for Mercer with Trump and others in the campaign, including Bannon, with whom he has partnered on numerous projects.
The White House declined to divulge what Trump and Caddell discussed in North Charleston, as did Caddell. But that afternoon Trump issued perhaps the most incendiary statement of his Presidency: a tweet calling the news media the enemy of the American people. The proclamation alarmed liberals and conservatives alike. William McRaven, the retired Navy admiral who commanded the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, called Trumps statement a threat to democracy. The President is known for tweeting impulsively, but in this case his words werent spontaneous: they clearly echoed the thinking of Caddell, Bannon, and Mercer. In 2012, Caddell gave a speech at a conference sponsored by Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog group, in which he called the media the enemy of the American people. That declaration was promoted by Breitbart News, a platform for the pro-Trump alt-right, of which Bannon was the executive chairman, before joining the Trump Administration. One of the main stakeholders in Breitbart News is Mercer.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency?mbid=social_twitter
LonePirate
(13,431 posts)He is as much a hypocrite as the rest of them.
dalton99a
(81,570 posts)Bob thinks the less government the better. Hes happy if people dont trust the government. And if the Presidents a bozo? Hes fine with that. He wants it to all fall down.
dalton99a
(81,570 posts)GoneOffShore
(17,340 posts)Joeyboots
(11 posts)Great piece, thanks for finding it icymist. I've always known, since first learning about him a couple years back, that Mercer is a sociopath with an authoritarian, fascistic, and racist worldview. Being as ridiculously wealthy as he is, he is very very dangerous to our democracy. I know I'm preaching to the choir when I say this but Mercer, and people like him must be brought to heel or face punitive measures for their dirty dealings. Plain and simple.