For those who travel by plane and want to pass the time if the in-house entertainment system is down by opening the airline magazine, they will always find a list of so-called prominent doctors, decked out in $5,000.00 suits and cufflinks, very well coifed. How does one get to be one of these “Super-Doctors,” or for that matter if you flip pages named as one of the “Best Steakhouses in America?” The answer is simple! You pay for this! It’s called advertising and in essence it’s mostly fake advertising to boot.
And while sometimes a great doctor, even with the “payola” involved, sneaks through and makes it to the list of “chosen people,” this is not exactly how one should choose one’s proctologist, that is unless one wants to get it up the derriere.
The same is thus true of many, but not all, of the speakers featured at CPAC conferences. Tellingly, until Donald J. Trump was elected president in 2016, he was not considered “good enough” to be invited to speak. Indeed, the “leader” of CPAC, one Matt Schlapp, who in jest I have come to call Matt Schlock (Yiddish for “low quality” ), actually is a “Never Trumper,” having done all he could to boost Senator Ted Cruz for president, not The Donald — who was considered too uncouth for The White House and not a true conservative by “Mr. Schlock’s” prior estimation. But hey, now that Trump is president, for Mr. Schlock it’s time to go with the flow: the flow of hard cash, that is!
In order to keep this commentary short, and I could go on for pages, I am putting forth just one example of how it’s “pay to play” at CPAC, which is mostly controlled by establishment Republican lobbyists even apart from “Mr. Schlock.”
The public interest group which I founded but left in 2003 to run for the U.S. Senate in Florida, certainly figured out how to play this scam. Just peruse the $250,000 plus in donations which Judicial Watch paid since 2012 to get Tom Fitton on the speakers dias and bestow him with an award to boot. If I had used that much of Freedom Watch’s hard-earned contributions to boost my ego and fame — and I would not waste donor money by so doing, but instead use it to mete out justice in our corrupt legal and government systems — I could perhaps have been given an award as the “Best Conservative Lawyer in World History,” and then taken the stage to congratulate myself! But what the nation needs now is not more FOIA documents, but hard justice to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C., our state capitals and in the courts.
Below are Judicial Watch’s payments to ACU since 2012, so please feel free to reach your own conclusions about how money talks and only those who don’t pay up usually walk at our so-called nation’s leading conservative gathering.
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Judicial Watch Charitable Contributions to the American Conservative Union
2019 — Est. to be at least $33,000
2018 — Est. to be at least $33,000
2017 — $33,000 (Event Sponsorship)
2016 — $25,000 (Event Sponsorship)
2015 — $25,000 (Event Sponsorship)
2014 — $5,000 (Event Sponsorship)
2013 — $51,000 (Event Sponsorship)
2012 — $52,000 (Event Sponsorship)
I am saying all of this because there is much hypocrisy and smoke and mirrors even among what is perceived to be our ranks. It’s time to get down to business, roll up our sleeves and for We the People to stop drinking the Kool Aid of the Washington, D.C, establishment.
Instead we must work hard to save the Trump presidency and the nation, and not waste time in self-congratulatory paid for “Public Displays of Paid for Affection” to boost our own egos. Go to www.freedomwatchusa.org to see the real work we are doing in this regard.