by Frank Holmes, reporter
If you need to know what’s wrong with America’s “Republican” establishment, you can sum it up in one story: A prestigious “conservative” organization is holding a meeting of the most influential and powerful conservatives in America and—instead of President Donald Trump—they invited a Democrat who’s one of the top advisers to Joe Biden.
These Beltway Republican big wigs have decided to invite Brian Deese, the director of Biden’s National Economic Council and a top economic adviser, in the place of the president who won more votes than any Republican in electoral history.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) wants to plumb the depths of Deese’s wisdom at its World Forum, held at a luxury resort on Sea Island, Georgia.
The AEI’s annual get-together was once described as a “secretive conference” full of “mega-donors who mingled… [with] top politicians, according to a 2015 report by the Center for Public Integrity.
But they don’t want to “mingle” with Trump—or his voters—just members of D.C.’s Deep State.
According to CBS News, the guest roster includes such Trump-haters as Jonah Goldberg, an AEI “scholar” who recently left Fox News over his feud with Tucker Carlson.
Also invited are Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; Senators Tim Scott of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and Rob Portman of Ohio; and Republican governors Doug Ducey of Arizona and Larry Hogan of Maryland.
It also includes a few Republicans who publicly say they support Trump, like Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, and Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York. Former Vice President Mike Pence has attended in the past.
It’s obvious what Democrats get out of this: The invite is a major coup. Biden’s adviser gets to present the liberals’ economic talking points, and lobby the most powerful Republicans in America on behalf of Biden’s legislation.
“The Biden White House has successfully found common ground on things like the bipartisan infrastructure law and competitiveness legislation by reaching out to stakeholders across the spectrum,” Biden administration spokesperson, Jesse Lee, said in a statement to CBS News. “We will continue to talk to anybody who has an interest in collaborating toward our goal of building long term growth that benefits all Americans.”
That definitely explains why Biden’s people would accept.
But AEI says it’s a “conservative” organization of “thought leaders.” So why is it hobnobbing with liberals? Because Democrats are the only people who hate Trump and Trump’s America more than the GOP Establishment.
They may disagree on how many percentage points to lower taxes on Wall Street investors, or how many trade deals to ink with China, but they agree on the fundamentals: exporting jobs, kowtowing to China, opening the borders and intervening in foreign wars around the world.
Their agenda has never been popular with the American people—and never will be. Donald Trump was elected to put a stop to that… and they’re trying to put a stop to us.
Even this Hate Trump event at the resort-and-spa shows that these pampered “conservative thought leaders” are out of ideas. They literally tried this before, six years ago.
In 2016, AEI held its World Forum on Sea Island, Georgia, in a desperate attempt to stop Donald Trump from clinching the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Liberal Republican Karl Rove gave attendees a workshop on “how this happened.”
And they were mostly the same attendees: then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, now-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Rob Portman of Ohio, as well as Republican Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, Kevin Brady of Texas, and Diane Black of Tennessee. They all hung on Rove’s every word.
Event organizers also invited the CEO of Apple, the co-founder of Google, and the publisher of The New York Times.
Another invitee, pundit Rich Lowry, went home and devoted an entire issue of National Review to taking a stance “Against Trump.”
America First conservative Pat Buchanan called the 2016 AEI meeting “a conspiracy of oligarchs, War Party neocons, and face-card Republicans to reverse the results of the primaries and impose upon the party, against its expressed will, a nominee responsive to the elites’ agenda.”
All the Sea Island celebrities really want is to assure the “perpetual control of the American nation by the ruling Beltway elites.”
“If an outsider like Trump imperils that control, democracy be damned,” he wrote.
2016 wasn’t even the only Sea Island event dedicated to bashing Trump. Last year, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., whined that Republicans should distance themselves from Trump. This is an annual, anti-Trump strategy session.
Pat Buchanan—who suffered from these elitists’ plots before—pointed out something important: AEI is a tax-exempt organization with a 501(c)3 status.
Its millions of dollars in donations from corporations are tax-deductible.
But a 501(c)3 isn’t supposed to support—or oppose—any candidate. Isn’t all this skullduggery illegal?
If they’ll thwart democracy, do you think they won’t break campaign finance laws?
And if they did break the law, shouldn’t the next outsider Republican bust them for it?
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”