Free Republic

Steven Mnuchin brought in the right-wing power brokers, as well as Bill Gates, to help fund such Hollywood projects as 'Dunkirk' and Steven Spielberg's upcoming 'Ready Player One.' Though they might be the most reviled figures among Hollywood's liberal crowd, the Koch brothers have been a silent investor in Warner Bros.' slate of movies for four years. Sources say Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch — who are worth a combined $96.2 billion and wield enormous power in political circles as major backers of right-wing politicians — took a significant stake valued at tens of millions of dollars in...

The conservative Koch network is promising to spend millions of dollars to defeat the health care overhaul backed by President Donald Trump and top House Republicans. The network’s leading organizations, Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners, announced late Wednesday the creation of a special fund to support House members who vote against the health care bill. The announcement, which comes on the eve of the House vote, marks the influential conservative network’s most aggressive move against the health care proposal, which is under attack from the right and the left. “The bill as it stands today is ObamaCare 2.0,” said...

The billionaire brothers are pulling out all the stops in support of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. Pity the interns who answer the phones in Colorado senator Michael Bennet’s office. Concerned Veterans for America estimates that as of March 2, it had connected with 80,000 Colorado supporters, urging them to phone Bennet’s office in an effort to convince him that he should support Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court. CVA is leading the Koch brothers’ network of libertarian-leaning advocacy groups in its effort to maximize pressure on senators to confirm Gorsuch.

Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch is launching a campaign to sink a border tax under consideration by Republican leaders in Congress, a move that could complicate the lawmakers' efforts to find a way to pay for President Donald Trump's proposed wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group founded by Charles Koch and his brother David, plans to use its network of wealthy political donors and activists to kill the proposal, which aims to raise $1.2 trillion over 10 years on goods coming into the United States, according to officials from the group, which...

Tea Party founder and conservative billionaire Charles Koch has attacked Donald Trump's controversial travel ban, branding it as 'authoritarian'. Koch said he will oppose the billionaire president if and when he deviates from a commitment to 'free and open societies'. Commenting on the travel ban controversy, he said: '[The] travel ban is the wrong approach and will likely be counterproductive.'

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. (AP) -- The conservative Koch network plans to spend between $300 million and $400 million to influence politics and public policy over the next two years, intensifying its nationwide efforts in the initial years of Donald Trump's presidency.Network officials disclosed their rough spending plans Saturday as donors gathered at a luxury hotel in the California desert. The investment, backed by the organization's extensive nationwide network, positions the billionaire industrialist family to play a major role in the debate over several Trump priorities — even those they oppose.

Now that I no longer do a weekly TV show, I have more time to read my local paper. Sadly, that's The New York Times. The Times actually does some good reporting, but their political and economic coverage is filled with deceit. Can I find deceit every day? You bet. Take a look at a few days just last week. --Thursday: The front page: "NAFTA's promise is falling short, Mexicans agree." Wow, the Times now embraces Donald Trump's position on trade? Economists estimate that 14 million jobs depend upon NAFTA, but people everywhere often oppose trade because the smaller number...

Kicking Money Out of Politics: Trump Boots Koch Brother from Golf Course Katie McHugh 2 Jan 20172 President-elect Donald Trump told a critical biographer and guest of billionaire David Koch to leave his West Palm Beach golf course on New Year’s Eve, forcing Koch to leave with him. Trump’s gesture was another slight against the pro-amnesty, pro-“free trade” billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who opposed Trump during the Republican primary season and refused to help him during the general election. It also signals Trump will not necessarily play nice with the GOP political establishment and Beltway right. The Kochs...

FAIRLESS HILLS, Pa. (AP) — To the Republicans in the red "Can't Afford Katie" T-shirts, it's as if Donald Trump doesn't even exist. These activists have been sprinting through Pennsylvania neighborhoods, talking to people about how bad Democrat Katie McGinty would be as a U.S. senator. Here to help save Republican Sen. Pat Toomey — and, more broadly, the party's control of the Senate — are employees and volunteers for Americans for Prosperity, the best-known group financed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch.

Surprise, surprise, surprise! ABC 15 in Phoenix teased a leak from Ann Kirkpatrick from the document dump. Might you think it would reflect badly on the Dem running to unseat McCain? WRONG! It was an email from 2014, from Kirkpatrick to Podesta, asking for help in her Congressional race against Andy Tobin.

The rise of Donald J. Trump, with his hostility toward free trade and vow to protect entitlements, is a sharp rebuke to the free-market principles long championed by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch. But if the Koch brothers have lost the battle for conservative values in 2016, they are also quietly preparing for a long war. Their secret weapon is the Grassroots Leadership Academy: a training program dreamed up by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the political education arm of the Koch network, and intended to groom the next generation of conservative activists to shape the...

Billionaire socialist political investor George Soros is behind Black Lives Matter and the attempt to empty the prisons to move America further left, so what are the Koch brothers doing joining them? Soros’ hub of his political web is the group, Open Society, which was hacked and its email traffic spilled into the public domain, showed that its U.S. Programs Board, in October of 2015, approved an expenditure of $650,000 to the Black Lives Matter movement, which has been at the epicenter of disruptive riots designed to transform the criminal justice system. And Politico reported that just a few weeks...

Four years after Charles and David Koch's political network opened its bank accounts to promote Republican nominee Mitt Romney, it's now spending millions to save the Republicans' Senate majority from their presidential candidate. This year's Senate ads will focus on issues involving the candidates, not national issues, said James Davis, spokesman for Freedom Partners Action Fund, a superPAC that is doing most of the network's TV ads. Most of the ads deal with "cronyism and corporate welfare, and/or spending and government over-regulation," Davis told NPR in an interview. "What we see is that there's not a national issue per se...

Lou Dobbs has a few thoughts on the battle for the soul of the Republican Party, with the Koch Brothers now crawling out of their holes just as Harry Reid predicted they would and issuing marching orders to the various politicians they control. Dobbs notes that “when they and other donors beckon, the Republican Party seems to rush to please the Brothers Koch.” “The struggle Ryan referenced,” Dobbs says, “Is well under way. It’s why the GOP establishment attacks Trump with fury equal to that of the left. I believe Republicans will either be the party of the Kochs, Ryan,...

Billionaire businessman Bill Koch and his wife Bridget are hosting a $2,700-a-head fundraiser for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at their home on Cape Cod on Saturday. Koch is part of the wealthy family who owns Koch Industries, and he also founded his own energy company. He co-chaired a campaign to oppose Cape Wind, a proposed offshore wind farm off of Cape Cod. Two of Bill Koch's brothers, Charles and David Koch, are prominent conservative donors who have said they will not support Trump.

COLORADO SPRINGS — Speaker Paul Ryan told a donor audience convened by the billionaire Koch brothers that they're in a fight to "retake the soul" of the Republican Party. "We have to do a better job of taking the moral high ground ... showing [conservative] ideas in practice," Ryan said on Monday. "And it will help us retake the soul of our own party, which we have our own challenges with these days." Ryan addressed a room of some 400 donors who have been gathered here since Saturday in a luxury resort at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains for...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Billionaire Charles Koch called the notion that he would support Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general election “blood libel,” while doubling down on his assertion that he wouldn’t support Republican Donald Trump. “The first thing I want to do is correct a rumor that the media keeps stimulating, and that is that I’m probably going to support Hillary,” Koch told a group of about 400 donors. He added, to a round of cheers: “That is a blood libel,” using a term that refers to the anti-Semitic belief that Jews used the blood of Christian children to...

Billionaire industrialist and conservative benefactor Charles Koch’s expansive political network will not help Donald Trump win the presidency. That’s the message from one of the Koch network’s chief lieutenants as hundreds of the nation’s most powerful Republican donors gathered for a weekend retreat on Saturday. With Election Day just three months away, Koch lamented the state of the 2016 contest during a welcome reception inside a luxury hotel at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. “We don’t really, in some cases, don’t really have good options,” Koch said of the “current political situation.” …

As new reports indicate that the Koch Brothers are furthering Hillary Clinton’s candidacy by refusing to run negative ads against her, House Speaker Paul Ryan will headline a lavish retreat hosted by the libertarian billionaires and the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce. As CNN reports: The powerful political network helmed by Charles and David Koch is ruling out running advertisements intended to hurt Hillary Clinton, another sign of their insistence on avoiding the presidential race. The Koch network has previously said they will not back Republican candidate Donald Trump, but on Saturday officials told reporters that they would not...

Charles Koch warns politicians are offering ‘frightening’ answers to improve society By Matea Gold July 30 at 9:06 PM COLORADO SPRINGS — Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch on Saturday chastised the political class, saying that those seeking public office were offering "frightening" answers and largely failing to promote a society that provides opportunity for all. “Our goal is to unite people from all walks of life to work for what we call a free and open society — a society of opportunity, of free speech, free exchange, and what we call permissionless innovation,” Koch told conservative donors assembled in a hotel...