MSNBC contributor Scott Dworkin has a good thing going with his Democratic Coalition, a (perfectly legal) political scam intended to open the wallets of the anti-Trump Resistance.
Disgraced ex-Naval War College professor John Schindler also has a good thing going, pulling in an estimated $17,000 per month by charging anti-Trumpers to read his tweets. (His tweets!)
But none of these Resistance grifters compare to the majesty of 2016 Green Party candidate Jill Stein. When it comes to cashing in on anti-Trump resentment, and turning some serious coin by playing on fears over the current White House resident, she really is the master.
The Daily Beast reports [emphasis added]:
A small part of me feels sorry for the marks who fell for Stein’s obviously bogus recall efforts. But a larger part of me feels everyone got what they deserved.
Did the anti-Trump crowd really think the long-shot Green Party candidate was going to turn the ship around with a recount effort in swing-states? Did they really believe this even after recount efforts in Wisconsin showed in December 2016 that Trump’s margin of victory was actually stronger than originally estimated?
Come on now.
The most absurd twist in all of this is that the recount effort wasn’t even originally Stein’s idea. It was the brainchild of computer wonks who are coping poorly with the fact that they got it wrong in 2016. They sought out Stein to challenge the results after the Clinton campaign rejected their recount proposal.
“It absolutely was not a Stein campaign cash grab,” David Jefferson, a computer scientist with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told The Daily Beast. “To be perfectly clear, we never really had any evidence [of vote hacking] … The point we have always been making is that you have to look. You have to check. You don’t just accept the results of complex software, especially proprietary software. You don’t just trust it.”
Well, that’s funny, because that’s not exactly how Stein, who previously promised that none of the cash was being pocketed, has been selling the effort.
“We are raising money into a dedicated account for a recount campaign. The money cannot be used for anything else. It cannot be used for my campaign. It cannot be used for the Green Party. It can only be used for the recount,” she told ABC News in December 2016.
Long live the grift.
