In This Week's Issue

For Immediate Release: March 20, 2017 IN THIS WEEK’S ISSUE How Robert Mercer, a Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon, Exploited America’s Populist Insurgency In the March 27, 2017, issue of The New Yorker, in “Trump’s Money Man” (p. 34), Jane Mayer profiles Robert Mercer, a reclusive Long Is- land billionaire and hedge-fund manager, and his daughter Rebekah, who exploited America’s populist insurgency to become a major force behind the Trump Presidency. Stephen Bannon, the President’s top strategist, told Mayer, “The Mercers laid the groundwork for the Trump revolution. Irrefutably, when you look at donors during the past four years, they have had the single biggest impact of anybody.” In the 2016 campaign, Mercer gave $22.5 million in disclosed donations to Republican candidates and to political-action committees. He also funded a rash of political projects and operatives. His influence was visible last month, in North Charleston, South Carolina, when Trump conferred privately with Patrick Caddell, a pollster who has worked for Mercer. Following their discussion, Trump issued a tweet calling the news media “the enemy of the American people.” Mayer writes, “The President is known for tweeting impulsively, but in this case his words weren’t spontaneous: they clearly echoed the thinking of Caddell, Bannon, and Mercer.” In 2012, Caddell had given a speech 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 stake- holders in Breitbart News is Mercer. Robert Mercer is the co-C.E.O. of Renaissance Technologies, which is among the most profitable hedge funds in the country. Many people have speculated about Mercer’s views, but Mayer reveals new details: Mercer’s views are extreme, and, according to former colleagues, he is susceptible to conspiracy theories. Nick Patterson, a former Renaissance employee, recalled that during Bill Clinton’s Presidency Mercer insisted that Clinton had participated in a secret drug-running scheme with the C.I.A. “Bob told me he believed that the Clin- tons were involved in murders connected to it,” Patterson said. Two other sources told Mayer that, in recent years, they had heard Mercer claim that the Clintons have had opponents murdered. Mercer has argued that the passage of the Civil Rights Act, in 1964, was a major mistake. According to a onetime Renaissance employee, Mercer has asserted repeatedly that African-Americans were better off econom- ically before the civil-rights movement, and has said that there is no problem of white racism in America. The source said that, not long ago, he heard Mercer proclaim that there are no white racists in America today, only black racists. Another onetime senior employee at Renaissance recalls hearing Mercer downplay the dangers posed by nuclear war. Mercer, speaking of the atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, argued that, outside of the immediate blast zones, the radiation actually made Japanese citizens healthier. David Magerman, a senior employee at Renaissance, told Mayer, “Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.” According to another former Renaissance employee, “Bob thinks the less government the better. He’s happy if people don’t trust the government. And if the President’s a bozo? He’s fine with that. He wants it to all fall down.” By 2008, the Mercer Family Foundation, under Rebekah’s supervision, had begun giving mil- lions of dollars to interconnected nonprofit groups, several of which played crucial roles in prop- agating attacks on Hillary Clinton. By 2011, the Mercers had joined forces with the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who have run a powerful political machine for decades. That same year, they met Steve Bannon, who became their paid political adviser and, some people worried, “Svengali to the whole family.” At Bannon’s urging, the Mercers made strategic ideological investments that helped pave the way for Trump. Adopting the strategy of the Kochs, the Mercers combined short-term campaign spending with long-term ideological investments. They poured ten million dollars into Breitbart News; made a two-and-a-half-million-dollar contribution to the Kochs’ Freedom Partners Action Fund; and put an estimated five million dollars into Cambridge Analytica, a firm that mines online data to reach and persuade poten- tial voters. An insider at Breitbart said that Rebekah Mercer is deeply engaged with the site’s content: “She reads every story, and calls when there are grammatical errors or typos.” Christopher Ruddy, the owner of the conservative outlet Newsmax Media, said that Rebekah Mercer is “the First Lady of the alt-right. She’s respected in conservative circles, and clearly Trump has embraced her in a big way.” Rebekah successfully pushed for a staff shakeup on the Trump campaign that led to the promotions of three people funded by the family: Bannon became the campaign’s C.E.O.; Kellyanne Conway, its manager; and David Bossie, its deputy LUCI GUTIÉRREZ LUCI manager. Rebekah’s pick for national-security adviser was Michael Flynn, and Trump chose him for the job. (Flynn lasted only a month.) After the election, Rebekah was rewarded with a seat on Trump’s transition team. She hasn’t got everything she’s wanted, though; so far, her recommendation that Arthur Robinson be named the national science adviser has gone nowhere. (Robinson is a biochemist, sheep rancher, and climate-change denialist who is storing some fourteen thousand samples of human urine as part of his efforts to find new ways of extending the human life span. His work is funded by the Mercers.) “Rebekah’s father, meanwhile, can no longer be considered a political outsider,” Mayer writes. “Bob has used his money very effectively,” Patterson, the former Renaissance employee, said. “He’s not the first person in history to use money in politics, but in my view Trump wouldn’t be President if not for Bob.” Can Chuck Schumer Check Trump? In “Minority Report” (p. 20), Elizabeth Kolbert profiles Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the country’s highest-ranking Dem- ocrat, and considers whether he—or anyone—can lead the resistance against Donald Trump. Schumer calls the other forty-seven mem- bers of his caucus so frequently that he has memorized all their numbers. “He reaches out constantly,” Senator Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, told Kolbert. “He knows what everyone’s working on,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, added. “He knows what people are interested in and what they are worried about.” Through a spokesman, Hillary Clinton called Schumer “a strong progres- sive and great legislative strategist,” who “knows how and when to give ’em hell.” Following Trump’s victory, Schumer indicated that the two might find common ground—but for even entertaining the possibility of col- laborating with Trump Schumer got a lot of grief. “Schumer has historically been really good at reaching out across the aisle, which in let’s call them ‘normal times’ is a great strategy to get things done,” Elizabeth Zeldin, who’s organized protests against Schumer, told Kol- bert. “But I think everyone’s feeling was, these are not normal times, this is not the time to make bipartisan motions.” Of Clinton’s loss, Schumer told Kolbert, “When you lose an election like this, you don’t blink. You look it in the eye and say, ‘What did we do wrong?’ And I include myself in this; I don’t just point at Hillary or anybody else . we did not have a sharp, strong, populist enough economic message.” Schumer called Trump’s Cabinet “the most extreme, as well as the least vetted, as well as the most conflict-of-interest-laden Cabinet, I think, in the history of America.” He thinks people like Vice-President Mike Pence and the White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, had directed the President’s Cabinet picks, and that Trump might not even have been aware of his own nominees’ views. “On many of them, it was how they looked, how they felt, and he got captured by the hard right, but he goes along with it, because that’s not what he cares about,” Schumer said. “And that’s a really sad, to use his word, a very sad commentary on the President, to not care about the issues you’re governing about.” Today, Schumer and his staff are working to craft an economic message in preparation for 2018: “It’s going to be based on two things— putting more money in the average person’s pocket and reducing the expenses they pay out of their pocket.” Schumer continued, “Deep, deep down, I believe in the American people—their solidness, their decency, even at times when they’re angry and frustrated, their pull- ing back and trying to do the right thing. And I’ve believed in it my whole life and this is the most challenging time for it, but I still believe in it. And, if I’m wrong, God help America.” A Philosopher’s Quest to Understand the Making of the Mind In “A Science of the Soul” (p. 46), Joshua Rothman profiles Daniel Dennett, the philosopher who, over the course of his forty-year ca- reer, has endeavored to understand the creation of the human mind.

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