'MAGA nerve center': Newly obtained docs reveal 'extreme' agenda of pro-Trump lobbying group

23 May 2024

President Richard Nixon famously complained that Republican candidates are expected to go hard-right in primaries only to make a mad dash for the center in a general election.

But Donald Trump, now running his fourth presidential campaign and third as the presumptive GOP nominee, has been pushing a far-right agenda in the 2024 general election and making a concerted effort to rally his hardcore MAGA base. And one of the groups supporting him is the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), a far-right lobbying group.

In an article published on May 23, The Guardian's Jason Wilson details the "hard-right policy agenda" that CPI is pushing this election year.

That agenda, according to Wilson, is laid out in CPI documents The Guardian has obtained.

"The documents offer previously unreported details of Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) trainings and 'bootcamps' for congressional staff at CPI's sprawling Maryland ranch, and lavish, star-studded retreats for members of Congress — mostly members of the far-right Freedom Caucus — at a string of Florida resorts," Wilson explains. "They also show how CPI, widely described as the 'nerve center of the MAGA movement,' enlisted its own network of affiliated organizations along with like-minded far-right organizations — some classified as hate groups by experts — as well as individual extremists to promote anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-vaccine policies, along with others premised on the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump."

Heidi Beirich, co-founder and chief strategy officer at the Global Project against Hate and Extremism, told The Guardian that CPI events have featured "seriously extreme people" and show "how far-right the MAGA movement has become."

Wilson cites attorney Cleta Mitchell and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadow as two key figures in CPI, noting that both were "at the center of Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election."

"Along with familiar faces from the Republican right," Wilson reports, "CPI events have billed controversial groups and individuals whose politics lay further out on the far-right fringe. Being platformed by CPI possibly allowed these individuals to exercise influence on lawmakers and their young staffers. Beirich, the extremism expert, said that including extremists in staff events indicated that CPI 'wanted their cadres trained up in far-right ideas, including racism, bigotry and hate.'"

Read The Guardian's full report at this link.

From Your Site Articles