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Swampy Schlapp Gets Whacked Over BLM

The Conservative Inc. mouthpiece is losing his corporate lobbying clients left and right.
sclapp

Matt Schlapp probably thought he was too big to fail. The Conservative Inc. maestro is also one of the best paid lobbyists in Washington, thanks to his proximity to power. His primetime tub-thumping for the Republican Party and especially for Trump,  was quite alright with his Fortune 500 clients as long as it opened the right doors when high-stakes regulatory and trade issues came knocking. But then, Black Lives Matter.

The Swamp is called a Swamp because there are a lot of hungry creatures in it ready to feast on flesh when the opportunity presents itself. Schlapp and his wife Mercedes have parlayed their influence with the White House into a personal partisan empire. But when Matt started talking out against BLM at the exact moment when corporations started caving to protest pressure, his two streams of income—GOP influence peddler and high paid corporate flack—collided.

On Monday night, Comcast, which owns NBC Universal, dropped the Schlapp’s lobbying firm Cove Strategies. 

“He’s no longer representing us as an outside lobbyist,” a Comcast spokeswoman said Monday by phone to a Bloomberg News reporter, without elaborating. According to Judd Legum at Popular Information , which has been checking the records, Schlapp had a $120,000 a year contract to represent the cable giant in Washington.

This follows his dumping by Verizon and Abbott Industries last week, which paid him a combined $480,000 a year, to do their bidding on Capitol Hill and the White House. Wal-Mart is also reportedly distancing themselves from the Schlapps but their Cove Strategies firm still has a $200,000 contract.

In June Matt Schlapp, who along with Mercedes, is a regular contributor to Fox News, accused Black Lives Matter of being “hostile to families, capitalism, cops, unborn life and gender.” Much like many commenters on the Right, he has also sounded off on BLM’s efforts to remove historical statues they find offensive.

But Matt is no ordinary rightwing pundit, he has a job to do and now his politics are getting in the way of making mega corporations rich and competitive. He is what Tucker Carlson complained about in his monologue last night: a tool of a Republican Party that no longer represents the American people and has lost sight of what is key to saving the country from ultimate collapse: rebuilding a middle class through jobs and supporting families and civic and faith institutions that support, not rip away at, human dignity. 

One needs no reminder that Wal-Mart was responsible for eliminating and displacing some 400,000 U.S. jobs that went overseas from 2001 to 2013, and has, by importing cheap goods from China, contributed to the massive trade deficit with that country.

One needs no reminder that like all big fish with lobbyists like Schlapp, Comcast and Verizon have helped crush their smaller competitors, including local municipal broadband efforts so that the leviathans can keep a lock on the Internet and cable markets. Let’s not forget that Comcast’s dominating media assets have promoted the bias that has kept conservative voices at the margins. 

And those are just a few of Schlapp’s clients. Others, according to Legum, include: 

Oracle. The computer software giant pays Schlapp $200,000 per year. The company does not appear to have publicly commented on the Black Lives Matter movement. Oracle CEO Safra Catz was a member of the Trump transition team and is a major Republican donor. 

Samsung. The electronics manufacturer pays Schlapp $80,000 per year. The company does not appear to have publicly commented on the Black Lives Matter movement. 

eHealth. The private online insurance marketplace pays Schlapp $200,000 per year. The company does not appear to have publicly commented on the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Schlapp is also the head of the American Conservative Union, which puts on the super donor-sponsored CPAC each year. While CPAC flings out the red meat about Trump “draining the swamp” and “American values,” Schlapp gets to have it both ways. Pretty swampy. But perhaps he’s met his match, a bigger fish than he, and it’s hungry.

 

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