Kenosha, WI– 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 run negative Clinton spots…
Network officials outlined their plans here as 400 of their donors prepared to hear from a roster of Republican leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan is among the politicians who scored invites to one of the nation’s most sought-after political retreats at a lavish campus nestled in the Rocky Mountains…Ryan will be joined here at the summit hosted by the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce.”
“The Kochs are effectively indifferent between Trump and Clinton,” CNN writes, noting the Kochs’ strong opposition to Trump’s “America first” positions on trade and immigration.
Indeed, as both Bernie Sanders and Jeff Sessions have explained, the Koch brothers support “open borders” immigration policies that will drive down wages for American workers.
Bernie Sanders has described “open borders” as a “Koch brothers proposal… which says essentially there is no United States.”
“It would make everybody in America poorer —you’re doing away with the concept of a nation state,” Sanders told Vox in an interview last summer.
Sen. Jeff Sessions has similarly explained that the Koch brothers are part of a “cabal” that is “deeply committed to a massive borders philosophy:”
There’s this cabal out there… The [Paul] Singers, George Soros, even the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson and others that are deeply committed to a massive open borders philosophy, really. I’m not exaggerating when I say that. They fundamentally see that a worker in Bangladesh should be able to contract with a business in America and come here, and why should some government force say, ‘No.’ I mean, that’s their fundamental thing. They don’t pay attention to the values and how it impacts the American people.
Paul Ryan has similarly articulated his support for the Koch brothers-backed open borders philosophy. In fact, Paul Ryan has a two decade long history of pushing open borders immigration policies.
As Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz has explained, “There is nobody around in the party who is more fanatically dedicated to the cause of open borders than Paul Ryan.”
In 2013, Paul Ryan made the case for essentially dissolving national borders— declaring that America is “more than our borders” and calling for an “open” immigration system where people from all over the globe can freely and legally enter the a country and take any U.S. job without any firm limits.
Paul Ryan is currently being challenged by businessman Paul Nehlen in Wisconsin’s August 9th primary. Nehlen has attacked Ryan for his longstanding support for the donor class’s open borders immigration agenda. Nehlen has also attacked Ryan for his support of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP). Because Wisconsin has an open primary, both Democrats and Republicans can vote in the August 9th Republican primary election.
Reports indicate that this week Paul Ryan outspent Paul Nehlen on advertisements by roughly 20 to 1.
As the Journal Times reported:
House Speaker Paul Ryan spent $192,000 on a TV ad released Tuesday in the Madison and Milwaukee markets, with another $25,000 for a corresponding radio advertisement, according to his campaign…Paul Nehlen, meanwhile, spent about $10,000 on cable and network air time for an ad criticizing the speaker on immigration… The ad wars offer a glimpse into the major financial discrepancy between the incumbent and challenger. Ryan was flush with nearly $10 million in his campaign account while Nehlen had about $146,000 at the end of the June 30 filing period, according to campaign finance records.
Nehlen addressed the new reports that Speaker Ryan will headline the retreat for the pro-open borders billionaires. Nehlen said, “For the Speaker of the House, who should be running the Republican Party’s strategy for this election, to be hanging out with the Koch brothers is further evidence that he is controlled by corporate donors, and puts corporations before country.”