The Friends – and Paymasters – of Alan Pyke

I wonder if Hillary Rodham Clinton has ever met Alan Pyke. Nobody who knows for sure–not Clinton, not Pyke–is returning my calls. But Clinton and Pyke certainly have a lot of friends in common–friends who would inevitably fill up a future Hillary Clinton White House. Yup, Pyke is right there in the middle of well-funded “progressive” activism, and so who knows: Maybe Pyke himself would end up in the Clinton 45 administration.

You remember Alan Pyke, don’t you? He’s the “deputy economic policy editor” at Think Progress–the blog of the Center for American Progress, the premiere left-wing think tank in DC–who on August 14 tweeted out that he wished Roger Ailes would die a “slow, painful” death. In other words, he’s not a very nice guy. He does, after all, describe himself on his own Twitter page as “reflexively assholish”; it’s revealing that he would a) put that self-description on his site, b) then get hired by CAP, and c) keep those words up there, even now.

Pyke has since deleted that nastygram of a tweet. He also tweeted a terse “I’m sorry”–and then he went right back to tweeting. Over the last three days, he has been tweeting obsessively on the Ferguson, MO situation, sending out more than 50 tweets, cheering on the protestors, heaping scorn on the police. In other words, the usual lefty stuff. Indeed, Pyke seems to be sort of an obsessive fellow; over the last four years on Twitter, he has sent out nearly 55,000 tweets from his personal account. And yet interestingly, he has less than 2,000 followers. In other words, he would seem to be the very definition of a lonely, angry, man crying out in the wilderness.

By contrast, Pyke’s employer, the Center for American Progress (CAP) is anything but a lonely voice. CAP is widely regarded as the most influential “progressive” think tank in town; in particular, it is seen as a holding place for once-and-future Democratic White House aides.

The current president of CAP, we might note, is Neera Tanden; she is an alumna of the Clinton White House, worked as deputy campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s 2000 New York senatorial campaign, did a stint with Senator Clinton on Capitol Hill, then joined CAP, and then joined the Obama White House–only to return to CAP in 2013. In other words, she’s connected. And so she’s also connected to her employee, Alan “Death Wish” Pyke.

So what does Tanden think of Pyke now?  And what does she think of Breitbart News’s demand that Pyke resign or be fired? We don’t know, because she’s not returning our calls, and there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, on the Pyke incident on the CAP website. As far as CAP is concerned, it’s as if it never even happened. So we can assume that Pyke’s job is safe and secure at CAP.

But since what Pyke said is so outrageous, so hateful–so, well, murderous–we at Breitbart News are not going to let go. So we will continue to check in with Tanden, to see if she has any further thoughts on Pyke.

If Tanden is a well-connected woman, another CAP-er, John Podesta, is a well-connected man. Podesta is a longtime Democratic operative who served in various positions in Bill Clinton’s White House, before ascending to be Clinton’s chief of staff from 1998 to 2001. (Judicial Watch put together a useful summary of Podesta’s White House tenure, including his role in “Travelgate,” here.) 

In 2003, Podesta founded CAP, and built it into a powerhouse with money from George Soros, Tom Steyer, and other “progressive” billionaires. Yet Podesta has stayed extremely close to the Clintons; in 2013, he was a headliner at a “Ready for Hillary” event in New York City.  

Podesta is an unabashed Hillary supporter; yet even so, in December 2013, he went back to the White House, to work as President Obama’s counselor, focusing mainly on “green” issues, such as opposition to the Keystone Pipeline. (The fact that Green Agenda comports with the business model of CAP donors such as Steyer has not gone unnoticed.)  

Podesta has made it clear that he will be urging Obama to use mostly his executive authority; that is, don’t bother with such Constitutional niceties as legislation that must be approved by Congress. And Podesta made his own views about Congressional Republicans perfectly clear when he said that the Obama administration if facing “a cult worthy of Jonestown” in the House. Podesta apologized for those incendiary remarks, but as with Pyke, the original expression was much stronger than the subsequent retraction.

Indeed, the fact that Podesta himself would say something Pyke-like tells us all we need to know about Podesta’s own worldview. After all, Pyke was hired at CAP when Podesta was president of the place; we can presume that they had a lot of contact around the office. And even now, their tactical apologies notwithstanding, we can assume that Pyle and Podesta see the right in similar terms. So it’s a safe bet that CAP is getting no pressure from Podesta to fire, or in any way discipline, Pyke.

But now, looking ahead to 2016, Tanden and Podesta are lining up behind Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign; we can expect them both to play prominent roles in the politicking, and then, if Hillary wins, in the governing. They will bring their “progressive” views with them–there’s no doubt about that. The only question is, will they bring Alan Pyke, too?

And one more thing: There’s still the question of the donors. Such lefties as Geoge Soros and Tom Steyer have given millions, but perhaps surprisingly, corporate America has ponied up, too. For a liberal group, CAP has done a great job of shaking money out of corporate America, as a look CAP’s donor list shows. Are all these companies really happy with the fact that they are giving money to pay Alan Sykes’ salary? We at Breitbart News, too, would love to know the answer. And we will do our best to find out.