David Plouffe, Democrat political strategist and former Obama campaign manager, said Thursday during a panel discussion on the 2020 election that the “most important people” in determining the direction of the Republican Party are Breitbart News and other conservative media outlets.
The McCain Institute held the roughly hour-long virtual panel discussion, moderated by Showtime host and Atlantic contributor Alex Wagner, which featured New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, Never Trumper and former Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) campaign manager Rick Davis, and Plouffe. C-Span broadcasted the event live.
Plouffe’s remark weighed in on the future the Republican Party after the election. He said in response to a question from Wagner:
[I]n the future, 2024, whether it’s [former Vice President Joe] Biden or [Sen.] Kamala Harris [D-CA] or some other Democrat who’s running for the presidency, whoever emerges on the Republican side — if it’s [President Donald] Trump, we know he’ll just continue the act, but will there be trashing of elections and trashing of election officials, and trashing of norms, and threatening not to abide by results?
…I really think [the] most important people in the Republican Party today about the future are not really [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell — on legislation, of course, Mitch McConnell — or Kevin McCarthy, or anyone thinking about running for president, it is Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, it is the people that run Breitbart, it is the people that run Prager University, it is the people that run the Epoch Times. Now it is the people who are running Newsmax.
If they say the election is not legitimate, if they say Trumpism is the thing we need to double down on, whether Trump is at the head of the snake or not, that’s what’s going to happen, because that’s where the energy is. So to me what we need to be watching is all of those entities over the next 60 to 75 days, where do they land? Because where they land, I think most Republicans are going to feel that they have to follow that.
View the entire discussion below:
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