Leaked Call Between Koch Network And Republican Staffers Reveals Efforts To Kill Voting Rights Bill

A leaked call from early in January has revealed that the Koch network is working closely with Republican aides, including an aide to Mitch McConnell, to derail public support for the voting rights expansion bill that Democrats are trying to pass. These efforts began even before Democrats took power in Washington, D.C., and Republican groups are scrambling to find a way to kill public support for the measure before it is too late for them. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this and explains why these groups are so desperate to stop it.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

While the Senate is still trying to get some traction on Senate bill one, which is the, for the people act the expansion of voting rights throughout the United States. The house already passed. There's a earlier March HR one S one still currently in, uh, deliberations Democrats have to worry about Republican filibuster, but Republicans have actually been sweating this legislation and strategizing against it since early January, a phenomenal new report from the new Yorker by Jane Mayer shows that on January 8th, there was a conference call and they have now obtained a leaked copy of what was discussed on this conference call between members of the Koch network and congressional Republican staffers, including a top aid to Mitch McConnell, uh, where they discussed ways to subvert this piece of legislation and get the public specifically Republicans to not support it because as it stands right now, as they pointed out on the call, not only does most of the country like this piece of legislation, but Republicans do too.

So this has broad bipartisan support outside of Washington, DC. And that is terrifying to these Republican power players. And again, you've got the Coke network, you got congressional staffers and you had dark money donors in on this call here from the new Yorker. Let me just read some of this, um, uh, recording obtained by the new Yorker of a private conference call January 8th, between a policy advisor to Senator Mitch McConnell and the leaders of several prominent conservative groups, including one run by the Koch brothers network reveals the participants worry that the proposed election reforms garner wide support, not just from liberals, but from conservative voters to the speakers on the call expressed alarm at the broad popularity of the bills provision calling for more public disclosure about secret political donors and the participants conceded that the bill, which would STEM the flow of dark money from such political donors as the billionaire Oro magnate, Charles Koch was so popular that it wasn't worth trying to Mount a public advocacy campaign to shift opinion.

So they're actually worried that this thing is so popular. It's so broadly supported that they might not even worry about running a counter campaign to it because they don't even think it would be successful. But, um, you do have a man by the name of Kyle McKinsey research director for the Koch run AF advocacy group stand together, who told the conservatives on the call, according to Jane Mayer's reporting here, that he had a bit of an ACE up his sleeve, and he thinks he knows how to get the public to not support this piece of legislation. Because when they were presented, when his little focus groups or whatever were presented with the information and the bill on a neutral level, you know, this isn't a Republican or Democrat thing, here's just legislation. What do you think they liked it? So then he tried saying, well, what if I told you that this particular piece of legislation, if passed, would allow people like representative Alexandria, Ocasio, Cortez to push forward with their highly liberal agenda. Now suddenly they got a couple of people, not, not all of them, but a few who said,