(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Prominent opponents of former President Donald Trump host regular Friday group Zoom calls to discuss and coordinate their NeverTrump strategies, Politico reported.
The report suggested that many of the nation’s top legal experts and political commentators routinely host a teleconference, which they refer to as a “digital salon,” to exchange political gossip and ensure a unified anti-Trump strategy.
The group was reportedly started by Norm Eisen—the former Trump impeachment lawyer and ironically titled “ethics czar” for the Obama administration, given his utter dearth of nonpartisan scruples.
The salon picked up momentum in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol—helping to ensure that the corporate media stayed on message about how it was framing the psy-op event, which otherwise might have been seen as far tamer than the “mostly peaceful” race riots that the public had witnessed from left-wing activists in the months prior.
About a dozen people—including top progressive ideologues, conservative but anti-Trump legal scholars and prominent legacy media pundits—may join the call on any given Friday, although they are entirely off-the-record.
“It feels almost like a seminar in law school,” one anonymous participant told Politico, but “with a distinct anti-Trump tilt to it.”
Members include ex-conservative commentator Bill Kristol, who formally announced his switch to the Democrats in 2020; and Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, one of former President Barack Obama’s mentors.
Another ex-conservative, Trump-spurned Lincoln Project cofounder George Conway, has also reportedly made appearances, along with Jeffrey Toobin, the former CNN legal analyst and Zoom persona non grata.
The group also routinely features special guests, the list of which includes:
- Staffers from the House Jan. 6 committee
- Roberta Kaplan, the lead attorney for serial rape accuser E. Jean Carroll
- J. Michael Luttig, a former conservative judge who helped spearhead the failed attempt to get Trump kicked off the ballot using the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause
Even the normally left-of-center Politico derisively called the group a symptom of today’s “Trump-media-legal-industrial complex.”
The existence of the group also confirmed what Trump himself seems to have long suspected: that there is an organized group of elites working actively against him, even using the legal system as a weapon against his campaign.
It called to mind Molly Ball’s notorious 2021 article in Time magazine, in which she gloated about the undemocratic cabal of special interests that had conspired to suppress valid information, push disinformation, foment civil disorder and manipulate the outcome of the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden.
The secret history of the shadow campaign that saved the 2020 electionhttps://t.co/xG3S60cP2L
— TIME (@TIME) February 5, 2021
Some within the group have likewise recognized that their gatherings confirm what has mostly been theoretical up to now.
“It runs the risk of creating the impression that there is an agreement or cooperation or conspiracy across mainstream media entities,” one anonymous attendee said, adding that the calls could “feed into some false and damaging perceptions, particularly on the right.”
