When Did the Hat Come Off? Heck Withdraws Trump Endorsement

Representative Joe Heck (R-NV3) candidate for the Nevada senate seat, issued a nice long statement about why he can no longer support the candidacy of Donald Trump. [RGJ]  This is Saturday, October 8, 2016. 

Wasn’t it enough when Trump insulted Mexico, the third largest US trade partner (Census)?  It’s not like we don’t get $280.5 billion in imports from that country, and export $226.2 billion in US goods and services.

“Trump lambasted the southern neighbor. “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems,” he said on May 30 at his campaign launch. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” The remarks led a number of businesses to cut their ties with him.” [The Hill]

It isn’t like some 28% of Nevada’s population is of Hispanic heritage.  Or, that 43% of Hispanic Nevadans are homeowners, or they represent 41% of all Nevada’s k-12 students.  [Pew]  Nor, could Mr. Trump abide the idea that an Indiana born judge of Mexican heritage could be impartial. [HuffPo] Insulting about 1/3 of Nevada’s population wasn’t enough to make Representative Heck remove the hat – and the endorsement? 

Wasn’t Representative Heck just a little disturbed to discover that the Department of Justice had to sue the Trump Management firm not once, but twice, for housing discrimination in the 1970’s. [HuffPo] Wasn’t it troubling that years later Trump disparaged his black casino workers as “lazy” (1991)?

“And isn’t it funny. I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it,” O’Donnell recalled Trump saying. “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”

“I think the guy is lazy,” Trump said of a black employee, according to O’Donnell. “And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” [HuffPo]

That commentary managed to be both anti-black and anti-Semitic at the same time – a two’fer.   It’s not like this is any kind of news – this and other statements have been in the public domain for ages.  Longer than the highly inflammatory statements about the Central Park Five.  No matter the coerced confessions, the lack of physical evidence – no matter that DNA evidence clearly demonstrates the five young men were innocent – no matter that a legitimate confession came forth in 2002 – to Mr. Trump they’re still guilty.  No apologies forthcoming.  Chalk off another 9.3% of the Nevada population – the African American percentage.  And still Representative Heck kept the hat.

And, then there was that entire Birther debacle, with Mr. Trump leading the charge, with Mr. Trump sending “investigators to Hawaii, with Mr. Trump rick rolling the press into covering his hotel opening in DC with a snippet in which he declared that he’d “solved” the President’s problem – the President (who just happens to be African American) didn’t have a birth certificate problem until Mr. Trump decided to make a major issue of it – and NO the stories didn’t emerge from the Clinton Campaign in 2008. [Snopes] African Americans are unlikely to forget Mr. Trump’s attempt to de-legitimize the first African American president of the US.  Nor are they likely to forget that Representative Heck didn’t seem to have doubts at the time about Mr. Trump’s candidacy.  Then, there was that matter of White Supremacists as part of Trump’s base of support:

“His white supremacist fan club includes the Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi news site; Richard Spencer, director of the National Policy Institute, which aims to promote the “heritage, identity, and future of European people”; Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a Virginia-based white nationalist magazine; Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist secessionist group; and Brad Griffin, a member of Hill’s League of the South and author of the popular white supremacist blog Hunter Wallace.

A leader of the Virginia KKK who is backing Trump told a local TV reporter earlier this month, “The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in.” [HuffPo]

Surely, when this pile began to grow it was time to head for the exits?  Heck kept wearing the hat.

But wait, there’s more – Native Americans:

In 1993, when Trump wanted to open a casino in Bridgeport, Connecticut, that would compete with one owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Nation, a local Native American tribe, he told the House subcommittee on Native American Affairs that “they don’t look like Indians to me… They don’t look like Indians to Indians.”

Trump then elaborated on those remarks, which were unearthed last year in the Hartford Courant, by saying the mafia had infiltrated Indian casinos. [HuffPo]

There goes another 1.6% of the Nevada population.  Still Heck kept the hat.

Was Representative Heck getting edgy when the story of how Trump insulted (nay, humiliated) Alicia Machado? Speaking of cruel and unusual punishment… “Miss Piggy?” Miss Housekeeping?” Still Heck kept the hat on his head.  Some publications were keeping track of Trump’s insults to women, Cosmopolitan counted 23 major incidents.  Huffington Post accumulated 18 in that category. Fortune magazine published a ‘history’ of Trump’s comments about women in August 2015.   It’s not that the information and the incidents weren’t in the public realm; it’s not that no one knew about Trump’s attitude towards women were – surely Representative Heck wasn’t surprised by the Access tapes?  Heck is on the horns of a dilemma herein: If he knew Trump’s history with women and still endorsed him he falls neatly into Secretary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” as a willful misogynist; If he didn’t know of Trump’s history of uncomplimentary and downright nasty statements about women he has to be the least well informed candidate since … Aleppo? Name a major world leader?  That’s not likely to make women, who constitute 49.8% of Nevada’s population very happy either.

So NOW Representative Heck says:

“I’ve spent much of my life serving in the military where I stood beside some of the bravest men and women this country has to offer — willing to put themselves in harm’s way to protect the freedoms upon which this country was founded. They live by a code of honor, of decency and of respect.

“As a husband and a father, I strive to bring that same code of honor into my personal life.

“I believe any candidate for President of the United States should campaign with common ethical and moral values and decency. I accept that none of us are perfect. However, I can no longer look past this pattern of behavior and inappropriate comments from Donald Trump. Therefore, I cannot, in good conscience, continue to support him nor can I vote for Hillary Clinton.” [RGJ]

Well, there was the  little flap with the son – that code of honor seemed to slip a bit in the Heck household.  What was “common ethical and moral values and decency” in a man who was twice sued by the Department of Justice for housing discrimination?  Where was the decency when Trump launched into snide and disparaging comments about breast feeding? Diaper changing? Women in the workplace? Women’s physical attributes?   How many incidents have to stack up before Representative Heck is willing to call out a “pattern of behavior and inappropriate comments?”

Heck goes on:

“My hope is that this will not divide us and that we can unite behind Republican principles. We deserve a candidate who can ask him or herself at the end of the day, ‘Did I live my life with honor and do I deserve to be elected president of the United States.’ [RGJ]

Mr. Trump announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015, or 480 days ago. For the meticulous that’s one year, three months, and twenty-two days since the announcement.   Are we to believe that it took Representative Heck 479 days to figure out that Mr. Trump didn’t meet the standards of “common ethical and moral values and decency?”

We might look to another source of wisdom about consorting with those who lack ethical and moral values.

He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith; and he that hath fellowship with a proud man shall be like unto him. 2 Burden not thyself above thy power while thou livest; and have no fellowship with one that is mightier and richer than thyself: for how agree the kettle and the earthen pot together? for if the one be smitten against the other, it shall be broken. 3 The rich man hath done wrong, and yet he threateneth withal: the poor is wronged, and he must intreat also. 4 If thou be for his profit, he will use thee: but if thou have nothing, he will forsake thee.  Ecclesiasticus 13:1

In endorsing the candidacy of Donald J. Trump, Representative Heck surely stuck his hand in the pitch pot.  Meanwhile, as of September 21 Representative Mark Amodei (R-NV2) was Trump’s man on the ground in Nevada; it remains to be heard if he’s removed the hat and gotten his hands out of the pitch pot.

>Sharron Angle’s Angel: Alan Keyes, and his Declaration Alliance

>In case anyone was wondering what that Declaration Alliance was, and why Nevada senatorial candidate Sharron Angle might have been endorsed by it; here’s the answer: It’s Alan Keyes’ non-profit “educational” operation. And, to make the soap opera elements even more interesting the Declaration Alliance got into some hot water amidst the Minuteman’s Civil Defense Corps founder Chris Simcox’s troubles with dissidents who have formed a splinter group calling itself the Patriot’s Border Alliance, and with the Pennsylvania Bureau of Charitable Organizations.

A summary of the situation, as reported by the Nonprofit Quarterly, is that the MCDC collected funds to be allocated to candidates supporting its views, only it seems that a mere $10,000 of the $300,000 was actually disseminated to qualified candidates. When senior members of the MCDC complained, they were fired. Simcox “explained” the firings were organizational housecleaning and most of the money went to “bolster the organization’s image in Washington, D.C. The Nonprofit Quarterly explains the connection between Keye’s Declaration Alliance and the MCDC:

“At the center of the Minuteman miasma is an organization called the Declaration Foundation, a 501(c)(3) that shares office space with the Declaration Alliance, a 501(c), located in Reston, Virginia. Alan Keyes founded both of these organizations. Apparently, the Declaration Alliance has been a funnel for resources going to MCDC. The most recent 990 of the Alliance, for example, reports $739,353 in “program services expenditures” in support of MCDC, plus a direct contribution to MCDC of another $112,500. The Web site of MCDC claims that it is a project of the Declaration Alliance, and the first and last MCDC 990 reports $418,493 in revenue (almost $1.2 million less than Simcox’s public estimate of the public support his organization had received), including the Declaration Alliance’s $112,500, but the 990 made no reference to the Declaration Alliance’s other programmatic involvement or its expenditures on behalf of the Minuteman project.”

The Pennsylvania Bureau of Charitable Organizations attempted to untangle the web created by Keyes’ various organizations and the MCDC during its investigations which led to a $6,500 fine because the related Declaration Foundation had failed to include mention of its ties to and contributions to other non-profits and organizations. The fine was also applied because the Declaration Foundation had lied about ties between members of its Board and outside vendors and contractors. “According to the bureau, the Declaration Foundation failed over a four-year period to submit audited financial statements, gave false information when it said it did not share revenue with other nonprofit or tax-exempt groups, and misstated the truth when it said none of its officers or employees was tied to any vendor providing services or goods.” [RWW]

One such tie-in was the relationship between Maureen Otis, listed as the Board Secretary of MCDC and American Caging of which Otis is President. The MCDC paid American Caging $15,202 for “caging activities.” MCDC’s Political Action Committee paid about $70,000 in caging fees from 2006 to 2010. American Caging advertises itself as the nation’s premier private lock box company, specializing in fund raising and “donor relationships.” The treasurer of two of the Declaration organizations received $37,500 from MCDC, and the Declaration Alliance PAC paid $5,000 to Politech, Inc. a company owned by the individual listed as the Declaration Alliance’s president, Mary Lewis, Keyes’ long time chief of staff. [NPQ]

Any other institutions, organizations, investigators, or analysts trying to unwind the entangled mesh of Keyes’ various fundraising operations will have to deal with Keyes’s “Loyal To Liberty” (donations happily accepted) Renew America, which started out as an astroturf organization to promote Keyes’ television show, [RAabout] (more donations happily accepted), and its related site “We Need Alan Keyes For President,” a sub-project of Renew America.

If what happened to the money in previous Keyes electorial efforts is any guide, [TRK] the endorsement is likely all candidate Angle will ever see from any of the Keyes’ related matryoshka nested political, “educational,” and political action committee organizations. Keyes wasn’t exactly punctual in paying his campaign debts from 1996.

What we do know is that a Keyes’ America’s Independent Party blog was announcing the imminent success of the Orly Taitz “birther” lawsuit, and calling the realtor-dentist-lawyer “my attorney in the case,” as of October 7, 2009. (warning: pop-ups) The designation of Taitz as “his lawyer,” might be the result of the unsuccessful bid by Keyes’ other attorney, Gary Kreep, of the U.S. Justice Foundation in November, 2008. [WND]

So, the question remains, will candidate Angle acknowledge the endorsement of Alan Keyes, and his associated Declaration Alliance; and, their relationships to the “birther” suits filed by Keyes?