Two Donald Trump loyalists behind a new lobbying firm explicitly founded to help businesses navigate the President-elect’s administration will also launch a pro-Trump super PAC intended to drum up support for his agenda and administration picks, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
The Great American Agenda PAC will “build grass-roots energy and support for the Trump agenda, the Cabinet nominees, and the Supreme Court pick,” former Trump adviser Barry Bennett, who cofounded Avenue Strategies with onetime Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, told Bloomberg.
Lobbying firms do not typically set up super PACs, and the explicit focus on supporting the agenda of one presidential administration is particularly unusual.
Lewandowski and Bennett’s work also seems contradictory to Trump’s campaign vow to “drain the swamp” of lobbyists and inside fixers who operate in Washington, D.C.’s corridors of power.
Lewandowski denied any inherent conflict, telling Bloomberg that his firm’s goal was merely “to help companies grow and expand, which falls directly in line with the goals of this administration.”
Trump himself gave Avenue Strategies his blessing in a statement to Bloomberg, saying, “Corey is a terrific and talented guy, and I wish him well.”
The 11 clients the firm has acquired thus far include Ohio payday lender Community Choice Financial and the incoming governor of Puerto Rico, according to Bloomberg. Lewandowski and Bennett said they will only accept clients who agree with Trump’s agenda.
When the firm first launched in December, Lewandowski told Fox News that draining the swamp was “somewhere down at the bottom” of Trump’s list of priorities. Trump ally Newt Gingrich also said that the President-elect thought the phrase was “cute” but no longer uses it, prompting Trump to send a tweet affirming that he will “always be trying to DTS.”
To be called SwampBuildersExtraordinaire, LLC
They’re going to need all the help they can get. After reading the first tidbits about Trump’s (really Heritage’s) budget and knowing the kind of extraordinary suffering it will cause, I’m pretty confident this television show of a presidency is going to get canceled.
K Street: The rectum of the political food chain.