The Weekly Standard was a worthwhile publication. Unfortunately its rebirth as The Bulwark is set to be a good deal uglier with a radical leftist funder notorious for his backing of terrorist propaganda and anti-Semitism.
A handful of writers and editors who worked at The Weekly Standard, the now-defunct conservative magazine that was deeply critical of President Donald Trump until its sudden demise in December, have a new home.
Starting Monday, Bill Kristol, a co-founder of The Weekly Standard, and Charlie Sykes, the former talk radio host and conservative commentator, will beef up The Bulwark, a conservative website that has until now served as an aggregator for Kristol’s non-profit group, the Defending Democracy Together Institute.
“The Bulwark was an aggregator,” Sykes told CNN in a phone interview Friday. “We are going to turn it into a full-fledged opinion news website, with really the core digital staff of The Weekly Standard.”
Money for The Bulwark’s expansion was raised in recent weeks and the revamped website has funding in the neighborhood of about $1 million which should last about a year, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. That said, Sykes said he welcomes more financial support.
“As far as I’m concerned, we are not going to get any Russian or Saudi money, so we are going to have to hope to get support from donors across the country and political spectrum who are willing to put country over party,” Sykes said.
Russian and Saudi money? What about Iranian money?
Defending Democracy Together has been criticized for accepting at least $600,000 in two grants from Democracy Fund Voice, a 501(c)(4) group created and funded by left-wing mega-donor Pierre Omidyar. According to Democracy Fund Voice’s website, in May 2018 it “approved two grants to Defending Democracy Together: first in the amount of up to $100,000 over one year and then in the amount of up to $500,000 over one year”
The Institute was also awarded $150,000 from the left-leaning William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in September 2018. The grant was paid to the Institute through DonorsTrust, a right-of-center donor-advised fund provider
The Bulwark’s site informs us that it’s a project of the Defending Democracy Together Institute. As I discussed last year, that’s the anti-Trump group funded in part by the Omidyar Network. As in Pierre Omidyar, the French-Iranian billionaire backing the radical anti-American Left, most notably, The Intercept.
The Intercept has defended Islamic terrorists and anti-Semites. It’s also served as a platform for Russia’s great intelligence coup against America.
Omidyar’s funding of Kristol’s anti-Trump efforts is not unique. Instead the French-Iranian billionaire has become a subtler version of George Soros, funding the organizations and outlets of the radical Left, like The Intercept, The Nation and Mother Jones, but also funding Never Trumpers.
Former hawks are now reduced to being funded by a ferocious opponent of America’s military and formerly pro-Israel pundits have sunk so low as to take money from one of the leading funders of media anti-Semitism putting them in the same company as Glenn Greenwald, Max Blumenthal and assorted defenders of Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet they accuse Trump supporters of having no standards.
The Weekly Standard used to have solid anti-terrorism and pro-Israel coverage. The Bulwark just has anti-Trump rants. Something tells me that Mr. Omidyar won’t be paying the Bulwark to criticize Islamic terrorists, just the President of the United States.
Who’s the traitor now?
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