Our Enemies Were The Friends We Made Along The Way

Last week on the award-ready Professional Left podcast we briefly touched on how The Federalist's loathsome Molly Hemingway had gotten behind the theory that Andrew Cuomo wasn't taken down for sexual harassment, but because he was a threat to Harris in 2024.  

Well, just this very day I learned that this very same Molly Hemingway is one of three winners of The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation prize.  In the press release Hemingway is described as a "noted journalist, author, and commentator" who is being honored for reflecting "The Bradley Foundation’s mission to restore, strengthen, and protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism."  

In case you were curious, the prize comes with a stipend of $250,000 and, in this case, a helluva punch line.  

Previous winners have included noted unreconstructed Iraq war pimp John Bolton, noted unreconstructed Iraq war pimp Victor Davis Hanson, noted unreconstructed Iraq war pimp Bill Kristol, noted unreconstructed Iraq war pimp Paul Gigot, Jeb Bush (who is the brother of the king of all noted unreconstructed Iraq war pimps), noted Reagan-era relic and national embarrassment Edwin Meese III, the late-and-unlamented Emperor of the Pig People Roger Ailes, and Kimberly Strassel who is an all-around human catastrophe.

In case you were curious about who or what the Bradley Foundation is, it's one of those deep-pocketed you've-never-heard-of-it-unless-you-know-about-it wingnut welfare troughs funded by two Right wing billionaires who sold their arms and electronics business and used the profits from that sale to bankroll all kinds of flag-swaddled, democracy-suffocating enterprises like FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, The Heritage Foundation and the Hoover Institution.  In the past they have also massively underwritten  Islamophobic lunatics like David Horowitz and his Freedom Center (which received $4.2 million), Frank Gaffney and his Center for Security Policy (which received $815,000) and Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum (which received $305,000). 

And don't worry.  The punchline's coming.

Via Wikipedia: 

The foundation describes itself as supporting limited government.[8] The New York Times described the Bradley Foundation as "a leading source of ideas and financing for American conservatives."[9]

It was reported in August 2021 (in New Yorker magazine) that Bradley Foundation is funding a number of groups tied to the Republican “Big Lie” that former President Donald Trump won the election because there was massive fraud. On Bradley’s board of directors is one of The Big Lie’s foremost propagators, attorney Cleta Mitchell, who notoriously joined Trump on his phone call to pressure Georgia election officials into “finding” more than 11,000 votes to overturn that state’s results.[10]

Now here comes the fun part.

I learned that Molly Hemingway was getting a quarter of a million dollar payday from these creeps when I heard Charlie Sykes grousing about it on Mona Charen's podcast.  

Sykes:  Okay this may be somewhat inside baseball, um, but I... I... think the low light of... of the week was the decision by the Bradley Foundation to award the prestigious Bradley Prize to Molly Hemingway...

Mona Charen: Amen.

Sykes:  This is a prize that was once conferred on people like Charles Krauthammer, and to conferred on Molly Hemingway is just such a... it is such a fall.  I mean Mona knows how I feel about all of this but also it's just a reminder of how the the gatekeepers, um, of... of the Right -- the people who could have been the gatekeepers of... of the Right -- have, instead of playing a positive role, have decided that they're all in on it and I think it's just... if you... if you... if you look at the trajectory of Conservative thought, to go from what the Bradley Foundation used to be what it stood for -- to giving a quarter of a million dollar award to a... a retromingent hack like Molly Hemingway is appalling.

What I very definitely did not hear Mr. Sykes mention was that until very recently, his third-and-current wife, Janet Riorden, was the grant manager/coordinator for... 

...The Bradley Foundation!

Because of course she was. 

The entire story behind that is long and wild and includes aliases, a secret mistress and legal strong-arming which you can read all about here.

Conservative Radio Host, Charlie Sykes, Marital Affair Exposed

My points here are twofold.

First, the fact that Charlie Sykes' wife was in charge of doling out money at The Bradley Foundation long after it was perfectly clear that they were in the business of bankrolling some of the sleaziest and most dangerous crackpots on the Right (and Jeb!) is one helluva big omission for Sykes' to make, especially considering he made it on one of his own company's podcasts, where he had all the time in the world to say whatever he wished and where he was the one who went out of his way to drag The Bradley Foundation into it in the first place.

And second, the more you look at the details of the actual history of the Right during Sykes' nearly-thirty-year tenure as one of its leading voices and power brokers, the more you realize how transparently ridiculous his whole maudlin schtick about pining for the noble Conservatism of the Good Old Days really is.  

Because remember kids, you can never trust a Never Trumper.

 

Burn The Lifeboats