Tomorrow, Charles and David Koch will sit down with Morning Joe for their much anticipated, first-ever joint television interview. Without a doubt, the billionaire brothers will use the interview to try to mask how they’re driven by a self-enriching and self-interested agenda. The Kochs use their wealth and influence to control the GOP agenda and back puppet candidates, which is a winning formula for the Kochs’ bottom line but hurts the middle class.
Here are 11 questions Charles and David Koch should answer on Morning Joe:
1. By not endorsing in the GOP presidential primary, each candidate continues to jockey for your support and is “looking to hone their message to appeal” to you. Donald Trump even called the candidates that appeared before you at your California fundraiser “puppets.” Are you the puppet masters of the Republican party?
2. You claim only a portion of the money you’re spending on 2016 is going to politics and also argue your “constituency” groups, including LIBRE,Concerned Veterans for America, GenOp, and others, aren’t political. But NPR reported leaders of these groups admitted behind closed doors at a Koch conference that they’re only interested in GOP politics & advancing your agenda. And National Review exposed how all of the data these groups collect at events like drivers education classes for Latinos and events for military families flows back to your for-profit data company, i360, which already selling data to the candidates you like. How can you argue that your entire operation isn’t political?
3. This week, the Charles Koch Institute is holding the Advancing Justice summit to highlight your work on criminal justice reform. You argue that prison terms and criminal history disclosures for a non-violent criminal offense can unfairly prohibit a person from advancing in his or her life and contributing to society, and many people including President Obama agree with that. But why do you believe that corporate criminal and civil offenses should be treated with the same leniency?
4. You defend your political spending as a form of free speech, but there have been reports that that donations from the Charles Koch Institute to public and private universities often come with stipulations on hiring and what coursework is acceptable. Is it hypocritical to defend free speech in one arena, but attempt to stifle it in another?
5. While you’ve claimed you didn’t enter the political sphere until the Bush administration, David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket in 1980 and Koch Industries spent hundreds of thousands on political contributions during each presidential election in the 1990s. Why are you trying to hide your long involvement in politics?
6. You’ve backed Speaker Paul Ryan starting when he first ran for office in 1998 and have contributed tens of thousands to his campaigns over the course of his career. Do you expect Speaker Ryan to advance more Koch priorities in the next few years?
7. In Good Profit, you parenthetically celebrate that your father did not buy into the asbestos industry given its harmful effects; why did you purchase Georgia Pacific given the numerous lawsuits it has faced due to its sale of asbestos-laden joint compound?
8. You often complain about dysfunction in Washington, but your network spent hundreds of millions to bankroll the campaigns of far-right Republicans in the Tea Party movement. Now, these candidates are trying to lead Congress, focusing first on moving your agenda forwards — and it’s a mess. Are you at least partly to blame for dysfunction and gridlock in Washington?
9. A majority of the GOP presidential candidates have released tax plans. Would you personally be better off under a Republican president? Which tax plan is best for you?
10. You’ve warned that “hubris, arrogance is just one step ahead of loss of integrity.” After a majority of House Republicans voted to reauthorize the Export-Import bank, Americans for Prosperity called out more than two dozen Representatives, even threatening “consequences” against them in certain cases. Is that hubris? How much will AFP spend attacking these Republicans?
11. In a recent interview with the Wichita Eagle, you claimed that politicians are “beholden to corporations and cronies who get them re-elected” and deemed this “welfare for the wealthy.” The Koch network has poured hundreds of millions into our political system — do you agree that the candidates you back are beholden to you?