Mounting evidence suggests that Charles and David Koch may be looking to Ben Carson as the GOP’s last best hope to beat out Donald Trump. Yes, Carson, whose own advisers admit that it’s a constant challenge to “make him smart.” Well, desperate times and all that.
It’s no secret that Charles and David Koch have for months been concerned about Donald Trump’s rise and GOP primary dominance. Now, it seems they’re doing what they can to help out Carson, who was just last week floated as a potential Koch-supported nominee by Americans for Prosperity President Tim Philips.
No one’s accusing Carson of having a sophisticated grasp of policy or the salient issues of the day, but that hasn’t stopped the Kochs from giving Carson a boost in the form of access to their voter file data through a Koch-linked corporation, “Demeter Analytics Services, Inc.”
FEC filings show that Carson America, Inc., has since April disbursed over $70,000 — and counting — to Demeter Analytics, which Politico describes as, “the holding company for the Freedom Partners-owned data firm i360”:
Of course the Kochs are making Carson pay — but that’s just what they do. What’s significant is that they’ve given Carson access. They aren’t about to extend the same courtesy to Trump. If anything, Charles and David have probably deployed their private espionage unit to infiltrate Trump’s campaign.
And these aren’t the only signs that Koch World is getting behind Carson. Pete Hegseth, the CEO of the Koch veterans front-group Concerned Veterans for America, just yesterday took to Fox News to defend Carson’s abject foreign policy ignorance. Addressing the well-publicized revelation that Carson’s own advisers have doubts about his ability to become informed, Hegseth said: “[Carson’s] gut is in the right place, when you hear his gut he is in the right place on his instincts, I think, and it says elsewhere in the article the advisors just felt like he’s overthinking it.”
The totality of all this, from AFP’s name drop of Carson to Hegseth’s robust defense of the poor man’s foreign policy ignorance, to — most suggestively — Charles and David’s decision to provide Carson access to their voter file data, points to one thing: The Kochs are getting serious (and desperate) about finding an alternative to Donald Trump.