Secret tapes show NRA leadership discussing their "wacko" members as a PR problem. Sound familiar, Republicans?
NPR released clips of secret recordings of NRA leadership in the wake of the Columbine shootings. In these recordings, NRA leadership laid the groundwork for how they would continue to react to mass shootings ever since: blame the media, say it's too soon to discuss solutions, and trash anyone insisting on their culpability as "politicizing the tragedy."
It worked for them until they got greedy and director Wayne LaPierre was found to use non-profit taxpayer-assisted funding for his own lavish lifestyle. Now they're as bankrupt financially as they are morally.
What caught my eye in this story was their conversation about their own membership. Just like the Republican Party, the National Rifle Association has a "wacko" problem. I'll let NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer speak for them:
"If you pull down the exhibit hall, that's not going to leave anything for the media except the members' meeting, and you're going to have the wackos ... with all kinds of crazy resolutions, with all kinds of, of dressing like a bunch of hillbillies and idiots. And, and it's gonna, it's gonna be the worst thing you can imagine."
Sounds vaguely familiar.
I'm old enough to remember when Fox News hosted Karl Rove advising Donald Trump to disavow Qanon. [Fox News link]. Too late now!
Every conservative movement is a privately acknowledged scam against ignorant extremists. The end.
