The Upper East Side, New York City
Belle’s meeting with her manager Robby Mock does not quite go the way she expected. Not to her surprise, he is already there inside her place, sprawled on the couch watching TV, when she arrives home that morning from her trip to Connecticut. Where she used to usually enjoy having him around, now it seems like an invasion of her privacy. And she is a little ticked that he didn’t at least wait for her to get home before coming over. She had talked with him on the phone in the car on her way back, and she had told him when she would be home. As she lets herself in the door, she remembers her promise to herself to get her key back.
They greet and say hello, and after a perfunctory kiss, Belle says, “By the way, Robby, I’d like my key back.” This immediately ignites a jealous confrontation.
Mock is contentious. “Why, so you can give it to your new boyfriend?”
Belle is cautious, does not want to further escalate an already tense situation; but, in her determined way, stares back mute response. Mock though is angry and jealous. He approaches and confronts Belle face-to-face.
“I have a right to know what’s going on, Belle.” The air now is heavy with tension. “Are you still fuckin’ this guy?” he belligerently asks.
Belle takes a careful step back to maintain some distance between them. “What I do in my private life is no longer any of your business.”
Mock steps up, gets right in Belle’s face. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” he rudely demands to know. “We have a partnership,” he insists.
Belle can feel his hot breath in her face, but she is unperturbed and stands her ground. “It means you’re no longer my boyfriend—or my manager. As of right now I am severing our relationship, both business and personal.
“You can’t fire me,” Mock angrily challenges her, “We have a contract.”
Belle laughs. “We have a handshake agreement, and I’m revoking that!”
“You bitch!” In a fit of rage, Mock slaps her and knocks her back; but Belle keeps her feet and her balance, steadies herself against the back of a chair. There is a trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth.
Belle stands her ground. “That’s it, Robby—we’re done as of right now. And if you don’t get out of here, I’ll call the police, and I’ll show them this,” she says touching the corner of her mouth where there is a lingering trace of blood, “. . . and I’ll bring assault charges against you. Now get out!” she yells at him.
Mock pulls a key off his key ring, throws it down at her feet, and starts to leave. At the open door, he turns back into the room and points a damning finger at Belle.” You’re gonna regret this, Belle,” he angrily says, “. . . cause I’m gonna make you pay. Just remember—if it were not for me, you’d still be a nobody singing in empty karaoke bars.”
Manhattan, New York City
From his 50th floor office at 40 Wall Street, right in the heart of downtown Manhattan, multi-billionaire hedge fund manager Thomas Merced, standing at the window, has a commanding view over-looking Battery Park and New York Harbor out to the Statue of Liberty. Is he moved by the scene? Or is it just another view out the window? Nobody knows. He certainly understands and appreciates the symbolism of that statue in New York Harbor, what it meant to millions of early emigres to this country—the liberty to say out loud what you believed and the freedom to worship or not as you pleased, and the chance for a new beginning. He understands the sentiments and deep yearnings of those early—largely white—emigres, but he is not going to get sentimental or worry excessively over the plight of those brown people on the country’s southern border seeking legal asylum. Does he have any feeling, compassion for the struggles, the hardships of the people on the U.S. southern border who are fleeing violence, poverty, and political oppression from their Central American countries of origin to seek asylum and find a better life in America?
The answer: probably not. He believes like the president (his president) in a tough, almost criminal immigration policy. He is a strident ethno-nationalist—believes exclusively in a White America, has no sympathy, no compassion or feeling for the plight of the brown people from Central America seeking legal asylum at our southern border. He sees masses of potentially Democrat voting immigrants as a direct threat to the minority control of the government currently maintained by his party. He is—in his empty, Chamber of Commerce heart—sympathetic only to the barbarous, inhumane, exclusionary border policies of The Bad King—separating babies and young children from their parents, crowding people (suffering human beings) into cages—telling them when they are thirsty “to drink out of the toilet.”
According to his nativist theology, America is the exclusive (capitalist) preserve (Haven?) for Anglo-white Europeans, not all—but many—of whom in their dark Christian hearts are fervently dedicated to the questionable tenants, vile Republican prescriptions, and hate-filled, race mongering tropes of an angry, unforgiving white supremacist ideology, an over-the-top, bigoted, phony religiosity all shadowed and veiled behind the dark, but relentless and lucrative, predatory practices of a greedy, unchecked brand of free-market capitalism. This is the altar (Temple to Mammon!) where the money mogul, Thomas Merced—the ultimate incarnation of evil in his plutocrat robes, his greed, and his black capitalist heart—worships. In his extremist, radical views, he reflects to a large degree the sentiments of his social class—the wealthy plutocrats who deploy their fortunes (often illegally) in a totally corrupted political system to make the rules that the rest of America lives by. Estimates of his wealth range as high as 8-10 billion dollars.
He and his daughter Rachel were influential promoters of the president’s campaign. Prior to the 2016 election they had provided substantial funding for Boston Analytica, the political consultancy/data analytics firm founded in 2013 by a British company, Strategic Communications Laboratories, to solicit contracts from the RNC for its social media effort before the coming 2016 election. Rachel served as chairperson on the board, Steve Bannon, the alt-right white nationalist from the conservative right-wing blog Breitbart News, served as a political adviser along with the president’s son-in-law, The Court Jester. Boston Analytica held itself out as a political consulting/data analytics firm when it was just the social media disinformation “dirty tricks” arm of the president’s campaign. The firm’s “social scientists” claimed they could predict the voting patterns of people based on sets of certain data factors.
The information to create the psychographs (psychological profiles) of the typical MAGA voter was pirated largely from Facebook. The profiles were passed along to Brad Pascale at his company, Southwest Media, to be coordinated and matched with social, personal, and demographic data to target specific districts in critical swing states. The information was then passed to the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg to be used by the Russian trolls to create the Bots that would be used on social media (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) to spread Russian disinformation to help The Bad King and hurt Hillary Clinton. It was estimated that 126 million Americans were exposed to and possibly influenced in their vote by phony Russian disinformation attacks. Boston Analytica came under investigation by Robert Mueller in 2017 and—following indictments of twelve Russians involved in meddling in the 2016 U.S. election—the company was disbanded and the president, Alexander Nix, fired when a secret video, taken in a London restaurant, exposed the company’s unethical practices.
Mueller failed to make a direct connection between Boston Analytica, Southwest Media, the president’s campaign, and Russia. But it is obvious to even the most casual observer that the political consultancy/data analytics firm—backed and funded by the powerful money manager and his political daughter in alliance with Southwest Media, the social media firm of Brad Pascale, the president’s 2020 campaign manager—formed the unholy nexus in 2016 that connected the president and his campaign to Russia and the trolls in St. Petersburg.
In August 2016, when the president’s election effort was seeming to founder, the Merceds—father and daughter, as principal donors—met with the then Republican candidate and urged that he bring their man, Steve Bannon, into the campaign as a principal adviser. After Paul Manafort was dismissed as campaign manager in August, Kelly Ann Conway took over and Bannon was installed—at the insistence of the Merceds—as a principal campaign adviser, bringing along with him that other Neo-Nazi, alt-right nationalist, Stephen Miller (known as Doctor Death or the Gestapo), the criminal architect of The Bad King’s border torture.
Now that the 2020 campaign is in full swing, the former Boston Analytica has been reconstituted as the new Boston Analytics. Its goal is still the same: to weaponize a social media campaign—with Brad Pascale as the director—to aid and assist The Bad King against his 2020 Democrat opponent, whoever that ends up being after the Democrat’s Milwaukee convention in July, now just weeks away.
As Thomas Merced stands at his office window and looks out over Battery Park and out to the Statue of Liberty, he mulls a growing and urgent pair of problems for the president, and—most especially in his mind—the conservative orthodoxy of the Republican party. One is named Belle LaForce, the other—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
He learned from a like-minded Republican friend just the day before that Belle has broken with her long-time boyfriend and manager, Robby Mock. The story is receiving widespread coverage in the national media—has been a regular feature on Entertainment Nightly. The billionaire hedge fund manager crosses the room to his massive mahogany wood desk, touches the intercom button on the phone, and tells a young assistant at the outer reception desk to have his daughter come into his office.
He has shared with his daughter, Rachel, the sentiment (shared equally between them) that something needs to be done to stop these bleeding-heart liberals—socialists like Belle LaForce and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new congresswoman from the Bronx—before they ruin the country.
Daughter Rachel taps lightly on the door and, without waiting for an invitation, enters the hedge fund manager’s large private office. She smiles demurely at her father.
“Yes, dad, you asked to speak to me?”
Thomas Merced’s face is grim. “No doubt you’ve heard that Belle LaForce has fired her manager, Robby Mock?”
Rachel nods, makes a little smile. “Yes, it’s all over the news.”
Her father is almost gleeful. “This could be the opportunity we’ve been waiting for,” he says.
He barely smiles. “I want a complete investigation on this guy—everything. I want to know his finances, his criminal record—if any—his friends and business associates, any outstanding debts or liens, or warrants. I want to know what he eats for breakfast, what toilet paper he uses. Call Keith (this refers to his chauffeur/strong-arm bodyguard) and get him on this. Tell him to use those investigators—Bailey & Associates—that we used to dig up dirt on that Democrat Jersey congressman last year. We’ve got to find a way to get some pressure on this guy, to get some information out of him that we can use against this activist singer.”
Rachel is obliging, does not demur or attempt to dissuade. She knows her father’s determination, obsession with the subject. “Okay, dad. I’ll talk to Keith and get him started.”
Billy and Rosie have talked before about Thomas Merced. Now they have just returned to Washington—after a raucous MAGA Rally in Ohio—and are on the patio at Macintyre’s Pub, not far from the FBI building, following an afternoon meeting with the CIA counterintelligence director, Sean MacGregor, and the FBI counterintelligence chief, Andrew Read, about the new, stepped-up, Republican efforts to influence the coming 2020 election. Rosie is writing—putting together—a new op-ed piece about the latest Russian tactics that Shane wants to get posted in the major national papers. The restaurant is crowded, and, though no one approaches their table, it is obvious that Rosie is recognized by the curious glances of some of the patrons. Billy though is always cautious and keeps a watchful eye on her when they are out together in public.
Merced, the reclusive billionaire, is making headlines, being castigated in the liberal media for bigoted, offensive remarks he made in an interview with a conservative Breitbart reporter. Billy’s information on the man’s reputation and character comes mostly second-hand through Sam.
With affection for his adoptive father, Billy tells Rosie: “Sam is a well-intentioned, sometimes kind of corny, old-fashioned patriot. He believes in America—the ideals of freedom, liberty, and equal opportunity for all; but he also thinks we should put some equity and fairness, some morality back in our politics. Help people who want to work hard for a better life, but just need some help getting started—maybe it is free college tuition, universal health care, family leave or child-care assistance. Sam believes that the country is affluent enough—and the economy strong enough—that it can afford to help those on the bottom of the income ladder get a leg up.”
Billy pauses, then goes on: “Sam knows Merced—not well, but they are acquainted. Sam’s an oil man, and he used to get invited to the Koch brother’s political conclaves. He does not share their ultra-conservative philosophy, but Merced has tried multiple times to solicit money from Sam for his investment fund. But Sam does not like the man, does not trust him, and would never give him any money.” Billy stops, takes a sip of beer, and stares across the table at Rosie.
“Sam says he is a crank, and kind of a quirky odd ball. He is reputed to be a math whiz and an early Wall Street pioneer in the use of mathematically complicated and arcane trading algorithms. Oddly, however, he has the public reputation of an idiot savant who speaks mostly in monosyllables and is either unable or unwilling to express himself in full sentences.”
“Sam has told me, with some disgust, that these big wealthy right-wing donors, like the Kochs and the Devoses, and others like them, who—because they have all the money in the world—think their opinions are the only ones that matter.”
He frowns, is almost indignant “In their arrogance and overweening greed, they believe they alone represent the real and true values of America. So, they use their money to pervert the normal political process and push their conservative political agendas using dark money pools, so-called “social welfare funds,” Super-Pac’s (501C-3’s and C-4’s) like American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS that—since the Citizens United decision—hide the identity of big donors and allow illicit tax deductions to fund their political activism.”
Billy takes another sip of his beer. again, looks across the table at Rosie, “Merced is a private-equity guy, what the liberal press refers to—always in a derogatory way, of course—as a “vulture capitalist.” They are the predatory, so-called takeover artists—Wall Street’s “Masters of the Universe” as they like to think of themselves—who buy up the stock of struggling companies in what sometimes are marginal industries. The stock is cheap because the companies maybe do not have great prospects. Under the typical private-equity formula the company—which was maybe just barely profitable before the take-over—is then loaded up with debt so the new managers can take out exorbitant “underwriting fees” to pay themselves up-front for their thievery. The Bad King’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, is the poster boy for this kind of vulture capitalism.”
Rosie nods in agreement. “I know, CNBC sometimes talks about this.”
Billy does not pretend to hide his disgust. “And this drives Sam crazy. When the company’s operations no longer generate enough free cash-flow to cover the interest expense, the vultures raid the employee pension plan, put the company in bankruptcy so they can default on the existing debt, and retire on-the-cheap whatever stock remains outstanding, and then start laying off workers and outsourcing production to “bring costs into line.”
“Once they are rid of the burden of debt service, and the company gradually returns to profitability, they will come out with a new public stock offering which is primarily intended to enrich the new management team. This is a practice, Rosie, that has been going on for years now, that has essentially hollowed-out the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy. The Wall Street Journal writes about it like it’s just Monopoly on steroids.”
Billy is matter of fact. “Sam is a wealthy man, Rosie. But he’s never used his money or power to cheat or steal from anyone.”
Billy finishes by saying, “Sam thinks Merced is a greedy, selfish, evil and dangerous right-wing demagogue who would not stop at anything to achieve his crooked ends.”