The German Marshall Fund Goes Overtly Political
George Marshall didn’t care one bit about which political party governed America and European capitals during and after World War II. GMF shouldn’t care today, but it clearly does. That must change.
Balance. Even-handedness. Nonpartisanship. Is expecting those things from a group created as a thank you from the West German government on the 25th Anniversary of the Marshall Plan too much to ask? It shouldn’t be, but apparently it is.
Recently, I received an email from the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) announcing a new newsletter, Countdown to the Midterm Elections, produced by the Alliance for Securing Democracy at GMF. The email noted that “Each week until the November elections, we’ll share the latest analysis on disinformation and election integrity…We’re kicking off with a look at Wisconsin, a state embroiled by the “Big Lie” and various efforts to spread disinformation and decertify Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.” (emphasis added)
Before I delve more deeply into GMF’s best imitation of disinformation peddler Nina Jankowicz, let me explain why I received the email. Back in 2006, I spent a month in Europe as a GMF Marshall Memorial Fellow (MMF). The MMF is one of GMF’s “flagship leadership development program [that] prepares leaders from both sides of the Atlantic for transatlantic relations…to enable leaders from business, government, and civil society to expand their understanding of transatlantic relations and create new forms of collaboration.”
I did my fellowship with sixteen other Americans most of whom were good people largely from the Left. My fellowship consisted of meeting with various officials from the Left. When I specifically asked in advance to meet with someone from the right-leaning governing Justice & Law Party in Poland, I instead had to spend time with a minor party left-wing policy person. Thus, my criticism of the fellowship, which I shared with GMF several times, was that it was too left-leaning in its fellows, its contacts in Europe, and its orientation. It sorely needed ideological diversity. As a result, I noted that, at best, it was only preparing young leaders from the Left for left-leaning U.S.-EU collaborations, which did a great disservice to the legacy of the Marshall Plan.
More importantly, it absurdly ignores reality on both continents; namely, that the U.S. would be led by the Right either in the form of Republican presidents or Republican majorities in Congress and that Member States in the EU also would be led by the Right. In the seventy-four years since the Marshall Plan was enacted, a majority of those years—forty to be precise—were under Republican U.S. presidents. Thus, the vibrancy and viability of the Transatlantic Alliance would depend on ensuring that young leaders from both sides of the political spectrum would participate in the program and build relationships for the future regardless of their politics.
Two examples vividly demonstrate this reality. During the debate on going to war in Iraq, the Transatlantic Alliance was deeply fractured by the conflicting positions taken by the U.S. under Republican President George W. Bush and by right-leaning French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac and left-leaning, Russian patsy German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Perhaps it wouldn’t have diffused the fight between the parties, but if MMF alumni had occupied high levels within those governments, then the breach that occurred among NATO allies may have been prevented or lessened. A similar reality existed during Republican Donald Trump’s presidency, especially given his criticisms of NATO contributions from EU partners.
In the sixteen years since my fellowship, I’ve served as a model MMF alumnus. I frequently hosted groups of European fellows and European journalists in America, always ensuring they met with officials from both political parties. I’ve written extensively on U.S.-EU issues, including the Transatlantic Alliance. I’ve done several fact-finding missions to Europe in which I met with officials in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, and Europol. I led a strategic policy summit in Europe with representatives from several EU countries. I’ve also given many speeches in Europe to business leaders, embassy staff from a dozen countries, and policymakers, as well as appeared on European radio programs discussing U.S. politics. Of the other MMF alumni I know, other than visiting Europe as tourists, I’m not aware of any of them doing any of the activities I’ve done.
I don’t make these comments to brag or to slight my fellow MMFers; rather, I make these comments because GMF should embrace folks like me, but instead alienate me by becoming overtly partisan. The GMF screed on disinformation and the “Big Lie” is little more than hyperpartisan poppycock that shows utter contempt for those of us on the Right and our legitimate issues with the 2020 election, conveniently gaslights the Right for what the Left actually has done, and ironically is, itself, disinformation.
GMF and its employees should switch off CNN, put down the Washington Post and the New York Times, and look at the facts, yes facts, about what has transpired over the last twenty-two years. Here are a few vital, undisputed facts:
· Democrats, including members of the January 6 Committee, repeatedly questioned the elections of 2000, 2004, and 2016 arguing that the Republicans winners had stolen the elections, were illegitimate, and Congress should reject the Republican electors sent to conduct the Electoral Vote count and replace them with the Democrat slate of electors—no differently than what Trump urged Congress to do in 2020. For those keeping count, that means that leading Democrats don’t believe any Republican win since George H.W. Bush’s victory in 1988 was legitimate;
· Hillary Clinton and her campaign used several cutouts in violation of campaign finance laws to illegally hire foreign nationals to interfere in our election to produce the Christopher Steele Dossier, which was little more than a bunch of false stories about Trump;
· The Clinton-generated Russia Hoax and Special Counsel investigation that it spawned were utter wastes of time and money and unfairly crippled the Trump Administration. The same goes for the Alfa Bank Hoax created by Clinton lawyer Michael Sussman and Rodney Joffe, as well as the improper FISA warrants on Carter Page;
· Four years of grossly biased anti-Trump media coverage, including running many false stories about the items noted above, that ran 90% negative compared to Barack Obama’s eight years of 80% positive media coverage unfairly meant that Trump had to run the election race with an 800-pound weight on his shoulders;
· Conversely, Hunter Biden’s computer was not Russian disinformation and was corroborated by Biden associate Tony Bobulinski. The 51 intelligence officials had no basis for their pre-election claim about the laptop and the media/social media had no real basis to suppress news about it, including Bobulinski’s statement that Joe Biden was involved in the business deals with foreign government as Vice President. Suppressing these stories helped Biden, as a meaningful number of voters now state they would have voted differently had they known about the laptop in October 2020;
· As detailed by Mollie Hemingway in her bestselling book, “Rigged,” Mark Zuckerberg’s nearly $500 million unprecedented “investment” to mostly left-leaning groups via state and local government entities to help get-out-the-vote of left-leaning voters in key battleground states in 2020 certainly impacted the elected vote tallies in Biden’s favor. These “Zuck Bucks” made it to Republican counties, but the vast majority of funds went to help blue counties get blue voters to vote;
· The last-minute change in election processes by Democrat officials—from mailing ballots to all registered voters to ballot harvesting—circumvented the set laws in several key states. These changes were later held to have been in violation of state laws, but, as they say, the horse already had left the barn; and
· Pfizer improperly delayed the announcement of the COVID vaccine until after the election knowing that the planned announcement on October 27 likely would have ensured Trump’s reelection.
While Democrats and their sycophants have spent far too much time turning a protest that got out-of-control on January 6, 2021, into an insurrection on par with the Civil War, those same “defenders” of “our democracy” justified and excused the violence, damage, and attacks on government buildings, including The White House, and law enforcement in 2016 and 2020 as “peaceful protests.” This includes Vice President Kamala Harris’ support of a bailout fund for rioters that resulted in the release of violent offenders who went on the commit additional violent crimes, including murder. The unequivocal facts show that left-wing rioters did far more financial damage to government buildings and injured or killed far more law enforcement personnel in 2016 and 2020 than the rioters on January 6, 2021, including, by the way, actually engaging in an insurrection in Seattle.
There is frankly little doubt that had there been no hoaxes against Trump, had the media treated him fairly for four years, had it covered the Biden family honestly, had the Zuck Bucks not been spent, had election officials followed the set laws, and had Pfizer made the vaccine announcement as it should have, Trump easily would have overcome the 43,000-vote advantage in three states that put Biden into the presidency (a thinner victory than Trump’s 77,000-vote win in three states in 2016). Heck, it is likely had just one of those things happened differently Trump would have won the 2020 election.
No reasonable discussion on disinformation and the “Big Lie” can be done without acknowledging that the biggest peddlers of disinformation and big lies have nearly all come from Democrats starting in 2000 and continuing through today. GMF should know better than to smear its great legacy by overtly adopting Democrat talking points. It should nix the biased Countdown to the Midterm Elections project and instead do some serious soul-searching about how it can far more effectively meet its mission vis-à-vis the Transatlantic Alliance.
The Transatlantic Alliance is not strengthened by focusing on just one side of the political spectrum. In a fraught world in which Russia, China, and Iran aim to push the West aside, it is more vital than ever that western leaders regardless of their political parties have people among them steeped in the Transatlantic Alliance and the importance of that alliance in securing freedom, democracy, and prosperity. GMF is failing that mission today.
George Marshall didn’t care one bit about which political party governed America and European capitals during and after World War II. GMF shouldn’t care today, but it clearly does. That must change.