The Far-Right Could Soon Have Two Senate Seats

Philip Bump: “As Trump leveraged his fame and wealth to seize power, billionaire investor Peter Thiel was by his side. Watching. People tuning in to the 2016 Republican convention would have seen Thiel giving an awkward, generic speech about patriotism and Hillary Clinton and probably assumed he was just another one of the random people selected to testify to Trump’s business acumen.”

“But Thiel had his own philosophy and his own ambitions. As the 2022 midterm elections approach and two longtime allies of Thiel’s stand on the brink of election to the U.S. Senate, it seems safe to say that Thiel is doing to Trump what Trump did to the GOP: Leveraging Trump’s existing popularity on the right to build his own power center in American politics.”

“Thiel and his compatriots, including Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, are on the brink of seeing GOP-skeptical right-wing allies wielding as much power in the Senate as the state of California.”