It’s a hell of a read, if only for the level of raw cynicism involved. The trade group appears to really, really want corporate donors to resume donations to the lawmakers who promoted an election hoax that goaded Trump supporters into seditionist violence, and is full of messaging advice on how to do it while minimizing brand damage. Everyone in the conversation knowsthat the reason corporate PACs give cash to sitting lawmakers is to gain access and to influence their votes on major legislation affecting their attached companies, so the discussion centers more on how to make that sound not-crooked in future press releases.
The Republican operative leading the conversation, Michael DuHaime, notes that providing corporate cash to a lawmaker who “voted after a Capitol insurrection where a police officer was killed” was a “really tough question” they might be asked, but one response might be that the hoax-promoting seditionist “supported ten other things that are important to your industry.”
While the central theme of the webinar appears to be that corporate PAC offices are, if possible, even worse than anyone ever imagined them to be, large American corporations do not appear to need the prodding of prominent Republican operatives to want to return to normal. The shock of actual insurrection and death—again, all premised on known-false hoaxes peddled by Republican lawmakers as means of delegitimizing an election in which their party’s de facto emperor lost—was enough to cause companies to swiftly cut off donations to the hoax’s promoters. Despite this, the Republicans whose money streams had dried up wasted little time themselves in threatening to use their official powers to retaliate against companies no longer willing to send checks.