He’s smart. He’s ambitious. He loves Ayn Rand. He has the backing of Peter Thiel, the most anti-democratic tech billionaire in the world. And Mother Jones has an excellent profile of him. Meet Blake Masters, whom the magazine caught up with at an Arizona campaign speech:
After dispensing with the requisite autobiography—raised in Tucson, married to his high school sweetheart, the father of three young boys—[Masters] pivoted to the doomsaying that has become his signature campaign spiel. “Conservatism can’t beat progressivism going the speed limit. You got to get people in there who know what time it is, who are going to play offense, because then and only then will we have a chance to save this, the greatest country in the history of the world,” Masters can be heard saying in a recording of the event. “Put me in in August and I guarantee you I will beat Mark Kelly by five points. Imagine me debating him as you’re listening to us tonight.” With that, it was time for the audience’s questions.
Asked about [incumbent Democrat Mark] Kelly, Masters responded sarcastically. “‘Oh, I’m an astronaut. Have you heard I’m an astronaut?’” Masters said, imitating the senator. “‘You know, when I’m on the space station and I look at that big blue ball I realize we’re all in it together.’ And it’s like, ‘Shut up, Mark.’” The punchline had the crowd laughing. Such swaggering contempt is typical Masters, who speaks with the self-confidence of a man who has always considered himself to be exceptional and is unsurprised that the world agreed.
Masters speaks with the self-confidence of a man who has always considered himself to be exceptional and is unsurprised that the world agreed.
Over the course of the Q&A, Masters said he backed impeaching Joe Biden over his border policy, attacked generals for being too woke, and warned that Social Security and Medicare would disappear before his fellow millennials became eligible. “Sorry,” he said. “But plan for that now.” (According to the financial disclosure Masters submitted last year, much of his own substantial wealth was held in cryptocurrencies.)
Many of the more than a dozen friends and acquaintances of Masters I’ve spoken with, including the best man at his wedding, have been shocked to see the transformation of someone who used to consider himself an open-borders libertarian turn into an America First nationalist whom Tucker Carlson calls “the future of the Republican Party.” “He was not a shitty, hateful person,” says a former college roommate. “He was a misinformed libertarian white 20-year-old. But honestly, they were a dime a dozen at Stanford.” But even as a young man, there were signs that Masters would be almost uniquely suited to fall under the sway of an icon like Peter Thiel.
You can read the rest here.
We dodged a bullet with that idiot Trump, a narcissist moron who never paid attention in school, never truly worked for anything in his life, and grew up so rich that Trump thought it more important to surround himself with sycophants rather than intelligent people who could help achieve his stated goals.
The ultimate nightmare is someone who rises on the far Right who is smart and rich and disciplined enough to do what Trump was too stupid to achieve: an oligarchic takeover of the reigns of power and democracy in America, and then use the fascist media playbook to turn Americans against one another to the point where a leader could get away with almost anything as long as it was solely to “make America great again.”
Trump has never been a true believer in anything. What the billionaires who fund the extreme Right need is a Trump with brains, a man who’s a total devotee of the mantra that greed is paramount and community is for suckers who will never purchase a car or boat with cash. These oligarchs need someone who believes deep down that the accumulation of wealth is what built America, the greatest nation on Earth. They need someone who not only doesn’t care about poor people, he hates the mere sight of them.
Is Blake Masters their savior? He just might be.
