Jane Mayer
Jane Mayer
Jane Meredith Mayer is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1995. In recent years, she has written for that publication on money in politics, government prosecution of whistleblowers, and the United States Predator drone program...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth24 November 1955
CountryUnited States of America
Jane Mayer quotes about
running song thinking
[Donald] Trump comes along and is singing a different song. He says, "I don't need your money; I'm rich enough on my own to run." And he says, "I think we need these programs." And, lo and behold, a lot of Republican voters liked what he said.
policy
There's not as much big money on the left, but you've got George Soros, who has the Open Society Institute. He's pushing liberal policies.
conservative trade
Donald Trump actually is a pretty big-government conservative. He doesn't see eye-to-eye with them [the Kochs] on trade.
presidential election natural
Barack Obama was elected President in 2008 and re-elected in 2012. The natural thing would be to suggest money on the right [wing] doesn't really matter that much. The first thing you have to know is that the presidential elections are the ones where it's most difficult for money to hold sway, in that they're the most public elections.
different trade free-trade
They [the Kochs] want free trade and cheap labour. They own the second-largest private company in America, which is a huge multinational corporation. So they are on a different wavelength.
party people unhappy
This year [2016] we're seeing a really strange upending [of the party]. The money was coming from these super-wealthy donors who were really on the far, hard right, people like the Kochs. So the party and the candidates moved so far to the right that a lot of people who don't share their point of view were unhappy.
party believe environmental
The Kochs have been activists since the 1970s. You can go back and look at the platform of the Libertarian Party in 1980 and see what they really believe in. They wanted to abolish huge swaths of the U.S. government, including the Internal Revenue Service. They want to get rid of Social Security. They'd like to get rid of Medicare. They'd like to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, which directly affects their business.
hopeful problem solutions
It's hard to look at [Donald] Trump as a hopeful sign because, in his own way, he is offering false solutions to many problems.
party arguing republican
I would argue that there's been a backlash this year [2016]. They [the Kochs] pushed the [Republican] party too far right. The other thing that the backlash is against is the sense that politicians have been bought and sold.
hate republican program
So you've got these regular, middle-class voters who don't hate the government as much as the Kochs do. They're Republicans, but they still want government programs. They want Social Security, they want Medicare. They need it.
hate big-government
[The Kochs] they hate big government.
action climate-change spending-money
[Tom] Steyer is specifically spending money on candidates who will take action against climate change.
running country writing
What I write about is how much influence it's had in things like state legislatures and governorships and congressional races. The other thing that's even more important in the long run is that very extreme money has affected the ecosystem of ideology in the country.
running house
In fact, Charles Koch tried to get [Mike] Pence to run for the White House in 2012.