Colin Anderson
Appearances
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
So there were two groups primarily behind these protests, first being Indivisible, the second being MoveOn. They are very well-funded liberal organizations who have been organizing protests protests like this for some time. And what was interesting in this case is these protests occurred during the congressional recess, the House recess. They just came back in session.
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
And Move On and Indivisible were very public and very forthcoming in the that they were planning these protests. They had their own statements released. They had toolkits that they put out for their members on how to find these town halls, what to say when they got to them, the whole works. They also planted a story with the Associated Press in which their leaders said,
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
very explicitly that we are ramping up these protests during the House recess. And here's what we're going to be doing. And you should watch for this. And so it was very telling then when we saw this wave of mainstream media coverage come out on these protests that portrayed them in a very different light and alluded to sort of the broad and bipartisan backlash that Doge and Elon Musk
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
Were generating through their efforts to slash government spending and you did not see mention of these groups and organizations driving them. What was so interesting about it to me is how public these groups were in touting their role in these protests even before they happened and yet you don't see mention of these things in these stories.
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
That's right. Yeah. And there were some really interesting examples, particularly in CBS News. The protest in the town hall that went particularly viral was a Rich McCormick town hall in Georgia, particularly in suburban Atlanta. He's in a deep red district. And there were some very sort of chaotic videos that came from it of folks shouting him down. And CBS quoted one of the organizers.
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
Her name is Maggie Goldman. And they quote her essentially just as a McCormick constituent. She says that she brought lots of folks to the town hall. CBS doesn't explicitly say that these folks are Democrats or liberals or liberal activists.
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
And yet, if you just sort of Google around, it's very obvious, you know, Maggie Goldman was a volunteer coordinator for Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign. She contributes routinely to Democrats. She ran for her county commission in this area as a Democrat on an agenda of inclusivity.
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
And so that's what was so stunning to me going through this coverage is this was really low hanging fruit in terms of the allegiances and the affiliations of these people. And it was either ignored or deliberately omitted.
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
Sure. On the polling side, it seems like as of now, the efforts are generally supported, particularly when they're worded as targeting waste and fraud. We've seen a little bit of a mixed bag in the focus groups. There was an Axios focus group, for example, that featured swing voters in Arizona. And of these swing voters, there were 11 in total.
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
Eight of them proved of Musk's efforts in the administration and several of them particularly in express the view that waste, fraud, and abuse are so prevalent in the federal government that Doge could go about slashing spending without really hurting core services.
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
The left seems to feel very confident in this case that regardless of whether these protests are grassroots or astroturfed, that Elon and Doge is sort of this rallying figure that is uniting and exciting their members in a way that perhaps they weren't fired up before. I'm not so sure that that's the case yet.
Morning Wire
Ukraine Mineral Deal & Trump’s Gold Card Program | 2.27.25
Yeah, really appreciate it. Always happy to.