84 Quotes by Jane Mayer

There's been a 40-year effort on the far right to build up think tanks, academic programs, advocacy groups, to push a particular ideology. That's really where the impact is that people don't see.

David and Charles Koch are pretty much as far right as you can get on the ideological spectrum without falling off. They are far right libertarians, very anti-government, very pro-business, very anti-tax, anti-regulatory, in favour of free markets ruling the day.

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.

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.

[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.

One of the oddities of this election is the man that [Donald] Trump chose as his vice-president, Mike Pence, is one of the Kochs' favourite politicians.

In fact, Charles Koch tried to get [Mike] Pence to run for the White House in 2012.

I think the scary thing is that there is in place already a sprawling infrastructure of advocacy groups, think tanks, academics and candidates and politicians funded by the Kochs and other deep-pocketed groups on the far right ready to attack Hillary Clinton.

The possibility exists that the Kochs will walk away with even more power if [Donalds] Trump's defeated.