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Tags: freedomworks | conservatives | maga | donald trump | populism

FreedomWorks: Trump Populism Led to Us Shutting Down

By    |   Thursday, 09 May 2024 11:15 AM EDT

FreedomWorks, a conservative group founded in 1984 that helped turn the Tea Party movement into a national political force, is shutting down.

The organization is calling it quits amid a split within the Republican Party now dominated by former President Donald Trump, Politico reported Wednesday.

"We're dissolved," the group's president, Adam Brandon, told the outlet. "It's effective immediately."

Politico reported FreedomWorks has had a drop in fundraising since 2022.

"A lot of our base aged, and so the new activists that have come in [with] Trump, they tend to be much more populist," Brandon told Politico. "So you look at the base and that just kind of shifted."

"Our staff became divided into MAGA and Never Trump factions," Brandon declared in an internal document reviewed by Politico Magazine, the outlet reported.

"Now I think donors are saying, What are you doing for Trump today?" FreedomWorks board member Paul Beckner told Politico. "And we're not for or against Trump. We're for Trump if he's doing what we agree with, and we're against him if he's not.

"And so I think we've seen an erosion of conservative donors."

Brandon told Politico he had resolved to "keep a working relationship [with the pro-Trump populists] on the issues we agreed upon," and asserted he "did my best to balance the two competing ideologies."

"This has been my life for so long and to turn the lights off, it's a real emotional thing," Brandon told the outlet. "The problem is that it's just not the best vehicle for our [libertarian] principles and values set."

FreedomWorks grew out of the Koch-funded group Citizens for Sound Economy. It split apart from the Koch political network in 2004.

Brandon told Politico he plans to launch a new organization focused on politically independent members of the millennial and Gen Z generations.

"If we started something new, you could build it from the ground up," he told the outlet. "You could build a brand that matches what these folks want, and you could get away around all the baggage [associated with the FreedomWorks brand]."

Fran Beyer

Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.

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FreedomWorks, a conservative group founded in 1984 that helped turn the Tea Party movement into a national political force, is shutting down.
freedomworks, conservatives, maga, donald trump, populism
344
2024-15-09
Thursday, 09 May 2024 11:15 AM
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