Failed Former ‘Never Trump’ Koch Exec Marc Short Abandons Trump to Join CNN

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 19: Marc Short, White House director of legislative affairs, briefs
Mark Wilson/Getty Images, Edit: BNN
John Binder

Failed former “Never Trump” Koch brothers executive Marc Short, who joined President Trump’s White House last year to be Legislative Affairs Director, has abandoned the administration to join CNN, the president’s most vitriolic opponents in the establishment media.

Short announced his departure from the Trump administration and has now officially abandoned the White House, joining CNN President Jeff Zucker’s payroll as a political commentator.

In a segment featured on CNN, Short was introduced as a political commentator alongside CNN host Wolf Blitzer:

Short’s time in the White House was marked by failure and pandering to the establishment wing of the Republican Party on issues like immigration and trade.

Most prominently, Short failed to deliver on an end to the Catch and Release program that allows illegal aliens at the southern border to be caught by Border Patrol and then readily released into the interior of the country.

The White House and sources close to the administration had told Breitbart News that Short was set to push for a legislative end to Catch and Release this summer. That initiative, like many of Short’s others, never came to fruition.

Last month, Short oversaw an amnesty plan for millions of illegal aliens being crafted by House Republicans and House Speaker Paul Ryan that broke with Trump’s key “America First” agenda on immigration.

In his most prominent failure, Short was unable to secure border wall funding in the March omnibus spending bill that actually barred the construction of Trump’s wall, expanded “Catch and Release” for illegal aliens, and did not fund 1,000 new deportation agents as requested and was released, passed by Congress, and rushed to Trump’s desk within a few days.

On numerous occasions, Short touted amnesty for illegal aliens as a priority of the Trump administration and even questioned what Trump’s border wall would look like.

“I think that what the definition of a wall is, is something that we all need to have a serious conversation,” Short said in September of last year during an interview with CNN’s Blitzer.

Before joining the Trump administration, Short was one of the leaders of the failed “Never Trump” movement inside the billionaire GOP mega-donor Koch brother’s network of organizations. The Koch brothers have promised to continue opposing Trump on immigration and trade, demanding more immigration and amnesty for the U.S. and for all trade barriers to be removed.

Short worked as the director of the Kochs’ Freedom Partners organization and in early 2016, during the height of the Republican presidential primary, while Trump was taking the country by storm on his populist-nationalist “America First” agenda, Short was heading an effort to derail the then-front-runner.

At the time, National Review exclusively reported that Short was leading an effort inside the Koch brothers’ organizations to take down Trump and his agenda, partly by supporting Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who infamously helped author the Gang of Eight amnesty bill that would have given the 12 to 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. a pathway to citizenship:

On a frigid Tuesday in February, a team of top political operatives from the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the umbrella group that controls political activities for the sprawling donor network led by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, arrived in Kansas for a meeting that they hoped would turn the tide of the presidential campaign. [Emphasis added]

They’d set aside $150 million to spend on paid media alone, to be spread across campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels. Yet they had not been authorized to spend a dime on the White House race. [Emphasis added]

Marc Short, then president of Freedom Partners, wanted to change that. He led a faction inside the Koch network that had become convinced of the need to neutralize Donald Trump before his momentum made him unstoppable. Fresh off Trump’s landslide victory in New Hampshire one week earlier, and staring down another likely Trump win in South Carolina that Saturday, Short and his lieutenants had come to Wichita to present Charles Koch with a detailed, eight-figure blueprint for derailing the Republican front-runner on Super Tuesday, when eleven states would vote. They hoped to get the green light to hammer Trump with ads in the states where he was most vulnerable. [Emphasis added]

Just a week after Short’s efforts to lead a full-fledged Koch-funded operation against Trump, he signed onto the Rubio campaign.

After Short left the Koch’s Freedom Partners, he praised the open borders, billionaire donors, saying, “Charles and David have built an amazing network of donors and activists, and their investments in future generations will pay huge dividends.”

In March 2016, The Guardian noted much like his stint at the White House, Short had failed to stop Trump’s ascension to become the Republican nominee for president.

After pushing for a Koch network blitz against Trump, the conservative network’s top political operative, Marc Short, left last month to advise the Rubio campaign and consult for several Senate and gubernatorial candidates, some of whom are likely to get Koch network backing too, say two GOP sources. [Emphasis added]

“Marc Short felt strongly that something had to be done about Trump, [and] advocated for getting involved,” one conservative said. [Emphasis added]

For months leading up to his abandoning the Trump administration and failing to successfully lead any legislative initiatives, Short was a guest on Blitzer’s CNN show despite the president’s fierce battle against the Zucker-run network.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. 

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