According to a report from the Daily Beast's Lachlan Markay, conservative gadfly Matt Schlapp's lobbying firm has suddenly become a vendor for Donald Trump's re-election campaign just as a Twitter campaign about his comments on Black Lives Matter protesters cost him corporate clients.
Schlapp who also runs CPAC -- and whose wife Mercedes works for the Trump 2020 campaign -- heads up Cove Strategies which billed the president for $43,567 for communications consulting in June,making it the first time his lobbying and public relations firm has done work for federal PAC since 2012.
According to Markay, the conservative Schlapp's company is bleeding high profile clients after they were made aware of his comment online.
"The Trump campaign payment came about a week before Schlapp’s lobbying clients began dropping his firm over comments about nationwide protests against racism and police violence," the Beast report states, quoting the Schlapps tweets that read: “All lives matter including the dozen or so killed due to fanning these flames for political ‘gain,’" and another claiming that BLM is “is hostile to families, capitalism, cops, unborn life and gender.”
Since that time, Cove Strategies has lost valuable lobbying contracts with companies such as Verizon, Comcast, and Abbott Laboratories, all of whom issued statements that were taking their business elsewhere.
With another client, trade group Seasonal Employment Alliance, also stating they were moving on, Markay reports that Cove has now lost one-third of their lobbying revenue from the first half of 2020.
For his part, Schlapp has complained that he is a victim of the "cancel culture" by tweeting, "Why does the American left demand that all opposing views be silenced?”
The report notes that Cove did add another new client last month whose fees, along with what he collected from Trump 2020, is making up for the shortfall.
For the moment, other clients, including Samsung, Walmart, and Oracle are sticking with the embattled conservative's business.
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