Trump mega-donor Rebekah Mercer warned of 'armed conflict' before funding Capitol rioters: report

On Wednesday, The Interceptreported that Trump mega-donor and billionaire heiress Rebekah Mercer suggested America could be on the brink of "armed conflict" in a 2019 book — before she went on to give money to groups involved in the storming of the U.S. Capitol.

"'[W]hat is the state of [the American] experiment today?' Mercer asked. ''Now we are engaged in a great civil war,' said Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863. One hundred and fifty-five years later, it is barely hyperbolic to echo the Great Emancipator,'" wrote Matthew Cunningham-Cook. "Raising the specter of violence, Mercer writes, 'We are not yet in armed conflict, but we are facing an ever more belligerent, frantic, and absurd group of radicals in a struggle for the soul of our country,' referring to antifa specifically and casting her opposition to progressives more broadly in existential terms."

"Mercer has been financing a host of right-wing individuals and groups involved in the storming of the Capitol, The Intercept reported earlier this month, from Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward to 'Stop the Steal' organizer Ali Alexander, in addition to her role as a financier of news website Breitbart and the social network Parler," continued the report. "In 2020, Mercer's father, Robert Mercer, donated $1.5 million to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, and the Mercers donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican National Committee."

The Mercers, who made their fortune in big-data analysis and built the controversial Cambridge Analytica firm, were early supporters of Trump's rise. Robert Mercer holds a number of extreme views, including that giving Black people the right to vote sent America in the "wrong direction," and that human beings "have no inherent value beyond how much money they make."