Not Quite Right: Tim Miller's Mea Culpa Doesn't Deliver
Tim Miller dodged a criminal court but will the court of public opinion be less forgiving? A tell all that doesn't isn't very compelling.
Whenever someone insults you, they are in some real sense, being autobiographical. So it is with Tim Miller who calls me a “shart of humanity” in his book, Why We Did It: A Travelogue From The Republican Road to Hell. He follows it up with “[h]e’s thoroughly shameless in networking and inserting himself into situations that he thinks might make him rich and influential.” Projection much, Tim?
Tim’s title recalls that other great HarperCollins classic, If I Did It, about how O.J. Simpson would have murdered Nicole Brown Simpson if I he had done it. As O.J. likely butchered Nicole, so too does Tim butcher the facts. And for someone who brays often about January 6th and the attack on democracy, I wonder how Miller squares taking money from the Chinese by way of HarperCollins, which is owned by NewsCorp. (Murdoch recently got $100M from the Bank of China.)
Tim’s “David Brockification” is well underway. You need a moral compass for a travelogue and, alas, Tim is confused — about his place in the world, his profession, and about yours truly. He says I’m “a little bit crazy,” apparently, but also “kind of a savant.” As so often happens with these sorts of things, I ask myself: To sue, or not to sue, that is the question! Needless to say Tim gets a lot wrong in his section about the tabloid, GotNews.com, I cofounded and later (rightly) shut down once a subordinate published something inaccurate.
Tim claims that I reached out to him though admits his memory is murky. Huh. The emails I have from former Fox News producer Michael Clemente, who later went to go to work at the shady oppo organization that Tim worked for — America Rising — connecting us which prove otherwise. (It was Tim, I’m told, who gave Clemente the questions that he, in turn, gave Megyn Kelly during that infamous Trump debate. In a way, given that Scott Adams said that Rosie O’Donnell quip was the moment Trump won, it was Tim who gave us Trump.)
That is, of course, one of many ironies that abound with the #NeverTrump folks whose ranks Tim joined. Tim is no exception. He is of a type who, for all their talk of #NeverTrump, found Trump very easy to maneuver and work with. Tim thought he might be a White House Press Secretary and he thought Jeb! the man to get him there. It was not to be. Instead Tim toiled to get climate change denier and deeply corrupt former attorney general of Oklahoma Scott Pruitt appointed to the Environmental Protection Agency. Where’s the accountability for that?
Tim knowingly and happily cashed checks from Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg even after I introduced him to Palmer Luckey and others mistreated by Facebook. Tim mentions that I burned him with the New York Times when I exposed this perfidy and the Times gleefully scalped him.
Apparently the contretemps cost him his job at a liberal podcast.
Let the record show that it was, in fact, I, who soured on Tim long before he turned on me. When I became a father in the early days of the Trump president, I started to regret my involvement with Tim and indeed, with much of the well fed right. To atone for my sins, I write this substack — which is free — and do what I can to tell the truth where and when I can. It’s not perfect and neither am I but I do what I can with the resources I’ve got and I sleep well at night. I never took a check from Facebook and Lord knows I did everything I could to defeat it. And yes, it looks like we are winning.
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Tim’s is a tortured soul who nevertheless has written a book in pursuit of one more grift. Quelle surprise! In his admitted (and surprisingly honest) pursuit of fame and money, Miller likely committed a number of crimes when he was working for America Rising and Definers — not registering for FARA whilst working for foreign governments chief among them. The lines between being an informant, doing opposition research, and spying are a lot blurrier than one might surmise. (This work should absolutely be regulated and fast!)
Now Miller’s trying to atone for them by becoming the so-called “Good Republican” — a role he’s been trying for ever since he “left the GOP” for the Republican Accountability Project, itself a deeply controversial outfit with connections to the Lincoln Project.
Will it work? It’s hard to say but let me suggest some follow up questions for media folks hoping to hold Tim accountable, those few who may remain.
To all the media feting Tim, please do ask him about how he got his start working for John Weaver, the accused sexual pedophile predator who lobbied for Russia, and who, according to the New York Times, used campaign and Super PAC funds to court young, gay men. Young, gay men, like, say, Tim, who was, I’m told, wildly overpaid for his experience. (I’m digging around on the financials here, to be exact, and will update this post accordingly.)
Let’s quote from The New York Times article, “21 Men Accuse Lincoln Project Co-Founder of Online Harassment,” itself:
John Weaver, a longtime Republican strategist and co-founder of the prominent anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project, has for years sent unsolicited and sexually provocative messages online to young men, often while suggesting he could help them get work in politics, according to interviews with 21 men who received them.
His solicitations included sending messages to a 14-year-old, asking questions about his body while he was still in high school and then more pointed ones after he turned 18.
These messages from Mr. Weaver, 61, who helped run John McCain’s presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2008 and John Kasich’s in 2016, did not lead to physical encounters except in one consensual case, and none of the men accused Mr. Weaver of unlawful conduct. Rather, many of them described feeling preyed upon by an influential older man in the field in which they wanted to work, and believing they had to engage with his repeated messaging or lose a professional opportunity.
Given that Tim worked under Weaver at the McCain campaign, and at the Huntsman campaign, and continued to work with Weaver at the Lincoln Project how does Tim feel being a preyed upon and later excusing a predator? And while we are on the topic, isn’t it, well, odd that Tim decided to come out after the Larry Craig incident?
You’ll search in vain for any mention of Weaver in Tim’s book. Tim was very involved with Weaver though how much he won’t tell and I can’t tell.
One gets the feeling that when Tim Miller was smearing Roy Moore, admittedly something of a hick, that he was doing it because Miller had himself been groomed. Psychological motivations are always weird, but Moore was, in a sense, a way for Tim Miller to lash out at his real abuser — John Weaver — and get one over on the rubes in the Republican Party he dislikes. Tim’s obsession with Russiagate whilst working for a guy who was a paid lobbyist for Russia is similarly worth probing, so to speak. Weaver’s pedophilia and promises of advancing people’s careers accordingly certainly carries with it shades of Epstein. Weaver likely got the contract because Huntsman wound up being ambassador to Russia. Seems odd.
You could ask about that, dear media.
Or you could ask about the work Tim’s firm did for and against Steve Wynn, who was forced to register as a lobbyist for the Chinese. (It’s my understanding that whoever wanted Wynn out of his hotel contract hired Rising for the oppo on Wynn and that Tim was responsible for the sexual harassment stuff coming out. This was also after Wynn allegedly wanted to return Guo to China.)
Or perhaps, you could ask about the lawsuit that the government of Qatar filed against his company for illegally representing the United Arab Emirates?
Maybe you could ask about how he begged me to introduce him to Peter Thiel — while he was doing opposition research against Thiel for Bill Kristol?
Or how he squares his new founded activism with helping Sheryl Sandberg’s smearing operation whilst he pushed the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about George Soros?
In America, at least, talent always finds its level.
Miller decided to include a private text with me in his book. I congratulated him on seeing Trump clearly (though having read his book, perhaps I spoke too soon).
But I sent Tim another text after the publication of his book.
Let me close with that.
“May you find the peace in non-political life that eluded you in political life.”
Something tells me he won’t quite find it. There’s always another grift to go on. How Trump-like!
Reread. And LOL again at "Jeb!".