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Tag: matt schlapp
Matt Schlapp

Plaintiff Who Charged CPAC Boss With 'Groping' Discloses His Identity

In early January, the Daily Beast's Roger Sollenberger reported that a former staffer for MAGA Republican Herschel Walker's 2022 U.S. Senate campaign was alleging that right-wing GOP activist Matt Schlapp had sexually harassed him — an allegation that Schlapp has denied. Schlapp is a major figure in Republican politics, chairing the American Conservative Union and serving as the main organizer for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

The former Walker staffer, now 39, agreed to be interviewed by the Beast, but only on condition of anonymity. Two months later, however, he has finally revealed his identity.

His name, according to CNN, is Carlton Huffman. The former Walker staffer agreed to let CNN publish his name after a judge, on Wednesday, March 8, ruled that his civil lawsuit against Schlapp could not proceed anonymously. Huffman is asking for more than $9 million in damages.

Huffman alleged to CNN, "On October 19, 2022, Matt Schlapp attempted to take my dignity, but he did not take my voice. Today, I reclaim that voice, and for every victim of sexual assault, I am here to say there is justice and there will be accountability. I look forward to our day in court."

Attendance at CPAC was down this year even though the speakers included two Republican presidential candidates: former President Donald Trump and Nikki Haley (ex-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations). Others featured at CPAC 2023 ranged from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Some pundits have attributed the fall in attendance to the fact that CPAC has become so hyper-MAGA, excluding other conservative viewpoints. But others have wondered if the Schlapp sexual harassment scandal had anything to do with the decline.

A GOP operative, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told CNN, "It's a scandal. If you are thinking about running for president and you're not Donald Trump, you can't afford a misstep. You can't afford to be linked to a scandal."

Schlapp is married to fellow Republican Party activist and former Trump White House staffer Mercedes Schlapp.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Male Aide Accuses CPAC Chief Schlapp Of Unwanted Sexual 'Groping'

Male Aide Accuses CPAC Chief Schlapp Of Unwanted Sexual 'Groping'

More details have emerged in the sexual misconduct allegations against Matt Schlapp, the ultra-conservative longtime Republican operative and lobbyist, chair of the American Conservative Union, the organization that produces the highly-influential Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and a Trump ally whose wife worked for for the ex-president.

A mid-level aide to the Herschel Walker campaign is accusing Schlapp of groping and fondling his genitals after taking him to two bars as he chauffeured him around Atlanta.The Daily Beast was the first to report the allegations.

Last October, Schlapp allegedly invited the staffer “to meet for drinks that night at the Capital Grille restaurant in the Buckhead section of Atlanta, the staffer said,” according to NBC News. “He believed the extra face-to-face time could help him solidify a professional connection with one of the party’s most influential figures.”

“Schlapp, who drank Tito’s vodka during the night, began ‘intruding into my personal space’ at the second bar, the staffer said. At one point, Schlapp bumped into the staffer’s gun while their legs touched, the staffer said, prompting Schlapp to ask what he was carrying.”

“‘Sig Sauer,’ the aide said, surprised to find that Schlapp seemed unfamiliar with the name of the gun given CPAC’s emphasis on Second Amendment rights.”

In audio recorded by the staffer that NBC posted in its report, the aide says Schlapp “put his hands on me in a sustained and unsolicited and unwanted manner.”

The aide alleges at one point Schlapp asked him, “Are you uncomfortable looking at me?”

That made “the aide even more uncomfortable than he already was, he said. In short order, he told Schlapp that they had an early morning and it was best to call it a night.”

In the car, “Schlapp began fondling his leg, he said. That progressed, the staffer said, as the two men made their way toward the Hilton Garden Inn at the Atlanta airport, a ride of about 15 minutes with little traffic.”

Schlapp “‘literally had his hands on me,’ the staffer said in a video he recorded early in the morning of October 20, just a couple of hours after the alleged incident. ‘Matt Schlapp of the CPAC grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length.’ The staffer did not post the video publicly but shared it with NBC News.”

“To my shame, I did not say ‘no’ or ‘stop,'” the staffer also said.

“God knows it was not a wanted advance.”

The aide says had Schlapp just made a “polite pass” he would never had said anything.

“‘If he had made a polite pass at me and left it that,’ the staffer said, ‘only me, Matt and God would know about that.'”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

'#Notinvited': CPAC Declares Muppets Won't Be Welcome At Next Year's Conference

'#Notinvited': CPAC Declares Muppets Won't Be Welcome At Next Year's Conference

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

Republicans have expanded their list of people to hate on to include muppets. Last Thursday, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) posted not one but two tweets that barred Elmo, Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie from attending their conference. That's right: CPAC took to Twitter to remind fictional characters they were not invited to a conference they have never been invited to before.

While they are wacky enough not to need a reason to randomly tweet at puppets, these conservatives were allegedly triggered by a tweet shared by Big Bird's Twitter account encouraging children to be vaccinated.

"I got the COVID-19 vaccine today!" Big Bird's tweet read. "My wing is feeling a little sore, but it'll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy."

Following the tweet, Sen. Ted Cruz amongst other right-wing minions took to accusing Sesame Street of pushing "government propaganda," but of course CPAC had to take it further: They decided not only to shame and ban Big Bird, but come after the whole crew.

I doubt that the Muppets ever had plans to come to the conference in Orlando, but the fact that CPAC even thought to tweet it is hilarious. One tweet even featured the hashtag #notinvited. We get it, you don't want Muppets at your conference, CPAC.

Not to mention they even made flyers with images of the Muppets to enforce the ban. They must really have a lot of time on their hands.


But Big Bird advocating getting vaccinated is not the only issue CPAC has with the Muppets. After PBS announced that its newest cast member to join Sesame Street was Asian, CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp shared his disapproval.

"What race is Ernie is Bert," Schlapp tweeted. "You are insane PBS and we should stop funding you."


But a tweet wasn't all Schlapp did to complain about the show's newest Muppet. He was so concerned that he had to go on Fox and Friends First.

"I grew up watching, and it wasn't ever about race. It was about learning lessons and learning to read and learning tolerance," Schlapp said. "And they want to inject race."

He also dove into the topic of gender.

"And by the way, this whole question about gender into everything, one of the Muppet characters had a son, and the son wanted to be a daughter, and they just won't stop with their push for woke politics," Schlapp said.

When asked by NBC News about his stance and why he wanted to defund PBS due to Sesame Street, Schlapp stood his ground and even took some stabs at National Public Radio (NPR), a publicly funded nonprofit media outlet, accusing the organization of wanting to "be in arms in the socialist movement."

"Sesame Street needs to go back to the time when a show was devoted to a letter in the alphabet, and not the latest woke fad," he told NBC News. "We all loved Bert and Ernie without the foggiest idea of the racial demographic they may have represented. Afterall, Ernie is orange. The taxpayers deserve a big rebate. If PBS and NPR want to be in arms in the socialist movement, they need to pay their own way."

While PBS receives some public funding, it is also significantly funded through private donations and grants.

The conservative hate isn't new to PBS, though. According to The New York Times, since its earliest days, PBS has been accused of liberal bias by conservatives including President Richard Nixon, who criticized the public broadcasting channel during his presidency.

Sesame Street has been making headlines for years, not only with its advocacy of increasing participation in the census, but the promotion of conversations regarding health, inclusion, and race.

The Muppet has been praised for letting Asian American children see a character like themselves on screen, but Schlapp slammed PBS.

Of course, like any other time a conservative takes their stupidity to Twitter, Twitter users had something to say about CPAC's outrageous tweets. Most of the retweets the organization had were from those mocking them.

Honestly, good for the Muppets. Who wants to attend CPAC anyway? At least we got some laughs from these tweets.

Fox News Pushes To Defund PBS After 'Sesame Street' Adds Asian American Puppet

Fox News Pushes To Defund PBS After 'Sesame Street' Adds Asian American Puppet

Fox News is promoting a conservative campaign to defund the Public Broadcasting Service for "bringing race into" its programming and encouraging viewers to get vaccinated. At the center of conservatives' latest culture war is Sesame Street, the iconic children's television show.

In a Thursday Fox & Friends First appearance, American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp called to defund PBS over the network's attempts to make its programming more inclusive of race and gender identity. Schlapp specifically attacked the producers of Sesame Street for recently adding an Asian American puppet to its regular cast of characters.

"They're trying to bring race into Ernie and Bert," Schlapp said, referring to two male puppets who live together on the fictional Sesame Street.

On Monday, Sesame Workshop announced that it would introduce the character Ji-Young — the first Asian American puppet in Sesame Street history — as part of an upcoming special titled See Us Coming Together. The show's producers told the Associated Press that the new character is part of an effort to teach children how to be a good "upstander."

"Being an upstander means you point out things that are wrong or something that someone does or says that is based on their negative attitude towards the person because of the color of their skin or the language they speak or where they're from," Wilson Stallings, executive vice-president of Creative and Production for Sesame Workshop, told the news outlet.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has seen a wave of hate crimes against Asian Americans. Bystanders have often played witness to such attacks without stepping in to stop them, leading some advocacy groups to organize bystander intervention training sessions. Former President Donald Trump, for his part, has fanned the flames of racist violence by repeatedly using the term "China flu" to refer to the virus.