Rep. Brandon Gill is a first-term MAGA member of Congress from Texas and the son-in-law of discredited election conspiracist Dinesh D’Souza. And he’s the beneficiary of a remarkable faux-intimate fundraising email from Vice President J.D. Vance.
“It feels like I typed & re-typed this note 100 times,” reads the subject line.
The email goes on to say that the message “is more personal and from the heart than most messages, because it's going to patriots that I feel I can trust as our movement’s closest confidants.”
There’s a lot more:
Every time I stand behind the resolute desk, or walk into a critical cabinet meeting to make a decision surrounded by the most dedicated and fearless men and women in our country, I feel the very weight of our country’s survival in my hands and the responsibility of what it represents — a thin, fragile line between the America we love and the America the radical left is determined to build in its place.
And when I sit alone with my thoughts and my prayers the question I ask myself constantly is “what more can I do?”
That’s when I decided I needed to write this message.
At the end of my life, I want to stand before God Almighty and be able to say with a clear conscience that I gave everything I had to protect the soul of this country.
And all that is just part of a plea to follow a link to read Vance’s “urgent briefing,” which opens with this:
My fellow Americans – this is JD Vance.
Today, I’m coming to you with all my cards on the table, not as “The Vice President.”
I’m coming to you simply as JD, the small-town Ohio hillbilly who loves God, cherishes his family, and somewhere along the way ended up being tasked with a critical mission at one of the most critical moments in American history.
The “briefing” repeats some of the email language about Vance sitting alone with his thoughts and prayers asking what more he can do, before going into now-standard Republican smears about Democrats and progressives:
This isn't about Republicans versus Democrats anymore. I need you to understand that what we are facing is something deeper and more dangerous than a partisan election fight.
We are watching the deliberate, systematic infiltration of American institutions by people who genuinely despise this country's history, who mock our values, who want to dismantle Western civilization itself and replace it with something unrecognizable.A legion of radical socialist candidates is being recruited, funded, and deployed to take over Congress. And their movement is gaining horrifying momentum as we speak.
Gill is no stranger to that kind of inflammatory rhetoric. Last year, when he was urging the defunding of public broadcasting, he claimed that everyone who works at National Public Radio hates Christians, conservatives, and this country. You'd never know from reading this email that Vance and Gill were both on Fox a couple months ago urging Democrats to tone down their political rhetoric.
Vance goes on. He warns that people who hate Trump and Republicans are filling “Democrat war chests.” It is unintentionally hilarious to have Vance—whose career in public life was sponsored and funded by Peter Thiel—warning that “Big Tech billionaires” are backing Democrats. Still, the stakes he portrays are dire:
If we lose the House this November, there is nothing left to protect us from what these deranged leftists and their socialist agenda will do. The America you and I grew up in — the one we are fighting to hand to our children — will not survive what comes next.
I'll be completely and uncomfortably honest with you: I cannot fight this fight alone.
After more paragraphs praising donors’ commitment and patriotism, Vance finally gets to the point:
I'm teaming up with Congressman Brandon Gill — the youngest House Republican in America, a fighter who takes on the radical left every single day in the hearing rooms and on the House floor with a ferocity I deeply admire — and together we are assembling 10,000 of the most dedicated MAGA patriots in the GOP's top donor files to build the firewall this majority needs to survive November.
Vance signs off with, “For God and for the America we refuse to give up on.”
The fine print reveals that unless a donor directs otherwise, 90 percent of their contribution will go to Brandon Gill for Texas, and 10 percent to Trump National Committee. And the finer print reports that funds going to TNC are allocated 77.5 percent to Never Surrender (Donald Trump’s PAC), 17.5% to the Republican National Committee, and 5 percent to Working for Ohio, Vance’s leadership PAC.
