Amy Kremer

Amy Kremer (born 1970 or 1971)[1] is an American political activist. She became involved in the Tea Party movement in 2009 and campaigned as part of the Tea Party Express until 2014. During the 2016 presidential election she was a co-founder of two political action committees supporting Donald Trump's campaign, and following Trump's loss in the 2020 presidential election she supported attempts to overturn the election result. In 2017 she unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election in Georgia's 6th congressional district as a Republican.

Kremer speaking at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference

Early life and career

Kremer attended Auburn University.[2] She worked for Delta Air Lines as a flight attendant, but gave up her job to focus on raising her daughter.[1] She became politically active in the Tea Party movement through Twitter and was involved in organising the first Tea Party protests in 2009.[3] She later described herself as having been "just a mom who was sick and fed up with what was going on in Washington."[4] She was a founding member of Tea Party Patriots (TPP), but defected to Tea Party Express (TPE) in October 2009.[5] Following her departure TPP filed a lawsuit against Kremer alleging she had tried to prevent others from accessing the group's collective resources.[6]

Tea Party Express (2009–2014)
Kremer campaigning for Ted Cruz in the 2012 U.S. Senate election in Texas

Soon after joining Tea Party Express, Kremer urged the organization to support Scott Brown's campaign for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.[1] During the 2010 midterm elections Kremer campaigned for candidates including Joe Miller, who ran for the U.S. Senate in Alaska.[3] She also endorsed Tom Tancredo, the American Constitution Party candidate for governor of Colorado.[7] In October 2010, The Daily Telegraph named her the "most influential" person in the Tea Party movement.[5]

In a 2011 appearance on The Colbert Report, Kremer said the U.S. federal government raised "enough tax revenue to service our debt, pay for Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, and then still have about $300 [billion] or $400 billion left over." PolitiFact.com rated this statement "Half True", noting that Kremer's calculations ignored defense and homeland security spending and mandatory programs.[8] In June 2011 Kremer said TPE would support Mitt Romney if he became the Republican nominee in the 2012 presidential election.[9] A co-founder of Tea Party Patriots rejected Kremer's remarks, saying "a pledge of allegiance to the Republican Party, or any other party, violates what the Tea Party movement is all about and is completely out of touch with grassroots Americans".[10] In the 2012 elections TPE endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock in Indiana; in September 2011 Kremer described Mourdock as a "true conservative."[11]

During a September 2012 appearance on CNN's Starting Point, host Soledad O'Brien and others criticised Kremer for wondering whether President Barack Obama "loves America."[12] In 2013 Kremer said that U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, a member of the Republican Party, voted "more with Democrats than with conservatives." PolitiFact.com rated this claim as "False", citing an analysis by The Washington Post that found Chambliss voted with fellow Republicans 91 percent of the time in 2011 and 2012.[13] Kremer spent much of the summer 2013 congressional recess on a national tour intended to convince Republicans to support defunding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.[14]

Kremer resigned from Tea Party Express in April 2014. She described the split as amicable and attributed her departure to a desire to focus on Matt Bevin's campaign for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky, instead of Curt Clawson's campaign in Florida's 19th congressional district.[15]

2016 presidential election

As of February 2016, Kremer was the chair of TrumPAC, a super PAC supporting Donald Trump's campaign in the 2016 presidential election.[16] TrumPAC later changed its name to Great America PAC.[17] Great America PAC was founded by Kremer and William Doddridge, the CEO of The Jewelry Exchange.[18] Kremer resigned from Great America PAC in May 2016, shortly after Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, due to decisions which she claimed had been made without her input.[19]

In June 2016 Kremer, along with Kathryn Serkes and Ann Stone, founded Women Vote Trump, a new super PAC that aimed to raise at least $30 million to support Trump's campaign.[20] Stone said the group would organize volunteers and advertise across the United States.[21] At an event the following month Kremer said "People assume that just because [Democratic presidential nominee] Hillary Clinton is a woman that I'm going to support her. That's an insult to my intelligence. I have the ability to think on my own."[22] Kremer made appearances on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC to promote the PAC.[23] In August 2016 Kremer claimed on CNN that Clinton was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease found in people who have suffered repeated blows to the head.[24] Federal Election Commission records showed that Women Vote Trump, which changed its name to Women Vote Smart in order to comply with regulations that prohibit the use of candidates' names, had only raised $26,813, had spent $20,000, and was nearly $20,000 in debt as of March 2017. Kremer said the group "had commitments from people and then people didn't come through," but that it was "definitely out there being active with the grassroots and engaging people."[23]

2017 congressional campaign
Georgia's 6th congressional district

In 2017, Kremer ran as a Republican in the special election in Georgia's 6th congressional district, which was vacant following Representative Tom Price's confirmation as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.[25] In an April 2017 interview, Kremer said "the biggest issue facing the Sixth District" was its "stagnant economy", which she suggested be fixed by cutting "government regulations that stifle job growth", cutting "government waste", creating "a pro-growth environment", and lowering individual and corporate taxes.[2] She said her priorities in Congress would be employment and the economy, national security, repealing and replacing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and taking care of veterans.[26] Kremer said she should be elected because she had "carried the values of the 6th District" with her as she "worked tirelessly to preserve freedom and liberty through electing conservatives like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and many others".[27] The radio and television host Sean Hannity and the Tea Party activist Katrina Pierson endorsed Kremer's campaign.[28]

In March 2017 Kremer offered supporters who donated to her campaign the opportunity to win an AR-15 style rifle.[29][30] Kremer explained: "We are very pro-2nd Amendment not only in Georgia but in the south."[30] In an email to supporters, Kremer criticised a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that affirmed Maryland's ban on military-style "assault weapons" (see Gun laws in Maryland) and called on supporters to "show these progressive judges that we will not surrender the rights granted by God and preserved in the U.S. Constitution".[29]

Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution observed in March 2017 that Kremer's campaign had "struggled to gain traction" against better-known and better-funded Republican candidates.[31] In March 2017 Kremer's entire campaign staff resigned after she allegedly only raised around $2,500 and was unable to pay her campaign manager and at least six other staff members.[31] One member of staff who resigned had been staying at Kremer's house and contacted police after Kremer allegedly changed the locks and prevented him from getting his belongings.[31] The staff members who resigned were subsequently hired by the campaign of Bob Gray, another Republican candidate in the special election.[32]

In the primary election on April 18, 2017, Kremer received 351 votes, or 0.18 percent of the total vote tally, and did not advance to the runoff election.[33]

Women for Trump and Women for America First

In June 2018, Kremer, who by then was a co-founder of Women for Trump, was interviewed on CNN, where she insisted that family separations at the U.S.–Mexico border were occurring at the same level for both the Obama administration and the Trump administration. She claimed that Jeh Johnson, the Obama administration's United States Secretary of Homeland Security, said that "they were separating families". However, CNN played the actual quote from Johnson, who had said: "There's no policy or practice, at least on my watch, to separate women, parents from their children", although he was sure there still were "individual cases for reasons of health or safety" of such happenings. Kremer's on-the-spot reaction was to insist that her quote of Johnson "happened", although later she tweeted that she had "conflated 2 different articles with quotes from 2 different Obama" administration officials.[34][35]

In 2019 Kremer and her daughter Kylie founded Women for America First, which organized a protest against the impeachment of Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. in October 2019.[36] In April 2020 Women for America First organized several protests against stay-at-home orders implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[37]

2020 presidential election

During the counting of votes following the 2020 United States presidential election, Women for America First founded a Facebook group titled "Stop the Steal", in which Kremer was a moderator. Facebook removed the group on November 5, and described it as "organized around the delegitimization of the election process".[38] Later that month, Kremer and Women for America First organized a protest in Washington, D.C., in support of Trump and his refusal to concede after losing the election.[39] In her speech at the event, Kremer criticized Facebook, Eventbrite and Mailchimp for removing listings for events she had organized.[40] Kremer spoke at events on a two-week bus tour sponsored, in part, by My Pillow to support Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election and encourage attendance at a rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6 which preceded the storming of the U.S. Capitol. This tour ended December 14, 2020.[41] Women for America First then organized a new bus tour to encourage the attendance at a rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6 which preceded the storming of the U.S. Capitol. As part of this bus tour, Kremer visited the Tactical Response marksman training center in Nashville, Tennessee, owned by James Yeager, where she and others taped an episode of Yeager's YouTube show "Tactical Response".[42]

On January 6, 2021, Women for America First hosted an event in Washington, D.C. referred to as "March to Save America." The executive director of Women for Trump, Kylie Jane Kremer, was listed as the person in charge on the rally’s permit.[43] Kremer spoke at the event.[41] The organization's Facebook page called on supporters to be part of a "caravan" to Washington for the event.[43] As Women for America First noted in a post-event press release, the event was followed by the storming of the United States Capitol.[44]

References
  1. Blackmon, Douglas A.; Levitz, Jennifer; Berzon, Alexandra; Etter, Lauren (October 29, 2010). "Birth of a Movement". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  2. "District 6 Q&A: Amy Kremer (R)". Marietta Daily Journal. April 8, 2017. Retrieved June 5, 2017.
  3. Pilkington, Ed (October 18, 2010). "Amy Kremer takes her Tea Party Express from coast to coast". The Guardian. Retrieved May 14, 2012.
  4. Chernin, Michael (May 16, 2014). "BPR Interview: Amy Kremer". Brown Political Review. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  5. "Top 20 most influential people in the Tea Party movement: 10-1". The Daily Telegraph. October 13, 2010. Retrieved May 14, 2012.
  6. Shapiro, Lila (March 18, 2010). "Tea Party Civil War? Lawsuit, GOP Friction Splits Leaders". The Huffington Post. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  7. Steinhauser, Paul (October 25, 2010). "Tancredo gets big Tea Party endorsement". CNN. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  8. Jacobson, Louis (May 20, 2011). "Tea Party Express' Amy Kremer says current tax revenues could cover interest, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security". PolitiFact.com. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  9. Stemple, Lexi (June 4, 2011). "Tea Party Group to Back Any GOP Nominee—Including Romney". Fox News. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  10. McAuliff, Michael (June 8, 2011). "Mitt Romney Splits Tea Party Groups". The Huffington Post. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  11. Hennessey, Kathleen (September 29, 2011). "'Tea party' group backs challenger to Indiana's Sen. Lugar". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  12. Robillard, Kevin (September 4, 2012). "Tea party leader Amy Kremer under fire on CNN". Politico. Retrieved October 5, 2012.
  13. Stirgus, Eric (January 8, 2013). "Chambliss not a true conservative, critic says". PolitiFact.com. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  14. Barrow, Bill (September 14, 2013). "GOP, Tea Party Face Growing Divide". The Huffington Post. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  15. Killough, Ashley; Brusk, Steve; Steinhauser, Paul (April 18, 2014). "First on CNN: Amy Kremer resigns from Tea Party Express". CNN. Retrieved April 6, 2015.
  16. Haberman, Maggie (February 12, 2016). "PAC Is Backing Donald Trump, Despite Campaign's Policy". The New York Times. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
  17. Isenstadt, Alex (March 11, 2016). "Pro-Trump PAC hires GOP veteran as strategist". Politico. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
  18. Jaffe, Alexandra (March 31, 2016). "Pro-Trump Super PAC Launches New Wisconsin Ad". NBC News. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
  19. Haberman, Maggie (May 6, 2016). "A Donald Trump 'Super PAC' Is Hit With Leadership Woes". The New York Times. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  20. Golshan, Tara (June 9, 2016). "Women Vote Trump: the Super PAC with one of the toughest jobs of 2016". Vox. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  21. Bykowicz, Julie (June 9, 2016). "3 women to launch super PAC to support Donald Trump". Associated Press. Archived from the original on June 25, 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  22. Merlan, Anna (July 18, 2016). "In a Mostly Empty Room, 'Women for Trump' Tries Really, Really Hard". Jezebel. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  23. Kaczynski, Andrew (March 9, 2017). "GOP Congressional candidate's 'Women Vote Trump' PAC came up $29,973,187 short of fundraising goal". CNN. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  24. Graham, David A. (August 22, 2016). "Questions About Hillary's Health: The Birtherism of 2016". The Atlantic. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  25. Bluestein, Greg (February 16, 2017). "Who is in the race to replace Tom Price in Georgia's 6th District". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved June 5, 2017.
  26. Williams, Ross (February 15, 2017). "18 in race to take Tom Price's place in Washington, D.C." Marietta Daily Journal. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  27. Ruch, John (March 16, 2017). "Voters Guide: Amy Kremer". Reporter Newspapers. Retrieved June 5, 2017.
  28. Render, Jacinta (April 13, 2017). "Co-founder of 'Women Vote Trump' is endorsed for Georgia's 6th district congressional race". WGCL-TV. Archived from the original on April 16, 2017. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  29. Cahill, Petra (March 7, 2017). "Amy Kremer Offers Supporters Chance to Win AR-15 Rifle in Raffle". NBC News. Retrieved June 5, 2017.
  30. Darnell, Tim (March 6, 2017). "Race to replace Price: Tea Party original raffling off AR-15 in 6th district race". WXIA-TV. Retrieved June 5, 2017.
  31. Bluestein, Greg (March 20, 2017). "Ex-aide calls cops on GOP candidate in Georgia special election". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved June 5, 2017.
  32. Bluestein, Greg (March 20, 2017). "Gray hires rival's staff, defends Trump credentials in Georgia special election". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  33. "April 18, 2017 Special Election". Georgia Secretary of State. Retrieved June 5, 2017.
  34. "Anchor fact-checks Trump supporter on separations". CNN. Retrieved June 25, 2018.
  35. Sacks, Brianna. "A Trump Supporter Made A False Claim About Immigration Policy, So This Anchor Pulled Out The Receipts". Buzzfeed News. Retrieved June 25, 2018.
  36. Mencimer, Stephanie (October 18, 2019). "'Heels On, Gloves Off!' Women March Against Trump's Impeachment in Washington. But Really Not Many". Mother Jones. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
  37. Steakin, Will (April 29, 2020). "Pro-Trump group plans dozens of anti-lockdown protests around the country, some in virus hot spots". ABC News. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
  38. Wong, Julia Carrie (November 5, 2020). "Facebook removes pro-Trump Stop the Steal group over 'calls for violence'". The Guardian. Retrieved November 7, 2020.
  39. Rodrigo, Chris Mills (November 13, 2020). "Far-right groups plan DC rallies for Trump as tensions grow". The Hill. Retrieved November 14, 2020.
  40. Rodrigo, Chris Mills (November 14, 2020). "Thousands rally in DC to protest election results, show support for Trump". The Hill. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
  41. Tanfani, Joseph; Berens, Michael; Parker, Ned (January 11, 2021). "How Trump's pied pipers rallied a faithful mob to the Capitol". Reuters. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  42. Rutenberg, Jim; Becker, Jo; Lipton, Eric; Haberman, Maggie; Martin, Jonathan; Rosenberg, Matthew; Schmidt, Michael S. (January 31, 2021). "77 Days: Trump's Campaign to Subvert the Election". The New York Times. Retrieved February 2, 2021.
  43. Schwartz, Brian (January 9, 2021). "Pro-Trump dark money groups organized the rally that led to deadly Capitol Hill riot". CNBC. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
  44. "Statement Violence Capitol Hill". Women for America First. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
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