Report: Oregon's Urine-Collecting Climate-Change Denier Considered As President Trump's National Science Adviser

Donald Trump's billionaire backers, the Mercers, are big fans of Cave Junction's own Arthur B. Robinson.

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The 43-year-old New York heiress Rebekah Mercer of New York and her 70-year-old billionaire father Robert have been identified as key donors and strategists behind Donald Trump's successful presidential campaign.

And Oregon played an important part in the story of their rise to influence.

Robert Mercer struck it rich in high tech and hedge funds. Their tax-exempt Mercer Family Foundation started out in 2004 as a small charitable grant-making outfit but has grown to become a $25 million political propaganda and influence operation in the vein of the Koch Brothers network.

The Mercers are leading investors in Breitbart News and Rebekah Mercer workers closely with Breitbart's erstwhile chief editor, White House adviser Steve Bannon. The family also bankrolls Cambridge Analytica, a digital data-mining operation involved in the United Kingdom's Brexit vote as well as the Trump campaign.

Today, in-depth stories in the New Yorker magazine, as well as the Huffington Post's enterprise reporting section, Highline, reveal how the Mercers ran a prototype of their new model right-wing campaign in Oregon seven years ago—with Arthur Robinson, a right-wing Cave Junction chemist who lost several bids for Congress.

There's another bit of news buried deep in the New Yorker story.

Rebekah Mercer has suggested to President Trump that Robinson be named national science adviser but, according to the magazine, this proposal "has gone nowhere" with Trump, much like her advocacy for "a return to the gold standard."

As Highline reports:

Robinson lost his 2010 campaign against US Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) with 43 percent of the vote. WW took note of his connections to wealthy climate-change deniers.

Robinson told WW in 2016 that he bonded with Mercer over their love of science and "have almost nothing to say to each other about politics."

The New Yorker story casts some doubt on that claim.

Robinson did not immediately respond to WW's requests for comment on the New Yorker and Highline stories.

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