Media Matters raked in as much as $2 million in coronavirus relief loans as the left-wing blog slammed the Trump administration's coronavirus response, according to federal records released on Monday.
Records show that Media Matters, the progressive activist group founded by Clinton loyalist David Brock in 2004, received between $1 million and $2 million from the government’s Paycheck Protection Program. The loan represents a significant portion of the group’s annual income, which was listed as $11 million in 2017, according to tax records. Media Matters is bankrolled by the Democracy Alliance, one of the largest progressive donor groups in the country. The deep-pocketed philanthropy network has steered hundreds of millions of dollars to liberal groups since it was founded in 2005—and pledged to distribute $100 million in 2020 alone.
Their million-dollar loan was much larger than the average PPP loan. The average loan size for businesses during the first round of funding that ended in April was $200,000, according to reports. The average for the second round of funding, which ended in late May, was $114,000.
Media Matters’s successful loan application has not stopped it from continuing to criticize Trump’s coronavirus policies.
"[T]hough Trump is set to ask Congress for emergency funds to fight the novel coronavirus outbreak—after weeks of failing to do so—some public health officials say he won’t ask for enough to do the job," Media Matters argued in late February, before receiving a PPP loan.
American Bridge 21st Century, a political action committee also founded by Brock that shares the same address as Media Matters, has attacked the administration for allegedly neglecting to provide loans to small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program.
The group posted a Twitter message suggesting that Trump was directly responsible for the failure to provide "PPP Funds for Small Businesses" in late May.
"As indicated by the SBA, Media Matters received a PPP loan in the $1-2M range," Media Matters communications director Laura Keiter said. "Media Matters and American Bridge are two distinct organizations."
Another Media Matters article claimed that Trump "is ignorant, incompetent, and generally uninterested in the aspects of his job that don’t involve promoting his narrow personal interests. His response to coronavirus has not diverged from this baseline."
"He spent the last few years systematically dismantling U.S. pandemic response capabilities, dissolving the National Security Council’s global health security unit and slashing funding to the CDC’s global health section," claimed the group. "And since the coronavirus outbreak began, Trump has been largely detached from managing the government’s response."