What The Hell America!

Alex Gibney

It’s about what I’d call “an unholy alliance” between big business and evangelical Christians who are extremely antiabortion. The evangelical Christians had popular fervor, a very emotional issue, and some popular support. There was no popular support for what the big-business people wanted to do. But they had a lot of money.

Along comes into this unholy alliance a gentleman named Jim Bopp, an attorney, who was working very hard to try to overturn Roe v. Wade. He concluded that nothing was ever going to happen unless he could destroy the system of campaign finance restrictions that had been put in place by [Senators] John McCain and Russ Feingold. So he labored very hard through a number of decisions that led up to Citizens United, and he literally took it to the Supreme Court, where it was argued by somebody else.

Ultimately, Citizens United was decided, and henceforth there would be no limits on contributions to political campaigns by corporations and individuals. The only restriction was that money had to go into independent organizations like super PACs or 501(c)(4)s, and there was supposed to be no coordination with the candidate. Now we all know that’s a joke. Particularly we know it because of the events we show in Ohio Confidential.