St. Louis article on Eagle split

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

ST. LOUIS • The late conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly formed her storied national grass-roots organization, the St. Louis-area-based Eagle Forum, more than 40 years ago.

It took one 40-minute phone call last April for it to start coming apart. ...

It will all be on display in the St. Louis area this week, when two groups of people who each claim to be the real heirs to Schlafly’s movement hold concurrent events a few miles apart.

One side had the blessing of Phyllis Schlafly, while the other side sued to cut her off from the organization she founded.

“I’m very sorry to say my mother was isolated from her best friends in the last six months of her life,” Cori said in an interview last week. “There were a number of people who were banned from seeing her.”

She added: “I had no conflict with my brothers before the advent of Ed Martin.”

I am one of those brothers, and our mother was not isolated from any of her friends. Except for the last couple of weeks of her life, any of her friends could call her or visit her at any time.

I had nothing to do with Ed Martin. He was hired by the Eagle Forum boards, and could have been similarly fired, if the boards were unhappy with him.

The bigger issue is Donald Trump, not Martin:

“We have no respect for that man [Trump],” former longtime Texas Eagle Forum President Cathie Adams told the Dallas Morning News shortly after Trump’s St. Louis event. “[Schlafly’s endorsement] is going to be widely dismissed. At 91, it is just totally unfair to impose upon someone who has such a beautiful legacy.”

Without naming Martin, Adams added that “I think this was very much a manipulation. When you’re 91 and you’re not out with the grass-roots all the time, it is very much taking advantage of someone.”

So this gang of 6 is attempting a hostile takeover of Eagle Forum c4 because they hate Trump and they hate Martin.

It was absolutely Phyllis Schlafly's own personal intention to endorse Donald Trump. She wrote articles and gave interviews about how he was the right man in 2016, just as Ronald Reagan was the right man in 1980. She coauthored a book with Martin. No one could have manipulated her into such a decision, if she did not want to.

President Trump just thanked Phyllis Schlafly in a speech Thursday evening. The NeverTrumpers are certainly not the heirs to her movement.