On March 19, Donald Trump Jr. emailed through his father’s email list management company, Campaign nucleus, announced “a BIG step forward in the culture war.” That culture war is “coming to American companies,” Trump wrote. He added that conservatives have a “new” tool to combat “wake-up” workplaces: the RedBalloon “freelance” job board. As an incentive to create an account on the site, Trump provided 20 signed copies of his latest book, activated.
“Major recruiting sites like Indeed and ZipRecruiter are really pushing for workplace ‘wake up’ policies,” Trump said in a promotional video posted on the right-wing video streaming site Rumble. “They are a huge part of the problem.” What exactly is the problem, or what word? “woke up” supposedly representing someone else rather than a conservative, dubious shibboleth.
Standing next to my eldest son recently indicted former president in the RedBalloon advertisement is the company’s unfortunately named founder, Andrew Crapuchettes. The RedBalloon origin story goes back to 2021, when Crapuchettes announced that he was fired from his role as CEO at his former company, EMSI, because of “too conservative and catholic.”
RedBalloon is clearly “anti-wake“positioned in line with the broader conservative effort in recent years to create a “parallel economy” beyond progressive values. The idea has been promoted by junior Trump and far-right scholars like Charlie Kirk of the American Turning Point. And while a parallel right-wing ecosystem of media has gained some traction, other anti-wake projects were not very successful. Consider the Peter Theil-funded bank that has faced self destruct, or the fact that Parler replaced the right-wing Twitter with only about 20 employees. EQUAL NBC News reported last month, conservative tech founders at the most recent Conservative Political Action Conference “said they believe a number of companies are part of the ‘parallel economy’ movement that has risen above on their will.”
‘A Conservative Christian Doesn’t Regret’
The peculiar nature of the Crapuchettes’ Christian faith is what might give fans of the separation of church and state pause. In November 2021, The guardian report Crapuchettes as an elder of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho—a church led by a man who has “openly expressed ambition to create a ‘theocracy’ in America.”
“When I run the company, I believe that people should give their best to the work,” Crapuchettes said when asked about his faith. “And as a conservative Christian with no regrets, that means when we have our annual Christmas dinner, I will pray for the meal.”
As for Crapuchettes’ role as an elder of a church that promotes Christian theocracy, he said it “never been brought up” as a conflict by the old board of directors. his.
“Is that a fundamental problem? I don’t know,” Crapuchettes said.
Crapuchettes says that the problems with his former employer began when he and the EMSI board of directors confronted each other over various social issues. “The Covid-BLM-George Floyd social change has happened,” Crapuchettes said. “We went to some problems, and they ended up selling the business.”
