Tag: Faiz Shakir

Since December, David Sirota has, on Twitter, on his own website, and in columns in The Guardian, been trashing most of Sanders’s Democratic opponents—all without disclosing his work with Sanders—and has been pushing back on critics by saying that he was criticizing the other Democrats as a journalist. Sirota’s hiring as a senior adviser and speechwriter was announced by the Sanders campaign on Tuesday morning after The Atlantic contacted the campaign and inquired about the undisclosed role Sirota held while attacking other Democrats. “He was advising beforehand,” Shakir said, explaining that Sirota’s informal work for Sanders goes back months, and was meant to be a trial period to see how the senator, who famously likes to write every word that he says himself, would work with a speechwriter. “Negative attacks on Democratic candidates,” Sanders said in 2018, criticizing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for putting out damaging information about an opponent to a favored candidate in a primary, “just continues the process of debasing the Democratic system in this country, and is why so many people are disgusted with politics." When people have questioned his tactics, Sirota has called them “mentally incapacitated.” Responding in mid-January to those who criticized him online for preemptively railing against the record of O’Rourke, who had not yet entered the race but had been a huge source of concern for Sanders allies since talk of O’Rourke’s potential presidential run picked up last year, Sirota tweeted, “The screaming temper tantrums by Democratic Party operatives whenever reporters scrutinize a lawmaker’s voting record is something to behold. On Monday night, after being contacted for a second time by The Atlantic with a list of specific questions about his undisclosed work for Sanders, Sirota did not respond to the email but deleted more than 20,000 tweets. On Tuesday morning, minutes after his position was announced by the Sanders campaign in a long list of new hires, Sirota said he hadn’t been able to respond to my initial inquiries because he’d been caring for his sick child. I started doing this many months ago.” He did not respond when asked if it was a coincidence that the tweets were deleted hours after I contacted him and the morning before he was announced as a Sanders employee. He then turned those into an op-ed on December 20 in The Guardian, writing that “a new analysis of congressional votes from the non-profit news organisation Capital & Main shows that even as O’Rourke represented one of the most solidly Democratic congressional districts in the United States, he has frequently voted against the majority of House Democrats in support of Republican bills and Trump administration priorities.” “This story was reported by David Sirota of Capital & Main,” the disclaimer at the end of the article read. He wrote another op-ed two weeks later, on New Year’s Eve, headlined “Beto O’Rourke Is the New Obama.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — At a parade this summer, candidate for governor Kris Kobach rode a jeep with a replica machine gun mounted on it. And he kept on riding the vehicle in other parades, posting photos on social media regularly. Now, Kobach is the GOP nominee in the gubernatorial race. Despite holding what is usually a low-profile state post, Kobach has gained a national following, thanks to his tough stand on immigration and his push for stricter voter ID laws. He immediately became known for helping to draft tough laws against illegal immigration, including Arizona's "show your papers" law in 2010. Trump enthusiastically endorsed Kobach over the incumbent a day before the primary. "Kris Kobach, a strong and early supporter of mine, is running for Governor of the Great State of Kansas," Trump tweeted. He called voter fraud a significant problem in Kansas, citing dozens of non-citizens on the state's voter rolls and nine criminal election-fraud cases he brought as secretary of state. But many GOP leaders across the country agree with him that it is rampant and requires tough ID laws. And the commission found no evidence to support Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election.