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11 Oct, 15 tweets, 7 min read
Florida Republican consultants have been exposed in court documents & guilty pleas for creating many fake candidates in order to siphon votes from Democrats. It's a much bigger story with far more people involved in whatever Matt Gaetz is accused of doing news-journalonline.com/story/news/sta…
But there is a Matt Gaetz connection to this Florida fake candidate factory.

At least one of them appears to have been propped up by Gaetz's best friend Joel Greenberg. Check this thread out from @gal_suburban
More on the first guilty plea of this actual election fraud scheme.

No surprise Trump fans never talk about this stuff. But the national MSM and progressive media has ignored it as well news-journalonline.com/story/news/sta…
People in the national press keep calling Florida an almost red state. But it's one where there have been more Dems than GOPers for years. Gerrymandering is only part of the strategy.

Cite for FL party registration dos.myflorida.com/elections/data…
There's so much here. Mega kudos to @gal_suburban for putting the pieces together here of how one of the GOP consultants hired a Playboy model and Hooters girl as "fundraisers."
One small aspect of this fake candidate ring that was reported by a national outlet was a white woman who was promoted to black voters with anonymous mailers featuring a stock photo of a black woman politico.com/states/florida…
The "ghost candidate" scheme of Florida Republicans also involved dark money political action committees and unwitting cutouts.

GOP strategist Alex Alvarado paid a woman $1,000 to use her name to chair "The Truth" PAC whose sole goal was deceit local10.com/news/politics/…
More details of how the scheme worked for some of the candidates and consultants.

The original money may have come from Alabama and was sloshed around to several Republican insiders, each of whom enriched themselves for little work news-journalonline.com/story/news/sta…
If you liked this thread, please consider supporting me so I can bring more stories exposing the far right.

I am doing independent journalism full time now & need help to keep doing it. My colleagues & I at @DiscoverFlux are entirely audience-supported patreon.com/fluxcommunity
Minnesota Republicans also did the same thing, according to one of the candidates, Adam Weeks. m.startribune.com/gop-recruited-…
Also see this thread from @jennycohn1 who is a very good follow on right wing corruption
Here's a thread from @clearing_fog about how Minnesota Republicans appear to have used pro-marijuana third party candidates to gain control of the state senate
These sorts of tactics are not new for GOP operatives by the way. I'm working on a column about how generations of consultants have engaged in what they call "ratf*cking."

Here's a story of how they tricked Bernie Sanders supporters in the 2016: nytimes.com/2015/05/17/us/…
Here's something unfortunate. If you search on Google News for "Frank Artiles," the Republican consultant who is facing trial for allegedly running the fake candidate scheme in Florida, you will find nothing about him from a national outlet. Zero stories. google.com/search?q=%22fr…
Just as an FYI, this is a tactic that has been deployed in the past by dishonest Democrats. The most recent instance I can find is from 2010.

Note the national GOP & the NYT exposed it well before election took place. Please post other candidates here. nytimes.com/2010/10/23/us/…

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More from @mattsheffield

Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
9 Oct
Thread:

I had a great @TheoryChange conversation w/@nimmideviarchy about political extremism's origins.

She's got a book out now called "Radicalizing Her" about female militants that is (sadly) very relevant to the growth of US-based extremism flux.community/matthew-sheffi…
@nimmideviarchy Nimmi makes the excellent point that mainstream media outlets are sometimes willing to explore the origins of white nationalist militancy but rarely do so for militants from the Global South.

Here's the cover and purchase link: beacon.org/Radicalizing-H… Image
But simply knowing what motivates people toward extremism does not really do anything ultimately, unless policy changes can be derived from this knowledge.

Nimmi's book highlights how many int'l aid groups don't understand how to truly help and seem unwilling to learn.
Read 5 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
6 Oct
Last post of a good thread below. If I may pick it up to continue a bit...

The question of why AT&T is willingly paying money to a Christian supremacist channel that routinely slanders people is one that's been asked a lot today. I'll try to answer that a bit in this thread.
According to court testimony of OANN's founder, Robert Herring Sr., the idea of starting his channel came from AT&T. There are a few interesting facts about ATT that are relevant to the motive question here.

The first is that ATT is a Republican company based on its giving.
Historically speaking, telecom companies in the U.S. have favored Republicans in their giving. ATT has been no exception.

This is plain to see in @OpenSecretsDC data opensecrets.org/party-totals-s…
Read 10 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
4 Oct
Facebook's incentive is to destabilize societies in favor of short-term financial gain.

Instagram, owned by FB, is even worse. #DeleteFacebook #DeleteInstagram
Just a quick followup on Instagram since it gets less coverage.

According to suppressed IG research:
✘ IG is geared toward lies about body image and lifestyle
✘ More than 40% of teen girls feel unattractive bc of it
✘ 13% of UK teens w/suicidal thoughts trace it to Instagram
✘ Because Instagram culture is built on lying, millions of teens & young adults have created anonymous IG accounts
✘ In a tragic irony, these "Finsta" or fake Instagram accounts are the only place on the site they feel comfortable telling the truth about themselves.
Read 6 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
2 Oct
So it appears that @maggieNYT & @nytmike wrote a profile of John Eastman, Trump's coup lawyer, but didn't recount his long record of extremist activity.

Since they omitted this crucial information, here's a short thread of what's missing in this article nytimes.com/2021/10/02/us/…
@maggieNYT @nytmike Eastman is anything but a "little-known but respected conservative lawyer."

He has a decades-long history leading hate groups, especially those against LGBT people. He is the chairman of the "National Organization for Marriage," a highly funded group opposing marriage equality
@maggieNYT @nytmike Eastman has called homosexuality "barbarism" and said on video that he supported a Ugandan law that made homosexual acts a life-sentence offence.

rightwingwatch.org/post/nom-chair…
Read 12 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
22 Sep
Yesterday, I did a Twitter thread about "Missing White Woman Syndrome," the idea that media give more coverage to missing white women over other groups

I also invited readers to name others outside the demographic who they thought received nat'l coverage. Here's the follow-up…
First, here is the the thread, in case you missed it.

I must've triggered a lot of far-right Republicans with it.

Most sent brainless emotional responses, others sent me names of people. So I looked them up in Google searches of Fox and CNN's sites
Altogether, I received 46 different names of people that respondents believed had received national coverage. Overwhelmingly, as you'll see, the missing people did not receive much, if any coverage.
Read 12 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
21 Sep
1/n: White Republicans are so totally coddled from reality that most have never heard the term "Missing White Woman Syndrome" even as they have devoured endless Fox coverage of victims like Gabby Petito, Laci Peterson and Natalee Holloway.

But it's absolutely real.
If you're white, think about it in your own experience first. Can you name a single person who was reported missing that was not a white woman? I'm guessing most of you cannot. Non-white women and men of any race don't get this saturation level of coverage on cable and elsewhere.
There have been multiple studies of media coverage that show Missing White Woman Syndrome is real.

Here's one that found missing black women were much less likely to be covered scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewconten…
Read 9 tweets

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