The Soros Deflection In Service Of Trump

As prosecutor Alvin Bragg geared up to indict Donald Trump, the Media Research Center labored hard to tie him to George Soros -- then got mad it was pointed out that doing so was arguably an anti-Semitic dog whistle.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 7/12/2023

With the news Saturday that corrupt George Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly ready to charge former President Donald Trump over accusations of "hush money" payments to former porn star Stormy Daniels, on Sunday former DNC chair Donna Brazile during ABC's This Week was ready to paint the entire GOP with being hypocrites on "law & order." Former New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie didn't let her get away with trying to turn the radical left's double standard on crime around on him and the Republican Party.

During the "PowerHouse RoundTable" discussion, Brazile ironically cried hypocrisy on Republicans using tough-on-crime rhetoric when it's convenient: "This is a party that continues to say that they are for law and order when it suits them. But it doesn't suit them when the crime is gun violence, when the crime is seeing this country suffer from the kind of violence, and crime across the board."

Things immediately got heated when Christie jumped in and let Brazile know "I'm not going to stand up for that."

[...]

What Christie said is blatantly obvious to anyone who has visited a major city in recent years, let alone crime-ridden New York City. Thanks to left-wing Soros-backed prosecutors like Bragg, many crimes in New York City are given lenient punishments while the book is thrown at Republicans like Donald Trump.

In fact, violent crimes have risen so dramatically that the leftist rag The New York Times was forced to report how "major crimes" rose a staggering 22 percent over the past year.

Actually, people who are actual experts in crime statistics (as opposed to partisans like Christie and Tober) point out that crime is decreasing in New York City and that rates for certain crimes are actually higher in Columbus, Ohio -- the state from which Republican Rep. Jim Jordan hails -- than in NYC.

A March 20 post by Mark Finkelstein tried to frame any prosecution of Trump as political: "As for those who deny that this indictment is politically motivated, consider the record of Alvin Bragg, the hyper-liberal Manhattan DA who has expended huge resources on this investigation, grand jury proceedings, and countless more if the case actually goes to trial." Luis Cornelio similarly attacked Bragg as a Soros-linked partisan in a post the next day:

Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney behind the alleged incoming indictment of former President Donald J. Trump, boasted about his ability to prosecute Trump even before taking office as DA.

Bragg touted his experience investigating Trump in an interview with Hot 97’s “Ebro in the Morning” during his run for Manhattan DA. He said prosecuting Trump was “the number one issue.”

[...]

Bragg’s comments and recent rumors that he will indict Trump are unsurprising considering his ties to Soros money, which are under scrutiny. Bragg was elected District Attorney of Manhattan in November 2021 and received over $1 million in aid from the Color Of Change PAC, a group that received funding from leftist mega-donor George Soros, Daily Mail reported on Mar. 20.

The New York Times reported on Jun. 21, 2021, that Soros “pledged $1 million to the super PAC Color of Change, aimed at helping another district attorney candidate, Alvin Bragg.” The Times added that “[a] spokeswoman for the super PAC said that nearly $500,000 had been spent on Mr. Bragg’s behalf” at the time. The Soros-tied Color Of Me PAC pulled out half of that donation after an unnamed woman made a “disturbing allegation” against Bragg. The details of the claims and the woman's identity remain unknown, according to Daily Mail.

Joseph Vazquez hyped the the Soros link in another March 21 post, whining that non-right-wing media weren't parroting the right-wing narrative:

The ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows conveniently ignored mentioning that the district attorney trying to secure an indictment against former President Donald Trump on dubious legal grounds is connected to leftist billionaire George Soros.

George Soros donated $1,000,000 to the racially-charged, defund-the-police group Color of Change PAC on May 14, 2021. Just a few days prior to Soros’ donation, Color of Change PAC announced Alvin Bragg, who would later win his race for Manhattan, New York District Attorney in November 2021.

Vazquez had another anti-Bragg freakout in a March 23 post:

The media hacks at Politico changed an outrageous headline characterizing the George Soros-tied Manhattan District Attorney as an apolitical, “by-the-book” prosecutor.

Politico conducted a March 20 public relations stunt on behalf of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who’s reportedly set to indict former President Donald Trump based on a seven-year old case. The Politico headline read: “By-the-book DA confronts unpredictable opponent in Trump.” Politico reporter Erica Orden fawned in her anti-Trump agitprop that Bragg was a “low key, politics-averse prosecutor prepar[ing] to take on the brash, mudslinging former president.” Orden must have forgotten that Bragg made prosecuting Trump a centerpiece of his political campaign for the DA position. Also, calling any political figure that’s connected to Soros “politics averse” is just absurd.

Her headline was later changed to: “Liberal Manhattan DA takes on Trump in perilous legal fight.” However, Orden didn’t appear to mind the irony of doubling down on how Bragg was still supposedly “politics-averse” while simultaneously admitting that Bragg was a “liberal” in the new headline. Orden got heavily ratioed on Twitter for her faux pas.

Vazquez laughably added: "MRC Business reached out to the Manhattan District Attorney’s offices six times for comment, but has received no response as of the publication of this article." Vazquez didn't explain why Bragg would ever want to talk to a right-wing activist like him who's only interested in manufacturing anti-Bragg agitprop.

So desperate is the MRC to attack Bragg that it trotted out an old enemy -- Michael Avenatti, currently in prison -- to trash Bragg's alleged case, even though he cannot possibly know all the details. P.J. Gladnick declared: "Most likely you read here for the first time this analysis by Avenatti about what a weak case Bragg has. Why? Because the mainstream media which formerly couldn't hype Avenatti enough are now shunning him because his analysis acts as a buzzkill to their excitement over a possible Trump indictment." Gladnick didn't explain why he suddenly finds a convicted criminal to be credible.

Feeling seen

These MRC articles attacking Bragg by playing the Soros card was joined by a series of defensive articles denying that it's invoking an anti-Semitic dog whistle in doing so -- even though it has a history of doing exactly that. Kevin Tober whined in a March 22 post:

On MSNBC's The ReidOut, host Joy Reid and her three guests, who all appeared to resemble a Mount Rushmore of stupid, engaged in another smear fest against Republicans. This time, they accused the GOP of engaging in a dangerous "dog whistle" for simply pointing out the amount of death, destruction, and decay that George Soros has caused in American society. Reid and her assembled panel had no facts to support their arguments. So, like good leftists, they simply maligned the intentions of their political opponents.

Reid turned to former CIA officer Tracy Walder to cry about conservatives being mean to Soros for merely pointing out he's a puppetmaster behind every destructive force in the United States: "[T]he fact that they keep throwing George Soros’ name, we’ve talked a lot in our show meetings, is it definitely feels like a dog whistle that is dangerous."

Walder agreed with Reid, adding: "[I]t absolutely feels like a dog whistle that’s dangerous. Look, most of these groups, the Oath Keepers, Boogaloo Boys, Proud Boys, they all subscribe to what you are all referring to as the great replacement theory."

She never explained what these fringe groups that the overwhelming majority of Americans of all sides have never heard of have to do with evoking the name of George Soros.

Yes, Tober is effectively -- and falsely -- accusing Soros of murder. His example of Soros causing "death" was that a "Soros-backed prosecutor" dropped a gun-related charge against a man who later killed three people at Michigan State University. But as ConWebWatch has pointed out, the gun charge that was dropped involved carrying a concealed gun without a permit -- something conservatives heartily support. Sounds like Tober needs to engrave himself on that "Mount Rushmore of stupid."

In a March 26 post, about an episode of "Meet the Press" in which a Trump appeared, Tober insisted that Bragg is "a radical Soros-backed prosecutor" who is engaged in a "political prosecution" of Trump -- though he offered no facts to back up and Trump hadn't even been indicted yet -- then went on a tirade smearing Soros as evil and Bragg as a "third-world" attorney:

It's clear that no amount of facts or logic will deter leftists like [show host Chuck] Todd from their half a decade quest to see Trump behind bars. Regardless of what you think of the man himself, all fair-minded people know this is a political prosecution by a corrupt third-world District Attorney doing the bidding of one of the evilest men in the world: George Soros.

Tober didn't explain how "fair-minded people" somehow know this is a "political prosecution" when the evidence hadn't yet been made public. He also didn't back up his smears of Bragg and Soros with anything resembling actual facts.

Tober lashed out at Reid again in a March 31 post for making the same point centered around another figure for whom the MRC serves as PR flacks:

After news broke Thursday that the leftist prosecutor Alvin Bragg and his Grand Jury voted to indict Trump, Florida Republican governor Ron DeSantis took to Twitter with a statement defending Trump and letting Americans know he would not help extradite the former President to New York to be arraigned. This news triggered the always unhinged MSNBC ReidOut host Joy Reid who used to occasion to claim DeSantis’s statement was a dog whistle that African Americans like Bragg are controlled by Jewish millionaires.

“The governor of Florida does not know the facts so he cannot talk about questionable facts in this case he doesn't know them. Only the Grand Jury knows them and this is a sealed indictment,” Reid huffed.

[...]

Nowhere in her incoherent ramblings did she explain how attacking Bragg amounted to a “dog whistle” that he’s controlled by “Jewish millionaires.”

Tober never explained why it wasn't. Vazquez similarly defended DeSantis from the dog-whistle criticism the same day:

Don’t criticize leftist billionaire George Soros’ agenda to overhaul the criminal justice system or you’re an anti-Semite! At least, that’s the ridiculous pejorative that MSNBC host Joe Scarbough hurled at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R).

Scarborough railed at DeSantis’ tweet signaling that he would not be cooperating with “Soros-backed” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the extradition of former President Donald Trump following his vendetta to indict him on dubious legal grounds. Scarborough, apparently ignorant of the fact that Soros himself made his agenda to elect leftist prosecutors across the country widely known, set up a strawman argument by arbitrarily making DeSantis’ criticism seem like a swipe at Soros’ race. “It’s just Jews. They’re attacking Jewish, international bankers. It’s what anti-Semites have been doing for hundreds of years — attacking Jewish, international bankers,” Scarborough spewed on the March 31 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Scarborough repeated himself like a broken record and used an overused left-wing strategy by likening DeSantis to Nazis: “That’s what they do. They try to blame everything on Jewish international bankers. It’s Germany 1933.” MRC Business Vice President Dan Schneider, who is Jewish, ripped Scarborough apart on Twitter for his senseless comparison of DeSantis to Nazi Germany: “@JoeNBC diminishes the evilness of the holocaust and anti-Semitism by blabbering such [treif]. THAT is evil.” Schneider later said in a follow-up statement: “Scarborough diminishing the evils of anti-Semitism this way is anti-Semitism. I call on him to apologize to all Jews.”

This plays into the MRC's narrative that Soros is a Jew conservatives are permitted to hate -- something Vazquez and Schneider didn't mention. Instead, he huffed that "to Scarborough, DeSantis simply criticizing Soros for using his enormous influence to further his soft-on-crime agenda — which in practice has led to significant spikes in urban crime rates — makes DeSantis an anti-Semite."

(Schneider's tweet tried to be gratuitously Jewish by using the word "traife," a Yiddish word describing non-kosher food, which Vazquez for some reason changed to "treif," though both appear to be accepted spellings.)

Alex Christy tried to defend the attack line in an April 1 post:

PBS NewsHour twice accused GOP critics of Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg and left-wing political donor George Soros of anti-Semitism on Friday’s show. Those doing the accusing were not cantankerous liberal guests, but host Amna Nawaz and White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez.

Barron-Lopez was up first. Talking about the potential for violence when former President Trump is arraigned on Tuesday, she lamented that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene plans to travel to New York to lead protests and that Fox News’s Tucker Carlson “is telling his viewers that it’s probably not a good time for them to get rid of their AR-15s.”

Greene and Carlson’s remarks come at a time when “Trump and a number of his allies have been using dog whistle attacks, anti-Semitic attacks against—when they attack D.A. Alvin Bragg by saying that he is backed by George Soros, who is Jewish.”

Of course, Barron-Lopez provided no evidence that criticizing Soros is anti-Semitic other than simply declaring it. However much the media may strain to claim he is, Soros is not a code word for all Jews and the conspiracy theory that Jewish money controls the world. Soros is an individual person with dangerous beliefs about law and justice.

Christy didn't explain how having beliefs about law and justice that differ from right-wing narratives are, by definition, "dangerous."

The Soros funding connection

Though the MRC went hard on trying to link Bragg to Soros, that link isn't as clear-cut as the MRC would like to you believe. As the Washington Post documented, Soros donated $1 million to a group called Color of Change, which had pledged to to spend $1 million on Bragg's election campaign before the donation; it ended up spending only half that, and the campaign itself raised much more than that though Bragg was far outspent (yet still won) by an opponent who was largely self-funded.

Just as the MRC got mad when folks pointed out the anti-Semitic dog-whistle stuff, it was annoyed that they also pointed out that the link between Bragg and Soros isn't terribly direct or consequential. Luis Cornelio desperately tried to spin away the ambiguity and nuance brought up by the Post and others in a March 24 post:

The legacy media is yet again defending the indefensible. This time, they claim the Soros-backed Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, is not actually backed by Soros.

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump, CNBC’s Brian Schwartz, and The New York Times fact-checker dismissed the fact that Soros donated $1,000,000 to the Color of Change PAC in 2021 just days after the organization endorsed Bragg and pledged to donate the exact same amount to his campaign.

One might think that one million-dollar donation from a Soros-backed group, would be enough proof of a Soros-Bragg tie, but that’s not enough for the legacy media.

The Times’ fact checker went so far as to claim that “neither Mr. Soros” nor his “Democracy PAC” contributed directly to Bragg’s campaign. That claim is partially true but clearly ignores that other Soros family members did indeed directly contribute to Bragg’s race, per a March 21 Fox News report.

CNBC’s Schwartz dismissed the ties claiming that Soros never met Bragg, per a “Soros advisor.” He also downplayed the donation by noting that the Color of Change PAC ran independent expenditures on behalf of Bragg.

WaPo’s Bump defended Bragg’s ability to fundraise, claiming he “raised more than $2 million in direct contributions.” However, are we supposed to ignore the fact that a group backed by Soros single-handedly gave nearly half of what Bragg and his team raised on their own? I guess so.

When Soros pointed out that he had never met Bragg and didn't contribute to his campaign, Cornelio raged in a March 31 post hyperbolically (and falsely) headlined "MORE LIES!":

George Soros is attempting to save Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg from GOP critiques by distancing himself from him–but the truth is that there is a money trail that arguably helped bolster Bragg’s efforts to become Manhattan’s DA.

Echoing the legacy media, George Soros dismissed his million-dollar donation to a pro-Bragg PAC. “As for Alvin Bragg, as a matter of fact I did not contribute to his campaign and I don’t know him,” the leftist billionaire megadonor said in a text message exchange with Semafor magazine published on March 31, attempting to distance himself from the radical Manhattan DA who pushed to indict former President Donald Trump.

Soros, who donated $1,000,000 to the Color of Change PAC in 2021 days after it endorsed Bragg, is downplaying his ties to the leftist Manhattan DA. Color of Change earmarked $500,000 from that donation to help seat Bragg as the Manhattan DA. The other $500,000 was revoked after “disturbing” allegations were raised by an unnamed woman.

“Soros is a bald faced liar,” wrote MRC President Brent Bozell in a tweet. “He paid for the political persecution of Donald Trump.”

Not only did Cornelio fail to actually identify any lie that Soros told, he's clearly afraid to fact-check his own boss and point out that Soros did not actually lie.

Alex Christy insisted that the right-wing anti-Soros narrative is more important than inconvenient facts in an April 1 post:

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler was the April fool on Saturday as he gave those claiming that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is currently prosecuting former President Donald Trump, is funded by George Soros three Pinocchios. Even worse, Kessler claimed such claims were “incendiary” and play “into antisemitic conspiracy theories.”

Kessler’s first attempt to rebut the claims is that “the intense focus on Soros is misplaced. Soros never directly funded Bragg, but instead contributed to a group that supported Bragg and other liberal candidates seeking to be prosecutors.”

Soros gave money to a group and that group gave money to Bragg, most people would say that means Soros funded Bragg. If Soros didn’t want his money going to people like Bragg, he would not be giving it to groups that support him.

[...]

He also wrote, “Soros supports candidates through occasional direct contributions, but mainly though his Democracy PAC or to groups that support candidates with what are known as independent expenditures... Independent expenditures are not coordinated with a campaign but work in support of one, such as through sending mailers or operating phone banks.”

Another distinction without a difference. Kessler continued to painfully attempt to argue Soros’s relationship with Bragg is not what conservatives are alleging. He reported that on May 8, Color of Change announced it’s plan to spend $1 million supporting Bragg and that on May 14, Soros sent Color of Change $1 million.

Kessler goes to great lengths to say that Soros’s donation had no impact on Color of Change’s endorsement, but again that misses the point. If Soros didn’t support Bragg or people like him, he would never have given Color of Change the money. Indirect support is still support.

Kessler also stresses “there is no evidence Soros has influence over Bragg,” but, once again, Kessler misses the point. Soros has an ideologically soft-on-crime preference for people like Bragg and donates money to groups who support prosecutors who share those preferences.

Christy also claimed it was "absurd" to point out the whole anti-Semitic dog-whistle thing, even though his employer has explicitly invoked that against Soros.

Curtis Houck ran to Fox News to push the narrative and baselessly insist that media outlets reporting facts about Soros' relationship with Bragg were somehow "shamelessly defending" him:

Houck picked the fact-checking of the supposedly esteemed fact-checkers who’ve set out to defend Soros by insisting he didn’t bankroll Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s campaign promising to hammer away at former President Trump.

Houck cited NewsBusters, Twitter Community Notes, and Washington Free Beacon as examples of outlets that pushed back on the insane notion “that George Soros has nothing to do with the Alvin Bragg campaign.” In reality, the Color of Change PAC was connected to Soros as, after having promised they’d give $1 million to Bragg, Soros then gave that same amount.

Tim Graham whined about all of this in his April 3 podcast:

The liberal media's "fact checkers" are furiously spinning how Trump and conservatives shouldn't say Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is "Soros-backed," even though that is a fact. Washington Post fact-finagling scold Glenn Kessler claims "the intense focus on Soros is misplaced." Anyone who's focusing is playing with fire: "The incendiary focus on Soros raises more difficult questions. Given the tenuous connection between Soros and Bragg, it’s a dangerous game that plays into stereotypes of rich Jewish financiers secretly controlling events."

MSNBC "disinformation" specialist Ben Collins uncorked a tweet insisting "Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ron DeSantis have all claimed Alvin Bragg is 'Soros-backed' or aligned since the news of the indictment dropped. In reality, Soros 'has never met or spoken to Alvin Bragg,' according to a CNBC story last week.”

By this logic, Ben Collins can't be accused of being "NBC-backed" if he hasn't met the CEO of NBCUniversal.

Um, that's not how that "logic" works -- a second-hand campaign donation is not at all the same thing as direct employment.

Vazquez spent an April 4 post trying to parse imprecise wording from CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale to claim he really was admitting that Soros was directly funding Bragg through Color of Change:

At the bottom of his piece, Dale said that Color of Change PAC “ended up spending about half of what it had planned [to support Bragg due to the allegations], [Color of Change President Rashad] Robinson said, and kept the rest of Soros's donation for other uses.” Ah, so Soros' money was in fact used? [Emphasis added.]

Dale must not have realized the implication of his framing. But Dale still tried to tell readers to ignore their lying eyes by quoting Robinson, who deflected: “‘Soros didn't give us money to give to Alvin Bragg. Soros made a donation to Color of Change.’” Per Dale’s framing, some of Soros’ money was used to support Bragg. But Dale dismissed this by zeroing in on how Soros didn’t make a “direct” contribution to Bragg and didn’t speak to him. For Dale, Soros' connection to Bragg was just "indirect."

“Soros did not make any direct contributions to Bragg's 2021 election campaign, and a Soros spokesperson, Michael Vachon, told CNN last week that the two men have never once communicated in any way,” Dale gaslighted. Newsflash Dale: Soros doesn’t have to make a “direct” contribution to indicate his backing of Bragg. He just needs to fuel radical leftist groups that support his views with his cash and they take care of the rest. The benefit of indirect funding is that Soros can then claim plausible deniability when it suits him, just as he’s done in Bragg’s case. Either Dale doesn’t know how a money trail works and accidentally said the quiet part out loud or he does know and just doesn’t care.

Vazquez again whined about the anti-Semitic dog-whistle stuff being called out, insisting that it was a "tired leftist tactic." Has he not seen the anti-Semitic tropes his employer has invoked against Soros (for which it has never apologized)? It's not a "tactic" if it's absolutely accurate.

Alex Christy was triggered in an April 6 post when a late-night comedian Seth Meyers called out right-wing attacks on Soros and Bragg: "Apparently Late Night thinks pointing out one person’s political donations is the same as blaming Jews for your personal problems." A few days later, though, Waters was taking the opposite view when billionaire Harlan Crow (who has a weird collection of Nazi stuff) was exposed as the sugar daddy of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The same day, Clay Waters whined about the New York Times pointing out the anti-Semitic dog-whistle stuff:

In the indictment of Donald Trump, many conservatives saw the malign influence of left-wing billionaire George Soros, who funded the successful election campaign of Manhattan-based Democrat District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The liberal press reacted to criticism of Bragg and “puppet master” Soros with outrage and accusations of racism and anti-Semitism.

A Tuesday morning “news analysis” from New York Times reporters Jonathan Weisman and Andrew Higgins went down the same path: “George Soros Is a Familiar Villain for the Right Wing in Trump’s Indictment.”

"Puppet master," of course, is very much an anti-Semitic trope -- even the MRC has gone there -- though Waters seems to be unaware of that history. Instead, he tried to play whataboutism:

Yet when liberals target influential conservative donors as “puppet masters,” the Times nods along, as reporter Jeremy Peters did in a 2018 story about the spat between libertarian donor Charles Koch and Donald Trump:

The difference -- which Waters failed to point out -- is that Koch is not Jewish and Soros is.

Joseph Vazquez used an April 10 post to complain that the hated NPR called out the right-wing obsession with tying Bragg to Soros:

The taxpayer-funded leftists at National Public Radio flung proverbial sewage at critics who dared raise Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s financial ties to billionaire George Soros.

NPR’s Apr. 6 edition of All Things Considered decried Bragg’s highly politicized prosecution of former President Donald Trump. The outlet railed at critics like Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

NPR host Mary Louise Kelly brought on guest and liberal Soros biographer Emily Tamkin, who downplayed the fact that Soros gave $1 million to the anti-police Color of Change PAC just a few days after the group initially pledged $1 million to support Bragg’s 2021 election campaign. She also teed up Tamkin to direct wild accusations of anti-Semitism at “conservative politicians” who criticize Soros.

But here was the fun fact that Kelly conceded that undermined the entire argument: “I want to open by noting that NPR has in the past accepted money from Soros' foundation to finance independent reporting on state governments.” Perfect, so no conflict of interest there, right NPR?

[...]

MRC Business Vice President Dan Schneider, who is Jewish, slammed NPR for its asinine propaganda in a statement: “NPR is doing what weak people typically do: they call their opponents nasty names instead of addressing the actual issue.” He continued: “[S]imply because the largest donor to Democrats and left-wing causes happens to be Jewish should not make it impossible to point out that Soros is a funder of the most radical, left-wing causes.”

One could more plausibly argue that the actual "weak people" are the ones who use propaganda (that could very well be called asinine) to turn people like Soros into bogeymen to advance partisan agendas and who hurl immature insults (like "asinine") at anyone who disrupts their narrative.