As Democrats accuse Republicans of trafficking misinformation, their own House campaign arm is spreading it.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent a pair of emails on Monday that outright lie about the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, deceitfully leading supporters to believe adding their name to a petition could compel President Trump to testify in the probe. Even by the standards of political fundraising emails, which allow for a generous amount of hyperbole, these DCCC messages are hard to defend.
“If we can gather 1,000,000 signatures, it will FORCE Trump to cooperate with the investigation once and for all,” the committee said in one email, first flagged by Buzzfeed reporter Dominic Holden.
“We need to gather 1 MILLION signatures for Robert Mueller to FORCE Trump to testify,” read another, later adding, “We’re the only ones left who can help Robert Mueller.”
No 1 million-signature petition is going to influence, let alone force, Trump to sit down with Robert Mueller, and the DCCC knows it. It might actually make Trump less likely to do so.
In March, Buzzfeed ran a story on frustration over the committee’s email fundraising practices among strategists. “It’s run in the model of the DCCC created back in 2013 and it’s exhausting our voters,” one operative said. “There’s not an infinite pool of people to pull from and their strategy is going to turn people off from supporting Democratic causes.”
Beyond that, Democrats constantly accuse Republicans of spreading misinformation about the Mueller investigation. To be clear, that goes the other way around too. But when you’re fundraising off such misinformation, those critiques lose their credibility.
