Bernie Sanders hires Beto O'Rourke critic as top aide in 2020 race

[Soph0571]

US. Senator Bernie Sanders on Tuesday said he is hiring a well-known liberal journalist with a history of sharply criticizing other Democratic presidential candidates, including Beto O’Rourke.

Sanders’ campaign said it is bringing in David Sirota, whose work has appeared in The Guardian and Newsweek, among other outlets, as a senior adviser and speechwriter.

The move could stoke tensions within the Democratic field since Sirota has previously targeted O’Rourke, the former U.S. congressman from Texas who entered the presidential race last week, and other rivals.
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“A supporter of Bernie Sanders attacking a Democrat,” Tanden tweeted. “This is seriously dangerous. We know Trump is in the White House and attacking Dems is doing Trump’s bidding.”

[link:https://www.rawstory.com/2019/03/bernie-sanders-hires-beto-orourke-critic-top-aide-2020-race/|

Heh. Same shit different election cycle

[notdarkyet]

1. He's getting down and dirty.

[Soph0571]

3. Not surprising

But disappointing

[TwilightZone]

2. He's been working for Sanders "unofficially" for months

while claiming that his hit pieces on the other candidates were written as a "journalist".

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/sanders-promised-civility-hired-twitter-attack-dog/585259/

[Soph0571]

5. This cannot happen

It is too important this election cycle
Whoever wins the nomination needs to be in a place where republicans CANNOT use bollocks and nasty from other democratic nominee campaigns to beat the eventual nominee over the head. It is toooooooooooo important in this election cycle for white privileged men who are older than dirt to hi-jack the narrative. Winning at all costs means we will all lose.

[NurseJackie]

4. Check this out. Have you seen Sirota's ELECTION EVE smears against Hillary? ELECTION EVE!!!

We're talking WAY past the primary and WAY past the convention... and Sirota was STILL working to "kneecap" Hillary.

The contest was over, and he was LITERALLY doing everything he could to HELP TRUMP to win.

I think that speaks very clearly about his moral compass and tells us a lot about him (and it's not at all flattering.) I think it's fair for anyone to question the judgement and motivation of anyone who would hire him for ANY job.

Link to tweet

[Soph0571]

6. WTF?????

I think Bernie knows what he is doing. He wants to burn the house down to win. All that means is Trump 2020 IMO

[dalton99a]

10. +1. Sleazy and vicious lies

[NurseJackie]

15. Read his words. Clearly he wants to destroy the Democratic party.

Is that what Bernie wants to do too?

[Gothmog]

7. Sirota was working for sanders when he did Beto hit piece

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[denverbill]

8. So reporters can't report facts anymore?

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/04/factual-reporting-david-sirota-stirred-epic-freakout

[Demsrule86]

9. Denying that you have a relationship with someone...and then admitting you do is not

reporting facts.

[dalton99a]

11. +1. When the deniability is no longer plausible

[Demsrule86]

12. Yes...if I ever consider Sen.Sanders for a primary vote...not any more. But honestly, bitter about

16 election and I don't think he can win...I would vote for him in a general but not a primary. By hiring all the anti-Democratic folks beginning with Turner...he has merely confirmed what I already suspect...these he hired folks hate Democrats.

[redstatebluegirl]

13. I hope he is a team player if he loses the

Nomination. I can hope anyway, it cannot be like it was in 2016.

[Demsrule86]

14. Doesn't look like he will be with these hires.

[denverbill]

16. So you are claiming Sirota was being paid by Sanders?

Michael Cohen was working for Donald Trump because Trump paid him. Sean Hannity is not working for Trump (afaik) because Trump isn't paying him, despite the fact that Trump and Hannity talk regularly on the phone.

Am I 'working for' Bernie Sander because I post approvingly of him on DU, despite the fact that I give him money and get no money from him?

If so, 1/2 the people at DU are now 'working for' candidates.

Personally, I like David Sirota and I don't find it at all surprising he supports Sanders. I'm sure he's tired of reporting on politicians who keep lying about their positions and changing their positions to fit the person they happen to be running against at the time just to get elected. Must be refreshing to cover someone who doesn't.

All Sirota did was report the facts. Beto is (or was) the 2nd highest recipient of oil industry contributions over $200 in Congress. Now maybe it's innocuous, maybe not, but that is a fact. Reporting it doesn't make him an attack dog.

[NurseJackie]

17. Sirota worked to ratfuck Hillary on Election Eve... to kneecap her and put Trump in the White House.

We can clearly see where HIS moral compass is pointing. What does that tell us about anyone who hires him?

[Gothmog]

18. Sirota was acting as an attack dog while not disclosing his employment by sanders

Sirota is not a journalist but was acting as an undisclosed surrogate for sanders

[Gothmog]

20. Sirota lied about not working for sanders

Link to tweet

?s=20

[Gothmog]

21. Washington Post-A Bernie Sanders supporter (and journalist) had a secret he kept from his readers

Link to tweet

A reporter’s undisclosed connection to a political candidate would constitute a breach of journalistic ethics. The basic rule is that journalists are supposed to be free of any personal or financial relationship with those they cover or comment on, even an “informal” relationship. Alternatively, reporters are obligated to at least disclose such relationships so that readers or viewers can evaluate the integrity of the reporting for themselves.

Sirota, 43, not only didn’t mention his relationship with Sanders’s campaign but apparently sought to erase his long history of attacks against Sanders’s opponents, according to the Atlantic. Just hours before his hiring by Sanders was announced, Sirota deleted about 20,000 or so of his tweets. He suggested that the timing of the mass deletion was coincidental, telling the Atlantic that his account was scrubbed by an “autodeleter” that periodically and automatically removes his posts.

It remains unclear how long Sirota advised the Sanders camp before his hiring. Neither Sirota nor Sanders’s representatives responded to multiple requests for comment on Wednesday.

Sirota’s vitriolic tweets and blog posts also appear to be at odds with the ethos of the Sanders’s campaign, which has stressed that it will “respectfully engage” other Democratic candidates. His hiring as a speechwriter also appears to be an acknowledgment that Sanders, whose extemporaneous public remarks have been a sign of his authenticity, will at times be scripted like other politicians.

[Gothmog]

23. The fact that Sanders kept this quiet worries me

Link to tweet

[R B Garr]

25. Yes, unethical doesn't even begin to describe it. nt

[Gothmog]

22. What it means that Bernie Sanders is hiring people who think all the non-Bernie democrats are bad

Link to tweet

[R B Garr]

24. Good read. "Savaged mainstream Democrats...in intentionally

misleading ways”. This should not be allowed by anti-Democrats. Enough of the hostile undermining.

[SHRED]

26. Huge mistake

What was he thinking?

[MontanaFarmer]

27. Folks, there is no lane for Bernie to run in

that can lead him anywhere near the nomination. He had the entire anti-establishment, too-cool-for-a-regular-dem vote to himself last time. Now, he's got Beto and Kamala cutting into his young voters, Warren cutting into the most progressive voters, and several outside the mainstream candidates taking another 4-5%. His only way to the nomination is to burn the house down. Even that would never be enough, because of his poor performance in the south, but that's got to be their calculation. Thankfully, I don't believe he'll get anywhere near the nomination, as there are many better choices this time. I just hope he doesn't nuke the eventual nominee on the way out.

[customerserviceguy]

28. At some point

the candidates are going to have to go after each other. It's not enough to follow the first candidate who gets to speak in the debate, and say, "Yeah, what he/she said." They're going to have to differentiate themselves from their rivals, and one way to do that is to say that the opponent's plan is inferior to one's own.

This may well be interpreted as an attack on the opponent by the supporters of that opponent, but that's politics.