Amazing, Lucas. Republican Rep. Darrell Issa spent years wasting millions
of dollars in taxpayer money to conduct bogus "investigations"
of the Obama administration that never went anywhere. But just like a
classic bully—just like
his idol, Donald Trump, in fact—he can dish it out but can't take a punch.
Issa—one of the leaders of the Benghazi witch hunt, and later
called the Benghazi "investigations" a success because they hurt Hillary's poll numbers—faces his toughest
re-election campaign in forever, thanks to Daily Kos-endorsed Democrat
Doug Applegate, a retired Marine colonel who, unlike his opponent, isn’t
afraid of the rough and tumble.
Can you chip in $5 right now to help Get Out The Vote for Democrat Doug
Applegate and give the odious Darrel Issa the boot?
Applegate recently started airing
a hard-hitting TV spot in which he directly links Issa to Trump. After playing a clip of Trump
declaring "I'm really rich. Nobody knows the system better than
me," a narrator explains that Issa likewise "gamed the system
to line his own pockets steering millions in taxpayer money to help properties
he owned," relying on a very negative
2011 New York Times piece about Issa's self-dealing for factual support.
So how did Issa react? Like the cowardly whiner that he is, he's
threatening to file a lawsuit alleging that Applegate has defamed him! Seriously, no one in politics ever does this. It’s insane. But
Issa's serious: He even sent the Applegate campaign
a draft of his complaint that he's ready to file in court at a moment's notice if Applegate
doesn’t cower before him.
The entire thing is nuts, though. Issa's cockamamie claim centers
around a screenshot where that "gamed the system" quote is rendered
in a newspaper-style headline, above a New York Times logo displayed on
a slant. It’s the kind of visual technique used in a million campaign ads.
But Issa's delusional attorneys are calling this image defamatory
because it "inappropriately misleads California voters by falsely
attributing quotes to an article in which such quotes do not exist."
They also try to claim that the article itself has been discredited because
of a few small corrections issued after the fact (such as the paper printing
the word "billion" when it meant "million"), even
though it still lives on the Times' website. And that’s really
it. Applegate’s summary of the article is totally fair—just
read the piece for yourself.
It’s a devastating portrait of a congressman who has used his time in office to get extremely rich,
and there's just no getting around that.
Please give $5 to Doug Applegate today so that he can defeat Darrell Issa.
Keep fighting,
David Nir, Political Director
Daily Kos