Last night, the @flores4congress Twitter handle retweeted this tweet by Dinesh D’Souza.
To get the obvious out of the way: Dinesh D’Souza is a convicted felon and the “uranium deal” has been debunked. (Yawn.)
The biggest problem in this tweet is the photo comparison. On the right: Hillary and Bill Clinton. On the left: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
In 1953, the United States executed the Rosenbergs after convicting them of espionage.
Regardless of the Rosenbergs’ guilt or innocence, it is completely over the line to draw this comparison to the Clintons. It is an endorsement of state-sanctioned violence against political opponents and that is not acceptable, from any party.
@flores4congress is the handle associated with the Bill Flores campaign; it is not Rep. Flores’s official congressional Twitter account, which is @RepBillFlores.
We are willing to give the Flores campaign the benefit of the doubt; maybe a staffer did not know the Rosenbergs’ story when he or she retweeted D’Souza.
We faxed Flores’s office last night and called his DC office this morning. They told us to contact the campaign at info@billflores.com. We emailed that address at 9 a.m., demanding a public apology. So far we have heard no response, and in fact the campaign retweeted D’Souza again this morning:
Just because Trump has violated so many other norms, we cannot ignore this advocacy of state-sanctioned violence against a political opponent. Let’s not lose sight of what a functional democracy looks like. And of you are a constituent of Rep. Bill Flores, please contact his office and let him know what you think.
The campaign email address is info@billflores.com
Sooooooo, your bombastic headline says “Bill Flores just endorsed state sanctioned execution of political opponents” and in the body of the articles you said “willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.” I’m so sick of these click-bait articles and you do nothing for our cause when you publish them. Shame on you and shame on me for taking the bait. If you want to be a journalist, get some integrity.
They were given a chance to respond, possibly to claim ignorance of the Rosenbergs’ story, and did not. Then they doubled down and retweeted D’Souza again. We stand by the headline.