Even though MoveOn has endorsed Bernie Sanders and Media Matters is tied to Hillary Clinton, both groups who woo liberals to back Democratic candidates are working in concert to attack leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
In an email sent to followers Sunday morning, MoveOn’s Chief Technology Officer Ann Lewis claimed that it’s “under attack by Donald Trump,” and needs help with contributions starting at $3.00 to “stand up to Donald Trump and his threats.”
Over the last few days in California, rampaging demonstrators — mostly angry at Trump’s calls to deport illegal aliens and build a wall across the U.S. border with Mexico — threw rocks at motorists, hurled eggs at police officers, blocked entrances and attempted to overturn a police car.
A protester defended the violence as “a necessary reaction” to the Trump campaign’s “inflammatory rhetoric,” one paper reported.
“We could be peaceful and do things different,” 19-year-old Arianna Perez told the LA Times, “but if we did, we wouldn’t get our voice heard.”
The email from MoveOn doesn’t refer to any of those violent actions and rather lays the blame on Trump for inciting it all.
“Here’s the situation: Over the past few months, as Donald Trump has campaigned from city to city, MoveOn members have turned out for peaceful demonstrations against his carnival of hate,” the email continued. “In response, Trump attacked us in the media, calling MoveOn members ‘not a good group of people,’ while his media surrogates explicitly blamed MoveOn for violence he incited at his rallies.”
One of the links cited by MoveOn was a Media Matters article titled, “Right-Wing Media Baselessly Accuse MoveOn.Org Of Inciting Violence At Trump Rally.”
“Right-wing media figures are blaming MoveOn.org for violence that occurred following Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s canceled rally in Chicago on March 11, likening the group to the Klu Klux Klan and accusing them of ‘creating this havoc and…putting innocent people’s lives in jeopardy,'” Tyler Cherry wrote for Media Matters. “In fact, several media figures have slammed Trump for condoning ‘violence in rally after rally,’ and at the Chicago event MoveOn.org only helped provide logistical support for the protests, including printing signs and recruiting attendees.”
Media Matters linked to a MoveOn statement which argued that what happened in Chicago “was a direct result of the violence that has occurred at Trump rallies and that has been repeatedly encouraged by Trump himself from the stage.”
“There is only one person to blame for the chaotic and often violent nature of Trump rallies: Donald J. Trump,” the March 11 MoveOn statement charged. “This sort of violence does not happen at Sanders, Cruz, Clinton, Rubio, or Kasich events, despite the fact that there are often protests at their events.”
However, while there may be some protests at other candidates’ rallies, they aren’t drawing large crowds that require any intense law enforcement agency supervision and don’t seem to be directly supported by any political organizations.
MoveOn will be “conducting a top-to-bottom security audit to secure [its] systems in advance of the general election,” the email added, claiming that it has been “flooded with hate mail, spam, and personal threats to our staff and online security.” But there isn’t any mention of whether or not it reported these threats to any law enforcement agencies.
“We’ve all seen the videos of Trump supporters punching and shoving protestors—as well as Trump’s explicit statements encouraging violence,” the email continued. “What the public doesn’t see is the avalanche of threats that come in through email and social media.”
MoveOn claims, “It’s more hate mail of a more vicious nature than we received even when we took on the NRA or helped take down the Confederate Flag.”
Throughout the email, MoveOn claims the “hate mail” they’ve received is “frightening,” “scary,” and that $3 donations will “help provide the resources to ensure the security of our staff and systems we need to take on this fight and keep our staff and systems safe.”
“MoveOn has already begun taking on Trump’s hate directly by providing support for peaceful protesters outside his rallies, by exposing how Trump incites violence, and by joining with leaders of civil rights, economic justice, women’s rights, labor, immigrant rights, environmental, veterans, and community organizations to launch a major initiative to stand up to Trump’s hate,” it adds.
On the other side, Clinton supporters have been reportedly threatened and harassed by Democrats that prefer Sanders.
A “hit list” was created to monitor pro-Clinton Twitter accounts and make stalking threats, as The Daily Caller reported early last month. (RELATED: #EndcyBernBullying Trends On Twitter, Gets Hijacked Twice)
Clinton supporters were upset about the website www.redlegion.org after it began utilizing “Open Source Intelligence gathering” to allegedly attack “democrat pieces of shit” who “did nothing” to stop the Patriot Act or NSA domestic spyings, and for calling leakers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning “terrorists.” Blasting Clinton supporters as “semi-Republican,” the blogger wrote that he would give them a “taste of [their] own medicine” by “watching all their interactions with others on social media.”
“I’m tracking you by your ID number in case you decide to change your username,” the Red Legion blogger wrote. “I’m watching every geolocation tagged tweet, every reference to your daily live, I’m going to scrutinize everything you do.”
Last week, the Associated Press reported, “While Sanders decries a ‘rigged’ economy, some of his backers see signs of corruption everywhere — even in the party their candidate hopes to lead. Some have turned their frustration on superdelegates, the party insiders whose ability to back either candidate give them an outsized role in picking the nominee.”
The article noted that the Sanders campaign “assures everyone that it doesn’t condone harassment,” but superdelegates, which include :public officials” such as “governors, former presidents and even Sanders himself” are also sometimes just “volunteers who’ve generally stayed behind the scenes.”
One superdelegate, Nancy Schumacher — “an administrative assistant from Elk River, Minnesota” — told the AP that some phone and email messages she had received called her “a stupid bitch” and threatened that “something bad will happen to” her.
Former Massachusetts Democratic Party official Gus Bickford claimed that after a superdelegates list was posted on his Facebook page, “a person from Rhode Island posted a response that basically said, ‘They should all be assassinated’ and then said ‘I’m only joking.'”
“Some Republican delegates say they have also found themselves at the receiving end of death threats” from Trump supporters, the AP article noted, but it didn’t provide any details.