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DCCC Slams GOP Candidate for Taking Tobacco Money, Only To Take Donation 4 Times Larger

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Hypocrisy, thy name is the Democratic Party, specifically the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The DCCC recently called out a Republican congressional candidate in California for accepting a donation from a large tobacco company, only to be exposed as having accepted an even larger donation itself from that exact same tobacco industry giant.

The hypocrisy of the DCCC was first noted and revealed to the public by Politico, which linked to a now-deleted media release from the DCCC that excoriated GOP candidate Young Kim for accepting donations from the National Rifle Association, big pharmaceutical companies and Altria, the tobacco company in question.

However, Politico pointed out that the current chair of the DCCC, Democratic Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos, had accepted donations from Altria from 2015 to 2017.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that upon closer inspection of Federal Election Commission records, it wasn’t just Bustos who accepted donations from the tobacco company, but that the DCCC had also accepted a huge donation just a few months ago in April.

According to screenshots of the now-deleted DCCC news release obtained by the Free Beacon, the Democratic organization had lambasted Kim for accepting a donation in 2018 from a “disreputable” tobacco industry leader, Altria, and wrote that the tobacco industry was “at the forefront of stopping progress for Orange County families that would ensure their health, safety, and security.”

The $3,500 donation Kim accepted in 2018 from the Altria Group, Inc. Political Action Committee, also known as AltriaPAC, was nearly five times smaller than the $15,000 donation from AltriaPAC that the DCCC accepted on April 24 of this year, according to FEC records.

Do you enjoy seeing the hypocrisy of the Democrats publicly exposed?

The Free Beacon noted that the DCCC declined to respond to questions about the donation or why it had taken down the hypocritical media release so quickly.

As for Rep. Bustos, the current chair for the DCCC, those FEC records confirmed that she had accepted donations from AltriaPAC in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Not only that, but a Bustos-affiliated group known as Friends of Bustos also received a $2,500 donation from AltriaPAC on the same day as the $15,000 donation to the DCCC.

The hypocrisy doesn’t end there, though, as further scrutiny of the FEC records showed that many other Democratic House members have also recently accepted donations from AltriaPAC.

The Free Beacon noted that Democratic recipients of AltriaPAC donations included “Rep. Donald McEachin (D., Va.) received $2,500, John Larson (D., Ct.) received $1,500, Friends of Jim Clyburn received $3,000, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D., Mich.) received $1,500, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) received $500.”

A moderate Democratic group known as the Blue Dog PAC received $5,000 from Altria in June, as did a PAC affiliated with Democratic Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, Friends of Bennie Thompson, which accepted $1,500 in May.

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The AltriaPAC donated a similar range of funds to a number of Republican members of Congress and Republican-affiliated PACs, but the point is that Altria, as is standard practice with countless other large corporations, makes political donations to both sides of the ideological divide as a means to protect itself no matter which side holds power following an election.

The Democrats can’t call out a Republican candidate for accepting donations from a tobacco company that numerous Democrats and Democratic Party organizations have also accepted donations from.

That is the most blatant example of hypocrisy, and it was so bad that liberal-leaning Politico had to call them out and compel the properly shamed DCCC to retract its hypocritical media release.

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Ben Marquis is a writer who identifies as a constitutional conservative/libertarian. He has written about current events and politics for The Western Journal since 2014. His focus is on protecting the First and Second Amendments.
Ben Marquis has written on current events and politics for The Western Journal since 2014. He reads voraciously and writes about the news of the day from a conservative-libertarian perspective. He is an advocate for a more constitutional government and a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, which protects the rest of our natural rights. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with the love of his life as well as four dogs and four cats.
Birthplace
Louisiana
Nationality
American
Education
The School of Life
Location
Little Rock, Arkansas
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Politics




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