Conservatives are pretending (always pretending) that they are outraged and dismayed that Joaquin Castro tweeted out a publicly available list of Trump donors.
When you donate to a campaign in America, it is made clear that your name is entered into the public record. We do this because we learned about giant, anonymous flows of cash between shadowy figures and Richard Nixon. It’s always Nixon.
I expect fake conservative outrage, because that’s what the right does. But the weird part is the role being played by the New York Times’ White House correspondent, Maggie Haberman.
In response to the disclosure, Haberman publicly fretted.
“This is dangerous, by any campaign,” she tweeted. Challenged on it by MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Haberman insisted this information should be a secret and complained when it was pointed out to her that her own newspaper had published information on donors to the Clinton Foundation.
There she goes again!
A reporter arguing that public information shouldn’t be utilized by a campaign is absurd, and it’s no surprise that it was Haberman arguing on the Trump side of the argument – again.
She’s got that book she’s shopping, after all.
One of the first political bloggers in the world, Oliver Willis has operated OliverWillis.com since 2000. Contributor at Media Matters for America and The American Independent. Follow on Twitter at @owillis. Full bio.
First off, the link you cite suggests Haberman has dropped the book idea.
Next, there are good arguments to why donations to various groups should be confidential. The issue arose with the NAACP in the 1950s, as I recall. I can think of several good reasons why persons would want their donations private in that event. We can debate whether “organization” donations, NAACP, Clinton Foundation, are, or ought to be different, than “political” donations. I’m not quite sure where I stand on the issue; but the growth of the violent white supremacists at least makes me cognizant that it is not a far step before we get someone knocking on our doors telling us that we are not sufficiently loyal to the Beloved Leader. It can happen here.
Did you miss our long arguments over the use on internet “nom de blogs”? There were good arguments on both sides; but we generally decided that our rights to privacy, and the right to avoid harassment from the various wackos out there, outweighed any need to provide our actual names. On one hand I want to see you as a huge success. On the other I don’t want to see you, or your family, at risk.
Again, I think you ask too much of the NY Times. Their goals are not our goals. They’re going to be lame.