David Brock is a Democratic Party political operative and propagandist who started his career as a right-wing propagandist. The first half of his career saw Brock dragging Anita Hill through the mud when, during confirmation hearings, she accused Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, of sexual harassment when she worked for Thomas at the Department of Education. According to The Nation, David Brock wrote a book on Anita Hill called The Real Anita Hill in which he described Hill as “a bit nutty and a bit slutty.”
David Brock also spent the first part of his career as a political mudslinger attacking Bill and Hillary Clinton, one example being the infamous “Troopergate” scandal involving Bill CLinton’s allegedly having used state police to arrange sexual liaisons for Bill Clinton while he was governor of Arkansas. This was before he made a full 180-degree turn and began working for the Clintons, essentially pulling all the same kinds of dirty tricks for them as he used to use against them and other Democrats.
In a 1997 article written for Esquire, Brock confessed to being a “right-wing hit man” and claimed to feel really bad about his past life as a right-wing political operative after allegedly realizing the truth about his right-wing associates.
Over the past decade and a half, David Brock has built a considerable political and media empire with the seemingly singular vision of making Hillary Clinton the President. After the failure of her 2016 campaign, Brock set his sights on creating an organization that would be Democratic Party’s answer to Breitbart, the media organization started by the deceased Conservative political commentator, Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart is at the center of American politics at the moment because of Steve Bannon’s role with the Donald Trump administration. It can be reasonably argued that without Breitbart and Steve Bannon, we might not have President Trump.
According to Heatstreet, Brock’s efforts are not off to a great start. In January, Brock announced plans to raise millions of dollars to create an anti-Trump “war room” as part of his political research organization, American Bridge. The new organization was tentatively named True Blue Media. Brock tapped investigative journalist, David Sirota, to lead the effort. Sirota announced today that he would be dropping out, seemingly due to funding roadblocks.
“True Blue Media does not right now have in hand the resources for the kind of independent, nonpartisan journalism I want to continue to do and that is needed to execute on the ambitious editorial strategy that we agreed on,” Sirota said.
David Brock’s “attack dog” strategies won’t exactly be missed by many on the left, especially by grassroots-oriented progressives, supporters of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries, and mainstream Democrats who prefer offering Americans ideas and solutions over dirty attack strategies and ugly politics.
Writing on Medium, David Brock sent a letter to Bernie Sanders last month apologizing for the way he treated Sanders during the 2016 primaries.
“It’s no secret who I supported. I was one of the most visible and vocal advocates of Secretary Hillary Clinton,” Brock writes. “Many others backed you, Senator Sanders, with contagious zeal. At times during the Democratic primary, I was criticized for being too aggressive in my support for Secretary Clinton — and rightly so. Looking back, I recognize that there were a few moments when my drive to put Hillary in the White House led me to take too stiff a jab. I own up to that, I regret it, and I apologize to you and your supporters for it.”
For many supporters of Bernie Sanders, and even Hillary Clinton supporters who feel the divisive nature of Brock’s political strategies against Sanders divided the Democratic Party and alienated left independents, the apology rings hollow and is too little, and way too late. They’d prefer to simply see David Brock go away and reflect on his mistakes out of public view.
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