by Andrew Kerr
The New York Times accused President Donald Trump of rehashing a “well-worn trope of the far right” in his Friday morning tweet labeling anti-Kavanaugh protesters as paid professionals funded by liberal billionaire financier George Soros.
The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad. Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love! #Troublemakers
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2018
The “elevator screamers” in Trump’s tweet are an apparent reference to the protesters who confronted Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake just prior to his decision to call for a supplemental FBI investigation into Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that she was sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh while the two were minors.
Protesters on Thursday also confronted Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, asking to have a discussion while shouting at the senator, who was getting into an elevator. He caused an outburst when he said, “when you grow up, I’ll be ready” to have a discussion.
“He called them ‘paid professionals’ and intimated that they are paid by George Soros, a liberal financier who has long starred in the conspiracy theories of the far right,” TheNYT reported on Trump’s tweet.
That sentence was removed by the time of this article’s publication. Another sentence that still remains as of publication time is: “And Mr. Trump urged on the Senate, saying the protesters were ‘screamers’ and ‘professionals’ paid by the financier, George Soros, a well-worn trope of the far right.”
However, Fox News identified one of the women who confronted Flake as Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), an organization that has received millions from Soros since 2014.
The CPD is one of the participating nonprofit organizations of #CancelKavanaugh, a movement that reportedly provided anti-Kavanaugh protesters cash to resolve fines received for engaging in civil disobedience during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.
The CPD, along with #CancelKavanaugh co-organizers Women’s March and Housing Works, took ownership of the arrests of more than 200 activists who disrupted Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in early September.
#CancelKavanaugh has organized events throughout the judge’s entire confirmation process. The movement is organizing “direct action in D.C. and around the country” over the remainder of the confirmation process in a last-ditch effort to keep Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court.
The Daily Caller News Foundation attended a conference call in September in which CPD national field organizer Darius Gordon said the left-wing groups would provide cash to protesters who didn’t show up with their own money to resolve their fines.
“If you do not have access to your cash we will certainly be able to arrange to get it to you before the action,” Housing Works national advocacy coordinator Paul Davis said on the call.
The DCNF did not immediately receive a response to a request for comment from The NYT article’s reporters, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos.
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Andrew Kerr is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation. Follow Andrew on Twitter.
