Quote:...Sean Spicer, the president’s press secretary, told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade yesterday that organized demonstrations against the administration and its agenda shouldn’t be taken seriously at all:
Quote:KILMEADE: Do you sense, instead of being organic disruption, do you sense that there is an organized pushback and people are being paid to protest?
SPICER: Oh, absolutely. Protesting has become a profession now. They have every right to do that, don’t get me wrong. But I think that we need to call it what it is. It’s not these organic uprisings that we have seen through the last several decades. The tea party was a very organic movement. This has become a very paid Astroturf-type movement.
Spicer doesn’t appear to have any idea what he’s talking about. Much of the tea party activism in 2009 and 2010 was bolstered, at least in part, by wealthy conservative benefactors who invested considerable resources into the effort. For that matter, there’s literally zero evidence that any of the recent anti-Trump activism is being bankrolled by anyone on the left.
Benen
Benen gets all of this right. The Tea Party movement was funded and organized/coordinated by Freedom Works, which was founded by the Koch brothers and is funded by them. Dick Armey was in charge at that time until he resigned after demanding and getting $8 million bucks in severance (a patriot's wage).
Further, the movement was heavily promoted on a daily basis for months by Fox who provided updates on where protests would be held, who encouraged attendance and who also provided key staff to attend and function as cheerleaders. They also lied about the size of crowds.
As to protest movements and participants now, no evidence has been advanced by anyone I know of regarding protesters being paid. That's simply a lie. But the purpose for the lie is obvious.
