When Is It Okay to Out Political Donors?
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 6 September 2019
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last month, Representative Joaquin Castro tweeted out a list of Trump donors living in his district in San Antonio. Actress Debra Messing asked for an attendance list at a Trump fundraiser in Beverly Hills. Both efforts were likened to doxxing or blacklisting. Should political donors be named if they might also be targeted?
Guest: Dahlia Lithwick, legal correspondent and host of the Amicus podcast.
Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Jayson De Leon, and Danielle Hewitt.
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you log on to the Federal Election Commission's website or go to opensecrets.org, you can find these lists, lists of who's donating to Donald Trump or Elizabeth Warren, how much they're giving. |
| 0:18.8 | It is an incredibly simple thing to do. |
| 0:21.8 | And I think I would also add it's like a treasure trove for journalists, right? |
| 0:26.1 | Donnell Lithwick covers Washington for Slate. |
| 0:28.8 | She loves doing this kind of digging. |
| 0:30.7 | If a donor is given more than 200 bucks, they're on these sites. |
| 0:34.7 | Like these donor lists are like super, super interesting. I think at some |
| 0:39.8 | point, I might have looked up like house renters, just to like find out what was going on. |
| 0:46.2 | People who are renting your house? Possibly. I think at some point. Some people do a credit check. |
| 0:53.4 | Dollar Whitwick does an FEC check. |
| 0:55.4 | I just wanted to know. But in the last few weeks, there's been this debate simmering about how donors get counted. |
| 1:02.5 | Who compiles these lists? Who tweets these names out? |
| 1:06.8 | Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas tweeted out a graphic this week that shows the names and employers of 44 Trump campaign donors in San Antonio. |
| 1:19.7 | It started when Congressman Joaquin Castro publicized the names of high-end Trump donors in San Antonio. |
| 1:26.2 | At the time, New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman called that |
| 1:29.9 | dangerous. |
| 1:31.4 | Trump himself settled for calling Castro a fool. |
| 1:34.1 | Do you want people to boycott their companies, protest outside their homes? |
| 1:38.5 | What's the goal here? |
| 1:39.8 | No, that was never my goal. |
| 1:42.4 | Like I said, my post was actually as a San Antonio. |
| 1:46.7 | My family has been here since 1922. |
... |
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