The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross breaks the story that the Harris campaign doled out $500,000 to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. This was Sharpton’s share of the action (forgive the long quote):
Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign donated $500,000 to Al Sharpton’s nonprofit organization just weeks before the anti-Semitic MSNBC host—who once said that “diamond merchant” Jews have the “blood of innocent babies” on their hands—conducted a friendly interview with Harris.
The campaign’s remittance to Sharpton’s National Action Network was part of a flurry of donations—$5.4 million in all—to black and Latino advocacy groups that seem aimed at winning Harris support from those constituencies. Harris’s campaign gave two payments of $250,000 to National Action Network on Sept. 5 and Oct. 1, according to campaign finance records.
On Oct. 3, Sharpton aired a video of Harris wishing him happy birthday on his MSNBC weekend show, PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton. “Happy birthday, Rev,” Harris said, using Sharpton’s nickname. “You have been over all of your years such an extraordinary leader. You have been a voice of truth, a voice of conscience.”
Sharpton, 70, conducted a glowing interview with Harris on Oct. 20 in which he touted her “extraordinary historic campaign” while referring to Trump as “hostile and erratic.” His questions lined up closely with messages that Harris sought to highlight on the campaign trail. Sharpton addressed concerns among black voters—especially black men—about Harris’s record as a prosecutor in California, where she was given the nickname “Kamala the Cop.” Sharpton brought up Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, and one of Harris’s personal heroes, to put Harris’s candidacy in historical perspective. Sharpton asked Harris whether men who opposed her were “misogynistic.”
Sharpton did not disclose payments from the Harris campaign during either segment with the candidate. National Action Network did not respond to requests for comment. MSNBC also did not respond to comment requests.
The Harris campaign had a lot of money to throw around. It blew through $1,000,000,000 in the course of its 107 days. It’s hard to believe the campaign found it necessary to drop a “donation” on Sharpton for favorable treatment on MSNBC, or that anyone thought it worthwhile to do so. As for MSNBC, the fact that the channel has given Sharpton his own show says it all, or almost all.
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