The Truth about ThinkProgress

One of the most prolific publications on Medium is ThinkProgress featuring Judd Legum as Editor-in-Chief. I decided to do a little digging to find out more about the publication and its leader.

The publication is produced by the Center for American Progress — a hard left advocacy organization founded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, in 2003. The CEO is Neera Tanden who worked in both the Obama and Clinton administrations as well as Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The organization has been widely criticized by the Sunlight Foundation and the Campaign Legal Center for keeping their contributors secret given its influence over the Obama and Clinton administration.

ThinkProgress has a very sketchy history when it comes to the truth. In 2008 they falsely accused John McCain of plagiarism of a decade old speech, but retracted their claim a day later. Two years later they claimed that the Chamber of Commerce violated campaign finance laws — FactCheck.org and the New York Times disagreed. ThinkProgress refused to retract their claim. The group ran afoul of the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee for making anti-semetic and anti-Israel statements. ThinkProgress responded by explaining that the statements were made by their staff ONLY in personal tweets and not in their publication. The ThinkProgress team apologized and deleted the tweets. Finally, ThinkProgress’ Editor-in-Chief was caught blackballing Roger Pielke Jr. from 538 when his email was leaked to the press.

If you were wondering who funds ThinkProgress you might be surprised. While officially a non-profit the organization collects millions of dollars. Their donors include George Soros (of course), Bill Gates, Walmart, CitiGroup, Wells Fargo, Northrup Grumman, Eli Lilly, and the United Arab Emirates.