Some common sense thoughts on the Craigslist ad floating around purporting to pay people for showing up at Trump’s Florida “campaign event.”
In particular:
First off, there have been a tremendous amount of unverified claims from both the left and the right that supporters/protesters are being paid to show up to political events. These claims have been made since the beginning of the last election, since Donald Trump descended down his escalator, and not one instance has been proven.
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However, in this case, overtly saying they’re going to pay supporters with gift cards and cash vouchers, at a very public event, is so incredibly dumb it can’t possibly be real.
Most importantly, it’s impossible to know if this ad is real or fake without attending this Saturday’s rally, which we will be doing. And if we see people getting paid to go this rally, we’ll let you know. To be honest, that would be an amazing story.
There are also rumors being circulated that this rally is actually a plot to make Trump protesters look like violent thugs with agitators prepared to attend the rally and stir up trouble. Unless someone has actually seen evidence of such plotting, though, it’s hard to know if it’s true or not. I think skepticism is warranted here as well.
The suggested way of dealing with this is for peaceful protesters to hold their counter-event some distance from the rally itself. While that certainly sounds reasonable, it won’t do anything to stop agent provocateurs from causing trouble in the name of the Resistance movement, and it could render any protest more-or-less invisible, since it will be out of sight of both the Trump supporters and the media. If one were given to conspiracy-style thinking, one might be concerned that this could be propaganda from Trump supporters to help minimize the appearance of dissent, but I wouldn’t know about that…
