GOP Congressman Falsely Claims Donald Sterling Is A Democrat (VIDEO)

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) inaccurately claimed Tuesday during a House Financial Services Committee hearing that Clippers owner Donald Sterling is a Democrat, shortly after the NBA banned him for life for making widely-denounced racist comments.

“We’ve all heard of the comments that were recently made by Mr. Sterling from the LA Clippers, who is a Democrat — made absolutely offensive comments,” Duffy said, praising President Barack Obama for condemning the comments.

In fact, Sterling is a registered Republican, as confirmed by public records provided by Los Angeles County officials.

Sterling’s partisan affiliation appears to have no relevance to the national political debate. But descriptions of Sterling as a Democrat could be found early this week in conservative media outlets including the Drudge Report and National Review, which made the assertion based on Sterling’s past campaign contributions to several Democratic politicians. (He doesn’t appear to have made any contributions to Republicans.) National Review has since corrected its article.

Duffy’s spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The hearing by the Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations was held for the purposes of considering a resolution to authorize issuance of subpoenas to compel testimony of certain employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He invoked the NBA’s swift decision to ban Sterling as a contrast to the Obama administration’s alleged slow decision-making.

Duffy released a video of his remarks referencing the NBA and Sterling, which were first noted on Twitter by SNL Financial reporter Zach Fox.

Latest DC

Notable Replies

  1. No one on the left that I’m aware of ever pushed to identify Sterling as a Republican until the right started pushing the false story that he was a Democrat. After all, his party affiliation is completely irrelevant. So why are they doing it? Because they know whenever someone is identified as a racist or misogynist (or both in this case) they immediately think “Republican.” So they push a false story that he’s a Democrat, which just leads to everyone pointing out he’s actually a Republican, and they have another racist misogynist problem on their hands that they never would have had if hadn’t lied to us.

  2. Sounds like Deputy Dumbass there didn’t get the afternoon memo from the bossman that Sterling’s not a democrat any more, but an unfairly-maligned conservative hero who was set up by his conniving mistress.

  3. “Duffy’s spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.”

    Stay on him.

  4. He’s on Twitter.
    @RepSeanDuffy

    I just tweeted, asking him why he lied.

  5. Avatar for fess fess says:

    Rather than a lie, I’ll bet it’s more of question of where he gets his “facts”: Drudge and/or Nat’l Review. In either case, dumb as a stump.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

19 more replies

Participants

Avatar for system1 Avatar for doremus_jessup Avatar for fess Avatar for jmundstuk Avatar for littlegirlblue Avatar for leesid Avatar for shmoople Avatar for mikem42 Avatar for lew Avatar for nick1936 Avatar for truegrits Avatar for trumpdog Avatar for randyabraham Avatar for populuxecowboy Avatar for df2691 Avatar for bonvivant Avatar for arc_of_the_universe Avatar for DelrayDame Avatar for canadian Avatar for amandacorliss Avatar for jimgroom Avatar for bayroad22 Avatar for Skrain

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: