(Bridgewater, NJ) — For weeks, Tom Kean Jr. and his allies in the National Republican Congressional Committee have knowingly spread a discredited attack that deliberately plays to paranoid fears promoted by QAnon, an anti-Semitic, conspiracy mongering movement that has been labeled by the FBI as a potential terrorist threat.
During their first debate Congressman Malinowski warned Kean was “fearmongering…to a very dark current in our politics.” Since then, the attack promoted by Kean and his allies has been met with overwhelming condemnation by objective fact checkers, faith leaders, and even some members of his own party. Yet they have continued to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every week running the same attack on television, and on social media. Even as the Kean/NRCC lies have been directly amplified by QAnon, resulting in threats on Congressman Malinowski’s life, they have doubled down. Yesterday, responding to the threats, the NRCC said that Malinowski “must live with the consequences of his actions.”
It’s not a mistake, it’s a strategy. Kean has nothing to run on. His record in Trenton on issues like health care, gun violence, and a woman’s right to choose is out of step with most voters in the district. He’s put forward no platform or plans on these or any other substantive policy issues. All he seems to have left is to distract voters with gutter politics, appealing to and emboldening the darkest fringes of our society.
“Kean may think this is a game, that you can say anything in a political campaign no matter how depraved or dishonest, as long as you think it may somehow help you win. But he is playing with fire. It reveals nothing about Congressman Malinowski and everything about Kean’s character and his fitness for office,” said Malinowski Campaign Manager Daniel Fleiss.
“Tom Kean Jr. endorsed Trump as he empowered white supremacists and gave a platform to violent conspiracy theorists across the country. Now, Kean has tapped into those same dark forces and focused their hate and violence squarely on our district. He must own the consequences.”