Fact-Checking the Mt. Olive Press Conference denouncing Nina Turner
Here is a brief rundown and fact-checking of the event at Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church on July 20 ludicrously denouncing Nina Turner’s campaign for mudslinging.
This event was billed as “a press conference to take action and denounce the misrepresentation, misinformation and outright lies that the Nina Turner’s campaign is spreading against Shontel Brown.” Having written critically of Shontel Brown’s campaign for congress before, and not being able to find any “lies” from the Turner campaign, I decided to tune in.
Instead of initially focusing on supposed lies, the theme set by Marvin McMickle was to denounce negative campaigning in general, claiming, “Shontel Brown has not run one negative ad through her campaign. She has never said, ‘I am Shontel Brown and I approve this message.’” A reporter asked how they explain the May 6 ad, which McMickle insisted was from an outside group. The reporter informed him it was not: “I have it on my phone. I can show it to you.”
That leads to the first fact check: It’s not true that the Brown campaign has never gone negative. In fact, the Shontel Brown campaign could not go 30 seconds without going negative. In their very first ad, a 30-second spot, it took the Brown campaign only 20 seconds to shift to attacking Nina Turner. I’ve personally received at least a dozen negative mailers from the campaign and seen their negative ads online.
In the next breath, McMickle claimed, “Somebody else ran an ad. That’s on them.” He is probably referring to the ad run by the Super PAC DMFI (Democratic Majority for Israel), which featured an image that depicts a fake Nina Turner ballot with “No” checked off next to “raising the minimum wage” and another “No” next to “universal health care.” (Needless to say, the ad’s claim itself is false: Turner supports those policies prominently, and even the Shontel Brown supporters on stage seem to acknowledge this.)
That leads to the second fact check: It’s true that somebody else (DMFI) ran the most deceitful ad for Shontel Brown, but it’s not true that “that’s on them,” implying the Brown campaign’s hands are clean. The truth is that the Brown campaign solicited ads explicitly from DMFI and two other anti-Palestinian Super PACs, and suggested talking points that included false information about Nina Turner. Although the smear used by DMFI was not precisely one suggested by the Brown campaign, it is still the case that the Brown campaign is responsible for soliciting ads from an unaccountable firm with a history of attack ads so egregious that they were denounced by a candidate they were trying to support. Clearly, the Brown campaign knew what it was doing in soliciting these ads, and unlike previous campaigns, the Brown campaign has made no official denunciation of the misleading ads. (Later in the event McMickle said, “I would urge both campaigns to be prepared to critique and rebuke any negative ads. It’s got to stop somewhere. Now’s as good a time as any. If you don’t have a record to run on, then run away.” Don’t hold your breath waiting on Brown’s campaign taking him up on that.)
Now we get to the final and central false claim made in the press conference. Again, it was Marvin McMickle that made the declaration, which is that Nina Turner’s attack ad said the following about Shontel Brown: “You voted yourself a $7000 raise or you gave a contract to your boyfriend as if you could do that by yourself. That’s not a fact, that’s a slur.” At another point he said, “You would think that Shontel Brown voted a raise for herself, by herself. That’s what the ad said. She gave herself a $7000 raise. Like she could singularly do that. She gave contracts to this one, she gave contracts to that one.”
Final fact check: This is an easy one. The Nina Turner ad did not say Shontel Brown did those things “singularly” or “by herself.” It says she voted for them, which is true. Both in audio form and in big bold letters on the screen, it says the words “voted.” Not “gave” or anything else like that. “Voted.” Obviously, voting implies there are other voters, not a “singular” handout. Watch it for yourself.
It’s worth noting that this was the first negative ad run by the Turner campaign, months after the first negative ad from the Brown campaign. I have nothing against mudslinging or political attack ads (if they are true), but it was incredible to watch the sanctimony from Brown supporters who thought their candidate had stayed above the fray because they aren’t even following Brown’s campaign close enough to know that their candidate had been slinging mud for months already.
