CNN’s Daniel Dale Does Blistering Fact Check On ‘Anti-Semitic Trope’ Being Used In Attacks On Trump DA Alvin Bragg

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale delivered a blistering fact-check on the attacks that many call anti-Semitic, but others defend, regarding George Soros and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Former President Donald Trump and his supporters have been attacking Bragg — the prosecutor whose grand jury investigating the circumstances around hush money payments, which resulted Thursday afternoon a several-dozen-count indictment of Trump — on the basis that Soros has donated money to a PAC that supported Bragg.

On Monday night’s edition of CNN’s OutFront, anchor Erin Burnett hosted Dale to fact-check those attacks. Dale conceded Soros did “play an indirect role” in Bragg’s success, but slammed the “anti-Semitic” trope behind them as not “responsible” and the exaggerated claims as not “factual”

BURNETT: Daniel Dale is OUTFRONT now to fact check those claims that you just heard from Republicans.

And, Daniel, obviously, George Soros is a longtime supporter of Democratic campaigns. That has been true in case after case. But what can you tell us specifically about the relationship between George Soros and Alvin Bragg?

DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER: So there is no sign of a personal relationship between Soros and Bragg. Soros spokesman told me, Soros has never once communicated with bragging anyway, not in person, not on the phone, not even on Zoom and Soros did not make any donations to Bragg’s 2021 election campaign.

Soros did, however, Erin, play an indirect role in that Bragg campaign by making donations to a PAC, political action committee, that supported Bragg. Now, here are the specifics. Soros is again a longtime supporter of criminal justice reform and D.A. candidates promoting that reform, and his spokesman told me that Soros and an affiliated PAC gave $4 million between 2016 and 2022, including one million in May 2021, not specifically earmarked in support of Bragg, but a million in May 2021 to a racial justice PAC called Color of Change, which, like Soros also backs reform minded D.A. candidates around the country.

Now, Color of Change tells me it ended up spending just over $500,000, so not over a million, but just over $500,000 in support of that Bragg campaign.

Now, Erin, Bragg was outspent by millions by his main opponent in the Democratic primary that he won and Color of Change president Rashad Robinson told me it’s a major overstatement, he said. A big reach to suggest that Color of Change’s 500K. Spending was like the one thing that won the election for Bragg, who is a Harvard law grad, a former state chief deputy attorney general, former federal prosecutor.

Robinson told me that his group was important in the race, but merely one of many factors, and Robinson said, quote: Up until last week, we couldn’t get people to write about our PAC.

Now, all of a sudden, we single handedly elected the Manhattan D.A. When he was elected, I didn’t get that credit.

Now, Robinson also called the Soros related attacks antisemitic and, he added, also anti-Black since, he said they suggest that his experienced Black lead PAC wasn’t making its own decisions on who to support and how — Erin.

BURNETT: So, Daniel, you know, you just mentioned those accusations of antisemitism. And to that point, I do want to show some of how Republicans have depicted Soros in the past.

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BURNETT: So, Soros, obviously very controversial among Republicans and it often does, Daniel, boiled down to a very thinly veiled attack on his religion.

DALE: Yeah, so there is a centuries old antisemitic trope Erin about like sinister Jewish puppet master somehow orchestrating us and international events with their cash and attacks on Soros are often either explicitly antisemitic attacks or dog whistle attacks, invoking that trope.

Oren Segal, an executive of the Anti-Defamation League, which works to combat antisemitism told me today that the Trump campaign’s own fundraising emails about Bragg have, quote, increasingly promoted potentially problematic language often used as antisemitic dog whistles, including calling Soros, a, quote, puppeteer or puppet master, and on from there.

Now, Erin, it is certainly possible to talk factually and responsibly about George Soros’s role in races and us politics. Generally he’s a major political donor political player in this country, but this kind of puppet master language just is not that responsible, factual language.

Watch above via CNN’s OutFront.