Tag: charles g koch summer fellows program

WATCH: Rachel Maddow Still Won’t Back Down From The Koch Brothers

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has made it her mission to expose the secretive ways that billionaires Charles and David Koch use their money and power to exact unprecedented influence in American elections. As a result, she gets lots of papers from lawyers representing the Kochs and Koch Industries.

That has not stopped her from reporting on the Kochs and their massive political network, which is designed to give them plausible deniability when they get bad press for an issue like the huge waste of taxpayer money that went into Florida’s plan to drug-test welfare recipients.

The Kochs and the right-wing media have called on Maddow to disavow her reporting on that debacle, saying they had no connection to the group that pushed the law to the Foundation for Government Accountability. Instead of doing that, she added to her reporting, showing how The Institute for Humane Studies offers the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellows Program, which sends fellows to the State Policy Network — including the Foundation for Government Accountability.

“Again, the Kochs say they have nothing to do with drug testing for welfare benefits or with the Florida law, but the group that is promoting that Florida policy around the country is affiliated with the Koch brothers and benefits from being part of their network of conservative political groups,” Maddow said. “And that matters. And reporting it despite their threats matters.”

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Screenshot via The Rachel Maddow Show