April 09, 2024 11:00 AM UTC

Trump Rides To Dave Williams' Rescue As Assembly Outrage Goes National

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• by: Colorado Pols

The removal Saturday of Colorado Sun veteran political number-cruncher Sandra Fish from the Colorado Republican Party’s state assembly in Pueblo has escalated into a major public-relations disaster for Colorado Republican Party chairman and CO-05 congressional candidate Dave “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams, who has found himself under surprisingly intense attack from fellow Colorado Republicans as the story spread from local to national press. The Washington Post reports this morning:

“We make no apologies for kicking out a fake journalist,” Williams said in a text message Monday, echoing Trump’s oft-used epithet of “fake news.” Williams added that the Colorado Sun, a nonprofit news outlet founded in 2018, “is just an extension of the Democrat Party’s PR efforts.”

Williams declined to say what has been unfair about Fish’s reporting. [Pols emphasis]

Colorado Sun editor Larry Ryckman said it’s “a sad day when politicians get to decide who can and cannot report for the American people,” according to the paper. He defended Fish’s reporting, calling her an “experienced, accomplished journalist,” the Sun reported.

Fish, 66, has been a reporter since 1982; she has covered Colorado’s Democratic and Republican parties for the past two decades. Some of her recent reporting details how the Colorado GOP, under Williams’s leadership, paid for mailers that criticized one of Williams’s congressional primary opponents and a newspaper in Colorado Springs. Last year, Fish reported on the state GOP’s fundraising woes.

From AP’s Jesse Bedayn’s wire story distributed nationally:

The controversy follows the contours of attacks on the press nationally, partly brought on by former President Donald Trump with the popularization of the term “fake news.” The ejection also appears to have influenced an endorsement Monday in the Republican primary race.

The state Republican Party announced on the social media platform X that it was endorsing U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert over one of her primary opponents, Deborah Flora, in the state’s 4th Congressional District race, partly because “Deb Flora lied about participating in the CD4 Assembly process, & now she’s boot licking fake journalists who only help Democrats.”

The post was a direct reply to Flora’s post on X defending Fish, in which Flora said the expulsion was “wrong and a violation of the First Amendment.”

As the criticism rained down on the Colorado GOP from a variety of local Republican officials and candidates yesterday, the state party’s Twitter account combatively took on all of Williams’ critics with the same trademark red-on-red bile that has typified Williams’ relationship with his intraparty critics from the beginning. We took note yesterday of the party’s seeming endorsement by fiat of Lauren Boebert in the CO-04 Republican primary over Deb Flora after Flora had the temerity to complain about Fish’s ouster, and we weren’t the only ones surprised to learn that the party under Williams’ control had passed a resolution allowing them to do it:

There’s debate now about whether this resolution truly overrides the party’s longstanding prohibition on candidate endorsements for the primary election, but after a vote by the party’s central committee resulted in the endorsement of Donald Trump six weeks before Super Tuesday, we’d say that horse has left the proverbial barn. For all of the weeping and wailing over Dave Williams’ self-serving control of the Colorado Republican Party and misuse of party resources for his personal career benefit, the central committee appears to be locked down with Williams loyalists and unwilling to take any action to stop him.

And last night, the chance of intra-GOP accountability for Dave Williams diminished even further:

It’s clear from this intervention that the criticism of Williams from within the party, especially following this weekend’s incident but growing well before, has become intense enough that Williams had to call in the ultimate in Republican air cover. Trump is not just putting his support behind Williams in defense of booting Sandra Fish from the state assembly, but everything else Williams has done as chairman to grease the skids for Trump and (most importantly) himself. Williams’ attacks on his personal political opponents are all carried out ostensibly in support of Trump, a claim Williams has stuck to even as it became precariously thin after the departure of Nikki Haley from the presidential race. But Trump has not just tolerated Williams’ appropriation of the MAGA brand, he’s now fully embraced Williams as his MAGA progeny in Colorado.

In short, Dave “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams’ critics in the Colorado GOP just lost bigly. Again. The red-on-red outrage is rendered impotent. It will fade.

Dave Williams’ misdeeds have been established as the Colorado Republican Party’s new normal.