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‘A dangerous normalization of lunacy’: Michael Flynn and a Proud Boys leader are now poll watchers in Florida
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‘A dangerous normalization of lunacy’: Michael Flynn and a Proud Boys leader are now poll watchers in Florida
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On Thursday, September 8, the Sarasota County Republican Party chose some new poll watchers — and the far-right choices include conspiracy theorist and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and James Hoel, a local leader of the Proud Boys. Journalist Michael Daly decries these choices in an op-ed published by the Daily Beast on September 12, slamming them as “a decidedly dangerous normalization of lunacy.”
“Flynn is nationally known as a retired general who has championed the Big Lie about the 2020 election, at one point urging military action to overturn it,” Daly explains. “He is also known for having been convicted of lying to the FBI while he was briefly President Trump’s national security advisor and for having subsequently received a presidential pardon. He has ascribed to various ‘Deep State’ conspiracy theories…. As if that were not scary enough, they also elected James Hoel, a local leader of the Proud Boys.”
Daly continues, “Hoel and fellow Proud Boy Nicholas Radovich were active in the August 23 Sarasota County School Board election that saw a longstanding 3-2 liberal majority become a 4-1 conspiracy minority. Radovich showed up at the victory party in a Proud Boys hat and t-shirt and flashed a White power sign during a group picture. The one reelected incumbent conservative, Bridget Ziegler, subsequently denounced the Proud Boys as a ‘menace.’”
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Daly notes that “several people at the meeting” on September 8 “posed for photos with Flynn that were subsequently posted on the Facebook page for Sarasota Watchdogs, which is associated with Hoel and the Proud Boys.”
