A look at an ascendant pejorative on the right.
One of Donald Trump’s first responses to reports that he might soon face indictment by a grand jury empaneled by Manhattan District Alvin Bragg was to disparage the prosecutor as “Soros backed,” referring to left-wing philanthropist George Soros. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a likely opponent of Trump’s in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, used the same term to refer to Bragg and Hillsborough County, Fla., state attorney Andrew Warren (in addition to pointedly referring to the scandal believed to be at the heart of the possible New York indictment).
The term has been common in response to the news of a possible indictment, offered by House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and commentator Ben Shapiro, among others. So it’s worth reflecting on what earned Bragg and Warren this appellation — and why it’s become so useful for Republicans and others on the right to deploy it.
One of the useful characteristics of the term, certainly, is its vagueness. That suffix “-backed” can mean all sorts of things. It can mean, for example, that Soros gave money to a group that then backed a candidate who then won — as it does in the case of Bragg.
In mid-May 2021, as Bragg was jockeying for the Democratic Party’s nomination for New York County, N.Y., district attorney, a nomination that all but guaranteed election in the general, Soros contributed $1 million to the political arm of a group called Color of Change. Over the course of the next two weeks, the group ran an independent expenditure campaign including pieces of mail, text messages and encouragements to vote by mail. Most of that effort was earmarked for Bragg in campaign filings. Color of Change had announced its plans to spend $1 million on the race shortly before Soros’s contribution, but reportedly ended up spending only half that amount.
In the abstract, that’s pretty clear: Soros gave to Color of Change, who spent on Bragg. But of course, a lot of people made contributions to his campaign; he raised more than $2 million in direct contributions. It’s also not clear how much effect spending had. Bragg won the nomination by a bit more than 3 points over Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who gave herself $8.2 million in the last few weeks of the campaign, part of nearly $13 million she spent in total — more than all of the other candidates combined. And she came in second.
The path from Soros to Bragg, which we’ll come back to, is at least visible. In the case of Warren, it’s far sketchier.
Critics often point to an interview with the Tampa Bay Times published soon after Warren won.
