Gotcha video shows donor at Deborah Ross fundraiser
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Conservative videographer James O'Keefe is back with a new video, this time of a Democratic donor making what O'Keefe called offensive comments during a fundraiser for U.S. Senate candidate Deborah Ross in New York.
O'Keefe unveiled the new gotcha video in Raleigh on Wednesday, just six days before the election. In it, an O'Keefe operative, armed with an unseen camera, catches Democratic donor Benjamin Barber comparing black voters who support Republican candidates to Jews who killed other Jews during World War Two at the event in Manhattan.
"Have you heard of the Sonderkommandos?" Barber asks the unknown person with the camera. "Jewish guards who helped murder Jews in the camps. So there were even Jews that were helping the Nazis murder Jews! So blacks who are helping the other side are seriously f---ed in the head. They're only helping the enemy who will destroy them. Maybe they think 'if I help them we'll get along okay; somehow I'll save my race by working with the murderers,'" Barber said.
O'Keefe called on the Ross campaign and Ross herself to denounce the comments and return the money; the same call has been made by Senator Richard Burr's campaign.
Within two hours of O'Keefe unveiling the video, Ross' campaign was responding to the allegations and pushing back. A campaign official said she doesn't support the comments, doesn't know Barber, and has given all the money he's given the campaign to a hurricane relief fund - all of $200.
African-American voters in Raleigh showed universal surprise at the words Barber used, but had very different responses, that often aligned with their political party.
Evangela Henry, a Republican, called it "very offensive." She said, "who would want to hurt their own people? We all want the best for each other; at least, we should."
For Sonya Jones, a Democrat out urging voters to choose Hillary Clinton for President, the video resonated. She said she thought black Republican voters were, in a sense, aiding the enemy. "It does appear that they are helping them based on some of the things I've heard in the news," she said.
And for others, like Evangela Henry's son Denzell, voting early on Wednesday, the video was just more static-noise. "There's been a lot, both Democrat and Republican, that have both put institutionalized policies in place to hurt blacks. So I personally don't trust Democrats or Republicans."
