On Monday, Donald Trump held a rally in Park City, just outside Wichita, to help Kansas Republicans two weeks before Election Day. Before Trump took the stage, Tracey Mann, who represents Kansas's 1st District, warmed up the crowd.
He told them the Democratic Socialists of America "has completely taken over the Democrat Party."
Then he told them what to do with that. "We need to tie every Democrat up and down the ballot to this insanity," Mann said, according to the Kansas Reflector.
What the DSA actually is in Kansas
The Kansas Reflector checked. The Democratic Socialists of America is a group of about 100,000 members nationwide. This year it has endorsed fewer than 50 candidates in the whole country, for city, county, state and federal offices combined.
In Kansas:
- No one running for statewide office has the DSA's endorsement.
- No one running for Congress has it.
- One candidate in the entire state has it: a candidate for the state House in southeast Kansas.
That's who Mann wants Republicans to "tie every Democrat up and down the ballot" to.
He said the quiet part
Mann didn't present it as a description of any Kansas Democrat. He presented it as a strategy: "tie every Democrat" to the DSA. And according to the Reflector's count, there isn't a single DSA-endorsed Democrat running for statewide or federal office in Kansas to tie anyone to.
Mann wasn't the only one on stage stretching the truth, according to the Reflector. Senator Roger Marshall said his Democratic opponent, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, was "the reason the Methodist church split." Hamilton's church stayed in the United Methodist Church. More than 7,000 churches left the denomination between 2019 and 2024 because they opposed same-sex marriage and gay clergy. Trump himself told the crowd that protesters interrupting him were paid. Several of the 11 people escorted out told the Wichita Eagle they weren't.
Ashley Moody tried the same thing in Florida. In her primary victory speech, she read four positions off the DSA's platform and pinned them on her opponent. PolitiFact found her opponent had publicly rejected two of them and never voiced the other two.
A record of this
This isn't new for Mann. Back when Barack Obama was president, Mann demanded to see Obama's "papers," and two Kansas newspapers pulled their endorsements of him over it.
What we know
At a Trump rally on Monday, Tracey Mann said the Democratic Socialists of America had "completely taken over the Democrat Party," and told Republicans to "tie every Democrat up and down the ballot to this insanity." In Kansas this year, the DSA has endorsed exactly one candidate, for the state House, and no one running for statewide or federal office.
