According to The St Petersburg Times, the message said:
The attorney who [w]on the Sykes suit said alex sink did nothing wrong. Tell not to let him keep talking about her.
Sink was clearly being surreptitious and, far from declining to read the message once she saw it related to the debate, she actively participated in the subterfuge. She was content to be coached and her body language indicates she knew she was doing something wrong.
That’s bad enough. What’s really disgraceful is what she does afterwards. She supposedly fires an aide (initially unnamed but now identified as Brian May, the person who apparently signed the campaign’s agreement to the debate rules) and issues a statement saying this:
While he [the aide] told me it was out of anger with Rick Scott’s repeated distortion of facts, it was a foolish thing to do.
In the annals of non-apology apologies, this takes some beating. The candidate cheats. There is no admission of personal responsibility at all and an aide is blamed. Then she goes one step further, justifying an aide’s ‘foolish’ actions as being motivated by ‘anger’ with her opponent’s ‘repeated distortion of facts’.
Okaaaay. So the candidate’s position is that she didn’t cheat but anyway it’s all her opponent’s fault? It’s the kind of thing few parents would let a six-year-old get away with.
No wonder so many Americans are so disillusioned with their politicians.
