Broward GOP leader ducks flap over speaker who mocked students

The head of Broward County’s Republican Party is sidestepping a controversy involving ultra-conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, who is scheduled to speak at a major party event after mocking survivors of the Parkland school massacre.

State Rep. George Moraitis, chairman of the Broward Republican Party and the only federal or state Republican lawmaker who lives in Broward County, declined to offer an opinion on whether the state party should be giving D’Souza a platform.

“I don’t want to speak to that,” Moraitis said. “I really don’t want to secondguess what the party chairman at the state level is doing at this point.” The state Republican Party chairman, Blaise Ingoglia, is a colleague of Moraitis’ in the state House of Representatives.

D’Souza had a lot to say about students who survived the Feb. 14 massacre in which 17 people were killed and 17 injured.

On Twitter, he distributed a photo showing students in the gallery of the Florida House of Represome sentatives crying after lawmakers declined to consider an assault-weapons ban. It was just six days after the school massacre.

D’Souza offered this commentary about the picture: “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs.”

Also on Twitter, he analyzed the House vote this way: “Adults 1, kids 0.”

About six hours later, he tweeted again: “Genuine grief I can empathize with. But grief organized for the cameras — politically orchestrated grief — strikes me as phony & inauthentic.”

The next day he apologized: “While it aimed at media manipulation, my tweet was insensitive to students who lost friends in a terrible tragedy. I’m truly sorry.”

D’Souza, whose activities include making documentaries and writing books, has long been a controversial figure. His most recent book, “The Big Lie,” claims that the American left has Nazi roots.

“He’s certainly a national figure. He’s very prominent. I think that’s probably why he was invited,” Moraitis said. “There’s a lot of things I don’t agree with that he’s said. There are things that he’s brought out in the past in some of his documentaries that are good.”

Florida Democrats have lambasted the Republicans’ decision to feature D’Souza.

“The Republican Party is going to have to decide whether it’s acceptable for them to have as a featured speaker someone who has treated not just the students and families with disrespect, but the entire community, and whether that really is the face of their party,” said U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-West Boca, whose district includes the school.

D’Souza pled guilty in 2014 to violating the federal campaign election law by making illegal contributions to a United States Senate campaign in the names of others.

After the negative reactions, Ingoglia announced an additional speaker to the lineup, Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, whose organization was critical of D’Souza’s Parkland comments.