PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ELIZABETH BROCKWAY/THE DAILY BEAST

The Daily Beast just broke an exclusive story confirming that suspected propagandists used Facebook to organize at least a dozen pro-Trump rallies in Florida during the presidential election.

The Aug. 20, 2016, events were collectively called “Florida Goes Trump!” and they were billed as a “patriotic state-wide flash mob,” unfolding simultaneously in 17 different cities and towns in the battleground state. It’s difficult to determine how many of those locations actually witnessed any turnout, in part because Facebook’s recent deletion of hundreds of Russian accounts hid much of the evidence. But videos and photos from two of the locations—Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs—were reposted to a Facebook page run by the local Trump campaign chair, where they remain to this day.

“On August 20, we want to gather patriots on the streets of Floridian towns and cities and march to unite America and support Donald Trump!” read the Facebook event page for the demonstrations. “Our flash mob will occur in several places at the same time; more details about locations will be added later. Go Donald!”

The Being Patriotic FB group had 200,000 followers exposed to multiple pro-Trump, anti-Hillary events that included a 2016 July “Down With Hillary!” protest outside Clinton’s Brooklyn campaign headquarters, a September 11 pro-Trump demonstration in Manhattan, simultaneous October 2016 “Miners for Trump” demonstrations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The Russians even organized a pro-Trump rally outside Trump Tower in November, when Trump was the president elect.

Vice President Joe Biden called the upcoming NJ governor's race “the single most important” election of the next three years.

Biden-backed Phil Murphy won the Democratic primary on Tuesday, delivering a Hillary Clinton populist message grounded in his career as a Goldman Sachs banker. Bernie Sanders did not endorse Murphy, although his son did campaign for the candidate.

As Sanders progressives rip into NJ Sen. Corey Booker's ethical credentials in any future presidential race -- having accepted money from big pharma companies in his state -- the Murphy win shows that at a state level, the Sanders wing of the Democratic party is not running the show in New Jersey.

The Murphy primary win -- and expected future win as NJ governor -- also demonstrates that Democrats can run on a platform that shares 95% of Sanders' priorities -- as the 2016 Presidential campaign platform did -- without throwing every person with ties to wealth and big business out of the party as the Sanders camp is demanding.

The Democratic party supports campaign finance reform, and the purge of big money from American politics. In a discussion yesterday, I arbitrarily estimated that for Dems to run nationwide in local, state and federal elections with campaigns that spend HALF the money of Republicans would cost every Dem voter $1000 in campaign contributions to a wide range of candidates. For all we know the amount is $5000. I wish one of the Dem think tanks would actually run the numbers, so that when progressives argue to throw every $ from wealthy donors out of the election process, that they are in a position to also advise all of us about what we will now need to contribute as civic-minded citizens. Granted, Democratic control would then allow us to pass new laws on campaign finance. But the Sanders camp needs to explain what it will cost each of us to get to this point. It's NOT $27 a person.

As Mother Jones writes: "In many ways Murphy’s platform, in a state with close ties to America’s capital of high finance, represents another sign of the Sanders wing’s policy momentum. (Quick: name a prospective 2020 candidate who doesn’t support a $15 minimum wage or single-payer health care.) But for a movement rooted in animosity toward the donor class, Murphy’s checkbook ascendancy highlights the gap between where the party is and where the Left still wants it to be. A populist ex-banker, after all, is still an ex-banker." ~ Anne