Outrage grew on X (formerly Twitter) after Stacey Abrams went on MSNBC to discuss the $2 billion grant her non-profit, which before then had only gotten $100, had received from the Biden Administration, ostensibly for the purpose of paying to put more energy-efficient appliances in homes. Commenters sounded off, describing the whole scheme as a corrupt kickback plot.
The explosion began when the Trump Administration discovered that the EPA, as part of a scheme to fund leftist NGOs without Trump’s knowledge, had made over $20 billion in grants, including to Stacey Abrams and her non-profit. The EPA Administration, Lee Zeldin, quickly called that out and canceled it. That, in turn, led to Abramas panicking over the cancellation on the mainstream media, including with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.
Hayes, during the interview, pointed out that Trump has sounded off on the matter and asked Abrams, “Okay, so what? What is this organization? What is your relationship to it? And what does it do?” The woke Georgia Democrat responded, “In 2023 and 2024, I led a program called [re]vitalizing DeSoto.”
She continued, commenting on giving people appliances for the sake of energy efficiency, “We worked in a tiny town in south Georgia to demonstrate that by replacing energy-inefficient appliances with efficient appliances, you can lower your costs.” She then said, without explaining why it is the job of government to spend billions lowering random people’s energy bills, “And in fact, we accomplished that for 75% of the community, they got appliances that are lowering their bills. Right now, we have one woman who saw her electric bill cut in half from $180 to $98 that’s what we delivered.”
She then added, “And based on that program, a coalition of organizations, famous organizations, came together and said to the EPA,’ if we can do this here we can do this for millions more Americans, let us invest the money of America in lowering the cost for Americans’ and the EPA said ‘okay great, go for it.'”
People online weren’t buying it, and found the whole thing ridiculous. Steve Milloy, for example, wrote, “The EPA-Stacey Abrams grift revealed: @staceyabrams just told MSBNC’s @chrislhayes that the Biden EPA gave her $2 billion to buy people new home appliances to reduce electric bills. So Democrats upgraded vote buying from Obama phones to Biden refrigerators.”
Similarly, replying to a post from the Amuse account that said, “DOGE: Stacey Abrams told MSBNC’s Chris Hayes that the Biden EPA gave her $2 billion to buy people new home appliances to reduce electric bills,” Tactical Wisdom hammered the program as obvious corruption, writing, “We call that a ‘kickback scheme’ in my line of work.”
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A commenter on that post argued that the way she described what was happening indicates that corruption was afoot, saying, “Notice that she talks about all the groups involved, that’s how it works $2 billion gets shaved to $1.8 billion by the feds for overhead, gets shaved to $1.6 billion by Abrams for the same purpose, to distribute among several groups, becomes $1 billion as they distribute among their friends, becomes $500 million used for the stated purpose.”
Watch the clip here:
Other commenters, chiming in on the post from Amuse, said things like, “Let me guess….for her friends, family, and cronies?” and “$2 billion for appliances while Americans can’t afford groceries? Classic D.C. scam, buy votes, waste tax dollars, and call it help.” Another noted the seeming cost per home, writing, “Desoto Ga. 114 homes, 1.9 Billion dollars / 114=16.7 Million dollars a home doesn’t add up. Must have been 5-10 million for cost of each appliance. If the government just paid electric bills it wouldn’t be more than 114×250 avg. = $28,500 each home.”