Environmental Activists Get GOP Presidential Candidate to Pose with Phony Koch Check

Beware of the political pranksters making points, presidential candidates – you might get caught smiling with a phony check.

That’s exactly what happened to Gov. Scott Walker, R-WI, at a campaign stop in Manchester on Aug. 3, 2015, at Theo’s Pizza, a few hours before the Voters First Forum.

At the event, environmental activists from 350 Action posed for a picture with Walker and then presented him with a check for $900,000 from the Koch Brothers, calling him “the most dangerous candidate on climate.”

Walker, according to yesterday’s Washington Post, credited David and Charles Koch at a Freedom Partners meeting, a Koch group, for “harnessing some Americans’ frustration.” More than four years ago, Walker was “punked” with a phony phone call from a person pretending to be David Koch.

In a statement this morning, Walker called President Obama’s power plant proposal “riddled with inaccuracies, questionable assumptions and deficiencies that make the development of a responsible state plan unworkable,” adding that it would cost Americans jobs and raise their energy rates.

Giselle Hart, one of the activists, stated in an email that she was frustrated that the country wasn’t making the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables fast enough and blamed Walker for taking donations from the industry. Tyler McFarland, the other activist, noted that gave him the “novelty check” because he didn’t think Walker was taking the climate change issue seriously and he “clearly prefers campaign donations from the Kochs to the safety of communities.”

A number of political reporters as well as the org caught a picture of the activists and the candidate, and it quickly circulated around social media.

Caption: Tyler McFarland, left, and Giselle Hart with Gov. Scott Walker. Credit: 350 Action