Trump/ Cleta, two peas in pod of self-interest -She was a firebrand Democrat. Now, Cleta Mitchell is a rising star of Republican election denialism
"Democrats grow concerned Republicans are planting seeds with legal suits to overturn a Trump defeat"
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Former colleagues and classmates described a gifted, ambitious, but self-interested attorney willing to attach herself to whatever cause might propel her career. The possible explanations they can find for the transition stem from her multiple marriages, the frustrations of a lost election and her husband’s white collar conviction.
In 2021, she told an Oklahoma newspaper that her ideological transition was a “thoughtful process” that involved reading and studying the perils of big government.
Regardless of why that shift happened, it led to one of the most prominent figures on the right pushing the narrative that voter fraud stole the 2020 election from Trump and could do it again this year.
‘She’s always had a very acidic tongue and was very gifted at using it’
Born Cleta Deatherage in Oklahoma City in 1950, Mitchell attended the University of Oklahoma as an undergraduate and a law student, where she was well known in student politics.
“At that time she was quite liberal and very articulate,” said classmate David Walters, who would go on to serve as governor of Oklahoma from 1991 to 1995.
Joe Lunn, who beat Mitchell in a race for student president and is now a history professor at University of Michigan, described her as bright, ambitious, political and “an opportunist”. Not many women considered running for student president at the time, making her a pioneer. But Lunn remembers that while they were campaigning, he and Mitchell spoke to the Black student union “and she made a pretty serious slip”.
“She got flustered and started talking about ‘you people’ and the African American students kind of went ballistic,” he said. “I think in that context, certainly at that time she was a subconscious (if that’s possible) racist like many [white] Oklahomans at that time.”
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“Cleta is a very gifted woman,” he said. “Very intelligent. Very knowledgeable. I try not to judge people, but Cleta has always been, in my opinion, my experience, first foremost and always for whatever is best for what she perceived to be best for herself.”
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