This is starting out to be a tough week for presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. In an effort to promote his “plan” for Black America, he released a fake list of 400 black people who apparently support his “plan”. The problem is that about half of the people on the list aren’t black:

Ryan Grim of The Intercept first reported that a substantial percentage of the 422 names on the list belonged to white people. 

The Buttigieg campaign told The Intercept that the coalition was supposed to be multi-racial, despite one campaign email describing it as consisting of ‘over 400 Black South Carolinians.’

What’s even worse is that he promoted his plan for Black America with a stock image of people in Kenya!

Above a quote from Frederick Douglass is a stock photo of a Kenyan woman and child:

The Intercept detailed how Buttigieg’s campaign rolled out the ‘Frederick Douglass Plan for Black America’ boast that it had the support of ‘more than 400 South Carolinians.’ Several key Democrats from South Carolina had already endorsed another candidate or hadn’t approved having their name on the list:

Prominent black leader, Rep. Ivory Thigpen, already endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders but was on the list.

Johnnie Cordero, the chair of the South Carolina Black Caucus, told The Intercept he ‘never endorsed’ the plan.

This is an unforced error just as Buttigieg was surging in Iowa:

Buttigieg is leading but we’ll see what this mistake does to his numbers…