A Republican activist who has been a reliable donor to Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — despite a racist tweet that put him on the outs with DeSantis’ predecessor, Rick Scott — shot a woman and then himself in the parking lot of a Palm Beach County restaurant, according to sheriff’s deputies.

The activist, 72-year-old Steve Alembik, died. The woman, wounded in the back and arm, survived when she ran into the restaurant bleeding and was rushed to the hospital.

The shooting happened at a Burgerfi outlet in Delray Beach a week ago Monday, although Alembik’s identity wasn’t revealed until last Friday in the Boca Raton News. The wounded victim was believed to be his wife.

Over the past 20 years, Alembik, gave more than $200,000 in political contributions, mainly to Republicans, including thousands of dollars to both DeSantis and Donald Trump. The founder of a Boca Raton digital marketing company, the Democrat-turned-Republican earned notoriety in 2018 by referring to former President Barack Obama as a “f******* Muslim n*****” in a post on the social media platform X, then known as Twitter.

  • Parabola@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    “Activist”. What idiot wrote this? If they were brown it would say terrorist.

    This redneck fuck was a terrorist. Good riddance.

    • Nougat@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      Because everyone is afraid of what the lunatic fringe will do is already doing. Nobody wants to appear responsible for escalating the violence.

      This demands repeating:

      Politicians, media, prosecutors, judges – There is already violence. There will be more violence. Not if, when. The sooner you stop thinking we can go back the way we came, the quicker we’ll be done with all this. The only way out is through.

    • PoliticalAgitator
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      8 months ago

      He also would have been described as a “responsible gun owner” 24 hours ago since the gun was likely legally purchased and he hadn’t lost control of his emotions and killed anyone with it yet.

      • lennybird@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        It’s rare to see someone rightfully point out the fact that all bad guys with a gun were once good guys until they suddenly… You know… Weren’t.

        • PoliticalAgitator
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          8 months ago

          And then magically, they don’t count, despite buying the same guns, from the same stores, with the same checks then carrying it around under the same laws and storing it with the same optional safety.

          It’s a perfect setup. Responsible gun owners can never commit crimes. Maybe it’s time we all started calling the murderers committing crimes with legal guns “former responsible gun owner so and so”.

    • DigitalTraveler42
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      8 months ago

      Technically he is brown, I really don’t know where the line is anymore for who’s a terrorist and who’s not according to the Peter Griffin skin shade scale, but it’s seemed to devolve into “if he’s a far right person then he must not be a terrorist” because you can’t say it’s conservatives because Jihadists are conservatives, then you have Hindu nationalists, the line really only seems to be “Donald Trump fan” not a terrorist, all others, terrorist.

      • treefrog
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        8 months ago

        He looks pretty white to me.

        https://thethaiger.com/world/news/560093/

        Also, disgusting how the right keeps talking about what an inspiring and great guy he was. Known for racist tweets towards Obama. Shoots wife several times in the back, in a parking lot. Oh but…

        “The tragedy surrounding Steve’s suicide has shocked everyone, and as details come out, people will probably be judgmental,” far-right activist Laura Loomer wrote in a post. “I just know that Steve was a kind man who had personal struggles like everyone else.”

        It was an attempted murder in a fucking parking lot. Potentially in front of kids. Potentially a bystander gets hit.

        Then he offs himself in public.

        What an asshole.

        • DigitalTraveler42
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          8 months ago

          According to this site:

          https://forebears.io/surnames/alembik

          The biggest concentration of folks with the surname Alembik are in Israel, where the brown people aren’t just Muslim but also Jewish, Jews are already usually not treated as white in general, although there are those of us like myself who are pale, blond, and blue eyed, but my Jewish ancestry is Russian in origin, really makes it easier to not be hassled for my mother and grandmother’s religion, although it would be much nicer if Nazis and others didn’t just blindly hate an ethnic/religious group.

          Anyways, I’ve seen pics of this guy looking on the brown side and pics of this guy where he looks white, either way, doesn’t matter because he’s all dickhead and the world is a better place without him.

          • treefrog
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            8 months ago

            I don’t know. I think shooting your wife and then offing yourself where children might witness it is more of an asshole move than a dickhead move.

            Anyway, he’s white enough that the press wouldn’t call him a terrorist, hoodlum, etc. I think that was the parent comment’s point and I was half expecting a black dude or mixed anyway when I went to find a photo.

            But yeah, not every Jewish person can pass as white I know. And I agree the world is better off without his energy in it.

  • Alien Nathan Edward
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    8 months ago

    It feels very Trump to try to commit a murder-suicide and end up being the only one who dies.

  • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    These murder-suicide assholes would do the world a favour if they changed the victim order of their killing spree.

  • lagomorphlecture
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    8 months ago

    Why am I not surprised that someone who would donate that much money to Donald Trump is apparently completely unhinged?

  • HuddaBudda@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    Alembik, who describes DeSantis as one of his “close friends” in a post on LinkedIn, first attracted attention in the wake of Trump’s comments following a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that left a counter-protester dead. After Trump insisted their were “many fine people” on both sides of the issue, mainstream charities pulled events from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

    Alembik, however, decided to move a charity gala for his newly formed pro-Israel nonprofit group, Truth About Israel, to Mar-a-Lago to help fill the void.

    His non-profit, looks like a website dedicated to claiming that Israel is not an Apartheid state. Beware, it looks like the site has been neglected for some time.

    That being said, it also looks like he didn’t really do anything with the charity outside of a quick youtube channel. Like nothing. I can’t find public records on what he used the money on, or donations, or Even pictures of projects he did.

    It is a charity in name only.

      • HuddaBudda@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        Well if points drew a line, then the dots are arranging themselves in a way where people who thought they were donating to Jewish culture preservation actually partially funded Trump’s legal depute with Stormy Daniels at the end of the money trail.

        Lord, I do hope I am wrong.

  • hiddengoat@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    We can only hope that after shooting someone for unknown (and likely very flimsy) reasons, this sack of gargled elephant dung had a serious moment of reflection and realized what an absolute worthless fuck he was and THAT is why he shot himself.

    Because I could totally see it just being an incompetent prick accidentally shooting himself while trying to holster his weapon.

  • YeetPics@mander.xyz
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    8 months ago

    Inb4 likeminded knuckle-draggers say it was antifa.

    This shitstain took too long to remove himself. Save the world, encourage more maga Republicans to follow suit.

  • DarkGamer@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    I’ve been googling this guy a little, seems like a huge piece of shit:

    You might think Steven Alembik would delete some of the more incendiary tweets in his feed after the Florida Republican donor caused a firestorm by using the ‘N-word’ about President Obama.
    You don’t know Steven Alembik.
    The in-your-face fan of President Trump and avowed enemy of political correctness made his Twitter feed private. But he didn’t delete at least five offensive tweets made since August that, among other things, refer to Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a “senile fool” who “can’t die soon enough.” He also denounces fired White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman as a “rat bitch” and says that Great Society programs “only” served to “enslave” African Americans.
    https://archive.ph/bw1Dv

    He started a company for and was involved in voter modeling, evidently trying to play “moneyball” for the Republicans.

    “In this life It is not about what you get
    But rather about what you give.”
    -Steven M. Alembik Co-founder. SMA Communications, LLC

    In his case, that includes money and support to antidemocratic fascists, overt promotion of racism, and murder-suicide. I’m glad to no longer share a planet with this jerk.