Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label hypocrisy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hypocrisy. Show all posts

Saturday, February 10, 2024

Today's Today

It just occurred to me that 'today' is an anagram of 'toady'. I wonder what brought that to mind.

Anyway, three years ago today, Lindsey Graham showed his true colors.


 Happy Anniversary, Senator! 



Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Today's Moscowitz



Saturday, December 30, 2023

Monday, December 11, 2023

Today's MAGA Dolt


Another 'Law-n-Order-Strict-Constitutionalist' Republican voter
saying she puts Trump above the law.

Friday, December 01, 2023

MAGA Mike Goes Full Hypocrite



Monday, November 06, 2023

Overheard


The wingnuts who exalted 'Purity Balls', where daughters would pledge abstinence - promising their dads to maintain their virginity until their husbands "take it from them" - are now scolding us all about "sexualizing children".

Friday, September 15, 2023

The Savior

The savior who's fucking Corey Lewandowski.


In Search Of A Beard

On the surface, it seems odd that Republicans express a need for their candidates to have a certain purity, but when it's painfully obvious they don't (eg: Trump), they just kinda make believe that he's pure, or that "he's a flawed man, but forgiven", or they insist on that purity, but not in a virginal way. ie: they want somebody who fucks, but only if that fucking is under official sanction of the church and civil law - and then, strictly heterosexual. Unless you're Lindsey Graham - or they need to take you down by implying something may be "wrong" with your sex life.

They preach a hard-n-fast moral code, but then practice situational ethics. And then they bitch about how nobody has any principles anymore, looking the other way when their own guys screw the proverbial pooch, and then they pat themselves on the back for being charitable and inclusive and forgiving.

Gosh - it's almost as if they don't want us to be able stand on any solid ground that we can really count on.

"Every time we call it a game, you call it a business. And every time we call it a business, you say it's just a game."




Tim Scott’s girlfriend

The unmarried Republican presidential candidate doesn’t like talking about his new relationship very much. But he is talking about it.


In June, as Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) began to get a little momentum in the presidential primary, a person working on behalf of one of Scott’s Republican opponents messaged me, asking to chat.

“Have you seen the video,” he asked over the phone, conspiratorially, “where he says he has a girlfriend?”

The video in question was from a May event organized by the news website Axios, where the interviewer asked the South Carolina senator about the possibility of becoming the first bachelor president since the 19th century. “I probably have more time, more energy and more latitude to do the job,” he replies. And then the senator adds — quickly, as an aside: “My girlfriend wants to see me when I come home.”

The Republican operative who called me wasn’t sure said girlfriend existed. He suggested I look into it. He followed up on our conversation with an email that included a dossier of Scott’s known personal relationships. “No fingerprints,” he said.

Scott’s romantic endeavors aren’t a scandal so much as they are a mystery. At 57, he’s never been married and rarely talks about girlfriends past or present. Late last year, as Scott was ramping up his run for president, I asked Jennifer DeCasper, his close friend and campaign manager, about the status of his dating life. “It’s nonexistent,” she said.

Now, Scott was suggesting otherwise. And the timing of that revelation seemed a bit convenient.

“He has staked so much on his personal story, character and faith,” said the operative, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity because, well, that’s how people kick dirt around in this business. “He’s running as America’s pastor, so to speak, as he courts evangelicals in Iowa, and I think a lot of folks may wonder about his lack of a family.”

It seemed like a not-terribly-original attempt to stir up gossip among conservative voters about how an unmarried Republican candidate might be weird about women, or to raise questions about his sexuality within the party’s stubbornly homophobic factions. (And let’s just get this out of the way: This is not a wink-wink story that uses “single” in place of “gay.” Despite the retrograde assumptions people still like to make about wifeless men of a certain age, there really is nothing to suggest that Scott is anything other than a confirmed bachelor in the most literal sense of the phrase.)

I wasn’t interested in laundering innuendos for this Republican operative. At the same time, the whole exchange left me intrigued about how voter interest (or lack thereof) in Scott’s love life (or lack thereof) might illuminate the politics of marriage, family and masculinity in today’s GOP. Donald Trump scrambled the values of the “family values” party to such a degree that the base kept loving him despite the “locker-room talk” about grabbing women and the allegation — which Trump denies — that he had cheated on his third wife with a porn star.

And yet, for all the conventional wisdom that went out the door when Trump walked in, a long-held belief persists: that the absence of a wife and kids would make voters uneasy, especially the kind who vote in Republican primaries. Was that still true?

There is a legitimate public interest in the partner of any would-be president. A first lady in waiting is typically a close confidante whose values reflect on, and influence, a potential leader of the free world. If Scott and his mystery woman were still in the get-to-know-you phase, voters might feel the right to get to know her, too. Plus, a new relationship can be strange to navigate under ordinary circumstances, so what’s it like when one of the people is running for president?

I decided that, yes, I would try to figure out whether Tim Scott has a girlfriend.

But I would also investigate a deeper question: Does anybody care?

On a Tuesday morning in mid-August, Scott sat on an outdoor stage at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, discussing his thoughts on policies that allow parents to direct public funds to private schools (he’s for it) and China “spying on our kids” via TikTok (he’s against). While he spoke, DeCasper, his campaign manager, stood at the back of the crowd in a campaign T-shirt.

“Do you work for Tim Scott?” asked an 88-year-old man in a short-sleeved checkered button-up and a National Rifle Association cap.

The man was Max Hagen, a self-described “Fairaholic” who claimed to have shaken every president’s hand since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“How come he doesn’t bring his wife and kids with him like all the other candidates do?” Hagen asked.

“Well,” DeCasper said, “that’s because he’s single.”

“He’s single?”

“He has a very lovely girlfriend.”

“How come he doesn’t bring her around?”

Frankly, the whole interaction was a bit on-the-nose. I had come to Iowa to try to get an idea of what people thought of his being a bachelor. DeCasper, who previously served as Scott’s chief of staff, had told me last year that, yes, there were times in his career when Scott had fretted about “the optics” of not having a spouse. More recently, however, she had told her boss not to worry about it. “Honey, it’s two-thousand-whatever, you’re fine,” she recalled saying to Scott. She had told me something similar last fall: “That’s old-school,” she’d said about needing a spouse to run for president. “We don’t operate that way anymore.”

It’s true that remaining single deep into adulthood is not as unusual as it used to be. In 1980, only 6 percent of 40-year-olds had never been married, according to Pew Research; in 2021, it was 25 percent. In politics, however, a family tableau remains core to “the optics.” The Republican primary field includes a conservative variety pack of Wife Guys — such as Ron DeSantis, who reportedly changed the way he pronounced his last name to the way his wife, Casey, preferred saying it, and Mike Pence, who reportedly won’t eat alone with a woman unless his wife, Karen, is also present. And although there have been unmarried candidates for president over the years — including the other Republican senator from South Carolina, Lindsey O. Graham, in 2015 — you would have to go all the way back to Grover Cleveland, in 1884, to find a bachelor who won. (Cleveland married two years later.) Before that, there was James Buchanan, who stayed single after winning in 1856. And yeah, it was a thing.

“An Old Bachelor is at most but a half man,” wrote the New York Evening Post in an editorial about Buchanan. “How can such a person make more than a half-President?”

Fast-forward to two-thousand-whatever. Despite an evolving understanding of gender — or, more likely, because of it — Republicans have made defining “masculinity” a part of their political playbook. This includes promoting some pretty old-school ideas about marriage.

“Men are meant to be husbands, to form the virtues of a husband in their souls,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) wrote in his book “Manhood.”

Before Trump, when Tim Miller was working in opposition research on the Republican side, finding a sex scandal used to be an effective way to topple an opponent. It may say something about our current political moment that Scott’s opponents might see an opportunity to damage him with a sexless scandal.

“What might be salient with Republican voters is not that he isn’t a perfect family man,” Miller told me, “but that he might not have the macho womanizing strength of the MAGA god-king.”

Scott’s current mission is to impress a particular subset of Republicans: the ones who will be participating in the Iowa caucuses early next year. What do they think of the idea of an unmarried, childless commander in chief?

“I think 10 or 20 years ago, people had a kind of romance with the first family,” said Bob Vander Plaats, the head of the Family Leader, a social conservative organization in Iowa. “But I think our country is at the point where being married isn’t the top qualifier. It probably doesn’t make the Top 50.”

Scott’s unmarriedness isn’t the only thing that distinguishes him from other Republicans who are trying to rise in the party. He is not a perpetually aggrieved, rhetorically aggressive culture-warrior type. He’s also a Black man who has spoken out against whitewashing America’s racial history and has experienced being stopped by the police frequently for offenses such as, as he put it in 2016, “driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood.”

At the same time, Scott does not believe there is systemic racism in America today, and lately he has been talking a lot about “backing the blue,” locking up violent criminals, securing the southern border and implementing a federal ban on abortions after the 15th week of a pregnancy, “at a minimum.”

When I asked Steve Deace, a conservative talk-show host from Iowa, about how Scott’s marital status plays into everything, Deace predicted that Republican voters aren’t going to evaluate the candidate on that factor alone — but that it could work against him if he doesn’t measure up in other ways.

“In the end, someone who is unmarried, hasn’t been part of a meaningful conservative fight and was on the wrong side of virtually every flash point in the last cycle just won’t pass muster,” he said. “If he were polling in double digits in November, there would be a super PAC running ads in Iowa pointing this stuff out.” (Scott is polling at 9 percent in the state, per an August poll by the respected Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer.)

For now, many of the Republicans checking out Scott at the Iowa fair didn’t really seem to specifically care that Scott was single.

“What matters to me is that he’s in favor of putting the family unit back together,” said Brian Heck, 60. “I’d be more worried about him having a bunch of illegitimate kids than having no kids.”

A Republican voter is worried about a black man having a bunch of illegitimate kids.
Is that just too fucking perfect or what?

“I wouldn’t want someone to bring their children to the White House. That’s no place for them,” said Connie Hoksbergen, 57.

“I think it will just be less distracting,” said Greg Pollak, a pastor from Altoona, noting the drama that has lately swirled around presidential offspring. “It seems like the family have been a problem these past several years. I could even see it being an advantage.”

Scott’s parents didn’t have a marriage worth aspiring to. In his memoir, “America: A Redemption Story,” Scott writes that his father was a mercurial man who suffered mental trauma while serving in Vietnam, and whose drinking and tirades drove his mother — along with Scott and his older brother — out of the house.

As a teenager, Scott found a father figure in a man named John Moniz, the owner of a Chick-fil-A franchise, who mentored Scott and taught him about conservative values. Scott was a charmer, even back then, according to Brian Moniz, John’s son and Scott’s friend since childhood. Scott and the younger Moniz used to spend a lot of time hanging around the mall and flirting with girls.

“He’s always had a way with the ladies,” Moniz said.

I’ve seen Scott flirt. It was 2012, and we were having lunch at Clyde’s in downtown Washington. A waitress came up and put her hand on his freshly shaved (and perspiring) head.

“I think you’re hot,” she told him. “I can feel your heat from over here.”

“Most people say I’m hot,” Scott said. “I agree.”

A few days after that, I asked Scott whether he was still a virgin.

The question wasn’t quite as prurient as it might sound. I had been assigned to write an article about Scott, then a freshman member of Congress, for National Journal. In my research, I’d found a 1995 interview he’d done with the Charleston Post and Courier in which he’d discussed speaking to students about the importance of abstinence until marriage. “Talking to teens and college students about sexual purity is a hot ticket for me because I’m single,” Scott, then a 30-year-old city councilman, had told the paper. “I know what it means to struggle on the issue of sex. But it’s worth the wait.” Seventeen years later, he was still unmarried, and sex education was a political issue, so it seemed fair to ask whether the congressman — who, according to the same article, once drove a Nissan with a bumper sticker that said “True Love Waits” — practiced what he preached.

“Not as well as I did then,” he said, adding that he still believed sex before marriage was a “sin” and that he wished “we all had more patience.”

Around the time that article ran in National Journal, The Washington Post reported that Scott had taken the general manager of a Charleston lingerie store called Bits of Lace on a trip to an exclusive resort. Less than a year later, anonymous sources told a gossip blog that the two had broken up.

Since then, Scott has occasionally hinted at past and present girlfriends while never mentioning anyone by name, which only led to questions like this from CNN’s Dana Bash in 2017:

“What gives?” she asked about his unmarried status.

Scott then surprised Bash by offering an otherwise unreported tidbit: that he had once been engaged.

“I didn’t know that,” Bash said, to which Scott offered a deadpan reply: “Shhh, don’t tell anyone.”

Apparently nobody told Brian Moniz, the childhood friend.

“No, I don’t think he’s ever been engaged,” he said when I spoke to him in August.


As for any current girlfriend, Moniz said: “I am not aware of anyone at this time.”

Playing things close to the vest doesn’t necessarily play well with everyone. A few weeks ago, Axios reported that Scott’s privacy about his personal life was an issue with conservative donors who might otherwise consider backing his candidacy. “The joke has always been that he is secretly gay or something,” the unnamed operative told me. “I don’t really buy that. But he’s got an interesting history.” The dossier he’d sent included details about Scott having owned property and shared a jet ski with male friends.

Scott is not gay, DeCasper told me, and nobody who knows him suggested otherwise. But the rumor mill is lazy, and the “joke” about the senator’s sexuality still gets repeated. Early last year, for example, Matt Schlapp, the head of the Conservative Political Action Conference, asked me whom I thought Trump might choose as his 2024 running mate. When I mentioned Scott, Schlapp replied: “You think he picks a gay vice president?”
(Incidentally, Schlapp, who is married with five kids, was later accused of unwanted groping by a male staffer on Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign. He has denied the allegations.)

According to Moniz, Scott’s bachelorhood is a simple case of being married to his job.

“It’s been a challenge, mainly for the females in his life over the years,” Moniz said. “They get put on the back burner. Women have hung around for a while, and they realize they’re not going to be the top priority right now.”

Bobby Harrell, who has been friends with Scott since the two served together in the South Carolina State House, told me that Scott talked often about how much he admired Harrell’s 44-year marriage and “wished for something like it someday.” In 2018, Scott told Politico that he wanted to have six(!) children once he found “Mrs. Right.”

“Every time my wife talks to him,” Al Jenkins, a longtime friend and current staffer, told me in 2020, “she says, ‘Who is she, and when are we going to meet her?’”

Now, three years later, I had the same questions. Six friends I spoke with said they didn’t know about a woman in his life. Others never returned my calls. The campaign, of course, was well aware that I was trying to get to the bottom of Scott’s love life. They were polite, but not exactly eager to spill.

Finally, with one debate out of the way and the end of summer approaching, Scott’s campaign did agree to make the principal available for a brief interview on the subject.

And so, two weeks ago, I flew to South Carolina to ask a 57-year-old presidential candidate whether he had a girlfriend.

“If I had my druthers, we wouldn’t be doing this,” Scott said.

We were sitting at a conference table at the DoubleTree hotel in North Charleston. Scott was looking sharp in a blue suit with no tie. His head was freshly shaved. A security guard stood sentry outside the door, and Scott was flanked by three different spokespeople. The whole thing felt a little like a one-man news conference, or perhaps a deposition. He came armed with talking points about how American voters cared about their own families, not about his family.

“I have been very protective of my family and my loved ones,” he told me. “I signed up for this. If we make it, she will be signing up for it as well, but at least then she’ll know what she’s getting into. But until then, the only conversation I’m going to have about her in any form or fashion is right now.”

For months, Scott explained, a friend from church had been trying to set him up with a woman the friend knew. Scott had told him that he wasn’t ready for a relationship. Then, late last year, the friend texted Scott the woman’s photo.

“You know what?” Scott recalled telling his friend after seeing the picture. “I’ve prayed on it. Tell me about her again?”

He got the woman’s number. They started talking, hitting it off with discussions about God and using a phone app to do a Bible study together. Scott said he loved her laugh. They had dinner at a downtown Charleston restaurant. She got the steak, he got the swordfish, and they shared even though, as Scott would later learn, she didn’t care for swordfish. They played pickleball, and Scott was embarrassed to find out that he was the “weak man on the court.”

He wouldn’t tell me her name, and the campaign declined to make her available to chat, even off the record. Technically I can’t verify that she exists, except to note that for a presidential campaign to essentially reverse-catfish America would be insane. (By way of corroboration, DeCasper offered that she’s personally hung out with her at the zoo.)

Scott said he had theories about why other campaigns might want to draw attention to his being single. It’s just a way to “sow seeds of doubt” about his campaign, he said, a way “to say that, ‘That guy isn’t one of us.’”

“It’s like a different form of discrimination or bias,” Scott said. “You can’t say I’m Black, because that would be terrible, so find something else that you can attack.”

Throwing himself into work was always kind of a defense mechanism, he said — a response to watching his parents’ marriage blow up when he was a child. “For me, it was the defining moment of my entire life,” he said. “It creates scar tissue. One thing you can do when that happens is run away or run toward something else. And I ran toward purpose.”

What, other than a photo and some prayerful reflection, might have made Scott decide to run toward a relationship at the same time as he’s running, harder than ever, toward his life’s purpose? A cynic would note that, when a person sets out to run for president, nearly everything they do in the lead-up to the election is done with a campaign in mind, and perhaps Scott thought finding a partner would help his candidacy.

As the interview came to a close, I half expected the door to the conference room to swing open, and for the mystery woman to waltz in for a dramatic reveal.

Then again, Scott isn’t the reality TV guy in the race.

“I can’t imagine dragging her onto the campaign trail unless I have the intention of marrying her,” he said. “I hope that happens, to be honest with you.”

He paused.

“I guess I should be careful about how I say that,” Scott said, with a sheepish grin. “Strike that comment.”

He laughed. His relationship and campaign were both new. It’s hard to know, this early, if any of this is real.

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

Hypocrisy Check


Tanya Chutkan's appointment to the federal bench was confirmed in the US Senate by a unanimous vote.


IMO, Republicans who bitch about Trump being tried in DC, or who whine about him being persecuted by a vengeful Biden administration - or whatever shit they pull outa their asses during any given wingnut media show - are fully in favor of burning Trump to the water line, but they have to be cute about it. They can't afford to lose the support of those rubes, so they pretend to be outraged. It's all they've got.

Sunday, August 06, 2023

Confirming My Bias

... but if my bias is the good kind of bias - eg: a preference for hard facts over conspiracy fantasies - then I should be looking for (and favoring) information that confirms it.

That doesn't mean I look at only the points of view that jive with my own. It just means I try to test the information for reasonableness and, if need be, adjust my world view accordingly.


Cynical manipulators (mostly Republicans these days) are convinced they can throw dust and glitter in the air, and while we're all busy fighting about whether it's red glitter or blue dust or some such bullshit, they have a free hand to go on picking our pockets.

But what if the rubes start to get hip to the tricks?


Are G.O.P. Voters Tiring of the War on ‘Wokeness’?

New polling shows national Republicans and Iowa Republican caucus-goers were more interested in “law and order” than battling “woke” schools, media and corporations.


When it comes to the Republican primaries, attacks on “wokeness” may be losing their punch.

For Republican candidates, no word has hijacked political discourse quite like “woke,” a term few can define but many have used to capture what they see as left-wing views on race, gender and sexuality that have strayed far beyond the norms of American society.

Gov. Ron DeSantis last year used the word five times in 19 seconds, substituting “woke” for Nazis as he cribbed from Winston Churchill’s famous vow to battle a threatened German invasion in 1940. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, speaks of a “woke self-loathing” that has swept the nation. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina found himself backpedaling furiously after declaring that “‘woke supremacy’ is as bad as white supremacy.”

The term has become quick a way for candidates to flash their conservative credentials, but battling “woke” may have less political potency than they think. Though conservative voters might be irked at modern liberalism, successive New York Times/Siena College polls of Republican voters nationally and then in Iowa found that candidates were unlikely to win votes by narrowly focusing on rooting out left-wing ideology in schools, media, culture and business.

Instead, Republican voters are showing a “hand’s off” libertarian streak in economics, and a clear preference for messages about “law and order” in the nation’s cities and at its borders.

The findings hint why Mr. DeSantis, who has made his battles with “woke” schools and corporations central to his campaign, is struggling and again show off Mr. Trump’s keen understanding of part of the Republican electorate. Campaigning in Iowa in June, Mr. Trump was blunt: “I don’t like the term ‘woke,’” he said, adding, “It’s just a term they use — half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is.”

It was clearly a jab at Mr. DeSantis, but the Times’s polls suggest Mr. Trump may be right. Social issues like gay rights and once-obscure jargon like “woke” may not be having the effect many Republicans had hoped

“Your idea of ‘wokeism’ might be different from mine,” explained Christopher Boyer, a 63-year-old Republican actor in Hagerstown, Md., who retired from a successful career in Hollywood where he said he saw his share of political correctness and liberal group think. Mr. Boyer said he didn’t like holding his tongue about his views on transgender athletes, but, he added, he does not want politicians to intervene. “I am a laissez-faire capitalist: Let the pocketbook decide,” he said.

When presented with the choice between two hypothetical Republican candidates, only 24 percent of national Republican voters opted for a “a candidate who focuses on defeating radical ‘woke’ ideology in our schools, media and culture” over “a candidate who focuses on restoring law and order in our streets and at the border.”

Around 65 percent said they would choose the law and order candidate.

Among those 65 and older, often the most likely age bracket to vote, only 17 percent signed on to the “anti-woke” crusade. Those numbers were nearly identical in Iowa, where the first ballots for the Republican nominee will be cast on Jan. 15.

Mr. DeSantis’s famous fight against the Walt Disney Company over what he saw as the corporation’s liberal agenda exemplified the kind of economic warfare that seems to fare only modestly better. About 38 percent of Republican voters said they would back a candidate who promised to fight corporations that promote “woke” left ideology, versus the 52 percent who preferred “a candidate who says that the government should stay out of deciding what corporations should support.”

Christy Boyd, 55, in Ligonier, Pa., made it clear she was no fan of the culture of tolerance that she said pervaded her region around Pittsburgh. As the perfect distillation of “woke” ideology, she mentioned “time blindness,” a phrase she views as simply an excuse for perpetual tardiness.

But such aggravations do not drive her political desires.

“If you don’t like what Bud Light did, don’t buy it,” she added, referring to the brand’s hiring of a transgender influencer, which contributed to a sharp drop in sales. “If you don’t like what Disney is doing, don’t go. That’s not the government’s responsibility.”

Indeed, some Republican voters seemed to feel pandered to by candidates like Mr. DeSantis and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, whose book “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” launched his political career.

Lynda Croft, 82, said she was watching a rise in murders in her hometown Winston-Salem, N.C., and that has her scared. Overly liberal policies in culture and schools will course-correct on their own, she said.

“If anyone actually believes in woke ideology, they are not in tune with the rest of society,” she said, “and parents will step in to deal with that.”

In an interview, Mr. Ramaswamy said the evolving views of the electorate were important, and he had adapted to them. “Woke” corporate governance and school systems are a symptom of what he calls “a deeper void” in a society that needs a religious and nationalist renewal. The stickers that read “Stop Wokeism. Vote Vivek” are gone from his campaign stops, he said, replaced by hats that read “Truth.”

“At the time I came to be focused on this issue, no one knew what the word was,” he said. “Now that they have caught up, the puck has moved. It’s in my rearview mirror as well.”

Law and order and border security have become stand-ins for “fortitude,” he said, and that is clearly what Republican voters are craving.

(The day after the interview, the Ramaswamy campaign blasted out a fund-raising appeal entitled “Wokeness killing the American Dream.”)

DeSantis campaign officials emphasized that the governor in recent days had laid out policies on border security, the military and the economy. Foreign policy is coming, they say. But they also pointed to an interview on Fox News in which Mr. DeSantis did not back away from his social-policy focus.

Along with several other Republican-led states, Florida passed a string of laws restricting what G.O.P. lawmakers considered evidence of “wokeness,” such as gender transition care for minors and diversity initiatives. Mr. DeSantis handily won re-election in November.

“I totally reject, being in Iowa, New Hampshire, that people don’t think those are important,” he said of his social policy fights. “These families with children are thanking me for taking stands in Florida.”

For candidates trying to break Mr. Trump’s hold on a Republican electorate that sees the former president as the embodiment of strength, the problem may be broader than ditching the term “woke.”

As it turns out, social issues like gender, race and sexuality are politically complicated and may be less dominant than Mr. Trump’s rivals thought. The fact that Mr. Trump has been indicted three times and found legally liable for sexual abuse has not hurt him. Only 37 percent of Republican voters nationally described Mr. Trump as more moral than Mr. DeSantis (45 percent sided with Mr. DeSantis on the personality trait), yet in a head-to-head matchup between the two candidates, national Republican voters backed Mr. Trump by 31 percentage points, 62 percent to 31 percent.

The Times/Siena poll did find real reluctance among Republican voters to accept transgender people. Only 30 percent said society should accept transgender people as the gender they identify with, compared with 58 percent who said society should not accept such identities.

Insisting on a collective societal right to determine your identity - sexual or any other - is absolutely in conflict with conservatives' long-professed dedication to an individual's freedom to make their own decisions about such things.

Hypocrisy,
thy name is Republican
(not that it matters to them)

But half of Republican voters still support the right of gay and lesbian people to marry, against the 41 percent who oppose same-sex marriage. Fifty-one percent of Republican voters said they would choose a candidate promising to protect individual freedom over one guarding “traditional values.” The “traditional values” candidate would be the choice of 40 percent of Republicans.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, responded simply: “Americans want to return to a prosperous nation, and there’s only one person who can do that — President Trump.”

Mr. Boyer, who played Robert E. Lee in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” bristled at having to make a choice: “It’s hardly an either-or: Why wouldn’t I want someone to fight for law and order and against this corrupt infiltration in our school systems?” he asked.

But given a choice, he said, “the primary job of government is the protection of our country and there’s a tangible failure of that at our border.”

Maybe the rank-n-file GOP voters are beginning to see the culture war malarkey for what it is, but we need to remember that all that culture war malarkey grows directly out of the Law & Order malarkey they're trying to reassert. It's another kind of rhetorical sleight of hand, intended to disguise a predilection for Daddy State authoritarian rule.

Friday, June 16, 2023

Mr Cop-Out Cops Out

There is disingenuous, and there is naiveté, and there is willful ignorance, and there is purposefully nefarious.

Put all that together, and then launch it into full-blown, Daddy-State-gaslighting, cynically-manipulative, who-me? fantasyland, and you're almost to where you can just barely start to make out the blurry outline of David Brooks, way off in the distance.

This jackass has played a significant role in dismissing, and apologizing for, and normalizing, and promoting exactly the kind of political atmosphere necessary to produce and then exalt a dick like Donald Trump.

Give it a fuckin' rest, Dave.



I Won’t Let Donald Trump Invade My Brain

And yet I’ve found that Donald Trump has confounded me at every turn. I’ve found that I’m not cynical enough to correctly anticipate what he is capable of.

I have consistently underestimated his depravity. I was shocked at how thuggishly Trump behaved in that first debate with Joe Biden in 2020. As the Jan. 6 committee hearings progressed, I was stunned to find out just how aggressively Trump had worked to overthrow the election. And then, just last week, in reading his federal indictment, I was once again taken aback to learn how flagrantly he had breached national security.

And yet I can’t quite feel ashamed of my perpetual naïveté toward Donald Trump. I don’t want to be the kind of person who can easily enter the head of an amoral narcissist.

I’d rather not let him infect my brain. I’d rather not let that guy alter my views of the world. If occasional naïveté is the price for mental independence from Trump, I’m willing to pay it.

I’ve been thinking about all this while bracing for the 17 months of campaigning that apparently lie ahead, with Trump probably once again the central focus of the nation’s consciousness. I’m thinking about how we will once again be forced to defend our inner sanctums as he seeks, on a minute-by-minute basis, to take up residence in our brains.

I cling to a worldview that is easy to ridicule. I hold the belief that most people, while flawed, seek to be good. I hold the belief that our institutions, while fraying, are basically legitimate and deserve our respect. I hold the belief that character matters, and that good people ultimately prosper and unethical people are ultimately undone.

I don’t think this worldview is born of childish innocence. It comes out of my direct experience with life, and after thousands of interviews, covering real-life politicians like Barack Obama, John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Donald Trump, by his mere presence, is an assault on this worldview. Trump is a tyrant. As Aristotle observed all those many years ago, tyranny is all about arbitrariness. When a tyrant has power, there is no rule of law, there is no governing order. There is only the whim of the tyrant. There is only his inordinate desire to have more than his fair share of everything.

Under political tyranny external laws become arbitrary. Even when Trump doesn’t wield state power, when he is merely campaigning, Trump wields cultural power. Under cultural tyranny internal values become arbitrary too — based on his whims and lusts of the moment.

The categories we use to evaluate the world lose their meaning — cruelty and kindness, integrity and corruption, honesty and dishonesty, generosity and selfishness. High-minded values begin to seem credulous and absurd, irrelevant to the situation at hand. Trump’s mere presence spreads his counter-gospel: People are basically selfish; raw power runs the world. All that matters is winning and losing. Under his influence, subtly and insidiously, people develop more nihilistic mind-sets.

Trump has already corroded the Republican Party in just this way. Let me focus on one value that Trump has already dissolved: the idea that there should be some connection between the beliefs you have in your head and the words that come out of your mouth. If you say something you don’t believe, you should at least have a twinge of guilt about your hypocrisy.

I used to at least hear Republicans express guilt privately when they publicly supported a guy they held in contempt. That guilt seems to have gone away. Even the contempt has gone away. Many Republicans have switched off the moral faculty, having apparently concluded that personal morality doesn’t matter.

Trump’s corrosive influence spreads far beyond his party. Any stable social order depends on a sense of legitimacy. This is the belief and faith that the people who have been given authority have a right to govern. They wield power for the common good.

Trump assaults this value too. Prosecutors are not serving the rule of law, he insists, but are Joe Biden’s political pawns. Civil servants are nothing but “deep state” operatives to take Trump down. This cynical attitude has become pervasive in our society. Proper skepticism toward our institutions has turned into endemic distrust, a jaundiced cynicism that says: I’m onto the game; it’s corruption all the way down.

Over the coming months, we face not merely a political contest, but a battle between those of us who believe in ideals, even though it can make us seem naïve at times, and those who argue that life is a remorseless struggle for selfish gain. Their victory would be a step toward cultural barbarism.

who coulda knowed?

Monday, May 01, 2023

Another One?

Hey - where ya keep all the voter fraud at?


4th resident of The Villages arrested for voter fraud

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Another resident of The Villages has been arrested for voter fraud by the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office.

Charles Franklin Barnes, was arrested on Jan. 4 for violating the law and attempting to cast multiple ballots in the 2020 election. He’s the fourth resident of the Florida community to see charges for voter fraud in the past month.

3 from The Villages charged with voter fraud, accused of casting more than 1 ballot in 2020 election

In December 2021, Jay Ketcik, Joan Halstead and John Rider were charged for casting more than one ballot, according to local authorities.

According to previous coverage by WFLA affiliate WESH, Ketcik voted by mail in Florida while also casting an absentee ballot in Michigan, while Halstead voted in person in Florida but cast an absentee ballot in New York.

Rider was charged with casting an absentee ballot in New York while also voting in Sumter County, according to reporting by Villages-News, a media company in The Villages.

Barnes was released on a $2,000 bond, according to the Sumter County sheriff. According to Florida vote records, Barnes was not affiliated with a political party.

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Kids & Books & Parents


  1. None of the rights guaranteed in the US Constitution is absolute or unlimited.
  2. With every right comes responsibility
"Conservatives" demand the freedom while ignoring the work required to achieve and maintain that freedom.

So who's the fuckin' moocher now?


Opinion
The parents’ rights movement keeps ducking parental responsibilities


The current “parental rights” movement has a dirty little secret: It depicts parents as victims of teachers and librarians. Yet many of the movement’s proposed solutions fob off parental responsibilities onto those public servants.

Listen to enough debates about what books belong in public and school libraries, or about sex education, and a theme emerges: Even as they demand more rights, advocates of book bans and curriculum-dodging appear to wish they could do less parenting.

Take the group of Alaska parents who recently asked their local library to remove books “which are intended to indoctrinate children in LGBTQ+ ideologies” from the children’s section, or put them on a restricted shelf. “Parents who do not wish for their children to stumble across … confusing ideas,” they complained, can’t let their kids browse without close supervision.

Or take this move. Texas state Rep. Jared Patterson introduced a bill requiring vendors who want to sell books in Texas to rate their offerings as “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant,” based on whether the books are “patently offensive,” “pervasively vulgar,” “obscene” or “educationally unsuitable.” Apparently, it’s not enough for parents to keep an eye on what their children are checking out. Instead, librarians must read the minds of every adult in town, anticipate what each one might find objectionable and pre-censor their shelves accordingly.

Such proposals actually give publishers, librarians and school administrators more power to make moral judgments on behalf of parents, not less.

Instead, parents should explain to their kids what they’re forbidden to check out and why. And let their kids’ librarians know. When she was a school librarian, says Andrea Jamison, Illinois State University College of Education professor, she would enforce parents’ rules. But she insisted they explain their reasoning to their children themselves. Stepping in to impart those values on their behalf would usurp parents’ rights.

In dodging these conversations, parents are also transferring their anxiety about how their children are growing up onto teachers and librarians.

It can’t be that young people express authentic interest in gender, sexuality or current events — or even that they crave junky thrillers and bathroom humor. It must be nefarious librarians pushing guides to puberty such as “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health,” and trash classics such as V.C. Andrews’s “Flowers in the Attic.” As Texas state Rep. Gina Hinojosa put it in March with an air of resignation, “I wish they would pick up Shakespeare.” But it’s Captain Underpants and the Fart Quest series that got her son into books.

And it couldn’t be that kids are naturally curious about racism or climate change. Instead, it’s teachers and librarians who are scattering dangerous ideas through their shelves like so many intellectual improvised explosive devices.

In reality it is the very books adults are trying to protect students from that they find most vital. That’s what kids tell Deborah Caldwell-Stone, who runs the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Students experience violence, they experience racism, they experience poverty,” agrees Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a former middle school English teacher. “If you’re old enough to experience these things, you’re old enough to read about these things.”

More ducking of parental duty shows up in the furor around sex education and other curriculums. Many school districts require parents to actively opt out their children from lessons that run counter to their values. Instead, some parents want to require that families opt in.

These advocates suggest that children shouldn’t be exposed to the social consequences of feeling singled out. For instance, at a 2022 hearing on a proposed sex-ed curriculum, Daniel Gallic, who chairs the Warren Township, N.J., planning board, complained: “An opt-out of the program makes the children subject to harassment and intimidation.” In 2017, a Palo Alto, Calif., parent protested her daughter hadn’t felt comfortable filling a form to skip a sex-ed class because “she would have been the only student in the class to do so and didn’t want to feel left out.”

Certainly, schools should protect students from bullying or discrimination based on their beliefs. But giving middle and high school students practice at explaining their family’s values seems like a form of education everyone should get behind.

“We do not want to raise snowflakes who are not able to take the realities of the real world,” was how Talarico put it in a March 21 Texas House committee hearing on Patterson’s books bill, flipping conservative rhetoric on its head. “We want to prepare our kids, especially our teens in high school, for what they’re going to face when they’re outside our school laws.”

That preparation takes work. Parents who want to assert their rights ought to be ready to take on their responsibilities.

Sunday, February 26, 2023

Hyper Hypocrite

As we await the momentous occasion of Tennessee passing legislation that outlaws drag shows, let us take a moment to revel in the memory of when Governor Bill Lee dressed in drag for some high school thing or something.

Experiencing a little gender confusion here, Governor?



Saturday, February 11, 2023

Hypocrisy Much?


Too typical. DeSantis needs to thread a very tight needle (and he's not doing all that well with it). So he demands a gun-free venue, but looks to blame it on local ordinances.

Maybe we should look a tiny bit closer. DeSantis is playing that usual double-sided game authoritarians play all the time. ie: "I'm in charge, and I'm the power, and I'm the government - but these hold-out weasels in the bureaucracy are preventing me from allowing you from expressing your true patriotism and blah blah blah."

Coupla things
  • "Give me total control over all levels of government so I can crush the extraordinarily powerful and dangerous enemy within."
  • "I'm the victim - which means you're the victims - and these namby pamby nobodies are too weak and incompetent to stand in our way. Let me vanquish them for you."
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”



DeSantis wanted to ban guns at event, but not to be blamed, emails show

As Gov. Ron DeSantis prepared for an election night party in downtown Tampa last year, city officials received a surprising — and politically sensitive — request.

The Republican governor’s campaign wanted weapons banned from his victory celebration at the city-run Tampa Convention Center, a city official said in emails obtained by The Washington Post. And the campaign suggested that the city take responsibility for the firearms ban, the official said — not the governor, who has been a vocal supporter of gun rights.

“DeSantis/his campaign will not tell their attendees they are not permitted to carry because of the political optics,” Chase Finch, the convention center’s safety and security manager, said in an Oct. 28 email to other city officials about the request, which was conveyed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), a state police agency led by a DeSantis appointee.

Finch further explained that because of “Republicans largely being in support of 2A,” referring to the Second Amendment, “Basically it sounds like they want us to say it’s our policy to disallow firearms within the event space if anyone asks.”

In a statement sent after this story published, FDLE said the agency determines on its own whether to prohibit weapons at events. “FDLE did not request the venue restrict weapons at the direction of the Governor or campaign. Security decisions are made by FDLE,” agency spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said.

Tampa Convention Center officials ultimately rejected the request to ban weapons. State law allows concealed firearms to be brought inside the public facility unless the renter insists on a gun-free event. On election night, the campaign did require guests to pass through metal detectors, Finch said.

The previously unreported request to Tampa officials illuminates a touchy issue for DeSantis as he weighs a potential bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Even as DeSantis has earned the highest rating from the National Rifle Association’s political arm, gun owners are balking at his recent appearances at events where firearms were prohibited, according to interviews and online posts.

Tim Marden, now the chairman of Florida’s Alachua County GOP, said he skipped a fundraiser featuring DeSantis in October after he was told the governor’s team insisted on metal detectors. A gun rights protester was arrested outside the event.

“In my thinking, it was a little hypocritical to have this measure in place for law-abiding citizens at a time when a lot of folks in the gun community will condemn a Democratic politician for having a security force,” Marden said.

In response to questions from The Post about gun bans at DeSantis events, the governor’s deputy press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, said in an email, “We do not comment on speculation and hearsay. The Governor is strongly in support of individuals’ constitutional right to bear arms.”

Lindsey Curnutte, a spokeswoman for the governor’s political team, said: “We follow the guidance of the FDLE and local law enforcement to keep the governor and his family safe during events.”

FDLE, which reports to the governor and three other statewide elected officials, values “the rights of our citizens to legally bear arms,” Plessinger said, and makes decisions based on “security threats.” She added in an email: “FDLE encourages private and public venues to limit weapons when hosting the Governor and First Family at large events. Doing so enhances the ability of law enforcement officers and FDLE Protective Operations agents to work proficiently and quickly in the event of an emergency.”

Plessinger noted that “security decisions are made solely by FDLE without consultation or input from any other agency or entity.”

DeSantis’s stance on gun rights is expected to draw attention in the coming weeks as the legislature debates a closely watched bill to legalize carrying concealed weapons without permits. The measure cleared its first committee this week but drew blowback from gun activists, who argue it does not go far enough. Redfern said the governor “has repeatedly stated publicly that he hopes to sign Constitutional Carry legislation this year.”

As DeSantis considers a 2024 presidential bid, potential GOP opponents who have put gun rights at the center of their agendas, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, could seek to capitalize on the issue, said Luis Valdes, Florida state director of Gun Owners of America. Former president Donald Trump, who is running for another term, was credited by the NRA’s political arm in 2020 with doing “more than any president to protect the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.”

“DeSantis continually pays lip service to the Second Amendment as he positions himself for a nationwide run, and yet what I am seeing as a constituent of his and as a Floridian is that his events are gun-free zones,” Valdes said. “His primary rivals will clean his clock on guns.”

The DeSantis campaign’s sensitivity to the issue was described in the correspondence between FDLE and Tampa officials in the days before the Nov. 8 election. The city officials who received the campaign’s request quickly agreed that they had no flexibility on the issue; Florida law gives the legislature the power to regulate firearms and generally prohibits local governments from doing so. Under a 1987 law, the state has granted more than 2.6 million licenses to carry concealed weapons in many public places.

Excerpt from email. (Public records from the city of Tampa)

“I’m certainly not signing this without any sort of guidance,” Finch wrote to city officials.

Less than half an hour later, he received an emailed response from Nicole Travis, the city’s administrator of development and economic opportunity: “We are not saying anything about concealed carry. That is the responsibility of the renter. We follow State Statute that permits concealed carry.”


Excerpt from email (Public records/The city of Tampa)

In Finch’s response to FDLE officials, he said banning concealed weapons at the Tampa Convention Center could put the city in a “legal quagmire.” He added: “I understand the campaign does not wish to ‘restrict’ 2A for their event because of the optics, but if any guests asks, we will not say it’s TCC’s policy to disallow legal carry.”

Diana Hunter, FDLE special agent supervisor, did not object to Finch’s assertion about the campaign’s position and thanked him for explaining the city’s policy in her response.

Days before the FDLE made its request of the Tampa Convention Center, gun advocates raised concerns about a weapons ban at the Alachua County Republican Party’s annual fundraiser, where DeSantis was scheduled to be the keynote speaker.

In the days leading up to the Oct. 20 event at a public building owned by the city of Alachua, a town near Gainesville, Fla., gun rights advocates warned in online posts that ticket holders would have to pass through metal detectors.

Jared Yanis, host of the Guns & Gadgets YouTube channel, which has over 600,000 subscribers, posted a 13-minute video about the no-guns policy at the event, saying: “Ron DeSantis is saying Florida is a Second Amendment state — except if you want to hear me talk, you have to give up your Second Amendment.” Lee Williams of the Second Amendment Foundation, a national group based in Washington state, wrote that he was told by Alachua GOP Treasurer Ann Stone that the governor would not attend unless guns were banned.

Stone could not be reached for comment. The governor’s representatives did not respond to questions about the Alachua event.

After receiving an email alert about the no-weapons policy from a gun rights group called Florida Carry, Chris Rose decided to protest outside the Alachua fundraiser. Carrying a neon yellow “I WILL NOT BE DISARMED BY DESANTIS” sign, he said he stood on the sidewalk about 30 yards from the entrance to the fundraiser. He was asked to leave by a private security guard for the event, according to his arrest report. When he refused, the security guard asked the police to “remove” him, the report says.

note: It appears the logical extreme is fast approaching. "Shall not be infringed" comes to mean, "Nobody can impose any restrictions on my gun-love for any reason, at any time. I get to do whatever I want with my precious gun."


Rose was arrested for trespassing, but the charge was dropped last month, records show. “I can’t consider DeSantis a defender of the fundamental human right to self-defense,” he said. “It’s just talk.”

Valdes of Gun Owners of America, who also warned supporters about the no-weapons policy before the event, said he was shocked to see Rose get arrested as he handed out literature opposing gun-free zones. “It’s a very delicate balancing act because there are credible threats against public officials, but we also have to respect the public’s civil rights” to carry guns, he said.

Valdes had attended a DeSantis campaign event one month earlier, in September, where guns also were prohibited. “All attendees must undergo security screening prior to entering the event,” read a notice from the governor’s campaign about the event in Dover, Fla., where DeSantis received an endorsement from the Florida Farm Bureau Federation’s political action committee.

Representatives of the farm bureau and the site that hosted the event said they were not in charge of security.

“I wasn’t happy about it, but I secured my firearm in my vehicle,” Valdes said. “It was a public event in a field and in no way would a bad guy with ill intentions have been stopped.”

Concealed weapons were also forbidden at Unite & Win rallies in August where DeSantis stumped alongside Republican candidates in Arizona, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Business Insider reported. The events were organized by Turning Point Action, a conservative advocacy group. Turning Point Action spokesman Andrew Kolvet said it is not the organization’s policy to ban firearms at its events, though some venues prohibit weapons. “Just like we’ve done in the past with the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies, we coordinated with Florida Department of Law Enforcement and followed FDLE’s direction,” he said.

Valdes and other gun rights advocates say they are reluctant to criticize DeSantis because of his pro-gun rights record as governor and a former U.S. House member.

When DeSantis was serving in Congress in 2018, Florida’s GOP-controlled government passed a gun-control law following the massacre of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla. The legislation raised the minimum age for buying firearms from 18 to 21. As a candidate for governor that spring, DeSantis said he was “disappointed that the Florida Legislature is rushing to restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens.” He added, “Better to focus on denying firearms to dangerous individuals, which avoids infringing on constitutional rights and is also more likely to be effective.”

In 2021, DeSantis signed a bill that allows concealed weapon permit holders to carry their guns into churches or other religious institutions even if they share property with schools.

After 10 people were gunned down at a Buffalo grocery store in May, DeSantis said of mass shooters, “They are not dumb, because they pick their targets and they know — and the Buffalo guy said he wanted to go where he knew there wouldn’t be blowback from people being armed, and so he tried to find a gun-free zone.” The governor added, “What you do is, you focus on the criminal. You focus on the lunatic. You don’t kneecap the rights of law-abiding citizens.”

The next month, DeSantis praised a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down a New York law requiring people who want to carry handguns to show they have a special need to defend themselves. “What you don’t want is to have a government bureaucrat stymie your ability to exercise your constitutional rights,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis also has pledged to sign a permitless concealed carry law, though he has not directly endorsed a bill in the Florida legislature that drew criticism at its first committee hearing this week, with gun-control advocates saying it will lead to violence and pro-gun activists arguing that it should allow them to openly carry weapons. Representatives of the governor did not respond to questions from The Post about whether he would support an “open carry” provision in the bill.

“Constitutional carry — I’ve been in favor of the whole time,” DeSantis said in August. “And so we think we will be able to do that, but that really requires the legislature to get it to my desk. I’m not the issue. I will sign it. That will be an easy thing to do.”

Friday, January 06, 2023

Today's Phony Fuck

Matt Sclapp


Herschel Walker Staffer: Matt Schlapp ‘Groped’ My Crotch

American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp allegedly groped the crotch of a male staffer for Herschel Walker’s campaign in October.


A staffer for Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign has alleged to The Daily Beast that longtime Republican activist Matt Schlapp made “sustained and unwanted and unsolicited” sexual contact with him while the staffer was driving Schlapp back from an Atlanta bar this October.

The staffer said the incident occurred the night of Oct. 19, when Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union and lead organizer for the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, “groped” and “fondled” his crotch in his car against his will after buying him drinks at two different bars.

The staffer described Schlapp, who had traveled to Georgia for a Walker campaign event, as inappropriately and repeatedly intruding into his personal space at the bars. He said he was also keenly aware of his “power dynamic” with Schlapp, widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in national conservative politics.

Schlapp, the staffer recalled, said he had wanted to spend the evening discussing the staffer’s professional future.

“It was a public space, and I was thinking that he got the hint. I did not want to embarrass him,” he said. “But it escalated.”

We are withholding the staffer’s name at his request, citing concerns of drawing attention to himself while embarking on his first weeks in a new job in Republican politics. He said he would come forward with his real name if Schlapp denied his claims.

In a statement to The Daily Beast, Schlapp attorney Charlie Spies called the allegations an “attack” and said Schlapp “denies any improper behavior.”

“This appears to be now the twelfth Daily Beast piece with personal attacks on Matt Schlapp and his family. The attack is false and Mr. Schlapp denies any improper behavior. We are evaluating legal options for response,” the statement said.

The staffer, in his late thirties, recalled that while he drove Schlapp back to the hotel, Schlapp put his hand on his leg, then reached over and “fondled” his crotch at length while he was frozen in shock, calling it “scarring” and “humiliating.” When they arrived at the hotel, the staffer said Schlapp invited him to his room. The staffer said he declined and left “as quickly as I could.”

He informed the campaign about the incident the next morning.

When the staffer got home that night, he received a call from Schlapp—shortly after midnight, according to call records the staffer shared with The Daily Beast—to confirm that the staffer would still chauffeur him to an event in Macon the next day. The staffer described the call as “short and perfunctory,” but after confirming he would drive him, the staffer “broke down.” He then recorded a series of tearful video accounts detailing the evening, which he shared with The Daily Beast as well as with two people close to him, including the staffer’s wife.

“What is wrong with me? This is OK to happen?” he said in one of the videos. “I don’t know what I did. It’s very sad that this is OK.”

In another video, the staffer narrated the events “in regard to Matthew Schlapp, chairman of CPAC, who approximately two hours ago put his hands on me in a sustained and unsolicited and unwanted manner.”

“Matt Schlapp of the CPAC grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length, and I’m sitting there thinking what the hell is going on, that this person is literally doing this to me,” the staffer said in the video.

“From the bar to the Hilton Garden Inn, he has his hands on me. And I feel so fucking dirty. I feel so fucking dirty,” he said.

“I’m supposed to pick this motherfucker up in the morning and just pretend like nothing happened. This is what I’m dealing with,” the staffer continued. “This is what I got to do.”

The staffer’s communications with the campaign the next day, along with further exchanges with Schlapp, were documented in call logs and text messages, which the staffer shared with The Daily Beast, as described below.

At 7:26 a.m., Schlapp sent a text saying, “I’m in the lobby.” One minute later, the staffer called his supervisor, followed by a call with a senior campaign official. The staffer said the senior official was “immediately horrified” and pulled him off the driving duty, instructing him to tell Schlapp in writing that he’d made him uncomfortable.

Right after that call, the staffer sent Schlapp a text.

“I did want to say I was uncomfortable with what happened last night. The campaign does have a driver who is available to get you to Macon and back to the airport,” he texted, providing the name and phone number of the driver.

“Pls give me a call,” Schlapp replied, followed by, “Thx.” Schlapp then called him three times over the next 20 minutes, according to phone records reviewed by The Daily Beast.

When the staffer did not answer or return the calls, Schlapp sent another text, asking him to look “in your heart” and call back.

“If you could see it in your heart to call me at the end of day. I would appreciate it,” Schlapp texted at 12:12 p.m. “If not I wish you luck on the campaign and hope you keep up the good work.”

The staffer said he never called, and has not had any communication with Schlapp since that text. Schlapp, who has been married to conservative commentator and consultant Mercedes Schlapp since 2002, never asked the staffer what had made him uncomfortable.

In interviews, the staffer was emphatic that throughout the ordeal he felt “nothing but support” from Walker campaign officials, saying he never felt pressure and was given “complete autonomy” over how to move forward. The options included legal and therapeutic support, as well as pressing charges.

But the staffer declined to take legal action at the time, telling The Daily Beast he was concerned that speaking out about Schlapp could carry professional consequences and endanger career advancement. (The staffer had previously accompanied Mercedes Schlapp when she visited Wisconsin during the 2020 election.) He also said he felt that going public at the time would only further aggravate what he described as the “circus of scandals” surrounding Walker’s campaign just weeks out from the election. However, he said he is still weighing his options, especially if Schlapp denies the allegations and does not step down from his post at the ACU.

A senior Walker official, authorized to speak on behalf of the campaign, confirmed the details of the campaign’s involvement as the staffer described it, noting the campaign initiated a meeting between the staffer and legal counsel.

It’s not clear whether Walker himself was made aware of the allegations. He did not reply to a request for comment.

A senior campaign official told The Daily Beast that the campaign had no further contact with Schlapp after the incident and did not believe Schlapp took them up on the private driver. The driver told The Daily Beast he did not recall Schlapp, and could find no record of any passenger with that name in his client logs.

Schlapp—a veteran GOP operative whose decades in the upper echelons of the Republican Party include gigs in Congress and the White House—carries enormous clout in conservative politics. The organization he chairs, the ACU, hosts the annual CPAC events, magnets for die-hard conservative politicians which in recent years have been criticized as an increasingly heated incubator for radicals within the party.

The ACU did not reply to questions for this article.

While Schlapp has personally welcomed the LGBTQ community at the conference, CPAC routinely draws criticism for embracing anti-LGBTQ extremists.

In Feb. 2015, the year Schlapp assumed his ACU leadership, the Log Cabin Republicans—an advocacy group for gay conservatives—complained that CPAC had blocked them as a sponsor for the third straight year. A week later, Schlapp reversed that policy.

“If you are a conservative who is gay, you have a right to be here,” Schlapp said, adding that “doesn’t mean we water down our principles.”

But given the type of guests and rhetoric that enjoy a warm home at CPAC—while the GOP itself increasingly embraces dangerous anti-LGBTQ rhetoric—gay rights advocates have blasted the ACU’s outward efforts at inclusivity as disingenuous and exploitative.

Schlapp, a devout Catholic, has personally taken heat from members of the far right for his acceptance of LGBTQ Republicans, while some conservatives have bluntly denounced Schlapp’s nominal acceptance of the queer community as a betrayal of Christian conservative values.

The criticism flared last year when CPAC hosted an overseas conference in Hungary, whose president, Viktor Orbán, has imposed increasingly oppressive restrictions on LGBTQ citizens. In August, Orbán came to CPAC in Dallas, where he spouted a “hardline stance on gay rights” and received a standing ovation.

Schlapp has also come under fire for his defense of alleged sexual abusers like former President Donald Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who partied at the Schlapps’ home this December alongside Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation.

But when it comes to sexual assault allegations against Democrats, Schlapp hasn’t held his fire, repeatedly targeting President Joe Biden for an unsubstantiated accusation from the 1990s.

“With 5 daughters I’d prefer Biden to be several doors down, not next door,” Schlapp tweeted when those claims first surfaced in 2019.

At the time, Schlapp was entertaining a Senate bid himself. A year later, Schlapp had dropped the political ambitions, but not the mudslinging at Biden.

“Thinking back on the Senate of the 1990s: was there a way for a female staffer who was a sexual assault victim to get fair treatment from an institution that was geared toward protecting senators of both parties,” he wrote on Twitter in 2020. “Biden stressing this event was 27 yrs ago is a bad strategy.”