Pundit and talk radio host Erick Erickson recently went on a rant about how “both parties have nominated terrible candidates whose supporters have decided to behave terribly to bully people into supporting their terrible candidate.” Erickson makes it known he’s still inclined to vote for Trump, but you’d think any prominent right-wing pundit who publicly expresses doubt about Donald Trump two months before the election would be chalked up as a win for Kamala supporters.
But then there’s the Leninist wing of Never Trump. Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, a site largely run by fraudulent conservatives who are funded by left-wing billionaires to help Democrats win elections, really didn’t like Erickson’s tone:
Someone sent me a radio rant by @EWErickson about my disagreement with some at the Dispatch in which he said: ‘Kamala Harris has done nothing but climb the ladder of power since the moment she got up off her knees in front of Willie Brown to put it bluntly to you.’ Swell guy.
Setting aside Erickson’s crude imagery, I’ve covered Kamala Harris’ relationship history more extensively before, but here’s a summary of the facts as we know them: When Harris was a subordinate in the San Francisco DA’s office, she started dating Willie Brown, the most powerful man in California politics, who was 31 years older and married. After the current DA passed over Kamala Harris, a woman who failed the bar exam and is not exactly known for her mastery of the law, Brown was instrumental in alienating the existing DA, and was personally involved in raising money and running Harris’ successful campaign to get elected district attorney. Once in office, Harris let a number of Willie Brown’s friends off the hook when they were facing serious charges — including an egregious case where she let a city contractor and Willie Brown donor skate after endangering people’s lives after defrauding taxpayers by using cheaper, structurally unsound recycled concrete to build bridges and other important structures. This was all reported on in detail by local San Francisco media when it happened, who aren’t exactly in the business of pushing right-wing smears.
And yet, Sarah Longwell thinks Erickson is a bad person because he rather bluntly states the fact that Kamala Harris abased herself personally and engaged in political corruption at the behest of a man who demonstrably advanced her political career. I would have been more circumspect than Erickson, but 26 years after Bill Clinton’s “dalliance with an intern,” I’m supposed to believe Longwell and her colleagues are on their fainting couches because a pundit made a reference to oral sex?
In addition to all of his well-known mistreatment of women as governor and president, one of Clinton’s top aides told Vanity Fair he made a trip Epstein’s notorious island and he spent extensive amounts of time with the notorious pedophile. Decades after the fact, several major liberal pundits finally got around to denouncing his treatment of women in The New York Times and other publications.
Not that any of this made a difference. Bill Clinton was a primetime speaker at the DNC last week, campaigning on behalf of a woman who by all reasonable appearances engaged in political corruption on behalf of a dirty politician she was having a transactional sexual affair with. Weird how these same people were not outraged by that.
At the same time, Trump’s sex life, which however disdainful, was never a matter of public corruption. And yet the whole reason they’re running around saying Trump is a Convicted Felon™ is that the Democratic Party engaged in an all-hands-on-deck effort to try and turn Trump’s attempt to keep an entirely private affair with an onscreen prostitute from becoming public knowledge. By presenting an entirely novel legal theory into a courtroom presided over by a corrupt judge who had donated money, in violation of judicial ethics rules, to Trump’s political opponent, they got a partisan New York jury to buy it.
Ultimately, it’s impossible to argue this incident merits more legal scrutiny than what Harris did in San Francisco. Even the former Democrat governor and attorney general of New York Andrew Cuomo — another politician laid low by a sex scandal less problematic than what Harris got away with in San Francisco — has said, “If his name was not Donald Trump and if he wasn’t running for president … I’m telling you that case would’ve never been brought.”
Now then some people will say, “what about Trump being convicted of sexual assault in New York?” Well, the heavily Democratic New York legislature passed a special law to undo the statute of limitations to make the case possible, and in any event, Trump’s accuser doesn’t even remember what year the assault took place. And while being wary of attacking the credibility of sexual assault accusers might be a good practice, E. Jean Carroll’s various public appearances strongly suggest she had questionable motivations and is a little crazy.
In any event, it’s also worth noting that Carroll’s lawsuit was cooked up by two regular contributors to Longwell’s Bulwark publication, George Conway and Molly Jong-Fast. Ultimately, the lawsuit was bankrolled by megadonor Reid Hoffman, who’s one of the most influential figures in the Democrat Party. Who is Reid Hoffman? Well, he’s the billionaire founder of LinkedIn who has admitted to funding Facebook misinformation modeled after Russian propaganda. Oh and he’s yet another guy who’s taken the Lolita express to pedophile island.
To be clear, this is not about defending Trump’s private life, which is in many ways indefensible. This is about being honest about the state of American politics. If you want to understand why someone as allegedly immoral as Donald Trump wasn’t immediately kicked off the political stage because of his supposedly outrageous character flaws, you merely have to recognize that the American public rightly understands that the Democrat Party is itself fully in the thrall of figures whose personal dealings and sex lives are in many ways worse than Trump’s peccadilloes.
Eight years later, people are still in total denial about this, and maybe you shouldn’t feign outrage over a talk radio guy being cruder about the truth than your sensitive ears can handle. Especially when you’re silent about Kamala Harris’ past, the Clintons’ continued influence, and your friends and allies cashing checks from Reid Hoffman. But other than that, I’m sure Longwell is a swell gal.