Reaction to newly surfaced videos this week of California Democrat gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter being an absolute horror of a human being to others is largely summed up as, “Wow, what a witch.” But there’s something deeper to consider when you put it in the context of Democrats more broadly and their extensively documented tendency to wreak havoc on innocent and unassuming people.
For the uninitiated, one of the videos featuring Porter has her in a contentious back-and-forth with a California-based TV journalist asking the loud-mouth congresswoman if she feels the need to appeal to any voters who supported President Trump in the last election. To that wildly offensive query — How dare a Democrat be questioned whether they can persuade potentially reluctant voters? — Porter threatened to walk out of the interview, scolding the journalist for giving her an “unhappy experience.” In another video, which is several years old, Porter is seen talking to a web camera with a smile — this was an apparently more happy experience — before she erupts in a volcanic rage at a woman who steps into view behind her. “Get out of my f-cking shot,” she says with the hardest f sound her two massive front teeth could muster.
This woman is a renowned monstrosity. Text messages between Porter and one of her congressional office staffers made public in 2022 showed her haranguing the poor girl over having been infected with a highly contagious, airborne virus called “Covid” and Porter blaming the staffer for spreading it. “It’s really disappointing,” the then-congresswoman said to her. The staffer profusely apologized and explained she had a lapse in following the office’s medical testing protocol due to the death of a loved one. “Well you gave me covid,” Porter replied. “In 25 months, it took you not following the rules to get me sick.”
In response to the video wherein Porter is screaming profanity at an adult woman behind her, Porter said it’s because she holds her staff to a “high standard,” and she said she was hoping to be more “intentional at demonstrating my gratitude” for the peons who do her dirty work. Independent journalist Josh Barro perfectly summarized the comment as “stereotypical therapy-speak from the sort of person who is rude because she thinks being politically progressive is a substitute for being interpersonally pleasant.”
Barro said it as he could be talking about any random miserable person, but this is a pattern specific to Democrats: unpleasant, antisocial people who belittle and demean anyone they perceive as inferior (which, incidentally, includes anyone unlucky enough to staff their offices and anyone who can’t help them win reelection).
Everyone working on Capitol Hill or paying granular attention to politics in Washington knows this. Stories of Democrat leaders behaving toward their staffs in abhorrent ways are legion. A lot of those stories are on record and many more are casually shared among people who work in town. When I lived in Washington, a friend of mine who resided near the home of Georgia Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock told me he would see the senator dropped off each day in a car driven by what was obviously an office staffer. That staffer would get out of the driver’s seat, walk to the back to open the door for Warnock, who handed the staffer his bag. The two would then walk to the senator’s front door, with Warnock in the lead. Once Warnock was inside the doorstep, he would take his bag and the staffer would then call a ride share service to pick him up, since the car he had driven was Warnock’s.
Mind you, staffers are not paid by the members they support. They’re paid by American taxpayers, with money allocated to each congressional office. And it is simply a point of fact that you never hear these stories about Republican members. Tell me one story you’ve heard about Donald Trump or J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio or Mike Johnson or any Republican treating their official staffs this way. I’ll wait.
It’s so humiliating, you have to wonder why anyone subjects themselves to working for a Democrat. As vice president, Kamala Harris was known for this same type of conduct. As little regard I have for anonymous attacks, they were so frequently published about Harris, and in line with complaints about other Democrats, that they have to count for something. “With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence,” read one quote from an unnamed “former staffer” in a Washington Post article in late 2021. “So you’re constantly sort of propping up a bully and it’s not really clear why.”
Recall that negative reports on Harris’ office culture were so frequent that one of her staffers was compelled to stage the gloomiest photo of himself sitting at a desk, staring blankly at his computer screen. He actually posted the picture on social media along with the grave personal allegation, “[I] absolutely love my job.” It was appropriately mocked by the internet.
Just a few days after she announced her ill-fated campaign for president in 2019, the New York Times reported that staff members of Democrat Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar had a “ritual” of saving “potentially damaging emails” from the lawmaker in the event that they were ever needed as “evidence of her conduct for their own reputational protection.” That same report said Klobuchar was “known to throw office objects in frustration, including binders and phones, in the direction of aides;” it said she required maternity leave recipients to pay back any time off should they resign from their positions; and it said “former aides said they were especially troubled by her willingness … to embarrass staff members over minor missteps or with odd requests.” Like Katie Porter, Klobuchar has excused her appalling behavior by citing her “high expectations.”
Then there’s my favorite: the late Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat who represented Texas and sported a hulking silhouette reminiscent of Shrek. Again, the stories of Jackson Lee terrorizing her staff are innumerable. By far the most shocking, though, was the 2023 publication of an audio recording in which the abusive congresswoman was heard telling a staffer who displeased her, “I want you to have a f-cking brain” and referring to another staffer as “sitting up there like a fat-ss.” She called them both “f-ck-ups.”
You simply do not hear stories like this from Republicans in Congress or the West Wing. Antisocial behavior is a Democrat thing.
