The splashy mainstream media news today is that Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Special Counsel, withdrew from his Senate confirmation hearing after texts surfaced in which he expressed distasteful ideas. A few Republican senators indicated they would not support him, so he had little choice but to bow out.
In an episode that closely resembles the flap over the Young Republicans in New York, Ingrassia texted views that are well outside the accepted mainstream in Washington:
“Never trust a chinaman or Indian.”
“We need competent white men in positions of leadership.”
“MLK Jr. was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell.”
“I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it.”
People say and do stupid things when they let their guard down — especially, for some reason, behind a screen. In particular, bragging about a Nazi streak is well beyond that. The Nazis were among the most evil regimes in the 20th century, and no good person deems himself a fellow traveler. Ingrassia was right to withdraw, and it would be even better if Trump would make a statement about how this sort of toxic thinking doesn’t belong in his MAGA movement.
But isn’t it interesting that Republicans around the country immediately condemned and pulled support for Ingrassia and the New York Young Republicans when they learned what awful things those men said? As Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon argued this week at The Free Press, “Bad ideas are like cancer. If you don’t deal with them quickly and decisively, they spread.”
There’s a hot debate about this currently raging on the Right, though that’s a discussion for another day. For now, I’ll say this: Dillon is right. If the conservative movement doesn’t police itself, steadfastly remaining true to First Principles, it will rot from the inside.
It’s even worse if a movement starts out on the wrong side. Take the Democrat Party, for example.
Bad ideas yield worse ideas, and wrongheaded people soon become radical extremists. That’s now normal among Democrats. When you allow a self-declared socialist like Bernie Sanders to become mainstream in the party, you end up with people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rising in the House and a radical Muslim socialist like Zohran Mamdani poised to win the mayor’s race in America’s largest city. Full-on socialism in New York City will have disastrous consequences nationwide.
When you don’t rein in the most radical voices, you also end up with Senate candidates who have literal Nazi tattoos, like Democrat Graham Platner in Maine. “I am not a secret Nazi,” he protested in a sentence no one ever wants to hear a candidate feel compelled to utter. And what — he’s not a Nazi, or it’s not a secret?
He’s on the record asking why black people “don’t tip” at restaurants, calling “all” cops bastards, blaming rape victims for their own assault, and declaring himself a “communist.” His defense? He was drunk when he said those things. As for the tattoo, Platner says he didn’t know what it meant, but even his former campaign manager is calling BS on that one. Genevieve McDonald resigned from his campaign last week over the aforementioned off-color comments, and she said Platner is “a history buff” who “knows damn well what [the tattoo] means.”
I mentioned Bernie Sanders above, and for a reason. He endorsed Platner and is standing by him in the wake of all the controversy. “I personally think he is an excellent candidate,” Sanders said this week. Asked about the Nazi tattoo, the Soviet-loving socialist blustered about the “corrupt campaign finance system” and how “we don’t have enough candidates in this country that will take on the powers that be and fight for the working class.”
Who says the Nazis and Soviets can’t get along? Fascists and communists are, after all, both on the Left.
Circling the wagons is basically a muscle reflex for Democrats. It was a whole three weeks ago when Americans learned that Virginia’s Democrat candidate for state attorney general expressed a desire to kill his political opponents. Other Democrats basically yawned and yelled, “But Trump!”
I’m with National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke, who has “developed a strategy to avoid being caught saying” horrendous things: “Don’t say those things in the first place.” He quips, “When practiced concurrently with another useful strategy — not believing any of those things in the first place — it is almost foolproof.”
That’s a good indicator of why certain individuals find themselves in the hot seat.
