Glenn Youngkin was boosted into the Virginia governor’s mansion by a media—led by The Washington Post—portrayed him as a friendly, fleece-wearing departure from the Trump wing of the Republican Party. This week, as thousands of Virginia students walked out of school to protest Youngkin’s effort to reverse protections for LGBTQ students, the Post was back at it, with an in-depth look at how Youngkin is supposedly “straddling the GOP’s ‘big lie’ divide.”
The answer? The legitimacy of U.S. democracy is not a litmus test for Youngkin. He only cares if someone is a) a Republican who b) could help bolster his own national ambitions. That’s not straddling a divide. It’s supporting people who have made clear that they will participate in a coup attempt.
RELATED STORY: Thousands of students walk out of school to protest Republican governor's anti-queer agenda
“You’re comfortable,” the moderator of a discussion at the Texas Tribune Festival asked Youngkin, “supporting Republicans that have issues or dispute the outcome of the last election?”
“I am comfortable supporting Republican candidates,” Youngkin answered. “And we don’t agree on everything.” So that’s Glenn Youngkin saying that whether to overturn the will of the voters is a simple matter of disagreement that is nowhere near as important as partisan loyalty. “We don’t agree on everything” sounds like a difference of opinion over china patterns, not whether the person who wins an election should become president—and that’s what Youngkin wants. He’s saying, in word and deed, that this is not an important question. And the Post is going along with it, treating it as a horserace issue, with the major question raised by his “straddling the GOP’s ‘big lie’ divide” being whether he can pull it off without angering too many people on one side of the divide or the other.
Bill Kristol remains, implausibly, a rare Republican truth-teller on this one. “For all the talk about a ‘balancing act,’ where’s the balance? What big lie, election denying, extremist Republican has Youngkin refused to endorse?” Kristol said in an email to the Post. “Is there even one? Youngkin seems to be party first, no questions asked, down the line.”
Youngkin has stumped for Kari Lake, the Arizona gubernatorial nominee who called it “disqualifying” and "sickening" when a primary rival refused to agree that “we had a corrupt, stolen election.”
He’s stumped for Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt as he runs for governor. Schmidt asked the Supreme Court to take lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 election.
He’s stumped for Paul LePage, the former Maine governor now running again after having moved to and back from Florida. “I tell you, this is clearly a stolen election,” LePage said in November 2020. “I think 70 million [Trump voters] all recognize that too many votes were illegitimate votes. People have voted more than once. I’m really concerned that Democrats do not want honest and fair elections. They just want to win at all costs.” More recently, LePage has toned down the outright election denial, while continuing to suggest election fraud.
Youngkin’s support for LePage also comes despite LePage's long history of racist comments, including a 2016 statement that law enforcement should “try to identify the enemy and the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin.”
But, according to Youngkin, “What I firmly believe is that all states deserve a Republican governor.” So case closed, he supports the racist who falsely said the 2020 election was stolen. And he wants credit for also supporting Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who didn’t let Trump strong-arm him into trying to overturn Georgia’s presidential election.
In fact, Youngkin himself refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Biden’s 2020 win until after he’d won the Republican gubernatorial primary. His wink-wink answer at the time was that Biden had been sworn in and was living in the White House—not a denial that Biden was president or a direct claim that the election had been stolen, but a refusal to say, “The election was not stolen, and Biden is the legitimate president.” After winning his primary, he shifted toward acknowledging the legitimacy of the election and Biden’s presidency, and the media let him because, after all, he hadn’t quite denied it before. He kept sucking up to the election deniers, though, with a lot of “election integrity” talk and an embrace of one of Virginia’s top election deniers as a campaign surrogate.
Glenn Youngkin wants to be president someday. He knows that to win a primary in today’s Republican Party, he will need to be on the good side of the Trump base, and that means supporting Trump’s Big Lie. But he also clearly believes—unlike, say, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—that winning a general election requires him to be seen as not quite a Trump Republican himself. In this, he benefits from a complicit media that constantly boosts Youngkin’s different-kind-of-Republican image at the top of the page while relegating reporting on his racist dog whistles and anti-LGBTQ moves to a much lower profile. And the Post is clearly determined to keep that up even in the face of the brave activism and terrified tears of Virginia teenagers as Youngkin takes aim at their rights.
RELATED STORIES:
Republican governor tries to reverse protections for trans youth in Virginia public schools
Youngkin asks Virginia parents to turn in teachers for teaching 'divisive' concepts
Youngkin ad silent on what book includes 'the most explicit material you can imagine'
The answer? The legitimacy of U.S. democracy is not a litmus test for Youngkin. He only cares if someone is a) a Republican who b) could help bolster his own national ambitions. That’s not straddling a divide. It’s supporting people who have made clear that they will participate in a coup attempt.
RELATED STORY: Thousands of students walk out of school to protest Republican governor's anti-queer agenda
“You’re comfortable,” the moderator of a discussion at the Texas Tribune Festival asked Youngkin, “supporting Republicans that have issues or dispute the outcome of the last election?”
“I am comfortable supporting Republican candidates,” Youngkin answered. “And we don’t agree on everything.” So that’s Glenn Youngkin saying that whether to overturn the will of the voters is a simple matter of disagreement that is nowhere near as important as partisan loyalty. “We don’t agree on everything” sounds like a difference of opinion over china patterns, not whether the person who wins an election should become president—and that’s what Youngkin wants. He’s saying, in word and deed, that this is not an important question. And the Post is going along with it, treating it as a horserace issue, with the major question raised by his “straddling the GOP’s ‘big lie’ divide” being whether he can pull it off without angering too many people on one side of the divide or the other.
Bill Kristol remains, implausibly, a rare Republican truth-teller on this one. “For all the talk about a ‘balancing act,’ where’s the balance? What big lie, election denying, extremist Republican has Youngkin refused to endorse?” Kristol said in an email to the Post. “Is there even one? Youngkin seems to be party first, no questions asked, down the line.”
Youngkin has stumped for Kari Lake, the Arizona gubernatorial nominee who called it “disqualifying” and "sickening" when a primary rival refused to agree that “we had a corrupt, stolen election.”
He’s stumped for Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt as he runs for governor. Schmidt asked the Supreme Court to take lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 election.
He’s stumped for Paul LePage, the former Maine governor now running again after having moved to and back from Florida. “I tell you, this is clearly a stolen election,” LePage said in November 2020. “I think 70 million [Trump voters] all recognize that too many votes were illegitimate votes. People have voted more than once. I’m really concerned that Democrats do not want honest and fair elections. They just want to win at all costs.” More recently, LePage has toned down the outright election denial, while continuing to suggest election fraud.
Youngkin’s support for LePage also comes despite LePage's long history of racist comments, including a 2016 statement that law enforcement should “try to identify the enemy and the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin.”
But, according to Youngkin, “What I firmly believe is that all states deserve a Republican governor.” So case closed, he supports the racist who falsely said the 2020 election was stolen. And he wants credit for also supporting Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who didn’t let Trump strong-arm him into trying to overturn Georgia’s presidential election.
In fact, Youngkin himself refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Biden’s 2020 win until after he’d won the Republican gubernatorial primary. His wink-wink answer at the time was that Biden had been sworn in and was living in the White House—not a denial that Biden was president or a direct claim that the election had been stolen, but a refusal to say, “The election was not stolen, and Biden is the legitimate president.” After winning his primary, he shifted toward acknowledging the legitimacy of the election and Biden’s presidency, and the media let him because, after all, he hadn’t quite denied it before. He kept sucking up to the election deniers, though, with a lot of “election integrity” talk and an embrace of one of Virginia’s top election deniers as a campaign surrogate.
Glenn Youngkin wants to be president someday. He knows that to win a primary in today’s Republican Party, he will need to be on the good side of the Trump base, and that means supporting Trump’s Big Lie. But he also clearly believes—unlike, say, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—that winning a general election requires him to be seen as not quite a Trump Republican himself. In this, he benefits from a complicit media that constantly boosts Youngkin’s different-kind-of-Republican image at the top of the page while relegating reporting on his racist dog whistles and anti-LGBTQ moves to a much lower profile. And the Post is clearly determined to keep that up even in the face of the brave activism and terrified tears of Virginia teenagers as Youngkin takes aim at their rights.
RELATED STORIES:
Republican governor tries to reverse protections for trans youth in Virginia public schools
Youngkin asks Virginia parents to turn in teachers for teaching 'divisive' concepts
Youngkin ad silent on what book includes 'the most explicit material you can imagine'