There’s no doubt that current, right-wingnut Virginia Attorney General (AG) Jason Miyares is horrible, but is he the worst AG in Virginia history? It’s hard to say he is, given how horrendously bad far-right-extremist, climate-science-denying, comparing-immigrants-to-rats AG Ken Cuccinelli was. A very short list of Cuccinelli’s litany of horrors includes:
- He compared immigrants to rats, ranted (falsely) that we’re being “invaded,” etc.
- He waged war on climate science for years, including a relentless and disgraceful assault against leading climate scientist Michael Mann
- He’s a raging (and raving) homophobe.
- He’s also a “birther,” a “states rights” extremist, a tinfoil hat wacko who believes the government is tracking his kids via Social Security numbers, etc.
- In August 2020, as the NY Times reported, “The acting secretary of homeland security, Chad F. Wolf, and his deputy, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, were appointed to their posts in violation of federal law, Congress’s watchdog determined.”
- Cuccinelli claimed he didn’t remember “Trump repeatedly calling the 2020 election ‘rigged’” even though “Trump used the word ‘rigged’ in 3 tweets 24 hours after losing the election” as well as many times leading up to the election. Which means that Cuccinelli – who’s an extremist, bigot, etc. but is NOT stupid – must be lying about this.
- As the WaPo reported back in July 2022, “Text messages for former President Donald Trump’s acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli are missing for a key period leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to four people briefed on the matter and internal emails.” As 1/6/21 select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson put it, “It is extremely troubling that the issue of deleted text messages related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol is not limited to the Secret Service, but also includes Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, who were running DHS at the time.”
So yeah, the guy’s a complete nightmare. And now, for his next act…drumroll please…yep, “the Cooch” is ditching Trump and instead endorsing Florida’s authoritarian-if-not-outright-fascistic Gov. Ron DeSantis for president. Check out the following video, in which “the Cooch” talks about the launch of his “‘Never Back Down PAC @Nvrbackdown24 to encourage @GovRonDeSantis to run for President in 2024.” Among the many lies and bizarre comments in this video:
- “The future is not Joe Biden. America’s future is Ron DeSantis.” (In fact, the future is very much – or, to put it another way, had better be! – Joe Biden’s vision of America, not Ron DeSantis’ dark, dystopian, anti-democracy, anti-women’s-reproductive-freedom vision of America.)
- “Gov. DeSantis has a proven record defending freedom, defending parental rights…defending the unborn, defending our children. And Gov. DeSantis has acted to protect our children from Disney like no one in history.” (This is complete blather, not even sure where to start on the lunacy here.)
- DeSantis supposedly “has stood up to the radical education establishment and their ‘woke’ politics they have brought into the classroom.” (In fact, there’s no “radical education establishment,” it’s simply called “public education,” and who even knows what Cooch means by “woke politics,” other than that he doesn’t want African-American history or anything about LGBTQ people being talked about in school.)
- DeSantis supposedly “has made Florida the #1 destination for Americans looking for more freedom and a brighter future.” (To the contrary, DeSantis is an authoritarian who has restricted people’s freedom, and whose vision is the opposite of “brighter”)
- “When Gov. DeSantis is President DeSantis, there won’t be any Chinese spy balloons drifting across America.” (In fact, there were numerous Chinese spy balloons drifting across America when Trump was president – lol).
Ken Cuccinelli, who NYT (via @maggieNYT and @MichaelCBender and me) reported last weekend was circulating delegate rule changes for states, announces he is forming a pro-DeSantis group, the Never Back Down PAC. https://t.co/wEj3tap99vhttps://t.co/4hemS6QwRp
— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) March 9, 2023
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
