How much b.s. and how many lies can you find in this article about Glenn Youngkin eyeing the White House? Here are just a few that jumped out at me.
- First of all, the unintentionally hilarious subheader: “The governor remains ‘focused on Virginia,’ he says.” In fact, Youngkin isn’t in the least bit “focused on Virginia,” other than using it as a springboard for his presidential ambitions – based largely on a concocted, fake, false, exaggerated. absurd narrative about his performance as governor – and where Virginia was before he became governor.
- “I am not one of those leaders who spend any time thinking about what’s next.” To the contrary, Youngkin spends a LOT of time and energy thinking about his political strategy, and also paying others to help him think through and plan that strategy.
- Youngkin claims his upcoming trips to IA and SC, which are blatantly obviously about his presidential ambitions, have nothing to do with his desire to run for president ( “Not, Youngkin says, that that’s on his mind.”). That’s just a flat-out howler.
- Youngkin says “I have some family there — my grandfather was from Iowa.” Yeah, maybe so, but that is NOT why he’s going to speak at the annual Republican Lincoln Dinner there.
- According to Youngkin, “It’s humbling that people are so interested in what’s happening in Virginia.” In fact, I’d wager that the vast majority of people who live outside of Virginia, including in Iowa and South Carolina, don’t think much about what’s going on in Virginia.
- “Virginia is known as the “mother of presidents” because eight of the 47 were born here, the most of any state. But no Virginia-born candidate has won the White House in more than a century.” In fact, some of the main reasons why Virginia produced numerous presidents early on in the country’s history were a skewed electoral college which favored the slave-owning South; plus the fact that Virginia was very populous (including slaves, which counted as 3/5 of a person for electoral purposes) and wealthy (mostly off of plantations/slave labor). But, as the article points out, “no Virginia-born candidate has won the White House in more than a century” – the last being Woodrow Wilson in 1912.
- “Youngkin will be making a case for himself as MAGA with a softer edge.” This is just bizarre and laughable; in fact, Youngkin has supported Trump on pretty much everything, with his supposed “softer edge” having overwhelmingly disappeared since 2021.
- Anyway, bottom line as Mark Rozell puts it for Youngkin’s upcoming travels to key early Republican presidentia primary states: “It’s not high tourist season in Iowa, so there can only be one other reason for his travels there.”