Video: In Interview with 2025 VA GOP Lt. Gov. Candidate Pat Herrity, Former Virginia Trump Campaign Chair John Fredericks Says Winsome Sears an “incredibly weak candidate,” VA GOP “looking at a potential wipeout” with Sears at Top of Ticket

This interview, by the former Trump campaign’s Virginia chair and MAGA radio host, John Fredericks (who is very close to Trumpworld), and 2025 VA GOP Lt. Governor candidate Pat Herrity (the sole remaining Republican on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors) is both very entertaining and highly revealing in a number of ways. Check out the following video and highlights for more, including:

• First, Fredericks gives his unvarnished opinion of Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears – currently the presumed 2025 VA GOP gubernatorial nominee – as well as some thoughts on Glenn Youngkin. According to Fredericks, Youngkin is “of course running for president in 2028  – and everything he does is based on Iowa in my judgment.” As for Sears, Fredericks says she got “a lot of issues with MAGA, kind of a never Trumper, now she’s tried to do a turnaround, nobody really believes her…not the strongest candidate that the Republicans could put up by any means.” Ouch.

• Next, before Fredericks introduces Pat Herrity, he notes that another Republican candidate for Lt. Governor, John Reid, is a “former colleague of mine, radio talk show host that I competed with on WRVA, I put him out of business and out of his misery, and now he’s running for lieutenant governor – thank you John, you made a great decision.” LOL

• Then we get into Herrity’s spiel about why he’s running for Lt. Governor, namely that (supposedly) when Democrats had a governing trifecta in Virginia in 2019-2020, a bunch of bad things happened (FALSE! in fact, Democrats passed 100s of pieces of excellent legislation that moved Virginia forward); also that “we got the country on the right path when we elected Donald Trump” (yikes!) and we need to keep that going; and that if Republicans don’t win in Virginia in 2025, all kinds of horrors will be coming, including the end of so-called “Right-to-Work” (aka, anti-union) laws, criminals running amok (this has been the Republicans’ fear-mongering pitch since the 1960s), “more public sector collective bargaining” (OH NOOOOOZ!!!!), etc.

• Challenged by Fredericks about how the other VA GOP Lt. Governor candidates say Herrity’s a “Northern Virginia Fairfax RINO who’s “gonna basically play footsie with Louise Lucas and the other liberals,” Herrity responded that people should “look at my history… I’m the only one who’s had to take a pro-Second Amendment vote…produce an alternative budget to show people how you can balance the budget without tax increases,” that “I haven’t been squishy,” etc. We’ll see how that pitch plays in the Republican primary, but I doubt it will be sufficient.

• Fredericks cites a previous statement by Herrity saying that “you thought it was time for the [Republican] Party to move on from President Trump” – very similar to what Winsome Sears said, and something that “is going to get replayed over and over” – Herrity first tried to claim his statement was “taken entirely out of context” (suuuuure! LOL), and then that he cares about the same issues MAGA cares about – immigration, public safety/crime, fentanyl, etc. – “the revoution of common sense,” supposedly. I mean…sure, whatever works for you, Supervisor Herrity, but we’ll see if it works for Republican primary voters. I’m skeptical.

• This is probably my favorite part of the interview, the “reality check” part. First, Fredericks says Herrity is the favorite for the nomination because he’s from gigantic Fairfax County, because he’s the only GOP Lt. Governor candidate who’s held elective office, etc. But, Fredericks argues, winning the nomination would be a “pyrrhic victory if the top of your ticket loses by eight or 10 – there’s no way you win that race, zero chance…if you lose the top of the ticket by 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Winsome Sears right now is down by 10 to Abigail Spanberger…she’s not a prolific fundraiser, she’s been a Never Trumper, she had that statement out on Cavuto that is killing her with the MAGA base, she’s not gonna turn them out and she is looking at a potential wipeout, which is also going to take down five seats in the House, two seats in the Senate and Virginia will be ruled by communists for the next generation.” So, “if that happens…how do you win this race...how do you overcome what appears now to be an incredibly weak candidate at the top of the ticket that is going to drag you down?” First off, note that Herrity does NOT push back on ANY of that, specifically that Sears is a super-weak candidate who is likely to get crushed. Instead, Herrity just talks about how he’s “a prolific fundraiser…a smart campaigner,” that “I
  will be able to deliver Fairfax County at 40%…and if we get 40% in Fairfax County it’s game”; that “angry people vote, happy people stay home,” so “we need to…make our people angry about what’s going to happen to Virginia in the  2025 if we don’t have either the governor’s mansion or the House.”

• Finally, here’s Pat Herrity attempting to square the circle of being a fan of telework for many years (including working with then-Rep. Frank Wolf to put it in place back in the 1990s), but now Trump’s ordered all federal employees back to the office. Herrity kind of flounders on this one, saying he thinks “we’ve swung the pendulum too far AWAY from telework” (???). Who knows…