The takeaway from today’s stunt is that Democrats feel the need to use publicity stunts and ploys.
There’s a reason why Glenn Youngkin has stuck to talking about the issues in the Virginia gubernatorial race while his opponent’s campaign entertained a hoax.
Last month, Laura Windsor was called "the Democrats’ Answer to Sting Artist James O’Keefe" by Will Sommer of the Daily Beast. He presented Windsor’s people as underdog heroes akin to Project Veritas in how they got Glenn Youngkin to answer questions about abortion issues.
Sommer does a decent job giving a history of how Windsor began as some twisted offshoot of the Veritas crowd.
"In response, Windsor launched 'Project Veritas Exposed,' an online dossier with pictures of known O’Keefe operatives and associates. Liberal groups, fearful that they’ve been infiltrated by someone working for O’Keefe, can scour the database and compare job applicants against pictures on the site."
But Sommer is going to have a difficult time trying to pass off Windsor as fair, given how it damaged the McAuliffe campaign’s credibility.
If the Virginia Democrats and McAuliffe could’ve gotten away with the tiki torch photo-op, they would have ran with it.
A local news article framed the issues as such (initially, when compared to the Lincoln Project reframing).
Just remember the facts. They tried tricking you.
Laura Windsor pretended that the Glenn Youngkin incident was legitimate this morning. In an age where social media disinformation runs rampant.
— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor)
This evening, Laura Windsor confessed to orchestrating Project Lincoln’s disinformation campaign.
In my capacity as a communications consultant, I worked w @ProjectLincoln to coordinate today's Youngkin action in Charlottesville. I join them in the fight to defend our democracy from rightwing extremists and call for Glenn Youngkin to denounce Trump’s ‘very fine people.
— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor)
Democrat strategist Joe Trippi also doubled down on participating in this stunt.
It’s why I joined @ProjectLincoln Trump Republicans go low and as @MichaelCohen212 and Lee Atwater have said “there’s a code”. LP ???? will go where Democrats won’t and risk it all to break that frickin code and expose Youngkin and his winking and nodding. https://t.co/fPW4V3bkjR
— Joe Trippi (@JoeTrippi)
In the race between Glenn Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe to become Virginia Governor, the last days of the campaign got particularly spicy.
The earliest signs of the incident of the five tiki torchbearers were treated with skepticism. This as members of the Virginia Democrats were identified as people involved in the stunt. It was raining and cloudy, yet these five individuals who were initially claimed to be white supremacists, showed up at a Glenn Youngkin campaign stop claiming to support him.
The Democratic Party of Virginia claimed to have no knowledge of this incident after the connections to their organization started to come to light.
Statement on Glenn Youngkin’s bus stop earlier today: pic.twitter.com/Hw0svCAW9W
— Andrew Whitley (@AndrewWhitleyVA)
Members of the McAuliffe campaign disavowed the hoax after the fact.
"What happened today is disgusting and distasteful and we condemn it in the strongest terms. Those involved should immediately apologize," McAuliffe’s campaign Manager Chris Bolling told VICE News.
This in spite of the fact two of McAuliffe’s communications team and his social media campaign manager tried initially passing off this incident as real.
"This is disgusting and disqualifying," said Jen Goodman of the McAuliffe campaign in a .
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"The Unite the Right rally was one of the darkest days in the Commonwealth's history. this is who Glenn Youngkin's supporters are," said Christina Freundlich of the McAuliffe campaign in a now deleted tweet.
"Wow. At a campaign stop for Glenn Youngkin this morning, people were holding tiki torches and chanting "we're all in for Glenn." Disgusting reference to the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville." said Charlie Olaf of the McAuliffe campaign in a now deleted tweet.
This all fits the last-minute and desperate framing by the McAuliffe team to try and paint Glenn Youngkin as some kind of Trump clone.
Their emperor has no clothes.