Hillary Clinton’s former spokesman weighed in on the Virginia gubernatorial race Friday, grouping the Republican candidate Ed Gillespie in with the same white supremacists whose rally this summer resulted in the death of an anti-Nazi demonstrator.
“Live look at Ed Gillespie campaign strategy meeting,” Brian Fallon, who spends his time these days advising Democratic candidates and appearing on CNN, said in a tweet.
Live look at Ed Gillespie campaign strategy meeting: pic.twitter.com/izcs57hZUv
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) October 27, 2017
His note included a photo, which was taken in August by Andrew Shurtleff of the Daily Progress, showing tiki torch-wielding white supremacists marching on the University of Virginia. The campus demonstration marked the second time this year that white supremacists have descended on the Old Dominion State to protest the removal of Civil War monuments honoring secessionist heroes.
Fallon’s tweet comes not long after the Gillespie campaign released an ad in which the candidate pledged to preserve the Civil War monuments.
“[Democratic candidate] Ralph Northam will take our statues down,” the ad’s narrator said. “Ed Gillespie will preserve them.”
Gillespie himself then said in the ad, “I’m for keeping them up, and he’s for taking them down. And that’s a big difference in November.”
If you listen carefully, you can hear the dog whistle in that ad. Just kidding. You don’t have to strain at all to hear it. It’s pretty blatant.
The first Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., took place on Aug. 11 and resulted in multiple injuries and one death. Counter-protester Heather D. Heyer was killed after a man drove his car into a crowd of anti-white supremacist demonstrators.
Gillespie, for his part, wasted no time in August condemning the Charlottesville violence and the white supremacists.
“[W]e will emerge from these tragic last few days stronger in our commitment to one another as Virginians. We will continue to love one another and serve one another and we reject the people who came in, largely from outside our Commonwealth and brought their hate, their white supremacism, their neo-Nazism with them,” the GOP candidate said in an interview on August 14.
He added, “I agree with Governor McAuliffe, they need to go home and they need to take that vile hatred with them. It does not belong here in the Commonwealth of Virginia and I know my fellow Virginians and we will emerge from this stronger.”
The Roanoke Times’ editorial board awarded Gillespie’s rapid response to the Charlottesville tragedy with high praise, writing on Aug. 18 that the GOP gubernatorial candidate had, “said and done exactly the right things here.”
“Vote against Gillespie because of his views on tax policy, if you want, but don’t vote against him because of anything related to Charlottesville. He and [his Democratic opponent Ralph Northam] are on the same side here,” they said.
So, back to Fallon: It was clear during the 2016 election that he wasn’t hired because he was particularly quick-witted or that he had some sort of mastery of election data. His talent is that he is a faithful foot soldier and that he lacks the capacity to shame. That Fallon is also extremely lazy about his attacks is a separate issue entirely.
