Am I at all entertained or tickled by the humiliating new details reported about the very creepy online activity of anti-Trump activist and Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver? Nope.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something to learn from it!
The New York Times reported Sunday that Weaver, who has a professional history advising high-profile Republicans such as the late Sen. John McCain and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, also has a long history sending unsolicited sexual messages to young men online. One of the men was as young as 14 when the contact with Weaver began. In total, 21 men said this happened to them.
Making things worse for Weaver, who is a father and married to a woman, is that there appeared to be a pattern wherein he would suggest helping his targets with professional opportunities in politics in exchange for an intimate relationship.
“Help you other times,” he said in one message, according to the report. “Give advice, counsel, help with bills. You help me … sensually.”
None of the men accused Weaver of anything illegal, and he has said he believed that the conversations were consensual. But what makes the whole sleazy affair important is that it serves as a reminder that the people who claim to be the guardians of virtue are the ones we have to be most concerned about.
The entire point of the Lincoln Project is to oppose former President Donald Trump and all Republicans who the founders and leaders deem morally reprehensible.
The people who make up the organization, including the perpetually angry Rick Wilson, have spent the last four years lecturing everyone on how repugnant Trump and his supporters are. It was people like Wilson and Weaver who held the keys to all that is pure in American democracy.
Well, we see that’s not true, as has often turned out to be the case with the loudest voices to complain that Trump morally degraded us all. They’re either just as bad or worse while pretending to be something else.
John Weaver helps us remember that.
