Virginia Sen. Mark Warner told a gathering of supporters in Staunton this past weekend that “this is it” for him. It is his last run for the U.S. Senate seat he first won in 2008 after serving as Virginia’s governor.
Funny, you don’t have to look hard in the archives to find a famous video from his first campaign where he said that he’d only run twice. (I’ll save you the trouble.)
Moreover, he said that it was “what you do for part of your life, not all of your life.”
Warner is one of the most active social media “content creators” in D.C. He regularly posts rants about President Donald Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin from the passenger seat of his car as he is being driven around. They are meant to look like a thought just struck him, and he had to pick up his smartphone and hit record.
Like many people, especially in politics, who think they know how to “do what Trump does,” meaning making dance-hall comments in social media posts and calling out political “opponents,” Virginia’s senior senator frequently comes off aggressive, hostile and petulant.
Take this post from his “Shotgun Sessions,” as I call them (from the nickname for the person in the passenger seat of a car), where he accuses the president of insider trading and of running a pay-to-play scam for his buddies to be in on it early:
Any evidence? Since this is not a news interview, he is unchallenged. He’s becoming a more animated version of Sen. Harry “Romney’s Taxes” Reid. And he’s one of the better ones.
Up until last week, news anchors, just pleased to have someone with such gravitas as the vice chair of the oxymoronically named Senate Intelligence Committee on their show, wouldn’t even question him, never mind “fact-check” him like they do Trump.
Then, after the president’s prime-time address to the nation where he exposed that 220 million voter registrations had been stolen by the Chinese, Warner went on with CBS News’ Tony Dokoupil and chastened the network, which had carried the address live, for presenting the speech “as news, as opposed to a rehash of falsehoods” and said journalists have a duty to push back on such claims.
Dokoupil wasn’t having it and engaged in a shout-down with the senator. The anchor pointed out that CBS had brought Warner on specifically to scrutinize the president’s assertions, had provided fact-checking and analysis throughout, and that Warner was now giving the very context and pushback he was insisting that CBS provide.
Lost in the backwash of the skirmish was Warner’s response when asked by Dokoupil if he had “heard anything new” from the president, and Warner said, “no.”
Wait. You KNEW that 220 million Americans’ voter records were now in the hands of China? When were you going to mention that to us?
Chum was in the water and now anchors no longer seemed to fear the tech billionaire turned lifelong senator.
Just three days later, ABC News anchor Jonathan Karl interrupted the senator live on the Sunday morning show “This Week” to correct him on Virginia voter laws. Warner began to say, “In Virginia, we have voter ID and photo ID!”
Karl interrupted: “That’s actually not the case. I’m a Virginia voter. You don’t need to show a photo ID in Virginia.”
While it is fun to watch the formerly untouchable Virginia senator become the lunch special, I spoke with some of the folks who hope to win the GOP nomination to face Warner in November. I wanted to know their reaction to the senator’s admission that he knew that 220 million Americans’ voter records were now in the hands of China.
Kim Farfington told me: “It’s been his track record all along. If you follow me on Facebook, social media, and on my press releases, this is exactly what I’m talking about with Mark Warner not understanding what people really need. They need accountability and they need transparency and he is not supporting Virginians at all.”
David Williams told me: “I will provide that accountability. Yeah, and that’s what we need to get the SAVE America Act passed, period, point blank. That’s what our president is trying to do.”
I could not catch up with Bert Mizusawa at the event we were all at. He did post this to his Facebook account regarding the president’s revelation: “This is insane! Trump just unclassified a bunch of information suggesting major election fraud over the past few elections. This is exactly why the SAVE America Act MUST be passed.”
Sure, it’s fun to see the news anchors pushing back on a Democrat, but as a kid of the Watergate era, I still want to ask, “What did the senator know, and when did he know it?”
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