I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. I hope you got real time with your friends and your family. I did — most of mine was in Wisconsin with my people, and it was good.
There was one blip. Work got in the way exactly once, and it came in the form of a prolonged argument with my conspiracy-theory-loving nemesis, Laura Loomer, over her absolutely disgusting attacks on Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio.
Here’s what happened: A deranged Republican lunatic lunged at Acton while carrying multiple firearms and another weapon on top of that. Several people were hurt. Thankfully, Amy was not.
And here’s how I found out about it: I logged onto X in the middle of an otherwise pleasant afternoon (always a mistake) and found Laura Loomer attacking Acton for showing up late to her own event — blaming the lateness on the bullshit story they have manufactured out of thin air that Amy is some kind of alcoholic. She isn’t. It’s a lie, and it has always been a lie. A woman almost got killed and their instinct, within minutes, was to run the smear one more time.
Today’s rant is sponsored by Ground News.
Lately, I’ve found myself asking a simple question when I read the news: what am I not being shown? Not because I’m trying to “both sides” everything—but because outrage is good for clicks, and clarity usually isn’t.
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The attacks Loomer has run in coordination with the Ohio Republican Party — and make no mistake about it, those two are working together, have been vile from the beginning. They’ve hurled vicious slurs at her. They’ve lied about her record. They’ve attacked her for trauma she survived in her own life.
Brick by brick they built a climate where the most unstable person in the room could hear all of it and conclude that Amy Acton was fair game. And in that climate, the brother of a Republican lobbyist — a lobbyist who previously had to quit his job when it was discovered he was a pedophile — felt like he could go and do what I believe was an attempted attack on her.
Now Loomer is on X losing her mind, claiming the whole thing was staged. That we staged it.
Staged it to do what, exactly? Amy Acton is the frontrunner to be the next governor of Ohio. Frontrunners don’t need to manufacture attempts on their own lives. There is no version of this where the upside is worth it, and everybody knows it.
So I said what I actually think: that it may well have been one of her own people who did this, and that her frantic staging attacks looks an awful lot like overcompensation. That’s when she threatened to sue me.
Which brings us back to where we started. I would love it. It would be genuinely hilarious if Laura Loomer, of all people, sued me, of all people. The deposition alone would be worth the legal fees — sit her down under oath and walk her line by line through everything she’s said about Amy Acton, and see how much of it she’s willing to repeat with consequences attached. I’ll clear my calendar. I’ll bring snacks.
Because here’s what she can’t sue her way out of: whether or not one of her people pulled this, she is complicit in it. She spent months lying about Amy Acton to an audience that includes some of the least stable people in American politics. You don’t get to pour gasoline for a month and then act shocked when something catches.
It’s just one more reminder that every accusation from the right is a confession. They tell you we stage things because they stage things. That’s how they think about their own supporters — as an audience to be manipulated into sympathy. A lot of people believe what happened at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was staged. I don’t know if it was or it wasn’t. What I know is that it was weird as hell and I don’t buy the story we were handed.
What a sad, miserable excuse for a political party the GOP has become — one effectively run by Laura Loomer, a close personal adviser to the President of the United States. Trump hasn’t said a thing about this. Amy’s opponent, Vivek Ramaswamy, couldn’t be bothered to put out a statement under his own name; he let his communications director do it for him, and it took roughly twenty-four hours before I saw him on camera saying anything at all. Absolutely disgusting.
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Political violence has gone up over the last ten years and I won’t pretend otherwise. Most of that, in my opinion, comes out of economic and political turmoil. Some of it is downstream of Donald Trump. But there are other players here too, including foreign actors who would love nothing more than to keep our government tearing itself apart. I firmly believe there are foreign hands feeding Laura Loomer some of the slop she puts out, and I hope that gets investigated the moment Democrats take back Congress.
Let me end this very messy rant with one thought. In a world full of Vivek Ramaswamys — do-nothing liars who con people and have no real interest in improving a single life — be an Amy Acton.
Amy Acton stayed behind to help people who were hurt in an attack aimed at her. She could have run. She could have spent the week manufacturing cheap political moments at her opponent’s expense, and nobody would have blamed her. Instead she had a message of unity and safety, and she put it into action by helping people. That’s what elected officials are supposed to do — figure out how to be useful in your community, then go be useful. Instead we’ve got some of the most corrupt, deranged grifters on the planet, from Trump to Ramaswamy on down through a million candidates up and down the ballot who don’t give a damn about you or me. And yes, there are plenty of Democrats like that too. I’m not going to pretend this is a purely partisan disease.
Here’s the part that scares me most. When this stuff happens — the violence, the lies, the smears, the case where a public figure had his kids taken from him because a woman lied and said he’d abused them, because she didn’t like his politics — it makes good people less likely to run for office. That’s not a side effect.
But the only way out is through. We need good people to run. We need you to run, or organize, or get involved however you can, because we cannot keep handing this country to the worst among us. Somebody has to take the plunge and dive off the deep end with the rest of us, even though it’s terrifying. That’s the only way we ever cut this malignant tumor out of American life.
With urgency,
—Mike
P.S. If you ever read a headline and think “there’s more to this than I’m being told,” that’s exactly why I use Ground News. It helps you see what’s being covered—and what isn’t. Check it out here →
I live in Ohio. Already known as a corrupt Republican enclave that competes with Trump for shady ventures, gerrymandering, closing polling locations.
The ads run against Sherrod Brown, Amy Acton are way past exaggeration into libel.
I’m tired of crazy immoral people threatening nonsense lawsuits.
Loomer is competing for attention.
you should respond to Loomer with a sarcastic “ooooooooo! We’re quaking with fear”, to call out her nonsense bluff.