Jon Husted Is the Fakest Republican in America

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. We are continuing our running series of crazy extreme Republicans trying to bring a modicum of balance to the world. And one of the mainstream media decides that Trump is so crazy. That's like it's hard to give attention to some of the other crazy Republicans. And so I got to they got to bring a fake balance and focus on kind of random extreme stuff Democrats say. And it's unfortunate because there's a big list of characters running all across the country in Republican races. Too many for us to even get to in the series to be honest. So we're focused mostly one or two personal preferences, but mostly on the state wide Republicans running in swing or swingish states. And for this edition, I want to turn to John who's dead in Ohio just just cards in the table. Chad is not as crazy or as extreme as some of the other candidates we've talked about, you know, Mike Collins in Georgia who John Ossoff kind of just twisted the knife on him and the debate the other night or running for governor in Arizona Andy Biggs is like a point person on the January 6th insurrection. Who's dead was like a traditional regular Republican who has gone along with Trump as a and had a dash of corruption on the side as well. And that makes me hate him more actually. Of all the candidates we've talked about, I think John who's dead is the one that I have the most personal dislike for. Because number one, he knows he knows better. And number two, it's just so fake. And the whole thing is fake. His whole campaign is whole persona. He wants the mag is to think he's a mag. He wants the, you know, swing voting suburban former Republicans to think he's one of them. He's nothing. He's nothing. He just wants power for himself, money and power for his friends. And in a lot of ways, I will take a crazy idea log over somebody that is this hollow at their core, particularly, you know, given the context. He's running for Senate Ohio against shared brown. Obviously, we did the big fundraiser in Dayton for the Haitians in Springfield a couple weeks ago. And to have someone be so hollow and cowardly in the face of these atrocities that are happening to their neighbors, to people in their state, to their constituents. For me, that just just makes what John who says is doing particularly noxious and unacceptable. So let's go through the worst hits on his resume. I want to start with the data centers. This is a thing he's trying to fix right now. There's some bill going through Congress. That is allegedly going to help alleviate the costs on ratepayers and the Republicans are letting John who said be the sponsor on that because they know he has so much baggage when it comes to the data centers. Highlands have seen the second largest utility rate increases in the country over the past year, who said played such a large role in bringing the data centers to Ohio that he was made the face of the data centers. He led the charge to give billions in tax breaks to the out-of-state corporations building the data centers in Ohio. The editor of Cleveland.com referred to him as the data center's best friend. Just kind of a human data center lover and now he realizes the political toll that's taking on him and like in everything else with his phony persona, he's trying to change it at this late hour to try to appeal to more people. And fortunately for us, unfortunately for John, I didn't work in on this one. I mentioned the corruption who said played a central role in a bribery scandal that folks in Ohio are going to be familiar with around the rest of the country, maybe not as much. This one is related to different energy projects. It was Ohio's first energy linked nuclear plants. And the deal here was they needed a bail out. The Ohio voters paid for it, about $660 bucks more on their utility bills as a result of this scheme. So first energy and allies basically donated about $60 million in order to receive a $1 billion bail out. That was funded by 150 million a year from ratepayers from Ohio and to themselves. Who's dead was Lieutenant Governor at the time. It was the person that was the chairman of the state public utilities commission that was bride, but who said it was deeply involved in it. He had a dinner with the executives in 2018 when he was running full lieutenant governor and they're discussing this issue and executive wrote in a text that who said it called him and what was the one that was going to help get the bills language into the Ohio Senate version. A lobbyist also told federal agents that first energy money went to nonprofits that benefited who said were aligned with him. His role in the scandal so essentially to testify in defense of the utility company executives. The other kind of big thing that everybody's going to be familiar with Jeffrey Epstein's I guess largest benefactor Lex Wexner the Victoria secret fella. He donated over $115,000 to who stood including a maximum donation just last year. Who stood then voted against releasing the Epstein files which had tons of incriminating tax conversations investigations that related to Wexner. There's still a bunch of files that we haven't received. And I mean all signs would imagine or point to the idea that Wexner is in the unreleased documents as well. In Wexner was so mobbed up with Epstein that he gave him a broad power of attorney which is kind of the legal document that lets one person act on behalf of another I mean we still I think are only at the surface of that relationship and who knows how gross additional revelations could be or incriminating for that matter. So for John who stood to take money from Wexner and this is not like you know sometimes we do these hits in politics like one candidate will do an ad talking about another candidate and he took money from Bill Cosby or whatever and you know and it's like it was 1998 you know nobody knew any better. Who said took a max donation from Wexner last year? Did you need the money that much? I mean it's we know everything. We know just how tied in he is to Epstein. So I mean who says just basically unapologetic about this? Can we cover up the Epstein files some of the women so the victims excuse me that testified about this talked about being flown to Ohio like this happened in his state he wanted to cover it up and he's taking money from the coke and spiritors that were named in the files and he's still covering up additional information. So that's John who stood for you. Let's talk about some of the policies. He's not really in touch with what's happening with regular folks on the economy I wouldn't say. Earlier this year he's talking about people in poverty let's just watch that actually. And people living in poverty are just not very they're not very experienced at navigating the real world. Look there are three ways to make things more affordable. Earn more, keep more of what you earn and drive down prices. They're just not very experienced at navigating the real world you know they should try a little harder. Maybe if they just tried harder than the economic pain that the Trump administration is inflicting on them you know wouldn't hit his bat right you know if they just like worked a few more hours that could offset the increase in pricing gas and groceries that they're paying because Donald Trump started a stupid war of choice in Iran that John who stood was fully backing from the start voted 13 times in support of the war. He said earlier that it was going much better than anyone thought it would much better. John Houston thought the Iran war was going much better than anyone thought he it would. I don't it's unclear how much worse it could be going. It's certainly going way worse than what Donald Trump and Pete Higgs at the Marco Rubio promised but you know he was just full speed ahead not affecting him you know he's in his little country called bubble. He can afford it. He's paying you know he's he's filling his tank up with that 92 gasoline so he doesn't didn't care that much but for the regular folks for folks that are struggling they're just going to have to deal they're just going to their work ethic is just not enough. They got to work John Houston hours. I mean what how many days do they think they worked in the Senate this year like 82 but they're working John who stood hours maybe they'd be in better shape. He voted three separate times to block efforts raining in the tariffs that are also increasing costs for regular Ohioans when the tariffs rolled illegal and shared brown called for a refund to Ohio households who stood argued against giving the money back. Finally that called the other Republican candidates it seems like John is dead is giving groy purse and far right white nationalists and in this case Nazis literally like not not kind of just saying it for a torrentical affect but Nazis literally high influential roles on their campaigns. In the case of who's dead he made Steven Wojtek his political director you know back when I worked on campaigns a political director for a Senate campaign that's a legit job okay like you're the one kind of in charge of endorsements you're in charge of the grassroots campaign you know like you have influence within the campaign you're in the senior staff meetings through the political director for that job John who's dead a hired a guy that likes to dress up like a Nazi you know I'm being in the South you encounter the people like to dress up as a civil characters. And it always makes me a little bit uncomfortable, you know, when people are dressing up as the Confederates, but usually they've got both sides out there. There's a great book about this, Tony Horowitz, RIP Confederates in the attic. I couldn't even recommend to the people that just do the Confederate cosplay stuff. I gotta tell you, until I read this story, I'd never encountered somebody that was doing Nazi cosplay, like out in the fields. I've got to think about the Confederate cosplays, like they go to battle sites, you know, the World War II battle sites weren't here in America. But, you know, kind of getting out there dressing up at Nazi regalia and kind of like pretending like you're doing the battles that took place in Europe. It was February 2018 that he was marching in that area. They had Nazi flags around. They were kind of wearing the costumes. That was a new one for me. This guy was super into that. He used a photo of SS Soldiers also as his Facebook profile photo. He had a playlist of songs. Oh, a big playlist, guy. You know, great. A lot of playlists for you guys. A lot of times it's kind of music that I like, every time you don't endorse every lyric necessarily, an every song. But in this case, his playlist included songs celebrating Rhodesia. A white minority-ruled nation that is venerated by the lights of premises. That feels like I'm the wrong side of the line. They're doing a Rhodesia themed playlist. I think that if you peril that with the Facebook profile, with the dressing up in Nazi costumes, a little too excited about that period in history, as Mark Raven had said in a succession. So, there we go. John Hustet, trying to pretend like he's a blue blazer and khakis moderate Republican, but hiring white nationalist groipers, going fully on board with Trump's idiotic trade war, idiotic war in Iran, being unbelievably dismissive of people's economic pain, full Epstein file cover-up, taking money from one of Epstein's biggest boosters and donors and confidants. This dude is dog shit. And I do hope that the people of Ohio do the right thing coming up here in a month and support Sherrod Brown. That's the latest in our series. We got a couple more coming between now and November. Subscribe to the feed. If you got friends in Ohio, send this one to them. Tell them about the bulwark. We appreciate all your guys' support for what we're up to. We'll be seeing you soon.