(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) After failing to get him booted from the ballot through bogus lawfare efforts, the alt-left has sunk to a new low in its smear attacks against Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., unearthing decades-old photos and miscasting their context.
Politico was the first to report last weekend pictures of Cawthorn dressed in women’s lingerie, apparently in a party setting, and in an attempt to expose an imagined hypocrisy juxtaposed the photos against Cawthorn’s conservative politics and Christian upbringing.
Cawthorn “was raised in a conservative Baptist community in Henderson County, North Carolina, and has staked his political persona on arch-traditional Christian principles and the insistence of the importance of a kind of hypermasculinity,” Politico proclaimed.
While admitting the photos and their context could not be independently verified, Politico ran the story, noting that the pictures were provided “by a person formerly close to Cawthorn and his campaign.”
Cawthorn put the photos in proper context with a simple tweet.
I guess the left thinks goofy vacation photos during a game on a cruise (taken waaay before I ran for Congress) is going to somehow hurt me?
They’re running out of things to throw at me…
Share your most embarrassing vacay pics in the replies🤦♂️https://t.co/YicRk0Albu
— Madison Cawthorn (@CawthornforNC) April 22, 2022
“I guess the left thinks goofy vacation photos during a game on a cruise (taken waaay before I ran for Congress) is going to somehow hurt me?” Cawthorn said. “They’re running out of things to throw at me…”
That did little to stop the leftist media from pouncing, while doing its best to simultaneously push its own radical agenda.
“To state the obvious, there’s nothing wrong with cis men wearing attire traditionally gendered for women,” opined Jezebel, “this may actually be the only cool or vaguely acceptable thing Cawthorn has ever done, in my opinion.”
“The jarring, problematic aspect of this is the hypocrisy: Cawthorn has repeatedly made anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ statements.”
Madison Cawthorn Appears to Party In Lingerie In Newly Unearthed Photos https://t.co/lFEjDSDsWz pic.twitter.com/A2QtE6vfcF
— Jezebel (@Jezebel) April 22, 2022
Cawthorn, again, shut down the misguided smears and accusations of hypocrisy with another simple tweet.
My gender didn’t change when I put that stuff on.
And neither does anyone else’s. https://t.co/EVZbzZaMRt
— Madison Cawthorn (@CawthornforNC) April 23, 2022
The hatchet job on Cawthorn was roundly dismissed as fodder for tawdry tabloid journalism and little else.
“This is a big miss from POLITICO given Rep Cawthorn’s explanation and the article he linked to about the cruise ship game. They basically accuse him of being a hypocrite and a bad Christian,” tweeted Amber Athey, Washington editor for the Spectator.
I’d expect to see these photos in a tabloid because they’re a bit embarrassing but a news outlet running them with seemingly no attempt to find out when/where they were taken is a bad look.
— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) April 22, 2022
Others took a similar view, backing Cawthorn and ripping leftist fake news and mainstream media.
Very normal and healthy that the corporate press has spent more time finding out what Madison Cawthorn wore on a cruise than whether POTUS is getting illegal kickbacks from his son’s dealings with the Chinese Communist Party.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 23, 2022
