(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) An MSNBC panel on Morning Joe reached a new level of absurdity after suggesting that Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for Virginia governor, is struggling at the polls because she’s a woman.
Here’s a reality check: Spanberger’s Republican opponent is Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, a woman, and even more notably, a first-generation American black woman.
Earle-Sears was born in Jamaica and rose through the ranks of Virginia politics before winning statewide office in 2021. Throughout the race, Earle-Sears, not Spanberger, has faced repeated racial smears from left-wing activists and pundits.
Critics quickly flooded X with sarcastic reminders of Earle-Sears’s gender, with the GOP candidate herself writing, “Who wants to tell them?”
Who wants to tell them? https://t.co/oYIEsTA8dF
— Winsome Earle-Sears (@winwithwinsome) October 22, 2025
The criticism targeted the panel composed of Morning Joe co-hosts Jonathan Lemire and Mika Brzezinski and MSNBC contributors Al Sharpton and Molly Jong-Fast. The leftist group was discussing supposed “electability” challenges for women candidates.
“There is some misogyny that is in the electorate that needs to be confronted,” Sharpton said during the segment.
Brzezinski echoed that sentiment, urging Democratic women to “fight, fight.”
She claimed, “It really is incredible when you have Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill, her background, all the different jobs that she has held in the military and also like Elissa Slotkin, I mean, my god, these women are incredible, and to them I would say fight, fight, fight because we need them. We need them!”
Lemire also claimed concerns about women candidates, given Democratic losses in 2016 and 2024 “does fall into the same misogynic trap.”
Brzezinski closed the segment by lamenting, “Other countries have no problem electing women!”
Their comments came as Earle-Sears continued narrowing Spanberger’s lead in polls ahead of Virginia’s November 2025 election.
Watch the full segment below:
