Self-styled resistance warrior Rick Wilson used to post photos of Confederate flag coolers and lob obscene, sexist words at random pundits and lawmakers. Now he has taken to spreading baseless and sexist speculation about Hope Hicks, a senior adviser to Trump in the White House. On top of that, he is talking up the Pizzagate conspiracy theory once again.
On the heels of President Trump’s announcement that he’d appointed a second campaign manager, effectively demoting Brad Parscale, Wilson and the pro-Biden operatives of the Lincoln Project took a victory lap. Jokes about Parscale needing to return his Ferrari are dumb and not funny but totally harmless. What’s not is what Wilson tweeted next.
hope hicks is trending and being accused of sleeping with brad parscale because rick wilson retweeted a joke to his 1 million followers about the two going to comet ping pong pic.twitter.com/iSGy6wKZNK
— David Covucci (@DavidCovucci) July 16, 2020
This is just sexism, plain and simple. Even worse, it’s invoking the already-dangerous Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which nearly got people killed. Pizzagate was a false story accusing John Podesta and other top Democratic operatives of running a child sex trafficking ring out of D.C.’s Comet Ping Pong, an actual pizza joint where employees have faced shootings and death threats because of people like Wilson spreading such lies and rumors.
Prior to Wilson’s tweet, the only mention of Hicks and Parscale being spotted anywhere in a personal manner came from the anonymous account that Wilson retweeted.
D.C. is a small enough town with a ravenous enough press corps that its safe to assume there would be at least one other person who recognized two incredibly senior members of Team Trump at one of the most unintentionally controversial sites in the city, five miles away from the White House on a school night.
So did Wilson, a Bush-appointee swamp monster who understands exactly how this all works, tweet that out with his million-plus followers because he believed it? No, he did it because negative partisanship has corroded whatever remained of his morality. He has no qualms about spreading a sexist rumor that he knows to be made up.
Thanks to Wilson, it’s Hicks and not Parscale who is now trending on Twitter and facing tens of thousands of sexist hate-tweets baselessly smearing her. Wilson hates Trump so much that he’s come to embody all of the president’s worst attributes.
