Hours after reports first surfaced of a racist photo on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s yearbook page, top state and national Democratic figures issued impassioned calls for his resignation.
But that didn’t stop conservatives from trying to play the hypocrisy card. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump administration officials, conservative activists and far-right journalists claimed that the media and Democrats who often speak out against racism were trying to protect one of their own.
Serial plagiarist and Daily Caller reporter Benny Johnson suggested that 2020 Democratic candidates saw wearing blackface and KKK robes—as two figures in the Northam yearbook page are doing—as “forgivable.”
Dem messaging going into 2020:
Immoral = Walls
Moral = Killing a baby at any stage of development – including once the baby has been born
Forgivable = Wearing blackface & KKK robes (If you’re a Dem official advocating infanticide)
Unforgivable = Wearing MAGA hat & smirking
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) February 2, 2019
“This should be easier work than parsing every word and semicolon in the Kavanaugh yearbook,” cracked top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, invoking Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s yearbook references to a female classmate and being treasurer of the “Keg City Club.”
“This would be all over cable news if this were a Republican governor,” said the Free Beacon’s Liz Harrington.
I see the headlines in our future: "Republicans seize on former Republican's high school days dabbling in black face"
— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizWFB) February 1, 2019
“The media was much more upset that a teenager was smiling wearing a MAGA hat than they are that a sitting Democrat Governor wore KKK outfits and called for babies to be killed after birth,” Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk offered, referring to the Kentucky teen who made headlines for his smirking standoff with a Native American elder at a D.C. rally.
Virginia state House and Senate Democrats have called on Northam to step down over the photo, along with the NAACP and multiple 2020 Democratic candidates. Northam has so far resisted the calls, apologizing for the “racist” image but insisting he can finish out his term.
