The Candidate Caught in a Nazi Porn Scandal Is Today's GOP Personified

[Celerity]

Meet John Reid, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia. There’s a lot to learn.

https://newrepublic.com/article/201540/john-reid-virginia-nazi-porn-scandal-gop-personified

https://archive.ph/S4JwF


John Reid, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

With his normcore style and measured, talk-radio voice, John Reid, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia, is no internet-pickled groyper. He’s a stock MAGA uncle, smarmy and bluff. But for six months now, he’s been giving lech. He’s been giving Gaetz lite. Back in May, research from an anti-Reid faction in the state GOP alleged that he was behind a Tumblr account, “JRDeux,” which posted penis pics. (Reid’s Instagram account has the same handle.) At the time, Reid denied he was responsible for the account, claiming he was the victim of a smear campaign for being openly gay; he stayed on the ticket over the objections of his own party, including Governor Glenn Youngkin.

But you can’t keep this sordid story down. Last week, with early voting well underway in the November 4 election, American Journal News revealed that, on the same porny Tumblr blog, JRDeux didn’t just serve up lewdery. He boosted a user who brandished swastikas. (See: “Republican Candidate in Virginia Caught in Nazi Porn Scandal.”) Back in 2015, JRDeux also shared an image of a male college student posted by a user who self-described with a racial slur and sought the company of “superior white men.” Turns out Reid’s alleged Tumblr clique was devoted to the eroticization of slavery and “overt Nazi fetishism.”

“No one’s ever seen a candidate like me in Virginia and quite frankly most places across the country,” Reid boasted not long ago to a Charlottesville media outlet. He’d be right—except that, for those keeping count at home, Reid is the second Republican to be engulfed in a Nazi porn scandal in just over a year. So that’s all deeply bleak. But what’s weirdest about Reid is not his weirdness. It’s how MAGA-typical his whole career is. Billing himself as an “American Patriot, Reagan Conservative, Virginia Gentleman,” Reid has a personal story that doubles as the spiritual journey of four decades of GOP putrefaction. Reid has Zelig-ed his way through just about every stage in the GOP’s metamorphosis from anti-fascist family-value conservatism to its current incarnation as the profa (as opposed to antifa) party of pervs.

Four decades ago, Reid started strong. He graduated from tony St. Christopher’s prep school in Richmond, and then Baylor, the Christian university that later brought in Ken Starr as president, only to fire him for licensing campus sexual assault. In 1993, Reid moved to Los Angeles to intern for former President Ronald Reagan. What telegenic Reagan conservative of the 1990s didn’t want to be on TV? Reid then spent a decade as a reporter and then anchor for a morning show at the ABC affiliate in Richmond. Years later, he built on this success by hosting a conservative radio show on WRVA. Trump called in to his radio show last February, and Reid buttered him up.

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