MAGA blogger Sasha Stone to Karl Rove: Racism isn’t as bad as transing kids

It takes almost Olympic-level mental gymnastics to still be all-in for Donald Trump now that Trump 2.0 has seen MAGA unleashed in its full unfiltered fury. This morning, I got a lovely reminder of why.

Lately, to get an idea about what the MAGA base is thinking, I’ve checked out the Substack of pioneering entertainment blogger Sasha Stone, best known as the founder of Awards Daily. She’d grown up as an open and unashamed Democrat, but veered sharply to the right after federal agents descended on Mar-a-Lago to search for the classified documents Trump had absconded after leaving the White House. Now she’s gone so far right that she claims the 2020 election was rigged.

But even allowing for Stone being red pilled, I didn’t expect to see her jump all over Karl Rove for his scathing op-ed in The Wall Street Journal denouncing a racist tweet from Texas Railroad Commission candidate and former Tarrant County GOP chairman Bo French. By now, you’ve all seen French’s disgusting tweet claiming that the growing number of South Asian and Latino students at the University of Texas–his alma mater–was a problem. Rove was so angered by that tweet that he publicly vowed to vote for French’s Democratic opponent, Jon Rosenthal. It will be only the second time Rove has ever voted for a Democrat.

That didn’t sit well with Stone. As appalled as she was with that tweet, she claimed–with a straight face–that his mask-off racism wasn’t as bad as letting kids have gender-affirming care.

I can’t defend Bo French, but I can say voting for him is not as bad as voting for a guy who believes in harming children’s bodies for life when they can’t consent, to say nothing of his belief that biological men and boys should be allowed to compete with women and girls.

Imagine having to pick and choose your generals in World War II based on things they said on social media. Imagine policing their minds to see how pure they were. We’d need Patton to wake you up to what is at stake. We need MEN.

We don’t always get to choose whether they are good or bad. The kids need us to protect them, not to be mewling crybabies sucking our thumbs in the corner like you, Mr. Rove.

I had to read this twice to believe it. So it’s okay to ignore if someone is racist as long as he is anti-trans? Really, Sasha?

Stone draws a parallel with General George Patton, whose abusive and abrasive behavior is well-documented. He was also viciously anti-Semitic, though he forced several German men to see the atrocities at Buchenwald. Stone argued that despite Patton’s issues, “he was a necessary general to fight and win a war.” What Stone leaves out, though, is that Patton’s reluctance to denazify Germany, as well as his claims we should have been fighting the Soviets rather than the Nazis, got him bounced from command of the Third Army after the war.

Stone argues that Rove shouldn’t get upset “over a tweet” As she sees it, for all of French’s racism, voting for him and other Republicans is necessary to stop what she calls “the greatest medical scandal of our lifetimes,” and stopping it means having t elect people who say “cruel, awful things.”

No, Sasha. French’s tweet wasn’t just a “cruel, awful thing.” It’s absolutely intolerable from anyone wanting to be an elected official. When I saw this, I was reminded of a 2019 piece Shaun King wrote in The Intercept in which he pointed out just why Trump’s racist attacks on The Squad were intolerable–he used language that would have been a firingg offense at just about any company.

Can a person who is explicitly, overtly racist treat everyone equally under the law? I feel dumb even asking such a question. Now if you let them tell it, they’ll tell you “yes” a hundred times. But you can’t let a racist be the judge of whether or not their racism negatively fuels and shapes the way they think and make decisions. It’s the very reason why overtly racist people are fired from every single type of place of employment. If you are an overtly racist person, Walmart will fire you from bagging groceries. Uber will fire you from driving cars. Amazon will fire you from packing boxes. McDonalds will fire you from making burgers. Because you are a liability, and you can no longer be trusted.

Plus, by Stone’s logic, college and pro teams should keep coaches who win a bunch of games even when they treat the rules and common decency like toilet paper. I’m reminded of Ed Orgeron at LSU. Just two years after winning a national championship, he was out of a job. You would think a national championship would be the ultimate piece of job security. But a series of embarrassing off-field incidents–including a veiled threat against a guest at his call-in show–led school officials to push him out. Keeping him would have told every kid in Louisiana that you could act like a clown as long as you won a bunch.

Stone has said on a number of occasions that she will never vote for a Democrat any time soon because of transing kids. Well, Sasha, the moral vacuity you espouse is why the Republican Party as presently constituted is unfit to govern.

Update: Stone responds. She denies saying racism wasn’t as bad as transing kids, but then doubles down on saying voting for a Democrat over “some guy’s ugly tweet” was a vote for “a barbaric practice that should be banned worldwide.” I repeat, Sasha—we should not tolerate open racism from our elected officials.

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