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WACKO? TRUMP WD NOT ENDORSE? BY NAME?
SLOGAN LET KEEP A GOOD THING GOING POST YOUNGKIN
'Hard to overstate' how badly Trump hurt Republicans in Virginia: political strategist
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Right-wing media told Republicans anti-trans politics would deliver a winning coalition. 2025 races show they misunderstood why the message ever worked.
Written by Ari Drennen & Vesper Henry
Research contributions from Casey Wexler
Published 11/06/25
After three cycles of predictions that voter backlash against LGBTQ people would propel Republicans to victory, the elections themselves continue to tell a different story. In 2022, the promised “red tsunami” never arrived. In 2024, Donald Trump won — and right-wing media declared that anti-trans politics had finally proven their electoral value. But 2025 tested that assumption in two high-profile governor’s races where Trump was not on the ballot — and found again that voters’ priorities did not include infringing on the liberties of their trans neighbors.
In Virginia and New Jersey, right-wing media saturated the airwaves with stories about bathrooms, school sports, and “gender ideology.” Both Republican candidates lost. Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger won in Virginia, and Democrat Mikie Sherrill won in New Jersey, even after months of Fox News coverage and paid advertising that presented their races as referendums on transgender rights. These results reflect the same pattern as 2022, demonstrating that the supposed backlash vote exists mainly in right-wing media rhetoric, not in voter behavior.
Right-wing media insisted anti-trans attacks would deliver again in 2025
Right-wing media treated the 2025 races as proof-of-concept opportunities for the same messaging they claimed worked in 2024. Coverage on Fox News, The Daily Signal, The Washington Stand, The Washington Times, and the New York Post heavily emphasized transgender issues in both races, even as voters consistently ranked the economy, health care, and public safety as top concerns.
In Virginia, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears’ campaign messaging closely aligned with Fox News narratives that cast Spanberger — who once cursed at a House colleague over his “aggressive” language about trans people — as unwilling to protect students from “nude men in locker rooms” and “boys in girls’ sports.”
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From the August 22, 2025, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Articles in The Daily Signal and The Washington Stand — a publication of the Family Research Council — followed this same framing, backing Earle-Sears’ mischaracterization of Spanberger’s pro-trans record as endangering children by supporting legislation that would supposedly “allow naked men inside girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms.”
One reporter in Virginia showed just how effective the right has become at turning local news into a delivery system for culture-war grievances. Nickolaus Minock — a former Trump administration press official now working at Sinclair-owned WJLA — consistently pressed the Spanberger campaign on transgender issues. For months, Minock chased Spanberger on camera with the same scripted questions, misgendering trans students and framing school policies protecting them as an issue gaining “national attention.”
An official from Loudoun County schools eventually filed a 36-page complaint to the Federal Communications Commission accusing the station of “broadcast news distortion,” including six instances of “dishonest and distorted” reporting that “injures the public interest.”
But Minock didn’t stop. He continued producing bathroom-panic segments as if refusal to indulge the premise was proof of guilt. The result was a pipeline that laundered a national talking point through a local broadcast feed to make it look organic.
Right-wing media followed the same script in New Jersey. Coverage in the New York Post asserted that Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli could win the governor’s race “by opposing transgenderism,” while Fox News cited polls from November 2024 and January 2025 to argue that Sherrill’s pro-trans voting record would threaten her electability.
Although Republicans devoted millions of dollars in ad money to the issue — including a majority of all ad spending by the Earle-Sears campaign — polling showed a vanishingly small number of voters listing transgender issues among their top concerns. Both races ended the same way: The anti-trans messaging campaign failed. Spanberger and Sherrill both won.
The 2022 “red tsunami” never happened — but right-wing media claimed it did anyway
In 2022, right-wing media insisted that Republicans had turned “gender ideology” into a losing issue for Democrats — even as election results undermined their claims. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh claimed Democrats were “doomed” by their stance on trans rights. Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Rufo framed the election as proof that voters were rejecting “radical gender surgeries.” The American Principles Project boasted that it had spent $15 million turning “the transgender issue” into a “litmus test issue” for the midterms.
In reality, the “red tsunami” never arrived. Democrats out-performed midterm expectations, Republicans under-performed when compared to historic averages, and exit polls failed to show LGBTQ issues as a top concern for voters.
But instead of abandoning the narrative, right-wing media reframed the failure: Republicans lost because they didn’t attack hard enough.
Trump’s 2024 win convinced the right their strategy had finally worked — but they mistook the messenger for the message
When Trump won in 2024, right-wing pundits declared vindication. They treated his closing attacks on “they/them” as proof that anti-trans messaging had become a universal wedge among the electorate.
But the attack functioned differently in 2024 than it did in 2022 or 2025. Trump used anti-trans rhetoric as a proxy for class resentment — not as a standalone issue. “Kamala is for they/them” was presented less as a policy critique than as a cultural code for elite detachment, campus liberalism, and Democratic priorities. The effect was specific to Trump’s delivery, and the issue worked only when attached to a much broader narrative about who the government serves and who it ignores — and even then, it functioned as part of a composite message, not a single-issue referendum.
Right-wing media took the wrong lesson from 2024, concluding that the issue was the driver rather than the messenger. Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey this year thus attempted to run the 2024 playbook without its central ingredient. The results were the same as in 2022: No backlash wave, no realignment, no measurable voter movement.
Even with blanket coverage, even with sustained amplification on Fox News, even with paid ads regurgitating right-wing media narratives, the messaging failed to change outcomes. Spanberger won. Sherrill won. Voters did not list “transgender issues” as a priority, and when pressed, declared that they prefer Democratic messages on the issue anyway.
Right-wing media’s own mixed messages might have reduced the salience of the issue for their base. By October 2025, figures like Matt Walsh were already declaring that “transgenderism is effectively over” and calling it the “clearest and most decisive cultural win that conservatives have ever achieved.” APP’s Terry Schilling published an op-ed before polls closed on Election Day claiming that the reason “Democrats are struggling in Virginia and New Jersey” was in large part their “support for policies allowing biological men in girls’ private spaces, and their backing of taxpayer-funded medical interventions for gender-confused minors.” When the loudest voices on the right announce the fight over transgender rights is already won, it should come as no surprise when the issue stops functioning as a voter-mobilizing grievance.
Conclusion: Right-wing media sold Republicans the wrong lesson. Again.
The midterms in 2022 disproved the claim that anti-trans messaging was an effective backlash engine. The presidential election in 2024 seemed to validate it only because Trump acted as a cultural amplifier. Now, with 2025 elections removing Trump from the equation and producing the same results as 2022, we see once again that the attacks failed to move voters.
The pattern is now clear. Right-wing media can continue producing bathroom panics for clicks, but their electoral theory has failed twice in three cycles — and only “worked” once under conditions they likely cannot reproduce.
Democrats who answer the attacks and re-center voters’ priorities keep winning. Republicans who mistake Fox News programming for the electorate keep losing.
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AN 11 25 ALL 3 WON PLUS PA SCOTUS
The November 4 elections found Democrats enjoying a mini-blue wave as their candidates enjoyed a long list of victories — including double-digit wins in Virginia's gubernatorial race (former Rep. Abigail Spanberger), New Jersey's gubernatorial race (Rep. Mikie Sherrill) and New York City's mayoral race (State Assemblyman Zohran Mandami). Those races were called by the Associated Press (AP) as well as CNN and ABC News.
Spanberger, according to AP, defeated her GOP opponent, Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, by roughly 13 percent. But according to GOP pollster Frank Luntz, the size of Spanberger's victory is reflected by not only the total numbers, but the individual counties.
On X, formerly Twitter, Luntz posted, "Every single county in Virginia shifted blueward tonight."
Luntz posted a county-by-county breakdown for Virginia, a key swing state. And even in the counties that Earle-Sears won, Spanberger posted far larger numbers compared to Democratic candidates of the past.
For example, Earle-Sears carried Salem County by 12 percent, but according to Luntz, that's a 6.9 percent improvement for the Democratic Party in that red county.
Spanberger, according to Luntz, won Portsmouth County by 47 percent (an 8.1 percent swing for Democrats) and Prince William County by 34 percent (a 16 percent blue shift).
In Virginia's House of Delegates, Democrats built on their current majority, now holding 64 seats to Republicans' 36. This means that Virginia Democrats' goal of passing a redistricting map to counter Republican mid-decade redistricting in Texas and elsewhere is likely to pass, with Spanberger giving Democrats a trifecta.
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RWW
09/17/2025
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The Christian nationalist program "FlashPoint" transformed itself into a campaign ad for Winsome Sears last night, complete with Lance Wallnau leading a prayer for Christians to mobilize and unleash a "conservative tidal wave" to elect her governor of Virginia.
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Winsome Sears Spreads False Christian Nationalist History
05/06/2025
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In August 2024, Virginia's Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears spoke at a "Give Me Liberty" held at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia. The event was sponsored by America's Black Robe Regiment, an overtly Christian nationalist organization that was founded by radical pastor William Cook, who wants to see "the government of God [established] throughout every square inch of the Earth."
Predictably, Sears, who is now running for governor of Virginia, filled her remarks with Christian nationalist misinformation.
"We are apparently quite afraid to talk about the Lord and government and all of that," Sears said. "You know that little part about the government being on His shoulders? So he is our government."
"In fact, the reason why we have the three branches of government is because the Founders read Isaiah 33:22," she continued. "It says, 'The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king': Legislative branch, judicial branch, executive branch. There it is. The founders said to themselves, that's the form of government that we think will survive."
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This claim is a favorite of Christian nationalists, despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence to this claim, which originated with pseudo-historian David Barton of WallBuilders and which Right Wing Watch has debunked a multiple occasions:
WallBuilders' claim that the three branches of government came out of Isaiah 33:22 relies entirely upon the fact that French political philosopher Charles de Montesquieu advocated for the separation of powers in government and that the Founding Fathers had read Montesquieu's works. Since Montesquieu was a Christian, that is apparently enough for the Bartons and WallBuilders to assert that the idea of the three branches of government came straight out of the Bible.
Undaunted, Sears went on to repeat another favorite Christian nationalist myth when she recited the speech made by Benjamin Franklin during the Constitutional Convention urging those gathered to turn to God in prayer for help in drafting the Constitution.
After reciting Franklin's remarks, Sears declared, "and that's why, of course as you know, every time government is opened, it's opened in prayer."
Of course, as anyone who reads Right Wing Watch knows, Sears' claim is utterly false because the delegates to the Constitutional Convention rejected Franklin's call for prayer.
As historian Richard Beeman recounts in his book, "Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution":
At the conclusion of the day's session in which the delegates rejected his suggestion, [Franklin] scrawled a note on the bottom of the speech he had written expressing his incredulity: "The convention, except three or four persons, thought prayer unnecessary!"
Over and over again, Sears and other Christian nationalists lie about the founding of this nation and promote these sorts of myths because they know that such fictions are useful in creating the false impression that their modern right-wing political agenda is rooted in our national history.
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schedule and speakers list for this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference make it clear that the gathering will be dominated by the undemocratic and unprincipled power-seeking strategies for which former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are known.
Lying About Elections, Undermining Democracy
The choice of Kari Lake to keynote the event’s gala, the “Ronald Reagan Dinner,” makes it clear that CPAC will continue to promote damaging false claims about voter fraud. Trump’s refusal to admit that voters rejected him in 2020 fueled the violent attempt to stop Congress from affirming President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
Following in Trump’s footsteps, Lake has refused to accept her defeat by Arizona voters in last year’s governor’s race. Instead, she inflames supporters with bogus claims of election fraud, filing lawsuit after rejected lawsuit seeking to overturn her loss. Right Wing Watch reported that this month Lake took her complaints to two programs hosted by far-right broadcasters who have called for violence against political opponents. On one, when the host claimed that conservative Christians are being provoked to unleash “violence or bloodshed,” Lake responded, “I don’t know how much longer the people can take it.” As we saw on Jan. 6, 2021, this strategy is dangerous for democracy.
In addition to Trump himself, other speakers include Trump family members, right-wing funder and promoter of debunked election conspiracies Mike Lindell, MAGA strategist Steve Bannon, and far-right “Pizzagate” promoter Jack Posobiec.
Previous CPAC gatherings have celebrated authoritarian strongmen leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Brazil’s former president, Jair Balsonaro, whose supporters attacked government buildings after his defeat. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, a right-wing legislator, will speak at CPAC this year.
‘Parents with Pitchforks’: Limiting the Freedom to Learn
Right-wing political leaders are aggressively restricting freedom in the name of attacking “wokeness,” which they have invoked to restrict honest teaching about racism, purge library books that feature Black and LGBTQ characters, and deny access to essential health care for transgender people. This is an expansion of the cynical right-wing strategy launched during the Trump administration to vilify “critical race theory” and then slap the label on anything right-wing activists didn’t like.
One strategy in the war on “wokeness” is stoking racial resentment and grievance among conservative white voters. Before last year’s election, a group run by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller ran digital ads denouncing “anti-white bigotry” and falsely claiming that the Biden administration “put white people last in line for COVID relief funds.” Miller, an architect of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies with a documented affinity for white nationalism, is listed as a CPAC speaker.
One Thursday CPAC segment dubbed “Parents with Pitchforks” includes Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, whose boss Gov. Glenn Youngkin has just launched an investigation of the AP African American Studies class attacked by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.Another segment on “Sacking the Woke Playbook” features Sen. Tommy Tuberville and former acting attorney general Matt Whitaker, who once insisted that all judicial nominees should share his “biblical view of justice.”
Christian Nationalism
Also likely to be promoted at CPAC is the increasingly aggressive Christian nationalism espoused by religious-right activists and promoted by far-right politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and North Carolina’s vehemently anti-LGBTQ Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who exclaimed in 2021, “As for this not being a Christian nation, yes, it is! If you don’t like it, I’ll buy your plane, train, or automobile ticket right up out of here.”Both Greene and Robinson are listed as speakers at this year’s gathering. Scholars have documented that white evangelicals are the group most likely to strongly embrace Christian nationalism, and those who do are more likely to support authoritarianism and political violence.
A ‘Principled’ Alternative?
A group of non-Trumpist conservatives has organized an alternative to CPAC, which they call the Principles First Summit. In a Substack column promoting the summit, organizer Heath Mayo denounced the evolution of CPAC in the Trump era, saying “What once set a budding movement’s standards for principles and character is now a showcase of its worst ills.” CPAC, Mayo wrote, “actively applauds a conspiratorial fringe of our politics completely unmoored from ethical constraints and moral commitments.”
Tags: Donald Trump Eduardo Bolsonaro Jack Posobiec Kari Lake Marjorie Taylor Greene Mark Robinson Mike Lindell Stephen Miller Steve Bannon Winsome Sears Censorship Christian Nationalism CPAC CPAC 2023 Critical Race Theory Stop the Steal CPAC
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