On a Friday evening, just days before Tuesday’s primary election, the Washington Post published a story on their website under the headline: “Ed Gillespie declines to denounce endorsement from anti-Muslim activist.”
Despite their breathless coverage of liberal attacks on Ed and his campaign, their story is misleading and bring into question their news judgment.
Here are the facts:
The Washington Post reporter based her story on a left-wing blog post questioning the Facebook “endorsement” from a 24-year-old, who says he’s voting for Ed. The reporter emailed our campaign, asking:
“Is Gillespie still proud of Presler’s endorsement? Or, does he denounce Presler’s support? Does Gillespie have any plans to join any of the “March Against Sharia – March for Human Rights” events this weekend?”
Our campaign responded by saying,
“Ed has more than 6,000 volunteers statewide, and while he appreciates their hard work and commitment to the campaign, obviously that does not mean he agrees with every supporter on every issue. Mr. Pressler indicated he supports Ed because of his plan to cut taxes for all Virginians, and the positive campaign he is running. Ed does not condone hatred or discrimination under any circumstance or in any form.”
The Post chose to run only portions of the comment provided, writing that our campaign “did not respond when asked if Gillespie would denounce Presler’s support.”
“Gillespie’s spokesman, David Abrams, said the candidate does not agree with every supporter on every issue. “Ed does not condone hatred or discrimination under any circumstance or in any form,” Abrams said in a statement.”
It remains astonishing that the Washington Post would take a social media statement from a 24-year-old supporter of Ed and extrapolate it into an entire story that questions Ed’s integrity.
The Washington Post still has not printed stories on Ed’s tax cut plan or the Democrats’ lack of support for Virginia’s long-standing Right to Work laws. And we sincerely doubt the Post is right now busy vetting every supporter and volunteer of Tom Perriello and Ralph Northam to see what they might find.
We believe their newsprint and bandwidth, days away from an election, would be better spent showing readers where candidates stand on important issues like how we get Virginia’s economy growing again and how we create new, good-paying jobs for ALL Virginians.