A Democratic candidate who claims that “gun violence is sadly on the top of his mind almost daily” has a deeply disturbing way of showing it.
Derek Tran, who is running for Congress against Congresswoman Michelle Steel, just tweeted a graphic that features a gun pointing squarely at his opponent’s head.
Let’s set aside how little sense this post even makes. Tran, himself a veteran, surely understands that the pistol in this picture is not a “weapon of war” in any meaningful sense. Pistols are weapons of war to the extent that, yes, they are used in warzones, but is he seriously advocating for a ban on pistols? If so, he has even bigger problems than needing to replace his graphic design team immediately.
You don’t need to be an aerospace engineer to see where this gun’s trajectory is heading. And it speaks to the candidate quality problems plaguing Democrats in both California specifically and across the country. Tran’s team is clearly not ready for prime time–because this is insane–but he’s not alone.
In California’s 47th District, Democrats nominated Dave Min, despite knowing that he had been arrested for drunk driving last year. When Min was pulled over, had a blood alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit and didn’t even have his headlights on when he blew through a red light.
Over in Nebraska, Democrats went with a candidate who combines Tran’s imagined violence against others with Min’s propensity for actually committing crimes. Even though Democrat Tony Vargas failed to unseat Air Force general-turned Congressman Don Bacon last cycle, Democrats are gearing up to lose to Bacon once again this November, even in spite of (or perhaps, because of?) so-called “Violent Vargas’s” alleged assault of an Omaha cab driver, in which he is accused of “jump[ing] from the back seat of the van into the front seat [when his] left leg hit [the driver] in the head [and] grabbed him by the shirt collar.”
The final Democratic nominee worth dunking on before Memorial Day is Joe Kerr–who has lost election after election before Democrats seem to have nominated him out of pity against Congresswoman Young Kim in California’s 40th District. Kim’s opponent’s name is literally joker. Come on. Why so serious?
I reached out to Tran’s campaign to see if this was posted in error–after all, what kind of psychopath approves this graphic on purpose?–and have not heard back.