Democrat who went viral for blasting ‘groomer’ slur accuses GOP of using ‘full fringe QAnon hateful rhetoric’

The Democratic Michigan state senator who went viral after blasting the GOP’s use of the “groomer” slur has criticised the Republican Party for what she calls its “full fringe QAnon hateful rhetoric”.

Mallory McMorrow appeared on MSNBC’sMorning Joe, saying that “there was an opportunity for the Republican Party to go back to debating how we spend tax dollars,” but that they’re instead using “full fringe QAnon hateful, hateful rhetoric with no actual policy”.

“Part of the reason I really wanted to identify myself is because this moment is going to require straight, white, Christian, suburban moms to stand up and get uncomfortable and say this is not okay,” she added during the Wednesday morning interview.

“Because odds are, a lot of us are probably pretty comfortable and okay, but that doesn’t mean that this is okay. And we can’t stand back and let it happen,” she said.

After a Republican state senator accused the Democratic legislator of supporting attempts to “groom” and “sexualise” children in a campaign fundraising email, Ms McMorrow took her response to the floor of the state capitol.

“I sat on it for a while wondering, ‘Why me?’ And then I realised – I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme,” she said in remarks on 19 April. “You can’t claim that you are targeting marginalised kids in the name of ‘parental rights’ if another parent is standing up to say ‘no’.”

In an email soliciting donations to her campaign on 18 April, Senator Lana Theis heaped together a list of right-wing tropes that have dominated GOP campaigns in 2022, alleging that “our children are under assault in our schools” from “gender-bending indoctrination” and “race-based education” promoted by their political opponents.

She also lashed out at Ms McMorrow, claiming she is among a group of “progressive social media trolls” who are “outraged they can’t teach, can’t groom and sexualise kindergarteners or that 8-year-olds are responsible for slavery,” without pointing to any such evidence, as GOP officials and right-wing personalities invoke baseless smears against LGBT+ people and their allies relying on the same language.

In furious five-minute remarks that went viral across social media on Tuesday, Ms McMorrow condemned the attacks and placed them within a broader, toxic national campaign to distort concepts like “critical race theory” and LGBT+ people for political leverage.

During her speech on Tuesday, Ms McMorrow said, “I am a straight, white, Christian, married suburban mom, who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism somehow means that ‘children are being taught to feel bad and hate themselves because they are white’ is absolute nonsense”.

“No child alive today is responsible for slavery,” she said. “No one in this room is responsible for slavery. But each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history. … We are not responsible for the past. We also cannot change the past. We can’t pretend that it didn’t happen, or deny people their very right to exist.”

“This is the Michigan Republican Party right now. This is the national Republican Party right now,” she told MSNBC on Wednesday. “It’s disgusting, it’s hateful, it’s horrible.”

Ms McMorrow said Ms Theis “said nothing back” after her speech, adding that she “couldn’t even be bothered to look me in the eye. I looked at the back of her head the entire speech. She turned away from me”.

“I have never been one to shy away from saying things to people’s face and she’s too much of a coward to even acknowledge my existence,” she added.

Asked what has happened with moderate Republicans in her state, Ms McMorrow spoke about “rising extremism and we’ve seen this play out with gerrymandering”.

“The fact is Michigan is a very purple state. We vote pretty evenly Democratic versus Republican, but the legislature, particularly in the state senate, has been Republican-controlled since 1984 despite the fact that in 2014, they only got less than 50 per cent of the votes,” she added. “They got 72 per cent of the Senate seats, and it encourages going further and further to the fringes.”

“We had an attempted kidnapping of” Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer and on “the day that we learned in the Senate about that plot, the Senate Majority Leader walked out of our Senate chambers, walked to the front of our capitol and rallied with the same hateful conspiracy theorist that plotted that kidnapping, that came to our chambers fully armed and threatened us, and told them to keep going,” Ms McMorrow said. “That’s where we’re at right now. And unless we push back and vote them out of office, it’s not going to get any better.”

Asked about the response to her speech, she said “the numbers speak for themselves”. As of Wednesday morning, her speech had received almost 9 million views on Twitter.

“This is definitely not something that I’m wanting to do to go viral. But if the message is that hate won’t win, I think we’re proving that and we have to say it loudly and clearly and stand up for those who are being attacked because one day it might be us,” she told MSNBC.

“And I know that everything that I felt the day that Lana Theis accused me of being a groomer and sexualizing children is that much worse for a trans kid who was getting attacked every single day who just wants to go to school and have friends and get through the day,” she added.

“The response has been overwhelming. And my hope is that other white women like me who are doing okay, are the ones to stand up and put an end to this because it won’t unless we do,” she said.

The Independent has reached out to Ms Theis for comment.