When Donald Trump became US president in 2016, one of the big talking points and launchpads for attacks against him – besides the “Russians everywhere!” narrative – was his alleged raging misogyny.
In an ironic twist of fate, an ardently anti-Trump conservative activist has been pushed out of the Lincoln Project on exactly that latter charge – and just as the project was starting to get attention.
The Lincoln Project was formed late last year by a number of big current and former Republican names, with the sole apparent goal of preventing from getting Trump reelected; to this end, in April, the organization endorsed Democrat Joe Biden.
The Lincoln Project’s rising star they’ve now decided to get rid of for a series of past tweets, where he used slang for female anatomy to insult rivals but also some apparently expressed some controversial sentiments, is Ben Howe.
Recently, Vanity Fair had a piece about him and the group that showed him as a creative mind and a video editor, at times even the narrator on the Lincoln Project’s anti-Trump ads.
This is the type of creative power exhibited in one of the more popular spots, going after Trump’s alleged poor health. A narrator is heard saying, “Something’s wrong with Donald Trump. He’s shaky, weak, trouble speaking, trouble walking.”
The Lincoln Project got wind of Howe’s past Twitter escapades thanks to a news nonprofit called The 19th, and now they’ve apparently severed ties with this creative mind.
Other than attempting to insult political opponents by using profanities, Howe was also found to have supported, on Twitter, (to then delete these posts) the policeman who in 2014 shot and killed Michael Brown.
Howe now doesn’t seem to appear to be particularly defiant about his past behavior, saying his tweets had been “ill advised and inexcusable.”
“Based on these unacceptable and offensive posts, and those that came to light last week, Ben Howe is no longer affiliated with the Lincoln Project, effective immediately,” Keith Edwards, the group’s spokesman, said in a statement to the Post.
Although he only joined the Lincoln Project last winter, the group has raised almost $17 million in the last quarter alone to further its cause.