 We're going to spend a good amount of time talking about the race that's taking place in the first congressional district of Massachusetts between Justice Democrat Alex Morse and incumbent Democrat Richard Neal, who is a very powerful Democrat, he chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. And the thing about this race is a lot of people are starting to pay attention to it because it's starting to get a little bit closer. Alex Morse, according to public polls, is inching up. You have a lot of people in that district, a high percentage now saying that they're undecided. You have Alex Morse closing the gap between him and Neal. And after Jamal Bowman and Corey Bush just ousted other incumbent Democrats, everyone's eyes are on this race because it looks to be the next instance where we may see another incumbent Democrat be taken down by an insurgent left-wing candidate. Now the reason why I'm talking about this is because out of the blue as this race tightens as the election comes up, several really serious allegations emerged out of nowhere. Allegations from college Democrats of Massachusetts. Now originally, when I first heard about this, if you follow me on Twitter, I stated that I wasn't planning on talking about this because I just I didn't understand the story. Like something about it seemed off and there was like key details in my opinion that were missing. Nonetheless, let's talk through the several allegations of the Me Too nature that have been alleged against Alex Morse. So the first one is that he regularly matched with students on dating apps, including Tinder and Grindr, who were as young as 18 years old. These students included members of the College Democrats of Massachusetts, UMass Amherst Democrats and other groups in the state. As for the second allegation, they accused him of picking up on college students at events, saying that he'd add students on Instagram and then DM them, and that apparently made them feel uncomfortable, even if he wasn't necessarily explicitly stating his interest to pursue them romantically. They didn't like it. Now, finally, he reportedly had sexual contact with college students, including at UMass Amherst, where he teaches and the Greater Five College Consortium. Now that last allegation has led to a lot of confusion because he is a lecturer at this college. So what a lot of people initially assumed was that he as a professor was sleeping with his students, but that's not actually the case. He happened to hook up with students that go to the same college but weren't directly under him. So there's a lot here that doesn't really make sense to me, which is why I kind of like pivoted away from the story, because the first allegation, like kind of looking at this, they're mad that he regularly matched with students on dating apps. But this is an individual who is 31 years old. He's going to match with people who are college students. We don't know if these are undergrads or grad students. And then it says, who were as young as 18 years old, okay, but 18 years old is of consenting age. And these 18 year olds are making their own profiles on their own accord on these dating apps and they're getting matched. So it seems a little bit bizarre. Now as for the second allegation, they said that he was picking up on college students at these events. Now they don't supply us with any evidence that he was in fact hitting on college students at these events. But the fact that he is DMing them afterwards, I mean, that may be a little bit creepy. Sure, I guess I could see how they view that in a weird way, but they don't actually even accuse him of hitting on them through DMs or creeping on them. They just say they didn't like that he contacted them. Okay, now as for this last allegation here, he had sex with students that happened to attend the college. So to be clear, he matched with students and hooked up with them or dated them. I don't know what the circumstances were. And the students didn't even know that he was a guest lecturer at the college. So I'm trying to figure out, like I'm reading through this, trying to wrap my head around it. Where's the controversy? These are two consenting adults. He doesn't appear to be using his position as a guest lecturer to use that power dynamic to his advantage. So what am I missing here? And I stated that very clearly, like, am I missing something? What's going on here? Because like me, when I see this, I think, oh, you matched with a student at the school you teach. That's pretty awkward. That's weird. I probably wouldn't be cool with that. Nonetheless, it's not really a scandal. These are two consenting adults of legal age that could do what they want to. But the plot thickens a little bit because come to find out I wasn't actually missing anything because there was no scandal. This is all a political hit piece because as Daniel Boguslaw and Ryan Grimm of the Intercept uncovered, the college Democrat at center of attack on Alex Morse hoped to launch career through Richard Neal. And they add rank and file UMass college Democrats were stunned to see the letter their chapter's leadership wrote on their behalf. OK, so let's just pause for a moment. You have a college student on behalf of his entire chapter trying to smear Alex Morse also he can help his own career because he likes Richard Neal. So you have that motivation there, but it goes deeper even than that. There's a really clear conflict of interest. And as you're going to see, there's even evidence. Now, I don't know much about the individual who catalyzed this entire non-story quote unquote scandal. But what I do know is that he's trying to cultivate a homophobic response from people like he's trying to play on that gay trope of, you know, gay men are sexual predators. They're always preying on others and you have to be wary of them. Like you'd think that by now we would have moved on. You know, we see the same thing being used against transgender women with the bathroom panic. But this is exactly what's happening. Like he's hoping to drum up some type of fear about Alex Morse being predatory because he's a single gay man who's 31 years old, who is sexually active. I mean, the ethical considerations here need to be discussed at length. But we can't possibly get to all of that. But I do want to share the details with you because it's very clear that the intentions of the individual who basically made this scandal a thing or tried to, at least he's doing this because he wants an internship with Richard Neal. And he knows Richard Neal personally, Alex Morse's opponent. So the intercept breaks it down with the allegation short of details or any student claiming to be a victim. The focus has shifted to the origin of the letter, the man serving as chief strategist for the UMass Amherst College Democrats, Timothy Ennis recently completed a class with Neal, who teaches the journalism course. Ennis, according to two members of the College Democrats chapter, was open about his hopes of working for Neal in the future. Meanwhile, an aide with the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences in which the journalism program sits, alerted the school's administration of evidence that the recently surfaced allegations against Holy Oak Mayor Alex Morse are politically motivated according to communications reviewed by the intercept. Spokespersons for the administration did not respond to requests for comment. Claire Sheedy, a rising sophomore and a Morse supporter, was active in the College Democrats chapter and knew Ennis through their joint work on behalf of the Pete Buttigieg campaign for president, with Ennis handing off the reins of the organization to Sheedy. In November, 2019, when Ennis was president of the College Democrats chapter, the pair were in New Hampshire together, campaigning for Buttigieg and Ennis, she said, opened up about his respect for Neal in a car ride through New Hampshire. He spoke very highly of Mr. Neal, Sheedy said. What he said to me was he wanted Neal to be his in to politics and work his way up from there. Sheedy said she asked Ennis what he thought of Morse and Ennis said Morse socialized with students in a way he found creepy. Not the students in question, mind you. And that Morse had recently matched with a student on the Tinder dating app. Sheedy said she didn't think of it again until last week when she and other members of the College Democrats were told by leadership that they had written a letter on the members behalf to the local college paper, which had published an article based on it. Helena Middleton, a rising sophomore and former member of the University of Massachusetts College Democrats, said she joined the group to meet other college students on the university campus where a sprawling undergraduate population of 22,000 can make it difficult to feel like a part of a community. A longtime supporter of Morse, she tried to recruit others to join her. I tried to share volunteer opportunities for Morse's campaign, but the chapter leadership would ignore it while at the same time send out opportunities for candidates like Ed Marquis and Joe Kennedy. So it was clear to me that there was something going on there, said Middleton. Eventually she said she learned that a member of the group's leadership was a student in Neal's journalism course at the time. He made it very clear that he supported the election campaign and that he wanted to work for Neal, Middleton said. And it was president of the UMass College Democrats from April 2019 until April 2020, at which point he transitioned to chief strategist. That same month, Morse said college Democrats requested a donation from his campaign. He declined saying that his war chest wasn't large enough. A number of other Massachusetts politicians, including Neal, did make such donations. The president of the state chapter of the college Democrats later took to Twitter to applaud Neal for donating $1,000 to the Amherst chapter in May. Neal posted a photo of his class, which Ennis, who has since locked his Twitter account, liked. So there's a lot there, but I'm going to move on because the plot thickens even further because Daniel Moranz of the Huff Post reached out to the college Dems. And after this story broke, they still literally had the audacity to deny the fact that this was politically motivated. And to make matters worse, as Rangrim points out, Alex Morse apparently only attended one event after declaring his candidacy after they basically insinuated that he was there all the time hitting on students. So the students, I don't know how many there are, who are claiming that he made them feel uncomfortable by coming to these events, like he only went to one event since he's been a candidate and he's been a candidate for a long time. But all of a sudden they come out now and say that he makes them feel uncomfortable as the race tightens as it seems as if Richard Neil might actually be vulnerable, but yet it's not politically motivated. Sure, but regardless, if they want to deny that this is politically motivated or not, the intercept came out with another story that basically confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt with receipts that this was a coordinated effort to smear Alex Morse, quote, College Democrat chats reveal year old plan to engineer and leak Alex Morse accusations quote, this will sink his campaign predicted a College Democrat leader hoping to work for Representative Richard Neil. Now the article goes on to explain on Wednesday, following a statement by Morse, the statewide College Democrats chapter clarified that he had in fact only attended a single event during the course of his campaign. It was after that event in October of 2019 that the leadership of the UMass Amherst chapter began to talk about leaking a story damaging to Morse, according to those online communications. Timothy Ennis, the chief strategist for the UMass Amherst College Democrats admitted in the chats that he was a Neil stand and said he felt conflicted about involving the chapter of the College Democrats in a future attack on Morse, quote, but I need a job concluded Ennis, quote, Neil will give me an internship. At the time Ennis was president of the chapter, a post he held from April 2019 to April 2020 when he was term limited out. Leaders of the College Democrats group went beyond merely plans to leak. They also explicitly discussed how they could find Morse's dating profiles and then lead him into saying something incriminating that would then damage his campaign. That effort appears to have failed to generate the material they hoped for. But the group's leaders did believe they held damning evidence they contemplated leaking Instagram messages between Morse and Andrew Abramson, who in April became president of the organization. Ultimately, the College Democrats did not release any chats or any other specific claims against Morse, opting instead to level broader charges that he behaved inappropriately. On October 5th, Morse attended a College Democrats event at a local community college. Neil also appeared and was introduced by Ennis who was at the time enrolled in a journalism class Neil taught at UMass Amherst. Neil later told Ennis he was impressed by the events Ennis claimed in the chats. Morse sat on a panel with Abramson. After the event Morse reached out to Abramson on Instagram to say it was a pleasure meeting. The two had previously matched on Tinder and a set in the chats but had never met up to match on Tinder means both parties must swipe in the same direction in order to begin a conversation. Now, these are the DMs that Alex Morse sent out to Abramson. As you can see, they are completely innocent. They're just making small talk basically in bullshitting. But the person who shared this screenshot literally admitted that he's totally leading on Alex Morse. But this is the same person who apparently said that Alex Morse made them uncomfortable. Because I know that when someone makes me feel uncomfortable, I try to lead them on. They're nuts. So after Abramson shared that conversation between him and Morse, Ennis then shared a meme joking about leaking the story to Politico. And Ennis also made an active attempt to find Morse on dating apps himself and match with him. So he too can try to lead him on I'm assuming and get him to do something incriminating. So we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this entire story this entire scandal the allegations against Alex Morse are completely bogus. It was created by a self interested political operative who was trying to help the person who he believed would help him get a job in politics, win his election. So it's disgusting. It's unethical. And if I were Alex Morse, I would be speaking to an attorney right now about possibly starting a lawsuit for standard like this is disgusting. Now we don't necessarily know at the time that I record this whether or not Richard Neil is in cahoots with Ennis or college Democrats. But I think that you know a journalist should look into that because this seems pretty fishy because it benefits him. So we certainly should speak out and condemn these allegations against his opponent, which is basically a smear job. And on top of that, what really is sad is another aspect of the story that we have to discuss the fact that so many people jumped on the bandwagon to smear and dismiss Alex Morse, even when the initial allegations that we saw in the first place didn't even make sense. Like these are allegations that two grown men are having sex with each other. They're of consenting age. They're adults and they're having sex and we're supposed to be angry. Like, this is basically puritanical bullshit that we're seeing here like straight people are trying to police the lives of consenting gay adults. Like, why would we blame Alex for that and not ask more questions, not ask why a media outlet would publish this without more evidence, without something more substantial. I think how Collins he put it best lefties fell for a smear of a progressive gay candidate taking on one of the most corporate of corporate Dems. He's accused of having consensual adult relationships with students who weren't his. It's pathetically easy to play the left like a fiddle and he is exactly right. The fact that this is all we got like those allegations came up like I can't not help but think this is the result of homophobia. Now, I don't like to use the gay card very often. I only use it and you know, bring it out when I think it's absolutely necessary. But this is unquestionably the result of implicit bias against the gay man because anyone who believed these allegations to be serious or problematic without asking for more evidence that them. I mean, I have to question your judgment. If you could be manipulated that easily by this scandal, then what else would you be willing to fall for? I want to know. And I think that Alex Morris in an interview with Crystal Ball on The Hill Rising made a really phenomenal point about this. How this basically conjures up images of the gay predator and how we should all be weary of gay men because they are preying on everyone. So you've got to watch them and be fearful of them. And what's most problematic is this age old response to these allegations, the language being used to describe these allegations and people like me that have had to endure an over policing of our sex lives as a member of the queer community and the number of LGBT folks that have reached out over the last few days who are too are so familiar with this language and this this framing of gay men as predators is incredibly problematic and something that we have been going up against for generations. And so many people messaging me and say stay in this fight because young people and queer people need freedom to and we deserve to run for office. And will young people ever run? Will gay people ever run for office? If this is how powerful people are going to treat us when we actually want to make a difference in this country. And he's exactly right. Shraid people have been trying to morally police the sex lives of gay men and women now forever. So the fact that some leftists almost fell for that trap shows that we have a lot of work to do. Like we have to do better because this is very clearly I think an instance of implicit bias. This is homophobia that is bubbling up again, even if people don't want to admit that it's homophobia among left wing people who I think would consider themselves allies. And you can be an ally and support gay people being legally equal. But you have to understand that these biases, these stereotypes about gay men, they're not just going to go away as soon as we have the right to marry. They're going to remain in the backs of our minds for a really long time. And look, even if you are supportive of the gay people, a lot of people don't realize that that bias may still exist in their own head. Like you can feel like this visceral response towards, you know, the thought of gay intimacy, even if you're not a homophobe like explicitly, even if you're an ally, because you have to think about this like the way that American culture perceives gay men is as asexual beings, right? When we look at gay people, gay characters in television shows, we don't really see them in gay relationships. We see them as comic relief or we see them as the friend to someone else. We don't ever really grapple with the reality that gay intimacy is a thing. We have to think of gay people as asexual beings in order to make ourselves feel comfortable, right? Because a lot of straight people still think that gay sex is gross. I mean, I think that Dave Chappelle made a really sound argument about this as problematic as it may be back in the early days when the Chappelle show was still on. I think he said that I think gay sex is gross. You know, I support gay equality, but I'm just going to admit I'm a straight person and I think that gay sex is gross. And I think a lot of people feel that gay sex is gross, even if they don't think that gay people should be, you know, relegated to second class citizens legally speaking. So what you have to do is fight past that instinct to like respond, you know, to gay people in that negative way, because you have to understand that gay men have always been treated as predators in our society. I mean, there's a makeup guru I'm blanking on his name. What is George Charles? Like just last year, I believe he's 19 years old. He's a virgin. And there were allegations by an older white woman that he was preying on straight men. Now he brought receipts and disproved all of that. But I mean, this is something that we're constantly having to prove. Like when I came out of the closet as a gay man to people, I had to explain to them how me being gay doesn't mean that I'm a pedophile or a sexual predator. So we're fighting to defeat this stereotype and this label and this sexual predator trobe. And we don't want to think about people in our culture who are gay as having intimate relationships with other gay people. It reminds me of the days when, you know, I told people that I was gay and the response was, oh, that's wonderful. Thank you for telling me. I support you. I just don't want to see anything. Like this is something that we're constantly dealing with. So, you know, Alex Morse is, you know, perfectly fine as an openly gay man in so far as he doesn't reveal to all of us that he actually is a young man who is sexually active. So that's what the people were trying to play to in this story, Richard Ennis. And that's what makes this so nefarious. Like he knows this. I'm assuming he's gay if he was going on, you know, these gay dating apps. And the other individual, Abramson, was also on these gay dating apps. So they know about all of this. Like they know about the gay predator trope if they're gay men because you have to. And they know that what they were trying to do was get leftist to turn on Alex Morse by triggering that you gay yucky factor in people's brains because once you get them in that state of mind, it's really easy to manipulate them. You can get them to think negative things because when you activate that portion of their brain, they turn off reason. They stop thinking logically. They become reactionary and they are susceptible to believing bad things about gay people, gay men in particular. Leftists should know better. But if you were duped by this story, then I would encourage you to just try to do better and vet these claims and try to, you know, understand that due process is important, especially for historically marginalized communities. I mean due process is important for anyone, of course. But I mean like you have to understand that when we're vetting these types of claims, old stereotypes have to come into play. And this was very clearly an attempt to play on that old gay predator stereotype. And it's disgusting. And you'd expect left allies who are, you know, in support of LGBTQ rights and queer people to not fall for this as easily, but the fact that they did, the fact that they were duped so easily by this ploy to help a corporate democrat, it's deeply worrying. And as a movement, we have to try to do better and educate people about these things.