No repentance necessary: Youngkin, given opportunity to disavow Trump, demurs

Fox News anchor Bret Baier gave Glenn Youngkin three chances to deny Donald Trump. Youngkin, unlike the Apostle Peter, was a good disciple, and the rooster crowed this morning with nary a cross word from him.

“Well, you know, I’m not a name-caller,” Youngkin sidestepped on the first question from Baier, who was trying to get comment from the governor on Trump’s odd social media post claiming that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has a “death wish,” and referred to McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who served in Trump’s Cabinet, as “his China-loving wife, Coco Chow.”

This seems an easy thing to do if you’re Youngkin, and you’re trying to present yourself as a middle-of-the-road conservative alternative to the likes of Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

You’re not a RINO if you think death threats and blatant racism toward other Republicans is a bad thing, and you let people know that.

Instead, Youngkin continued with a word salad about “common-sense solutions,” which Baier interrupted.

“But this thing doesn’t help,” the anchor said.

“We can actually win over and over again by pressing forward answers to problems,” Youngkin tried to continue.

That was his second chance to deny Trump.

“That post doesn’t help,” Baier pushed back.

“Yeah, but, Bret, I’ve just found that calling people names is not the way to, not the way to put forth a good idea,” Youngkin said, then began another word salad about taxes and schools and moving the country forward.

He didn’t deny Trump, disavow him, criticize him in any way, shape or form.

Because he’s afraid that in doing so, he’d be done within the Republican Party.

It’s a sign of how pathetic things have gotten under that tent, for sure, but it’s equally pathetic that a guy like Youngkin, who with a net worth in the range of a half-billion dollars doesn’t need politics, and you’d think could say what he really thinks, consequences be damned, either feels constrained from being able to do so, or, more troubling, he’s only playing nice because he is a Trumper, and knows that he couldn’t get elected in Virginia if that was known.