>> We're learning more about the motivations behind some of the ridiculous accusations
against progressive candidate Alex Morse.
Alex Morse is the progressive candidate who's actually primering Richard Neal, who is the
Head of the House and Ways Committee in Congress.
So he's got a powerful position, but if you look at his record, he's a complete and utter
disaster.
He helped to defeat legislation that would have regulated surprise medical billing, that
many Americans deal with, whenever they go to a doctor or have a procedure done.
And you have all of these corrupt influences making headway in policy because of who Richard
Neal is and what he stands for.
Now, Alex Morse is challenging him, and it's important that Morse win this primary election.
This is in the first congressional district, and as we approach this primary election,
all of a sudden, the campus Democrats from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst
put out this letter, basically saying that Alex Morse made people feel uncomfortable
because he was on a dating app where he matched with people who were also students.
They weren't his students when he was a professor, or a lecturer, I should say, at the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst, but they were part of that university system.
And they were also on these dating apps.
They also had these specific preferences noted in their accounts.
So in order for Morse to match with them on these accounts, they would have to basically
set up their accounts to say that they're open and willing to date people in Alex Morse's
demographic.
Now, I tell you all of that because it's a two way street.
It's important to know that context when it comes to dating apps like Tinder or Grindr,
but we're also learning more about the anonymous accusations that came out against him.
The Intercept reporting that the man serving as chief strategist for the University of
Massachusetts Amherst College Democrats, Timothy Ennis, recently completed a class with Richard
Neal, who of course, Alex Morse is running against, who teaches a journalism course.
Ennis, according to two members of the College Democrats chapter, was open about his hopes
of working for Neal in the future.
Hmm, sounds like there's a little bit of a conflict of interest there.
But let me give you more.
Because there were students who were part of this group, Campus Democrats, who went
on the record to speak to The Intercept about what they experienced within this group.
So Claire Sheedy is one of those students, a rising sophomore and a Morse supporter.
She was active in the College Democrats chapter and knew Ennis through their joint work on
behalf of the Buttigieg campaign for president.
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.
So there's one student who went on the record and specified this.
And when we first reported the story, by the way, we also shared with you that Richard
Neal donated $1,000 to this particular Campus Democrats chapter.
I'm sure that that had nothing to do with some of the motivations behind their ridiculously
vague accusations against Morse.
Helena Middleton is one of the other students who actually spoke to The Intercept on the
record, and she said she joined the group to socialize and be part of the community,
but she noticed that the group's leadership pretty much had it out for Morse.
Here's what she had to say.
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 Markey
and Joe Kennedy.
So it was clear to me that there was something going on there.
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.
So now you have two students on the record, who are part of this organization, saying
that there were some aspirations that led to, that might have influenced the decision
to put out this letter against Alex Morse.
Middleton, by the way, left the chapter several days ahead of the letter's publication, frustrated
at the anti-Morse bias from leadership.
Sheedy left the chapter after the letter was published.
The current president, Andrew Abramson, reached out to Middleton last week to apologize for
joking about the Morse race in the College Democrats' group chat.
So, look, John, I want to hear all your thoughts on this.
But let me just refresh everyone on what the accusations were.
And first of all, there's no evidence of these accusations, but even if there were, this
isn't sexual misconduct, it's just not.
And to equate this with sexual misconduct is absolutely disgusting, and absolutely minimizes
and degrades sexual misconduct and the victims who have had to deal with it.
So the 31-year old, and he's very young, he's 31 years old.
Mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts was barred for allegedly having made students feel uncomfortable
by sending them messages through Instagram and matching with University of Massachusetts
students on Tinder, in addition to having sexual contact with students at the University
of Massachusetts Amherst, where he was previously an adjunct professor.
None of these individuals, who were all adults, were his students.
He had no power over them.
So I wanna be clear about that.
And in terms of the messages he sent to students, there's no specificity as to what the messages
were.
Did he write something that was inappropriate?
Because we haven't seen a single example of that.
Is the very act of messaging someone on social media inappropriate?
Because if that's the case, then we're all perpetrators of sexual misconduct.
Come on, no one's buying that.
One other point, John.
The College Democrats have not alleged that Morse had inappropriate relationships with
students he taught, but rather accused him of having relationships with other students
in western Massachusetts, some at UMass Amherst.
UMass, like most universities, only bars relationships between students and faculty who have a supervisory
or teaching relationship.
Not all students generally.
John jump in.
>> I don't.
It's such a weird situation, because generally, it's one of two parts of this that we need
to focus on, sort of the, I guess the motivations or whatever behind the accusations.
Is it trustworthy or is it not, or whatever?
And then breaking down.
It's usually fairly obvious whether this is an acceptable action, if it was, in fact done
or not.
In this case, I don't know what I'm supposed to make of either of them.
Certainly, it looks like there was a sort of systemic pro-Neal bias that was going on,
that certainly could have influenced the willingness to go along with spreading the sort of thing,
especially considering the content of the accusations.
But even if there wasn't the bias, let's say that we hadn't discovered that.
I don't know what I'm supposed to make of what he did.
I guess it's up to individuals to say whether they think that's unacceptable or not.
But I don't feel like a lot of people are gonna think that this was some horrible immoral
course of action.
You're talking entirely about adults, as you've pointed out.
I mean, there are rules that he wasn't even breaking, he would have been okay had he done
other things that he didn't do, but he didn't even do those.
I honestly just don't know what we're supposed to take away from this, other than if you
don't pay a lot of attention and you just see some headlines, you'll think sexual stuff.
What are you gonna do?
Even if you didn't know the Neal stuff, if you actually look into the specifics of this,
I don't know what you're supposed to take away that would cause you to write them off
as a candidate.
>> I mean, look, I think you hit the nail on the head.
They are banking on, I think that, this opposition campaign is really banking on people not reading
the details of the story and just basically going off of headlines, which are vague and
don't really give you the details of what the accusations are.
What Alex Morse did is called normal behavior, normal activity.
If you're a college student, and you find it traumatizing that someone matches with
you on either Tinder or Grindr, or whatever app you're on, then you need to get off the
app.
That's the point of the app.
Right now, I think it would be problematic if he used his position of power, if he had
some power over students, and took advantage of that to engage in some sort of like sexual
relationship, but that didn't even happen.
Not even close.
And when he was on the dating apps, he was between the ages of 25 and 30.
That's called normal.
It's normal.
>> And he is a grassy edge, basically >> Yeah, and if these students don't wanna
match, like they made this big deal because they're like, he matched with people as young
as 18, which by the way is 18-year olds are adults, unless we wanna now live in a society
where we treat 18-year olds as infants.
I mean, sure, we can do that.
I don't think that they are infants.
I think they are adults who can make decisions for themselves, but fine.
We haven't heard from a single person who's had a sexual relationship with Alex Morse.
And to be quite honest with you, I have no interest in hearing it.
This is a disgusting narrative to begin with, especially because he's gay.
And I think that they're purposely trying to tap into a stereotype about gay men preying
on young boys.
And it's hideous and awful.
And then on top of that, in order for an 18-year old to match on Tinder, I mean, I can't believe
it's been a long time, but I was on Tinder a long time ago.
In order for you to match with someone in any age group, you have to set your profile
to indicate, hey, I'm open to dating people within this age group.
It's a two-way street.
So if you're genuinely one of these college students who matched with Alex Morse and you
are traumatized by it, okay, well, where's your personal agency?
I'd love to hear about that.
>> Exactly yeah.
>> It's just so pathetic.
And I know what to make of this.
>> I know what to make of this, because I've seen it happen to various male progressive
candidates.
They try to like gin up some false narrative about how they're like scary predators with
very little evidence behind it.
And I'm sick of it, and what I'm more sick of is that progressives are so obsessed with
seeming like they're the good guys.
That they immediately throw people like Alex Morse under the bus, without even doing a
proper investigation into what the accusations are.
Do we wanna win?
Or do we want to be pathetic fools?
Because honestly, I'm tired of the pathetic behavior.
I'm ready to win.
I'm ready to fight.
And we need to think about power as opposed to signaling to the rest of the world that
we're more moral, because what's happening to Alex Morse right now, is not moral.
It is incredibly immoral.
And the very leftists who are buying this narrative would be disgusted if they were
the targets of a smear campaign like this.