Brian McGinnis is a big loser.
He hails from North Carolina, where a heated, closely watched Senate race between Michael Whatley (R) and Roy Cooper (D) is currently in progress. As it stands, Cooper has a clear advantage in the polls, meaning that a majority of North Carolina voters apparently prefer to have their women stabbed to death on buses by career felons rather than fill their spiritual voids with something other than crusades against “climate change” and whatnot. So it seems that McGinnis is in good company.
But McGinnis is an even bigger loser in that he’s the Green Party candidate for the Senate race. Like the Libertarians, every election the Greens dig up somebody for whom a sense of dignity is no obstacle in their willingness to campaign, waste everyone’s time and money, and hopefully finish the race with a vote percentage tally to the left-hand side of the decimal point. If McGinnis is eager to be this year’s candidate to take the pie in the face, that’s his business. His campaign site is the joke you’d expect it to be, short on specifics, big on bumper sticker axioms. The amount of grammatical errors would make a short bus grade schooler blush.
But McGinnis is perhaps the biggest loser because of his actions last week on Capitol Hill. It’s neither original nor a stroke of Machiavellian genius for flailing, unknown candidates to pull publicity stunts to attract attention, any amount of attention, to their campaign. McGinnis headed to a Senate hearing and began screaming from the back rows. Numerous police officers and a Republican senator had to drag him out like a child having a meltdown on the playground, during which time his hand was broken when it got caught in between a door frame.
What made this particularly egregious, in my view, is McGinnis’s decision to don his old Marine Corps uniform for his publicity stunt. I say this as a former Marine myself. Since my enlistment, and indeed during it, I always made a conscious effort not to use my status as a United States Marine to earn leverage where it wasn’t due.
Being a Marine was one of my life’s proudest moments. What it wasn’t was a wedge to gain political clout. My uniform wasn’t a prop, and it didn’t grant me moral authority. Being a Marine didn’t mean people owed me anything, and it didn’t confer upon me a right to break the law.
Another thing we Marines don’t do is strut around town in our dress blues over a decade after leaving active duty. Service is supposed to be an act of humility. Barring a specific request from, let’s say, a parade organizer or for some veterans’ event, that’s not what veterans keep their uniform for. The next time I wear my dress blues will be in my coffin.
McGinnis sullied his uniform the moment he used it to gain social leverage for a political issue. He wants to be given deference for being a former Marine, but without showing the deference Marines give to the democratic process we took an oath to protect.
If McGinnis wants to effect change as someone wearing a Marine Corps uniform, he can re-enlist and serve another four years. If McGinnis wants to effect change as a private citizen or as a political candidate, he can do so without the uniform. And he can do it peacefully, within the confines of the law.
Marines don’t shut down democratic assemblies. Marines don’t attack police officers. As it stands, McGinnis is facing three counts of assault on a police officer, three counts of resisting arrest, and three counts of crowding, obstructing, and incommoding for an unlawful demonstration. And he committed these crimes while wearing his uniform.
But even if misguided and immature, surely his stunt must have been done to advance the cause of freedom and the defense of the United States, right?
Right?
Well, let’s take a look at what he was so upset about. “America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel!” is what McGinnis shouted when he began shouting down our elected representatives. Hmm, okay. So he’s singling out Israel. Not Ukraine, or Taiwan, or Venezuela, or South Korea, or Cuba, or NATO, or Iraqi Kurds, or Nigerian Christians. Just Israel.
His wife is “Palestinian.” Hmm, okay. So the pieces are starting to fit.
And if we go back to April 2024, we find that McGinnis took part in the “Freedom Flotilla Coalition,” one of those Thunberg-esque clown shows where pampered Westerners get to play revolutionaries by bringing “aid” to Hamas terrorists. Er, I mean the noble “Palestinian” people of Gaza. No word from him as to whether his flotilla’s supposed 5,000 tons of aid helped Gaza more than the two trillion tons of aid Israel has provided.
And finally, we have his stillborn Senate campaign. His website milks the Marine thing about as much as one could milk it but says nothing about how, if elected, he would uphold his duty to the United States of America. Rather, we see a picture of him wearing a kaffiyeh, which is the modern equivalent of a swastika armband.
And the only picture of him on the main page shows him with a flag pin on his jacket. And despite the fact he’s running for office in the American government, and despite the fact he feels the need to repeatedly sledgehammer the reader across the head that he was a Marine, his flag pin is oddly not an American flag.
Care to guess which flag he pinned onto his jacket?
Yep, it’s a “Palestinian” flag. The chode who wants everyone to know he was a Marine can’t even put an American flag pin on his campaign website. Instead, he wears the flag of the world’s most brutal terrorist state.
Whatever honor, integrity, or decency he learned in the Marine Corps has since been lost. And that’s a shame. Because when McGinnis puts on his dress blue uniform these days, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a piece of cloth. And it’s a direct insult to those of us for whom it is more than a piece of cloth.
McGinnis is a disgrace to that uniform, and he is an embarrassment to the nation.
I don’t expect McGinnis to do any self-reflection about this. All I ask is that our readers, and the American public, know that McGinnis does not represent Marine Corps veterans. And I’m not talking about political affiliation. I’m talking about his shameless exploitation of a symbol of honor, his uniform, to advance his political career. And I’m talking about his material support for a terrorist entity that wouldn’t hesitate to murder everybody in that Senate hearing room, Republicans and Democrats alike.
McGinnis pats himself on the back quite a bit about his courage and bravery (another thing most veterans don’t do). Surely, then, you’re brave enough to face off against a fellow veteran on a debate stage? We can debate whatever you want: Israel, Hamas, Iran, capitalism, global warming, etc. And I guarantee any one of us will mop the floor with you.
And you’ll limp away from that debate stage not with your hand broken, but rather your shameless sense of narcissism.
And to all my fellow Marines out there, brother and sister, black and white, liberal and conservative, active duty and veteran, who continue to honor your uniform, not with grandstanding but with impeccability, not with sophomoric belligerence but with graceful composure, thank you for holding the line. Semper Fidelis.
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