I want to like Will O'Neill

I also want to eat paste.

Will O’Neill is the head of the Orange County Republican Party, and a guy I’d prefer to like.

I’m not just saying that. Will is a local guy. He’s read some of my books. As Newport’s mayor, he wasn’t entirely vile. So, sometimes, I think, “Maybe, just maybe …”

Then he drops jewels like this …

I ask this, sincerely, of Will O’Neill: Why should anyone (left or right) take you seriously when you never, ever, ever apply your “standards” to your own side? You’re upset about the undermining of the media? Really, bruh? This bothers you? Because it’s weird that we’ve never (not once) heard you mention the White House press briefings now being less about mainstream media and more about the packing in of hard-right hacks like Riley Gaines and Mike Lindell’s “network.” It’s weird that we’ve never (not once) heard you criticize Donald Trump for attacking one woman reporter after another after another. For their low IQ. For their looks. It’s weird that we’ve never (not once) seen you question Pete Hegseth’s bizarre savaging of journalists. It’s weird that we’ve never (not once) seen you defend minority reporters being dismissed as DEI hires.

You’re upset about journalism under attack? Let’s discuss NPR. Let’s discuss Armed Forces Radio. Let’s discuss a president tagging the press as the enemy of the people.

Will, fuck, let’s discuss the two journalists you say are doing “great work”—Jennifer Van Laar and Katy Grimes. One (Van Laar) is actively campaigning for Spencer Pratt to become Los Angeles’ mayor. The other (Grimes) is a right-wing hack pretending to be moderate.¹

I truly don’t know what happened to you. But I also know, as your party drowns beneath the vomit of a president you refuse to condemn, your words grow less and less important and more and more pathetic.

1. A trusted colleague reached out to me, RE: Grimes. And wrote this: “There is only a very small percentage of people in the world and, in a smaller subset, the Capitol community that I truly dislike. I even get along quite well with most of the Republicans around the Capitol. But Katy Grimes… I dislike her intensely. Her investigative journalism consists of her sitting in the back of the chamber during a Senate or assembly session and then going and writing a column for the California Globe, where she trashes everything that went on that day. I have never in my many years of being around this Capitol even seen her talk to any lawmaker, except for the most hard-core Republicans. She is a fucking joke and not a single member of the press corps takes her seriously.”