There are a lot of members of the House of Representatives that would make a Koala Bear seem smart. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a certain shrillness in her Marxist platitudes that could be compared to nails on a chalkboard, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s drunken press conferences have become a staple in more recent years. Then there’s Rep. Katie Porter, who manages to show her vapidness in other ways.
To hear people on the left talk, Porter is brilliant. She brings whiteboards to committee hearings and uses bags of rice to illustrate the wonders of liberal economics. On the other hand, she also thinks pedophiles are unfairly discriminated against and sees abortion as a solution to inflation.
Here’s an example of the kind of grandstanding Porter often partakes in, and if you want to gag yourself, try reading the fawning replies. She’s just so darn smart! You better not mess with her!
Of course, everything in that video was performative nonsense. There was no “Big Oil exec.” There was only the owner of a small drilling company that employed just 16 people. The “special tax break” in question was actually a deduction that allowed the non-salvageable costs of drilling to be written off in a single year instead of being taken as losses over time. In other words, the credit wasn’t even “special.” But Porter sure did own him!
You get the idea. This is the kind of person Porter is. She’s a rabid narcissist from the highly mediocre halls of academia who thinks talking in circles at hearings makes her noteworthy. That’s what makes none of what I’m about to share surprising.
Apparently, Porter kicked a staffer (we’ll get to their specific role in a moment) out of her office permanently for supposedly giving the congresswoman COVID-19, and be sure to follow the story until the end because things get a lot crazier.
Those texts from Porter reveal what an absolute lunatic she is. She doesn’t even give the staffer a chance to explain before booting her, accusing her of breaking office protocols on COVID-19 testing.
Let me stop there for a second. Who the heck is still requiring employees to follow a COVID-19 testing routine when they aren’t symptomatic? And to be sure, per the texts, the staffer was not symptomatic. Further, why would you stop a staffer from coming to pick up their personal effects in person once they no longer have COVID-19? What an immature way to handle the situation. Besides, Porter is vaxxed and boosted (multiple times) so what is she even worried for? I’ve been assured that if you get the jabs, all will be right with the world.
But I digress, that’s just the first part of this ridiculous saga. The staffer then says that they were dealing with a serious personal issue (a friend being murdered) and that missing the test was just absent-mindedness. Porter shows no care at all, snarking back with an accusation that the staffer gave her COVID-19 (something she couldn’t possibly know) and that she has no one to care for her kids.
It’s the last message shown that really shows how duplicitous Porter is, though. According to a statement from Progressive Caucus Chair Amar Shergill, Porter attended an in-person meeting after she banned the staffer for supposedly giving her COVID-19. So the staffer gets banned from the office permanently for not following testing protocols, but Porter was out and about knowing she had been exposed. I guess the California congresswoman doesn’t see herself on the same level as her lowly office workers.
After the initial texts were leaked, more details came out, including Porter’s side of the story.
Did you get that? This wasn’t just any staffer. This staffer was a Wounded Warrior Fellow operating as a veteran liaison for Porter’s office. She treated a military veteran like dirt over not taking a COVID-19 test. It’s just incredible.
To put a cherry on this, here’s Porter back in March happy-talking about how she treats her staff.
Some of the worst people in the world work hold public office. They are fake in borderline psychotic ways. This episode shows us the real Katie Porter, though. Perhaps her district, which almost kicked her out of office during the last mid-term, will get the message in 2024 and send her back to being an overpaid stump at some college.
On Thursday, text messages leaked showing that Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) had permanently banned a female staffer from her congressional office for failure to take a COVID-19 test. During the exchange, Porter went on to accuse the staffer of giving her COVID-19, refusing to let her retrieve her personal belongings in person while showing no care for the personal tragedy the staffer had been facing.
It was a mask-off moment for Porter, who has grown quite the fan club among whiteboard-loving liberals who think cheap grand-standing during hearings is evidence of brilliance. But what made things even worse was who the staffer was.
Later, it was revealed the person Porter had treated like absolute dirt was Sash Georgiades, a Wounded Warrior Fellow who was operating as a veteran liaison inside the congresswoman’s office. According to Georgiades, after Porter chastised her and banned her from the office, the two never interacted again.
But while all that was bad enough, a resurfaced video has managed to make this story much worse. In it, Georgiades appears with Porter, with the latter proclaiming that “we need to be backing up our gratitude for veterans with action.” The biggest problem? The video was was published two weeks after Georgiades was blamed for giving Porter COVID-19 and viciously banned from the office.
When you put all this together, it’s pretty grotesque. Porter treated Georgiades like garbage, kicking her out of the office permanently and claiming the staffer gave her COVID-19 (something Porter couldn’t possibly know). Yet two weeks later, Porter put up a previously-filmed video with Georgiades bragging about the congresswoman’s supposed concern for veterans.
There’s something sociopathic about that, especially given Porter reportedly never reconnected with Georgiades to apologize or explain her behavior. Normal people don’t treat their employees like trash only to use videos of them for what boils down to self-promotion.
It certainly seems like Porter had no care or remorse at all about what happened, otherwise she would have at least canned the video so as to not further exploit Georgiades. But she just threw the clip out there anyway as if she hadn’t banned the veteran from her office under ridiculous, self-serving pretenses.
Is this what all politicians in Washington are like? I certainly hope not, but it wouldn’t surprise me if most fit the bill. Still, Porter appears to be a special breed of obnoxious elitism mixed with abject mediocrity.