Michigan’s MTG-Wannabee is a Climate Denier, and So. Much. More.

Bridge:

LANSING — A Michigan Republican House candidate under fire for saying he told his daughters “if rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it” claims he’s only guilty of using a bad analogy.

Robert “RJ” Regan of Grand Rapids, who is favored to win the solidly Republican 74th District in west Michigan after an upset in a special election last week, made the remark during a livestream Sunday hosted by a conservative group, The Coalition to Rescue Michigan, about his pursuit to decertify the 2020 presidential election.

He told Bridge Michigan on Monday that his remark only meant that “nothing is inevitable.”

“Sometimes, my words aren’t as smooth and polished as the politicians are because I’m not a politician. I’m working on it,” Regan said. “The only reason the (politically) left trolls attack you is because they know you’re directly over the target, dropping direct hits on an issue. If you’re not scoring hits, they leave you alone.”

Both Democrats and Republicans, however, are condemning Regan for his comments, as well as statements calling the Ukraine war a “fake war just like the fake pandemic.” He has also questioned the legitimacy of the coronavirus pandemic and shared a meme claiming that feminism is “a Jewish program to degrade and subjugate white men.” 

In other social media posts, Regan shared conspiracy theories claiming that Jewish people were behind the 2001 terror attacks and presidential assassinations and control the banks as well as the media. 
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Regan ran for the House seat in 2014, 2018 and 2020, when he made national news because his daughter urged voters to oppose him. He’ll face Democrat Carol Glanville in the May general election. The winner replaces Mark Huizenga, who won election to the state Senate last fall. 

The Hill:

The daughter of a candidate running for a seat in the Michigan state House has drawn viral attention online after taking to Twitter earlier this week to plead with voters not to elect her father to office.

In the viral tweet, which has racked up more than 159,000 likes in the past two days, Stephanie Regan, the daughter of Republican state House candidate Robert Regan, writes, “If you’re in Michigan and 18+ pls for the love of god do not vote for my dad for state rep. Tell everyone.”

In a pair of tweets the day after, Stephanie wrote that her father was Robert Regan and called on voters to research his campaign, writing: “I don’t feel safe rn sharing further information regarding his beliefs, but please look him up and just read for yourself.”

Stephanie Regan confirmed her identity to the website the Daily Dot. The Hill has reached out to her for comment.

Regan addressed his daughter’s tweets in a lengthy statement posted to Facebook on Thursday afternoon, saying in part, “I am happy that she feels confident enough in our relationship to express her opposing thoughts so publicly” while encouraging her and others to voice their own opinions.

The candidate told The Hill on Thursday when reached for comment that he was not completely surprised by his daughter’s words given their disagreements over issues like systemic racism, the existence of white privilege and Black Lives Matter.

“A lot of students when they go off to these liberal university campuses, like the University of Colorado, the University of Texas and Austin — and she went to the University of Colorado in Boulder — and you know, they just kind of get sucked into this Marxist, communist ideology and she and I just don’t see eye to eye when it comes to the whole socialism, communism, Marxist philosophy,” he said.

When asked what he thinks could have prompted his daughter to ask people not to vote for him, Regan said “her big thing has to do with the systemic racism that’s going on in the country.”

But wait, there’s more, so much more….

Turns out his ex has some things to say as well.

It goes on and on.
I could do this all night, but I’ll have to cut it off somewhere.

Forward:

In May 2021, Regan’s personal Facebook page shared two posts, still visible on his page as of Monday, in which he expressed antisemitic opinions. In one, he shared an image of a quote branded by the logo of Smoloko News, a now-defunct antisemitic website. The quote described “feminism” as “a Jewish program to degrade and subjugate white men.”

In January of last year, Regan shared a link to an antisemitic “family history” of the Rothschilds, the Jewish banking family often at the center of conspiracy theories about Jews and world banking domination. Two months later, he shared a meme made by a QAnon influencer that called “(((Them)))” the “real virus” in a post calling public health measures to combat COVID-19 “nonsense.” The triple parentheses, or echo symbol, is used online by antisemites to identify Jews.

In another post, Regan himself called Jewish financier and political activist George Soros a “Jewish communist investor” and “pure evil.” 

Regan, a Grand Rapids resident whose LinkedIn page says he is a trucking company executive, frequently posts his views on social media alongside right-wing memes. Recent Facebook posts show that he supports causes including COVID vaccine skepticism and the debunked lie that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. “Climate change is a hoax, just like Covid was,” he tweeted in 2021. 

I know you’ll be amazed he was at the insurrection.