Meet Michael Moates. He’s kinda the worst.
Normally, you’d say, “what’s so special about yet another Qanon-style conservative down in Texas? They’re a dime a dozen!” And sure, you’d be right. But Moates has decided to stand out from the pack, to get himself a healthy dose of the Streisand Effect. So okay, here goes.
It all started when community member republicinstanity posted this story: “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day: Michael Moates.”
[W]e’ll be discussing Michael Moates, a 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in Texas’ 26th Congressional District who is more renowned for being a conservative troll who does his best to promote the Qanon Conspiracy Theory (the one that insists opponents of Donald Trump are Satan-worshipping, child-molesting cannibals), and has been given temporary bans from Twitter for encouraging Donald Trump to order ICE to shoot at migrants crossing the border on sight.
The story originally had a picture of Moates culled from his social media, and he decided to file a complaint with our hosting service, attempting to shut down the site. (The story’s writer replaced image with an equally appropriate one: a trash dumpster.)
We handled it, sure, but then it made me curious. Who is this asshole, trying to censor people’s discussions about him? Under any possible theory of the copyright law, the image was fair game—we are a political discussion site, he was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, affording the highest Fair Use protections for the image. Why was he going to such lengths to try and hide his face?
For starters, there’s the QAnon stuff linked above. “The conspiracy theory these media figures have adopted is known online as “The Storm” and is essentially a radical spin-off of the already byzantine “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which alleges the world’s top politicians, financiers and entertainers operate a secret satanic pedophile ring that traffics young children to be sexually abused and sacrificed,” wrote Jared Holt for Right Wing Watch. “The Storm, which since its inception has more frequently been referred to as the “QAnon” theory, takes Pizzagate a step further by alleging that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion between Russian officials and the Trump 2016 campaign is actually cover for Trump’s work dismantling the supposed pedophile ring and inching closer toward imprisoning Democrats like Hillary Clinton for their alleged involvement.”
But it wasn’t until this moment that he stood out from the pack:
Calling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “bitch”—a favorite pastime of misogynists everywhere unable to handle a strong woman—catapulted him into infamy. Conservatives loved him! Look at all those likes! But it also focused greater attention on him. And what people found was, er, kinda gross.
For example, his creeping on women and underage girls, as extensively documented by Right Wing Watch. We’ll start with a rare case: a woman of legal age (a college student).
While discussing this exchange on a podcast, Moates decided to blame the woman, because of course he did:
Moates admitted to Higbie on the podcast that the message about alcohol may have been phrased poorly, but said that because the young woman to whom he sent that message had reportedly experienced multiple instances of sexual harassment at her college, her interpretation of his messages “speaks to her state of mind.”
“If you have a history of this, maybe you’re the one who’s overreacting,” Moates said on the podcast.
As noted, that one was an anomaly. His targets usually trend much younger.
There’s the story of 16-year-old anti-abortion activist, Purity Thomas, who first approached Moates (who styled himself a journalist, and even made it into the White House briefing room at least once), wanting to tell a story about being punched by pro-choice activists outside an abortion clinic. Sensing opportunity, Moates pounced.
Thomas texted Moates more details about her incident, writing that it had happened the year before, when she was 15 years old, to which he replied: “hey crazy beautiful chick.” Thomas took offense. In following messages, Moates would try to joke that he had mistaken Thomas’ first name, Purity, as “purdy,” a slang term reflecting a southern dialect saying the word “pretty.”
“After that, I thought, ‘You’re not coming anywhere near my team,’” Thomas told Right Wing Watch.
After Thomas came forward about her interactions with him, Moates defended his remarks during a September 5 podcast, saying, “Yes, she was beautiful.”
“She never sent me a text message saying that it bothered her,” Moates told Higbie. “If anyone here made my comments sexual, it’s the lady who interpreted it.”
It’s the woman’s fault, of course. Always is, right?
Thomas has been public and vocal about the incident:
Again, note that Moates never denied any of those. He actually tweeted a response to that (since deleted when Twitter banned him for good), “The fact that you can’t call a woman beautiful without offending them anymore is a problem.” Again, it’s the woman’s fault, because we all know how overly sensitive and political correct conservative women are.
In yet another incident, a young woman “alleges that Moates once told her that she ‘couldn’t possibly be telling the truth that I was a proud virgin, that I had indeed never kissed a boy, because I was too gorgeous for that.’ She was 16 years old at the time.”
You get the point. What’s worse, is that when confronted with his words, “Moates cited the First Amendment in defense of his remarks.”
“This was supposed to be light humor, you getting along with people, you know, the free exchange of what used to be protected under the First Amendment sort of thing?” Higbie asked Moates.
“Right,” Moates answered.
In Moates’ world, the First Amendment protects creepers, but doesn’t protect photographs of a political candidate. Interesting interpretations! These morons don’t even understand what the First Amendment is all about! (To be clear, it’s about the ability of government to restrict someone’s speech. Nothing in the Constitution protects aspirational pederasts from their predatory words.)
In any case, all of this was confined inside the conservative media bubble until Moates decided to go after AOC. HIs misogynistic efforts caught the eye of none other than Stormy Daniels. After she tweeted about Moates’ attack on AOC, Moates stupidly decided to amplify her tweet with a “thanks for all the free followers @StormyDaniels. I appreciate the attention.”
Her response was one for the ages:
After that beat-down, he scrubbed his entire Twitter feed. Later on, Twitter banned him outright.
That should’ve been the end of the story, but it seems as though now, a year later, Moates is attempting to scrub the internet of all of this terribly embarrassing material (which apparently includes his face). That is why we have this asshole threatening our hosting with bogus copyright claims, despite having used the First Amendment as an excuse to sexually harass underage girls.
And so you ready for this? On top of all that other horrible shit, we can add one more indictment against Moates—a single big-ass count of hypocrisy.
Check out this screenshot from his website:
WHAT THE WHAT? He’s literally calling himself a “contributor” at THIS place, while using our copyrighted logo to illustrate his bullshit lie?
Turns out, he had an account! Bojo’d, of course, though he did manage to get two stories in before getting banned. But he’s banned. And yet, there is that obvious lie, in all its glory, on his freakin’ website.
He’s really going to go after us for copyright infringement, when he himself is infringing on our copyright? Granted, it’s not exactly attempted pedophilia, but with conservatives, there never is a bottom. They can always manage to be just a little worse than you already thought they were.
So f’ that guy. His attempts to scrub the web of his mug just backfired on him. He’ll be getting a letter from our lawyer soon. And I had way too much fun re-exposing him to the world. Thanks to republicinsanity for getting the ball rolling on this, however inadvertent it might've been!
p.s. Community member CajsaLilliehook is up to 525 conservative sexual predators, abusers, and enablers, in what is an unfortunately long-running series.