Democrat Wes Moore’s presidential ambitions imploded over the past 10 weeks, but you’d have to be a pretty close student of the Maryland governor to know it, since most of the mainstream press is in cahoots with the aspiring 2028 Democratic presidential cohort.
Our Andrew Kerr has published two blockbuster investigative reports about Moore that undercut key elements of his life story—first, his boasts about being some kind of a “foremost expert” on radical Islam, based on an Oxford University graduate thesis that he can’t produce and that the school doesn’t have on file in its library, and second, his oft-repeated tale that his great-grandfather was chased out of the country by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. These claims are part of Moore’s long and well-documented history of making self-aggrandizing and provably false assertions about his biography. In that sense, the Potomac River overflowing with crap, apparently the largest wastewater spill in American history, is an apt metaphor for the governor himself.
Pressed by CBS News correspondent Norah O’Donnell about the mystery of his missing thesis, Moore gave a nonresponse response, telling her that he “received a Master’s degree at Oxford University in international relations,” that he was “the first African-American Rhodes Scholar in the history of Johns Hopkins University,” and that he is “a person of honor and integrity” who was “raised right” by his family. If you have to say it…
As for Moore’s tale about his great-grandfather, the Rev. Josiah Johnson Thomas, which is contradicted by Episcopal Church records and contemporaneous news reports, the governor doubled down without providing a shred of evidence and instead flung insinuations of racism at anybody prepared to challenge him.
“I’m the grandson of someone who was born in South Carolina, and when he was just a child, the Ku Klux Klan ran their family, ran my family out,” Moore said. “So if some blog has a question about the Klan’s history, maybe they should ask the Ku Klux Klan.”
Leading up to his sit-down with O’Donnell, Moore’s communications team offered a series of responses about the imaginary Ku Klux Klan attack, leaning heavily on the vagaries and inconsistencies of “oral history” and the “broader reality” of racism in the 1920s South.
The governor’s communications director, David Turner, is perhaps best known for helping former Democratic Virginia governor Ralph Northam navigate the fallout after a photograph surfaced of him in blackface standing next to a man clad in a Ku Klux Klan robe. (Yes, really, we’re the racists.) Turner went ballistic on Baltimore’s local ABC News affiliate for asking the governor’s office for a response on Moore’s Klan story, dismissing questions as “absurd, ridiculous, and from a partisan, right-wing outlet known for shoddy work.”
“As most people with a basic understanding of American history know,” Turner added, “Black Americans often carried an oral tradition of their history due to low literacy rates at the time.”
Just one thing: For our “shoddy” work, we went to the College of Charleston and pored over hard copies of church archival records. We also reviewed century-old articles from the Gleaner, Jamaica’s storied newspaper.
That’s how we know that Thomas, Moore’s great-grandfather, was literate, and Kerr has the receipts on that, too. As most people with a basic understanding of American history know, many black people in the 1920s South were literate and educated, and, well, isn’t it kind of racist to suggest otherwise in order to run cover for the boss?
Moore and his team may believe they can mock reporters and dismiss scrutiny because it comes from a “right-wing blog,” to use Moore’s term, and maybe they really are that stupid. Team Walz certainly was, and Moore’s press secretary and “director of media strategy,” Ammar Moussa, did quarterback the Harris campaign’s nonresponse to the candidate’s dubious claim to have spent a formative summer manning the fryer at McDonald’s, which led to the greatest photo op in the history of presidential campaigns.
But Kerr’s meticulously researched reports come against the backdrop of a litany of false statements and prevarications from Moore about his background, from a “difficult childhood” in Baltimore, where he never lived until college, to his absurd claim to have been inducted into the Maryland College Football Hall of Fame, an organization that does not exist, not to mention that little Bronze Star fiasco.
If Moore runs in 2028, his primary opponents will call him on his bullshit. Calling them “conservative right-wing blogs” and accusing them of racism while offering no substantive response—well, good luck with that. We look forward to the debates.
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