Lessons From the Week: 'When People Show You Who They Are, Believe Them'

What a week it has been! Over the past few days, Maya Angelou’s famous admonition has constantly come to mind.

Photo by Edi Libedinsky on Unsplash

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“When people show you who they are, believe them.” - Maya Angelou

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What a week it has been! Over the past few days, Maya Angelou’s famous admonition has constantly come to mind.

I prepared for this week with great ambitions for a major post that I hope will contribute to the national conversation about who we want to be as a country.

But, because this independent project does not yet pay the bills, Hate Comes to Main Street had to take the back seat as my real job became all-consuming over the past 10 days. (Thanks to those who have become paid subscribers in hopes of one day making this project a bigger part of my work.)

After a badly needed beach break, I broke a big story—completely unrelated to the topic of this publication—about how U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn’s office had been the subject of a confidential Senate Ethics Committee investigation last year into the use of taxpayer resources for her political campaigns. The MAGA candidate is now running for Tennessee governor.

And, because my bosses and I tend to be conservative about what kinds of stories we break once early voting begins, I anticipated there would be no follow-up—at least, until after Republican voters had chosen their nominee.

Then, Blackburn did an interview with another television station in which she claimed that there was nothing to the investigation.

"This was a politically motivated complaint,” Blackburn insisted. “It was fully investigated. There was no misconduct.”

What the U.S. senator apparently did not anticipate was how much I knew and how much evidence was in my possession.

As a result, this week, I followed up with the revelation that the Senate Ethics Committee’s evidence included recorded conversations among Blackburn’s own staff about feeling pressure to engage in political activity in violation of the law.

Why would Blackburn try to spin the investigation as completely politically motivated when, as I also reported, her office faced pressure from the Ethics Committee to rectify the problems uncovered by investigators?

Why not just admit that mistakes were made—and explain what you are doing to address the issues raised by the ethics investigation?

When they show you who they are…..

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An unexpected response

One of the many surprises of this publication is how subjects of my reporting sometimes willingly own who they show us they are, no matter how ugly it may appear to those of us monitoring their behavior.

My most popular post last week was summarized in these two paragraphs:

Now, Hate Comes to Main Street can link a racist, antisemitic, misogynistic, Christian nationalist X account to another group of Young Republicans—in this case, far-right men associated with a Knox County chapter in East Tennessee.

That X account—calling itself the Tennessee Heritage Association—routinely pushes themes that once would have been more commonplace at cross-burning Ku Klux Klan rallies than in mainstream GOP politics.

The story mentioned that one of the people appearing at a Tennessee Heritage Association event—and defending Young Republicans caught up in scandals for making Nazi jokes—was Christian nationalist Aaron Miller.

But rather than disputing my critique, Miller jumped into the comments on my Facebook page and suggested that my feelings had been hurt when he canceled my ticket to another event they held in the Nashville area.

(Truth be told, I was a bit relieved. Listening to a bunch of Christian nationalists was never what I considered to be an ideal way to spend a Friday evening.)

“Phil is just salty because we blocked his RSVP to our last event,” Miller posted. “We’re going to win, it’s only a matter of time. Father Time is undefeated, and we are on the rise. Christ is King!”

That was all he had to say about my reporting?

When they show you who they are….

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Nobody ever said fascists are smart

Among those paying close attention to Hate Comes to Main Street is fascist Robert Rundo and the people involved in his Active Club network.

They recently put my image in one of their mocking AJAB—”All Journalists Are Bastards”—graphics.

And last week, Rundo did a podcast critiquing my interview with antifascist activist Kristofer Goldsmith. You can watch it here.

Apparently trying to discredit me to his followers, the Active Club founder claimed I “used to work for one of the biggest corporations out there, DuPont.”

Rundo continued, “These guys, them and the working class have never met. It’s such a funny thing that these leftists try to throw this word around: hate.”

Let me speak to Rundo directly:

Rob, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I never worked a day for the chemical giant DuPont. Yes, I have won five duPont-Columbia University Awards for my journalism, but—I hate to break this to you—I am just not the corporate type.

In fact, my upbringing is probably not so different from your own background, except I focused on my education as the way out of that poverty. It never occurred to me that beating up other people was the way to a better life.

When they show you who they are….

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Political violence for me, not for thee

Over the last 10 days, I noticed a pair of revealing posts on X by rightwing podcaster C.Jay Engel, who now calls Jackson County, Tennessee, home.

I’ll let them speak for themselves.

When they show you who they are….