Ever since Eric Hovde entered the race to be Wisconsin's US Senator, he's been attacking Senator Tammy Baldwin about the southern border and the fentanyl crisis. In response, Baldwin is running an ad about her helping pass a bill to crackdown on fentanyl. The ad features a woman named Brooke McKearn, whose son passed away because of fentanyl. In the ad, McKearn thanks Baldwin for listening and for working on this bill.
Carptetbagger Eric Hovde was apoplectic over the ad, claiming Baldwin had nothing to do with the bill. As proof, he offered an undocumented conversation he had with Tim Scott, Mr. Credible Source himself: Hovde was so angry, he broke his own trope of the need to calm down the rhetoric in politics:
Hovde further said that while Scott was visiting Wisconsin since the bill’s passage, he asked him “Did Tammy work with you on the amendment? He said ‘I haven’t spoken to Tammy in two years, she had zero role,’” Hovde said on the podcast.
Hovde has called the senator’s claims to be doing something about fentanyl “despicable” and he said using Brooke’s story is “far beneath any human being”
He also said it’s wrong to “act like she has been doing something, in my view is beneath a U.S. senator and far beneath any human being.”
Hovde's tantrum did not go unchallenged.
Senator Sherrod Brown testified in an interview about how hard Baldwin worked on cracking down on fentanyl.
Also, McKearn, the grieving mother, stepped up to the plate:
“We started talking as families, as moms to Tammy Baldwin. We would sit down with her and we would say, ‘Well, this is our story. This is what happened. This is what we don’t want other parents to have to go through. What can we do?’” she said. “She was very diligent about listening to our stories, about (saying) what she could do, about proposing bills to stop trafficking, the FEND Off Fentanyl act.”
“She attended, I don’t know, how many countless hearings to either propose bills or support bills. We would talk to her about drug induced homicide charges. It was a group of us moms that all lost children, and she actually sat down and listened to us.”
She also stated that she did not get paid to be in the ad. In fact, she took off of work and drove to an out of town location to film the ad. McKearn also had this to say, which is the real tell:
Baldwin’s concern for fentanyl is genuine, Brooke continued.
She said no one from Hovde’s campaign has reached out to her. She said the mothers she has gotten to know, who have all lost children to fentanyl, have not been contacted by Hovde, either.
“Tammy has not only significantly but repeatedly, reached out to people and families trying to figure out how to help them. Her own mother struggled with addiction,” she said. “We didn’t even know that until we sat down with her. She told us her story. It’s personal for her.”
“We told her from a parent perspective what it was like, and she told us from a child perspective what it was like, and this before it was used as a political point.”
To paraphrase and expand on what McKearn said - Baldwin walks the walk, Hovde just squawks the squawk.
