President Trump said the three top Democrats caught up in scandals in Virginia are “killing” the state and claims if they were Republicans, “stronger action would be taken.”
“Democrats at the top are killing the Great State of Virginia. If the three failing pols were Republicans, far stronger action would be taken. Virginia will come back HOME Republican) in 2020!,” the president wrote on Twitter.
Virginia has been rocked by scandals in the past week involving a racist photo in Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook, sex assault allegations against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring admitting that he appeared in blackface while in college.
The three represent the line of succession in Virginia, meaning that if all three step down, Speaker Kirk Cox, a Republican, would become governor.
Republicans gained control of the House of Delegates when the GOP candidate’s name was selected from a bowl, breaking a tie with a Democratic candidate in 2018.
Northam first apologized for the photo in the 1984 yearbook and then on Saturday denied he was in the picture, which shows a man in blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit.
Fairfax has rejected allegations from Vanessa Tyson that he forced her to perform oral sex in a Boston hotel room in 2004. He claimed the sex was consensual.
Herring admitted on Wednesday that in 1980, he put on dark makeup and donned a wig to pose as his favorite rapper, Kurtis Blow, when Herring was a student at the University of Virginia.