Mitt Romney Was A High School Gay-Bashing Bully
Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, was a gay-bashing high school bully who said, “Atta girl,” to effeminate boys and shockingly had a days-long emotional attack that culminated with him pinning down a gay classmate and cutting off his bleached-blond long hair. Governor Romney claims he has no memory of any of these incidents that date back to 1965, according to a lengthy and heart-wrenching exposé in today’s Washington Post. An excerpt:
John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!†an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.
“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,†said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,†he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.â€
“It was a hack job,†recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.â€
The Post article concludes with an emotional note about John Lauber:
He came out as gay to his family and close friends and led a vagabond life, taking dressage lessons in England and touring with the Royal Lipizzaner Stallion riders.
His hair thinned as he aged, and in the winter of 2004 he returned to Seattle, the closest thing he had to a base. He died there of liver cancer that December.
He kept his hair blond until he died, said his sister Chris. “He never stopped bleaching it.â€
But Lauber was not the only target for the gay-bashing Mitt Romney.
In an English class, Gary Hummel, who was a closeted gay student at the time, recalled that his efforts to speak out in class were punctuated with Romney shouting, “Atta girl!†In the culture of that time and place, that was not entirely out of the norm. Hummel recalled some teachers using similar language.
Saul, Romney’s campaign spokeswoman, said the candidate has no recollection of the incident.
Yes, it was 1965, a different time, when these acts of anti-gay bullying were not just ignored or accepted, but often condoned.
But the handful of Mitt Romney’s classmates who either participated or didn’t stop it, not only remember his gay-bashing, they feel terrible about it. For Romney to not remember, and thus not be affected by his own gay-bashing, speaks volumes about his character.
The Romney campaign, and others, no doubt would say it was 1965. It doesn’t matter. But Mitt Romney married his wife Ann in 1969, just four years later, and that certainly matters in his campaign.
And they have on their campaign website a video that shows Mitt’s life, beginning with 1968, with the note:
“I think there’s one word that would be high on my list of a few words you would describe Mitt with. It would be trust. I think the qualities Mitt would bring to the Oval Office would be integrity, intelligence, an ability to see a problem and see a solution and make people recognize that he has those leadership qualities that would unite many people.” – Ann Romney
At what point do your actions matter?
Editor’s update: This morning Mitt Romney spoke on this issue.
Read our report: Romney Minimizes Gay-Bashing: ‘In High School I Did Some Dumb Things’
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President Donald Trump’s top loyalists are angling to climb the political ladder to help secure the future for his ultra-MAGA movement—and position themselves for greater influence. House members like far-right U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) are looking at the U.S. Senate, and far-right U.S. senators like Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) reportedly see hope in governors’ mansions.
Some critical U.S. senators on both sides of the aisle are retiring, like Republican former Majority and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and the second-highest-ranking Democrat senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois.
“Democrats anxious to deny Donald Trump and his Republican Party a governing trifecta as soon as possible are feeling pretty good about their prospects for flipping the House in 2026, given the GOP’s fragile margin of control and the historical pattern of sizable midterm losses for the president’s party,” New York magazine’s “Intelligencer” reported last month.
“But the Senate, which has the power to confirm Trump’s executive branch and judicial nominations, is really going to be a reach. Democrats would need to flip four Senate seats to win control of the chamber. And an already difficult landscape is being made even tougher by the retirements of Democratic incumbents Gary Peters of Michigan, Tina Smith of Minnesota, and now Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. All three of these open seats could potentially trigger competitive races in 2026.”
READ MORE: ‘Reeks of Eugenics’: RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Registry’ Draws Nazi Germany Comparisons
Enter Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who went from a freshman stripped of all of her committee assignments over incendiary language, to becoming chair of the Delivering on Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) subcommittee. She also sits on the House Committee on Homeland Security.
Congresswoman Greene is now thinking about becoming Senator Greene. If successful, her controversial tactics could have a dramatic impact on what is supposed to be the “world’s greatest deliberative body.”
Rep. Greene is reportedly eyeing a run to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff, and believes she would “crush” any GOP primary opponent—except Governor Brian Kemp, should he choose to enter the race—according to the right-wing website Daily Caller.
“Republicans are laser-focused on defeating Ossoff, whose narrow victory over former Republican Georgia Sen. David Perdue in a January 2021 runoff election was partly responsible for costing Senate Republicans their majority during the 2020 cycle,” Daily Caller notes, adding, “Ossoff is the only Senate Democrat running for reelection in a state that Trump won last November.”
Could Greene beat Ossoff?
READ MORE: Trump’s SignalGate Sit-Down Mocked as a ‘Him in a Nutshell’ Moment
“This would be a dream for Dems in Georgia,” should Greene run, observed veteran journalist Lydia Polgreen.
“Somewhere at the DSCC [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] some operative is frantically wondering if there is anything they can do to ensure this happens,” wrote University of Pennsylvania political and media historian Brian Rosenwald.
A Daily Caller source also suggested Ossoff would retain his Senate seat, especially should the election move into a runoff. And Ossoff “has been taunting Greene to jump into the race.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville is reportedly mapping out a run for the Alabama Governor’s mansion.
“Tuberville told a group of donors at a private event on Wednesday night that his mind is officially made up,” the conservative website Yellowhammer News reported. “Rather than seeking re-election to the U.S. Senate, he is ready to run his next race in Alabama, and serve the people of the state in Montgomery instead of Washington.
An official campaign announcement is imminent in the coming weeks, but latest reports offer insight into a finalized decision by Tuberville, who has been privately discussing jumping into the 2026 gubernatorial race for quite some time.”
Senator Tuberville reportedly is “furious” at the leak, according to an opinion column at Alabama Political Reporter.
“Tuberville melted down like a plastic lawn chair in July. By Thursday morning, the whispers had turned into headlines. Then Tuberville took to Facebook — and things got weird.”
“While I appreciate all the interest,” Tuberville wrote, “Suzanne and I are still praying about how to best serve the people of Alabama. When I have an official announcement about my future, you’ll hear it directly from me.”
U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a top “Trump loyalist,” is “strongly looking” at a run for the Tennessee governor’s mansion.
The Tennessean reports that “early polling suggests she would likely be the Republican frontrunner. Some politicos across the state consider her success a foregone conclusion: at a Tennessee Chamber of Commerce event in January, attendees called her ‘Gov. Blackburn.'”
And U.S. Rep. Jim Comer (R-KY), the chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee, has also said he would be interested in running for governor.
READ MORE: ‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution
Image via Shutterstock
The Trump administration reportedly has plans to scrape your private medical data from sources like your doctor, your pharmacy, your insurance company, the lab that processes your bloodwork, your smartwatch, and your fitness apps—to create a “registry” of people with autism.
“The National Institutes of Health is amassing private medical records from a number of federal and commercial databases to give to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new effort to study autism,” CBS News reported. “The new data will allow external researchers picked for Kennedy’s autism studies to study ‘comprehensive’ patient data with ‘broad coverage’ of the U.S. population for the first time, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said.”
CBS also adds that “a new disease registry is being launched to track Americans with autism, which will be integrated into the data. Advocacy groups and experts have called out Kennedy for describing autism as a ‘preventable disease,’ which they say is stigmatizing and unfounded.”
“By bringing the data into one place,” Bhattacharya “said it could give health agencies a window into ‘real-time health monitoring’ on Americans for studying other health problems too.”
“What we’re proposing is a transformative real-world data initiative, which aims to provide a robust and secure computational data platform for chronic disease and autism research,” he said.
READ MORE: Trump’s SignalGate Sit-Down Mocked as a ‘Him in a Nutshell’ Moment
Critics warn that a registry of people with autism poses great privacy and health risks, while others wonder about HIPAA violations—especially in light of what some say is Secretary Kennedy’s apparent bias against autism and people on the spectrum.
Last week, Secretary Kennedy’s remarks about children with autism drew intense fire.
“This is an individual tragedy,” Kennedy declared (video below). “Autism destroys families. And more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which our children. These are children who should not be, who should not be suffering like this. These are kids who, many of them, were fully functional, and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they’re two years old.”
“And these are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children,” he alleged, to widespread criticism.
“How are they going to collect all this data without violating HIPAA laws and privacy protection?” Dr. Joel Shulkin asked, as The Daily Dot reported. “How are they going to de-identify all the data so that it cannot be misused against people who are involved in it? And what are they planning to do with that data once they finish their so-called study?”
ASAN, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, warned: “There is no indication that autistic people whose data is being taken would be afforded any say in whether their data is used or what it is used for. This raises significant moral, legal, and practical concerns. People have a right to decide what is done with data about their health. Unethical science is bad science.”
“Medical data can also easily be manipulated by unscrupulous researchers to create the appearance of causation where it does not exist,” ASAN added. “This has already happened this year with an anti-vaccine ‘study’ about autism that RFK Jr. approvingly cited during his confirmation hearing. The study, which was not published in a reputable scientific journal and did not go through peer review, used Medicaid data from Florida to show that children who had doctors visits to receive vaccinations were statistically more likely to also have doctors visits to receive care for autism.”
And the National Consumers League warns that “RFK Jr.’s autism study will pull private medical records, pharmacy data, insurance claims—even data from your fitness tracker—all under the banner of a flawed and stigmatizing narrative that autism is a ‘preventable disease.’ This kind of data grab raises serious questions about privacy, consent, and how personal health info could be misused in the name of speculative science.”
“RFK Jr.’s proposed national autism registry is straight-up dystopian,” declared Democratic strategist Chris D. Jackson. “Centralizing private medical data—from pharmacies, labs, fitness trackers, even veterans—and handing it to third parties? That’s not research. That’s surveillance. Let’s be clear: this echoes the darkest chapters of history, when regimes like Nazi Germany used medical registries to target and dehumanize vulnerable populations.”
READ MORE: ‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution
“And calling autism a ‘preventable tragedy’? That’s not science—it’s dangerous, ableist propaganda. Autistic people deserve respect, not to be tracked, labeled, or erased.”
Dr. Kristin Lyerly, who hosts The Dr. Kristin Lyerly Show, wrote: “I am very concerned about this effort for so many reasons, including health privacy and respect for people and families living with autism. This reeks of eugenics.”
“First RFK Jr says that people on the autism spectrum are useless eaters,” noted Yale Professor of History Timothy Snyder, an expert on authoritarianism. “And then he announces that the government is going to make a list of them, a ‘registry.'”
Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali, like many social media users, wrote: “Nazis did registries by the way.”
Fred Wellman, a West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School graduate, an Army veteran of 22 years who served four combat tours, and now a political consultant and the host of the podcast “On Democracy,” blasted the Trump administration:
“RFK Jr. wants to create a national registry of people with autism. The Admin wants to increase baby supply with a motherhood medal. Trump wants to deport US citizens to a third world gulag. They formed an Anti-Christian Bias Task Force to prosecute people for their speech. A White House advisor is floating arresting Americans for speaking in support of immigrants as terror supporters. Does this all sound familiar?”
Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic Instructor Alejandra Caraballo warned: “This won’t be limited to just autism. They’re building the panopticon to track anyone with any ‘undesirable’ illness. This is eugenics, full stop.”
Fred Guttenberg, an anti-gun violence activist who lost his daughter in the Parkland mass school shooting, wrote: “Help me understand how these lunatics who spent years fighting me on gun safety & used the idea of a government registry to create fear, now believe in a government registry to track people with autism. Everything they say is a lie, & everything they do is designed to hurt people.”
A user on the social media platform X posted this response:
“I’m autistic And when I heard RFK Jr. wants a government registry to track people like me using private medical records I didn’t think ‘safety’ I thought Nazi Germany A roundup’s of disabled people Because I know history And I know exactly what comes after the list is made This isn’t about health This is about control It’s about fear It’s about marking people People like me Neurodivergent people Different people Don’t dress it up as policy This is how roundups begin You want to stop autism discrimination? Start by not creating a fucking list.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
RFK JR: And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted pic.twitter.com/8T3hcYYn9O
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 16, 2025
READ MORE: ‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House
Image via Shutterstock
President Donald Trump announced he will be sitting for an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic who was erroneously included in a group chat about military strikes in Yemen and subsequently broke the SignalGate story.
Trump suggested he agreed to the interview with Goldberg and two other reporters because of the supposed title of the proposed article: “The Most Consequential President of this Century.” And while there have only been four presidents this century, including himself, Trump appeared happy to indulge the reporters in exchange for the compliment.
“Later today I will be meeting with, of all people, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor of The Atlantic, and the person responsible for many fictional stories about me, including the made-up HOAX on ‘Suckers and Losers’ and, SignalGate, something he was somewhat more ‘successful’ with,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
READ MORE: ‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution
“Jeffrey is bringing with him Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, not exactly pro-Trump writers, either, to put it mildly! The story they are writing, they have told my representatives, will be entitled, ‘The Most Consequential President of this Century.’ I am doing this interview out of curiosity, and as a competition with myself, just to see if it’s possible for The Atlantic to be ‘truthful.’ Are they capable of writing a fair story on ‘TRUMP’? The way I look at it, what can be so bad – I WON!”
Despite Trump’s dismissals, the “suckers and losers” stories were well-documented, fact-based reporting, as was the SignalGate story.
Finance journalist James Surowiecki of Fast Company and The Atlantic, writes, “This may be my favorite Trump tweet ever – it’s him in a nutshell. He attacks Jeff Goldberg, and complains about The Atlantic. But of course he’s going to do the interview, because he can’t resist being the focus of attention, and being labeled ‘The Most Consequential President.'”
READ MORE: Trump Doubles Down Calling Egg Prices ‘Too Low’ as Costs Soar to Record Highs
Yahoo Finance’s Jordan Weissmann adds, “Trump grudgingly admitting Goldberg was ‘somewhat more successful’ with SignalGate is one of the funniest ‘OK, you got us there’ moments I’ve ever seen.”
Earlier this month Goldberg, speaking about his SignalGate article and Trump, said: “I’m not going to be bullied, because there’s no end to the bullying if you agree to be bullied in the first place. If there are consequences to not bending, fine.”
“It beats selling your soul.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
“If the president of the United States says we’re lying, and I have the truth, I’m going to publish the truth”: Jeffrey Goldberg on The Atlantic’s decision to publish the Signal chats following the Trump administration’s initial response to the leak. https://t.co/YZ5mSWNKr8 pic.twitter.com/kPtAIJhOao
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) April 3, 2025
READ MORE: ‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House
Image via Reuters
‘Reeks of Eugenics’: RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Registry’ Draws Nazi Germany Comparisons
Trump’s SignalGate Sit-Down Mocked as a ‘Him in a Nutshell’ Moment
Marjorie Taylor Greene Tops List of Ultra MAGA Hardliners Pursuing Promotions — and Power
Marjorie Taylor Greene Tops List of Ultra MAGA Hardliners Pursuing Promotions — and Power
‘Reeks of Eugenics’: RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Registry’ Draws Nazi Germany Comparisons
Trump’s SignalGate Sit-Down Mocked as a ‘Him in a Nutshell’ Moment
‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution
Trump Doubles Down Calling Egg Prices ‘Too Low’ as Costs Soar to Record Highs
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