On Anderson Cooper 360 Monday, 17-year-old high school student Ethan Lynne joined the show and spoke about getting attacked on Twitter on Saturday by a campaign account for Virginia’s new Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. The now-deleted tweet showed a picture of Lynne with former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, pointing out Northam’s racial insensitivity in his younger days.
“I was surprised. I could not believe this was real,” Lynne said. “I never thought we would get to the place where a governor is attacking his constituents online. That’s something that Donald Trump would do. He promised he would be different than Trump and take out — and our politics have become too toxic.”
The tweet from the Youngkin campaign came in response to Lynne posting a story from a local television station about a historian resigning from the governor’s mansion that may have painted Youngkin in a bad light. On Monday, Youngkin posted a tweet stating that the tweet from his campaign was unauthorized.
On Saturday night, an unauthorized tweet came from a campaign account. I regret that this happened and it shouldn’t have. I have addressed it with my team. We must continue to work to bring Virginians together. There is so much more that unites us than divides us.
— Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) February 7, 2022
But for Lynne, that wasn’t enough.
“I thought it was a non-apology. He’s just sorry that the whole situation happened, he’s not actually sorry for what was said,” Lynne said. “He didn’t even take credit that it was his campaign team account, he said that it was a campaign account and did not strongly condemn the situation in any way, shape, or form.”
Lynne would like a real apology, and believes the behavior is beneath the office of the governor.
“I would like an apology to me and my family,” Lynne said. “But the only way to stop this is by publicly condemning this type of bullying and rhetoric in politics. The governor should be setting a better example for students like me.”
Anderson Cooper 360 airs weeknights at 8 p.m. on CNN.
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