On its face, it seems ridiculous to compare Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick to Donald Trump.
One is a low-key former federal law enforcement official who strives to be quiet and only makes carefully crafted statements on bland topics. The other is a brash, bombastic showman who is terrorizing most of our country, and blathers on regardless of whether what he says conforms to truth or reality. The two, on the surface, could not be further apart.
But the surface is not the whole story.
The media
As you peel down, the similarities between Trump and Fitzpatrick begin to appear. Take the issue of the media. We’ve all seen how Donald Trump continually denigrates the “fake news” and how he has attempted to shut out CNN, Politico and MSNow from covering him. In our district, Fitzpatrick has taken a step in that same Trumpian direction. For several years he banned his staff from answering inquiries from Levittown Now, with an article from that outlet stating:
Following LevittownNow.com exclusively obtaining audio of then-President Donald Trump’s endorsement of the congressman for the 2020 election, Fitzpatrick’s taxpayer-funded congressional office removed this news organization from their press release distribution list and refused to answer questions and respond to requests for interviews. The two exceptions were a single press release from then-Press Secretary Lauren Offenberg on Fitzpatrick’s vote for the 2021 infrastructure bill and a brief comment to a reporter at a community event….
Fitzpatrick’s communications staffers Casey-Lee Waldron, Will Kiley, Betsy Byrne, and Offenberg all followed the policy of limiting the ability of journalists to get information from the congressman and his taxpayer-funded office that serves Bucks County and part of Montgomery County.
Despite the congressman and his office’s ban, LevittownNow.com has continued to report on the congressman, his campaign, and legislation he supports and opposes.
Fitzpatrick’s lack of interest in interacting with media outlets who won’t let him control the narrative extends to this autumn. The Associated Press shared three words from Congressman Fitzpatrick in their piece about our district, words from a recent public appearance. The news outlet followed that terse quote with the observation that, “Representatives for Fitzpatrick did not respond to requests for a more complete interview.” Similarly, the outlet publishing this article has had little success in getting comment from our Congressman. He might not be as flashy as the president in his efforts to shut out the press, but the end result is similar.
The bigotry
No one needs a recap of the hundreds, if not thousands, of racist, sexist and generally awful things President Trump has said since his elevator entrance onto the political stage. And it is true that Brian Fitzpatrick has attempted to distance himself from that kind of content, deploying the time tested technique of pretending he hadn’t heard what the president said, and thus couldn’t possibly be expected to comment upon it.
But in a Bulwark article released last week titled “The Bigot Behind Brian Fitzpatrick’s Attack Ads,” we learned that our congressman has no problem tolerating heinous bigotry in his personal life. He doesn’t just tolerate it – he has paid that person to help his campaign, and he even has invited that person to his own wedding.
Fitzpatrick only follows 141 people on his social media accounts, and that list does not even include his own famous wife, but he does follow the man who crafted all those false Patch stories. And what that man has to say is disgusting. All of these quotes were from the social media account of “Sommers35” via The Bulwark. Content warning for Islamophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, racism, and minimization/joking about sexual assault.
Belittling sexual violence:
“Every liberal Democrat female is a sexual assault survivor, especially the morning after, when the guy hasn’t fallen in love with her.”
Racism:
“Black teens go wilding…again…all over America. We don’t have to live like this!!”
Islamophobia:
“Islam is the religion of rape, incest, and pedophilia, where they bow down to a stupid rock and a false prophet!”
Anti-immigrant:
“America is SO SCREWED!!!! This SCOTUS decision will only encourage Third World anti-western third worlders [sic] to sneak into America anyway they can, knock up a woman, and eventually take over America.”
Despite his pretence of civility and moderation, Fitzpatrick has long tolerated these kind of sentiments from a close friend and campaign aide. He cannot pretend he didn’t know that this person was spewing invective. And as we so often say, “Silence is complicity.”
The lies
Another issue where one can find a similarity between Trump and Fitzpatrick is their relationship to the truth. No one needs a reminder of the over 30,000 lies that the Washington Post counted during Trump’s first term in office. While Fitzpatrick can’t get anywhere close to President Trump’s record-breaking mendacity, he does know how to tell a lie and put a lot of cash behind it.
My first exposure to Fitzpatrick’ loose relationship with the truth was during the 2020 congressional campaign. Then Democratic-candidate Christina Finello had tweeted “I oppose defunding the police.” Her campaign manager repeated “Christina opposes defunding the police.” And despite this, Fitzpatrick released a massive broadcast TV ad campaign that declared, “Christina Finello wants to defund our police.” I don’t see how that could be called anything other than a lie. It is unclear what portion of the $4.2 million his campaign spent in that cycle went towards paying for the TV ads that lied about Finello.
Fitzpatrick has since then lobbed a few other whiff comments around, usually via his spokesperson. In a situation that hit home with me personally, in 2024 they referred to Indivisible as a “hate speech organization,” something that is clearly untrue … unless, of course, Congressman Fitzpatrick defines hate speech as ‘anyone who disagrees with me.’
But he really ramped up to Trumpian levels of deceit with his congressional campaign this year against Bob Harvie. If you live in our congressional district, you will have been exposed to the wallpapering of our community with campaign signage and advertisements that have little to no relationship to the truth. Some frame the bipartisan county leadership vote to give county employees a small cost of living raise as Bob Harvie voting to give himself a raise. But the real offenders against veracity are the “Harvie files” signs.
Harvie appeared before a grand jury as a witness. That investigation resulted in no charges for anyone, and Harvie was never the target of the grand jury. But despite this, Fitzpatrick and his Defending America PAC have plastered our community with claims that Harvie was under FBI investigation. The Huffington Post recaps this story best in their headline, “GOP Congressman Claims His Opponent Is Under FBI Investigation, But Can’t Prove It.” In response to this onslaught of duplicity, Harvie has filed a lawsuit against the PAC for defamation. But in the meantime, Fitzpatrick’s lies about Bob Harvie are still everywhere in our community.
And last week another issue of deception came out in the news. Politico broke a story that Brian Fitzpatrick’s friend, wedding guest and one-time paid congressional staffer was publishing duplicitous articles in the self-publishing news outlet The Patch, and the Fitzpatrick was citing those stories – without attribution – in his campaign ads as if they were headlines from actual journalists in accredited media outlets. That’s a whole new spin on lying during campaign season!
Every Accusation is an admission
One of the hallmarks of the Trump political era is that maxim “every accusation is an admission.” From weaponizing the Department of Justice to mishandling classified documents to claims of a rigged election, Trump’s political accusations often end up highlighting some nefarious action he and his administration are enacting. And that saying puts Brian Fitzpatrick’s accusations about Harvie into a new light.
Fitzpatrick may want people to focus on some imaginary files and some alleged but unproved wrongdoing, but I’m more interested in the wrongdoing happening inside of Brian Fitzpatrick’s campaigns, current and past. Because it isn’t just that Politico story from earlier this week that exposed wrongdoing on Fitzpatrick campaigns. We have also seen:
- In 2018, Brian Fitzpatrick’s campaign paid $6,000 to a staffer who went on to fake press credentials for the Bucks County Courier Times to get one-on-one access to Fitzpatrick’s congressional opponent. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the staffer went on to share the contents of those interviews with “websites that track candidates, cataloging footage for attack ads.”
- In 2022, a man paid by Fitzpatrick’s campaign (the same one involved in this week’s Politico story) was caught on video uprooting and stealing the campaign signs of Fitzpatrick’s primary opponent, and he was charged with a crime for doing so, per the Levittown Now.
- In 2022, another Brian Fitzpatrick paid campaign staffer was caught in what The Philadelphia Inquirer called a “potential ballot harvesting scheme.”
- And earlier this year, the excellent blog A Better Bucks published photos of yet another Fitzpatrick campaign staffer tampering with Bob Harvie campaign signs.
So when Fitzpatrick accuses his opponents of wrongdoing, my immediate response is to wonder what Fitzpatrick’s operation is up to today. Because every accusation is an admission.
I don’t think Fitzpatrick planned this path when he decided to run for office in 2015 to replace his brother. He could never have predicted then how Trump would overturn the political ecosystem and subjugate the GOP. But just as Trump has reshaped American politics into something cruder, uglier, meaner and less ethical, we can see that same pathway writ small in Brian Fitzpatrick’s political devolution. Fitzpatrick’s treatment of the press, his playing fast and loose with truth, and the scandalous events that have come from his campaign operation all show a disturbing similarity to how Donald Trump has molded the Republican Party and our political environment. It is disturbing, and it is not the direction I want for our community or our nation.
We deserve better.
