I’d like to think it was a dare that prompted veteran Washington Post reporter Paul Schwartzman to include Nick Fuentes, the infamous Neo-Nazi sympathizer, in his story (5/22/26) on DC mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George.

The lefty candidate has no known ties to the far-right Fuentes, who lives some 700 miles away in Illinois. Yet there Fuentes was in Schwartzman’s story, alongside three other controversial figures…and the word “terrorist.”

This wasn’t the result of a dare, however. The truth is more mundane: This is just what the Post does in close DC mayoral elections, associating the candidate it wants to lose with extremists and corruption, facts be damned.

The Post did this to DC Mayor Vincent Gray as he sought reelection in 2014 (more on this below), and it’s doing so again today. This time around, the target is Lewis George, a DC council member backed by the Democratic Socialists of America’s local chapter.

‘A complicating DC influence’

In his story on Lewis George, Schwartzman managed to name-check not only Fuentes, but also President Donald Trump, lefty streamer Hasan Piker and a DC councilmember charged with corruption.

Schwartzman began:

DC Council member Trayon White Sr.’s stature in local politics was damaged when federal agents videotaped him allegedly agreeing to accept more than $150,000 in bribes from a city contractor.

Two years later, after he pleaded not guilty and awaits trial, White remains a complicating DC influence, as was evident this week when Janeese Lewis George, a council member running for mayor, found herself explaining why she attended his recent birthday picnic and described him as a past “mentor.”

See what Schwartzman did there? Since Lewis George attended her colleague’s birthday party, and even said nice things about him (perhaps the sort of thing one does at a colleague’s birthday), she’s tainted by association—which is the only way to taint Lewis George with corruption, as there’s not a whiff of it surrounding her.

That Lewis George would call White a mentor makes sense, but not to Post readers, who aren’t given the proper context. Before White lost his way and got caught up in a corruption scandal, he was an inspiring organizer, demanding DC do more to address the city’s stark disparities and senseless gun deaths. White’s grassroots work in Southeast DC—the largely Black and highest-poverty quadrant of DC, where White grew up—is what enabled him, against all odds, to win his Ward 8 DC Council seat in 2016. I’d guess that White has attended more funerals for boys and young men than all of his colleagues combined—and he’s spoken about the personal trauma this has caused him (Afro, 6/15/22).

When Lewis George called White her mentor, this is almost certainly what she was referencing; not his corruption scandal, which led Lewis George to join her colleagues in voting for White’s expulsion from the DC Council.

No criticism of ebola outbreak?

In the Post’s telling, however, Lewis George is tainted by White’s present-day scandal, as well as by his long-ago statements—even a boneheaded one he made three years before Lewis George was on the DC Council.

In 2018, White said the Rothschilds, the Jewish banking dynasty, were “controlling the climate.” (White quickly apologized and sought to educate himself on Jewish matters—Washington Post, 3/23/18.)

In his story on Lewis George, Schwartzman highlighted White’s Rothschilds comment—twice. While Schwartzman noted that a spokesperson said that Lewis George “has denounced White’s remark when constituents have voiced concerns at meetings,” the Post reporter left open the possibility that she may not have done so at the time: “No published account of her criticizing him for the remark could immediately be found.”

What a neat trick! Since Lewis George wasn’t in office at the time, she wasn’t questioned about White’s comment—or any number of other issues. So, why stop there? Schwartzman could just as easily do stories on Lewis George’s conspicuous lack of public comment on other alarming 2018 events, like the murder of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, or the last Congolese ebola outbreak.

Having tied Lewis George to White via the birthday party, Schwartzman then used that relationship as the basis for name-dropping other controversial figures, and using the “t” word.

From Schwartzman:

The associations that politicians forge with controversial figures often are fodder for opponents’ attacks. President Donald Trump’s 2022 dinner with Nick Fuentes, a White nationalist, prompted an outcry among Democratic leaders, for example. During New York’s mayoral race last year, Andrew M. Cuomo called on Zohran Mamdani to denounce Hasan Piker, a well-known supporter who had said that America “deserved” the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (Mamdani did condemn the remark.)

Notwithstanding Schwartzman’s insinuations, Janeese Lewis George is a straight-laced former prosecutor and third-generation Washingtonian.

‘Fiscal death spiral’

Schwartzman’s efforts are not alone. Two days before his story, the Post editorial page beat him to the would-be birthday party scandal.

Under a picture of Trayon White, a Post editorial (5/20/26)—headlined “Janeese Lewis George’s ‘Mentor’”—concluded, “DC voters will decide in the June 16 primary whether they want this politician’s mentee in the mayor’s office.”

Unfortunately for the Post, many DC voters seem to want this, as polls show Lewis George in the lead—a development that has sent the Post editorial page into a meltdown.

“The socialist mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George” (4/10/26) has “no good ideas” (5/5/26), insists the Post, but lots of bad ones—like “battering landlords for political advantage” (4/12/26), “empowering a self-serving teachers union” (5/14/26), “foolish[ly]” opposing a youth curfew (5/18/25), and using the city’s pensions to finance housing construction (5/29/26). Taken together, the Post (4/10/26) warns, if Lewis George becomes mayor, it “risks pushing DC into a fiscal death spiral.”

It’s ironic to see the Post editorial page so forcefully intervene in an election, after Post owner Jeff Bezos (10/28/24) declared that newspaper endorsements only “create a perception of bias.” Of course, Bezos wrote this amid fierce pushback over his personal spiking of the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris in 2024 (just one of the extraordinary favors—what some might call bribes—that Bezos and his paper have done for Trump.)

Bezos’ 11th-hour “no endorsements” dictum only applies to presidential endorsements, not local ones, for some unexplained reason.

Farrakhan, always Farrakhan

Even as the Washington Post is busy throwing everything at the wall in the hopes that something sticks to Lewis George, the paper hasn’t brought up Louis Farrakhan. But another publication has picked up the slack.

The purpose of Jewish Insider, as best I can tell, is to investigate every sneeze from a DSA-backed candidate—like Lewis George or New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani—to see if any of us Jews were in the vicinity at the time, to determine whether this might be an act of antisemitism.

Over the course of the DC mayoral campaign, Jewish Insider has published nearly a dozen stories on Lewis George and the supposed threat she poses to the Jewish community.

Jewish Insider’s anti–Lewis George campaign kicked off (2/25/26) over her response on a DSA candidate questionnaire, where she wrote:

I share the opinion of the UN Independent International Commission, that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. I’ve said before, and I’ll say here again: What is happening to the people of Gaza defies humanity. And leaders should not turn a blind eye.

On the questionnaire, Lewis George also wrote that she wouldn’t attend events “promoting Zionism and apartheid,” while noting that, as mayor, she will meet with constituents she disagrees with, as she has throughout her six years as Ward 4 council member. The Insider turned for comment to Ron Halber of the Jewish Community Relations Council, who called the DSA questionnaire an “antisemitic manifesto” that “mak[es] the price of their endorsement the social exclusion of Jews.”

About a half-dozen Jewish Insider stories later, we arrive at Farrakhan. How, you may wonder, do we get from Lewis George to the 93-year-old leader of the Nation of Islam, who, like Fuentes, lives in Illinois? Once again, via the Trayon White bank shot.

In the wake of Lewis George attending White’s 42nd birthday, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch (5/18/26) wrote that in 2018:

White donated $500 from a local fund, earmarked for Ward 8 constituents, to an event in Illinois featuring the antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan…. Lewis George has had her own dust-ups with the Washington Jewish community in the course of the mayoral race this year.

Those “dust-ups” haven’t stopped Lewis George from securing endorsements from the Jews United for Justice Campaign Fund and the DC Council’s senior Jewish lawmaker, Brianne Nadeau.

‘Old race warrior’

What’s so depressing about the attacks on Lewis George isn’t just how off-base they are, but how unoriginal.

The last time DC had a close mayoral election was 2014, when Mayor Vince Gray sought a second term. To stop him, the Post discarded journalistic norms to go for his jugular (FAIR.org, 2/1/24). This ugly history should be taught as a warning in journalism schools, but instead it’s being repeated (albeit at a less intense cadence: In the nine days before 2014 early voting began, the Post ran an incredible seven editorials targeting Gray).

Above, I described the approach to tie Lewis George to corruption and Farrakhan as the Trayon White bank shot. In fact, it should be called the Ward 8 bank shot.

In the 2014 race, it was White’s predecessor as Ward 8 council member, his mentor Marion Barry, who the Post used to attack Gray.

When Barry, a former mayor, endorsed Gray, then-Post columnist Dana Milbank (3/19/14) used the occasion to tie Gray to Barry’s drug use:

Embattled Washington Mayor Vincent Gray called in a notorious predecessor, Marion Barry, to prop up his reelection campaign Wednesday afternoon. Gray got exactly what he deserved.

“Vince Gray,” Barry told a modest crowd in a church basement in Southeast Washington, “is a leader with a solid crack record.”

The self-proclaimed mayor for life caught this Freudian slip. “Track record,” he corrected.

Barry, now a 78-year-old City Council member in failing health, is, famously, the one with the crack record.

Milbank also called Barry, who came out of the civil rights movement, an “old race warrior.”

While Gray led all polls, the Post’s deluge—as well as prosecutorial interference—proved too much, and he lost to Muriel Bowser.

After a dozen years in office, Bowser opted not to seek a fourth term this year. In the race to succeed her, Lewis George’s top opponent is former council member Kenyan McDuffie.

‘Engaging in tribal politics’

Joining Milbank in utilizing the Ward 8 bank shot in 2014 was then–Post columnist Mike DeBonis (3/13/14), who wrote:

If Gray is engaging in tribal politics, he’s certainly doing it more subtly than the master of the trade, Marion Barry…[who] after his 1990 drug arrest…was not shy about sending signals to his African-American base—embracing the support of Louis Farrakhan and other controversial activists.

Like Lewis George, Gray has no ties to Farrakhan. What’s more, as a student at George Washington University in the 1960s, Gray joined a Jewish fraternity, where he was one of three Black students to integrate the school’s all-white fraternity system.

Fast-forward a dozen years, and the Post’s bete noire has changed names, but the paper’s tactics remain much the same.

This time around, however, it’s less certain the paper will come out on top. The billionaire-owned Post has so discredited itself in the intervening years that it may not be able to prevent the nation’s capital from electing a democratic socialist.

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