Winsome Earle-Sears and the machine gun
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Winsome Earle-Sears and the machine gun is John Kiriakou's account of the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia in 2025, delivered on 22 October after he had cast his early vote against her.

The verdict

He did not qualify it. "And then the current lieutenant governor of Virginia, Winsome Earle-Sears, is a nut. She's just a nut."

The photographs

The evidence he reached for first was four years old and visual. "Her campaign pictures when she was running for lieutenant governor four years ago, she's just smiling, standing, and holding a machine gun like this. A machine gun."

The host's comparison, to another Republican's early advertisements shooting up photographs of Democrats, drew agreement.

The debate

Kiriakou's second piece of evidence was more recent. "So there was a debate a couple of nights ago between the two, and Winsome Earle-Sears never shut her flapping gums through the entire debate. She had to be repeatedly slapped down, because Spanberger couldn't get a word out."

The substantive exchange he recounts concerns discrimination. Spanberger's charge was that her opponent supported it, and cited as an example that "Earle-Sears doesn't want to allow gay people to get married."

The reply is the line Kiriakou found disqualifying. "And Earle-Sears jumps in and she goes: 'That's not discrimination, that's God's will.' And she just kept repeating this."

What he would have said

The host's response was to imagine the cross-examination he would have relished, asking whether she talks to God, and whether she is on psychotropic medication, a line Kiriakou heard out without adding to.

Kiriakou's own politics on the underlying question are not stated here, but they need not be: his objection is to an answer that removes the question from argument altogether. A policy defended as divine instruction cannot be debated, only obeyed or refused, which is precisely why he treats the repetition as evidence rather than as rhetoric.

By the polling he cited on the same programme, Earle-Sears was six points behind, a margin matched by the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor.

See also

- Abigail Spanberger
- Jason Miyares
- John Kiriakou
