The name came up in passing in a viewer’s comment about which politicians serve which interests. Ted Rall had barely finished the list when John Kiriakou stopped him.
The set-up
“Don’t get me started on Crenshaw,” Kiriakou said. “Oh my god.”[1] He then volunteered the reason: “Let me tell you about Crenshaw.”[2]
He described briefly dating a woman “who was considerably younger than I, very, very attractive, a leader in her field.”[2] They were at her flat one night watching a film, it was about midnight, and her phone was on the floor near him.[2][3]
The message
The phone buzzed with a text. “It’s from Dan Crenshaw,” Kiriakou said, “and he says, ‘What are you wearing?’”[3]
He read it out to her. Her reaction, in his telling, was weary rather than surprised: “Oh, that guy won’t leave me alone.”[3]
So Kiriakou answered it himself. “I took the phone and I wrote back. I said, ‘Crenshaw, this is her boyfriend. Why don’t you ask your wife what she’s wearing?’”[3][4]
The reply came back in two words: “Sorry, scumbag.”[4]
What made it worse
Kiriakou’s objection was not only to the message but to its timing in the man’s life. “His wife just had — they had a ten-month-old baby at the time,” he said, “but he’s asking my girlfriend what she’s wearing at twelve o’clock at night.”[4]
He added that she then showed him other messages from the same sender. “They were filthy,” he said — and, significantly, “she saved them just in case she needed to use them against him.”[4]
Rall’s reaction was two words of disbelief; Kiriakou’s verdict was one sentence: “Yeah, he’s a scumbag.”[4]
Note
Kiriakou does not name the woman, give a date, or say whether she ever made use of the saved messages. He introduced the account unprompted, as an illustration of a judgement he had already delivered — that the subject “is in a league all of his own” among people he regards as contemptible.[1]