MADISON, Wis. — Today, in a new report from the Huffington Post showing that the race to beat keyboard warrior and belligerent Congressman Derrick Van Orden is tightening, Van Orden  ducked from questions about his own behavior. 

Derrick Van Orden is a hothead who spends his days yelling at teen workers and his nights fighting with strangers online—but when he’s confronted about his own behavior and his fleeting reelection chances, he suddenly has gone radio silent. The contrast between January 6th attendee Derrick Van Orden and Rebecca Cooke is night and day—and voters are ready to see a new dawn this November. It’s no wonder he’s ducking out on answering questions now.

From the Huffington Post: 

The contrast between her and Van Orden is hard to miss. Cooke, 36, sounds every bit the youth development 4-H Club president and soccer team captain she was in high school. Van Orden, 55, is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL and known on Capitol Hill for an often brusque manner.

That reputation has only grown with Van Orden’s occasional headline-grabbing episodes. Van Orden was at the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection attempt. In July 2023, he yelled at a group of Senate pages who were lying on the floor in the Capitol’s rotunda to take pictures of the ceiling.

“Wake the f*** up you little s****. … What the f*** are you all doing? Get the f*** out of here. You are defiling the space you [pieces of s***],” Van Orden reportedly told the pages, according to The Hill, which cited an account given by one of the pages.

At the Republicans’ national convention in July, Van Orden got into an altercation with a Code Pink protester, with each claiming the other had pushed them.

“I think Derrick Van Orden has certainly proved himself to have gone Washington in the way he reacted to those young Senate pages,” Cooke said. “That’s not how we talk around here.”

An emailed request for comment left with Van Orden’s campaign was not answered.

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