West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice called on Saturday for the resignation of a state lawmaker who posted a sexually explicit TikTok video to his public account.
State Del. Joe Jeffries was stripped of a committee assignment on Friday after word spread of the social media posting, according to a statement from House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, who called his fellow Republican an “embarrassment.”
On Saturday, the state’s Republican governor issued a statement calling Jeffries’ behavior “sad” and “childish.”
“Not only did he yell graphic comments about me to a group of senators during the recent Legislative Session, but now we find that his not-so-secret TikTok is full of disgustingly vulgar videos, which are especially insulting to women,” Justice’s statement read. “This is the behavior of an immature child, not a 39-year-old father and elected official.”
The governor said he had expected to hear an apology from Jeffries by Saturday morning, “but all he has done is hide from the media and the criticism.”
Jeffries did not immediately respond on Saturday afternoon to a phone message left at his office or an email from The Associated Press.
Jeffries, whose district includes a group of counties near the state capital of Charleston, posted the video on Thursday. His account was set to private on Friday afternoon.
Belinda Biafore, chair of the West Virginia Democratic Party, said Jeffries “has a slew of inappropriate and vulgar videos with his own sexually explicit commentary on a social media app aimed at youth.”
For the uninitiated, this is not the first issue the House of Delegates has had with Jeffries, who got into a heated beef with Governor Jim Justice after reportedly making remarks that asked a group of state senator’s how the Governor’s neither region tasted during a meeting. The details of the TikTok videos in question can be found in this West Virginia Public Radio write-up.
The larger point though is that social media like TikTok once again — like money, power, and alcohol — empowers folks to be themselves, and often far too much of themselves. This isn’t really a TikTok story; that’s just the medium that Joe Jeffries used to let the world know what he was really thinking…in graphic detail. Joe Jeffries’ decision to self-immolate his political career via TikTok is another example of that weird social media headspace where folks like him think no one is noticing but revel in thinking everyone is paying attention to them at the same time. It is a weird cognitive dissonance that social media brings folks, instant transmittal from brain to the whole world, that gets so many in trouble. They of course are sorry after the fact, and insist that “that’s not really me” or “that’s not what I’m about”, and probably mean it. But that contrition of heart is belied by their prior inability to not enthusiastically mash the send button to share that innermost thought with the whole world right that second without delay.
Anyone can make a mistake, or have a bad moment, or lapse in judgement. Elected officials included. For the Joe Jeffries of the world though, social media mostly enhances the pattern of their already known behavior to tell us what we should have already discerned: an unrepentant jackass unfit for elected office.
If only the political class committed career suicide this spectacularly more often.Report