According to the ghoulish left, one GOP donor stuck at the bottom of the ocean is nothing but a good start.
Five passengers on an ill-fated voyage to explore the ruins of the Titanic are close to being declared dead after their submersible lost contact with its mother ship Sunday.
One of the people on board the OceanGate vessel is the company’s CEO Stockton Rush, who was singled out by The New Republic not for his spirit of adventure or for the horror of his possible demise — but rather because he donated to Republicans.
While other publications were sharing somber news about the status of the vessel’s oxygen and the families whose lives might be changed forever, the left-leaning outlet ran a hit piece on Rush titled “OceanGate CEO Missing in Titanic Sub Had History of Donating to GOP Candidates” on Wednesday.
“Public campaign finance records indicate that Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate currently stuck on the missing Titan submersible that was running a tourist expedition of the Titanic wreck, has been a consistent Republican donor over the years,” the lede stated, unequivocally setting the tone for the hit piece.
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“According to these public finance records,” author Daniel Strauss went on, “Rush was not a Republican megadonor, but his donations over the years leaned heavily toward Republican candidates.”
Strauss noted donations to conservative organizations and GOP candidates either made by Rush or close members of his family but firmly concludes that “those donations are consistently Republican and include George Bush for President in 1979, the Illinois Republican State Central Committee in 1980, Citizens to Elect Rick Larsen in 2022, and friends of Mike McGavick in both 2000 and 2005.”
Although the author doesn’t come right out and say it, the implication is that Rush’s right-wing leanings may have contributed to the accident (because everyone knows Republicans despise safety — even their own).
“As national attention has shifted to the missing submersible, there has been increasing scrutiny on OceanGate and its top executives,” noting a former employee was fired for bringing up “safety concerns.”
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Although the story is still on the publication’s website, a since-deleted tweet from The New Republic with the link elicited reactions to the callous treatment of Rush’s predicament, Fox News reported.
When you lose your humanity, this is what you write about. https://t.co/H8PA83tZjV
— Tony Katz (@tonykatz) June 21, 2023
The New Republic thinks the CEO of Oceangate deserves to suffocate on the bottom of the ocean because he supported Republicans https://t.co/ycUug56nzc
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) June 21, 2023
Thanks for this very vital information. I really didn’t know what to think about the entire story until this. https://t.co/LSx4hKLyzs
— AG (@AGHamilton29) June 21, 2023
Wow. What if the missing CEO had donated to the other party? How disgusting and pathetic. https://t.co/bp2K7vux7C
— Janice Dean (@JaniceDean) June 21, 2023
There will no doubt be plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking about what went wrong and why in months and perhaps years to come regardless of the outcome for those onboard.
However, it’s ugly to insinuate that Rush’s political donations have anything to do with the fact that he and four others may have met their demise at the bottom of the ocean.
That’s not to say that there won’t be an appropriate time to have a conversation about the problems that led to the disaster, including the fact that Rush himself prioritized diversity over experience when it came to staffing his vessel.
It’s relevant that the 61-year-old CEO’s hiring philosophy prioritized age over experience or expertise.
In a previous interview, Rush said he didn’t want his company staffed by a “whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys” because that would not be “inspirational.”
Regardless of what eventually comes to light as the cause of the disaster — if the vessel is ever recovered at all — the left has once again shown itself to be indifferent to human suffering or death if they have those involved have the “wrong” political leanings.
It seems that the events of the last three years have brought to the surface a desire from the left to see political enemies die as their supposed just desserts, whether through accident or illness.
Who can forget that the Los Angeles Times published Michael Hiltzik’s disgraceful “Column: Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but may be necessary” after the death of a vaccine-hesitant Republican? Hiltzik was hardly alone in that sentiment, but he was one of the few to say it out loud.
Still, in all of the partisan venom spewing from the left in the last few years, the victim-smearing from Strauss is a new low — and if there’s a shred of decency left in America, Strauss’s career will be sunk.