Newly revealed college video of Trump-endorsed Iowa congressional candidate Joe Mitchell shows him BRAGGING about his DUIs and CRYING about his penis size, Black women, and his dislike of white people.
A word of advice to any college student who may have even the faintest glimmer of a desire to run for public office: don’t let your friends videotape you while you’re heavily intoxicated and spouting things that may eventually scuttle your political career.
Iowa Republican congressional candidate Joe Mitchell is learning that lesson the hard way as voters are now getting an unexpected look at what he was doing while he was still in college.
According to the Daily Mail, a video from 2017, when Mitchell was a 19-year-old student at Drake University, shows him crying about his anatomy, challenging friends to a penis measuring contest, and making a series of strange statements about Black women. In the clip, he says he wants to marry one and says of his future kids, “I want my kids to not be white, ok?” He also says he doesn’t like white people.
The Mail says a friend who wasn’t in the room gave it the video, and that two Snapchat screenshots appear to show him bragging about “2 alcohol violations in a week” and “taking lots of xanx tonight,” referring to the tranquilizer Xanax. A second source who knew him then says he often said he didn’t want white children and asked people to “hook him up with black women.”
The campaign’s attorney didn’t dispute the video’s authenticity. Instead, he accused “political foes” of trying to damage the campaign. Mitchell said, “I was 19, in college, and I have grown up.” Eric Branstad defended him as “as clean as they come” and said the people sending this material are “jealous of success.”
The woman who provided the video put it plainly: “We are all drunk and young once, but that doesn’t make us any less accountable for our words.”
Mitchell is running in Iowa’s 2nd District with the backing of Trump and Turning Point Action, and he’s also a former HUD regional administrator in Trump’s second term. The Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up in a district Republicans usually win. A House Majority PAC poll in August had Democrat Lindsay James at 46 percent to Mitchell’s 45.
Mitchell became the youngest state lawmaker in Iowa history at 20, just a year after that video was made. He also founded Run GenZ, a group that recruits young conservatives to run for office. He now asks voters to judge him as a polished adult entrepreneur, something many will find difficult to do after viewing that video.
Plenty of people did dumb things in college, and nobody should be held to every word they said at 19. But Mitchell is asking Iowa to send him to Congress, and voters have a right to decide whether this video matters as they assess his character.
