I’m going to lay this out pretty simply. Who is the real you? Absolutely none of us are exactly the person that we think we are in our minds. No one thinks *they* are a bad person when they’re doing bad things. They justify it to themselves, and sometimes there’s even logic to it. Life gets in the way of our better ideals sometimes. We take inconvenient, contradictory positions. That becomes even more true in the pursuit of power, riches, and fame. It’s why politics in general is full of a bunch of kiss asses who want important titles and positions. It’s not that they want to be kiss asses, but sometimes life gets in the way. I lived that life for like 22 years. Now I really don’t give a shit who hates me, or what blacklist they’re going to put me on. I’m just happy to be alive. I really don’t care if I’m never chairman of the committee on whatsha-muh-call-it, or get to speak at next year’s awards dinner. It’s small stuff.

Actions speak louder than words though. A guy sitting at the house his ex-in-laws helped him get, posting Oathkeeper memes is speaking his truth. A political candidate trying to convince voters to vote for him to be their Congressman will lie. Oh sure, they’ll tell you and themselves it’s not a lie, they’ll make up a reason they converted and saw the light. But they do that after how many years? It was 22 years ago that Bob “Crooksy” Brooks accepted help from his in-laws financially, it was 18 years ago that he signed a promissory note to pay it back, it was like 8 years ago that he was sued, and it was like four years ago that he lost his appeal in front of the Pennsylvania Superior Court, and for like all of that time he and his ex sat by and didn’t pay back the money they signed a contract to pay back. I’m sure he’s justified it in his own mind. I’m sure he thinks you should justify it as a bad divorce or “hard times,” or whatever too. But for a period of time longer than too many people’s lives, he didn’t do what he said he’d do.

In 2012, Bob wasn’t a Congressional candidate yet. He wasn’t the President of a statewide union yet. No Governors were calling him up and trying to be his friend, no Senators in Arizona knew who the hell he was, and certainly Bernie Sanders wasn’t too concerned about him yet. He was a normal guy, on the internet, stating his truth. His truth? He thought Barack Obama sucked. Why? Did he hate Obamacare? Did he wish Osama Bin Laden was still alive? Did he wish all those UAW jobs in Detroit that Obama saved were gone? Did he think passing modern banking regulations, or putting in place the first coherent strategy for fight climate change was bad? Maybe he wished the American economy had fully melted down in 2009? I don’t know. Now he has his “friends” Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, and Ruben Gallego telling you he’s some sort of progressive champion. He’s an every man. Does he mean “every” man, or does he mean every man that isn’t like Colin Kaepernick that wanted to protest inequities and biases in our society? What exactly made him say that Kaepernick was a douchebag? Listen, I don’t pretend to love that Kaepernick became a symbol of protest in our country while justifying not voting. Bob didn’t cite that though, kind of like he never told us why he disliked Obama at the time. The truth is that he did not agree with the majority of Democrats on Obama, or Kaepernick, but now wants you to know that he’s going to restore “true” Democratic values in Washington, if you just trust him. Kind of like he was going to pay back his mother-in-law, trust him.

Today Bob wants you to vote for him for Congress. In 2019 he was posting a “III%’er” meme saying we need school prayer and guns in our society. Today he’ll tell you he doesn’t mean that. Of course not, Democratic Primary voters don’t like that. Does Bob though? He will definitely tell you he didn’t mean it then, and especially that he didn’t mean it in the context of posting it days after an armed white nationalist lunatic shot up a bunch of people at an El Paso Walmart. Trust him, he’s telling you the truth now with his words, not with his 2019 actions. Trust him, like his mother-in-law should have.

You know, there’s a lot of people who express political views they come to regret later, some genuinely and some because it becomes a problem for them. There’s plenty of people who fight with their family and have money issues. There are literally millions of Democrats with mixed and even negative views about the direction their party has chosen to take, including the person you’re reading right now. I could almost give “Crooksy” a pass on it all today. Almost. He should have run as who he is, who he demonstrated he is by his actions over decades. Of course, he may not know who that is, since he originally endorsed one of his opponents and then decided to change his mind like a starf**ker once he got a little attention from some powerful people telling him he should run. But you see, that’s the thing- I get lying to yourself, anyone can be a hypocrite, but it’s that Bob lies to literally anyone. I mean, the guy’s argument for his 2022 appeal of the money he owed his ex-mother-in-law was mostly that she *waited too long* to try and collect it. Not that he didn’t sign it in the first place. He argued technicalities. But now he wants you to know that she never really wanted it anyway, even after having him sign a contract, and she’s not a great person. But you know, forget that he signed it, right?

Some people say we shouldn’t go negative in a primary. Still more say we should let candidates explain their past. Look guys, that’s just not how campaigns work. You either find out now and decide if you can accept a lying right-wing MAGA guy as your Congressman, or you find out in September and October when some shady super PAC pastes it on your eye balls with TV ads. Maybe you’re fine that he was funding election deniers and pro-lifers while not endorsing Kamala Harris from his post as a union leader. You should probably know that you need to be fine with that. All I’ve done about him here is tell you the truth, there’s nothing more I can do with it. As one family member said to me, “he’s the one that’s going to win.” And you know what, maybe he is. I mean look at all the people who initially said they’d support someone else, or were natural allies with the folks supporting another candidate, and now they’re all defending the indefensible because they’re afraid of retribution. As I said up top, it’s a business of kiss asses. People who want to keep their “important title/job” in the party. So they want people to keep quiet, in the hopes that they can ram him through the primary and hope that people are so sick and mad about Trump that they’ll still vote for this pile of slop. Then maybe sometime in the next couple of years before the guy loses when the political atmosphere evens out more, just maybe he’ll take a picture with them at a gala or endorse their candidacy for dog catcher in Podunk Township. That’s what it’s all about, right?

Forget all of that though, let’s just accept the obvious truth- Bob “Crooksy” Brooks believed everything he said online, everything he did in his life, and is exactly the person his actions suggest, he’s just sorry he got caught. Now that he’s a candidate he needs to be what John Fetterman’s consultants are telling him to be, to win this primary. I’m sure he won’t flip back to some of his old positions once he’s nominated though, it’s not like there’s other voters out there who do believe these things. There’s no way he was being honest as an actual “every man” citizen in 2019 or 2012, he’s being honest now as a candidate. I guess you could almost believe that if you’re just getting to know him now in 2026. Some folks knew him when he was the bartender he talks about on his commercials. They knew the real Bob “Crooksy” Brooks. The one he’s apologizing for now. They knew the “Crooksy” who wasn’t Congressional material. Be honest, you do too.