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PaperclipPerfector  13hr ago (text post)   1666 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026

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Hot off the Platner scandal, here comes Max Miller one upping him. Max Miller, a Republican who previously served in Trump's first admin and running for reelection as state representative has been accused by his ex-wife of throwing hot water on her, putting a gun to her head, and (potentially) even choking their 2 year old daughter.

She doesn't know for sure as it would have happened behind closed doors, and Miller obviously denies this but CPS investigations did suggest strangulation as possible.

Neither the child’s father, Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), nor mother, conservative policy adviser Emily Moreno, admitted to knowing what caused their daughter’s injury or that it occurred while their daughter was under their care. Miller’s primary theory was that the bruising resembled marks from a seat belt. Moreno, who discovered the bruises and took the child to an emergency room, suggested the cause may have been something more sinister. Records of the investigation into potential child abuse show that Moreno told detectives that Miller had previously thrown hot water at her, shoved her, and held a gun to her head; therefore, she couldn’t rule out that Miller caused their daughter’s fracture. Moreover, a child protection specialist reviewing the incident had characterized the bruising near the fracture as resembling a “handprint.”

And the daughter for some reason seems to be scared of her father, so even if he didn't cause this particular injury it's not a great sign.

“Daddy’s house is scary,” Moreno recounted her daughter saying, according to a Bay Village, Ohio, investigative report relating to the February 2026 injury.

There's also apparently been other accusations against him when he was younger.

Responding to written questions from Moreno’s lawyer about whether Miller threw a girl down the stairs in high school, faced expulsion from college for a violent incident involving a female student, and left Moreno within three days of their child’s birth, Miller—over the course of the domestic proceedings—neither confirmed nor denied the events took place.

Especially when I made an interesting discovery, him being an abuser seems to have been already known or at least suspected in politics. George Santos had previously called him a woman beater during a spat with Miller, because Miller was accused of assaulting his previous girlfriend before that.

Miller, a former Trump White House aide, was accused of slapping his then-girlfriend and Trump’s former press secretary Stephanie Grisham in 2020, which she said resulted in her ending the relationship.

and

Politico was more specific in its July 2021 article, recounting—according to three people familiar with the incident—that Miller “pushed [Grisham] against a wall and slapped her in the face in his Washington apartment after she accused him of cheating on her.”

And Miller is (or was) a drug user, showing a history of irresponsible behavior.

Records from Miami University police concluded that Miller’s blood alcohol content was under the legal limit, and he pleaded down to a misdemeanor for failing to control the car. “A blood test conclusively established that Mr. Miller was not impaired,” Miller’s attorney told Politico at the time.

However, Mother Jones has obtained further toxicology reports from the incident stating that Miller had MDMA—also known as ecstasy—and Klonopin in his system at the time of the crash.

And there is hard proof that he poured hot water on Moreno, per a recording.

According to the transcript, Moreno is heard saying, “You poured steaming hot water on me, and you’ve also, you, uh, you have been insanely emotionally abusive.”

Miller first said he “didn’t pour hot water on [her] neck.” He then said, “The water incident…I never thought that that hurt you.”

“It was never done to hurt you with intent. It never was done to hurt you, and you know that,” Miller explained.

Again there's no hard proof of most of these (yet at least) but a history of physical abuse allegations throughout his life + drug usage (and lying about it) + the abuse suggesting bruising patterns on his own child + at least one proven allegation, it certainly seems to be leaning towards his guilt.

These allegations haven't reached the general public much yet, but they do seem to having a small effect on his reelection chances already. Not as much as Platner did but the news is still pretty young. Some comments I've been seeing however suggest that Republican candidates are simply held to lower moral standards nowadays by their respective sides and it won't impact him too much despite the severity. I guess time will tell.

This is just boo outgroup stuff. We just banned someone in the last thread for doing this.

Three day ban for you as well.

Should we update the Rules As Written to match the Rules As Intended, if we're going to start enforcing them in this way?

At least in the comment you linked there was clearly an overgeneralizing crack at the whole outgroup in the last sentence. Here the framing seems to be "Boo Not-Just-My-Ingroup", with the very first clause reminding us that that Ingroup has some boo-worthy members too..

In RAW it still says "concrete criminal or impeachable offenses are also fair game". The example there is ""Congressman Jones is under suspicion of taking bribes" is fine", a criminal+impeachable offense which is clearly more discussion-worthy by being directly linked to the office, but is that necessary? The initial Platner scandals weren't even criminal; a discussion of how mere "slimy or gross" might not even be disqualifying, during our weeks of Platner discussion, even made the AAQC lists.

the very first clause reminding us that that Ingroup has some boo-worthy members too..

One sentence doesn't undo the entire point of the post. And we don't want some magic set of words to allow someone out of an otherwise rule breaking post.

And the entire point of the post is to point out that someone in the out group is doing something bad.

Someone is always doing something bad and I don't want this place to turn into a battleground where we all just publish the worst things that members of the out group are doing.

Parts of the Platner discussion struck me as much more nuanced than this. In the sense that they weren't about the veracity of the allegations but how others were choosing to respond to those allegations. Some of the Platner discussion was the boring "oh look an out group member turned out to be terrible" and that discussion should have probably been shut down.

Some comments I've been seeing however suggest that Republican candidates are simply held to lower moral standards nowadays by their respective sides and it won't impact him too much despite the severity. I guess time will tell.

That pretty much reads to me as just "Let's not forget that even if my ingroup might sometimes do bad, my outgroup are always worse (or so I've heard some guy whose opinion here is irrelevant say, see? I'm not the one waging the culture war, I'm just reporting on what is being said!)"

It's a weaker and more qualified attack, but yeah, that's also pushing the boundaries in the same direction.

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