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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5074 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.

Taking Hanania seriously is a sure sign of Low Human Capital. In the real world, almost every Democrat actively stood behind Plattner while spiking, sabotaging, and downplaying stories about his poor behavior... until the exact week he started polling worse than Collins, at which point they pretended that previously ignorable claims were damning.

Anyway, this dude sounds like an asswipe.

Fairly certain Hannania has admitted he engagement baits and isn’t actually saying his true thoughts. At this point he’s essentially running a business and not a serious intellectual. He might have some very solid thoughts from time to time but if you’re spending your time reading him now….well he’s 90% optimizing for Hannania bank account go up.

he engagement baits

First time? Pretty much every moderately successful influencer is posting 80% engagement bait in some form. Youtube, Tiktok, Reels, Substack, whatever. Engagement is an influencer's bread and butter and they give zero shits for how much they torch the commons as long as they get theirs.

For Hannania he first gained influence without the engagement baiting and just wrote interesting things. For me it’s seeing the transition from intellectually interesting to influencer sell-out over time that makes him different. Most of us probably knew his writings before he got a little famous.

I can’t fault someone for trying to make a buck, but he’s not the same Hannania from like 2018 or whenever he began to gain influence. I’ve come close to just blocking his comment on social media because it’s 90% hackery now.

Idk who stated the obvious but someone once said that something like: "if you are good at something, and do it for fun, making it a business sucks all the fun out of it, and eventually you do it for the money" (I suck at words) Sounds like the most common pipeline. People write interesting things, collect a following, then start doing it for a buck, and since it's now about audience metrics and engagement, it forces them to sell-out.

It's sad but common enough that I guess I just cynically assume most folks with online followings are somewhere in that pipeline and it's just about where.

I believe it was a very wise man:

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

While the context (from Matthew 6:24) has God and money as the two masters, it applies just as well to any two non-identical selections: they will somewhere and somehow conflict and a choice must be made.

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