There are some moments so consequential that you can divide your life into the world before and after them. A film popularized the concept as a sliding doors moment. Some of these moments happen in politics. Howard Dean’s scream lasted two seconds, but it cost him the race and his career.

Fran Hong’s sliding doors moment came in the middle of a Madison street Wednesday night when she lifted a megaphone, waded into the crowd, in a silly blue jumpsuit no less, and demonstrated a shockingly dangerous recklessness for someone who fantasizes about being a governor.

This image will come to define her if she’s the nominee. And Tom Tiffany’s millions will make sure people see it.

I’m appalled by Francesca Hong’s comments. They’re disgusting, irresponsible rhetoric — fanning the flames before an investigation is finished. She did this during the Jacob Blake investigation when she called for abolishing the police within hours of the shooting, without the… https://t.co/Fn38y8hVM8

— Eric Toney (@EricJToney) July 23, 2026

I think it just cost her the general if she wins the primary because it crushed her own new fake branding – that she’s the harmless candidate for affordability and free sh*t. She’s actually the candidate of chaos, disorder and instability. She is Al Sharpton crossed with Mata Hari.
And it’s on video.

That’s not all.

The Madison Bourgeoisie

That same night, the Madison bourgeoisie gathered for Chardonnay or a good Riesling and a lazy night out for a concert at the Square. Photojournalists captured the shell-shocked largely white and middle-aged, affluent concert goers with their South Florida hats and linens, with wine bottles splayed in front of them, as BLM ranted and raved. I’d feel sorry for them, but it’s Madison. You get what you vote for, and the chickens likely came home to roost.

I bet some of those folks preach positively about BLM (“we’re allies”) to their friends but were scared sh*tless to actually come face-to-face. How dare you interrupt our cocktails! In one fell swoop, the folks in that concert scene have come to define the old Democrat Party – the little free library liberals – versus the anarchist, cop hating, pro-encampment crazy wing that is taking over. It reminded me of a scene from the Hunger Games. Go home and erect another hate-has-no-home-here sign to feel good about yourselves.

“I’m pretty sure attendance at the Farmer’s Market in Madison will be a little light this weekend,” a reader opined, and then another guy revealed it’s already been cancelled in solidarity with “the community” which is heartbroken over the knife-wielding suspect who the chief says cut a cop.

Another reader stated, “I’ve been asking aloud for years how the GOP can win back the Chardonnay drinkers (suburban moms and metrosexual dads) in the WOW counties in a post Trump America and this is exactly how. Just let them talk.”

Yes. This is how.

Bye, Man Card

Then came the Madison police chief John Patterson’s shambolic press conference in which he let a protester rip his microphone out of his hand and officially handed in his man card. A person held a sign saying cops should di* and maybe even the police chief himself – with no pushback.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Protesters burst in and take over news conference as Madison police identify man killed by officer a day earlier. pic.twitter.com/viv4nyKvcz

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) July 23, 2026

The guy who grabbed the microphone declared that no one wanted to hear the police drone on about Corey Ruiz having a knife, which is, you know, the central fact. And why this shooting was almost certainly legally justified (the chief previously said Ruiz injured the firing officer with the knife).

The chief looked like a wet noodle that cooked too long on the stove. He stood there all sheepish and pale like a little boy being scolded by his dad.

Embarrassing weakness. How will you get control of the city if you can’t get control of the room? Or mic? That’s a new one.
Chief, the man card bin is on your left.

Advice for Satya

Advice for Madison officials, especially Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Never cede control for even a minute and always protect symbols. Remember when Minneapolis let the police precinct burn. The press conference was a symbol. Implement a curfew if necessary. Keep control of the streets.
Don’t let the tail wag the dog. Ever.

Stop making untrained, unarmed DPW workers run security for the protests. Recipe for disaster.

Satya once caused controversy when a password-protected video she sent the cops leaked. “You must be exhausted. I know I am, and you’re facing a much more difficult situation than I am. It must be absolutely infuriating to stand in heavy gear outside while listening to people constantly insult your chosen profession… You are not what the protesters say you are. I know that…” the lefty mayor told them then. In Madison, such comments are hugely controversial. Someone might get triggered.

Read your own words, mayor. Why didn’t you have a plan to help the chief keep control of the press conference? Instead, she released an obnoxiously pandering statement that further elevated the tensions.

Don’t be surprised if other departments won’t offer mutual aid, either. No cop wants to set foot in Dane County anymore. It’s no-go land. Too dangerous for cops.

MacArthur?

Fran Hong had been holding carefully calibrated court with journalistic friendlies until now, pretending (likely lying) that she doesn’t really want to defund police despite repeatedly writing that she wanted to abolish them. That makes her a typical politician, not the idealistic phenomenon the media have built her into. Now, wading into the crowd like MacArthur in a Jeep (a friend gave me that analogy), Hong screeched about the system, threw in some racial comments, and declared the Corey Ruiz shooting an “execution.” Incensing.

Only MacArthur was liberating the Philippines from Japanese tyranny. Hong is running to turn the governor’s mansion into a furry or Comic Con convention.

Hong was no liberator; she was throwing a cop under the bus, rushing to judgment without all of the facts, inciting a crowd and racial anger at an already intense moment, and pandering to the crowd besides. Was she okay that Kenosha burned?

If you watch the megaphone video, you can almost clock the calculation by the ticking seconds as she pauses before ratcheting up her rhetoric in response to the crowd egging her on. Craven. But probably fatal error. I’ve never seen anything this outrageous from a #Wisconsin politician.

The protestors goaded the truth out of her. It’s like their shrieks of “murder!” pumped about two minutes of truth serum into her, just enough to tank the race.

No one in Thorp or Rice Lake wants the state abolished. Good God, lady, we just wanted cheap eggs, and they’re $1.99 at Kwik Trip. That’s it! Slow down! Urban chaos elects Republicans. Remember the Mothers of the Movement. That helped elect Trump. People prefer order. (Actually a reader just told me eggs are on sale for 50 cents at Kwik Trip this month.) Fran! We’re not down for abolishing the U.S. Senate and every local Sheriff’s Department! You’re taking this way too far.

Wait! Where will Fran put all of the so-called police “killers” without prisons? Hahaha.

These aren’t policies. They’re gimmicks that kids stuck in their rooms too long in 2020 think sound cool – their chance to rage against the machine! She didn’t even know Madison wouldn’t give the cops body cams.

“This state sanctioned violence was an execution,” Hong ranted to the crowd, through a megaphone, as protests erupted. “We no longer can have a system that protects a power and a privilege that puts the pain and lives of armed officers over black people. We can not protect a system that contains to rain harm and terror.” She also called the likely justified shooting an “execution” in a written statement.

So she wants to abolish the system now? Well she belongs to DSA, which has pretty much already said that. Literally. All of it. From capitalism to the presidency. It’s on their website. She’ll have allegiance to the rose – not you.

She’s an agent of chaos and disorder whose goal is to destabilize our democracy. It’s hardly hope and change. It’s a brand hinged on negatives. Abolishing, destruction. People usually vote for optimism and change: “Make America Great Again.”

Fran Is a Fake

Don’t buy her image. It’s fake. I told you that she’s actually a provocateur and saboteur. If she actually cared about waitresses, she would have voted for the surplus deal so they wouldn’t have to pay taxes on tips.

Her mother was a music teacher and dad a UW-Madison researcher, by the way. Hardly a hardscrabble upbringing.

Meanwhile, Tom Tiffany and AG candidate Eric Toney released tempered, responsible statements (as did Tony Evers), which basically said a transparent investigation was needed, and people should stop putting out incendiary nonsense. Actually, Tiffany is MacArthur, coming to liberate us from insanity if his jeep can make it through the Madison mud (more and more likely.) Evers appears to have learned his lesson after inciting the riots in Kenosha in defense of knife-wielding Jacob Blake, and then the cop was exonerated by a Democrat DA.

Since most of the Democratic Party is probably all in with cop hating BLM protests, even the Chardonnay liberals, this might help Hong win the Aug. 11 primary. Other candidates were releasing orchestrated press releases and hapless, possibly dishonest David “Dirt McGirk”

Crowley was laughably claiming he never saw the police shooting video (just like someone else wrote the bonkers Dirt posts and stuck the word David in them). Hong was making it clear when surrounded by BLM agitators: These are my people.

It’s like she channeled George W. Bush with the firefighter and megaphone right after 9/11. Except that was inspiring. This was scary.
Worse for Hong. She’s becoming a meme. That image – brilliantly recorded by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Laura Schulte – of Hong with a megaphone captured her essence… not of who her campaign is trying to turn her into but of who she really is. The mask is off. You’re going to see a lot of the megaphone image.

When she loses in November, if she gets that far, look back to this moment for the why.