He's been trying to, at least
We'll start at The NY Times:
The videos were a sort-of virtual ride-along with Doug Mastriano as he crisscrossed Pennsylvania in the governor’s race, regaling viewers with his far-right musings about climate change, abortion and critics within his own party.
In one live broadcast on Facebook in April, Mr. Mastriano, a Republican state senator, referred to climate change as “pop science.”
In a separate video on his social media from a radio interview, three days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, he dismissed the issue of abortion rights as a distraction. And when trying to explain in April why some Republicans would not support him, Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army colonel, attributed it to their “disdain for veterans.”
And we know that he did say that the issue of abortion rights is a distraction because it was reported as such at Business Insider:
In an interview with Newsmax on Monday, Mastriano was asked to comment on footage of pro-choice protesters who were dispersed by police with tear gas outside the state capitol in Arizona. Mastriano, who himself was on the front lines between police and protesters at the US Capitol on January 6, per video from the day, praised law enforcement for quelling the civil unrest.
But the state senator also didn't really want to talk about it, he said, insisting that "it's all a distraction."
"The Democrats and their friends in the traditional media want us to focus on this, and now on the Roe v. Wade decision, instead of dealing with life," Mastriano told the right-wing news outlet. "And most people in this country are concerned about inflation, gas prices, food not on the shelves, baby formula, and just on and on. So this is all a distraction."
The Times goes on:
The removal of the videos from his campaign’s Facebook page was reported earlier on Monday by The Philadelphia Inquirer, which listed 14 videos featuring Mr. Mastriano, one of Pennsylvania’s pre-eminent election deniers, that had disappeared since April.And The Philadelphia Inquirer includes this:
The removed videos include freewheeling discussions in which Mastriano predicts that this November’s election will be marred by Democratic voter fraud; accuses Republicans who don’t support him of looking down on veterans; and calls the fight against abortion “the most important issue of our lifetime.”
But wait, isn't the issue a distraction?
Anyway, back to The Times:
But the video footage that once resided on Mr. Mastriano’s campaign Facebook page has not vanished entirely. The New York Times obtained the clips on Monday from American Bridge, a liberal group specializing in opposition research that archived them.
Uh-oh.
Both The Times and the Inquirer report that the transparently trustworthy Mastriano has done this before.
From the Inquirer:
Before this latest batch of deletions, Mastriano removed potentially problematic or controversial posts, including tweets promoting the Qanon conspiracy theory, as well as videos in which he called local faith leaders “cowards”; acknowledged his COVID diagnosis while visiting the White House; and feuded with GOP lawmakers in Harrisburg.
Luckily, Media Matters has an archive of his deleted tweets:
See that WWG1WGA tucked in the middle?
That's QAnon, my friends.
The reporting over at Media Matters also lead to this:
Mastriano has pushed false claims about vaccinations, which are safe and do not cause autism. On April 12, he shared a Facebook video that's accompanied by text that falsely claims that “vaccines kills & causes autism” and refers to vaccines as “the government's poison.” And on March 27, he posted a video featuring disgraced anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield that falsely connects vaccines to autism.And this is what that April 12 Facebook link shows as of this morning:
Same thing with that March 27 video as well.
PA State Senator (and now GOP cand. for PA Gov.) Doug Mastriano: A QAnon follower and anti-vaxxer who doesn't want the public to know he's a QAnon follower and anti-faxxer.
