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Anna Paulina Luna is a bad girl. Why else would the Washington Post be so eager to discipline her?
Reporters Jacqueline Alemany and Alice Crites, truly a modern-day Woodward and Bernstein, appear convinced that the freshman congresswoman representing Florida’s 13th congressional district is a George Santos retread.
The pair of bullies went rummaging through Luna’s panty drawer in search of skeletons. The result? A lengthy article intended to punish her — to which several corrections and clarifications have been added in the days since its publication.
The bombshell revelations that remain in the intro of the gruesome twosome’s story include that when serving in the Air Force, Luna “described herself as alternately Middle Eastern, Jewish or Eastern European,” that she went by her “given last name of Mayerhofer, “sported designer clothing” and “expressed support for then-President Barack Obama.” Oh my stars!
The piece then cocks an eyebrow at the fact she “changed her last name to Luna in what she said was an homage to her mother’s family.” The implication seems to be that she did so in order to endear herself to Hispanic voters, which Cockburn’s buddies in Texas call “doing a Beto,” the difference, of course, being that Luna is actually Mexican-American.
The Post also scrutinizes Luna’s claims of having “little extended family” and experiencing a “traumatizing ‘home invasion’.” The reporters’ attempt to pour cold water on these anecdotes involve speaking to a cousin and a roommate who “had no recollection of the ‘home invasion’ Luna detailed, describing instead a break-in at their shared apartment when they were not home, an incident confirmed by police records.”
“She is part of a new class of House Republicans that includes many elected to public office for the first time, including Rep. George Santos (N.Y.), whose fabrications about his biography emerged after his election,” Alemany and Crites write. See what they’re trying to do? Clever isn’t it?
What follows is a he-said, she-said biography, in which Luna’s cousin offers various contentions that aid the Post reporters’ efforts to smear Luna and Luna’s mother gives an account entirely consistent with what Luna has previously said about her life.
Friends from the Air Force “recalled her talking about her aspiration of being a Maxim magazine model.” And “according to a biography of Luna on the website of Turning Point USA, the conservative nonprofit where she worked, she ‘modeled professionally as a means of paying for expenses that the GI bill did not cover.’”
“Throughout college and after leaving the Air Force, she worked at times as a model, a cocktail waitress at a gentleman’s club and an Instagram influencer, Luna has said,” Alemany and Crites write. Yet in what is perhaps the greatest act of journalistic malpractice since Stephen Glass, the Post neglects to link out to Luna’s Sports Illustrated shoot. It’s right here, cowards.
And if considering all Republicans to be Nazis wasn’t enough, the Post confirms that Luna’s paternal grandfather actually was one: “According to several family members, Heinrich Mayerhofer, who died in 2003, served in the armed forces of Nazi Germany when he was a teenager in the 1940s.” To be fair to Luna, having Nazi ancestors is pretty Hispanic. Ever been to Argentina?
“Holy shit the Washington post just tried to claim my dad was never incarcerated, left out comments from my mom, said I was a registered Democrat, and did not report a convo they had with a former roommate, and interviewed “family” I don’t talk to. This is comical,” Luna tweeted on Friday.
Despite bothering to speak to multiple people internationally in pursuit of the Luna scoop, the initial Post story got a couple of key facts wrong. It described Luna as a “registered Democrat” in Washington, a state that has not required party registration for two decades. A further clarification concedes that while Luna’s roommate was the only person interviewed by police after the break-in, Luna is mentioned in the police report. The Post also said it couldn’t verify that Luna’s father had been in jail — when court records show that he was. Luna also posted a picture of him in a jumpsuit.
Not everything in the Post story is original: it seems that one of America’s most esteemed newspapers is cribbing from Proud Boy pal Jacob Engels, a hard-right blogger that the Daily Beast once branded “Roger Stone’s mini-me.” Engels, who was probed by the January 6 Committee, was asking Luna about her “white” or “Hispanic” heritage and her work at the gentleman’s club in 2021. Cockburn would have thought that the Post would be above rehashing far-right offcuts. Apparently not.
Cockburn has a more pressing question: why is the press only bothering to look into prospective members of Congress’s pasts now? It couldn’t have anything to do with the huge decline in local journalism over the last few years, which is occurring largely thanks to the efforts of major media conglomerates such as the Post’s peers TRONC and the New York Times Company? Or the fact that many media companies are making cuts, prompting slapdash fits of “Quick! Let’s Do Journalism!” among the remaining staff.
Ultimately, Cockburn wonders if the pair of reporters are jealous of the glamorous thirty-three-year-old representative. Luna was one of the sharpest dressers at last week’s State of the Union, channeling 2004-era My Chemical Romance in a smart blazer and tie combination. (“Anna Paulina Luna, Gryffindor,” as Cockburn’s live-blogging colleagues had it.) The Harvard-educated Alemany and multiple Pulitzer winner Crites have impressive résumés — but as far as Cockburn can see, neither ever came close to being a Maxim Hometown Hottie.
