The 82-Year-Old Democrat Trolling Ted Cruz Into Oblivion
Bulwark Takes
The Bulwark
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2026
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will Sommer and Lauren Egan give their takes on the unlikely rise of Louise Lucas, the 82-year-old Virginia lawmaker whose unapologetic, meme-heavy social media presence has Democrats buzzing. As Virginia Democrats push an aggressive redistricting plan, Lucas has become a lightning rod for her online trolling of Republicans, including high-profile sparring with Ted Cruz. Meanwhile, figures like Gavin Newsom and Brian Schatz are experimenting with punchy online voices of their own. Is this the future of Democratic politics and does going viral translate into votes?
Read more from Lauren’s reporting: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/how-82-year-great-grandmother-louise-lucas-became-masterclass-democratic-shitposter
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, guys, it's Will Summer here at the bulwark. I'm joined today by one of our reporters, Lauren |
| 0:04.5 | Egan. She writes the opposition newsletter. You got to subscribe to it. It's on Democrats in the |
| 0:09.3 | wilderness. Will they ever come back in power? Lauren has her finger on the pulse of the upcoming |
| 0:14.2 | election in the midterms. Lauren, thanks for coming on today. Hey, Will, how's it going? Good. So I wanted |
| 0:20.3 | to talk today about your new newsletter on Louise |
| 0:23.6 | Lucas, a relatively little-known Virginia statehouse politician. And I guess the gist of this newsletter is, |
| 0:30.7 | can this 82-year-old politician teach Democrats to be rude again online? And so let's dive into it. |
| 0:37.3 | Tell me all about Louise Lucas, if I'm someone who hasn't heard of her. |
| 0:40.8 | So I feel like a lot of the conversation about Democrats this past year and this is where |
| 0:45.7 | like our beads kind of intersect because you know all the discourse that's happening online. |
| 0:50.5 | But so much of the Democrats focus this past year has been like, how can we rival the Republican |
| 0:55.9 | party's grip on social media? It's just something that Democrats have honestly been pretty bad at. |
| 1:02.8 | And that's why you've seen people like Gavin Newsom start these podcasts. You've seen donors sink |
| 1:07.7 | millions of dollars into all these projects about how can we get more creators |
| 1:12.1 | to create content that's pro-democrats, things like that. |
| 1:16.2 | And then as all of this is going on on the national level, there's this state senator in |
| 1:20.7 | Virginia who's kind of crept up out of nowhere over the past couple of years, at least for me, |
| 1:25.4 | I'm not a Virginia resident, who's just |
| 1:27.7 | had like the most just kind of sassy shit posting type personality on Twitter. |
| 1:35.4 | And she's really broken through over the past couple of months because of all the redistricting |
| 1:39.0 | stuff that's going on. |
| 1:40.2 | Virginia right now is trying to redraw their congressional maps. |
... |
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