Councilwoman becomes completely unhinged in conference call, attacks city’s first openly gay mayor
A councilwoman from Trenton, New Jersey had a truly epic meltdown at work last week and she’s not apologizing for it.
Robin Vaughn is facing calls for her resignation after she launched into an homophobic tirade during a conference call with city officials about coronavirus, unleashing on several of her colleagues.
According to NJ.com, Vaughn went on a “10-minute expletive-laced rant” that included calling the city’s first openly gay mayor, Reed Gusciora, a “pedophile,” a “woman,” and a “bitch ass,” and accusing another city official, Joe Harrison, of performing sex acts on him.
The Trentonian reports:
She launched into a stream of curse words and personal insults after Gusciora challenged her to name one of the capital city’s “do-nothing” organizations she has criticized on Facebook. At one point, Vaughn, who previously caught heat for defending a colleague’s use of an anti-Semitic slur, called Gusciora a “pedophile,” said the mayor and Harrison weren’t “real men,” and suggested “the only thing [Gusciora] brought into City Hall is a bunch of young boys, and they’re sitting up there in the mayor’s suite.”
At one point during the rant, Vaughn attacked Harrison’s family, shouting: “We don’t have bitch ass men in my family. We don’t have bitch ass men like you and Reed Gusciora in my family. We got real men in my family. Bitch asses! Nothing but a bunch of women. That’s all you are. Bitches! That’s right. Running around here with young men. Reed ain’t nothing but an old pedophile. Bitch ass motherf*ckin’ mayor!”
At another point she told Harrison to “continue to suck Reed Gusciora’s d*ck all you want to, motherf*cker.” Later, she told him to “bend over a little lower” for the mayor.
After the story broke, Vaughn released a statement on Twitter. Instead of, say, apologizing for her antigay remarks, she accused the media of portraying her in a negative light, calling for the “full audio” of the conference call to be released.
In a tweet, Vaughn wrote: “Trentonians, since I don’t have the privilege of having friends who are owners and/or editors of newspapers who will only write good things about me or my side of a story, then I will request the full audio or transcript be released so you, the residents and taxpayers of Trenton, will have the full context of the conference call.”
Mayor @gusciora stop talking to the newspapers and release the full tape and/or transcript. t.co/MqYzog1erO pic.twitter.com/D077V9z1v1
— Robin M Vaughn (@trentonwestward) May 3, 2020
Well, be careful what you wish for. Because after Vaughn asked that the full recording be released, The Trentonian did just that.
Complete audio of the 53-minute call was published over the weekend and it doesn’t make anyone in the meeting look good, but Vaughn definitely comes off as the absolute worst.
While both Gusciora and Harrison can be heard hurling insults at Vaughn prior to her 10-minute outburst, including calling her “incompetent,” a “child,” and telling her she that she was acting like a “crazy person,” pretty much everyone agrees that the things they said pale in comparison to her blatant homophobia.
Now, the LGBTQ rights group Garden State Equality is calling on Vaughn to resign.
In a statement, the organization says, “Councilwoman Vaughn is unfit to serve the people of Trenton. There’s no need to parse words here: for her hateful anti-LGBTQ language and defending the anti-Semitic slurs of others, she must resign.”
“Her words are an attack on the diversity of Trenton’s community, the city’s elected leadership, and our state as a whole. Any decent-minded New Jerseyan who believes in the success and future of our state’s capital should denounce this hateful rhetoric and call for her to step down immediately.”
Statement from our Executive Director @Fuscarino on anti-LGBTQ attacks from Trenton Councilwoman Robin Vaughn: pic.twitter.com/17WmzJjUPM
— Garden State Equality (@GSEquality) May 3, 2020
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