Hillary Clinton offered direct praise for a Youtube channel creator who asked a planned question during Sunday night’s Democratic debate.
But that Youtube star has a history of engaging in misogynistic commentary, including the kind Clinton and her campaign claim to abhor, once calling a Christian woman a “crusty old homophobic bitch.”
Connor Franta, a 23-year old Youtube videomaker, asked a banal question during the NBC News-Youtube debate about how the three Democratic candidates can best “engage” millennials.
“Congratulations for five million viewers on Youtube,” Clinton told Franta. “That’s quite an accomplishment.”
But did Clinton know about some of the rhetoric that Franta has used to build his Youtube following?
In a December 2015 video called “My Homophobic Uber Driver,” Franta described riding in an Uber in Los Angeles with a “Christian woman” whom he claimed asked him if “the homosexuals” had gotten to him yet.
“She just continued on cackling in her Southern accent the entire time,” Franta said.
“I felt betrayed. I even took down this lady’s number because I was going to call her later to have her read more shit about me, because I enjoyed it so much,” Franta said, noting that the woman took an interest in his videos.
“Yeah, then we basically pulled up, I got out, and I left that bitch behind, and just a horrible memory. Of course I tweeted about her. I’m not going to tweet her number because I’m a good person. Unlike that crusty old homophobic bitch.”
Franta said that “she turned out to be evil.”
Franta did not immediately return a request for comment on social media for this report.