Michigan House candidate William Lawrence called America a “s***hole country” and posted an upside-down flag, rhetoric House Democrats brushed past while elevating him to flip a GOP seat.
William Lawrence, the Democratic challenger to Republican Rep. Tom Barrett in a closely watched Michigan House race, used a January 2021 social media post to brand the United States a “s***hole country.”
The Washington Free Beacon reported that the since-deleted post came as Lawrence complained that “everyone is supposed to just keep showing up for work” amid what he called the “mass dieoff” of family members during the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump administration had released the first wave of Operation Warp Speed vaccines roughly a month earlier.
House Democrats recently added Lawrence to their Red-to-Blue program, the effort that steers money and staff toward candidates they call “top-tier” prospects to flip Republican-held seats. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
In May 2021, Lawrence posted an upside-down American flag. He wrote that “democracy in the USA is on the brink.”
The Free Beacon noted the inverted flag has long signaled dire distress. Both the January and May posts were later deleted. Archives preserved the wording and the image.
Those were not isolated outbursts. On a 2024 podcast, Lawrence called for “destroying the American way of life” and said the country should “redistribute all the land and all the money” to atone for America’s “evil deeds.” He pushed a “world without borders.”
He also described the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, a disaster that killed six construction workers, as a “climate activist’s dream” because it choked off coal exports.
Other deleted social media posts show Lawrence writing “f***” the nuclear family and voicing a desire for a “world without police and prisons.”
The pattern is consistent. He treats core American institutions as targets for demolition rather than reform. Voters in Michigan now get to decide whether that record belongs in the House.
Lawrence is an open fan of socialist influencer Hasan Piker. Earlier this year, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed introduced the two men backstage at a campaign event. Lawrence was caught on tape calling Piker “the man” and asking for an invite onto Piker’s Twitch livestream.
Piker’s own record, as laid out in the same reporting, includes saying “America deserved 9/11,” calling the United States the “absolute worst country on the face of the planet,” and labeling it a “capitalist s***hole.”
Lawrence later let his Democratic Socialist party membership lapse last month. The timing does not erase the years of public statements that preceded it.
Lawrence launched his campaign last August. Deshawn Bailey appeared at the event. Bailey, who lives about a block from Lawrence’s house in Lansing, served 14 years in prison for raping his 12-year-old half-sister. Lawrence employed him at the tenants union Rent is Too Damn High.
The Free Beacon’s earlier reporting had already documented the Bailey connection and the podcast remarks. The newly surfaced 2021 posts simply add sharper language to an already clear record of contempt for the country Lawrence now wants to represent.
Barrett, the Republican incumbent, faces a race national Democrats have chosen to prioritize. They did so after Lawrence’s “s***hole country” post, the upside-down flag, the call to destroy the American way of life, and the public embrace of Piker were all available for anyone to check.
Americans who still believe the country is worth defending do not need a lecture on what those words mean. They need candidates who do not say them.
