Fox News host Dana Perino sat down with Wisconsin state Representative Francesca Hong recently, and things did not go the way Hong’s campaign probably hoped.
Hong is the Democrat frontrunner in the Wisconsin governor’s race, and her past is catching up with her fast.
Perino put Hong’s own words right in front of her on live television, and the candidate spent the entire interview trying to talk her way around them.
A Record That Doesn’t Disappear Just Because the Campaign Changed Its Pitch
Hong belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America and pays dues. That is not a rumor or a Republican attack line. She confirmed it herself on air.
“In my home chapter in Madison, I have been since 2020,” Hong confirmed, describing herself as a “democratic socialist,” “a good single mom” and a “service industry worker.”
And the DSA is not some vague progressive club. DSA co-chair Megan Romer went viral recently for confirming that the DSA supported abolishing the Senate, eliminating national borders and prisons, replacing the presidency and the Supreme Court, and more during an interview with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday.
That is the openly Marxist organization whose dues Hong pays every year. The DSA’s own platform calls for government seizure of major corporations, the abolition of the US Senate, and the creation of a classless society. These are not fringe interpretations of the platform — they are the platform. And Hong has been a card-carrying member since 2020.
The posts Perino pressed her on backed defunding police, abolishing the Senate, and getting rid of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Perino asked the question Wisconsin voters deserve an answer to. “Why shouldn’t people take you at your word when you say that you want to defund the police and go towards abolishing it?”
Hong pivoted to her economic pitch. “As a Democratic Socialist, what that means is I want to put working class people first,” Hong said.
Perino did not let that float. “How does defunding the police put working class people first?” Perino asked. That is a question every Wisconsin family in a neighborhood that depends on police protection would probably like answered before handing Hong the governor’s office.
The Posts Were Not Vague, and the Campaign Knows It
In social media posts in 2020, Hong called to “defund the police” and stated that she supported defunding police “as a first step towards abolishing the police.”
She did not stop there. Hong called for abolishing police in a 2021 social media post after federal prosecutors chose not to charge the officer accused of shooting Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha.
The language she used in that post was not measured. “Police exist to uphold White supremacy. Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option. My heart breaks for the trauma the Blake family and their community continues to endure,” Hong wrote.
And those were not isolated moments. Hong repeatedly called for abolishing police departments, according to a CNN KFile review of her social media posts, interviews and statements. She also reposted calls to abolish police following the 2021 fatal shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by a Chicago police officer.
That is a sustained, documented record. Not a misquote. Not a Republican invention.
Now, facing a statewide general election audience that looks nothing like her Madison base, Hong wants voters to believe she has grown. Hong said her views had evolved, replying, “I believe that people can evolve. We meet Trump voters from previous elections who now would like to vote for me.”
Perino had a sharp response to that. “So who needs to evolve, the voter or you?” Perino asked.
That one line probably did more damage to Hong’s campaign than anything Tiffany’s team has put out.
“The governor cannot defund the police, and I won’t defund the police,” Hong said. “But I will invest in the things we know prevent crime.” That is a carefully lawyered answer. She is not saying she was wrong. She is saying the governor lacks the power to act on what she believed. That is a very different thing.
Hong’s campaign communications director stated that while the candidate’s values on police and prison abolition remain unchanged, she now discusses the issue differently. So the values did not change. The talking points did.
Tiffany Has the Receipts, and the DSA Keeps Handing Him More
US Representative Tom Tiffany (R-WI), the Republican frontrunner in the governor’s race, has been methodical about this. Tiffany told Fox News Digital, “Democrat Socialist Francesca Hong can flip-flop all she wants, but she can’t hide who she is. She’s a card-carrying socialist who called to abolish the police, ICE, and even the U.S. Senate.”
And when Hong claimed recently that she does not agree with the entire DSA platform, Tiffany’s team went through her record point by point. They noted that Hong had posted in favor of abolishing the Senate, abolishing ICE, prisons, and the police, and supported mass amnesty.
Hong’s campaign pushed back on the Senate claim specifically. Her campaign previously addressed her “Abolish the Senate” comments, noting she did not recall making the post in 2021, which came after the Senate failed to convict President Donald Trump during impeachment proceedings. She does not recall it. The post, apparently, does not share that problem.
On the Senate question during the Fox News interview, Hong called the DSA push to abolish the US Senate “nonsensical and non-practical at this time” and declined to back eliminating the Supreme Court. The phrase “at this time” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
The DSA’s own platform openly calls for replacing the presidency and the Supreme Court with bodies subordinate to Congress and abolishing the Senate entirely. Those are textbook Marxist objectives aimed at dismantling the constitutional republic. Hong pays dues to the organization that wrote those goals down. Calling them “non-practical at this time” is not a rejection. It is a deferral.
A Marquette Poll showed 49% of registered voters in Wisconsin have an unfavorable view of the DSA organization and the democratic socialist label. That number matters a great deal in a general election in a state that Donald Trump won in 2024.
But Hong leads recent polling in the crowded Democrat primary, which is set for August 11. She is getting closer to winning that primary. And the closer she gets, the more the general election math starts looking like a problem for Wisconsin Democrats who understand what it takes to win statewide.
The DSA’s own platform — government seizure of major corporations, open borders, abolition of ICE, the elimination of prisons — is not a secret. It is published. It is the platform of the organization whose membership card Hong carries. Wisconsin voters will have to decide whether “I’ve evolved” is a sufficient answer to a decade’s worth of documented positions. Based on what Perino put on screen, that is going to be a hard case to make.
“Socialism is knocking on Wisconsin’s door. This November, we slam it shut,” Tiffany wrote. Whether Wisconsin agrees will say something significant about where the Democrat Party is headed — not just in Madison, but everywhere the DSA is running candidates and winning primaries.
Sources: Breitbart, Fox News, The Hill, Yahoo News/Fox News Digital, CNN KFile, Wisconsin Watch, Marquette Law School Poll, Newsweek, Townhall, RedState
