Wisconsin MAGA Republican former Navy SEAL and transgender internet porn enthusiast Bill Berrien on Friday threw in the towel on his anti-transgender-centric gubernatorial campaign, the Associated Press reports, citing a lengthy statement in which Berrien concluded that he “had no idea that running for political office could be almost as dangerous” as “hunting down war criminals in Bosnia.”

The end came just days after the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel tracked down Berrien’s account on blogging platform Medium and found that, among other unconventional content creators, the family values conservative follows a “queer, trans, non-binary adult performer” who goes by “Jiz Lee,” a person whom Team Berrien insisted their principal did not know was trans when he followed Lee and upvoted their post about “ethical porn.” Nevertheless it was, for obvious reasons, a bad look for a candidate whose ads featured him saying “take it from a dad and a coach, I will keep boys out of our daughters’ sports and locker rooms” and another in which Berrien praised convicted felon President Trump for “protecting our daughters’ sports” from trans athletes, leading him to call it quits.

Possibly accelerating the end was the Wednesday launch of Cheesehead State MAGA Congressman Tom Tiffany’s gubernatorial bid, which itself could have been hastened or maybe even spurred by the Journal-Sentinel’s dogged investigative reporting on Berrien’s proclivities. That launch makes Tiffany now the 14th House Republican to announce their intent to exit DC ahead of the 2026 midterms, slightly outpacing the pre-2018 midterm exodus in anticipation of that cycle’s Blue Wave.

Now WPR’s reporting says Tiffany had been “teasing” the bid for a while and it may indeed be that he was going to enter whether Berrien was publicly revealed to be a freak or not, the timing seems pretty unlikely to have been merely coincidental. Factor in that Berrien owns a specialized manufacturing company that does $16 million a year in revenue per RocketReach and thus would’ve been able to self-fund a lot of his campaign, likely posing what would’ve been a formidable “political outsider” challenge to a seven-term deep red district lifer like Tiffany – if not for the Jiz Lee thing.

Hell for all we know it wasn’t the Journal-Sentinel who dug up Berrien’s media profile but some oppo shop hired by Tiffany to find exactly this kind of shit and they handed it over to the paper. If not though, while this story is fucking hilarious, it still sucks in the cosmic sense. As entertaining as Berrien’s statement in which he complained bitterly that the Journal-Sentinel had “painted a salacious and sensational picture that was clearly targeted to force me out of this governor race. It was a major attack piece. And for what? For reading! Nothing illegal, nothing unethical, and nothing immoral. Just reading. Wouldn’t you want your political and business leaders (and all of society, frankly) to be widely read and thoughtful and aware of different perspectives and ideas?” might be, the timing of all the revelations still could’ve been better. Much better. Like “minisoldr“-level better.

If it had taken another year for Bill Berrien ❤️ Jiz Lee to surface then maybe Tiffany never would have jumped into the race, Trump would’ve endorsed a hefty self-funder who didn’t need much if any support from the RNC, the primary would’ve been a foregone conclusion, Berrien would’ve been doomed in the general and the Wisconsin governorship stays blue. This doesn’t mean it won’t remain blue anyway given the likely national environment in 2026 – Mark Robinson was going to lose in North Carolina even without the “Nude Africa” (lol) shitshow – it just could’ve been a luckier break.