NEW: “Oregon Congressional Candidate Alek Skarlatos Joked About Choking Women”

A report out today in the Oregon Capital Chronicle reveals that OR-04 GOP candidate Alek Skarlatos has a history of making derogatory jokes about women – including laughing off sexual violence – while inappropriately interacting with underage girls on social media. 

The report found that Skarlatos:

• Joked about strangling women to death during sex on a podcast just prior to his failed campaign for Douglas County Commissioner;

• Quipped about a woman who suffocated to death during oral sex, saying that the man – who wasn’t convicted of murder – “got off, in more ways than one;”

• Repeatedly liked photos of underage girls in bikinis and midriff-baring crop tops, the two youngest girls being 15 at the time he engaged with their photographs;

• And complained that “there’s literally two attractive women in my town.”

DCCC Spokesperson Teddy Lake:
“Alek Skarlatos has shown Oregonians everything they need to know about him. Set against the backdrop of his party’s national attack on women’s bodily autonomy, Skarlatos’s jokes about sexual violence and inappropriate interactions with underage girls on social media aren’t just disgusting – they’re disqualifying.”

Read more below:
Oregon Capital Chronicle: Oregon congressional candidate Alek Skarlatos joked about choking women
By Julia Shumway | September 12, 2022

• Alek Skarlatos, a Republican candidate for Congress in a competitive Oregon district, repeatedly “liked” photos of underage girls in bikinis on Instagram and joked about strangling women on a podcast shortly before beginning his political career four years ago.

• Skarlatos, 29, is a former Oregon National Guardsman who parlayed his recognition for helping stop a terrorist on an Paris-bound train in 2015 into multiple reality show appearances and two previous unsuccessful campaigns for Congress and the Douglas County Commission.

• Skarlatos’ comments about choking women were on a podcast in 2018 to promote a Clint Eastwood movie dramatization of the thwarted train attack. Skarlatos appeared as himself in the film.

• In March 2018, two months before Skarlatos launched his campaign for Douglas County Commission, he and film co-star Spencer Stone, a former Air Force staff sergeant who also helped stop the terrorist attack, appeared on the podcast “Drinkin’ Bros.” For 45 minutes, the pair and two podcast hosts discussed the film and speculated about celebrities’ sex lives, and Skarlatos read aloud some of his messages from the dating app Tinder.

• Then, the conversation turned to choking in the bedroom.

• “You ever thought if you choked someone and killed them in bed what would happen?” podcast host Ross Patterson asked.

• “Oh yeah,” Skarlatos responded, laughing. “Oh yeah.”

• The conversation about women dying during sex continued, with Stone saying he had plans to sit in on a trial of a man charged with choking his girlfriend to death during what the defendant described as a consensual encounter. Skarlatos then referred to a 2017 Florida case in which a man argued that his girlfriend accidentally suffocated while performing oral sex, saying that the man wasn’t convicted and “got off, in more ways than one.”

• Around the time of Skarlatos’s podcast appearance, the Oregon Legislature upgraded strangulation during domestic violence to a felony. Strangulation was also made a federal felony in the 2013 reauthorization of the federal Violence Against Women Act.

• Academic studies have found that more than half of female college students have been choked by partners during sex and have linked an increase in strangulation attempts to depictions of choking in pornographic videos that don’t show how dangerous it is.

• Earlier in the episode, Skarlatos also complained about the physical appearances of women in Roseburg, and how he had to travel elsewhere to date.

• “There’s literally two attractive women in my town,” Skarlatos said.

• Within the past few months, Skarlatos has also “liked” photos of underage girls wearing bikinis and other skimpy outfits on Instagram. One such photo, posted by a then-17-year-old girl this past March, shows her in a string bikini bottom and a sweatshirt raised to display her midriff.

• Since 2020, Skarlatos liked dozens of photos of teenage girls, including several in which the girls are wearing two-piece bathing suits or midriff-baring crop tops. The two youngest girls were 15 at the time Skarlatos liked their pictures, according to Instagram posts they made on their birthdays.

• The Capital Chronicle reviewed screenshots of the posts and found them on Instagram to verify that Skarlatos liked them.

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