Source

Wisconsin Republican says he sought to overturn 2020 election because of Zuckerberg | AP News

https://meidasnews.com/news/tom-tiffanys-campaign-reports-a-donor-covered-his-rent-as-his-campaign-spends-over-70000-on-private-planes

Apparently Tiffany is not ok with how 15 mil was spent by Mark Zuckerburg to the point he attempted to over turn our election. But on the flip side the 40 million he has gotten from billionares or Elon Musk literally paying people to vote he is totally fine with. This guy is a disgrace to our state and a hypocritical loser. Vote Crowley!!

Full link to his pathetic answer. https://youtu.be/NtD68LEQ-mM?is=sW2jxInDQtdYkiMH

Stella Parton (yes related to dolly RIP) in TN said GOP candidates were the default and she had to put her blue choices in 3x before they took. Default? Ffs.

Tom Tiffany's one debate is today, and I'm going to fact-check it the same way I did the Van Orden vs. Cooke forum from yesterday (Oct. 20.) If you want a preview of what that will look like, this is it. I've taken the whole forum hosted by the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce and WEAU from start to finish and paused after factual claims from both candidates so you can see what the record says.

There are 71 fact check cards. Red means the claim and the record don't match, gold means the candidate has some valid evidence to support their claim, gray adds context or shows the record itself when something is more complicated than it seems, and a few are marked unverified where I couldn't confirm the claim either way and I wanted to be upfront about that missing information. The cards follow the claims, not the candidates, so Van Orden gets more of them (55 to Cooke's 16). Thirteen of his are cards are where he's right, and Cooke gets checked when her numbers run high too. Opinions and promises aren't checked, and I try to save my fact check interruptions so they occur at natural breaks. I am also in the process of localizing the video into the top 20 languages on YouTube. Though there isn't a sizable non-English population in WI-3, our 3 college towns in Platteville, Eau Claire, and La Crosse make for some interesting demographics.

I did what I could with the audio, but Van Orden writes and taps against his podium throughout the video when he isn't talking. Why they didn't mute him when he wasn't speaking is beyond me.

The Van Orden vs. Cooke fact check video is here.

Jump to a question, or straight to a claim:

• How the fact-check cards work (0:00)
• Forum opens: format and rules (1:03)
• Producer costs, inflation and the economy (2:39)
  • Van Orden: Inflation: "As of this morning, it's 2.6%." (4:07). That's core inflation. The overall rate in September was 3.7%.
  • Van Orden: "President Trump signed the Harvest Fuel Relief bill last night" (4:34). There was no bill or act. USDA announced an $8 billion program with money they already had; he also said $9 billion.
  • Cooke: The Iran war, "which Derrick Van Orden voted for six times" (7:40). She's right: he has made six votes against resolutions to pull U.S. forces out.
  • Van Orden: Iran, the hostages, Beirut and "thousands of American citizens" (8:39). Right on the hostages and Beirut. The counts I found are in the hundreds. He seems to imply that it's necessary to wipe out the people of Iran once and for all as 'the only language they understand is war' and 'it is time to finish this', but I might be reading into it. He does not sound entirely well here.
• Workforce and immigration (10:20)
  • Van Orden: The Tren de Aragua member "released because they're a sanctuary city" (12:13). He was never in custody in Dane County and Dane County has no formal Sanctuary City policy, a false claim he makes several times. Van Orden is right about the Minnesota release.
  • Van Orden: "Defund the police," "disgusting" and "Rebecca Cooke wants to ban M4s" (14:34). Civilians already can't own an M4 made after May 1986. She did back an assault weapons ban in 2024, and says she no longer does after having personally handled one.
• Health care and employer costs (15:47)
  • Van Orden: Insurance company profits up "1,300 times" (16:24). No count I found supports that. UnitedHealth's stock rose about 1,200% and they were by far the highest number.
  • Van Orden: "An additional $1 billion for BadgerCare" (17:42). The money comes from Wisconsin's state budget, not the federal law.
  • Cooke: Hospital closures "under Derrick Van Orden's watch" (19:20). While Sacred Heart and St. Joseph's closed during his term, Menomonie's labor and delivery unit closed after his election but before he took office.
  • Cooke: "$207 million" and premiums going "from $400 to $1,800 a month" (20:34). The award is $203.7 million. KFF projected premium payments would more than double on average.
  • Van Orden: "One of six Republicans" who voted to extend the ACA subsidies (21:59). He did vote for it. It was 17 Republicans. He voted against bringing the vote to the floor on procedural grounds before voting yes.
  • Van Orden: Dead people on SNAP, and dual enrollment in Medicare and Medicaid: "That's illegal" (22:05). It's legal: 12.2 million people were enrolled in both in 2018. The 'dead people on SNAP' is a rough, unverified estimate and represents a miniscule amount of the program even if it does exist at the level he suggests.
• Taxes, federal spending and the national debt (23:22)
  • Cooke: The tax law's "tax breaks" for billionaires (23:49). Context: CBO found the top 10% gain about $13,600 a year and the bottom 10% lose about $1,200.
  • Van Orden: "No tax on Social Security" (25:27). The law added a $6,000 deduction for people 65 and older, ending in 2028.
  • Van Orden: Cooke worked for "two organizations that are responsible for building two data centers" (26:08). Third Way is a think tank and the Tech Council is an advisory board. Neither builds data centers.
  • Van Orden: "The largest tax cut in the history of our country" (27:27). Sixth-largest relative to the economy, per the Tax Foundation.
• Tariffs, trade and supply chains (29:29)
  • Van Orden: Canada "has not been adhering to the tenets of the USMCA" (30:22). Partly accurate: one trade panel ruled against Canada's dairy quotas, and a second sided with Canada.
  • Van Orden: Tariffs, factories and "the biggest decrease in pharmaceutical costs in 60 years" (31:28). Factory construction spending dipped in 2025 after Trump's election. He's right that drug prices had their biggest drop since 1963; whether tariffs did it is unproven.
  • Cooke: Argentine beef and farm bankruptcies (33:45). She's right on both.
  • Van Orden: "We got rid of the death tax" (34:46). It still applies above $15 million. On 2022 returns, 40 Wisconsin estates of any kind owed it. If WI-3 is consistent with the national average, he has saved 3 of the largest farms a portion of their millions of dollars of inheritance. Fewer than 0.1% of family farms pay any estate tax, with it typically being used for mansions owned by the very rich.
• Global conflict (36:34)
  • Van Orden: "The longest-serving enlisted member" ever elected to Congress (37:51). Unverified: I found no official record that compares them. We have had numerous Generals and war heroes who have served in the past, and some Congresspeople like Tammy Duckworth lost limbs in their service.
  • Van Orden: House Armed Services "is the body that would be declaring war" (38:41). Congress declares war, and declarations go to the Foreign Affairs Committee.
• Energy and reliability (41:30)
  • Van Orden: Keystone, Line 5 and the Superior gas plant (42:05). Right on Keystone. Evers' DNR approved the Line 5 reroute permits.
  • Van Orden: 765-kilovolt lines and a reactor "back in Genoa" (42:16). He's right on both, and Cooke agrees with him.
  • Cooke: "I'm a very big nerd" (45:00). She is very accurate on this.
  • Cooke: An "$80 billion tax break" and "the maximum contribution from Elon Musk" (45:55). I couldn't verify $80 billion. Musk did give Van Orden $6,600.
  • Van Orden: "Every member of the Soros family" (46:40). Two family members gave $14,000 (FEC records through July 22).
  • Van Orden: "She either falsified these documents or she's lying to you now" (47:05). Her filings match her claims.
  • Cooke: No corporate PAC money and no AIPAC money (48:10). Her FEC records through July 22 back her up.
• Higher education and federal funding (48:35)
  • Van Orden: Voting against the "executive order banning public sector unions" (53:20). He did vote for the repeal bill. The order ended bargaining at many federal agencies; it didn't fully ban the unions (a distinction Wisconsin Republicans have been insistent upon since Walker).
• Housing, child care and the workforce (53:50)
  • Van Orden: "$90,000 to $140,000" into a home "before you break ground" (54:22). Context: the home builders' trade group puts all regulation at $131,734.
  • Van Orden: A "struggling waitress" with "two pieces of waterfront property" (54:51). Her disclosure lists two properties (one a rental) and doesn't say either is on the water.
  • Van Orden: Homebuyer tax credits "are already in" the law (59:07). I found no first-time homebuyer credit in it.
• Infrastructure and federal permitting (1:00:29)
  • Cooke: Rail money "that Scott Walker turned away" (1:01:45). Partly: that money was for a Milwaukee-to-Madison line, with a planned possible Eau Claire/Minneapolis extension, but that was dependent on the Milwaukee-to-Madison line first.
  • Van Orden: Red Letter Grant, the WEDC and "money laundering" (1:02:49). She resigned from the WEDC board in 2021, and a grant plus a later donation isn't money laundering.
  • Van Orden: WOTUS and "literally puddles" (1:03:46). The 2015 rule explicitly excluded puddles.
  • Cooke: "Over 70 small businesses" helped by Red Letter Grant (1:05:09). Volume One reported over 50. This does not mean it isn't over 70, merely that I could only find a source on 50+.
  • Van Orden: "Paying herself and her staff more than the grant money she sent out" (1:06:11). Unverified: the filing doesn't break out grants. It doesn't look like it's the likely case based on the numbers, but it is mathematically possible.
• Final question: a view that changed (1:06:59)
  • Van Orden: "$16 billion unauthorized by Congress" (1:07:50). I found no source for $16 billion. His "view that changed" was that he dislikes government more after having been part of it.
  • Cooke: Changing her position on assault rifles (1:10:17). In 2024 she backed a federal ban.
• Closing (1:11:24)

There is no AI-generated footage or voice: the narration is me, and every clip is the WEAU broadcast, and the forum runs in full between the cards. I did use local speech-to-text models to transcribe the forum so I could find and double-check quotes, and the subtitles (with speaker labels) were checked against several separate transcriptions. Every card lists its source, and all 94 sources are in the description and the pinned comment thread. Corrections are pinned and dated, and a few clarifications are already up.

If you missed it, here's the 22-minute cut of Tom Tiffany's past debates and interviews (earlier thread). I have a playlist of around 16 Tiffany videos with similar fact check treatment, only in vertical format.

Source video: WEAU 13 News livestream of the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce candidate forum, Oct. 20, 2026 (WEAU's announcement).

Rep. Derrick Van Orden backs the Canada trade war. A UW-Madison economist says Wisconsin dairy will feel it more than most states, with milk prices at risk.

This article notes that this is happening in Wisconsin. Has anyone heard of this happening in their community?

Which, we all know, was a Wisconsin invention.

If YOU live in Wisconsin's 3rd District (La Crosse, Eau Claire, Stevens Point) you can vote this clown out and vote for Rebecca Cooke instead

They're finding that many voters just don't know anything at all about Clark or Alfonso.