MADISON, Wis. — This weekend, new reporting from NBC News revealed new details of Derrick Van Orden’s unhinged verbal harassment of teenage U.S. Senate Pages at the U.S. Capitol last week. Van Orden continues to refuse to apologize.
According to an eyewitness to the events, Van Orden’s conduct towards teenaged U.S. Senate Pages last week was “physically aggressive” and left the students “visibly shaken”:
The lawmaker was “screaming inches from the pages’ faces” and “shooed” at them with his hands several times, said the source, who described previously unreported details of Van Orden’s behavior.
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The source told NBC News that Van Orden, 53, also said, “I don’t give a f—who you are. I’m a congressman. My name is Derrick Van Orden, and I represent the 3rd District of Wisconsin,” and he called the group “pieces of s—” multiple times.
The pages, who were 16 and 17 years old, were “visibly shaken,” according to the source.
Meanwhile, North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis blasted Van Orden’s conduct as “inexcusable and embarrassing” and demanded Van Orden “do the right thing and apologize.”
“Unfortunately for Derrick Van Orden, these brutal headlines aren’t going away,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin Communications Director Joe Oslund. “Van Orden’s ‘physically aggressive’ conduct towards teenagers at the U.S. Capitol is just one episode in a troubling history of bizarre and disturbing incidents, and confirms what we’ve long known here in Wisconsin: Derrick Van Orden lacks the temperament to serve.”
