Rachel Lindsay Calls for ‘The Bachelor’ to Do Better With Casting in Wake of James T.’s Tweets
UPDATE: January 14—The Bachelorette and Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss tweeted that James Taylor is “exiled” from Bachelor Nation for attending Trump’s rally on January 6.
“Whoever that former cast member/idiot jerkoff is that went to Trump’s treasonous rally, got a message for ya… You are officially exiled from #BachelorNation !!!,” he tweeted.
Former Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay retweeted Fleiss and added, “Reason #4853569536 we have to do better with casting.”
ORIGINAL STORY:
James Taylor, from JoJo Fletcher’s season of The Bachelorette, confirmed he attended the rally that led to the Capitol riot on January 6.
“Big thanks to #TheBachelor family for supporting me during this time… from top to bottom,” he tweeted, adding that he “legally supported our president” by attending the rally.
In his tweet Taylor also included unverified claims—which we won’t publish here—that ABC “had his back” while he went to the rally. But a source close to the network told E! that what James said is “unequivocally false.”
What happened at the Capitol after the rally was horrific. As Barack Obama said in a statement, “History will rightly remember today’s violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation.”
Fans of The Bachelorette immediately started criticizing Taylor for attending the rally, regardless of whether or not he participated in the violence. “Your actions and involvement are barbaric,” one person tweeted.
Taylor has been a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump for a while now and even wrote on Twitter days before January 6 that he’d be attending the rally.
“Who’s going to the #FightForTrump rally in D.C. in 2 days!?” he tweeted. “If you voted for a man named Donald J. Trump & don’t trust Dominion voting machines or ANY method of voting outside of in-person, ID-in-hand voting for that matter… be there Jan 6 to support @realDonaldTrump.”
It’s important to note Trump’s claims of voter fraud or that Democrats “stole” the 2020 election have been widely debunked and were ruled against in several courts. The president’s Twitter account has been permanently suspended, with the social platform saying, “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them—specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter—we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
