This Is Somehow Running For US Senate From Kentucky And Most People Are Asking 'What The Hell Is Happening In America'

N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas, 31, a nurse and Chickasaw citizen, won Tuesday’s Democratic runoff with about 61 percent. She’ll face GOP Rep. Kevin Hern in November for the seat Markwayne Mullin left. Democrats haven’t won a Senate race here since 1990. That is the boring part.

The viral part is 52 seconds of Thomas in a bedroom, wet hair, dropping to a zebra-print rug with scissors and scrap paper. She cuts out Mullin’s headshot, beard, red tie, flag and pastes it into a homemade booklet. Next to his face she writes that he “is a world class criminal” and that people should not vote for him. There’s a hot-pink page on the floor stamped “B-RN BONS.” At one point she’s got what looks like a pacifier on a cord. Then she holds the page up and grins.

Copies flying around X add a full-throated scream over the crafts. That’s the sound people can’t shake. Some versions make it seem like she’s howling while she cuts. Look closer and her mouth doesn’t clearly match a long scream the whole time, so the yell may be added, off-camera or just dumped on the clip. Doesn’t matter to the timeline. The package now attached to the nominee is: floor, scissors, “criminal,” grin, scream.

Thomas calls herself a democratic socialist. She ran on health care, tribal sovereignty, and no AIPAC money. She also got crushed on fundraising. Hern is sitting on a real war chest in a state that votes red. Critics on X are not being gentle. One poster said she “makes AOC look like a freaking Mensa member.”The runoff is over. The tape is not. In tabloid terms, this is the ad her opponents didn’t have to pay for.