Instead, Mercado opted for provocation, fantasizing about storming day care centers with cameras and “demanding to see their children,” as if that bears any resemblance to what investigators or journalists are actually doing.
The post reads less like a good-faith argument and more like a man so consumed by partisan reflex that he’s lost the ability to distinguish oversight from intimidation, and accountability from voyeurism.
[snip]
“I’m going to bring a camera team with me into conservative-backed daycare centers in Minnesota and demand to see their children,” Mercado posted to X on Sunday. “I want to uncover ALL of the fraud in our state from daycare and childcare centers.
[snip]
How else can you describe Mercado’s screed as anything other than “creepy”? There is no universe in which “demanding to see children” inside a day care facility is a normal or defensible response to allegations of financial fraud.
“Someone check this guy’s browser history,” one biting response to Mercado read.
Conservatives aren’t asking to peer into classrooms or interrogate kids — they’re asking how taxpayer money was siphoned, who signed off on it, and why oversight failed so spectacularly.
Trying to blur that line isn’t just dishonest, it’s grotesque. Mercado’s framing turns legitimate scrutiny of books, contracts, and administrators into something lurid and disturbing, as if investigating fraud somehow requires invading children’s spaces.
Additionally, Mercado’s argument collapses the moment you flip the politics. If credible evidence emerged that “conservative-backed daycares” (whatever that even means) were ripping off taxpayers, conservatives would be the first to demand investigations, prosecutions, and reforms. Accountability isn’t conditional on ideology — it’s the point.
[snip]
Lastly, I’d be remiss not to point out that the “For Charlie [Kirk]” line is the tell — the moment where any pretense of seriousness evaporates. Invoking a dead man’s name to sneer at political opponents isn’t edgy or clever; it’s indecent.
More than anything else, it underscores how detached parts of the left have become from basic human decency. When mockery replaces argument and tragedy is repurposed as a punchline, it’s no longer about defending the vulnerable or exposing wrongdoing. It’s about scoring points, no matter how ugly the method.
[snip]
It’s ugly in spirit, ugly in intent, and plainly ugly for anyone not completely consumed by ideological partisanship.
If this is what constitutes “journalism” on the left these days, it’s little wonder that trust in that field is as disastrously low as it is in 2025.
* Original Article: