The Young Turks' Michael Tracey has a...dubious history with women, at best. As a college student, he sued police for "excessive force" when they arrested him for bypassing security to get an autograph from Ann Coulter (probably the only time in history this has ever happened.) This past November, he was fired from Vice for revealing Lena Dunham's address in an attempt to prove she didn't vote in New York's primary. Oh yeah, and here he is retweeting Nina Kouprianova, a.k.a., Mrs. Richard Spencer:

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Nothing to see here, folks!

So naturally, when he claimed yesterday that California Representative Maxine Waters "shoved" him, he opened himself up for mockery of the highest order: Twitter mockery!

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Briefly, here is Tracey's version of how Maxine Waters acted when he went up to ask her a simple question:

First of all, since I'm from Los Angeles, I'd like to point out the irony of Tracey interviewing Brad Sherman, a Jew who represents the heavily Jewish part of the San Fernando Valley, since Tracey tends to either ignore or downplay the forces of anti-semitism in America, and oh yeah, he also retweeted the woman married to the most famous Neo-Nazi in America.

Second of all, less than an hour after Tracey had made his claims against Waters, he had still not uploaded his cameraman's video, instead linking to his cameraman describing what happened. Fifteen minutes later, Zachary Fedell laid waste to his claims, tweeting this video:

So let's get things straight: Tracey leapt into Waters' face to ask a "gotcha" question about Obama and Russia, and having no time for his BS, she correctly called him an Obama hater and lightly brushed aside his arm as she walked away. I have had more physical altercations going through the Times Square subway station than Tracey has in this video. I once brushed shoulders with, and got asked to move aside by, David Motherfucking Mamet. And did I go on Twitter and complain that he had "shoved" me? Of course not (I wasn't regularly using Twitter at that point), because I don't want to be THAT person. Apparently, Tracey does.

He was warned. He was given an explanation. Nevertheless, he persisted: an hour after the video was put online, Tracey released the statement and, for the rest of the day, dug his heels in, even resorting to a dictionary definition to clarify his position. But Twitter wasn't having it. Take note of the amount of retweets and likes between his and Fedell's tweets: Tracey's statement, 391 retweets, 752 likes. Fedell's: 17,000 retweets, 29,000 likes (as the time of this article's publication - obviously it's gone up since then.) As the responses made clear, he picked a losing battle.

Here are a few of the best tweets about the incident:

And, full disclosure, my own contribution:

It's always nice to see frauds like Tracey exposed for exactly who they are. In a time of extreme political polarization, we can't afford to have people who pretend to be our friends parrot tired, right-wing talking points against the previous administration. Tracey doesn't know he's little better than the Republicans who fund his network, but fortunately, the rest of us do.

And Maxine: we love you. Keep fighting for us.