The Grudge Report

Eric Swalwell, All American

My brief encounters with a bad man

Bess Kalb

Apr 16, 2026

A few weeks ago, on a dreary March evening soaked in freezing rain, I met with Eric Swalwell at a friend’s apartment in lower Manhattan. He was in town for, presumably, fundraising events, and he had set aside some time to have wine and cheese with a group of mostly writers and editors to talk about our, and his political future.

I had met him for the first time years ago at comedian friend’s house in LA, where he was fundraising for his Congressional campaign and ingratiating himself into an alt-comedy circle, which seemed to be a focus of his ascent in politics. He’s one of the few members of Congress who has appeared on Kimmel, Colbert, Seth Meyers, and Chelsea Handler’s shows, and this month he had a cameo on this season’s “Jury Duty: Company Retreat.”

That day in a backyard in Silverlake, he exchanged cell phone information with a few of us, including my friend, a beautiful genius who would eventually use that contact information to text him “Resign” last week.

I thought nothing of it. He was friendly. All politicians network to survive. They all have a forced charm that hopefully translates to pushing a policy agenda through an unwilling legislative process.

Months later, I got an email from Swalwell’s friend:

I remember feeling a bit odd about the invitation, and for reasons that remain mysterious to me, I never replied.

In Manhattan last month, I entered the apartment while he was holding court in front of a half dozen people seated on two couches, hanging on his every word.

He stood when I entered, immediately familiar, and I reached out for a handshake. “Cmon, Bess,” he guffawed, pulling me in, “We can hug.”

I was charmed. It seemed to be folksy gesture of camaraderie, if a bit forced. After all, I hadn’t seen him in seven years.

Over the course of the ninety or so minutes he spent with us, I saw a very different man than I had met in LA so early in his political career. Back in Silverlake, he was a corn-fed slightly dorky character from The Music Man, eager to please and ebullient. But here he was, the frontrunner for the California governorship, with a clichéd mid-40s “glow up” beard, commanding the attention of some of the most judgmental bastards in New York City (myself included). I gave him a joke to use at Trump, and after the event, one of the two — and this has stuck out in my memory of the evening — extremely attractive young women working for him took my cell phone number for the Congressman. Again.

I texted a smart friend after:

“What’s your read on Eric Swalwell?”

“Not impressed,” was the response, then went straight to voice notes.

I agreed, and neither of us could really articulate why.

Another writer friend, who was invited to the apartment hangout but didn’t come, said she didn’t come because she had a similar gut feeling.

Thanks to the heroism of women who came forward about Swalwell’s multiple sexual assaults, we now know how horrifically that gut check bore out to be.

I’m not writing this because I think Eric Swalwell was in any way hitting on me. I don’t think he had any intentions with me beyond getting some free jokes and connections with famous friends and maybe a selfie on Instagram (which, again, for reasons I cannot account for, I did not post). I think he is the type of man who only interacts with anyone remotely female-shaped by flirting with them. This was a man who operated in a system that rewarded flirtation as a modus operandi.

All politicians rely on a degree of charm and charisma to separate donors from their money, and to convince voters that they’re worthy of their trust. But there’s a difference between politicians who use charm to push a political agenda and the ones who use it to assault their own staffers. The charisma divide between the Swalwells in office versus politicians like Mamdani and Obama and AOC, is that the latter group had magnetic personalities that owned a room since the time they learned to talk.

Swalwell, as my unimpressed friend texted after I met him, just never had it. Even with the forced charisma, there was something dead-eyed and rote about him. Despite the media exposure and anointments by all the right mega-donors and PACs, he had the vaguely pathetic rizz of a looksmaxxer, not a Kennedy. Eric Swalwell is a monster, and he is also the consummate pathetic loser. And according to multiple accounts, the way he could truly have his command of women was to drug their drinks.

Eric Swalwell is the latest flare up of an insidious American problem with sex abuse. This is a country founded by men who fucked around with impunity and were put on money and carved into stone.

The Declaration of Independence was drafted by a ginger violinist who was impregnating a woman he owned. The sitting president, of course, bragged about his habit of grabbing women’s genitals before he was elected the first time, then was convicted of sexual assault before he was elected for a second time. When reports came out about Trump’s close ties and “wonderful secrets” with known child rapist Jeffrey Epstein, his approval rating initially slumped, and as of this writing, remains between 81 and 88% among all Republicans. As of March, among Republicans who identify as “MAGA,” Trump’s approval rating is even higher. If there’s any partisan lesson to be gleaned from Swalwell’s resignation, it’s that Democrats won’t blink twice before annihilating one of their own when he’s accused of rape, while MAGA proudly wears the rapist’s hat.

But rape remains a nonpartisan offense. This stomach-churning list of American politicians in federal office across the political spectrum who faced sexual misconduct, harassment and assault accusations is longer than the list of poet laureates.

So what we are reckoning with is clear: This is a country with a rape problem, CNN recently reported on an online “Rape Academy” that had 62 million visitors in February alone, most of them by American users.

62 million visits. Mostly Americans. All looking for ways to drug and rape women.

I do not think 62 million men are preparing to actually commit rape in some kind of Purge-like marauding spree, but I do think all 62 million were entertaining a fantasy of dehumanizing and violating women.

The only hope I have in any of this are the women who are fighting back. The accusors are incredibly brave, and so are the women like Arielle Fodor and Cheyenne Hunt who initially fielded the women’s multiple reports and took them seriously.

So long as women continue to hold bad men accountable for their crimes against us, there’s justice. Our voices have legitimate political power when the whisper network turns into a collective scream.

As Eric Swalwell, in hopefully the last throes of narcissism, posts direct-to-camera denials of the charges that eventually came out on video, I look into his eyes that never twinkled like Obama’s, and his muppet features that never coalesced like Kennedy’s, and his forced innocence that doesn’t ring as true as Talarico’s, and I pity him. Here he is, asking for a hug, and getting told by every woman alive to go fuck himself.