Nothing says “stop the fascism” quite like chemically assaulting a 22-year-old man in the face while he’s sitting on a bus minding his own business. Philadelphia, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to the resistance!
Frank Scales runs Surge Philly, a conservative media outlet focused on on-the-ground coverage of protests and political events in one of America’s most aggressively left-wing cities. On January 19th, he was riding home on a SEPTA Route 7 bus when Paulina Reyes — a 22-year-old former WHYY journalism intern sitting directly behind him — started screaming that he was a racist and a fascist. When Scales pulled out his phone to record the confrontation for his own safety, she lunged for it, punched him in the head, and pepper-sprayed him in the face. Then, when that apparently didn’t satisfy her anti-fascist urges, she pepper-sprayed him again.
The bus driver responded to this situation by removing Paulina Reyes from the bus. As one does when someone is committing assault.
Scales, for his part, handled it with remarkable composure. After the second macing, a friend filming him asked if he was okay. “Second pepper-spray, baby,” Scales replied. At some point before the chemical weapons deployment, he had asked Reyes the obvious question: “How am I a fascist?” She explained that he “talks sh*t about Islamic people,” “talks sh*t about Black people,” and “talks sh*t about Mexicans.” Case closed. Pepper spray administered. Justice served.
Now here’s where the story gets truly spectacular.
Paulina Reyes is a communications and film student. Her career goal is journalism. She was a journalism intern. She pepper-sprayed a journalist. On camera. Twice. And then, before she was charged, she gave an interview to the *Inquirer* explaining that she “did what she thought was the safest thing” to protect herself — from a man sitting quietly in his seat. “I got mad and I wanted to defend myself because he wasn’t listening,” she said. He wasn’t listening! To the woman screaming at him from behind! On a bus!
The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General has since charged Reyes with simple assault, harassment, disorderly conduct, and possession of an instrument of crime. Reyes told the Inquirer that the viral encounter had “reshaped her life,” led to “nonstop” calls including threats, and that she worried the incident might affect her ability to land a job in journalism.
That is, genuinely, a concern she should have.
But let’s talk about Frank Scales for a moment, because this kid’s life has been a nonstop adventure in leftist tolerance. He was investigated by his college — the Community College of Philadelphia — for hate speech after saying that the Founding Fathers were good people. Founding Fathers. The men who built the country. Hate speech. He was later impeached and removed from his position as student government president for endorsing Donald Trump on Instagram.
“I endorsed Donald Trump,” he said, “and I got impeached and removed from my position.”
His co-founder, Ian McGinnis, resigned from student government in solidarity and the two went on to found Surge Media together. Frank Scales described his mission as spreading “the conservative movement behind enemy lines.” Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner has grabbed his phone, called him “un-American,” and told him to “put down *Mein Kampf*” during a confrontation in a public park. Scales has been blocked from entering town hall meetings. He was maced at an anti-ICE protest just days before the bus incident — his first macing, from which he joked from the ambulance that “every journalist has to go through it at some point.”
He is 22 years old.
Scales put it better than we ever could: “They call Republicans and President Trump authoritarians and fascists and all this, but who is silencing their political opponents? Who is ruling a county with one-party rule? Who won’t allow Republicans into town hall meetings? These are all things that fascists and authoritarians would do, and Democrats are the ones doing it.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression had to intervene on his behalf at his own college. Elon Musk saw the viral video and responded to it with four words: “She has violence issues.”
WHYY, for their part, released a statement clarifying that Reyes “has no current affiliation, employment, or contractual relationship” with their organization. The journalism intern who attacked a journalist is no longer affiliated with the journalism outlet. Very brave statement, WHYY.
Here’s what’s actually going on in places like Philadelphia: the people screaming about fascism are the ones throwing punches and deploying pepper spray on city buses. The fascists, as it turns out, are the ones who have been trying to shut Frank Scales up since he said something nice about George Washington.
He’s still talking. Good for him.