Why kid outed her ‘brainwashed’ ma
A Massachusetts teenager who publicly shamed her mother for attending the Capitol riot said her mom was “brainwashed” by the MAGA movement and lied to her — telling her daughter she was going to visit an outof-town doctor.
Helena Duke, 18, went viral Thursday after she tweeted a video of a woman being punched in the face (inset) during the pro-President Trump riots in Washington, DC, Wednesday, with the caption: “hi mom remember the time you told me I shouldn’t go to BLM protests bc they could get violent…this you?”
In the clip, a white woman tries to grab a phone off a black woman — who appears to be wearing a police uniform — before being struck right between the eyes.
The teen told The Post her mother — identified by Newsweek as Therese Duke — said she would be gone for three days to take her aunt to get a medical procedure done. She only learned her mom was actually part of the violent uprising after seeing footage online.
“She didn’t give me any more information about it, she was very vague . . . and then the next day, my cousin shared a video of her getting punched in the face . . . by police after harassing them,” Duke said.
But Duke said she wasn’t surprised her mother — an ex-Democrat who abruptly changed her political views about three years ago — took part in the chaos because she has been “brainwashed” by the MAGA movement.
“I think . . . all she had in her head was that whatever the president tells her is right and is what she will go along with. So I think she had in her mind this was the right thing to do,” she said.
Duke admitted she had mixed feelings about outing her mother on social media, knowing that it could lead to her arrest, but that she ultimately decided to because her mom had previously kicked her out of their home for attending a Black Lives Matter protest.
“I think it was definitely so hypocritical of her to end up kicking me out of the house for going to peaceful protests because she assumed they’d be violent, and then end up going to this, which was obviously a very violent attack on the Capitol — and end up harassing a cop,” she said.