58-Year-Old Republican Blames Sending Unsolicited Nudes on ‘Youthful Indiscretion’

Brent Taylor, a Tennessee state senator running to represent the state’s 9th District in the House of Representatives, is currently weathering one of the sillier sex scandals in recent years, mounting a novel defense against allegations that he sent unsolicited nudes to women as recently as 2021.

The defense? Well, shucks — he was just a kid!

“As I near 60 years old, the expiration date has come and gone on any of my youthful indiscretions,” Taylor told the Nashville Scene, which broke the story. “Whatever story you think you’ve got, my wife is well aware of and we’ve worked through it a long time ago. My god and my wife have forgiven me, and I would consider everyone else doing the same.”

Slightly undercutting this excuse, however, is the fact that Taylor was in his 50s when he allegedly sent the nudes. Modern medicine has helped many people preserve youthful vigor well into middle age, but that doesn’t seem like the greatest excuse for sending dick pics.

“I know people will be disappointed in what I did, but I think the important thing is to know that I’m willing to be held accountable,” Taylor told local Tennessee radio host Matt Murphy on Tuesday. “If I didn’t want to talk about it seven days before an election, I shouldn’t have done it.”

Taylor told Murphy that the contact was “a text communication with somebody that I shouldn’t have been communicating with.”

Still, Taylor seems to be rolling with the punches. “All I can tell you is, in the past, I’ve been guilty of being a rounder, back in the day,” he told the Nashville Scene, using a term often used in bluegrass songs to describe a wastrel or ne’re-do-well.

The question, of course, is whether or not 2021 qualifies as “back in the day.” And Taylor doesn’t have a lot of electoral wiggle room. His opponent, Democratic State Rep. Justin Pearson, is relatively close in the scant polls available, though Taylor is still favored to win in the district, which was recently gerrymandered to include more rural, white voters, tipping the prospective balance of the district enough that its Democratic incumbent, Steven Cohen, retired rather than run again.

Pearson responded on X to Taylor’s reported sexting and his explanation. I’m disturbed to learn of Brent Taylor’s pattern of sending unsolicited nude photos to multiple women,” he wrote. “The fact that he would dismiss his behavior as ‘youthful indiscretions’ despite it happening recently, in his fifties, & while he held government office is ridiculous.”

“Career politicians like Brent Taylor and billionaires like Donald Trump have been abusing their power and getting away with it for far too long,” Pearson continued. “This is the type of predatory behavior that needs to be rooted out of our society and politics.”

Pearson, who is legitimately youthful at 31, does have a certain amount of name recognition on his side. In 2023, he was briefly expelled from the Tennessee State House for a protest against gun violence, winning him both fame and notoriety in the state. He announced that he would seek Cohen’s seat a year ago, before the incumbent opted to resign.

“This is my home and I have always wanted to serve this community,” Pearson told Rolling Stone last year. “Now is our moment in time to fight for the change that we want to see, and fight for the future that we know we deserve.”