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While the dumbing down of the GOP has been going on for years (Sarah Palin mixed reality TV stupidity with lies and corruption, Romney and Ryan ran a campaign based almost entirely on Alternative Facts), perhaps no one over the past four years has embodied the dumb new age of Trumpism quite like Florida Congressperson “Kinky” Matt Gaetz.
I began the #KinkyMatt hashtag last year when some very serious “oppo research” about Matt Gaetz started surfacing on the internet. As the worst allegations from Matt’s college days have not been verified, I won’t repeat them here. But even a brief survey of Gaetz’s highly privileged formative years reveal a life of drunken debauchery and DUI, the attempted bribery of a hotel clerk to get into a sleeping state lawmaker’s room, the allegation that he created a “sex game” (with points for sleeping with staff) while he was a Florida state Rep., the fake “adoption” of a Cuban boy he still claims as his “son,” some weird tweets about sex, and, prior to the news of Bill Barr launching a sex trafficking investigation into Gaetz becoming public, a strange and sudden engagement to a woman who lives on the West Coast and calls him her “travel buddy.”
As news of the sex trafficking investigation broke this week, Gaetz attempted to get ahead of the story by appearing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show and also bragging to Axios about what a “generous” lover he was during his single (pre-engagement) days.
What Nestor, “the son he loves,” thought of it all, we don’t know.
Thursday night, the story got worse as we learned that Gaetz may have lured young women with promises of cash and drugs, and had been openly showing nude photos and videos of his sex partners to GOP lawmakers in DC, including when on the House floor. Even after forgiving Trump for grabbing women by the pussy, lusting after his own daughter, walking in on naked teen pageant contestants, committing more than two dozen alleged assaults, and his failure to keep Jeffrey Epstein alive in prison, this was not a good look for the party of “family values.”
In fact, in an attempt to distance themselves from Kinky Matt, many GOP members began immediately texting CNN’s Dana Bash with details too shocking to repeat on air.
While Fox News has imposed a Matt Gaetz news blackout since the Congressperson tried to implicate Tucker Carlson in his shenanigans, Twitter has exploded with multiple trending hashtags, including #GaetzGate, #PizzaGaetz, #MattGaetzIsAPervert and, this morning, #ResignMattGaetz.
This morning, Gaetz’s longtime aide Luke Ball “quit out of principle.”
Unlike Joe Biden, who believes governing is about making people’s lives better by controlling deadly viruses, giving people jobs, making healthcare and education more affordable, etc., Gaetz, according to the “Sex and Money” chapter of his 2020 book Firebrand, thinks that “if you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing.”
Of course, the only thing Kinky Matt is doing today is making news. He’s never been any good at actual governing.
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