Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, a spoiled 38-year-old adult child of a wealthy Floridian who has never had to earn a fair dollar in his life, is reportedly a part-time predatory teenage girl aficionado – something he emphatically denies – and no doubt that’s a full-time creep. Quelle Surprise: It seems there is more slime on Florida’s First District Representative than in all of the Everglades.
It’s hard to say what exactly made the exposure of Gaetz’s filth so predictable to people outside the Beltway. It could have been the 16 speeding tickets and DUI, his aspiring father relationship with former President Donald Trump, that time he staged a photo of himself mocking COVID-19 wearing a gas mask, his friendship with alt-right figures like Holocaust denier Charles Johnson, media appearances in which he appeared spoiled, or the fact that he was known to haunt a popular college bar in Tallahassee while serving as a state legislator.
Perhaps it was the time he complained that he was unable to “ hunt ” antifa the way the military hunts terrorists, or the time he publicly voiced creepiness to 22-year-old Tiffany Trump, or the time he was a congressional witness threatened the night before he was due to testify and then tried to storm the hearing of a committee he wasn’t on, or the time he tried to storm another impeachment-related hearing that took place in a SCIF. Or maybe it’s his rightful, combative demeanor that reminds everyone of the most annoying man they went to college with, or the giant dark circles under his eyes that waxed and waned like a spring break hangover.
But it was certainly a thing as people within the Ring Road showed a similar level of no-shock. The general reaction of his party members seems to be “of course.” In fact, according to reports, many in his party say they saw Gaetz’s PR problems coming from a mile away; Subsequently, Attorney General Bill Barr, who was aware of the investigation, avoided his presence in photos and news hits on cable with him, and it seems likely that some of his colleagues in Congress did the same to avoid the bad PR that would inevitably come.
If so, why the hell hasn’t any of Gaetz’s conference colleagues done anything? Why were there no “party officials”?
After the Times reported on Monday that the FBI was investigating a relationship Gaetz allegedly had with a 17-year-old girl, Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing while insisting that the real victim here was Matt Gaetz and his family, who Gaetz said was blackmailing for $ 25 million. Gaetz’s harm reduction plan included a disastrous appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show that Carlson later called “ the weirdest interview ” he’d ever done.
As the previous week progressed, more information came to light, each tidbit more skin-crawling than the last. It now appears that Gaetz was not the target of the original FBI investigation, but rather was engaged in a child sex trade involving a crooked little Florida official and a friend of Gaetz’s named Joel Greenberg. Greenberg was charged in 2020 for, among other things, sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl with whom Gaetz may also have had sex. Researchers are investigating whether the disgusting duo only organized sexual encounters and proportionate payments online last year. Gaetz has been a member of the Congress since 2017.
But wait, there is more. A story published by the Miami Herald in 2017 resurfaced in which Gaetz allegedly made a “ game ” with other young Florida lawmakers whose goal was to sleep with state house interns, married colleagues, aides and lobbyists. (In reality, he didn’t actually ‘create’ that game, considering he copied a frat house game that Lifetime has been making movies about since the mid-1990s, so let’s not give Gaetz too much creative credit; even his predatory behavior is distracted and not original.) Reports also claim that Gaetz would brag about the women he’d slept with, sometimes showing nude photos of them to colleagues on the House floor.
“Matt Gaetz has never paid for sex,” Gaetz ‘office told the New York Times not long before Gaetz’ comms director quit amid a scandal that is very much about Gaetz, somehow, paying for sex.
If typing anything that made me feel like taking a shower, then what the hell is wrong with Gaetz’s conference colleagues who suspected or witnessed this behavior, but about Jack did shit to stop it? I mean it. What is wrong with the people who were aware of this and yet were more concerned with their own publicity than with the safety of their colleagues, the enforcement of the law and the affairs of the country?
Not that I have any confidence that Republicans will do the right thing here and take tangible steps to get Gaetz out of the Washington swamp and back to the Florida swamp where he belongs. The 2021 GOP is more adept at providing passages on and about Twitter than showing any measure of moral courage. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who continues his out of control caucus as an overwhelmed babysitter the kids locked up in the bathroom, has not deprived Gaetz of his committee duties, despite the gravity of the charges and the advanced state of the investigation. Gaetz’s Republican colleagues were brave enough to say unofficially that they always knew the man was rotten, but not brave enough to come out publicly and be accountable.
And what about some or all of the record number of Republican women who took office last fall? Why don’t we hear from them? Surely at least one of the 30 Republican women currently working on the same floor where Gaetz allegedly flashed nude photos without the consent of their subjects, has any thoughts on this? Every time a Democrat is accused of sexual misconduct, the press looks to the party’s women for answers. Why don’t we ask Republican women what they think about all this? It is not fair to expect answers from women only on issues related to sexual misconduct, but it is also not fair to pretend their insight is not important.
Why don’t we hear from Rep. Nancy Mace, who revealed on the floor of the South Carolina state house in 2019 that she is a survivor of sexual assault? What about Representative Michelle Fischbach, who backed a bill against sex trafficking when she served in the Minnesota legislature? What about Iowa’s Ashley Hinson, who as a state legislator wrote a bill intended to “ensure that these predators would be held accountable” in public schools, and was so proud of that bill that she placed an advertisement on it when she ran for Congress? Why haven’t we heard from Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, one of the most powerful Republican women in Washington, who in 2018 encouraged the passage of a law updating standards of conduct for members of Congress and their employees with a statement that read: in part: “Members of Congress must have the conversation and lead by example. There is no room for sexual harassment in any workplace, and there should be zero tolerance for it on Capitol Hill. How about Texas Rep. Beth Van Duyne, who was ever cheeky tweeted #MeToo in honor of Bret Kavanaugh’s confirmation to SCOTUS? (Hold on; it looks like she’s part of the problem.)
Either Republican men and women stand up and say something about Gaetz, or they remain silent and are therefore complicit in maintaining a work culture that actively keeps half the population out.
Because here’s how all this telling about Gaetz is so devastating to the insiders who say they knew and yet did nothing: Every time women share stories about feeling unsafe or being harassed at work, they are questioned. Women who complain about painful behavior by grown men are told that “not all men” are like that, that there are “good men.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reflexively qualified a comment about male misconduct by first pointing out that I know not all men are bad. But any person – male or female – who does not speak when they witness sexual misconduct by a co-worker is concerned to ensure that the exceptions to the ‘not all men’ rule are always shielded from punishment from those who do not. want to get involved. If you are a member of the congress of one of the parties and have witnessed Matt Gaetz flash naked on the floor of the house, then you are involved. If you knew he was running across Washington with suspiciously young-looking women, then you’re involved.
Journalists calling in the background about this should wonder why so many people with knowledge did so little.