Matt Gaetz is in deep doo-doo. Last week, The New York Times broke the news that the Florida representative and Trump loyalist was being investigated over alleged sex trafficking involving a minor. But that was only the beginning. Since then more claims have emerged about his untoward and in some cases illegal activity. These include him allegedly begging Trump for a blanket pardon before he left office and that he may have conducted some of his actions over Venmo — the latter which surprised even his most devoted critics.
How is Gaetz dealing with this? By stealing a common move amongst corrupt Republican lawmakers: Ignore it. As per The Daily Beast, on Friday, the scandalous politico appeared at a conservative gathering entitled the Save America Summit, which was actually held at a Trump golf course in Miami. And while there he declared that he wouldn’t let surmounting proof of sex crimes get him down.
“I’m built for the battle, and I’m not going anywhere,” Gaetz told the crowd as he spoke at an event called “Women for America First,” despite being under federal investigation over potentially paying women for sex, including a 17-year-old. He claimed the accusations were “smears” and “wild conspiracy theories,” spread by a “lying media.”
Speaking of lying, Gaetz kicked off his speech by repeating the baseless accusation that his good friend Donald Trump’s “election was stolen.” Earlier in the week, the former president — who had previously been warned to steer very clear of the scandal — offered a comically half-assed attempt to defend his ever loyal pal via a press release that ran a mere two disengaged sentences.
Mere hours before Gaetz’s appearance, the House Ethics Committee opened their own investigation into the accusations made against him. It even listed his many potential crimes, including “sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds for personal use, and/or accepted a bribe/improper gratuity, or impermissible gift in violation of House rules.”
While Gaetz was buttering up the crowd, telling them that “the best is yet to come,” pretending that all was well, it clearly was not. None of the 16 senior Trump staffers contacted by The Daily Beast — not a single one of them — would go on the record to defend him. And when you’ve lost even white supremacist theory-promoter Tucker Carlson, you may have lost the GOP itself.
(Via The Daily Beast)