Both Trump and his fellow Florida man are embarrassingly on the hook for this one, because we live in a world where there’s a tweet and/or video for everything. Trump has shown great disdain for child traffickers. That’s the basis of QAnon, after all, that Donald Trump is here to stop the adrenochrome-drinking pedophiles of the world. Sounds like a holy quest — until you stop to realize that Matt Gaetz fits the profile of a child trafficker, having committed statutory rape, according to the Ethics Committee report released Monday. Here’s Trump’s plan to deal with people like Gaetz.
Does that mean he is condemning himself to death as well? Shit. If that's the case there are gonna be a hell of a lot of vacancies on the pulpits around the country.
— Muse of Fire 4 (@muse_4) December 24, 2024
That is tragic but unfortunately true. And a lot of the pulpits in question are helmed by so called evangelical Xians. The big question about Matt Gaetz these days is can he politically survive the storm that the Ethics Committee report has unleashed? He’s clearly worried. He resigned before it could be released and he moved heaven and earth to get injunctive relief from the court, but failed. So Gaetz is clearly worried.
But does he have to be? We live these days in the upside down. Politics is not what it was and morality has taken one hell of a hit. The Bulwark cynically opines that Gaetz may not be done.
IN A NORMAL TIME AND STATE, Matt Gaetz’s political future would be over after Monday’s release of a damning 36-page House Ethics Committee report accusing the Florida Republican of “statutory rape,” paying women for sex, illicit drug use, and other conduct unbecoming of a congressman.
But these are not normal times. It’s the Trump era. And this is not a normal state. Gaetz hails from Florida, the heart of MAGAville.
And in the aftermath of Monday’s bombshell revelations, operatives and political pros here said they really could see Gaetz—now radioactive—making a successful return to elected office.
“There was a time I would say he was done—there was a time politicians would disappear just for having an affair—but those days are gone,” said Kevin Wagner, a Florida pollster and political scientist.
“The short answer is I don’t know what happens to Matt Gaetz,” Wagner said. “The incoming president could endorse him in 2026, and in that case, I wouldn’t bet against him in Florida.” […]
For Gaetz to run again would be an act of hubris. For him to win—and many observers understandably have doubts about whether he could—would require an embrace of the playbook perfected by Trump, who survived sex scandals, indictments, a conviction, and even an assassination attempt or two to recapture the presidency.
Already, the groundwork is being laid to get Gaetz to run once more. On Monday, MAGA operatives were lashing out at the Ethics Committee report, treating it as a form of political propaganda engineered by establishment lawmakers to remove a perpetual thorn in their side. Steve Bannon, a Trump adviser and the host of the War Room podcast influential in MAGAville, urged Gaetz to “return to Congress on its first day next year and take a page from that old song the ‘Harper Valley P.T.A.’ and expose all the hypocrites in the House who have used tax money to cover up their sexual depravity.”
Morals have eroded considerably over the years. The fact that Trump survived “Grab ’em by the pussy” tells you everything you need to know about the morality of this country in this day and age. And maybe Gaetz will get by as well. I hate to think of it, but The Bulwark makes a good argument. And I’m cynical as well. November 5 made a cynic out of me. I was poised, like so many, for the moral high ground and the story book ending and now we’ve got Trump 2.0 starting next month.
The sequel’s always worse than the original, Barack Obama pointed out. And I’m pretty sure that as bad as our imaginings are for the next four years, probably worse things will happen than what we can conceive at this point.
You do have a strong point Ursula, but I’m reminded that in the past, Trumpism didn’t apply much further than Trump himself. Anyone with apparently similar proclivities tended to not get supported by the electorate. If Trump himself had done what Gaetz did he still might not have skated by, but also remember, Stormy had her days in court, and he still owes that judgement on the E Jean Caroll case, (is it half a billion owing yet?), even as he fund-raises off people stating the truth about it.
One thing is for sure, in today’s puritan ‘conservative’ America, sex is a mixed up matter with chastity vows and the world’ largest porn film industry existing at the same time.
Maybe he’s just mad because the drunk pedophile won’t share his little black book with him. It can’t be easy attracting interest when you smell like shit and burnt cat fur. Then there’s the girdle, the Depends, the lifts, the toupee and the makeup to contend with. YIKES! Not to mention some people don’t like mushrooms. Right Stormy?