This is the 5:10 clip that Matt Gaetz posted to his account on Twitter because he thinks it makes him look ruff and tuff against Lloyd Austin. No, it makes him look small, selfish, pushy and rude — but that will get him sound bite coverage on Fox News and invites for interviews, so the clip did serve its purpose in that regard.

This iteration of the GOP has not only gone a bridge too far, it’s gone more like a continent too far. There is nothing of partisanship in this clip, but much of harassment.

This is Bullying 101. Gaetz has to keep control and remind people that he “controls the time” because if Austin is allowed to open his mouth it gives him a space wherein to eviscerate Gaetz — which is just what is happening right now.

On a practical level, Rebekah Jones, the whistleblower who was threatened at her home, reportedly leads Matt Gaetz by six points in the polls. The link is to her website.

This is not governance. This is performative assholery and it has to stop. Even Paul Gosar had a moment of clarity the other day when he realized how bad it looked for him to be seen on stage with Nick Fuentes and Gosar publicly disowned him.

Politics, despite all appearances to the contrary, is not about who can win the shock jock soundalike contest on any given day.

Matt Gaetz clearly shows himself to be the lesser man in this spat with Lloyd Austin. It can only be devoutly wished for that he will show himself the lesser man at the polls and be defeated. Florida would be better off, the House of Representatives would be better off, America would be better off.

Gaetz was in enough trouble yesterday when he voted against lowering the price of insulin and told his constituents to lose weight instead. This one two punch isn’t doing him any good.

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6 COMMENTS

    • The military no longer takes felons and that is what this punk will be soon. Of course then he will no longer be a pimple on the ass of our democracy so we will have one less idiot to pull this sort of shit. I am just thankful I am not a Floridian since the state produces morons at about the same rate it produces citrus fruits.

    • Gaetz wouldn’t make it past noon the first day of basic training. Hopefully, he will not only be voted out of office, but he will be convicted of some heinous crime and learn just how far his smart mouth will get him in prison.

  1. Let us compare records here:

    Matt Gaetz: Born in 1982, graduated high school around 2000, graduated from Florida State in 2003 and went to William & Mary where he graduated in 2007 with a Juris Doctor. He was admitted to the Florida bar in 2008 and made his first run for political office in 2010 (Florida House of Representatives) which he won–conveniently, his dad just happened to be serving in the Florida Senate. (Between getting admitted to the bar and getting admitted to the Florida House, he worked for a law firm. Oh, and he also managed to acquire 16 speeding tickets in as many years and he managed to get his drunk driving charges dismissed–even though he refused a breathalyzer test which was documented by the officer at the scene AND his own attorney, yet an officer with the State’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles declared he hadn’t refused it.)

    Lloyd Austin: Born in 1953 and graduated from West Point in 1975 and spending a fairly distinguished 40-year career in the Army, culminating in a three-year stint as Commander of CENTCOM. Among his many citations, he received the Distinguished Service Medal and the Army Service Medal plus the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit (no indication that he had any speeding tickets or was ever cited for drunk driving nor any accusations of being inappropriate with teenage girls).

    Yep. Really tough call to make as to who the better person is.

    • You know, as a brainless pussy-assed punk, Gaetz makes a very good one. I am waiting, not very patiently, for his a-hole to grow several times larger during his future prison stay.

  2. It did NOT backfire. Gaetz said straight up that he got the answer he wanted and he did but only by cutting Austin off, and he also got the FOX soundbites he wanted. By continually cutting Austin off, he performed live editing to prevent the context that would make the soundbite less valuable. You can tell it was about soundbites because Gaetz continually conflated democratic socialism with socialism. In a similar fashion the far right tries to create a spurious correlation between the German word for “socialist” in NAZI with Venezuelan socialism and the Democratic socialism of Scandinavia and the US Democratic Socialist party. The far right will see this exchange as an unalloyed win. Gaetz was not there to learn anything from Austin, just to use him as a foil, and he succeeded. I wish the chairman who started to impose some discipline had carried it through.

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