Maybe the tides are started to shift ever so slightly. It could be that Madison Cawthorn’s idiocy was the bridge too far — although, that said, Donald Trump is making him a headliner at the April 9 North Carolina rally — because now Paul Gosar appears to have developed some kind of a social conscience. What oh what can this possibly be about?
Nick Fuentes White Nationalist PAC had a meeting last month at which Marjorie Taylor Greene was the keynote speaker and Paul Gosar sent in a video. Now Gosar is saying that the video was sent by error. Politico Congress Minutes:
“It wasn’t supposed to go to Nick’s group,” Gosar told POLITICO, noting that a staffer “misconstrued” directions from his chief of staff. The tape was intended to go to other groups as a general “welcome video,” he added.
“We’re kind of short-handed,” he said. “And there was miscommunication.”
Shrugging it off: He dismissed the idea that a video of him speaking constituted a form of involvement in the Fuentes-organized conference, which he spoke in person at in 2021.
The video “just basically said ‘welcome to the Miami area. Have a great conference. The United States is at a crisis point,’” Gosar said. He added that the groups “authorized” to receive the video included American Principles and Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), not America First.
(Both CPAC and America First took place in Orlando, not Miami.)
And about that meeting? House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had said he would meet with both Gosar and Greene to discuss their controversial involvement in the event. But Gosar dismissed that idea when asked Friday: “Why would I?” McCarthy has met with Greene — while she herself didn’t say as much, the GOP leader said she would not attend again.
Gosar said he sent the video to McCarthy and explained what happened, adding: “So there is nothing there.”
Greene has argued that she didn’t know who Fuentes was before agreeing to appear at his event. And Gosar made a similar claim on Friday, arguing that Fuentes is misleading his followers.
He and Greene “didn’t know anything about the group” before speaking in person at America First in their appearances a year apart, Gosar said.
“The young people that were being misled by somebody — we should be trying to mentor, trying to change them. I’ve given up … on dealing with Nick. Nick’s got a problem with his mouth.”
Well, there you have it. There’s the gloved slap across the face. What do we expect next? Pistols at dawn? Swords, maybe?
My knee jerk translation of “Nick’s got a problem with his mouth” is that Gosar is telling him that you don’t say the quiet part out loud. Umm…Paul? Fuentes screamed the quiet part out loud when he was marching with the rest of the mob at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. You’re really going to claim you didn’t know who or what Fuentes was?
But but but: The first results when you Google Fuentes’ name identify him as a white nationalist who has compared baking cookies to the Holocaust’s mass murder of Jews, among other incendiary and discriminatory statements.
Keep in mind: Gosar and Greene have lost the benefit of the doubt with many GOP colleagues this Congress, as some talk publicly and privately about how their Fuentes ties have hurt the party. So even fellow Republicans are likely to be skeptical about Gosar’s assertions that it was a staff error.
Nobody in their right mind is going to believe that it was a staff error. And that’s not the point. The point is that Gosar has appeared before with Fuentes. They go back a ways. But now it appears that Gosar has rethought the benefit of being hooked up with Fuentes versus the burden and he’s decided Fuentes is too costly an ally. At least that’s how it appears at first blush.
This could get interesting.
He was happy enough to be seen with them when he believed they would win easily, for whatever result he thinks is “winning”.
Snowflake in the shape of a swastika.
He assumes his constituents are so dumb they will.swallow his explanation. Sad truth is,they likely will.