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Post by the Scribe on Apr 16, 2020 11:27:01 GMT
Who Is Matt Gaetz? Narrated by Gabe Gundacker | NowThisMatt Gaetz Invited A Holocaust Denier To The State Of The Union Address
Florida (congress)man Matt Gaetz is best known for 1) being arrested for a DUI in 2008, 2) having a famous politician for a dad, and 3) recently trying to call out someone else for past substance abuse problems and only getting a job due to having a famous dad.
But that isn't even the worst thing Gaetz has done. In 2018, Gaetz attended Trump's State of the Union address with internet pest Charles C. Johnson, a Holocaust denier ("I do not and never have believed the six million figure"). Johnson not only helped crowdfund money for the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, but is also permanently banned from Twitter for asking for donations to "take out" a civil rights activist. And Gaetz brought him into the House of Representatives.
Gaetz later claimed he didn't even know Johnson, let alone his past -- he just handed a ticket to a random person who "showed up at [his] office" on the day of the speech. We're pretty sure that's how that Designated Survivor show with Kiefer Sutherland started. Anyway, Gaetz felt so bad about accidentally associating himself with this chode that he ... invited Johnson to hang out again at a fundraiser on a yacht. As one does with total strangers!
www.cracked.com/article_26929_5-republicans-in-congress-who-are-garbage-humans.html
www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/09/alleged-holocaust-denier-chuck-johnson-attends-matt-gaetz-fundraiser-dana-rohrabacher/
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 3, 2020 14:40:25 GMT
‘The Swamp’ Exposes Just How Much Republican Matt Gaetz Kisses Trump’s Buttwww.yahoo.com/news/swamp-exposes-just-much-republican-073952032.html
Nick Schager
The Daily BeastAugust 3, 2020, 12:39 AM
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Spoiler alert: Contrary to his stated intentions, President Donald Trump has not “drained the swamp,” but has in fact amplified D.C. corruption and special-interest power—currently, more than 300 lobbyists have seats in his administration—unseen in modern times. The Swamp understands and exposes this fact, and yet Daniel DiMauro and Morgan Pehme’s HBO documentary (premiering August 4) nonetheless tackles the issue of politics and money via a decidedly wishy-washy look at three of Trump’s staunchest faux-“renegade” GOP congressional acolytes: Colorado’s Ken Buck, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie and Florida’s perpetually sycophantic Matt Gaetz.
It’s Gaetz who’ll likely be best known to viewers, thanks to a series of headline-making (and social media-inflaming) stunts, including tweeting out a not-so-veiled threat to congressional witness (and former Trump attorney) Michael Cohen, and leading a group of rabble-rousing Republicans on a raid of a closed-door impeachment hearing deposition. A perpetual fixture on Fox News, where he parrots Trump talking points in the most extremist fashion imaginable, he’s a young, eager go-getter who’s hitched his post to the current commander-in-chief. That’s certainly the figure depicted by DiMauro and Pehme’s film, which captures him articulating his staunch support in personal phone calls to the president (and is told, in return, “You’re doing fantastic…you’re tough and smart and you have the look”), as well as stating outright “I love him so much.” Throughout the film, Gaetz is repeatedly seen fawning all over Trump, receiving marching orders from the president and delivering near-daily progress reports. When Trump calls him “handsome,” the congressman acts like he’s won the lottery.
John Oliver Unloads on ‘Idiot’ Trump for Endorsing Dr. Demon Sperm
www.thedailybeast.com/john-oliver-unloads-on-idiot-trump-for-endorsing-dr-demon-sperm-stella-immanuel?via=rss&source=articles_fancylink
Given his fawning admiration for the president, it’s predictable that Gaetz spends a lot of time in The Swamp criticizing D.C. venality at the hands of wealthy special interest groups, whose checkbooks are coveted by politicians wanting to maintain their membership in the party, and their position in committees. Gaetz, Massie and Buck’s dismay over this flawed paradigm is voiced at regular intervals throughout the film (set in 2018-2019), as is a greater desire for bipartisanship, which Gaetz himself partakes in alongside California’s Ro Khanna with their Khanna-Gaetz amendment designed to take unilateral war powers (specifically with regards to Iran) away from the president and return them to Congress. In this effort, as in their many censures of super PAC influence, the three come across as principled outliers committed to upending the “new normal” of donor-driven governance ushered in by Newt Gingrich in 1994.
Like an introductory scene of Gaetz dressing and putting on makeup in the office work closet he calls home—the better to maximize his daily productivity, he says—such commentary is the trio’s (and film’s) means of casting them as hard-working against-the-grain mavericks. At the same time, though, directors DiMauro and Pehme fully recognize that these supposed rebels—and Gaetz in particular—are bald-faced hypocrites who don’t walk their own talk. While it’s true that, in 2020, Gaetz became the first Republican to swear off any campaign donations from super PACs (a worthwhile stand, to be sure), he otherwise comes across as a guy who doesn’t care that his beloved president is far from the reformer he claimed he would be on the campaign trail. First during the Mueller hearings and again throughout the impeachment process, Gaetz readily takes to his Fox News pulpit to rail against the “witch hunt” and Democrats, as well as to vilify immigrants as “criminals, thugs, special-interest aliens…jihadists,” habitually using the president’s very own polarizing language. He’s akin to a Trump ventriloquist dummy.
www.thedailybeast.com/inside-dummy-the-quibi-show-about-rick-and-morty-creator-dan-harmons-sex-doll
The discrepancy between Gaetz’s anti-“swamp” pronouncements and his adulation of a leader whose entire Oval Office tenure has been designed to enrich himself is hard to ignore, and The Swamp certainly takes pains to underline it, as it does the dissonance between Buck and Massie’s avowed disgust for special interests and yet dubious connections to the NRA and the coal industry. Massie himself likens his congressional pin to The Lord of the Rings’ ring (because its limitless power is corrupting), and equates himself to Star Wars’ rebel fighters and Congress to the Death Star, and the nerdiness of the latter point is only outweighed by the silliness of the analogy, especially since Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale recently associated the president’s re-election as a villainous Death Star juggernaut ready to wipe out its enemies.
Despite routinely pricking Gaetz and company for behaving in ways that are diametrically opposed to their declared values, The Swamp still spends considerable energy lavishing fond attention on them. Slow-motion shots of Gaetz strutting down D.C. streets, sunglasses on and the sun shining from behind him, contribute to puffing up his media-friendly persona as rock star-ish upstart contrarian driven to shake up the status quo. Since the film knows this isn’t really the case—at its conclusion, Gaetz votes along party lines for a military bill even though his beloved war powers amendment was cut out of it—the effect is to make one feel as if the directors want to have it both ways, obligated to critique their subject but not too harshly because, after all, Gaetz has granted them intimate access to his life in the first place.
Only in interviews with Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig does The Swamp make a truly passionate case for the need for wide-scale lobbying reform—which came, most recently, in the form of Democrats’ H.R. 1 bill, which found few receptive Republican friends in the Senate. From climate change to military funding to gun control (to name only a few pressing national concerns), “none of these issues can be addressed sensibly until we address the deep corruption inside of our government,” he says. Without that, we’re doomed to deal with a system that turns politicians into fundraisers, and because “politics of hate is the most productive technique for fundraising we have,” that in turn leads to the hyper-polarization we see today.
When it’s providing an insider’s view of the ways elected representatives are compelled—often willingly—to sell themselves to the highest bidder in order to maintain their sliver of power, The Swamp is a revealing and timely survey of our broken government. Where it stumbles, however, is in its choice of tour guides through that greedy bog—a collection of pretenders whose corruption-friendly actions speak far louder than their crusading words.
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 3, 2020 14:44:43 GMT
If Matt Gaetz is gay it might be time to turn in one's gay card but I guess it takes all kinds to make the world go round. The only way I can explain gay republicons or republicons of "color" is the common amygdala syndrome which is the reptilian brain they must share.
gets confusing:
www.discovermagazine.com/mind/your-brain-on-politics-the-cognitive-neuroscience-of-liberals-and-conservatives
www.discovermagazine.com/mind/brains-of-gay-people-resemble-those-of-straight-people-of-opposite-sex
 Rep. Matt Gaetz insists he’s “not gay” after revealing his 19-year-old “son” who he “loves very much”www.queerty.com/rep-matt-gaetz-insists-hes-not-gay-revealing-19-year-old-son-loves-much-20200619
By Graham Gremore June 19, 2020 at 2:06pm
When it comes to digging himself into a deeper hole, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has proven himself exceptional. In fact, it might be the thing he does best. Second only, perhaps, to racking up drunk driving arrests.
On Wednesday, he got into a shrill screaming match with Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana during a House Judiciary Committee meeting.
Gaetz, who is white, shouted at Richmond, who is Black, as Richmond was speaking about the lack of attention Republicans, in general, give to non-white citizens, particularly Black men.
“Who in the hell do you think you are?” Gaetz shrieked over Richmond while waving his hands angrily in the air.
After people took issue with his behavior for a number of reasons, the main one being that he tried to silence a Black man for talking about racism, the 38-year-old bachelor took to Twitter to claim he has a 19-year-old “son” named Nestor, who happens to be Cuban, which somehow proves he’s not racist. Or something.
Just for the record: Gaetz, who holds a 0% rating with the Human Rights Campaign and who opposed the LGBT Equality Act, has never been the legal guardian of Nestor. Nor has he ever commonly referred to him as his “son.” In the past, he’s called Nestor a “helper,” a “House page,” and a “local student.”
After that, Gaetz paraded Nestor on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, where he said, “Nestor is the light of my life. I couldn’t imagine loving him any more if he was my own flesh and blood. I have raised him for the last six years, and he is just the most remarkable young man.”
Later in the interview, Gaetz really laid on thick when he said:
For the sake of Nestor and my story, we’re a proud, happy family and we love each other very much, and Nestor’s on his way off to college in the fall, and I just couldn’t be happier and prouder of the young man he’s become, and the fact that he’s embracing these American values, that everyone should be treated fairly and equally.
OK, just to be clear, parading around a person of color as a token on national television in an effort to “prove” that you’re not racist after behaving in a racist manner is the definition of racism.
Gaetz’s sudden obsession with this teenage Cuban boy who he calls his “son” and claims to “love very much” led to rumors that he’s gay, prompting some people to wish him a “Happy Pride!” on Twitter.
This morning, Gaetz responded by denying the reports about his sexuality. Then he called people “mean.”
“I’ve honestly never understood this gay shaming smear,” he says. “Are you saying being gay is something to be ashamed of? I’m not gay, but I don’t think it would be if I were. How do gay people feel when a straight person is accused of being gay as some sort of dig? The New Woke is mean.”
Gaetz is right about one thing. Being gay is nothing to be ashamed of. Too bad his voting record and party affiliation suggest otherwise.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 7, 2021 8:33:32 GMT
NYT: Matt Gaetz sought preemptive pardon from Trump
Gaetz Denies Report That He Sought Blanket Pardon From Trump | The 11th Hour | MSNBC
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Post by the Scribe on Jun 3, 2021 22:05:23 GMT
Rep. Gaetz Being Investigated For Possible Obstruction Of Justice
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is being investigated for possibly obstructing justice by having a telephone call with a potential witness in a case involving an associate of his. NBC's Pete Williams has details.
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