After 10 days of relentless developments in the rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) saga of scandals, the Republican in Florida gathered again Friday night to mostly ignore the most recent and damning reports and offer MAGA defense and applause lines.
“I was built for the fight and I’m not going anywhere,” Gaetz told the Save America summit at Trump Doral in Miami, Florida.
While Gaetz is trying to dismiss reports that he is being investigated for paying women for sex – including possibly a minor minor – Gaetz apparently saw no irony in the speech at an event hosted by Women for America First ‘not. Instead, he claims that the reports are ‘smears’ and ‘wild conspiracy theories’ promoted by a ‘lying media’.
When the sun set on one of Trump’s golf clubs, Gaetz was celebrated as a hero and a “fearless leader. ”
The congressman kicked things off by raising the lie again that the ‘2020 election of former President Donald Trump was stolen’ due to ‘change in the rules’. After that, he goes into the famous “America First” boosterism before saying that the past week has been ‘full of encouragement’.
But beyond the hot boundaries of another Trump property, the list of Gaetz scandals is growing and expanding. Just hours before Gaetz spoke Friday, the House Ethics Committee announced that it would also launch an investigation into the “public allegations” against him – and the usually laconic press release presents a laundry list of complaints.
“The committee is aware of public allegations that Representative Matt Gaetz may have had sexual misconduct and / or illegal drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the house floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds for personal use and / or a bribe. “improper gratification or an unacceptable gift in violation of the House Rules,” the committee wrote in a letter.
And yet no one who attended the “Dinner and Drinks with Rep. Matt Gaetz” event would have known that he was possibly fighting for his political future and, more importantly, his freedom. He delivered a speech that could largely be said during any Trump rally over the past four years.
As much as Gaetz still connects himself to the Trump brand, it seems that Trump himself is distancing himself.
As The Daily Beast reported late last week, advisers to former President Trump begged not to defend Gaetz in public, at least until more was known about the truth of the allegations regarding a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and the federal investigation. Trump mostly agreed with the advice privately, and various Trumpworld armatures, members of the Trump family and top Republicans and conservative media stars closed the hell out of the Gaetz scandal.
Some are already washing their hands of the faithful MAGA soldier, despite years of Gaetz power struggle to bat at almost every scandal or major controversy for Trump.
None of Trump’s 16 former senior Trump officials, brass from the former campaign, longtime GOP agents and sources close to the former president contacted by The Daily Beast were willing to defend Gaetz on the record. No one would even do it anonymously.
When former President Trump finally done issued a statement Wednesday about Gaetz, it was a short, mostly self-sufficient statement that offered a half-hearted defense at best.
“Congressman Matt Gaetz has never asked me for a pardon,” Trump said in a statement, after reports that Gaetz was seeking a blanket pardon for himself and other Trump cheerleaders. “It must also be remembered that he completely denied the accusations against him.”
But for Gaetz, this is the justification he needs.
“The best is indeed yet to come,” Gaetz said on Friday night.
This is a sentiment raised from the 2020 Republican National Convention speech by Kimberly Guilfoyle, a prominent Trump ally and friend of Donald Trump Jr.
In the meantime, when Guilfoyle called the words for the first time and when Gaetz said them on Friday, Joe Biden defeated Trump in the presidential election, the American Capitol was overtaken by insurgents, and Trump became the first American president to be twice accused and it has been exposed. that Gaetz is the subject of an investigation into alleged sex trafficking and prostitution by the Department of Justice.