When I was in middle, or high possibly school, some social clique I never interacted with had enough inner turmoil and fighting that it somehow rose to the level of everyone else’s attention, unwillingly. The group would try to get the outsiders to pick sides, and usually would be met with an “I don’t even know you or care about this, please go back to not talking to me. I now know things about you I really wish I didn’t.”
I wish our current political landscape didn’t remind me so much of those young teen dramatics, but here we are.
See, now-former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was recently ousted from his leadership position because he was dumb enough to make a deal where any House member could call for a vote for his removal at any time. Lacking all self-awareness, as is the hallmark of all GOP members, he was actually surprised when one of the grosser and more opportunistic members of the party did just that. I am, of course, talking about the Florida Congressmember Matt Gaetz. McCarthy of course lost the vote to keep his job, because, like a real political genius, he spent all weekend taunting the Democrats about everything, and then was surprised when they voted en masse, along with Gaetz and 7 other wackjob MAGA extremists, to remove him. Who would have ever seen that one coming?! (Answer: everyone but medicore white men, obviously.)
Which leads me to today’s fun subject, and I warn you, you’re going to learn things about Gaetz (allegedly) that you’re going to wish you hadn’t. See, Senator Markwayne Mullin (perhaps the most Republican-sounding name of all time) took to CNN on Wednesday to announce to the world, apropos of nothing, Gaetz’s sexual proclivities, and honestly, I could have gone the rest of my life without knowing what he shared, but if I have to have the mental picture, so do you. Per Insider:
“He bragged about how he would crush E.D. medicine and chase it with energy drinks so he could go all night,” Mullin told CNN’s Manu Raju. “This is obviously before he got married.”
Earlier in the interview, Mullin referenced a prior occasion in 2021 when Gaetz was suspected of having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl.
“This is a guy that the media didn’t give the time of day to after he was accused of sleeping with an underage girl,” Mullin said.
“And there’s a reason why no one in the conference came and defended him,” Mullin continued. “Because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor, that all of us had walked away, of the girls he had slept with.”
Here’s the video of it:
The video ends with Gaetz’s written denial of Mullin’s accusations. It’s the standard issue “liar liar pants on fire” but it notably ends with Gaetz expressing his “thoughts and prayers” to Mullin for mourning the loss of McCarthy’s speakership. Gaetz, I supposed, has fully given up on being seen as anything but a butthead in the national discourse. I’d like to point out that a Congress member’s annual salary is $174,000, plus an amazing health plan. Florida, you’re really sending your best and brightest here, aren’t you?!
It should be noted that Gaetz was never charged with sexual abuse of a minor (read into that what you will.) He’s still a massive turd, though. So is Mullin, in case you were wondering. His views and policy endorsements are exactly what you’d expect from a Republican Senator from Oklahoma. This is a real “let them fight” type of situation. Or maybe it’s a “leave them alone in a room, and don’t let them back out again and oh, shoot, wouldn’t you look at it two years later, we forget they were in there” type of situation.
Regardless, it’s pretty funny to watch the Republicans finally turning their chaotic-evil-aligned energy inwards, fighting amongst themselves, and revealing dark personal secrets to the world. I mean, could have gone my entire life without ever having any sort of mental picture of what Matt Gaetz’s sexual activities might be, but I guess in a timeline where I had to know it, it’s good for it to be coming from a fellow Republican who has the same amount of hate and ignorance in their heart as he has. They’re evenly matched that way. This is very, very middle school in the dumbest way possible.
(Photo by Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)
