Trump fanboy’s sex scandal gets more sordid by the day

Hey, we’ve got our first political sex scandal of the spring. Not as charming as an Easter basket, but maybe livelier. What would you guess the most common response was?

A) “Oh my God, not

Rep. Matt Gaetz!”

B) “Matt who?”

C) “Is that the guy who they say keeps passing around pictures of naked women?”

I would go with C, but it’s possible people are still perplexed when the name comes up. Which is a shame. If Americans love a sex scandal, they prefer it to involve somebody important.

“Nancy Pelosi once defended President Bill Clinton after he (had sex with an intern) in the Oval Office,” Gaetz argued in an opinion piece. This is true, and we would hope the congressman gets the same kind of loyal support the very second he presides over one of the longest economic expansions in American history.

As it stands, Gaetz is a spectacularly unproductive Florida Republican who never managed, during his first two terms in the House, to get a single bill that he sponsored signed into law. Meanwhile, by Forbes’ count, he has appeared on Fox News at least 179 times.

Now, we’ve learned, the Justice Department has been investigating — through two administrations — whether he had sex with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her to travel with him. Having sex with a minor is both illegal and appalling, and the Gaetz saga is intertwined with details involving his slimy associates, one of whom has already been indicted on sex trafficking, and his alleged use of drugs.

As scandals go, this one can’t compare to American politics’ greatest. Like Alexander Hamilton’s desperation to prove he wasn’t politically corrupt by arguing that all his surreptitious financial dealings were just blackmail payments to cover up an adulterous affair. (Stop here for a minute and try to imagine the Gaetz story being turned into a Broadway musical.)

Donald Trump was a terrific example of how to weather crises like the revelation of his dropins on naked beauty pageant contestants and that adultery case argued out in the New York tabloids. Another man might have curled up in a ball under the bed in humiliation. But Trump just measured the headlines and moved right on.

Gaetz is a huge Trump fanboy who recently proposed to his fiancée (yes!) at Mar-a-Lago. He offered to resign from Congress to represent Trump as his impeachment lawyer.

If his goal is making it big on right-wing talk shows, Gaetz is certainly going to have to be more careful. During a recent appearance on Fox, he reminded Tucker Carlson about the time they went on a double date. Carlson did not recall.

While there have been lots of shocking political gossip stories over the years, it’s a little different when the whole world can just Google everything. In 2019, for instance, a conservative website published nude pictures of Rep. Katie Hill, which the freshman Democrat decried as revenge porn by her estranged husband.

Hill’s story moved into a second chapter when she admitted she had an affair with a campaign staffer and resigned from office. Gaetz sort of congratulated himself for defending her back “when her own Democratic colleagues wouldn’t,” and she recently agreed that he had been a pal.

… Before adding that if there was even “a fraction of truth” to the current reports — that included showing off pictures of naked women without their consent — he should definitely resign. “Immediately.”