Matt Gaetz: A lurid sex scandal
Rep. Matt Gaetz is caught up in “a head-spinning scandal,” said Giovanni Russonello in The New York Times. News broke last week that the Justice Department is investigating whether the flamboyant Florida Republican—a Fox News favorite and “unabashed” defender of Donald Trump—committed federal sex crimes. Investigators are probing whether Gaetz paid for a 17-year-old girl to cross state lines for sexual purposes, in violation of sex-trafficking laws. And they “believe he paid for sex with a number of women” recruited online by his friend Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax official indicted last year on sex-trafficking charges. Gaetz has denied everything and says he’s the victim of an extortion plot. But he’s in serious trouble: A conviction on child sex trafficking carries the possibility of life in prison, while each charge of sex with a minor could carry 15 years.
At times like these an embattled politician needs friends—and Gaetz doesn’t have any, said Matt Fuller and Sam Brodey in TheDailyBeast.com. His GOP colleagues have “largely kept their mouths shut” since the scandal broke, with almost nobody willing to defend a grandstanding self-promoter whose TV “theatrics have put off
Democrats and Republicans alike.” Even Trump has not said a word in Gaetz’s defense. Nor is anyone shocked by the allegations, said Jeremy Herb in CNN.com. Over four years in Congress, the 38-year-old Gaetz has gained a reputation “for bragging about his sexual escapades.” Multiple sources say he’s shown colleagues “photos and videos of nude women he said he had slept with,” even flashing these photos on the House floor. “It was a point of pride,” said one source.
Gaetz’s sordid tale “represents almost everything wrong with the GOP and our politics generally,” said Jonah Goldberg in TheDispatch.com. The Trump era has given rise to a breed of politicians “who think their job is to be pundits and media trolls” and that actual legislating “is for suckers and losers.” It’s a good bet this “boorish clown” put more effort into negotiating “the price of a three-way than he has ever committed to getting legislation passed.” Now that his extracurricular activities have come to light, Republicans are ready to cast Gaetz aside. But the real scandal is that so-called conservatives were happy to “embrace and encourage” such a sleazebag until he stopped being “good TV.”