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Matt Gaetz (R-TV)
Soon after Matt Gaetz was first elected to Congress in 2016, his focus became clear. It wasn’t any of his official responsibilities, according to a former staffer in his D.C. office — it was going on TV. “Nothing beat out going on Fox,” the staffer recently recalled.
This wasn’t just simple vainglory. It represented Gaetz’s fundamental political philosophy: “If you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing.” This approach to politics hasn’t made him many friends in Washington or imbued him with the air of gravitas that ambitious politicians once craved. But as scandal has swirled around him, it has served as something of a shield.
The son of a former president of the Florida state senate who made a fortune in the hospice industry, Gaetz was first elected to the Florida state legislature at age 28. He never made a secret of the fact that his personal life was as libertine as his politics are libertarian: He boasted in his memoir about answering a phone call from Donald Trump mid-coitus and allegedly created a sex game rating his conquests while serving in the statehouse. Gaetz has denied this. After three terms there, he won the open congressional seat in his deep-red district in the Florida Panhandle.
Once he got to Capitol Hill, he quickly became a cable-news fixture as he worked his way into Trump’s good graces through his ceaseless cheerleading on Fox News. But Gaetz didn’t attract coverage simply through his constant presence as a TV pundit; he drew media attention for his heterodox libertarian views on drugs and foreign policy, in addition to a social-media presence that crossed the line into sheer thirstiness for female public figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Tiffany Trump. And, of course, Gaetz was always available to talk about his policy views or social-media posts for any television booker who asked.
This wasn’t just simple vainglory. It represented Gaetz’s fundamental political philosophy: “If you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing.” This approach to politics hasn’t made him many friends in Washington or imbued him with the air of gravitas that ambitious politicians once craved. But as scandal has swirled around him, it has served as something of a shield.
The son of a former president of the Florida state senate who made a fortune in the hospice industry, Gaetz was first elected to the Florida state legislature at age 28. He never made a secret of the fact that his personal life was as libertine as his politics are libertarian: He boasted in his memoir about answering a phone call from Donald Trump mid-coitus and allegedly created a sex game rating his conquests while serving in the statehouse. Gaetz has denied this. After three terms there, he won the open congressional seat in his deep-red district in the Florida Panhandle.
Once he got to Capitol Hill, he quickly became a cable-news fixture as he worked his way into Trump’s good graces through his ceaseless cheerleading on Fox News. But Gaetz didn’t attract coverage simply through his constant presence as a TV pundit; he drew media attention for his heterodox libertarian views on drugs and foreign policy, in addition to a social-media presence that crossed the line into sheer thirstiness for female public figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Tiffany Trump. And, of course, Gaetz was always available to talk about his policy views or social-media posts for any television booker who asked.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/04/matt-gaetzs-florida-sex-scandal-hasnt-sunk-him-yet.html
