Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Second rate reporter says what?

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

I was promised a recession.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / GOP A**holes Open Thread: Rep. Matt Gaetz Makes A Bid to Rise in the Rankings

GOP A**holes Open Thread: Rep. Matt Gaetz Makes A Bid to Rise in the Rankings

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It’s not like Gaetz had real ties to the Trump Crime Cartel, about from their common party membership. Per Mr. Pierce, who gets paid to keep track of these fekkers:

Congressman Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, already has made quite a name for himself as an up-and-coming lunatic phenom in the order of a Louie Gohmert, a Steve King, or a Glenn Grothman. He’s a dolt with a DUI arrest who’s made his mark as the primary administration mouthpiece in the Congress.

He’s not a member of the House Oversight Committee, which means he won’t be sitting there on Wednesday when Michael Cohen comes by that committee to chat. This, Gaetz apparently reasoned, was an appropriate excuse to engage in a little witness intimidation and/or witness tampering on the electric Twitter machine anyway…

And this ain’t Paul Ryan’s House any more. From SFGate:

… House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a stern warning to members of Congress over any comments that they make on social media leading up to Cohen’s Wednesday testimony for the House Judiciary Committee.

“I encourage all Members to be mindful that comments made on social media or in the press can adversely affect the ability of House Committees to obtain the truthful and complete information necessary to fulfill their duties,” Pelosi said in a statement Tuesday night.

Pelosi called on the House Committee on Ethics to monitor any statements made by lawmakers prior to Cohen’s highly anticipated congressional testimony.

“As a result, such statements can be construed as not reflecting creditably on the House, and the Committee on Ethics should vigilantly monitor these types of statements, which may not be protected by the Speech or Debate Clause,” she said…

Gaetz denied accusations of witness tampering.

“We’re witness testing, not witness tampering, and when witnesses come before Congress, their truthfulness and veracity are in question, and we have the opportunity to test them,” he told reporters Tuesday.

Background reading, from the Orlando Weekly: Matt Gaetz loves him some dumb publicity stunts.

Maggie Haberman finds the silver lining!

Speaking of people who are looking to get themselves locked up…

Extinction burst, I tell myself. Extinction burst.

Reader Interactions

86Comments

  2. 2.

    hells littlest angel

    I picture Matt Gaetz sitting at home working on the twelve-pack of Bud Light that was delivered to him with a note reading, “Thanks, from a friend.”

  3. 3.

    Cathie from Canada

    Nice little congressional hearing you have here. Be a shame if something were to happen to it.

  4. 4.

    cope

    A**holes gotta a**hole, doncha know?

    Just when I think the award for “Most Asinine Politician From the State of Florida” has already been handed out…the Gaetzman strikes. My brain, it reels.

  5. 5.

    MattF

    Well, thank you, Nancy. Gaetz needs to register the fact that he’s no longer protected from the consequences of his own stupidity. He also needs to be hit again, and harder, IMO.

  9. 9.

    cain

    I saw him on TV, and goddam he sure has a punchable face. I seriously wanted to slap him just so I can see a shocked lock on his face. Asshole.

  11. 11.

    C Stars

    Extinction burst, I tell myself. Extinction burst.

    I’m going to start telling myself this too. It kind of works for all of everything right now.

    I heard a piece on NPR about how the GOP can paint Cohen as dishonest/not credible, but the Democrats don’t have anything to counter that with. BUT THE GOP IS SAYING COHEN IS DISHONEST BECAUSE HE DID EXACTLY WHAT TRUMP DID!! I.e. cheat on his wife(wives), multiple mistresses etc. I mean FUUUCK! It’s so frustrating that these journalists can’t even connect the closest-together dots.

  13. 13.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    In his prepared remarks, Cohen will say Trump knew that his longtime associate Roger Stone “was talking with Julian Assange about a WikiLeaks drop of Democratic National Committee emails.”

    In particular, Cohen will recount a July 2016 phone conversation he witnessed between Trump, who was then a presidential candidate, and Stone. According to Cohen, “Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

    ***

    Cohen will also tell the committee that he will provide “copies of letters I wrote at Mr. Trump’s direction that threatened his high school, colleges, and the College Board not to release his grades or SAT scores.”

    (link)

  14. 14.

    Sebastian

    @MattF:

    Whoa. “The meeting is all set” “Good … let me know”

    Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not. I want to be clear. But, I have my suspicions.

    Sometime in the summer of 2017, I read all over the media that there had been a meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016 involving Don Jr. and others from the campaign with Russians, including a representative of the Russian government, and an email setting up the meeting with the subject line, “Dirt on Hillary Clinton.” Something clicked in my mind. I remember being in the room with Mr. Trump, probably in early June 2016, when something peculiar happened.

    Don Jr. came into the room and walked behind his father’s desk – which in itself was unusual. People didn’t just walk behind Mr. Trump’s desk to talk to him. I recalled Don Jr. leaning over to his father and speaking in a low voice, which I could clearly hear, and saying: “The meeting is all set.” I remember Mr. Trump saying, “Ok good…let me know.”

    What struck me as I looked back and thought about that exchange between Don Jr. and his father was, first, that Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgment of anyone in the
    world. And also, that Don Jr. would never set up any meeting of any significance alone – and certainly not without checking with his father.

    I also knew that nothing went on in Trump world, especially the campaign, without Mr. Trump’s knowledge and approval. So, I concluded that Don Jr. was referring to that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting about dirt on Hillary with the Russian representative when he walked behind his dad’s desk that day — and that Mr. Trump knew that was the meeting Don Jr. was talking about when he said, “That’s good…let me know.”

  15. 15.

    clay

    @MattF: That’s quite a statement. As an optimist, I believe people can change, and seek redemption. I hope Michael Cohen is sincerely trying to change for the better, and I hope he finds his redemption.

    His testimony is a good start.

  17. 17.

    sdhays

    It astounds me that anyone, including Cohen’s wife, would think he wouldn’t have a piece on the side. Are they not acquainted with his (former) best friend, Donald J. Trump?

    What an absurd and stupid threat.

  20. 20.

    Yarrow

    Posted this in an earlier thread. In addition to being buddies with Roger Stone,

    Also at the Trump Hotel that night was Sebastian Gorka, the baritoned wild man who briefly served in the White House as a national security adviser. He said hello to Gaetz, too. Earlier that night, Gorka had dined at the White House with Trump and Fox host Jesse Watters. What he wanted to tell Gaetz was that Trump had singled out three congressmen for praise—California Republican Devin Nunes, Freedom Caucus co-founder Jim Jordan, and Gaetz. Over a White House meal that included roast heirloom cauliflower and milk-chocolate mousse, Trump had—Gorka told Gaetz—marveled at Gaetz’s relentless television appearances, calling him a “machine.”

    Gaetz’s life outside the office isn’t limited to interrupted dates and chance run-ins with Gorka. He says he also recently shared breakfast with Erik Prince, who wanted to chat about Bitcoin. He also says he received an invitation from Congressman Dana Rohrabacher to dine with him and disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Uncharacteristically, Gaetz declined.

    Trump, Stone, Gorka, Nunes, Gym Jordan, Erik Prince, Rohrabacher, and Jack Abramoff. It’s pretty much traitors all the way down.

  22. 22.

    Yarrow

    Ohhhh…after that Nancy SMASH statement, Drunky McFelony is walking it waaaaay back:

    Speaker, I want to get the truth too. While it is important 2 create context around the testimony of liars like Michael Cohen, it was NOT my intent to threaten, as some believe I did. I’m deleting the tweet & I should have chosen words that better showed my intent. I’m sorry. https://t.co/Rdbw3sTQJD— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) February 27, 2019

  25. 25.

    cain

    @Yarrow:

    He’s probably laughing his ass off, the damage is already done. The apology is just to escape any culpability for what he did.

  26. 26.

    Mary G

    Somebody had to apologize to Mommy:

    Speaker, I want to get the truth too. While it is important 2 create context around the testimony of liars like Michael Cohen, it was NOT my intent to threaten, as some believe I did. I’m deleting the tweet & I should have chosen words that better showed my intent. I’m sorry. https://t.co/Rdbw3sTQJD— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) February 27, 2019

    Must have heard from his lawyer.

  29. 29.

    Jay

    Cohen’s dad is the consiglitorri to the Brighton Beach Russian mob and Cohen had 10% of “the business” until just before Treason Tribble rode diwn the escalator because he’s afraid of stairs.

  31. 31.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    There was a special election today in NYC for Public Advocate.

    Justice Democrats/The Young Turks/Rose Twitter/Susan Sarandon ran a candidate named Nomiki Konst, who is also one of Wilmer’s top surrogates and staffers.

    They lost. The great socialist uprising, in deep, deep, blue NYC, could only manage a feeble 2% of the vote.

  36. 36.

    Yarrow

    From the Cohen statement:

    It is painful to admit that I was motivated by ambition at times. It is even more painful to admit that many times I ignored my conscience and acted loyal to a man when I should not have. Sitting here today, it seems unbelievable that I was so mesmerized by Donald Trump that I was willing to do things for him that I knew were absolutely wrong.

    The Hoarse Whisperer on Twitter has written about dealing with narcissists. As we watched Cohen go from a Trump loyalist to openly signaling that he was wavering and open to negotiating to finally flipping, the HW wrote about how it works when the scales finally fall from the eyes of someone who has been under the spell of a narcissist. When they finally see they cannot believe they did what they did. The above paragraph reminds me of that. Maybe it’s all bs or maybe it’s Cohen finally seeing what he did because he was under Trump’s spell.

  37. 37.

    rk

    Cohen sent threatening letters to the college board, Trump’s college and high school about not releasing his grades and SAT scores? Are they really that stupid? I guess thuggish behavior is such a part of their persona that it doesn’t occur to them that none of these entities would ever release the records to anyone except Trump. I can’t even get my kid’s college grades without his written permission. Do these guys have any idea how the system works or do they think everyone operates like crooked real estate developers.

  39. 39.

    NotMax

    It’s always attack the messenger (in this case Cohen), not the message, ain’t it?

    Wait for the outrage machine to go into hyperdrive about Mueller having eaten paste in kindergarten!

  47. 47.

    Yarrow

    @trollhattan: It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? I mean..

    The President of the United States thus wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws. You can find the details of that scheme, directed by Mr.Trump, in the pleadings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

    Okay, then. That pretty much lays it all out.

  48. 48.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Wilmer in Disarray!

    Architects of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 Race Part Ways With 2020 Campaign

    By Jonathan Martin and Sydney Ember

    Feb. 26, 2019

    WASHINGTON — The architects of the 2016 insurgent campaign for Senator Bernie Sanders abruptly parted ways with his 2020 campaign on Tuesday, dealing him a surprise blow one week after he entered the presidential race with an emphatic show of fund-raising strength.

    The consultants, Tad Devine, Julian Mulvey and Mark Longabaugh, said in a statement that they were “leaving because we believe that Senator Sanders deserves to have media consultants who share his creative vision for the campaign.”

    Their decision was unexpected: The three produced the announcement video that Mr. Sanders released last week, which has helped him raise $10 million, and they had been intimately involved in the planning of a second White House bid for the Vermont senator.

    The rupture infuriated some of Mr. Sanders’s supporters, who feared it would detract from a stunning financial haul that they had hoped would quiet the doubters about a second Sanders candidacy. The shake-up was also the latest indication that Mr. Sanders is going to run a different kind of race this time around — or at least, that his advisers want him to do so.

    In a brief interview, Mr. Longabaugh said he and his partners, who produced some of Mr. Sanders’s most memorable 2016 ads, had strategic differences with the senator and his wife, Jane, who is his closest adviser. “We came to realize this was just not going to work,” he said, noting that the disagreements “built over time.”

    (link)

    ONE week in and his campaign team quits.

    Moreover, it’s shocking than Tad Devine was still on his team, given he worked hand-in-glove with Paul Manafort to prop up Putin’s oligarch in Ukraine.

  49. 49.

    Yarrow

    More Cohen statement.

    Mr. Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery. He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment.

    He finished the conversation with the following comment. “You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.”

    I find it ironic, President Trump, that you are in Vietnam right now.

    Heh.

  50. 50.

    Jay

    @Amir Khalid:

    Only with pedants like you and Steve in the ????????

    I once wrote a rather brilliant comment ( if I do say so) and the only response I got was that I used too many commas and apostrophes.

    I’m on a mobile, in an area where even with a repeater and amplifier, I get one bar, and I don’t use spellcheck.

    I ain’t writing War and Peace here.

  51. 51.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Michael Cohen will be everywhere on Wednesday. His long-awaited testimony to the House Oversight Committee will be shown live on all the cable news channels, of course, and it will also carried live by the broadcast networks.

    And that’s what we’re going to see on Wednesday. The hearing begins at 10 a.m. Eastern time. Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd will anchor live coverage on NBC starting at 9:45 a.m. George Stephanopoulos will lead ABC’s coverage. Norah O’Donnell will anchor on CBS. And Fox News will offer an optional special report to Fox’s broadcast stations.

  53. 53.

    Mary G

    @Yarrow: I find myself impressed with Cohen’s writng. It doesn’t sound like his old “the law says a man can’t rape his wife” old persona.

  55. 55.

    gwangung

    Ah, yes. Trump goes to Vietnam, and praises Kim Jung Un and the current Vietnamese government. IOW, two of the few actual Communist countries left in this world. Cadet Bone Spurs indeed.

  56. 56.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @Jay: Hey what about me? I can pedantify too! Though only (very well) in my first language. And let’s please not forget Gin and Tonic and Steeplejack.

  65. 65.

    Jay

    @Duane:

    I often write ‘Murkin, because it sounds just like how a Gullabillie pronounces it, and because it is also a pubic hair wig for men.

  67. 67.

    Yarrow

    More Cohen statement:

    As Exhibit 8 shows, I have provided the Committee with copies of Tweets that Mr. Trump posted, attacking me and my family – only someone burying his head in the sand would not recognize them for what they are: encouragement to someone to do harm to me and my family.

    I never imagined that he would engage in vicious, false attacks on my family – and unleash his TV-lawyer to do the same. I hope this committee and all members of Congress on both sides of the aisle will make it clear: As a nation, we should not tolerate attempts to intimidate witnesses before congress and attacks on family are out of bounds and not acceptable

    Did Matt Gaetz see that last sentence before he posted that tweet intimidating Cohen and his family? Or after?

  71. 71.

    NotMax

    @Yarrow

    Important but hardly new from Holder, who has been saying this since at least this past December. What is new from him (AFAIK) is his call this week to jettison the electoral college.

    @Jay

    Like ents, trees which perambulate, silly.

    :)

  72. 72.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @NotMax: I’m so sorry to have forgotten you! I’ve lost track of Steve in the wherever the fuck he is this week, but I’m appalled and ashamed that I left you off the list. Profuse apologies.

  73. 73.

    Jay

    @NotMax:

    That’s a pedestrian silly, tree’s don’t walk. When you see what you think is a walking tree, it’s just an extra furry beckbearded man bunned hipster.

  75. 75.

    Sebastian

    @Yarrow:

    I liked that one, too. Very nice.

    Also nice:

    Yet, last fall I pled guilty in federal court to felonies for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in coordination with Individual #1.

    For the record: Individual #1 is President Donald J. Trump.

  78. 78.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jay:
    I have no opinion on the city. But I can see that you don’t actually need spellcheck to police your orthography.

  79. 79.

    Jay

    @Amir Khalid:

    Sometimes I can construct proper sentences, with proper grammar.

    Sometimes my big fingers don’t work the small keypad, ( much much bigger than Orange Bloat’s),

    Sometimes I don’t catch it because I’m too focused on getting a bar and hitting post, trying to avoid the “your phone is not connected to the internet”,

    You should hear me speak. Half my vocabulary was learned from reading books, with no phonetics. My wife laughs her ass off and says, “did you mean??????”.

  81. 81.

    sukabi

    @TaMara (HFG): I think what’s surprising you is that you were hoping his actions were the result of a brain falling apart…and it turns out that his PRIMARY affliction is that he’s a stone cold sociopath. Secondary is that he’s been declining mentally for a while which is making his sociopathy more blatant.

  83. 83.

    Jay

    @Amir Khalid:

    Yeah, no.

    A footie anthem is your teams song. Whitecaps forever, ( except for the ‘aughts when team management killed the team).

    There’s only one footie anthem for me.

  84. 84.

    Frank McCormick

    @NotMax:

    The folks that are “attacking the messenger and not the message” are the same ones that misuse the phrase “ad hominem” when someone points out that what they said was horrible.

  85. 85.

    Droppy

    @Jay:

    but whats a pedan tree?

    It’s the tree from which we pick pedans to make pedan pie. Unfortunately, recently decimated by a pest, the pedan tick.

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