NEWS: McCarthy says he told Madison Cawthorn during a meeting today that the freshman has lost his trust and he needs to take steps to turn his life around, or else there could be consequences.
Also says Cawthorn admitted his orgy & cocaine allegations were exaggerated/untrue.
— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) March 30, 2022
You mean the homeschooled, pampered teller of such epics as ‘Affirmative action stole my spot at the Naval Academy’ and ‘My friend crashed our van and left me to die in the flaming wreckage’… might not be 1000% trustworthy in all details? Shocking!
"He's lost my trust."
McCarthy seems to be saying Cawthorn had McCarthy's trust until his recent comment. Which is kind of amazing. https://t.co/e5c2atNWe6
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) March 30, 2022
Ok. Given the sweaty denials, I've given this some thought. My theory is "orgies" means some lobbyists are footing the bill for some indeterminate number of sex workers for gross parties. So not exactly full Eyes Wide Shut blindfolded piano player.
And "cocaine" means cocaine.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 30, 2022
Feeling a lot like Cawthorn will be the sacrifice so that superior fundraiser Greene may thrive. https://t.co/PrTpTnqP9Y
— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 30, 2022
Tell me more…
NEWS: Thom Tillis is backing a primary opponent to Madison Cawthorn, while 2 state GOP legislators are hosting fundraiser for a Cawthorn foe.
And sources say other Rs may follow suit as frustration w/ the freshman hits a boiling point. w/ @mkraju @arogDC https://t.co/eRR3M5xsht
— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) March 30, 2022
Some Rs have sympathy for Cawthorn, who was paralyzed in an accident. But they’re also frustrated he's rebuffed attempts to mentor him.
Mike Johnson, who was in the McCarthy meeting 2day, was assigned to be his mentor; MC was put on Ed & Labor so Foxx could show him the ropes.
— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) March 30, 2022
madison cawthorn (r-key bump) pretending he doesn't know what cocaine is turns out to be much funnier than i even thought it could be https://t.co/15wOqfKUNG
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) March 30, 2022
“we found him in the bathroom doing lines of comet off the toilet seat and we were like whoa whoa whoa madison there’s a whole eight ball over here on the coffee table I mean c’mon son act like you’ve been there before don’t embarrass us for inviting you” https://t.co/ZRylYL81SK
— kilgore trout, death to putiner (@KT_So_It_Goes) March 30, 2022
Cawthorn and other Q-piIIed reps go out every day spinning tales of satanic cabals and Jewish space lasers and but him cryptically letting slip that the Gingriches are swingers is TOO FAR for the GOP.
Truly no wonder that the longest serving GOP Speaker is Dennis Hastert.
— zeddy (@Zeddary) March 30, 2022
Another attention whore comes forward:
https://t.co/LZ5eKCq2uF pic.twitter.com/m4UlNRkKtV
— zeddy (@Zeddary) March 30, 2022
Adam L Silverman
The car crash that Cawthorne caused, which put him in that wheelchair also included a serious and severe closed head injury/traumatic brain injury. He’s clearly got some serious brain damage as a result. It doesn’t help that he was never very smart and he’s poorly educated thanks to the home schooling.
John Revolta
Hilarious. Pass the popcorn!
NotMax
This is gonna end up being some anonymous flunky slipping him a coupon for 10% off at Hooter’s, isn’t it?
//
Ishiyama
I remember when McDonald’s changed their little plastic coffee spoons …
opiejeanne
But but but, McCarthy says Cawthorne doesn’t know what cocaine is. Why don’t you believe him?
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: To be fair, his lies are both smaller in number and intensity than Trump, Cruz, MTG, Bobert, etc. I don’t think we can assert half the GOP has brain damage.
Maybe 10%. Tops.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: Yes. I have been wondering about mental illness. Or brain damage, as you suggest.
Maybe CBS can offer him a contact, next.
Amir Khalid
Cawthorn has always struck me as a weird mash-up of Dr Strangelove and Alex Keaton. The tales of GOP coke-&-orgies seems to come from the Dr Strangelove side.
ColoradoGuy
At this point, after all these years from Nixon to QAnon, I’m willing to believe that even the wildest things they accuse Democrats of, are things they are actually doing themselves, or would very much like to do. They really are that perverted … and not in a nice clean mutual-consent S&M kind of way, but straight-out psychopathic like Epstein, Trump, or Putin. The GOP is a mutual support society for this kind of behavior … all the rest is nothing more than window dressing.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Alex Keaton and the implied incipient orgy.
:)
Edmund Dantes
Wait… wasn’t Roger Stone rumored to be a swinger? He’d know about the “orgies” on the Hill….
piratedan
I am still wondering why he hasn’t been bumped up into the party hierarchy as of yet, seems like he would be the type to be properly groomed for greater things….
has an exploitable issue
obviously malleable morals
willing to be exploited
stupid enough to believe his own bullshit
Arclite
The first rule about Republican cocaine orgies, is never talk about Republican cocaine orgies.
sab
Western North Carolina should be ashamed of itself that they sent this guy to Congress. Apparently no vetting at all. That boy hasn’t been right for years. No one noticed? You’ve got no one better?
bjacques
Jesus. Like Herschel Walker, Cawthorn needs a few decades in private life, under the care he desperately needs, the sooner the better. I’ll reserve my scorn for the people backing both of them and will toss them aside when no longer useful.
Patricia Kayden
@Adam L Silverman: Cawthorn has the excuse of a car accident. Bobert and MTG have no such excuse.
sab
Cynical me has finally realized that Republican big money looks out in the country and looks for and actively recruits lost souls. Underachieving losers with greater aspirations.
A handful made it to Congress or state government
ETA Democrats look for the next Obama or Sherrod Brown. Republicans look for the next loser they can manipulate.
The Thin Black Duke
@sab: Remember what Isaac Asimov said about anti-intellectualism? A sizable chuck of the population in America hates people who are smarter than them and the GOP uses that hatred to exploit these clowns and implement their goals. A voter shows us who they are by seeing who they vote for.
sab
@The Thin Black Duke: Yikes. Sad but true.
Tony Jay
I guess when they told young Madison “Psssst, they’re putting on a night of hookers and blow at Newt’s apartment. Spread the word“, the fool took the command far too literally.
Such a pity. He was clearly on course to be the GOP’s answer to FDR.
Elizabelle
WaPost magazine article on Cawthorne from February 2021. I had not realized he is in his first term; seems to have been around longer. Too much free publicity to him. Maybe he will be one and done after this term. He is pathological, but so are his voters.
The making of Madison Cawthorn: How falsehoods helped propel the career of a new pro-Trump star of the far right
Cawthorn has emerged as one of the most visible figures among newly arrived House Republicans, who have promoted baseless assertions and pushed a radicalized ideology that has become a driving force in the GOP
Long list of lies by Cawthorn. Accounts of how he would invite young college women out for “fun rides” in his modified Dodge Challenger, and proposition them. More than 150 former students from his college signed a letter to NC voters, warning them Cawthorn was unfit for office.
hells littlest angel
@Adam L Silverman: The brain of a compulsive liar is not like a normal brain.
Kay
Cawthorn lies constantly but the only time they do anything about it is when it harms them, personally.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Yeah. It’s fine if they are telling lie after lie about Democrats.
That GOP voters are asking about Cawthorn’s “revelations” — what a bunch of gullible SOBs. LOL.
It is so hard to maintain a democracy when a large proportion of voters are brainwashed by filth and lies. We should do something about that, while we still can.
Ken
I would have thought so, until so damn many Republicans rushed out statements denying the whole thing. Now I’m half-wondering if it’s something even worse.
It’s like that poet wrote, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I — I took the one to Roger Stone’s Nazi-themed cannibalistic pedophile heroin orgy in the basement of a Shakey’s pizza outside Hagerstown.”
Kay
@Elizabelle:
2 weeks ago Cawthorn said that the “rumors” of Pelosi having a drinking problem were true, that he knew this from personal contact with her. Flat out lie – she doesn’t drink- but fine with Republicans until 2 weeks later when he says something about them.
Just pure, 100% self interest. Public interest doesn’t enter into their analysis at all.
debbie
@sab:
I just cannot figure out how he got elected.
debbie
@The Thin Black Duke:
I’m wondering whether the GOP has begun to question that decision to back these fools.
Ken
@debbie: The “(R)” after his name on the ballot. In some districts, dead people could win with no more qualification than that.
Kay
@debbie:
He got elected because a group of stupid rich people with Fox news addled brains poured money into his campaign:
Ken
@Kay: I do hope someone has told Rand Paul that people look at Madison Cawthorne and see him.
Kay
Another wealthy insurrectionist:
The mob in the capital were just the foot soldiers- the gullible rubes who ended up in jail. The planners and funders of the insurrection are still at large.
Frankensteinbeck
@debbie:
Bear in mind, ‘the GOP’ includes lots of these fools at the top. Cawthorn is a congressman. So are Boebert and MTG. How many Republican senators are utter dumbasses? McCarthy is not much smarter than these idiots. The non-elected bureaucrats in the party have plenty of idiots. Bottom to top, the GOP is infested with stupid assholes. McConnell is the smartest I’ve seen, and he’s no genius. He’s just a sociopath eager to break every unwritten rule, and exploiting that if you are willing to do that it’s pathetically easy to destroy rather than create. Not filling Garland’s seat took no skill, only world class assholery.
teakay
@Ken: And that has made all the difference.
Betty
@sab: The Democratic candidate was a great guy. Just a tribal drcision to go with this guy.
Dee Lurker
Meanwhile, Matt Gaetz receives no rebuke.
Anyway
@Kay: [Jeffrey Yass]
Omigod – the list of filthy rich reactionaries pouring money into Rethug coffers is neverending. There’s a new billionaire every few hours.
Geminid
@debbie: Cawthorne won the primary for the seat vacated by Mark Meadows. The candidate favored by Meadows placed 2nd.
That year (2020) was a good one for radicals challenging establishment candidates. Loony Lauren Boebert beat 6-term incumbent Scott Tipton in the Colorado 3rd primary, by 8 points. She then went on to win the 3rd in November by 6 points, close to Trump’s margin in that district.
Tipton may have taken Boebert’s challenge lightly; he reportedly ended up with $300,000 in unspent campaign funds. He may also have decided not to exploit Boebert’s checkered past with negative ads, in hopes of keeping her and her adherents on board for the general election. But it was Tipton who was thrown off the boat.
Jinchi
McCarthy : ‘Hey Madison, how would you like to join the gang for some hookers and cocaine’
Cawthorne: ‘What’s cocaine?’
Geminid
@Jinchi: Cawthorne: “What’s cocaine?
McCarthy: “It’s like Adderall.”
Cawthorne: “Now you’re talking!”
Kay
@Anyway:
There was a normal far Right Republican in the race.
Some of America’s stupid, low quality elites then jumped in to beat the normal GOP candidate in the primary and elect Cawthorn.
He’s one of their excellent choices. Voters are to blame for these people, that’s for sure but we also have a huge “low quality elites” problem. They’re dumb and bad, although really rich and powerful.
Baud
If you wanna be MAGA
You gotta snort a bag o’
Cocaine
Wilson Heath
I believe the totally accurate phrase to use given the reporting is “recanted under pressure.” That way people can draw their own inferences as to why the pressure was brought to bear.
Jinchi
I realize I may be out of touch, but am I the only person who learned the term ‘key bump’ yesterday?
Baud
@Jinchi:
No, me too.
Kristine
@Kay:
Pretty much the definition of “conservative.” It’s not a problem unless it affects me.
Kristine
@Jinchi: Nope
NotoriousJRT
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve never read that he caused the accident?
Uncle Cosmo
@Baud:
doodoodahdoo, dah doo /airguitar
Chris Johnson
Told ya. This is Cawthorn trying to deliver a message from Putin that the Republicans better straighten out and back Russia, or he’ll fuck with them. The reason it’s extreme is because Putin’s needs currently are extreme. The reason it isn’t working is because the Republicans think they can throw Putin under the bus and get away with it now that he’s so embattled. They may be right, but dear God did it take them far too long to figure that one out.
Brantl
Their Republicans, they aren’t looking for better.
Eric K
shorter McCarthy:
You’re supposed to tell ridiculous lies about the Democrats not other Republicans you idiot
Shana
@Ken: It’s the Shakey’s Pizza that makes it art
I gather young Madison recently announced he would run in a different, newly drawn district from the one he was elected to and then when lines were finalized decided he would run for reelection in his current district after all, infuriating the party in NC. I suspect if he loses there will be no love lost, either on the state or national level.
Tehanu
Cawthorne reminds me, forcibly, of the character Louis Deem in Dana Stabenow’s A Deeper Sleep. And believe me, this is not a compliment.