In the days that followed the news that the Justice Department was investigating whether Gaetz had violated sex trafficking laws – a claim he denies – no Trump adviser or family member tweeted about the Florida congressman. Neither are almost any of Trump’s most prominent substitutes or conservative Trump allies and media personalities, including Sean Hannity, Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk or American Conservative Union President Matt Schlapp, at whose annual CPAC conference Gaetz appeared recently.
The Daily Beast reported on Friday night that Trump himself was monitoring the situation, but following advice from advisers to be quiet about it. And several people familiar with their relationship said that Gaetz and Trump have not spoken regularly recently, even after the legislator offered to resign from Congress to join the ex-president’s impeachment defense team in February.
Operators within Trump World say the silence is due to a variety of factors. Among them is the fact that Gaetz has always been considered a grenade whose pin had already been pulled. The congressman had a reputation for having a wild personal lifestyle that, say associates, sometimes bordered on recklessness. Some of Gaetz’s own aides used to send embarrassing videos of their boss to other Republican Party agents, according to two people familiar with the videos.
“Anyone who has spent 10 minutes with the guy would realize that he is a little serious person,” said a former Trump campaign advisor.
Neither Gaetz nor his office returned a request for comment.
How Gaetz defended himself against the charges – with a TV appearance that left Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson stunned and statements that denied the underlying charge, but admitted that he was “generous as a partner” – that perception only got stronger.
“The reason you haven’t seen people in the MAGA world defending Gaetz is less about him being unpopular, what he’s in many circles, and more about the fact that he did nothing to make people comfortable defending His interview with Tucker was an absolutely embarrassing train disaster, “said a confidant of Trump.
Gaetz has friendly ties with some of the former president’s greatest media champions and members of Mar-a-Lago. Florida congressman proposed to his fiancee, Ginger Luckey, during the New Year’s Eve celebration at the Palm Beach club last December, which included a long list of guests from MAGA celebrities and Republican Party donors.
“Congressman @MattGaetz asked and Ginger said ‘yes’”, Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro, one of the network’s leading pro-Trump commentators, wrote in a tweet announcing Gaetz’s engagement at the time.
But the congressman does not enjoy particularly strong relationships between Trump’s core team. Some Trump confidants considered him a hijacker during Trump’s presidency, who was just as eager to use his association with the 45th president to lift his own career as to help Trump’s.
His self-promotion has sparked twists at times, including how he managed to position himself as a protagonist in an HBO documentary in DC during the Trump era. And he angered others by constantly attacking his own colleagues within the Republican Party conference. In late January, for example, Gaetz organized a demonstration outside the Wyoming State Capitol, where he encouraged voters to dismiss Congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on charges of inciting an insurrection. .
Of half a dozen lawmakers who hurried to make a statement in support of Representative Jim Jordan when it was reported that the Ohio Republican covered up allegations of sexual abuse on the Ohio State University wrestling team, none defended Gaetz. But Jordan did. And the same happened with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Whose involvement in conspiracy theories cost her commissions on the committee earlier this year.
In an article published on Monday, a challenger Gaetz said he would not resign from Congress and compared his own situation to the accusations made against Trump and Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, whose Senate confirmation battle fell into chaos after he was accused of sexually assaulting a former school acquaintance. In a precisely worded statement, Gaetz denied having paid for sex or having sex with a minor.
“My lifestyle back then may be different from how I live now, but it was not and is not illegal,” wrote Gaetz.
But Republican leader Kevin McCarthy called the allegations “serious” and said that if they proved to have merit, Gaetz would be stripped of his duties on the House’s Armed Services and Judiciary committees. And even former Democratic MP Katie Hill, who resigned her seat in California in late 2019 after becoming the target of revenge pornography, said she would not support her friend from Congress after he once came to her defense. Gaetz, according to reports, had shown pictures of naked women to his colleagues while on the floor of the House.
“If true, Matt engaged in the same practice that he defended me for,” wrote Hill at Vanity Fair. “Sharing intimate images or videos of someone without their consent must be illegal, pure and simple.”
The Congressman’s strenuous denials were accompanied by a strange series of allegations that his father was the victim of an extortion plan involving a former Justice Department employee earlier this year. In his appearance on March 30 on Carlson’s prime time program, Gaetz said that his father, former Florida Senate President Don Gaetz, used a headset during a meeting with one of the individuals involved in the alleged plan. extortion. The Florida Republican also said the FBI was investigating the situation.
“If you just saw our interview with Matt Gaetz, this was one of the strangest interviews I’ve ever conducted,” Carlson told viewers afterwards.
Gaetz has not appeared on Fox News since.