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Matt Gaetz's Fox News Fiasco Was an Exhibition for the Grotesque Mediocrity of the Conservative Movement


One of the defining experiences of the Trump era was watching the steady-then-swift degeneration of The Supporting Cast. In the beginning, you had some reasonably normal people—generals, financial-services executives, Traditional Republican Congressmen—who must have convinced themselves they could Siegfried-and-Roy the vicious clown this country saw fit to make its president for as long as he was in the big chair. By the end, they'd pretty much all given up, leaving a passel of fools and brigands willing to Yes, Sir their way to a contributor contract with Newsmax, or whatever. Paul Ryan escaped with his rich-kid tax cut and left us with Matt Gaetz. Soon enough, we had Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn and Lauren Boebert.

Speaking of Newsmax, and speaking of Gaetz, the Florida congressman was reportedly telling his friends recently that he might jump ship on his congressional career for a gig at the network for people who think Fox News is insufficiently pro-Trump. (What a stunning testament to what the Republican Party has become, a vehicle for people to stage pugilistic stunts in the media long enough to become Conservative Stars with their own teevee shows. These folks have not even considered writing a piece of legislation.) Yes, Gaetz has been mulling a departure from public office, and in surely unrelated news, the New York Times reported Tuesday that he's under investigation by the Justice Department "over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him."

Gaetz, towering intellect that he's always appeared to be, has entirely ignored his own right to remain silent, culminating in a chat on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show last night that even Carlson was forced to admit was "one of the weirdest interviews I've ever conducted." Tucker might have been eager to emphasize that because, at multiple points, Gaetz seemed to be trying to pull him onto the capsized vessel.

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It is of course possible that, despite the lack of evidence Gaetz has so far supplied, there really is a former Justice Department official trying to extort the Gaetz clan to the tune of $25 million. But perhaps the more striking thing here was the series of weirdly specific-slash-circuitous denials Gaetz issued with regard to the immediate charges at hand.

Actually, the most striking thing is how we are all forced to endure the in-turns mediocre and horrific phenomenon of modern American conservative politics. Another latter-day Trump apparatchik, the extremely scrupulous Jenna Ellis, reacted to the Gaetz news by wondering aloud how the Justice Department had time to investigate child sex trafficking but not Hunter Biden. Good God, these people. Even if Gaetz is completely innocent of all charges here, he has absolutely nothing to offer the people of this country beyond culture-war histrionics and performative conflict. There are currently United States senators from his party shooting Blair Witch sequels in some bushes near the Rio Grande in an attempt to gin up immigration hysteria. None of them has offered anything in the way of a solution beyond brutalizing migrants, just like they have offered zero answers to any of the other pressing problems facing this country. And now we're treated to this grotesque spectacle as they try to eat each other during Fox News primetime. Democrats must govern competently and win elections if only to someday render this nauseating form of vaudeville politics untenable.

Esquire

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Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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