“An arrested-development adolescent with the swagger of a sequined guitarist in a low-rent casino” is how old school conservative man of letters George Will describes former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, the lawyer and politician whom President-elect Donald Trump has controversially chosen to run the Department of Justice.
[NOTE: Gaetz has been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for alleged sexual abuse and illicit drug use, allegations he denies. He resigned from Congress days before the report was to be released and House Speaker Mike Johnson, after meeting with Trump, changed his mind about its release and said he actively will try to bury it.]
Will believes — or rather he hopes — that the taunting, nose-thumbing Gaetz for Attorney General pick might yet jolt an otherwise subjugated GOP majority Senate out of its subservient Trump-induced stupor.
“United in nausea” caused by the Gaetz nomination, the queasy Senate might remind itself that it has power it needn’t willfully surrender to the executive branch — or so Will proposes. (Will’s idealistic prognostications are clearly not based on Republican actions in recent years, when even those who believed that the former President had incited an insurrection decided, well, better that than a Democrat named Kamala.)
WSJ on Gaetz: “a self-promoting featherweight disliked by 98% of his colleagues and towing a steamer trunk of skeletons.” https://t.co/ub1TNdSkZI
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) November 16, 2024
But Will is just one among many on the Right who appear to be waging an unofficial contest as to who can fire the biggest, nastiest insult at Gaetz. In dismissing Gaetz as a bubble gum villain, an editorial in Rupert Murdoch‘s Wall Street Journal calls the AG nominee “a self-promoting featherweight disliked by 98% of his colleagues and towing a steamer trunk of skeletons.”
[And that insult came in an opinion piece that praised Trump and his early cabinet picks, citing Trump’s “political bravery” in making picks that “demonstrated a commitment to reform.” Elise Stefanik, Tom Homan, and Lee Zeldin made that list of purportedly principled selections. But how to explain Gaetz, Pete Hegseth (Defense Secretary), and Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence)?]
Former Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Charlie Dent told CNN that when it comes to Gaetz, it’s hard to describe the level of enmity he engenders among his colleagues. “No one should underestimate how much these House Republicans dislike him. I mean, dislike is actually — that’s a dramatic understatement, to use that term to describe how much they dislike him,” Dent said.
Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), whom Gaetz helped oust from his short-lived stint in the post, said the following of Gaetz in April without using “allegedly” — “I’ll give you the truth why I’m not speaker. It’s because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old.”