#2876: Matt Gaetz

We feel some pressure to provide an entry to this character, although Matt Gaetz isn’t clearly so much a loon, in our use of that category, as he is a disgusting abomination – a derangedly corrupt collection of character flaws. There is a brief and even-handed portrait of him here (and another one here, if one is needed). But we do need to at least mention him: Although his political career should be over (even Mat Staver thought Gaetz was morally “disqualified” for being Attorney General, though Todd Coconato and Mario Murillo praised him as “God’s choice”), we have been mistaken on that issue before. He is currently a pundit over at OAAN.

 

So, although it is easily overshadowed, underneath Gaetz’s repugnant actions and proclivities there is certainly something of a loon as well. In 2022, for instance, Gaetz suggested that Republicans should use their House majority to redeploy the Jan. 6 Committee – with Marjorie Taylor Greene as leader – to prove that the FBI and Antifa were behind the January 6 2021 riots. And in 2018, he went on Infowars to complain about being called a conspiracy theorist just for pushing conspiracy theories about the Obama administration – conspiracy theories aren’t conspiracy theories when they’re conspiracy theories about the mythical deep state. Here is a report on his rather unhinged rant about the 2023 Louisville shootings. (There’s a number of these kinds of things in Gaetz’s background, and we don’t attempt to be comprehensive.)

 

Diagnosis: We probably needed an entry for him even though most of his antics are more accurately described by other terms than ‘lunacy’. Gaetz is most notably for his complete lack of moral character, and we suspect that his supporters pay less attention to exactly what he says than they do to his character.