40 Comments

Gaetz is a proud member of the Congressional Clown Caucus. The CCC includes Jim Jordan and Louie Gohmert, and has just welcomed Marjory Taylor Green. The CCC members are not in Washington to legislate - they are there to "own the libs," gum up Congress, and wear their ignorance as a badge of honor. Fox pretends not to notice.

Expand full comment

Yep—the Trolling Caucus. zero interest in governing

Expand full comment

Add Madison Cawthorne and Lauren Boebert to that list as well.

Expand full comment

To be fair, I don't think any Republican in Congress is there to legislate.

Expand full comment

Roger Ailes, resigned; Bill O'Reilly, resigned; Bill Shine, resigned; the list of sexual favors and enablers at the channel goes on. Their stance on Roy Moore's pedophilia was so bad they decided to play dead with Gaetzgates.

It might already be time to change their 3 month old motto "Standing Up For What's Right" to "Standing Up For Predators, Right?"

Expand full comment

they do have an ugly history!

Expand full comment

Like replacing the adulterous Newt as House Speaker with the adulterous Bob Livingston. Then replacing him with the squeaky clean Denny Hastert.

Expand full comment

The Republican Party is just one continuous shit show of corruption. It's amazing how often they are caught doing exactly what they project the democrats to be doing. Maybe sex trafficking in a basement of a pizza parlor is happening. It's just that the Republicans are the ones doing it. The fact that Fox News has been silent for over 24 hours on a story that continues to gain steam and is not going away speaks volumes. But what do you expect from a network that is already trashing Biden's infrastructure bill that is headed toward being as highly popular as his Covid relief? No folks, this time it's the Republicans in disarray and Biden's popularity and the things the administration is doing is evidence that Fox News may just not get away with their business as usual model.

Expand full comment

Haven’t you heard that HIllary Clinton is really running this sex trafficking scheme too? Gaetz and his pal Joel Greenberg were victims, helpless to resist.

Expand full comment

I'm sure Q is already at work on this angle.

Expand full comment

I have seen nothing about people's reactions to receiving their $1400 checks and other benefits from the Covid Bill, have you?

Expand full comment

Or multiple stories about Black people in Georgia who voted for Biden and Warnock/Ossoff.

Expand full comment

Or what a historic win it was. Or the historic significance of Kamala Harris as VP. And I'm not even thinking about just Fox.

Expand full comment

I think the NYT will go out and interview Biden voters in diners. /s

Expand full comment

NYT will go to diner in Wilmington to ask Trump supporters how they feel about Biden going to Wilmington every weekend.

Expand full comment

Couldn’t have happen to a ‘nicer’ guy, ie Gaetz who reminds me of a spoiled frat brat with his nonsensical antics. A Congressman? Please. As to Fox, the rest of the cable world is hearing this story loud and clear. Their lack of reporting speaks volumes. Poor babies, another of their heroes caught with his pants down.

Expand full comment

He really is quite awful

Expand full comment

Even for a Republican. Or maybe not.

Expand full comment

Meanwhile the WaPo has gone big on headlines spinning Biden’s infrastructure bill in a negative light. I looked at every page in yesterday’s e-edition after seeing their top headline “Price, tax hikes early hurdles to Congressional approval”. There was one about a “disconnect” because taxes really won’t cover the cost before 2036. Biden says the spending will be over 8 years and will be paid for in 2036, 7 years later. Why is the fact that the spending isn’t paid off the same year it is completed a “disconnect” in any important sense? Clearly the headline writer was looking for a negative way to spin the fact that Biden proposes to fully pay for his infrastructure plan in just 15 years and that is they best anyone could some up with.

Then there was this bizarre headline in the Economy and Business section: “With his political future at stake Biden returns to Pennsylvania” which makes Biden sound like he is desperate and fighting tanking poll numbers. His poll numbers are above 50% except on the immigration “crisis” and support for railings taxes on upper incomes and corporations to pay for his infrastructure bill is also good.

The NY Times’s headlines were much more neutral: “Biden Details $2 Trillion Plan to Rebuild and Reshape the Economy” and Biden’s Big Bet” Tackling Climate Change Will Create Jobs Not Kill Them”.

And what is up with the Post not capitalizing headlines? The Times still does but others like my local paper don’t.

Expand full comment

Re not capitalizing headlines: it could be obnoxious pandering to the - ahem - youthful internet users who get all twisted over those who use all caps in comments/tweets and accuse them of 'screaming' (which I don't really give a phuck about).

There are so many other, way more important, things to be offended by these days so I've never viewed it as screaming. I must be old, because that particular bugaboo smacks of the overprotected college crowd huddled in their safe spaces. Gag me.

Expand full comment

Thanks Eric. As usual you nailed it.

For me it is mostly "Fox Entertainment," not Fox News, for a large part of the night, every night. As former employee Shepard Smith said the opinion side of the network exists to be entertaining. "They don't really have rules on the opinion side. They can say whatever they want — if it's their opinion." But we don't have to take Smith's word for it, Fox lawyers responding to defamation and other lawsuits consistently tell US Courts that Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, etc. are just entertainers.

The Gaetz story isn't entertaining. Well not to them.

Expand full comment

Can you *imagine* the Fox coverage if this were a Dem?

Expand full comment

Fox is still pushing the Hunter Biden story, months after no one else cares about it, because there's no 'there' there which gives a hint to how they'd handle it. If Gaetz were a Dem that story would be the only thing they'd talk about on all of their shows.

Expand full comment

NPR, too. 14 stories about Gov. Cuomo in 3 weeks. Not ONE about Gaetz.

Expand full comment

Oh geez!

Expand full comment

Another reason why I stopped giving to NPR years ago when they did the hatchet job on Anita Hill.

Expand full comment

All of the salacious & vile behavior & bizarre marketing (did ya see LG with his advertisement for AR15’s today & MTG’s promo/justification against vaccines?) is like the chaos of an unending tornado! I feel like I need to be a spider with a zillion eyes to keep up with these scumbags! I’m going to the park now without my phone to recenter myself.

The central issue of our time is American Civil War 2.0 with RQP’s doing selfies w/ guns intending to scare the other into not pissing them off while at the same time DISMANTLING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. RQP’s are using all the levers of media, power & intimidation to achieve 1 party rule, decision making for the majority, brown & black ppl and elimination of everyone that LGBTQI represents. That, in my mind is all I think about. The rest is distraction. I guess what will be is not salacious enough for major media prioritize.

Expand full comment

I think it is fair to note that Fox News’ has had its own sex scandals, from Bill O’Reilly to Roger Aisles, with stops along the way for many of the other hosts now long gone (including Kimberly Guilfoyle, now Trump Juniors girlfriend). It could be the case that defending Matt Gaetz would only remind viewers that FNC is full of creepers and sex fiends and that this might be more of self-preservation than avoidance.

Expand full comment

So the whole Q child trafficing and Pizzagate saga was just projection.

Expand full comment

FYI, the Wall Street Journal has covered the story, but it isn't on the front page of the website, only on the front page of the Politics section. It also isn't the biggest story there, which is Biden's infrastructure bill.

Expand full comment

I honestly expected Fox to downplay the Gaetz story—not to boycott it for 30 hrs

Expand full comment

I fully expected them to be silent on Gaetz while doubling down on Hunter Biden and Andrew Cuomo!

Expand full comment

I'm wondering if the primary reason is because, as you pointed out, he threw their golden boy under the bus. For the reason alone they don't want to mention him.

Expand full comment

OMG Someone else has discovered Willie Nile! A friend turned me on to him 13 years ago, the ultimate NYC rocker. Saw him at McCabe's in Santa Monica, a guitar shop, which literally has at least 150 guitars on a wall in their small 125 seat venue. Willie is in his 70's and rocks with the best of them. He is a true American poet.

Expand full comment

They’re not sending us their best.

Or maybe the problem is, they are.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
April 2, 2021
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

very good point. I also don’t thing they deserve WH credentials

Expand full comment

Remember how the media had tremendous sadzzz when Obama mentioned that?

Expand full comment

And speaking of debates, the return of the League of Women Voters to moderate the debates would be a welcome change. No need to subject candidates to preening, gaffe-seeking "news" stars' gotcha questions.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
April 2, 2021
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Last night on MSNBC David Jolly joked that the reason Tucker got so angry when Gaetz said Tucker and his wife had dined with Gaetz and the woman was that Tucker hadn’t been with his wife — at least I think Jolly was joking.😊

Even more delicious are the details of Gaetz’s buddy Joel Greenberg’s insane crimes. Greenberg is indicted for a host of things in addition sex trafficking a minor. Rachel Maddow covered the mind boggling details of his misdeeds just the other night. After he was elected tax collector for Seminole County he used over a million dollars of the county’s money for all kinds of weird things like buying guns and a drone for him and his buddies, buying computer servers so he could set up a for profit company for the county which involved cryptocurrency, stole a bunch of surrendered drivers’ licenses to make fake id’s for himself, taking COVID money for a fake business and much more. Then there is the little matter of sex trafficking minors. But my favorite was that when Greenberg set up those computer server he started a fire in the office!

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/the-even-weirder-backstory-behind-the-bizarre-gaetz-sex-trafficking-investigation-story-109411909553

That video is well work watching just for laughs but if you prefer here is the transcript:

https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/transcript-rachel-maddow-show-3-30-21-n1262589

Just yesterday Greenberg was hit with 21 new charges, almost tripling the number against him. One expert in these matters said that that likely happened to up the pressure on him to get him to flip against Gaetz.

Now it comes out that Gaetz had been going around showing nude pictures of women he had slept with to fellow Congresscritters, even on the floor or the House. GOP staffers are saying Gaetz was into alcohol and illegal drugs and was so toxic people didn’t want to be photographed with him. William Barr kept close track of the case and made sure he was never seen with Gaetz.

Q Anon has said that the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal was transporting HIllary Clinton’s sex trafficking victims so you know it’s just a matter of time before they find a way to pin this sex trafficking scandal on her.

Expand full comment

T-I saw the TRMS deep dive; almost too bizarre to be real. A fire!

Then another thought creeped (intended) in--there is a wall of silence in Congress that must be broken. Credit to the NJ Congresswomen who spoke out about possible "recon" on 1/5, but where is the evidence of who went in on that day?

Expand full comment