The latest from the Lincoln Project.

Matt Gaetz is spinning so fast he’s going to fall down.  After deny, deny, deny didn’t work, he’s now saying that the DOJ investigation into sex trafficking and crossing state lines with a minor for sex is all a Democratic plot to take him down.  The little detail he left out?  The investigation was begun last year when Trump and Bill Barr were still in office.  Oops.  Oh, and it gets worse.  While Gaetz continues to dig a deeper hole for himself, the NY Times is reporting that he had petitioned the Trump WH for a blanket preemptive pardon for himself a some unnamed associates for crimes they may have committed during his term in office.  Mercifully, WH counsel determined that request to be a non-starter.  Apparently, he did not disclose to the WH that he was under federal investigation at the time of the pardon request.  Oops, again.

“I took her love at seventeen

A little late these days it seems
But they said heaven is well worth waiting for.”– Robert Plant/Jimmy Page

Those of you that have been paying attention to the news have undoubtedly heard about the controversy surrounding Matt Gaetz. The embattled Florida congressman always seems to find himself in the center of some controversy. A lot of this is self-inflicted. The details are a bit circumspect at this point, but I’ll do the best I can.

At the center of it all is a report that he had a sexual encounter with a 17 year old girl (thus the Led Zeppelin reference). Gaetz is currently in his late thirties, but I’m not sure when this sexual encounter supposedly happened. Unless it happened when he was 18, he is in the same hot water politically. Legally, it might be a whole other matter.

Meanwhile, Gaetz is spinning yarns about a blackmail scheme that is at the heart of it all. He is defending himself of charges that haven’t even been levied. I’m sure the psychologists among us will opine about what that fact means. I have had some psychology training, but I’m going to leave that nugget to the professionals among us.

Oddly enough, I find all of this to be a huge Rorschach test. For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to those nebulous ink blots that we are supposed to interpret for the therapist. Supposedly, our answers say a whole lot about us. In this case, I think they say more about our particular feelings for these individuals than it does about us specifically.

Gaetz is a polarizing figure. Conservatives love him and everyone else seems to hate him. So, it makes perfect sense that those particular groups would handle these allegations differently. When I look at Matt Gaetz I see a jackass. So, it isn’t that difficult for me to imagine him doing anything like this. The fact that he is awkwardly defending himself tends to be icing on the cake. Still, there is always the possibility that everything he is saying is true.

We can see no greater contrast than looking at the situation Andrew Cuomo is in right now. We could throw in the likes of Al Franken as well. The level of sympathy we feel for any of these guys is directly proportional to the level of animus we felt for them before their controversies. In plain English, if we like them we tend to believe them. If we hate them we already see them as guilty.

Make no mistake. Matt Gaetz is a jackass. I’m sure in a proud moment he would admit to that. He might not use that exact word, but he has made his bones acting in an obnoxious fashion. Maybe he would call himself spirited or a gadfly. Then again, he might not be smart enough to get the gadfly reference. Either way, he already has one foot in the jail cell for many Americans. It will be hard to resist the temptation to push him in. However, we must do it if we ever expect anyone we like to be given the same consideration.

Wow.  Twice in one day we talk about Matt Gaetz; first this morning when we talked about him accurately calling “Big Dan” Rodimer a fake Texan.  Now, Axios is reporting that Gaetz is toying with leaving Congress to join Newsmax as a manure shoveler on television.  It fits.  Usually politicians don’t leave a cush job on Capitol Hill unless there is some problem.  What’s Gaetz problem?  Well, as I write this, news is breaking that Gaetz is being investigated in Florida for a sexual relationship with a 17 year old girl.  The investigation is part of a larger investigation into Gaetz pal Joel Greenberg who’s being investigated for sex trafficking of minors.  Well, being Trump allies, that all fits.  The interesting thing is that the investigation was opened months ago while Bill Barr was still AG.  Funny how Barr didn’t trumpet that one like he did the one into how the FBI conducted investigations of Trump before the 2016 election.

There’s been a lot of speculation about Gaetz over the years, especially when he revealed last year that he “adopted” a 12 year old boy from Cuba 6 years ago when he was 32 years old himself.  He kept that relationship secret until last summer when he revealed it in a surprise announcement.  Until then, he had called the boy his “helper” and a congressional page.

Newsmax, being super Trumpist, doesn’t seem to have any problem with pedophilia, but I’m curious if that the offer is going to come through now.

Remember the nonsensical story about Hillary running a child sex trafficking operation at the back of a pizza joint in DC?  Remember the nut job who believed it and came in shooting an AR-15?  Remember all that?  Well.  The story is actually true, but it’s not Hillary, it’s not in a pizza joint and it’s not in DC.  It’s actually in Campbell County Kentucky and the trafficker is Tim Nolan, a high profile Republican who is closely associated with the Tea Party, the KKK, and was Campbell Country chair of the Trump campaign.  During the delegate battle in Kentucky, he challenged Mitch McConnell for control of the state delegation.  He serves (at least for now) on Campbell County’s school board.

This fine fellow has been charged with “human trafficking (a class B felony), first degree unlawful transaction with a minor (a class C felony), and third degree unlawful transaction with a minor (a class A misdemeanor).”  Apparently, he thought it was a good idea to ply minors with alcohol to induce them to have sex with adults.  Oh, and the crimes with which he is charged happened in 2016, while he was chairing Trump’s campaign.

Yes.  The hypocrisy is breath taking.