Matt Gaetz has had a rough couple weeks. It started when The New York Times revealed that the Florida representative and die hard Trump loyalist was under investigation by the Department of Justice over sex trafficking allegations involving a minor. His attempts to clear his name have not gone well. And though he tried to act like everything was normal, even delivering a fiery speech at a Trumpy summit on Friday, sources tell CNN that his attempt to reach out to Trump for a meeting ended in a hard pass.
Aides have reportedly been warning the former president to steer very clear of the Gaetz scandal. And though he did issue a comically lame, two-sentence press release half-assedly defending the embattled lawmaker, the sources claim his team still rejected the meet-up. Moreover, during his typically inflammatory appearance at an RNC meeting on Saturday, he didn’t mention Gaetz once.
The Gaetz team (or what’s left of it) denied that Trump turned him down, which seems to play into his apparent strategy, which seems to be to wait it out, hoping the fury will die down eventually. But it’s clear this is far from over, with twists and other revelations emerging at a fairly steady clip, from claims that he’s known to share naked pictures of women he alleges he slept with to fellow lawmakers to Venmo receipts linking him to a known sex ring. But no doubt Gaetz hopes that an unemployed, disgraced former president who’s banned across much of social media will snap his fingers and make it all better.
(Via CNN)