A Take on the Matt Gaetz Situation

Law and Public Policy

Photograph: John Lau

You might have heard of Matt Gaetz for being former American president Donald Trump’s loudest cheerleader. Although Gaetz actually grew up in a town called Niceville, Gaetz falls short when it comes to being nice. Before he was championing the former steak salesman’s efforts, he was just another 'little rich boy'. With the financial help of Gaetz’s father, Don, who made a fortune co-founding a hospice care company, Gaetz was launched into the spotlight. His family was so well off that they owned a second home in seaside Florida. It is the same house that Jim Carrey’s character calls home in the Truman show. Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones even notes how “Gaetz, who has devoted his career to getting on television, spent much of his childhood in a house made famous by a character trying to get off TV.”

After graduating from William & Mary with a JD in 2007, Gaetz worked for a law firm, where, according to Mother Jones, he filed a debt collection suit against an elderly woman who was unable to pay the home care firm owned by Gaetz’s dad. Then, in 2008, one year into his gig at the firm, Gaetz was pulled over for drunk driving. After failing an eye test twice and refusing to take a breathalyser test, he was arrested; however, the charges were dropped thanks to a lawyer at the firm. As of 2014, Gaetz has been cited for 17 traffic tickets since 1999. In addition to driving under the influence, Gaetz rear-ended a constituent while talking on his phone when driving and racked up multiple speeding tickets over the years, with no signs of slowing down.

In 2010, he decided to run for the state house seat in Florida’s fourth district. Once he was in the state house, Gaetz led an effort to allow Floridians to carry guns openly in public. He also sponsored bills to speed up the state’s death row executions and to ban abortions under Obamacare. In 2013, after George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, Gaetz offered a full-throated defence of Florida’s ‘stand-your-ground’ law, to which a recent study concluded that conviction outcomes under that law are racially biased. Further fanning the flames of racial hatred, Gaetz fired off a tweet regarding two lawmakers’ writing skills. Out of the 14 Democrats, Gaetz picked on the black legislators - a comment he never rebuked.

In early 2016, Gaetz announced that he was running for the United States House Seat representing Florida’s fourth congressional district. He won that election, and has been stirring things up ever since. With the help of people like renowned conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, his message began to spread. During his first term, Gaetz invited a Holocaust skeptic who had threatened to take out a Black Lives Matter activist in order to attend the State of the Union. At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence, almost a year after the Parkland school shooting, Gaetz, with his A+ rating from the National Rifle Association, attempted to eject two fathers who lost their children to that shooting.

So, who was cheering Gaetz on through all this? Donald Trump. Even when Gaetz is said to ‘face Justice Department inquiry over sex with an underage girl’, as per the New York Times, Trump is still backing him despite his alleged partner-in-crime Joe Greenberg pleading guilty to 6 federal charges and informing investigators that Gaetz was fully aware that the girls he had sex with were underage.

Some claim that this is frightening – that a sitting congressman could possibly get away with this. Hence, there needs to be an urgent change in the way American lawmakers are appointed if the nation is to scrap its notorious political reputation.