Finishing off Matt Gaetz

The DOJ has three confirmed cooperation deals against Matt Gaetz: 1) his ex-girlfriend, who was given obstruction of justice immunity in exchange for testifying against him. 2) his former close associate Joel Greenberg, whose attorney publicly announced that he was flipping on Gaetz. 3) Joe Ellicott, whose attorney announced the same thing as Greenberg’s attorney.

If you know how these things work, Gaetz is obviously going to be criminally indicted on serious charges. And even though he maintains his innocence, the cooperation of three people close to him means that it’s extremely, extremely likely he’ll be convicted. So he’s going to prison for a long time. His life is over and he knows it. In the meantime Gaetz is just trolling you all, to try to get a certain reaction. You should just laugh at him.

Why did Gaetz go on a victory tour? Why is he now voting in support of Putin? Just to troll us. It’s all he has left. He wants to come off as defiant and unafraid of what he knows is coming. He’s trying to convince us, and himself, that he’s somehow going to get away with it all.

Gaetz also surely enjoys it when you yell defeatist things like “Why is he still in Congress, he’s getting away with it all” or “If he hasn’t been indicted by now he never will!” His life is over, yet he’s managed to get you cowering to him, and he surely gets a deranged kick out of it.

Gaetz also knows that if he keeps trolling us, he can then raise money from far right loons by pointing out how he’s “owning the libs.” When you cower to him in response to this taunting (and yes, yelling “he’s going to get away with it all” is cowering), you’re putting money in his pocket.

This is actually true of every far right troll in politics and punditry. They strategically troll the left, in the hope of getting an overly earnest response from us about how “dangerous” they are, so they can use our response to make money from their far right base.

Far too many folks on our side have been conditioned over the years to believe that they’re only being “vigilant” if they’re cowering and yelling defeatist things. But that’s the opposite of vigilance. When we behave in defeatist fashion, it only helps the other side get ahead.

Not that Gaetz in particular can get ahead at this point. He’s lost at life; there’s nothing for him to win anymore. Best he can do is create isolated moments of deranged fun for himself, where he convinces us he’s somehow winning, and convinces himself he’s invincible, as the clock ticks down on his obviously inevitable arrest.

The fact that Gaetz is still in congress is a huge win for our side. These House Republicans are too cowardly to even temporarily remove a guy who’s being criminally investigated for alleged underage sex trafficking. We should be using Gaetz against every Republican in the midterms.

There are a bunch of House Republicans seeking reelection in swing districts in 2022, and we should be forcing every one of them to explain why their party has refused to do anything about an alleged child sex trafficker in their own caucus. We could flip 3-5 seats with this.

Democratic Party leaders want us to use this strategy. They keep telling us that every House Republican seeking reelection should have to answer for Gaetz, Boebert, Greene, etc. Instead we mostly whine about the Democratic Party in defeatist fashion, then we bash Democratic Party for a supposed “messaging problem.”

If we would once ever listen to the Democratic Party, and act on the things they keep begging us to do, we’d win every election. But too many of us think our job as activists is to whine about the Democrats and insist the other side is “getting away with it all.”

Which brings us back to why Gaetz keeps trolling us: because it’s so easy. Too many folks on our side just want to feel self righteous outrage by whining about how the other side is winning. People like Gaetz can’t help but take advantage of our side’s inherent desire to believe we’re losing at all times.

Whenever Gaetz (and others like him) troll us, our response should not be defeatism or self righteous outrage. That’s the reaction they want from us; it plays right into their hands. Instead we should simply mock these clowns, and in Gaetz’s case, point out that his life is over.