Matt Gaetz and Donald Trump

| 9:09 am EDT April 1, 2021
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Yesterday, multiple major news outlets confirmed that there are separate DOJ investigations into whether Matt Gaetz had sex with one or more underage girls, and whether a former official tried to extort him in exchange for making it go away. Gaetz still says he’s innocent; the truth will come out one way or the other. But here’s the thing.

Matt Gaetz has gotten a fair amount of national media coverage over the past couple years because he was a de facto Trump surrogate. He’ll get more media coverage now because of this scandal. But the reality is that Gaetz isn’t really anybody. He’s a back bencher in Congress. He only got elected because he’s from an overwhelmingly Republican district where his father is influential. Even before this scandal, Gaetz almost certainly had no political future beyond his current seat. He’a a whole lot of nothing. Yet someone saw fit to try to blackmail him over his alleged dirty secrets.

Now think about Donald Trump. The man’s entire life has been one big long scandal. Dozens of women have accused him of rape and/or sexual assault. He’s been committing financial crimes for decades. He’s long been closely linked to career criminals ranging from Roger Stone to Jeffrey Epstein. He owes dirty money to banks owned by foreign governments. On and on and on.

If someone out there saw fit to blackmail a relative nobody like Matt Gaetz over his scandal, just imagine how many people out there were blackmailing and extorting Donald Trump the entire time he was President of the United States.