What does Matt Gaetz think he’s even doing?

| 8:00 pm EST February 13, 2023
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Not much has been heard from Matt Gaetz lately. Ever since he almost torpedoed Kevin McCarthy’s speakership, there’s been mostly silence from the high-haired congressman. Until now. You see, Matt caused some “unintended consequences” (his own words) recently, and those consequences were not good ones — are they ever in GOP land?

The judiciary committee was set to say the Pledge of allegiance in their first meeting of the year. Matt Gaetz is on that committee. And Gaetz had invited a man by the name of Cory Beekman to lead the committee’s first Pledge of allegiance. Beekman, an Army national guard veteran, was there at the invitation of Gaetz.

Gaetz introduced the man as “Staff Sergeant Corey Ryan Beekman” and “an American hero.” What an introduction. But there was one thing Gaetz left out of the introduction, Beekman stands accused of murder. This happened in 2019 when Beekman is alleged to have shot and killed Billy Buchanan in the state of Michigan.

And there was an actual standoff with the police there. Eventually, Beekman was arrested. Obviously, this man, whose court case is pending, should not have been there to lead the Pledge of allegiance. So why was he?

Because Gaetz never bothered to do a background check. And the family of the victim heard about all this and was infuriated. Gaetz then issued an apology to the family,. Admitting the “unintended consequences” he said he was complete in the dark about the man’s past.

Now I agree that nobody’s perfect. Mistakes can happen. But how difficult is it to do a basic background check? This is not exactly a difficult task. And frankly, anybody visiting the Capitol in this type of capacity should go through a background check.

This is rather negligent, but that’s republicans for you. George Santos, now this guy. The fact is one needs to know who one is inviting to be the face of one’s party. It sounds to me like Gaetz was simply far to lazy to do that.