The Gates of Hell: the Hell of Gaetz

In a stunning development, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, turning on Donald Trump, the man he has slavishly backed for the past five years.

“I finally learned my lesson,” Gaetz, R-Nubile, said during an address before the Miami Beach chapter of The Baby-Sitters Club. “You can be (Trump’s) biggest supporter, buy into all his lies and phoniness, but ask him for one teensy-weensy favor and suddenly you’re on his s— list.”

Gaetz said he was referring to his request, during Trump’s last weeks in office, for a blanket pardon from the then-president for himself, his family, friends, colleagues and people he may get to know in the future for any misdemeanors, felonies or traffic violations any of them may have committed in the past or might commit or contemplate committing in the future.

“Think about it,” Gaetz, R-Pedo, said. “He pardoned half a dozen Republican congressmen, close to a dozen health-care people who committed Medicare fraud, three officers who committed war crimes in the Middle East, not to mention traitors like (Paul) Manafort, (Michael) Flynn, (Steve) Bannon, (George) Papadopoulos and (Roger) Stone. I mean, hell, he even pardoned Blackwater murderers. And dead people, too (Zay Jeffries and Susan B. Anthony, among others). Even Jared Kushner’s dad.

“And after all I’ve done for him, all the excuses I dreamed up for him, all the times I lied through my teeth for him, he couldn’t come up with one more lousy pardon?” Gaetz shouted. “Well, when I’m president and he’s rotting in some cell for all the tax and bank frauds he perpetrated, I don’t think I’ll be accepting any collect phone calls from any federal prisons.”

Asked why he included traffic violations in his blanket pardon request, Gaetz, R-Fondle, said he was “just covering all the bases,” making no specific reference to the federal human trafficking laws he is alleged to have violated, along with having sex with an underage girl and paying for sex.

Speaking a day earlier before a meeting in Orlando of a fan club of the Pen15 television program, Gaetz, R-Venmo, said he hadn’t done “that many things that could be considered really wrong,” referring to his dating at least one underage girl and giving her a gift.

“I mean, what guy hasn’t bought his sweetheart a pink teddy bear for her to snuggle? That’s nothing compared to, say, paying $130,000 to a porn star. And I guarantee you I never, ever, grabbed anyone by the p—y or anywhere else without asking first.”

The congressman from the Florida Panhandle (“Pretty funny, that name, considering all the begging for money I do,” Gaetz said) has denied all the allegations against him and includes the denials as part of the fund-raising mailers he distributes.

Gaetz, R-Chippy, also went on Tucker Carlson’s show on the Fox Network and in a rambling, confusing defense of his actions all but accused the host of similar indiscretions with young women.

He said he and Carlson had dinner with one of the young women involved in the investigation or with other young women. A confused-looking Carlson said he had no recollection of what the congressman was talking about.

“Yeah, maybe I went a bit too far with that,” Gaetz said. “I mean, if he doesn’t remember playing footsie with his date and how the waiter started giggling and nearly dropped the rigatoni campagnolo, who am I to make a thing of it?”

Speaking before an invitation-only gathering of the conservative Girl Scouts for America First, Gaetz, R-Mann Act, said he is innocent and, to prove it, has pledged to become a “scout dad” before the year is out, or a chaperone at their next Jamboree.

“I cannot, for the life of me, understand these accusations,” he said, gazing wistfully at several dozen Felta Thi chapter Cadettes assembled at the scouts’ Palm Beach Garden of the Divine Revelation Academy auditorium.

“I don’t have any daughters,” Gaetz added, “but if I did I’d want them to be as charming and pretty and eager as some of you. And let me ask you this: have any of you ever been to Cabo San Lucas?”