When Matt Gaetz came to Washington last year, he could easily have been mistaken for the typical freshman member of Congress. The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call ran a short profile of him under the headline “The Least Interesting (Fresh) Man in the House.”
But the Florida Republican proved to be anything but that.
Gaetz has made a name for himself in front of the television cameras by leading the charge against special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and by calling for new inquiries into Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration. He’s been willing to defend Trump with vigor and pal around with some of the most unsavory characters on the right, including white nationalists and conspiracy theorists.
Gaetz is the son of a wealthy and influential former Florida state senator. A native of Hollywood, Florida, just north of Miami, he studied at Florida State University before moving on to law school at William & Mary. After graduating in 2007, he spent a couple of years working as an attorney in Fort Walton Beach in the state’s Panhandle. Gaetz won a seat in the Florida house of representatives in 2010 and in 2016 ran for Florida’s 1st Congressional District—the most Republican district in the state. He won with 69 percent of the vote, promising to defend gun rights and push for fiscal responsibility.
Since entering Congress, the unmarried 35-year-old has positioned himself as a Trump Republican and a critic of the House GOP leadership. He says his top priorities for 2018 are “rebuilding our military and protecting Florida from the dangers of offshore oil drilling.”
If we had power rankings of congressional Republicans who carry water for Trump, Gaetz would undoubtedly earn a spot alongside the likes of House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows, and Senate immigration hawks such as Tom Cotton and David Perdue. Yet Gaetz rejects his portrayal as one-dimensional Trump apologist.
“I’m made out as an uncritical cheerleader for the Trump administration, and that isn’t true,” he says, pointing to several areas of disagreement with the White House, such as the wide ideological rift between himself and Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, over medical marijuana. Gaetz has also called on Trump to release his tax returns.
But the Florida Republican makes frequent appearances on cable news shows, and watching him, it’s difficult to think he has more than one viewer in mind. When talking about the Russia investigation, the FBI, or the Justice Department, he says exactly what Trump wants to hear—that Trump is “getting a raw deal.”
And the president has taken notice. Trump frequently calls Gaetz to talk after seeing him on TV, the lawmaker tells me. “One time he said, ‘Good morning, Matt. It’s your favorite president,’ ” Gaetz recalls of a recent phone call from Trump. He refuses to say just how many times Trump has called him after seeing him on the cable shows, but he admits it’s “often.”
Gaetz is a particular favorite of Fox News, but he is not picky about which outlets he goes on—though he says he turned down Russia Today. His affinity for the cameras is atypical of a first-term House member, most of whom avoid the press almost religiously. Gaetz said he tried to keep a low profile as he was getting used to the place, but, at some point, he couldn’t help but embrace the spotlight.
“You hear all the talk that freshmen congressmen are supposed to be seen not heard,” Gaetz’s younger sister, Erin, tells me. “But Matt’s not the type to go stare at his nameplate for two years.”
His pivot-to-video came from a growing frustration at listening to House Democrats talk about the Russia investigation during committee hearings. “I believe there was Russian intervention for the purpose of hurting Donald Trump,” he says of the investigations into Russian involvement in the 2016 election. “I believe that in elections all over the world, Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, and at times Americans are engaged on all sides.”
Gaetz says he’s “not much for playing defense.” That’s why he turned to fellow House Judiciary Committee member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for help plotting a path forward. Jordan, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, shares Gaetz’s bombastic, Trump-friendly stance and has a similar fondness for the cameras.
Gaetz was in the Atlanta airport last summer when he thought of Jordan—“He’s got a good amount of fight in him”—and gave the Ohio Republican a call to suggest they attempt to take back the narrative. Jordan says the call began a friendship. The pair adopted a forward-leaning strategy during Judiciary Committee hearings, aiming to deflect Democratic questions about Russian intervention in the 2016 election with their own questions about the Uranium One deal and Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
In January, Gaetz and Jordan jumped on the counter-narrative provided by the Devin Nunes memo alleging improprieties within the FBI. Gaetz bombarded the airwaves to hype the implications of the document for weeks before it was released on February 2. “The facts contained in this memo are jaw-dropping,” Gaetz said in a statement. His crusade, largely seen as an effort to undermine the Russia investigation, has won him celebrity status with the alt-right.
This status was further cemented when Gaetz invited the alt-right race-baiter Charles C. Johnson to the State of the Union. Johnson has lately been roiled in controversy for questioning the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust in a post on Reddit: “I do not and never have believed the six million figure,” he wrote. “I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic.” The Anti-Defamation League quickly sent Gaetz a letter asking him to repudiate Johnson’s views.
On top of the invitation, Gaetz made an appearance on the conspiracist radio program InfoWars, which has claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre was faked, that the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando was a set-up to advance a gun-control agenda, that 9/11 was an inside job, and that juice boxes make kids gay. Gaetz countered criticism of his InfoWars appearance by going on MSNBC and then bragging to his Twitter followers that he seeks out all types of audiences.
Asked about the State of the Union invitation, Gaetz says he thinks Johnson is more of a “provoker” than anything else, though he says that if he had known about the Reddit post, it would have “certainly impacted” his decision to offer the ticket. As to his decision to go on InfoWars, Gaetz tells me he does not think the show’s host, Alex Jones, is credible, but—ever the lawyer—defends his decision to sit down with the infamous purveyor of fake news. Millions of people get their news from InfoWars, Gaetz argues, and he thought it would be a mistake to pass up an opportunity to reach that audience.
What audience was he able to reach at InfoWars that he couldn’t reach at Fox News?
“I don’t know,” Gaetz says. “I’m not a media demographics guy.”
Gaetz’s first brush with the alt-right came last summer, when he made headlines after one of his legislative staffers used material from a fanatical pro-Trump Reddit forum known for its conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism as the basis for an amendment Gaetz sponsored calling for a special counsel to be appointed to investigate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. At the time, Gaetz defended the staffer, saying he was simply doing comprehensive research and gathering citizen input.
In our interview, Gaetz notes that he does not have a Reddit account and has never visited the site. And asked whether he identifies with the alt-right, he says he doesn’t even know what the alt-right is. “I’m a libertarian-leaning Republican,” Gaetz says. “That’s my ideology.”
During his six years in the Florida statehouse, Gaetz advocated for gun rights, medical marijuana, and animal welfare causes. He brought those priorities with him when he came to Congress—along with a quixotic streak. The first bill he introduced took up just one line: “The Environmental Protection Agency shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”
The self-described “Freedom Caucus sympathizer” is remarkably candid, often cutting straight to the point when answering questions. Everything he says, no matter how farfetched, comes with a brash confidence.
“What you see is what you get with Matt for as long as I remember, and I think voters here in the Panhandle love it,” says Rebekah Bydlak, who was one of Gaetz’s Republican primary opponents in 2016.
Gaetz’s sister, Erin, agrees. She said that the popularity of her brother’s decisions can be easily gauged by “the Publix poll.” Publix is a Florida-based grocery chain with locations across the southeast. “People tell you exactly what they think of you in the dairy aisle,” Erin says. And by that metric, she estimates voters firmly support her brother’s focus on the Russia probe and the Nunes memo.
When he comes up for reelection this year, Gaetz will face two of the primary opponents he defeated in 2016. But Gaetz isn’t worried about the controversies. The voters who sent him to Washington watch a lot of cable news, and they’re loyal to Trump.
“President Trump is a very different kind of Republican,” Gaetz tells me. And that’s precisely what Gaetz is aiming to be.
Haley Byrd is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
