Matt Gaetz blasts ABC News pundit as ‘definition of useless’

Hours later, Gaetz fired back. “I was overwhelmingly elected to Congress. Twice. I’ve served nearly a decade in public office, earning voter trust every 2 yrs,” he said. “You are appointed by corporate media 2 spread the very nonsense voters rejected when they elected Trump. Your views are the definition of useless.”

Their spat appears to have stemmed from a feud between Gaetz and Andy Lassner, executive producer of The Ellen Degeneres Show, who reacted to a tweet the Florida Republican sent out last week with a selfie of himself at the World Series with President Trump and first lady Melania Trump.

Gaetz, a 37-year-old Florida native who took on a political career following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and has a 2008 DUI arrest mug shot that his critics enjoy sharing, has been all over the news lately.

He slammed Democrats for not rallying around Rep. Katie Hill, a California Democrat who last week announced her resignation from Congress after news stories revealing her relationship with a young female campaign staffer and a House Ethics Committee investigation into another alleged romance between Hill and her legislative director.

Gaetz has also been a leading critic of the House Democrats’ impeachment effort against the president. The congressman demonstrated his dismay last month by joining fellow Republicans in storming a secure hearing room where lawmakers were conducting impeachment proceedings in a protest over access. He also filed a complaint against House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff his opening statement at the only public impeachment hearing so far, in which the California Democrat delivered a parody account of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Dowd, 58, is a former altar boy who once thought about becoming a priest. His political career began in Democratic politics, having worked for former Sen. Lloyd Bentson, a Texas Democrat, before becoming a Republican in 1999 and ultimately working for former President George W. Bush as his chief strategist on his successful 2004 reelection campaign. Dowd had a change of heart in 2007 over the Iraq War, leading to him identifying as an independent and becoming a vocal opponent of the two-party system.

He was a strategist for then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2006 reelection campaign and later began dating Maria Shriver, the Kennedy heiress who filed for divorce from Schwarzenegger in 2011 after finding out he fathered a son in an affair with their maid. In 2017, Dowd considered an independent campaign against Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2018 election but decided against it.

Dowd is now a vocal Trump critic. Over the summer he said Trump’s rhetoric is “dangerous to our democracy.”

UPDATE: Dowd later deleted his initial tweet about Gaetz and replied to his response Saturday afternoon, saying, “Hey Matt, i don’t why you are so angry and defensive. I stuck up for you. Folks were calling you a tool. Also, you might want to look at my bio. I helped the last Republican to win the national popular vote (Bush 2004).”