March 2020 | Rolling Stone | 41
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he says. “If you couldn’t do one of those things
you are an extra in the movie in the United
States Congress. I had no interest in that. I start-
ed to realize that to serve my constituents, I had
to bring forces to bear outside of that tradition-
al paradigm that they teach you in orientation.”
Gaetz has claimed it’s all done in the ser-
vice of delivering “outcomes,” but what hap-
pens if what he’s trying to accomplish for his
district doesn’t jibe with the president’s agen-
da? Trump’s haphazard carnival barking may
have put him in the White House, but where
will it lead Gaetz and others aiming to capital-
ize on the disoriented media landscape? Isn’t
it inevitable that the endorphin-fueled drive to
rack up engagement stats, to cater to the out-
rage-chasers, to get headlines at any cost, to
own the libs, will hinder a lawmaker’s ability
to make life better for the people they’re sup-
posed to represent?
I ask Gaetz about this, but he doesn’t partic-
ularly care for the question, visibly taking of-
fense at the suggestion that an agenda predicat-
ed on clicks should be carried out with caution.
“It’s a hell of a note from a ROLLING STONE
reporter to tell me I’m too entertaining,” he
snaps. “I guess I’ll take it as a compliment.”
He also, sitting in his office, has other things
to worry about, and he’s still in a hurry. “I’m
having a terrible hair day,” he says, “but we’re
going to have to go anyway.”‘Y
OU’RE BAD LUCK,” Gaetz tells me once
we arrive at the Cannon House Office
Building’s rotunda. “This has never
happened to us before. Hundreds of TV hits.
Two years of doing it. We’ve never had a cam-
eraman bail on us.”
The cameraman who was scheduled to shoot
his spot on Making Money With Charles Payne
is out to lunch — literally. Gaetz tells his chief
of staff to text the producer. She already has.
While we’re waiting, she shows me some of
the metrics they keep of Gaetz’s media appear-
ances. In 2019, he appeared on TV 264 times,
with 174 of those appearances coming on Fox
News or Fox Business. Gaetz talks about his
media presence as if it’s a carefully curated fi-
nancial portfolio, noting that he does around
two MSNBC or CNN hits a quarter, and that
he’s trying to diversify his presence with hits
on platforms like Cheddar, the streaming news
network founded in 2016. Everything is quan-
tified. “If you don’t measure it, it doesn’t really
matter to you,” he says.
“The great thing about social media is that
you get instant feedback on the extent of your
engagement,” Gaetz says. “I know within three
minutes whether or not one of our tweets is
going to be widely consumed. There are times
when we’re able to inform the content of our
social media based on the engagement.”
Over the course of so many media appear-
ances, so many talking points tread and re-
tread, Gaetz has attained a kind of flow state
with his performative self. “I try to stay in a
constant state of preparation,” he says. “Walk-
ing around here, a reporter can stick a micro-
phone under your nose and ask you a questionat any moment in time, and they frequently do
with me. I think the relationship I’ve built with
the press is that they expect an honest answer
from me.”
Gaetz certainly makes his arguments to the
press with conviction, but, as is the case with
Trump, the bombast often seems to be in ser-
vice of obscuring the truth. Throughout the im-
peachment process launched by House Dem-
ocrats last fall, Gaetz enthusiastically cycled
through a Rolodex of dubious talking points —
that Trump is sincerely concerned about cor-
ruption, that the career officials who testified
as part of the inquiry were not credible, that In-
telligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is
a liar who needs to be investigated — in an effort
to absolve the president of any wrongdoing.
But part of the reason Gaetz has been able
to elevate himself is that he’s willing to take it astep further, as he did in October when he put
together a stunt in which a group of House Re-
publicans stormed a Sensitive Compartmented
Information Facility where Intelligence Com-
mittee members were deposing witnesses with
knowledge of the Trump administration’s deal-
ings in Ukraine. Gaetz’s move was arguably
illegal, and at the very least set a dangerous
precedent for ignoring rules to safeguard na-
tional security. Gaetz didn’t care, nor did he
care about the need for the depositions to be
conducted in private so witnesses couldn’t co-
ordinate their testimony — something that, as a
lawyer, he surely understood. But the move got
headlines, and thus Trump’s approval.
This kind of fealty to Trump is at the heart
of Gaetz’s media presence and political stat-
ure, and along with the president’s precious
online nods and phone calls, it has garnered
him IRL invites to Mar-a-Lago and the World Se-
ries, where Gaetz made sure to snap a selfie to
broadcast back to his constituents.
Considering Florida’s 1st District voted for
Trump over Hillary Clinton by a 40-point mar-
gin in 2016, his strategy makes sense. “I think
he’s a pretty calculating guy and that he’s look-
ing to where the puck is going in his party right
now,” says Steve Schale, a Florida Democrat-
ic strategist and friend of Gaetz’s for years. “I
think he sort of plays for that audience. Matt, at
his core, is a raw political creature.”O
NE OF THE REASONS Gaetz is so effective
at garnering media attention is that he
isn’t simply mimicking Trump. Gaetz
was just as controversial and liable to feud pub-
licly with those who opposed him during his
time in the Florida House of Representatives,
where he served from 2010 until his election to
Congress, in 2016.
“The issues were different and there wasn’t
as much Fox News coverage, but you could
argue he was doing the same things in the state
Legislature,” says Schale, adding that Gaetz was
a “disruptive force” who “wasn’t afraid to take
a shot at his own colleagues” and that “there
were people who grudgingly respected his abil-
ity to create his own news cycle.”
He was able to do this by occasionally buck-
ing party orthodoxy — Gaetz has a strong liber-
tarian streak and (at times) has expressed sup-
port for legalized marijuana and LGBTQ rights
— but also by using his trollish social media pres-
ence. In 2012 he mocked “the gays” holding a
“kiss-a-thon” to protest Chick-Fil-A’s anti-LGBTQ
ownership. A year later, he lamented the sight
of a woman whose back was “covered in tat-
toos” using a welfare card at a grocery store.
In 2015, he singled out two black lawmakers
from a group of 13 Florida state senators who
filed a lawsuit related to the health care expan-
sion, blaming them for what he felt was a poor-
ly drafted lawsuit. The tweet drew bipartisan
condemnation, and Gaetz issued a non-apology.
Gaetz’s father, Don, was a powerful figure in
the state Senate, serving as president from 2012
to 2014. “The rub I heard on Matt Gaetz was
that he always had an entitlement mentality,”
says John Tobia, an ally and former roommate
of Gaetz’s while the two served in the state Leg-
islature. “Not necessarily financially, but heck,
his dad was in leadership over there in the Sen-
ate. You heard that if that wasn’t the case then
he wouldn’t be sending out tweets that were di-
rectly counter to leadership positions.”
Tobia makes clear that this isn’t how he felt
personally, only that it was the sense he got
from others whom Gaetz had rubbed the wrong
way. This includes Cris Dosev, a Trump- loving
combat veteran who ran for the House seat
Gaetz won in 2016 before unsuccessfully try-
ing to primary him two years later. “He had a
lot of cover from his dad,” says Dosev. “The kid
knows how to make sure he has an umbrella
of protection over him, and he’s very effective-
ly done the same thing with President Trump.”
Circling around the second floor of Cannon, I
bring up the entitlement issue with Gaetz. This
question, he doesn’t mind at all. “I think it’s a
sign of strength, not weakness, to build strong
partnerships,” he says. “Of course I was stronger
in the Legislature because my dad and I worked
together on projects. So was he. Of course I’m
stronger in Washington because I work closely
with the president. I don’t regret any of that.”G
AETZ PERFORMS his role as Trump’s
pre-eminent impeachment defender
during his spot on Charles Payne, which
eventually goes forward thanks to a camera-
man borrowed from Fox News. The segmentGAME TIME
Gaetz at the
World Series
with Trump.
“I’m stronger
in Washington
because I
work closely
with the
president,”
Gaetz says.
“I don’t regret
any of that.”