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Where Things Stand: Where Are Gaetz’s Friends Now? 
Apparently, they were always few and far between. At least in Washington.
According to a new Daily Beast report, Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) colleagues on the Hill have been wary for some time that he might eventually become embroiled in scandal. Lawmakers told the Daily Beast that it’s widely known in Congress that the Florida Republican has an affinity for partying hard, and it was an open secret in 2018 that he was dating a college student who came to Washington, D.C. as an intern.
Gaetz Saga Manages to Get More Absurd
Here’s a fascinating new wrinkle to the Matt Gaetz story. Jeff Stein has a piece up about the backstory of this Iranian rescue operation which – absurd as it sounds – is the center of what the Gaetzes claim was an extortion plot.
The Gaetzes gave purported screencaps of text messages to The Washington Examiner, a friendly rightwing outfit, to support their extortion claims. But even at face value what is described doesn’t sound like an extortion plot.
Where Things Stand: Gaetz Tries, Fails To Pick Up Deep State Baton In Trump’s Absence
The Self-Immolation of (Not So) Young Matt Gaetz
When I saw the first reports of the Gaetz story I figured he was hooked up with some sleazeball who kept a coterie of young women on hand for his male pals enjoyment. Gaetz partook and got swept up in the investigation of the sleazeball associate. Some version of that seems broadly true and the friend is a disgraced GOP rising star named Joel Greenberg, who was the tax chief in Seminole County before getting indicted for stalking, child sex trafficking and more.
But Gaetz’s performance on TV and Twitter last night makes me think his legal predicament is significantly more serious. Sex with a minor, with money involved and crossing state lines, is certainly bad enough. But these wild claims about good guy and bad guy factions at the DOJ, feds pressuring various friends to testify against him, denials about photographs with underaged girls that no one had at least publicly accused him of yet – these are the flounderings and flailings of a guy wrapped up in something considerably more serious.
Where Things Stand: Preparing For The Next Pandemic
The global community has taken significant steps in the last week to try to properly arm the world against the inevitability of another pandemic. In a letter published in newspapers around the world, 24 world leaders — including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, German chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron — made the case for some form of a global treaty for pandemics, arguing COVID-19 was “a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe.”
Trump is Floundering and Unheard
I hear again and again that people shouldn’t ‘amplify’ Trump now that he’s lost power and his platforms on social media. This is a theory and understanding of politics and speech that I have always thought was more or less bankrupt. It crops up again now when Trump releases one of his Twitter-esque statements “from the office of” the 45th President, which he distributes to reporters. This happened again yesterday when he released a lengthy – quite lengthy – tirade against Drs Fauci and Birx. The idea is that journalists posting these on Twitter or discussing them somehow does Trump’s work for him rather than keeping him bottled in what really must be a personal hell of exile from the social media platforms which were so central to his political rise and the supply of endorphins in his bloodstream. But really these blasts only underscore how distant he has become from the centers of power, both literal and figurative. He used to yell in our faces or live in our heads. Now he’s reduced to nailing his rants to a public bulletin board way on the outskirts of town.
It’s like he’s barking into a pipe deep in a mine shaft and you can only faintly hear him out of the exposed pipe end sticking up out from the ground.
As we’ve discussed in various contexts over recent months, a big, big question is whether mRNA vaccines prevent COVID infection itself or the just illness that the virus causes. If the vaccine keeps you from getting a severe case of the disease or dying that is obviously a huge benefit. But the initial efficacy studies could not rule out one possibility: that vaccinated individuals were still getting infected and that the vaccine was pushing their cases into the asymptomatic category. That may not be a huge difference for individuals. But it’s all the difference in the world in terms of stopping the on-going spread of the disease through the population.
Now we have a study that seems to address this question directly.
Where Things Stand: The Sad Wedding Guest
It’s a Monday in the new Trump-free world and most days it’s best to keep it that way. But we thought this particularly sad weekend news was worth flagging.