Working toward the Donald

Smarmy weasel and upright man in the eyes of the Lord Mike Johnson doesn’t think a little thing like a House ethics investigation into Matt Gaetz’s curricular and extra-curricular activities ought to be something that the US Senate sees when it considers whether Gaetz ought to be the nation’s top law enforcement officier:

House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday that he does not think the House Ethics Committee report on allegations related to Matt Gaetz should be released and is “going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report.”

The former Florida congressman, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for attorney general, resigned his seat in the House when Trump announced that he was going to nominate him to serve in the role. Gaetz has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

“I do not. No, I think it’s a terrible breach of protocol,” Johnson said when asked by reporters if he thinks the report should come out.

The speaker said he planned to talk to House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest about the situation.

“I will talk to him and anybody else. I’m going to try to reach him. I’ve been a bit busy,” he said, noting he got back from Mar-a-Lago late last night.

Asked if he would respect the panel’s decision if the Ethics Committee chose to share the report with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Johnson replied, “I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report.”

“That is not the way we do things in the House, and I think that would be a terrible precedent,” he said.

The Senate could still subpoena the report, although that might set up an opportunity for John Roberts to deliver yet another statesman-like pronouncement along the lines of Trump v. United States, about this rule he just made up on the spot out of thin air must be respected by all because of the majestic independent integritude of the judicial process.

Ben Domenech is part of what very little remains of the pre-Trump Republican party establishment, and he has some nuanced and edifying thoughts about all this:

I realize that we are occasionally given to hyperbole about the untoward nature of politicians, but let me be clear: Matt Gaetz is a sex trafficking drug addicted piece of shit. He is abhorrent. His eyes are permanently rimmed with the red rings of chemical boosters. In person, he smells like overexposed Axe Body Spray and stale Astroglide. The fact that he boasted on the floor to multiple colleagues in the House of Representatives of his methods of crushing Viagra and high test Red Bull to maintain his erection through his orgiastic evenings is perhaps the least offensive of his many crimes against womanhood and Christian faith. The man has less principles than your average fentanyl addicted hobo. He likes them underage and he’s not ashamed about it. Matt Gaetz isn’t just your average extreme Florida MAGA Man, he’s a hypocritical ass with the worst Botox money can buy, pursuing an ever-thinner nose and higher cheekbones at every opportunity like a Real Housewife gone mad for fillers. Every Republican in Washington has an opinion about Matt Gaetz, and 99 percent of those opinions are “Keep Matt Gaetz away from my wife/daughter/friend and anyone I care about.” He is a walking genital, warts included as a bonus. If I was merely attempting to count the number of women I know who have had bad experiences with Matt Gaetz, I would run out of fingers and toes. If you vote for him to be the Attorney General of the United States, you don’t just need your head examined, you need to be committed to a mental institution. The man is absolutely vile. There are pools of vomit with more to offer the earth than this STD-riddled testament to the failure of fallen masculinity.

All the Savvy People are speculating that Gaetz is being offered up by Trump in a bit of eleventy-dimensional chess, so that all his other horrible nominations look good by comparison, as will whatever monstrous replacement takes Gaetz’s place after his nomination is shot down.

All the Savvy People have been wrong about Trump non-stop for nine years now, and I don’t see any reason think think they’re about to break that streak.