(Jewish Group) The chaos is the point: Matt Gaetz and the mainstreaming of ... and antisemitism

[Behind the Aegis]

The chaos is the point: Matt Gaetz and the mainstreaming of conspiracy, xenophobia and antisemitism

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy temporarily averted a government shutdown by agreeing to a bipartisan deal. He was punished gravely for doing so.

The event itself had a kind of ceremony: The motion to vacate the speaker’s chair, the speeches in defense of and against Speaker McCarthy, the vote to remove him, the gavel at the end a final performance of decorum.

The driver of it all was a man who has grabbed headlines for being the opposite of decorous: Matt Gaetz, the Republican representative from Florida who led the charge to oust Kevin McCarthy from his speaker’s chair.

Gaetz has in the past made headlines for everything from possible violation of sex trafficking laws to raising an ex-girlfriend’s younger brother as his son. He tried, in his speech before the House on Tuesday, to draw a contrast not only between his bombast and Congress’s studied civility, but also between his moral compass and that of his colleagues: “I take no lecture on asking patriotic Americans to weigh in and contribute to this fight from those who would grovel and bend knee for the lobbyists and special interests who own our leadership — boo all you want! — who have hollowed out this town and have borrowed against the future of our future generations,” he said in a clip he later shared on social media.

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