Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Matt Gaetz: “We had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor … of the girls that he had slept with. He’d brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.”

Gaetz responds: “This is a lie” pic.twitter.com/h55hj0ag29

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 5, 2023

You’ve gotta think about this guy. This is a guy that didn’t have – that the media didn’t give the time of day to after he was accused of sleeping with an underage girl. And there’s a reason why no one in the conference came and defended him – because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor that all of us had walked away, of the girls he had slept with.

He bragged about how he would crush E.D. medicine and chase it with energy drinks so he could go all night. This is obviously before he got married. And so, when that accusation came out, no one defended him. And then no one in the media would give him the time of the day. All of a sudden he found fame because he opposed the speaker of the House back in November. And he’s always stayed there. And he was never gonna leave until he got this last moment of fame by saying– by going after a motion to vacate.

[This week should be just charming, no? Mullin’s wrong about the media coverage of the Gaetz allegations, at least. Those got plenty of national-media coverage, much of it entirely credulous even while we were pointing out how some of those didn’t add up. The decision to close the investigation didn’t get nearly as much coverage, and I’ve heard from more than one friend this week wondering what happened to it. As for the bro talking, well, those allegation have been around for a while, and came up during the first Speaker fight in January. — Ed]