Is Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Breathalyzer) the biggest schmuck currently gracing the halls of Congress?

Opinions vary. But not by much.

On Monday morning, Fiona Hill, the administration*'s former Russia expert, came to Capitol Hill to testify in closed session to the House Oversight and Intelligence Committees regarding the president*'s attempt at running a protection racket on Ukraine. Gaetz is a member of neither committee, but he showed up anyway, obviously as a mole on behalf of Camp Runamuck. Acting perfectly within the rules of the House, the committees threw his truckling ass out. Gaetz immediately found a bank of microphones in front of which to drive the nails into his own palms.

"It's not like I'm on the Agriculture Committee," Gaetz moped. Good thing, too, since he apparently could be outsmarted by produce.

You may recall that it was Gaetz who Tweeted out what could only be interpreted as a threat toward Michael Cohen before the latter testified to the Judiciary Committee. That episode was referred to the Florida Bar Association in a complaint that charged Gaetz with with witness tampering. The Florida Bar cleared Gaetz because, well, Florida, but it did hurl a handful of uncomplimentary adjectives at him. It's important to remember that any articles of impeachment that are forthcoming will have to go through the House Judiciary Committee of which Gaetz is a member and, as such, he has to be allowed into the room. Where it happens. And people say vaudeville is dead.

A flunkie hunts the limelight. Mark Wilson Getty Images

And now, Matt Gaetz speaks.

This morning we see further evidence that Adam Schiff's clown show of an impeachment proceeding continues. Adam Schiff lied when he said that he & his team had not had contact with the whistleblower. He lied when he read a false transcript into the record.



When the final history of this historical malignancy is written, this argument that Schiff's comic paraphrase of the president*'s guilt-laden telephone call was a "false transcript" is going to be reckoned as one of the dumbest things they ever got the MAGAs to swallow, much less one of the dumbest chunks of pure mendacity ever to emerge from Congress. For one thing none of us has seen the actual transcript of the call. What Camp Runamuck released was something close to a memorandum of the conversation, and it was still enough to touch off a legitimate impeachment inquiry. The idea that Schiff read "a false transcript into the record" is proof enough that Gaetz believes his audience is as big a box of rocks as he is.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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