This, to be fair, was the fulfillment of a campaign promise: He rather famously vowed not to use his time in Congress to fix any problems or advance any legislation: “I have built my staff around comms rather than legislation,” he said in a letter to his colleagues, announcing his intention to use his seat in Congress to be a troll. He used taxpayer money to pay for dinner and hotel bills. He tried to bring a loaded gun on an airplane on not one but two occasions. He was pulled over for speeding and charged with driving with a revoked license. He was accused of insider trading while in Congress. Lewd photos of him partying with young women and a video of him sticking his penis in his cousin’s face circulated before Tuesday’s election. More than 150 college classmates denounced him for “predatory behavior and sexual harassment.” Several women accused him of making unwanted and inappropriate advances over a period of several years. He was discovered to have had a grand old time at Hitler’s vacation home, writing on Instagram that “seeing the Eagles Nest has been on my bucket list for awhile, it did not disappoint.” He participated in Trump’s January 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally and later accused Democrats of being behind the ensuing riot at the Capitol. He spent the three years that made up the period between the start of his congressional campaign and his defeat on Tuesday leapfrogging from one tawdry debacle to the next. He was iced out because he had found a way to embarrass a party that’s furthering those extreme ends-no mean feat for a party that’s adopted shamelessness as its superpower.Ĭawthorn’s political career has perhaps the greatest scandal-to-length ratio in American history. Cawthorn wasn’t taken down as part of some ideological course correction or a trimming of Trump-era excess. It’s a catnip storyline for the political discourse: At long last, the establishment struck back.ĭon’t get your hopes up. Cawthorn may have had the most coveted talisman in electoral politics-Trump’s endorsement-but it didn’t matter: He narrowly lost to Chuck Edwards, who serves in the state legislature and owns several McDonald’s franchises. But he was mostly mad for a different reason: The GOP’s Beltway elites whupped his ass. In the same post, Cawthorn-not the sharpest person who has ever served in Congress-also writes that “the time for gentile politics as usual has come to an end, it’s time for the rise of the new right, it’s time for Dark MAGA.” Cawthorn undoubtedly is ready for a revolution: One of Trump’s most extreme and devoted backers in Congress, he’s a fervent election denier and conspiracy theorist. “But we will never be able to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party. He lavished praise on a handful of true believers-including Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and Marjorie Taylor Greene-before ending with a rousing call to action. Writing on Instagram shortly after his defeat in a Republican congressional primary in North Carolina, 26-year-old Representative Madison Cawthorn lashed out at the Republican establishment for turning “their guns” on him.
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