On October 23, a gaggle of House Republicans, led by Matt Gaetz of Florida, stormed the Capitol’s Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. Gaetz had hoped to expose the supposedly secretive nature of the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump.
Contemporary Washington is full of drama queens who pitch their operatic outrage to the farthest seats in the house, but few would stage a mock invasion of a secure facility. Even before he, ahem, “stormed” the SCIF, though, Gaetz was a regular on Fox News, confidently regurgitating conservative talking points and jumping at every opportunity to trash the Green New Deal with his own half-baked legislative riposte, a.k.a. the Green Real Deal.
Earlier this fall, Mother Jones reported on how Gaetz’s father funded his son’s Washington ambitions through a series of questionable property sales. Buoyed by family money—and the solidly Republican politics of Florida’s western panhandle—Gaetz arrived in the nation’s capital in 2017 eager to attract the notice of the biggest Republican daddy of all by going on TV.
