Following a firestorm of controversy around his allegations of sexual misconduct with an underage girl, former Representative Matt Gaetz has now withdrawn from his consideration for Trump's attorney general, [00:00:15] so he made the announcement via a post on X, writing I had excellent meetings with senators yesterday. I appreciate their thoughtful feedback and the incredible support of so many. While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confrontational confirmation [00:00:32] was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump transition. There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle. Thus, I'll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney general. [00:00:49] Trump's DOJ must be in place and ready on day one. I remain fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful president in history. I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice, and I'm certain he will save America. [00:01:06] And Trump accepted this. He had his own statement. And here's what he wrote. Let's take a look. I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be attorney general. He was doing very well, but at the same time did not want to be [00:01:22] a distraction for the administration. So look, long story short, Trump has accepted it, which is a good sign, right? He didn't try to bully his way into getting Matt Gaetz into that position. And according to the New York Times, Gaetz's decision to drop out was [00:01:38] based on four other Republican senators who made clear that they were not interested in confirming him. That includes Lisa murkowski, Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell and John Curtis. But I also want to make a point that Ken Klippenstein wrote about in his Substack, [00:01:55] and I think he's absolutely right. Don't give the Republican senators all the credit, It because the people also had spoken and based on polling, including polling from Morning Consult. Donald Trump's nomination or appointment of Matt Gaetz as attorney general [00:02:12] is the only person that Trump has picked that the people do not favor. Okay. So let me just give you the results on that. A morning consult poll released Tuesday showed that 41% disapprove of Matt Gaetz as AG pick, compared to 34% who approve. [00:02:30] But when it comes to other individuals who Donald Trump has tapped for various roles in his administration, voters approve of Trump's preferred cabinet selections by a margin of 54% to 38%. So Gaetz really stood out as someone that some of the senators didn't want. [00:02:46] But more importantly, the people didn't want either. - Jake. - Yeah. As I've said from day one, I think Matt Gaetz is a complicated character. And, so I'm going to pour my 40 to him in a second. But and I'm going to tell you where he might go next, which might be a bit disastrous. [00:03:02] So buckle up for that one. But there's two potential main reasons why he might have stepped down here, because it's pretty unlike Matt Gaetz to shy away from a fight. Right. So he was ready for this fight. He knew that it was going to come. He knew about the 17 year old. [00:03:18] He knew about the the report that was done in the house, etc.. So why why balk now rather than earlier and go, oh no, no, I don't want it because that's going to be too much of a mess. Right. So number one, he got the hell out of Dodge in terms of the house. And this way that report doesn't get released, [00:03:36] at least technically, legally, officially. Right. And he's not going back to the house. He already dropped out of the house. Right. So, but, there's two things that happened recently that that I think might have made a difference. One, as Anna pointed out, some of the Republican senators, [00:03:54] apparently there was four already that were a hard no on on Matt Gaetz, meaning that he could not be confirmed even if the Republicans had 53 senators in the Senate. Now, having said that, they went a little bit further than that. And this was more from the House and the Senate. [00:04:09] So apparently a lot of the members of the House on the Republican side said, we will not agree to recess appointments for the rest of Donald Trump's picks if Matt Gaetz is included in that bunch. So the reason why that's so important is because Trump has a lot [00:04:28] of controversial nominees. And one of the things that he's planning to do is that if some of them don't get confirmed or look like they're not going to get confirmed, he's going to ask the House to go into recess and the Senate to go into recess. And he's just going to put him in anyway as a recess appointment. But in order to do that, he needs the approval of the House to do it. [00:04:46] And enough Republicans apparently rebelled against Matt Gaetz in the House for them to block the recess appointment idea and strategy that Trump had. So so it's his combined Colleagues in the Senate and the House, [00:05:02] not Democrats or Republicans that were so adamant that he cannot be Matt Gaetz that that it forced Donald Trump's hand. There was no way around that. Theoretically. Now, he could have made a giant, spectacular deal out of it and try to beat up all the Republican senators and House members that were in rebellion over this. [00:05:20] But it would have that would have been an all out brawl right from the get go, and not against the Democrats, but against the Republicans. So apparently they chose to to not do that fight. But there was one other thing that might or might not be relevant. So we all know about the, you know, the sex that was that he paid for. [00:05:35] Apparently that's at least the allegations. And everybody can call me a bad guy. I don't that's his personal life. I don't care at all. I didn't care when Eliot Spitzer did it. And he was a Democrat sheriff of Wall Street. I don't care when Matt Gaetz does it. I'm going to come back to the 17 year old because that's [00:05:51] the most relevant part in a second. Yes, I. Agree with you. I just want to reinforce what you're saying. Look, I mean, you can't pick and choose if you're on the left especially you can't pick and choose when sex work is okay. I mean, the left has been wanting to legalize and regulate sex work, so I don't have a problem with him paying for sex with adults. [00:06:11] The issue here is the 17 year old that he has been accused of having sexual relations with, and that's certainly front and center when it comes to the reason why some of his Republican colleagues do not want to confirm him. So the woman who says she had sex when she was a minor with then Representative Matt [00:06:29] Gaetz, told the House Ethics Committee that she had two sexual encounters with him at one party in 2017. So that is at the heart of why there is so much, disagreement about him getting confirmed for such an important role. [00:06:45] Well, that's what they say. - There's other reasons, too. - I don't believe them at all. Just to be clear. But there's one part of that that might have also spurred Matt Gaetz to drop out today, as opposed to any other day. So CNN says that they had extra details about the second encounter with the 17 [00:07:04] year old, apparently on the same day, and that after they called Matt Gaetz for a comment 45 minutes after they called him, he dropped out. Now, is it because of that? We don't know. Right. But CNN implied that it was. But of course, it's their story. So that's why they implied it. So but why does the second encounter matter? [00:07:22] Why on God's green earth would it matter when we already know the essence of it? You know, sexual relationship with a minor is already devastating. It doesn't matter that much if it was once or twice in the same day. Well, they report that it was a three way and that it was with another adult woman. [00:07:38] Now, if Matt Gaetz doesn't want the name of that other adult woman out in public, he might be doing it to protect her. Partly. Okay, so now that's a little bit of speculation on my part, but part I told you about CNN is is clear. [00:07:53] So the part where I say, look, that's a the 17 year old is a massive concern for real people, Yes. Right. Yeah. But for his colleagues in the Senate, in the House, I don't think it's a real concern at all. I think half of them have done equally horrible things. - I think they're using it as an excuse. - Yeah, I agree. [00:08:10] And I think that the real heart of the problem and why I'm conflicted about it, when you think like why you don't agree with 10, 000 things that Matt Gaetz has said, and he's done these terrible, obnoxious things in terms of the 17 year old, so why bother even, and now he's gone. [00:08:28] So why even do a conflicted halfway defense of him? Because I want you guys to understand politics. It's not about Matt Gaetz. It's about the process and how things work. So any time that that somebody challenges power, they will always have some sort [00:08:43] of sexual allegation against them. Always. Okay. If they're in the establishment, they have the same sex crimes behind the scenes. And that's why the one thing Marjorie Taylor Greene said the other day was true. She's like, oh, do we want to release all the files? Because I got all sorts of files on other. [00:08:59] That's right? Yes, she did make that threat. Yes. She said that if the House Ethics Committee releases the report that they did on Matt Gaetz, then she's going to air the dirty laundry of all of her Republican colleagues. So apparently that exists, and they all know that it exists. [00:09:14] That's crazy. But they never bring it out unless they challenge the establishment. Right. And in the case of Madison Cawthorn and Matt Gaetz, it was not just the establishment. And Democrats are fairly impotent to begin with, but it's Republicans that were bothered by Madison Cawthorn and Matt Gaetz. [00:09:31] And they're the ones who said, okay, use the secret files against them, right. And then we'll all pretend to be outraged by the secret files when we all know that we got secret files on so many of us, and none of us are actually outraged by it. I mean, Donald Trump said that he knew that Jeffrey Epstein liked girls young [00:09:47] and partied with him for 15 years. Are they outraged by that? No, they're not outraged by it at all. Right. So I want you to understand that hypocrisy, because what are the three decent things about Matt Gaetz? And yes, you could say that someone is terrible and still say that they have three redeeming qualities. He genuinely, proposed anti-corruption bills [00:10:06] that Progressive Democrats signed on to. They were good bills, both in terms of the conflict of interest on the stock trading, but also in getting money out of politics to some degree, or at least limiting it. It was shocking that Matt Gaetz signed on to that. He was genuinely anti-war. [00:10:21] He challenged Trump, which almost no Republican did when Trump was in his first term, not to bomb Iran. That was shocking, right? And so the establishment hates both of those things. His Republican colleagues hate both of them. And what's the last thing he did? He he challenged, sometimes comically and ridiculously and absurdly, [00:10:41] but sometimes courageously, he challenged his own Republican colleagues. Now, what have I been asking Justice Democrats to do all this time? Challenge your colleagues. But there's a price to pay when you challenge your colleagues, and. That's why people don't do it. That's why people don't do it. That's why people don't do it right? Because they're afraid. [00:10:56] They're not afraid necessarily, of sex scandals, right? But they're afraid that it's going to have consequences and this is the consequences. So understand that Matt Gaetz did not lose this position because of the sex with the 17 year old, or because the American people were upset with him, or [00:11:11] because of his truly outrageous positions. No, he lost the position because his fellow dirty Republican colleagues were so corrupt that they were bothered that he was slightly not corrupt on some of these issues and challenged them on it. - So that's what actually happened here. - Yeah. [00:11:27] I mean, he was absolutely loathed in D.C. There's no question about that. Asked about Gaetz withdrawal, Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, gave a prolonged and silent smile. So now the question is, what's in store for Matt Gaetz? [00:11:45] What's in store for his future? What is he planning on doing next? Well, apparently Fox News is already coming up with some ideas. Let's take a look. So he resigned from the 118th Congress. And when he gave his speech on the House floor announcing that resignation, he said, I do not intend to take the oath of office for the same. [00:12:02] Office in the 119th Congress. You have to ask, does he now take that back and try to be a congressman, or does he go away? He said. But you caught what he said the same office. Yeah. DeSantis has to appoint if Michael Waltz, Congressman, [00:12:18] moves on in his nominated post. If Marco Rubio, senator, moves on in his nominated post, he's he's got some positions to work with there in that state. Could it be Matthew Gaetz, who then becomes a U.S. Senator for an interim in the state of Florida? [00:12:34] That's an interesting thought. I don't I mean, I guess it's a possibility, but do you think that DeSantis would fill that empty Senate seat left behind by Marco Rubio with Matt Gaetz? Well, that would be rubbing it in their face. [00:12:50] That would be amazing actually. Like I mean, look, I'm not really a fan of Matt Gaetz. I want to be clear about that. I think your analysis is accurate, Jake. I think that there were some good things that he did that definitely upset the Republican establishment, and I would love to see the [00:13:07] Republican establishment suffer that blow. But I don't know if it would make sense to have Matt Gaetz serve as a United States senator. Yeah. Look, so that's a super tough one because we genuinely disagree with him on so many things. And he's been so outrageous on some of those things. [00:13:23] But on the other hand, it's not like we're going to get a Republican senator that agrees with us. Yeah, totally. Right. And it's not like we're not going to get a Republican senator appointed by Ron DeSantis, who isn't a crook. Right. So if you're looking at it strictly from a policy point of view, and here, by the [00:13:41] way, by being honest, I'm exposing myself to super unfair attacks from my own side. Later they'll say, oh, you didn't you defend Matt Gaetz? No. But wait. I gave an explanation of how politics works, but they won't do any of that. And not just our side, but New York Times, etc. [00:13:57] Will later smear me for this analysis. So I'm giving you that as a, you know, a preface to this. But honestly, almost any other Republican senator would be 100% corrupt and 100% wrong policies. So the fact that Matt Gaetz is against corruption to some degree and against war [00:14:17] to some degree, and against his other Republican colleagues, makes me say, yeah, he'd probably be a better senator, a better Republican senator from Florida than probably anyone else that DeSantis could appoint or would appoint. [00:14:32] I guess we're going to have to wait and see. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. [00:14:48] But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. Thank you.