Live by The Bro, Die by The Bro? Gaetz is drowned by Swamp he vowed to drain.

Tune out corrupt DC hypocrites faux-outraged by Matt Gaetz's dogged style and tawdry private peccadillos. Gone from power is a true DC reformer. Team Trump might long regret they didn't fight harder.

“Politics makes strange bedfellows,” goes the hoary cliche. Never more so than the Trumpian embrace of The Bro. Trump won reelection partly due to his appearance on bro-pods like The Joe Rogan Experience and at bro-loved mixed-martial-arts (MMA) cage matches commandeered by the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) and fake fights engineered by the WWE. I’ve never warmed to this bread-and-circus aspect of Trump, just as I found nothing endearing in his embrace of low-brow reality TV or his gauche, gilt-littered early architecture.

But when one sees a candidate who, by design or luck, is willing to tackle the existential crises facing the nation––mass illegal immigration; Democrat-enabled crime; racist, sexist, anti-American DEI quotas; state-sponsored censorship and lawfare; and a new Axis of Evil abroad––you put up with difficult private differences.

Unlike infantile Americans, I don’t put much stock in the personal lives of public figures. Bill Clinton was a sex addict and a cad––he thought Fleetwood Mac was cool long past its peak––but he was a successful Democratic Centrist who understood the need for balanced budgets, strong borders, and more cops. He also wouldn’t take guff from his party’s radical racialist fringe (which has since become its base). I voted for Clinton twice. History teaches that FDR and Churchill were not choir boys either. Still, without them, we might not have defeated Nazi Germany, let alone the messianic lunatics in Tokyo.

By analogy, I tolerated Trump’s embrace of The Bro as long he did not nominate any for office. But on the surface, Matt Gaetz seems like the classic “bro-seph.” A true man doesn’t brag about his drug-fueled sexual exploits with young women (underage or not) to fellow congresspersons in the Members’ Wellness Center (yes, the place exists). Bros do. Gaetz did. True men are discreet and respectful and never show off photos of women they’ve dated or with whom they’ve had sexual relations (paid or unpaid). Bros do. Gaetz did. True men don’t parade around women like some prized turkey they bagged up in the Loess Hills. It’s a red flag of anxiety about one’s worth and manhood.

Most bros carry within them a deep-seated fear that, God forbid, “I might be gay or bisexual. Oh no, not that!” It’s why they are suckers for steroid-enhanced cartoon men like Rogan and UFC’s Dana White and beefy knucklehead entertainers like Alex Jones and Hulk Hogan. It’s why they are drawn to gladiator sports, superhero films, gun fetishism, and all manner of how-to hogwash to attract “hot girls” and extend the length of one’s own “member.” I can envision the geeky and puerile Gaetz falling for such schemes.

But for all his bro-ish antics and conspiratorial poppycock, Gaetz is well-educated, shockingly strategic, media savvy, and eminently practical. He is also uniquely committed to “draining the swamp.” With that as your prime directive, you don’t earn many friends on Capitol Hill. As another hoary adage goes, “If you want a friend in DC, get a dog.”

See the excellent HBO documentary “The Swamp” to grasp Gaetz's political character, the sincerity of his noble quest, and the powerful forces arrayed against him. A William & Mary Law School grad––before that once-respectable school succumbed to racist, sexist “social justice” claptrap––Gaetz (like The Crotty Man before him) saw right through the Department of Justice’s Crossfire Hurricane scam. This massive dirty trick nearly brought down the first Trump Administration based on a bogus and preposterous Russia collusion narrative that Hillary Clinton funded, approved, and supplied to the Trump-hostile FBI and Trump-deranged media.

Clinton and corrupt DOJ insiders who trucked in her ruse should have served time in prison. With many DOJ agents openly hostile to Republicans, Trump, and the fair and equal application of the law, that necessary comeuppance never came, even though Special Counsel John Durham laid out chapter and verse their crimes of commission and omission. But with Gaetz as Attorney General (AG), the possibility of prosecution for the Russia collusion hoax and other DOJ improprieties, including against himself, had finally arrived, along with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to clean house at a roundly dysfunctional and partisan agency.

Gaetz also exposed the institutional capture of men like former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whether for personal reasons or not. This came back to bite Gaetz when Senate Republicans In Name Only (RINOs)––Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Senator-elect Mike Curtis of Utah––telegraphed to Team Trump they would not confirm Gaetz as AG. Two of the four don’t fear being primaried: Murkowski is one foot out the GOP door, and McConnell is one foot in the grave. But Collins could be targeted. Having previously supported Supreme Court Justice Bret Kavanaugh (also accused of sexual misconduct) and Democrat Merrick Garland, her rejection of Gaetz based on allegations that the DOJ––which has the most to fear should Gaetz become AG––refused to prosecute is a troubling contradiction. The one person Trump could have leveraged was newbie Senator John Curtis, but he didn’t. Maybe the list of closet Gaetz antagonists was lengthier than anyone save McCarthy presumed. Or maybe the DOJ itself had intervened to destroy a man they knew would expose their very dirty laundry.

I fault Trump for failing to use his electoral mandate and renewed institutional power to fight harder for Gaetz or give Gaetz more time to fight for himself. It sets a bad precedent for a Cabinet pick to withdraw his nomination just sixteen days after such a resounding voter mandate. Rather than serving as tasty chum to appease Senate sharks, paving a smoother confirmation path for other controversial nominees, the Gaetz debacle might embolden more defiance from establishment Republicans against other Trump picks.

As flawed as he might be, Mr. Gaetz would have done a world of good cleaning out the corrupt Department of Justice of all the schmucks who enabled the nine-year coup. While success is the best revenge in one’s personal life, I am not so forgiving of people who deeply wound my country. Even with Gaetz now replaced as AG nominee by the serviceable Pam Bondi, there still must be consequences for those who enabled the Russia collusion hoax, the Steele Dossier and its promulgation, the paid State Department censorship exposed by The Twitter Files, the Blinken-led 51-intel-spook election interference scheme, the FISA court lies, and the circumvention of state election laws, lest DOJ Democrats, NeoCons, and Never-Trumpers feel free to do it all again. We need to rip the CIA, NSA, and DOJ––and its subdivision, the FBI––down to the studs and fire or prosecute everyone involved in “The Resistance” (aka “The Insurance Policy”) or Trump’s reelection will be in vain. You don't forgive or “move on” from state-sponsored treason and criminality.

Uniquely free of big-donor constraints and establishment instincts, Matthew Louis Gaetz was perfectly positioned to wage war on the deep state in all its guises. But his arrogant, sloppy, wannabe bro-ness did him in. The country will suffer as Trump struggles to find people as passionate about deep institutional reform. But Trump must assiduously work to discover those persons, lest his agenda is again sabotaged by hostile agents from within.