Matt Gaetz

Matt Gaetz (born May 7, 1982, Hollywood, Florida, U.S.) is a lawyer and a congressman representing Florida’s 1st congressional district (2017– ). He is one of the most outspoken ultraconservative members of his party, has been a staunch defender of former U.S. president Donald Trump, and played a pivotal role in the ouster of Kevin McCarthy from his role as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Early life

Gaetz was born in Hollywood, Florida, in 1982 to Victoria and Don Gaetz. His father was a hospital administrator who launched a for-profit hospice company in 1983. (He would later become a major figure in Florida politics, serving in the state senate from 2006 to 2016 and working as the chamber’s president from 2012 to 2014.) Matt Gaetz graduated from Florida State University with a bachelor’s degree in 2003, then earned a law degree from the College of William & Mary in Virginia in 2007.

Entry into politics

After working for several years at a law firm in northwest Florida, Gaetz made his first foray into politics in 2010 when, at age 27, he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives. He won and ran again, unopposed, in 2012 and 2014. During his time in the legislature, he sponsored a bill to accelerate the executions of inmates on Florida’s death row and pushed to end a requirement that gasoline suppliers provide ethanol-blended fuel. He was also one of only two legislators who opposed a bill criminalizing revenge porn. The bill’s sponsor said that Gaetz’s position was that former lovers should be able to use photos however they want.

Meanwhile, he developed a reputation in the statehouse for partying (“I’m a legislator, not a monk,” he once joked), for his aggressiveness in committee hearings, and for his lively presence on the social media platform Twitter (now X). In 2013 The Miami Herald described his account as “part commentary, part GOP and FSU fanboy, and part insult comic.”

Representative Gaetz

In 2016 Gaetz ran to represent Florida’s 1st congressional district, which encompasses Pensacola and the surrounding area, in the U.S. House of Representatives, after the incumbent, Jeff Miller, announced that he would not seek reelection. Gaetz won a seven-way primary and then defeated a Democratic opponent that November. In the House, he has staked out a number of far-right positions. He has opposed sanctuary cities (in line with his claim on the campaign trail that undocumented immigrants were “sucking us dry”), gun restrictions, and abortion and the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Gaetz has long been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump; in 2018 GQ called him “the Trumpiest Congressman in Trump’s Washington.” However, he has occasionally partnered with Democrats, including to promote the legalization of marijuana, and he is an ardent defender of animal rights. But more than his legislative record, Gaetz has drawn attention for his incendiary actions and rhetoric. He has identified himself as an “admirer” of his party’s ultraconservative Freedom Caucus.

Controversy

In 2018 he brought a right-wing activist who had questioned whether six million Jews actually died in the Holocaust to the State of the Union address. In a 2019 hearing about gun control, he claimed that a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border would save more lives than the policies in question, and, when two fathers whose children were murdered in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting objected, he tried to have them thrown out. That same year Gaetz led a group of roughly two dozen House members in storming a closed-door deposition of a Defense Department official, during the course of Trump’s first impeachment inquiry. The Capitol Police were consulted when they refused to leave. “It was closest thing I’ve seen around here to mass civil unrest as a member of Congress,” one person in the room told CNN. And after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Gaetz blamed antifa, saying that its members had marched on the building while “masquerading as Trump supporters.”

In 2021 the Justice Department investigated accusations that Gaetz had had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and had paid for the teenager to travel with him. The Daily Beast reported that one of Gaetz’s associates affirmed this in a confession letter. The associate also said that Gaetz had paid for sex with other women, according to the website. By February 2023, the investigation had been dropped. Prosecutors said they were concerned about the credibility of two key witnesses.

Several months later, the House Committee on Ethics reopened a separate investigation into accusations about Gaetz’s sexual misconduct and other criminal behavior, which it had suspended while the Justice Department was conducting its probe. Throughout the turmoil, Gaetz resisted calls, including some made by fellow Republican legislators, for him to resign.

The congressman versus the speaker

In the fall of 2023, Gaetz and Freedom Caucus members clashed with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, as McCarthy tried to work with Democrats to pass legislation to continue funding the government. Gaetz ultimately led a successful charge to oust McCarthy as speaker—marking the first time a speaker had ever been voted out. McCarthy claimed Gaetz was acting on a personal vendetta because McCarthy had not quashed the investigation by the House Ethics Committee. Gaetz’s opposition to McCarthy put him at odds with another firebrand and conservative backer of Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

“Has there been a politician both as broadly despised, including in his own party, and yet as improbably effective as Matt Gaetz?” Benjamin Wallace-Wells asked in The New Yorker following McCarthy’s ouster. He pointed out that Gaetz had carried out his plan with the support of only seven other House Republicans out of 221. Gaetz was later asked on NBC’s Meet the Press whether his actions would seem worth it if he wound up losing his legislative seat as a result. “Absolutely,” Gaetz replied. “Look, I am here to fight for my constituents. And I’m here to ensure that America is not on a path to financial ruin.”

In 2024 Gaetz continued his support for Trump and the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. When Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky announced his plans to step down from his leadership position after the November elections, Gaetz took to social media to announce: “We’ve now 86’d: McCarthy, McDaniel, McConnell,” in a reference that included Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who had announced she was stepping down. “Better days are ahead for the Republican Party.”