Donald Trump has few criteria for endorsing a political candidate.
The candidate has to endorse Trump, early and often, and without equivocation or shame, and he or she has to praise Trump early and often, and without equivocation or shame and remain obsequiously loyal to him.
That’s it.
This leaves Trump free to endorse liars, con artists, frauds, freaks, moral degenerates, sexual deviants, and a ragtag collection of imbeciles, incompetents, and ne’er-do-wells.
Many of these characteristics appear to fit Madison Cawthorn, a one-term congressman from North Carolina.
Trump endorsed Cawthorn when he ran for re-election even though the congressman had made a number of mind-numbing statements and done a number of mind-numbing things.
If fact, there is little record of him saying or doing anything that wasn’t mind-numbing in its idiocy.
Cawthorn, who was the youngest member of Congress, said that 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and voted to overturn the results of the election. He then expressed regret about making false claims about the election. He then again raised doubts about the election, saying there would be said “bloodshed” if there were more “stolen” elections.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/12/cawthorn-election-fraud-concerns-458217
Cawthorn was asked on a conservative podcast how politics in Washington D.C. compared with how it appeared on the television program, House of Cards.
“The only thing that isn’t accurate about that show,” Cawthorn said, “is that you could never get a piece of legislation about education passed that quickly.”
Or passed at all.
Cawthorn then continued:
“The sexual perversion that goes on in Washington … being kind of a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 or 70 – [you] look at all these people, a lot of them that I’ve looked up to through my life, I’ve always paid attention to politics. … Then all of a sudden you get invited – ‘We’re going to have a sexual get-together at one of our homes, you should come.’ … What did you just ask me to come to? And then you realize they’re asking you to come to an orgy. … Some of the people leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our country, and then you watch them do a key bump of cocaine right in front of you. And it’s like, this is wild.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/28/politics/madison-cawthorn-orgy-invite-cocaine-claim/index.html
Uh-huh.
Politico reported that Cawthorn’s claims caused an internal uproar at the next meeting of the House Freedom Caucus, a far-right group of GOP congressional members.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/29/cawthorn-orgies-freedom-caucus-00021548
Did I mention that Cawthorn was a member of the House Freedom Caucus?
I didn’t need to, did I?
One Freedom Caucus member, addressing Cawthorn’s quote on condition of anonymity, responded: “You should have to name names if you are going to go make those kinds of brush stroke accusations and impugn the character of people in this institution or … anybody else in this town.”
The House Republican, who said this, insisted on not being identified.
But, Politco then added, that “as aggravated as Cawthorn’s colleagues may be by his salacious tales, they also know that digging more deeply into his stories may cause them more political problems.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/12/cawthorn-election-fraud-concerns-458217
The Washington Post published an article with the headline, “How falsehoods helped propel the career of a new pro-Trump star of the far right.”
The article begins with Cawthorn, then a student at Patrick Henry College, a Christian college in Virginia, giving a testimonial during chapel about a car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. He said that a close friend has crashed the car and fled the scene, leaving him, as he said, to die “in a fiery tomb.” He said was “declared dead.”
The friend, who was driving the car, said Cawthorn’s account was false and that he pulled Cawthorn from the car. Cawthorn, he said, was seriously injured but not “declared dead.”
Cawthorn did not mention that his friend had left him to die in an insurance deposition. Instead, he said, he couldn’t remember anything about the accident. An accident filed by the Florida Highway Patrol described Cawthorn as incapacitated and in critical condition, nor did it say he had been declared dead, The Post reported.
Cawthorn eventually dropped out of college after his grades plummeted.
He said he suffered a brain injury in the accident.
‘I think it slowed my brain down a little bit,” he said. “Made me less intelligent.”
While attending Patrick Henry, Cawthorn, when he wasn’t spouting nonsense at chapel, developed a college-wide reputation for sexual misconduct. More than 150 students signed a letter accusing him of being a sexual predator, the Post reported.
Three years after leaving college, he ran for Congress, hoping to succeed Mark Meadows, a family friend who had resigned from Congress to become President Trump’s chief of staff.
Cawthorn’s campaign video said that he had nominated to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis but that he could not attend the school because of the accident. In reality, the Naval Academy had rejected him before the accident.
Cawthorn won the congressional seat by running what The Post called a smear campaign.
After the 2020 president election, Cawthorn ingratiated himself to President-elect Trump by promoting claims about voting fraud on his Twitter account.
President Trump retweeted, saying, “Thank you Madison!”
Cawthorn also spoke at the January 6, 2021, rally that preceded a mob storming the U.S. Capitol to confront members of Congress who were certifying the election. He praised the crowd for its “courage” to confront the “cowards” in Congress.
While serving his term in Congress, he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia, a “thug.”
In April 2022, he was detained – for the second time in a year — for attempting to bring a loaded gun through the security checkpoint at the Charlotte, N.C., airport. He pleaded guilty in May 2023, was fined, and his firearm was returned.
Cawthorn has been charged twice with driving with a revoked license. In both cases, he was speeding.
Cawthorn was also charged with insider trading and fined for promoting a cryptocurrency that he had a financial stake.
And then there are the college photos of Cawthorn drinking and dressed only in women’s lingerie.
Retiring U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina called Cawthorn “an embarrassment. Others in the North Carolina GOP found an alternative candidate, Chuck Edwards, to run against Cawthorn in the 2022 primary.
Trump endorsed Cawthorn ahead of the primary.
“When Madison was first elected to Congress, he did a great job,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. “Recently, he made some foolish mistakes, which I don’t believe he’ll make again. . . . let’s give Madison a second chance!”
Trump did not specify which of Cawthorn’s “foolish mistakes” he was referring to.
Cawthorn lost in the GOP primary without leaving important information about constituent problems to congressman Edwards,the Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times reported.
He then moved to Florida seeking to rehabilitate his political fortunes.
Good choice.
Any state capable of electing Matt Gaetz, Ted Yoho, and Rick DeSantis is capable of electing Madison Cawthorn.
In his farewell address to Congress, Cawthorn called on men to “reclaim their masculinity.”
A Fox News story did not mention if Cawthorn was wearing women’s lingerie when he made the speech.
