OPINION: This article contains commentary which may reflect the author’s opinion
A little over a week ago, congressional ethics officials filed a complaint calling for an investigation into GOP Rep Madison Cawthorn following a video showing him having his crotch felt by a male friend.
Reporters were able to obtain video footage showing Cawthorn, 26, in a car with his close friend and his scheduler, Stephen Smith, 23.
Smith recorded Cawthorn in the driver’s seat enunciating an exaggerated accent as he says, ‘I feel the passion and desire and would like to see a naked body beneath my hands.’
In the next shot, the camera pans back to Smith as he says, “Me too” while Cawthorn laughs. The film then shows Smith reaching his hand over Cawthorn’s crotch and into his groin.
Another video came out last week with Cawthorn possibly naked with a friend.
As Kari Donovan reported for Republic Brief last week:
Madison Cawthorn has been under personal attack in North Carolina by a group of determined and vicious political bullies who are trying to intimidate voters, politicians, and even President Donald J. Trump- so they can hold onto their power in the ‘Tar Heel State”.
Almost three weeks of Primary voting is underway in North Carolina, which will end on May 17.
These bizarre attacks are not by the left on the Trump firebrand. They are being done to help very well-connected Republicans in the state who are accustomed to getting their way.
These attacks are coming from Cawthorn’s Republican primary challengers.
Even so, Cawthorn just got some devastating news. Trump isn’t pleased with all of the photos and videos of the young congressman coming out.
The liberal magazine Rolling Stone reported:
Donald Trump helped make Rep. Madison Cawthorn a star of the MAGA movement, but now the lawmaker risks falling out of The Donald’s good graces.
Just a month after he invited Cawthorn to speak at a North Carolina rally, Trump has grown increasingly annoyed and disappointed with his MAGA apprentice. The twice-impeached former president has described some of what he’s heard about Cawthorn’s latest woes — and the online sexual imagery associated with it — as “gross,” according to two sources who’ve heard Trump speak about the matter in the past couple weeks.
Over the past three weeks, someone (or some group) has shared personal videos of Cawthorn engaged goofing in sexually suggestive antics with the apparent aim of raising questions about his sexuality to North Carolina voters. Cawthorn has pushed back by dismissing the videos as years-old attempts at humor, saying their release is part of a plot from “the left.”
Trump, for one, is not impressed. “Trump is not at the point of pulling his endorsement, but the [former] president says he wants to sit back and see what happens,” one of the sources recalls. “But he’s been disappointed with Madison, and thinks he has problems handling his [public relations],” specifically with the video and photos that have surfaced.
The other source said that lately Trump had voiced bewilderment and disgusted confusion about what he’d been told of the flood of leaks and footage, asking at one point in recent days if one of the allegations was that Cawthorn was “fucking his cousin?” (That is not one of the allegations. Instead, Cawthorn’s cousin, who is also on his staff, appears in some of the videos where sex is discussed.)
Former “President Trump is completely weirded out by the allegations,” a third source, a Trump ally, bluntly relayed to Rolling Stone.
Cawthorn isn’t taking it laying down, though.
“President Trump is my friend and the leader of our party. I don’t trust anonymous sources and nameless accusations. The fake news attacks MAGA warriors every single day. Their lies won’t distract me from fighting for an America First agenda in Congress,” the congressman told Rolling Stone in a statement he sent to the mag.
Cawthorn does need to “get his act together,” as the source interpreted Trump’s question about Cawthorn’s cousin, but he has “good” insights and has relayed the narrative Trump wanted about the 2020 election.
The endorsement of Cawthorn is safe at the moment. However, his political future will rest in the hands of a group noted for being unpredictable throughout Republican primaries and in the months leading up to the midterms.
The Stone did report this, though:
“Cawthorn also ran afoul of much of MAGAworld when he endorsed Josh Mandel in Ohio’s Republican Senate primary. That put Cawthorn on the wrong side of the former president’s feud with the more mainstream conservative Club for Growth and its president, David McIntosh, who served as one of Mandel’s main backers.”
Anyone even remotely anticipating running for office, does really need to keep their nose clean.
Cawthorn may not have had political aspirations until he decided to run, so it’s easy to understand a person of his age and background acting out as he did, but now it’s all catching up and giving his political enemies ammunition to use against him.
What can we say but, welcome to the big league. We’ll see if he can weather the storm.
Source: The Republic Brief