The GOP Scandal So Twisted They Can’t Spin It

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the bulwark. This is Will Summer. I'm joined today by Joe

Pertakone. He's the author of our great press pass newsletter on Congress. Today we're going to

talk about Tony Gonzalez, the scandal plagued Republican Congressman who's now announced his

retirement. Joe, what's going on? So Tony Gonzalez and this had been brewing for a while. The

allegations they had an affair with one of his own staffers with a subordinate, which is another

layer of unethical behavior. But then the staffer, she committed suicide. She set herself on

fire, died. More text messages came out in which it was revealed that he was pressuring her and

really pushing her to send illicit photos and really pursuing her aggressively. And he was refusing

to bow out of his race. He was refusing to resign. And then he just came out and he said,

I'm going to be not seeking re-election. This was after his primary,

primary already advanced to a runoff. So now the other Republicans are just going to walk away with it.

But it also kind of shows how far gone things have gotten in politics. Because if you remember

when Paul Ryan was speaker, like not that long ago, like 10 years ago, you had Trent Frank's

from Arizona who he was having trouble conceiving with his wife and therefore started inquiring

and seeking surrogates within Capitol Hill. And he tried to pressure staffers allegedly to

carry his child. And it wasn't just, you know, I want you to be a surrogate allegedly. It was,

I want to do it the old fashioned way with you. And he was forced to resign. And he resigned

from Congress. And this, there's been no pressure on Gonzalez to resign. There's been a few

Republicans, rank and file Republicans. But Mike Johnson hasn't said you need to resign. He hasn't

told him you need to get out of here because he knows that the majority is thin. And he has made

the calculation that he'd rather have a thin majority with scumbags in it than maybe have a more

difficult time for the next few months and not have a horribly unethical scumbag in it. So now

Gonzalez isn't seeking re-election. The whole thing's a mess. And, you know, we've seen him

kind of finally come clean about the affair, though he went further into, you know, insulting a

grieving widower of this woman who he had the affair with, which I think we have a clip of.

This is truly crazy stuff. I mean, he's trying to, this was right after the primary. And so he's

kind of trying, seems like maybe he's trying to kind of clean things up ahead of this run off.

And it really goes off the rails. Sure. Just one thing. One of the things it was relayed was,

you know, what was Miss Santos' last words? And they tried to make it all dramatic.

In the police report, this is specifically from the police report, the female subject with

burn injuries then stated her husband is gay and having an affair with her best friend.

I wonder if that had something to do with her tragic passing.

So that looks like that's like kind of a typical like congressman affair scandal cleanup.

But what drove me crazy about this video was, and currently if I'm wrong Joe, it's sort of

seen like at the moment, he was definitely planning to run still in this runoff.

That he then goes and says, and by the way, a lot of people are blaming me for this woman's

suicide. But if you read the police report, it says she's upset about her husband who was a

strange from her by, I think they were separated at this point. And she tells the cops in her,

essentially dying words, my husband is gay. As everyone looked it up, it's in the police report.

I found the police report. It didn't mention the gay thing as far as I, correct me if I'm wrong.

But I mean, my sense is that that is when Republicans, they were like, he couldn't even pull off

this cleanup thing. He's got to go after the grieving husband. And to be fair, like he doesn't really

have to go right now is what they're saying. They're just like, don't, don't run for

reelection. And he puts, we'll get to this in a second, the guy who's taking his place. But he

puts the, with his scandal, he puts the district at risk. It's about a Republican plus seven district,

which is a comfortable margin. But in a blue wave year, that brings it down within the margin

of error, which means it could go Democratic. So he being scandal plagued running for reelection

would seriously put the seat at risk, would put their very, very dim chances at a majority,

or holding on to it at risk. And so now they're going to take their gamble with this new guy,

Brandon Herrera. Well, you know, before we get to him, and there's a lot to dive in there,

I mean, so the timeline here is so he goes into the runoff at the primary on Tuesday.

He's slightly behind Herrera. Do you think that he was still intending to run on, let's say,

Wednesday, like it sort of seems that only, or like what happened between the point where he comes

out and does this apology and then his resignation? So usually when somebody's being very defiant

about whether or not they're going to not run again, what's happening behind the scenes is

either a pressure campaign, like you need to get out, and then they go, well, so what,

I can win anyway. And then they realize, oh no, I'm not in the very, like, comfortable district

that I used to be in. So I'm going to need lots of money, money that I don't have. And now,

because of the scandal, don't have the ability to fundraise on my own. And so that help that would

come from the campaign committees, like the NRCC, potentially there's a threat, we're not going

to help you out. And therefore, we're going to not care about your district and we're going to

dedicate our resources elsewhere. You see this all the time. And so those factors that pile up,

or he might have reliable, deep pocket donors who he typically relies on in each cycle,

he could have been communicated to by them that they're not going to chip in because, you know,

can't have a man of ill repute running with their money, unless he's running for president,

of course. And then, like, all of those factors, and then he decides, I'm not going to win this

thing. It's not worth it. I can leave intact, go back to doing whatever my previous career was,

maybe in launch a podcast, who knows, like they all have all these options now. And

in very quick amount of time, it was about a 24-hour period before where he thought he was

going full steam to the runoff to all of a sudden saying, no, I'm done.

That makes a lot of sense. Once you hit the point where it's like, oh jeez, you know, I'm second

place. I mean, just right before we go to Brandon Herrera, I mean, just to underline,

I mean, this was a truly twisted scandal. You're talking a little about the text messages that

emerged. Yeah, him pressuring her to send photos and things like that, like,

people being able to see the evidence, I believe this is a daily mail that got their hands on these

text messages, like being able to see in real time. And at this point, like he had not addressed it,

he had not acknowledged it. And then, of course, you saw in his radio interview where he says,

well, I look forward to the ethics committee taking this on. He could have said that at any point.

He could have said, oh, I welcome an ethics investigation. He didn't do that. So he's doing it now,

in which there's a finite time left on the congressional calendar. Ethics committees,

investigations don't continue when someone's no longer in Congress. They move at a glacial pace.

Everybody knows that. They also don't inflict punishments other than like a strongly worded letter

of admonishment when things do happen. And so him saying now that he welcomes an ethics investigation,

it might sound like he's owning up to something to like a person who doesn't understand the

inner workings of Congress. But it really is just him being like, yeah, I'm going to be out the

door soon. So it doesn't matter to everyone. So this means the Brandon Herrera, the guy who was

slightly beat him in the primary was headed to a runoff with him. He's going to win the Republican

nomination. We'll see if he gets to Congress. I mean, tell me about him. What's his story? Is

this guy? Does he have his own issues? He does. They're not. Bit of a Hitler thing. Yeah,

not none of the like staffer, a fair suicide angle that Gonzalez has. He looks

crazily like comedian Matt Berry. So there's potential for SNL shenanigans there. So good for him.

What might people remember Matt Berry from? Uh, what we do in the shadows. I think someone

summoned a breakfast burrito. Carthamorengi's dark place. It's me, Jack. I'm in a dead end.

I've been calling it by some cavalry. I think I can take them. Yeah, he's on one of the great

episodes of community for I am a grifter. And this is grifting one I want, which a show which is

very good, but like has a lot of parallels to Capitol oil. I'll just say that. That's one to

explore. Yes. Yeah. So, so, so yeah. So, so what's his background? He's a big gun guy, right?

Yeah. And, you know, he had a very swift backing from some of the like freedom, the freedom

caucus's political action arm, which is like who they endorse and who they back. They jumped

on it really quick. They said, we're backing Brandon Herrera. Um, get Gonzalez out of here because

Gonzalez ideologically was just like a regular Republican in the house. He's not like a freedom

caucus guy. And so they seized on that. Um, and so he had that very like right wing backing.

And to say that like the median Republican has shifted very much to the right in recent years.

He's even way further to the right of that. And he collects books, which I think we also have

some great points. Um, that's my copy. At my house next to a bunch of the Germans stick grenades.

I got a the 1939 edition printed in English just because I thought it was wild.

Then you couldn't buy it on Amazon, but you can buy the Communist manifesto in Desk Kapital.

The book he's referring to there is Hitler's mine comp. It strikes me. Look, I'm not saying you

can't have a copy of mine comp. You can't be interested in World War II history. But at the point

where you're somebody say shrine, you got your Hitler book, you've got your World War II Nazi grenades.

It's not a great sign. That's just sort of like a weird thing to be bragging about. And it's just

odd that like he would go do that. And it shows that there's probably a lot more racist skeletons in

his closet. You know, he's also a YouTuber, right? I mean, he's a popular YouTuber. I think under

the name Mr. AK, a gun guy, shotguns are based. Speaking of the sort of the Hitler aspect of it,

he at one point, there was an article in the Washington Post where he had like an old Nazi gun,

and he called it a ghetto blaster. He said, there's the original ghetto blaster. The idea of

like the Jewish ghetto. I guess overall, it's it's there's a lot of like kind of weird stuff going

on in this guy's background too. So if you look at this Tony Gonzalez race and you think,

you know, oh, we're, you know, there's no more scale to come from this district. It kind of seems

like that's not the case. Yeah, you're starting to see Democrats and the opposition research groups

roll out the Oppo book on him, which usually happens in somebody finally emerges as a nominee or

a front runner in this case where they pull out clips like this. You're going to find out a lot

more because like when there's little things like this, you're noticing immediately there's going to

be a long history of very similar behavior. There's probably a lot worse than the bad stuff we've

already seen. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of footage. I mean, look, this guy's been endorsed by

the likes of Kyle Rittenhouse, who is helping him campaign ahead of the primary. So it's very much

this kind of gun guy culture. Yeah. So Joe, what should we, you know, just wrap up here? What should we

be looking for out of this race? I mean, our Democrats, who's, you know, our Democrats kind of

looking to take this seat? They have like so many target districts right now, and they have, they

just added more on what they call their red to blue districts, which is like where they want to flip

them. I guarantee that they're paying a lot more attention to this. And you can see it by like when

they roll out an Oppo book on a race, like if a Republican runs in like a Republican plus 30

district or where I grew up, a Democrat plus 30 district, there's not a deep opposition research book

on them because there's not a lot to be gated by dedicating those research resources to digging into

that candidate because they're guaranteed to win. The fact that people are already digging into

this random new person who's running in this race shows that like there's, there's some money,

there's some financial investment in trying to unseat him. So I'd expect Democrats to start

taking a closer look at this, especially as they look at a lot of other seats in Texas that they

definitely want to flip. All right. Well, this has been kind of the end of the end of the end of

the scandal plagued a political career of Tony Gonzalez. Joe, thank you for joining me. Joe has

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