Do we like Matt Gaetz?
Our score: 2 out of 10. Harmful words and votes on LGBTQ+ people, a platform for conspiracy-minded guests, an ethics report he disputes, and very little real good on the record.
Matt Gaetz is a Florida Republican who started in the state legislature and went on to Congress, where he became one of Donald Trump's loudest allies. Even early on he wasn't a one-note culture warrior: as a state legislator he helped rescind Florida's ban on gay adoption, according to LGBTQ Nation. In Congress, though, he built his name as a hard-right disruptor.
His biggest stunt was in October 2023, when he filed a motion to vacate against Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He told reporters McCarthy's “true coalition partner on all things of substance has been the Democrats.” It was the first formal attempt to remove a speaker in over a century, and it worked, which made him famous and very unpopular with his own side.
Then the scandal. In December 2024 the House Ethics Committee released a report saying there was substantial evidence that between 2017 and 2020 he paid women for sex and drugs, and that he had sex with a 17-year-old at a 2017 party. The committee said it found no evidence he knew her age at the time. It also said he tried to deflect and mislead its investigation. Gaetz denies wrongdoing, insists he never had sex with a minor, and went to court to try to block the report. That effort failed.
The criminal side is murkier. The Justice Department investigated alleged sex trafficking and obstruction, and in February 2023 his lawyers said it had finished without charging him. So no court has found against him, and the House committee's findings are a political body's findings, not a verdict. Make of that what you will, but it's fair to say the cloud never lifted.
On the harm test, his record is the problem. LGBTQ Nation reports he voted against the Equality Act and the Respect for Marriage Act, opposes gender-affirming care for minors, and twice called LGBTQ+ people “degenerate”. After he left Congress he took an OAN show, and a Guardian critic said he readily features conspiracy theorists. That's the grievance-and-culture-war lane the harm test is built to flag.
Lately he's been in the headlines for a March 2026 post on X that critics said used trans people as a punchline in a rant about the Iran war. Reports said it got a pasting online, with some replies also raising his departure from Congress ahead of the ethics report. The same month he told CPAC that a ground invasion of Iran would make the country “poorer and less safe”, which is a stance a lot of people, left and right, would agree with.