There aren’t many Conservative talking heads that Fox News won’t associate themselves with. So long as the individual is staunchly pro-Trump and loves Ronald Reagan, their overall standards for who they’ll allow on their shows are strikingly low. But evidently, Matt Gaetz is below them.
Even for a network with standards so low you could trip over them, it seems as though Fox News has unofficially blacklisted the Trump-sycophantic GOP Congressman amid allegations of sex trafficking and statutory rape, after the Florida House Rep. seemingly attempted to rope Fox host Tucker Carlson in on his scandals during his appearance on Carlson’s show last month, according to sources who spoke with The Daily Beast.
It seems as though Gaetz angered the powers that be at Fox when he sat down for an interview with Tucker Carlson last month and appeared to try to rope the host in as an exonerating witness, making Carlson visibly shaken and uncomfortable while on air. Speaking with The Daily Beast, one Fox source said Gaetz was “going to be excommunicado for a while.”
“It’s highly unlikely you’ll see him on again anytime soon,” a network insider told the publication.
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Reports claim Carlson was “livid” over Gaetz trying to rope him in and seemingly implicate him in his numerous scandals during the interview but apparently Fox News is trying to walk the fine line of keeping the scandal-ridden congressman at arm’s length while trying not to anger their viewers who love Gaetz for his undying loyalty to Donald Trump.
But nevertheless, Gaetz hasn’t appeared on the network since that infamously awkward interview last month and his name has scantly been mentioned on the network as a whole as the allegations against him keep getting worse and worse.
Evidently, even Donald Trump himself was critical of Gaetz’s behavior during the Carlson interview, saying “What was he thinking? What the hell was he thinking?” in the days after, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
Another source told the Beast that Trump has privately expressed interest in helping the GOP congressman by labeling the reporting that’s coming out against Gaetz as “fake news,” but phone calls and group messages obtained and reviewed by The Daily Beast appear to show former president and his allies discussing ways to insulate themselves from the GOP lawmaker’s scandals.
“[Matt Gaetz] used to be a useful idiot,” one person involved in those conversations said. “Now, he’s just an idiot to us.”
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
