Democrat Politics

Gonzales’ interview on CNN infuriated members of the House Freedom Caucus, causing one to endorse his primary opponent.

By Matthew Choi, The Texas Tribune

U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, ripped into his party’s right flank for voting against billions in foreign aid for U.S. allies last week, castigating his ultraconservative peers as “scumbags” and klansmen.

“These people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they’re walking around with white hoods in the daytime,” Gonzales told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview Sunday. “It didn’t surprise me that some of these folks voted against aid to Israel.”

Gonazales, a rare flame-throwing centrist who is battling it out against YouTube gun enthusiast Brandon Herrera in the first serious primary challenge, singled out two sitting Republicans by name who have endorsed against him.

“It’s my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags like [Florida Congressman] Matt Gaetz. He paid minors to have sex with them at drunk parties,” Gonzales said, before calling out Rep. Bob Good for earlier this month endorsing Herrera, whom he called a “known neo-Nazi.”

Federal prosecutors declined to charge Gaetz after investigating allegations of sex trafficking, though the House Ethics Committee is continuing to investigate the matter.

Gonzales made the remarks in reaction to several Republican members voting against their party’s leadership on Saturday on military and civilian aid packages for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The hardline House Freedom Caucus asserted Congress should not pass the bills, which would include over $90 billion in assistance to the U.S. allies, before more securing aggressive measures on the U.S.-Mexico border. The foreign aid packages passed the House with large bipartisan support.

Gonzales has a history of clashing with the right wing of the House Republican conference. He criticized hardline border proposals by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, as anti-American and un-Christian and was the only Republican to vote against a set of rules for the House negotiated between former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and hardline Republicans. Roy’s border bill eventually became a foundation for sweeping border security legislation the House passed with full Republican support last year.

Gonzales’ attack on Good, who is the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, attracted swift rebuttal from the group’s members. U.S. Rep. Eli Crane, R-Arizona, said on social media it was “pathetic” to “insinuate that other members are klansmen.” Crane endorsed Herrera’s run in the same post.

“It is not surprising that one of the most liberal RINOs in Congress, who has egregiously fought against real border security, and votes like a Democrat, would also resort to the Democrat playbook in screaming ‘racism’ against those exposing him,” Good said in a statement. “Thankfully, the good people of the Texas 23rd District have the opportunity to vote for change and an America First patriot, in Brandon Herrera.”

Herrera said Gonzales’ comments were an act of desperation as he gains momentum.

“This is the death spiral ladies and gentlemen,” Herrera said on social media.

Gaetz denied Gonzales’ claims about him as “lies,” saying on social media that “one of the final phases a politician goes through prior to defeat.”

Gaetz supported Herrera before the primary election, appearing at a campaign rally with him in San Antonio in March.

Roy, who also represents parts of San Antonio and has previously kept any personal animus out of the public eye, railed against Gonzales in a Tuesday radio interview in San Antonio.

“I’m being attacked. Conservatives are being attacked,” Roy said on KTSA. “Bob Good, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, is being attacked by Tony. He said that he’s a Klansman. Yeah, I cannot tolerate what’s happening to the people that I think are standing up for this country.”

The Texas Republican Party censured Gonzales last year, citing his opposition to Roy’s border bill and the rules package, as well as his support for gun safety legislation after the Robb Elementary shooting in his district. The party also cited his support for legislation protecting same-sex marriage.

The censure invited a lively, five-way primary field, including Herrera and Julie Clark, the former Medina County GOP chair who started the censure motion. Backed by an army of online fans donating small-dollar donations, Herrera was able to secure a place against Gonzales in the runoff, which will be on May 28.

Attacking a fellow Republican member, including endorsing a primary challenger, was historically rare in the party. Gaetz’s support for Herrera was a provocative move, but the censure motion from the Texas GOP gave some cover for other Republicans to endorse Gonzales’ challengers.

Herrera has disquieted many of his fellow Republicans for his edgy humor on his YouTube channel and podcast appearances. He has made quips about veteran suicide, the Holocaust and child abuse that many moderate Republicans viewed as flippant.

He has defended his comments as being in jest to lighten heavy topics. He says in one video he’s “not really a big fan of fascism.”

Despite the pile ons from the right, Gonzales remains a competitive candidate with a formidable fundraising operation. He raised more than twice as much as Herrera in the first quarter of the year and maintains strong relationships with Republican leadership, corporate interests, moderate Republican donors and bipartisan interest groups. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which supports members of both parties to advance Israel-related issues, has steadily supported Gonzales.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, also backs Gonzales. He traveled to San Antonio on Tuesday to fundraise for him.

Roy criticized Johnson for passing the foreign aid bills without securing more for the border — a move Roy viewed as a betrayal. He said the speaker campaigning for Gonzales rubbed salt into the wound.

“To have the speaker be in San Antonio, campaigning for Tony … when we had them both voting to fund this atrocity this last weekend. I’m just beside myself that that’s where things are,” Roy said on KTSA.

Gonzales has also shown a willingness to entertain more partisan priorities, including the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Gonzales helped U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, garner support for her move to impeach the secretary. The Democrat-controlled Senate voted to dismiss the impeachment.

“Tony Gonzales openly blasts fellow Republicans as “scumbags” and klansmen” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Campaign Action

www.patreon.com/keefknight

www.keithknightart.com

Things got spicy at a Republican county campaign event in Perryville, Missouri, last Friday, in an expletive-filled confrontation that was caught on video.

State Sen. Denny Hoskins  cursed out Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, calling him “chicken shit” numerous times, as well as “a fucking coward.”

Hoskins is running for Ashcroft’s office in the GOP primary, and is also a member of the extremist Missouri Freedom Caucus. In a post on X, Hoskins said the incident took place after Ashcroft finished a speech at the event. According to Hoskins, Ashcroft pointed his finger in Hoskins’ wife’s face and “barked off to her.” A spokesperson for Ashcroft’s campaign denied it and told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Hoskins “just flew off the handle for no reason.”

As Donald Trump’s campaigning is confined to a Manhattan courtroom, the never-Trump political group Republican Voters Against Trump launched a new six-figure ad campaign Monday designed to highlight the 88 felony charges lodged against him.

The ad, which will air nationally on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and “Fox & Friends” and run digitally in blue wall swing states, uses hidden-camera footage to follow the travails of a job applicant who is routinely rejected by potential employers as he reveals that he is “currently facing 88 felonies.”

“Do you all take people that have been found liable for sexual assault?” he asks one potential employer.

Trump’s trial is putting journalism to the test

Will the media meet the moment?

Gavin Newsom targets another two states for GOP’s draconian abortion laws

This is how you make them pay.

Cartoon: Gag order

Can he be stopped?

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke with alleged conman and former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon on his “War Room” show Monday. The interview was what anthropologists might call … bananas. 

Greene, who is hopping mad about everything, always, is almost incoherently angry that over the weekend, Congress finally passed long-delayed foreign aid funding for our allies in Ukraine. Greene characterized sending aid to Ukraine as throwing good money after bad.

“It doesn’t guarantee a Ukrainian victory because everyone knows they’re going to lose eventually. It just is a matter of when,” she whined.

Bannon and Greene then spent the rest of the interview accusing House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican supporters of not being MAGA enough. Greene seems to talk only with people who agree with her.

I’ve not seen people this angry since November of 2020. I mean, they are off the charts, off the charts, angry …They’re angry on a whole ‘nother level. And here’s what really worries me. They’re done with the Republican Party. They are absolutely done with Republican leadership. Like Mike Johnson, who totally sold us out to the Democrats, would join the “uniparty” faster than anyone we’ve ever seen in history, and literally made a night and day change in a matter of months, betrayed everyone, betrayed the entire Republican Party, betrayed Republican voters, betrayed the Republican conference. And voters are so angry this time that I’m really worried. I am really worried. They’re so angry. They’re not going to give us the majority back in 2025.

They watched from the courtroom or via closed-circuit television in an overflow room — roughly 140 reporters, most with laptops or other silenced electronic devices, serving up news at its most elemental and in rapid-fire fashion.

There were utterances posted a few seconds after they left a lawyer’s mouth. Observations on how Donald Trump is reacting. Tidbits on what testimony is causing jurors to scribble notes.

The Senate is finally set to pass Ukraine aid, with the first procedural vote Tuesday afternoon and final passage expected as soon as Tuesday night. Now that Republicans are forced to do the right thing, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham has found a way to justify his previous monthslong blockade of the aid package.

“There’s a loan component to it. This would not have passed without President Trump,” Graham said on Fox News Sunday. “Trump has created a loan component to this package that gives us leverage down the road.” “His idea of making some of the aid a loan, not a grant, was really a turning point in the whole process,” Graham told Axios, in a desperate bid to save face and justify his craven actions on Ukraine aid.

The strange story of Republican Tim Sheehy’s bullet wound just keeps getting stranger.

Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL who is seeking to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in Montana, recently claimed to the Washington Post that he lied to a park ranger when he said he accidentally shot himself in the arm at a national park in 2015.

Instead, Sheehy says, he was shot in Afghanistan three years earlier in a possible episode of friendly fire but never reported the injury. He lied to the ranger, he says, because he feared that telling the truth would somehow spark a military investigation into the original incident overseas.

Of course, these new claims don’t add up either, as this new video from Montana Democrats helpfully illustrates:

x

x
YouTube Video

Cartoon by Clay Jones.

Campaign Action