Republican Congresswoman Madison Cawthorn is returning after spending a week as a punching bag in the press.
Mr. Cawthorn has been the subject of several recent salacious stories, including airport security finding a gun in his bag for the second time, his second traffic stop while driving without a license, images of him partying in women’s lingerie and with another man touching his crotch. .
Now, Mr. Cawthorn claims that the “RINOs” (Republicans in name only) are engaged in a coordinated smear campaign to hurt his re-election chances.
“We see through that, RINO,” Cawthorn wrote on Twitter, sharing an image from an Epoch Times story detailing his claims of a “drip campaign.”
“They’re going to release an attack item every day or two just to try and kill us with a kill per 1,000 cuts, and that’s really their main strategy,” Cawthorn said in an April 26 statement on Instagram.
Commentators on social media have theorized that Mr Cawthorn may be the victim of targeted attacks due to his outspoken criticism of his colleague’s personal life and claimed earlier this year that he has been invited to “orgies” by veteran politicians.
“The sexual perversion that happens in Washington… being a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 or 70 years old… [you] look at all these people, many of them that I have admired throughout my life, I have always paid attention to politics,” he said during a podcast interview.
“Then all of a sudden you’re invited: ‘We’re going to have a sex meeting at one of our houses, you should come.'” … What did you just ask me to go to? And then you realize that they’re asking you to come to an orgy… Some of the people who are leading the movement to try to eliminate addiction in our country, and then you see them do a key cocaine hit right in front of you. And it’s like, this is wild.”
More recently, Cawthorn tweeted that some of his veteran colleagues would never have entered politics if smartphones had existed in their youth.
“A lot of my colleagues wouldn’t be anywhere near politics if they’d grown up with a cell phone in their hands,” he said.
On April 22, politician published a story about photos submitted to the publication showing Mr. Cawthron partying while wearing women’s lingerie. Days later, video surfaced of a male colleague touching Mr Cawthorn’s crotch while the couple sat in a car.
While most Democrats don’t love the MAGA-oriented congressman, who once took a vacation to Adolf Hitler’s “Eagles Nest” fortress, a trip he said was “on his bucket list for a while,” stories about Mr. Cawthorn seem to be destined to erode his credibility not only on the left, but also on the right.
A group called “Fire Madison Cawthorn” used the video as the basis for an ethics complaint it filed with the Congressional Office of Ethics.