Fierce Trump defenders including Matt Gaetz make case for him at GOP convention

Some of President Donald Trump’s most ardent defenders inside the Capitol including Rep. Matt Gaetz tore into Democrats at Monday night’s GOP convention – as the Florida Republican said Democrats would invite gang members to live next door. 

Gaetz, a House Judiciary Committee member who ripped former special counsel Robert Mueller about the Steele dossier in 2018, this time trained his fire on Biden and his allies. 

‘They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door. And the defunded police aren’t on their way,’ Gaetz said, in one of several charged lines.

He accused Democrats of ‘blaming our best and allowing society’s worst.’

He ridiculed ‘woketopians’ who he predicted would ‘settle for Biden.’ And he took a dig at Biden running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, bringing up problems with California’s electric grid and saying they shouldn’t send their ‘junior senator’ to be vice president.

‘And Biden knows failure,’ Gaetz continued in his appearance Monday night. ‘His own Defense Secretary said, “Biden has been wrong on every major foreign policy and national security decision for nearly four decades.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz attacked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and ‘socialists’ in his convention remarks

He was referring to a statement in the memoir of former George W. Bush and Barack Obama Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who has stood by the comment more recently. Another Obama defense secretary, former Sen. Chuck Hagel, endorsed Biden last week.  

‘He believes in war without winning, war without end,’ Gaetz said of Biden, who voted for the 2003 Iraq war authorization. He later said he was misled by President Bush.

‘President Trump doesn’t want us in distant deserts. He wants to fight to save America here and now,’ said Gaetz. ‘Settle for Biden – that’s the hashtag promoted by AOC and the socialists,’ he said.

Like Trump, Gaetz ridiculed Biden as someone who would be a puppet for others in the party. 

Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) descends from Air Force One following a trip from Florida, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., March 9, 2020. He went into quarantine after the trip

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio was also set to address the convention

Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., holds up documents detailing President Trump’s plan for dealing with the Coronavirus during a House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing on July 31, 2020 in Washington, DC

‘And they will settle because they know it’ll be like Weekend at Bernie’s—and they’ll be pulling the strings,’ he quipped.

‘But instead of a comedy, it’s a horror movie. They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door. And the defunded police aren’t on their way,’ he said.  Biden himself has rejected calls to defund the police.

‘It’s the only kind of movie they’re making in Hollywood nowadays – that’s if the lights even stay on in California anymore.’

 But Gaetz called Trump a ‘builder’ and ‘a visionary.

‘The mind is as powerful as any brick and mortar…. China can keep making cheap plastic. But we have the ideas. And we will keep making the future,’ he said.  

‘I’m speaking from an auditorium emptier than Joe Biden’s Daily Schedule,’ Gaetz quipped, also mocking Biden for his basement TV appearances.