But historical figures we now consider heroes were strange in ways that might now make them targets for the online mob, maybe even cancelation.
Sir Isaac Newton proclaimed he was proud to die a virgin. Bizarre! Tragic, even if you ask me. Howard Hughes revolutionized air travel and then became a bizarre recluse pissing in milk bottles. Cancel that weirdo! Put him on Zoloft and wheel him into the corner. We are now routinely told to wash our hands, but Ignaz Semmelweis was mocked, jailed, and killed for telling us to do just that. Yet he is revered by modern-day nerds for discovering germ theory. The brightest among us are often appreciated only after the rest of us catch up. Sometimes they even have to die first, like accused witches.
Exceptional oddities must be husbanded in the service of our country. We need America’s Geek Squad to beat the rest of the world. They’ve done it in business. Why not politics? Is that their last frontier?
Canceling our nerds and misfits gives them little incentive to contribute. Most aren’t motivated by money. Certainly, the ones I’ll discuss later aren’t. No wonder so many of them are trying to build rockets to leave us behind—or build web pages to find girls seeking expensive handbags. They’re different. God love them, and especially forgive them. I sure have.
“You must fire your legislative correspondent,” my father said. My father had never given me human resources advice before. We had served in the Florida Legislature together. At times we famously disagreed, but we always knew our unbreakable bond meant we had the rest of the Florida establishment surrounded. “Lots of people are calling me,” he reported honestly, earnestly.
I barely knew my new legislative correspondent. I had intended to hire someone else for the position—someone I knew. But Devin Murphy asked if he could submit a writing sample to compete for any open job. It was brilliant prose, so he started three days later. He was paid $33,000 base salary and has opposed every salary increase he’s earned over three years. A serious legislative office cannot pay its best people unfair wages, even if they would gladly accept them. Reluctantly he took the money—and then bought his subordinates suits because he believed in them, and in the mission.
The smart among us are motivated by being around beauty—and being around Firebrands. Excellence loves competent company.
When I assigned the objective to assemble legislative research on the corruption of Hillary Clinton, Devin partially crowdsourced it—on Reddit. Reddit was castigated as a white supremacy playground. Ironically, following the riots over the killing of George Floyd, Reddit’s cofounder resigned from the board, demanding a black man replace him. If you can’t beat the platform, you can at least try to outdo its virtue signaling.
I never considered firing Devin—not for a second. If my team makes mistakes, I want it to be because they are trying to learn too much, seek too many perspectives. Making the same mistakes repeatedly is one thing, but we seek to make bold, new, fresh, exciting mistakes and to learn from them. Fail fast! We aren’t afraid of information—only incompetence. Laziness and acceptance of what passes for an acceptable status quo are more unacceptable to me than unorthodoxy is. Devin Murphy is a fantastic member of our team and now serves as my legislative director. He wasn’t the last hiring risk I took.
The American Conservative’s Curt Mills put it plainly. I’ve made “some maverick personnel choices.” Curt’s report was accurate:
Darren J. Beattie…was fired from the White House last summer to the consternation of many Trump loyalists. His transgression? Beattie spoke on the same panel as Peter Brimelow, an immigration restrictionist writer with deep ties to the American elite from his days as a financial journalist. Brimelow, who is most notably friends with Lawrence Kudlow, the White House economic point man and former CNBC anchor, has been frequently described as a white nationalist (Brimelow denies the charge). Beattie says he had never met Brimelow before that day. By hiring Beattie, Gaetz drew a line in the sand. Games of guilt by association have to stop. “Darren Beattie did nothing wrong,” Gaetz told me.
I’m proud Darren has worked with our team. Not many PhDs serve Congress. We need more brilliant, strange minds. After all, our country was founded by them and will be maintained by them. The People’s House gets what it pays for, which usually isn’t much. I get briefings at 3:00 AM I didn’t ask for, research from the corners of the internet some are scared to access, and talent from the places others wouldn’t look. The best people must be inspired and honed, not just bought or rented. You can’t afford them if they haven’t already invested in you. Our movement deserves no less than dedicated patriots—and leaders who will admire those patriots’ best and improve their worst. I’ll never be too woke to forgive.
The media will never forgive me for bringing conservative investor Charles Johnson to President Trump’s first State of the Union. I seek neither forgiveness nor permission from the Fake News.
I was supposed to bring my father. He had bronchitis and had to bail at the last minute. Word got out among the Florida Delegation that I had an available ticket. A colleague asked me to accommodate one of his supporters. It was Charles. We had only spent a few minutes together, but the dude is clearly brilliant and interesting, so I was happy to oblige. I’m a giver.
When the Daily Beast called asking whether I had invited Charles, it seemed routine—like they were checking who everyone’s plus-one had been. I later learned that Charles had said some very terrible things, which today he deeply regrets and do not reflect the person he has grown into. Growth is a good thing for all of us. When they called him a Holocaust denier, I was ready to join the
