Here’s the Marjorie and Matt Show
Don’t Miss Their Tour
The latest darlings of the Republican Party are a congressman ensnared in an investigation into his role in a child sex ring and a congresswoman who believes wild fires in California are part of a Jewish plot and they are teaming up to lead a series of “America First” rallies. Jeesh.
And then you have a group of old, white conservative men, today’s version of “Deadheads,” who have been termed “Front Row Joes” as while they can’t follow the Grateful Dead, they do travel around the country to cheer wildly at rallies for the ex-president who has convinced millions that he is the rightful president while his rants have led many to refuse to get vaccinated for COVID-19 because the program is a plot to control America even while the Delta variant of COVID is charging headland into the heartland.
So Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. R-Ga., and Rep. Matt Gaetz. R-Fla., are the latest comedy team, rivaling Abbott and Costello, the Two Stooges and Laurel and Hardy, even though that is a slight against the greatest comedy teams ever. Greene and Gaetz are about as funny as climate change flooding in Germany, genocide in Myanmar and the Nazi anschluss.
But what would you expect from two of the biggest and most enduring fans of an ex-president who got laughs from ridiculing people with differences and inhabitants of “shit hole” countries. Greene and Gaetz are as likeable as Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Paris Hilton, Snookie, O.J. Simpson, Jerry Sandusky, Charlie Sheen and Kris Jenner, rolled into one gelatinous ball of sludge. Gaetz makes Joe McCarthy, Xerxes of Persia, The Joker and Lex Luthor look positively lovely.
Just to remind you, Gaetz is under investigation by the Justice Department into whether the congressman had sex with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him. Gaetz, who insists on his innocence in this and any and all other allegations, has hired as his lawyer, criminal defense attorney Marc Fernich, who lists on his website clients that include convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Mexican drug lord El Chapo, former mobster John A. “Junior” Gotti, and “alleged propagandist in Nazi Hungary” Ferenc Koreh. Quite impressive but I wonder why he didn’t ask for Judas Iscariat to represent him.
And then there is Greene, who has promoted numerous far-right, white supremacist, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories including the white genocide conspiracy theory, QAnon, and Pizzagate, as well as other disproven conspiracy theories, such as false school mass shootings, the Clinton body count, and those related to 9/11. Before running for Congress, she advocated for executing prominent Democratic politicians. As a congresswoman, she equated the Democratic Party with Nazis and compared COVID-19 safety measures to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Now that’s a great, great stateswoman.
Greene and Gaetz are two of the loudest voices backing the ex-president’s lies about massive voter fraud along with trying to downplay the foiled insurrection at the Capitol by Trumpers.
In May, Gaetz and Greene started their “America First” tour with a rally that was greeted with great applause from a packed ballroom at The Villages, a huge retirement community in Florida.
This past Saturday, the Greene-Gaetz show performed outside Riverside, Calif., city hall after they were told they could not hold their duet in the cities of Anaheim, Laguna Hills and Riverside. They’ve also rolled out their act in Mesa, Ariz., the hottest point in the country promoting the ex-president’s false election claims.
And then there are the “Front Row Joes” who continue to hopscotch the country to get the best seats to hear the ex-president spew out his special form of venom, which by now is sounding like a very bad recording from Paul Anka or The Archies. You watch the crowds cheer like rabid dogs at trump rallies, eating up every word of their faux messiah and going willingly along a path that could lead to the end of our nation. And in front are the “Front Row Joes.”
Created by Randal Thom, 60, a Minnesota man who died in a car crash in October, the Front Row Joe Facebook page says it is a “nationwide movement that believes to support our President we need to get off the couches. We work to support our President.
The Facebook page said that Thom “adored our POTUS and was known personally by the secret service” and had attended more than 60 rallies. Thom raised Siberian Huskies including one he had named “Donald Trump.” The Facebook page said that “thousands flocked to Randall’s Facebook to mourn the loss of their friend who ‘could only be described as loving.’”
So Thom won’t be trucking with the Dead anymore but his memory lingers among the many Front Row Joes who can’t wait for the next glimpse and to cheer on their savior. Oy.