A sitting Republican congressman tried to shut down his own party’s agenda after a White House insider described him to a former Fox News pundit as “creepy” and “fat” — spurring one columnist to argue “Donald Trump’s unofficial MAGA court” is out of control.
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Salon senior political writer Sophia Tesfaye on Sunday drew her readers’ attention to the feud between unofficial Trump administration insider Alex Bruesewitz and the Republican congressman determined to have him ousted.
“Alex Bruesewitz is not a Cabinet official and holds no Senate-confirmed position,” Tesfaye wrote. “Yet a sitting Republican congressman spent this week threatening to gum up the GOP’s agenda in the House until Bruesewitz is removed from the president’s orbit.”
As Tesfaye tells it, Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) refused to move on a procedural rule tied to Trump’s precious SAVE America Act, a bill experts warn would disenfranchise voters to solve a problem that does not exist.
“The strange part is that Fine had spent months publicly begging Senate Republicans to attach the SAVE America Act to exactly this kind of must-pass legislation,” wrote Tesfaye. “So, when House leadership finally gave him what he’d demanded, he voted no anyway, telling reporters only that he was working out ‘disputes inside the family.'”
According to Tesfaye, “The real family dispute has nothing to do with voter identification.”
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The real problem is that Fine plans to block every rule that reaches the House floor until Bruesewitz is fired, she wrote.
“The feud apparently traces back to Bruesewitz’s appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, where Carlson, discussing Trump’s own endorsement of Fine, described the congressman on air as ‘that creepy fat guy from Florida who endorsed genocide'” she wrote.
“The Florida congressman retaliated on X, accusing Bruesewitz, Carlson and Candace Owens of spreading a ‘mind virus’ that seeks to ‘pit Jews and Christians against each other.'”
Fine’s refusal is more than bad news for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who needs near unanimity to get anything done, it’s bad for the whole MAGA movement, the Salon writer concluded.
“When clout brokers can provoke lawmakers into obstructing their own party’s agenda, the White House is no longer directing the coalition — it is being dragged around by it,” she concluded.
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“It’s clear that Donald Trump’s unofficial MAGA court is becoming a liability.”
