A group of MAGA loyalists and wannabe heavy-hitter lawmakers played hooky from the Capitol on Thursday and made their way up to Manhattan to support Donald Trump in court.
While the merry band of court jesters, headlined by Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL), may have been there to demonstrate their personal devotion to the former president and publicly attack the judge on his behalf, sources close to Trump sure don’t seem impressed.
In fact, three well-placed Trumpworld sources who spoke with The Daily Beast all suggested this latest court-crashing contingency did more to embarrass themselves than anything.
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"Morons. All of them. Selfish morons,” one senior GOP aide told The Daily Beast, referring to Boebert, Gaetz, and their fellow travelers, Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Eli Crane (R-AZ), and Bob Good (R-VA).
Not only did this group risk overplaying their hands in Trumpworld through overexposure and gratuitous sycophancy, our sources said, they also opened themselves up to attack by skipping votes on the Hill, effectively leaving the Democrats with a majority for the day.
“You can’t think of a more bozo crew to come through,” said one source close to Trump, requesting anonymity to relay the reaction within the former president’s orbit. “And honestly, if ChatGPT could come up with an F-tier list, that would be it.”
That “F-tier” stands in stark contrast to what this Trumpworld source described as the ex-president’s “first tier” of courthouse guests, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and top vice-presidential contenders such as Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and J.D. Vance (R-OH), who treated the opportunity as an audition of sorts.
Unlike the Thursday cohort of colorful, mostly fringe personalities, the likes of Johnson and Scott traveling up to New York to defend Trump was viewed as a badge of honor within the former president’s circle, these sources all said. Vance used a podium outside the courthouse to rail against “every single person involved in this prosecution,” while Johnson, as the top legislative Republican, decried how Trump was “clearly frustrated” to be “tied up now for the fifth week in this trial that has no merit.”
The Thursday crew didn’t have quite the same gravitas.
Good, in particular, drew the ire of Trumpworld sources for appearing at the Manhattan criminal court. “Some of these people are showing up because they’re disgusted by what’s going on in New York. [But] a lot of them have ulterior motives,” a source close to the Trump family texted The Daily Beast. “Bob Good is a perfect example—he spat in DJT’s face during the primaries and now that he has millions of dollars in negative ads falling on his head in a primary that he’s sure to lose, he’s trying to cozy up to DJT.”
The source continued: “We see you, Bob, and we’re not buying it.”
Good met with Trump prior to the event and talked with him. While he declined to delve into specifics, the House Freedom Caucus chair said it was a “great visit.”
He claimed that despite the optics of being up against a pro-Trump primary challenger—who was also in attendance, riding in Trump’s motorcade to the trial—he wasn’t going for any political reason and just wanted to show his support for the big man.
“This was all about supporting the president,” Good told The Daily Beast. “The Freedom Caucus is the most important relationship for the president in the House, we’re the ones who had his back in his first term, and we’re the ones who will have his back in a second term.”
