A three-way, a rape, and a videotape

Florida GOP Grotesque Keeps Going

UPDATE 2: It gets worse: Steve Bannon and Cory Lewandowski are advising Ziegler to stay and fight it out, per this NBC piece. Degenerates, one and all.

UPDATE: Christian Ziegler is offering to resign…for $2 million dollars.

It’s hard to imagine that the story of the menage-a-trois that led to allegations of videotaped rape and sexual assault by Christian Ziegler — Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, and his wife Bridget Ziegler — a founder of MILFs for Liberty, eager book-banner, and snippy judge of everyone else’s sexuality — is still with us almost two weeks later.

And yet, here we are.

Both Zieglers remain adamant they won’t resign their jobs, apologize, or take even a shred of accountability or responsibility.

Welcome to the post-shame Republican Party, where even the roaring, transgressive MAGA crowd knows they’re in trouble but are helpless to do anything about it.

Nearly the entire Republican establishment in Florida, from Ron DeSantis on down to local county chairmen, has called on Christian Ziegler to resign. He has steadfastly refused.

This week, in an act that defies imagination in either its tone-deafness or its blazing stupidity, Christian Ziegler compared himself to…wait for it…Donald Trump.

Great play, Christian. Amazing. Let me get this right…

You’re accused of rape and sexual assault, and you’ve admitted you videotaped the crime, and your role model to defend your actions is...Donald Trump? The same Donald Trump who was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll and has been accused by dozens of other women of sexual misconduct?

Is this really the parallel you’re going for?

Don’t you think this is taking the method acting a touch too far, Christian?

As for Bridget Ziegler, the rest of the Sarasota school board begged her to step down this week, and she sat there prim, smug, and prissy. She’s led the hate on LGBT students in Sarasota and beyond, and her sexual affair with another woman has opened the door for the public — including many Republicans — to say, “Enough.”

One audience member came with a perfectly tuned sign; “I’m gay, but you’re a hypocrite.”

It should be noted that Ron DeSantis has removed Democratic elected officials from their offices at the drop of a hat but has yet to request Ziegler step down from the Sarasota School Board or leave the DeSantis-controlled board he put in place to persecute the Walt Disney Corporation. (Of course, DeSantis created that board because they objected to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill written in part by…Bridget Ziegler.)

The continued grotesqueries of this one-time power couple, particularly Christian Ziegler, are too much for even the Florida Republican Party to bear. They know having an accused rapist at the helm of their organization is, even in the Trumpocene Era, what the polling and public relations professionals call “a bad look.” 

They’re trying to remove him, but the power of the Chairman is notable in the Florida GOP, and many are waiting on Trump to pass the word on Ziegler’s fate.

It’s remarkable. Despite knowing what the police report says, despite knowing of the roaring hypocrisy and terrible optics, if Donald Trump blesses Christian Ziegler as head of the Florida GOP, he’ll remain there until the Sun is a burnt cinder.

The Ziegler story is a Florida tale, to be sure, but it’s also a window into a national political party utterly transformed in the era of Donald Trump. 

They play by different moral, social, and political rules. They obsess about the “Never admit, never apologize, always attack” philosophy born from the odious Roy Cohn and his degenerate fop Dollar Store imitator Roger Stone.

Shamelessness is their superpower writ large. Anything can be forgiven if their enemies are upset by their actions. 

As long as non-Trumpers are offended, shocked, sickened, or distraught, everything in service to the great movement to tear down the normie world is worthy of praise.

Their obsession with “how it plays on Twitter” is equally damning; they excuse the worst of their behaviors (even criminal behaviors) by clucking about “owning the libs” and “triggering the cucks.” In 2015 and 2016, many Republicans’ reaction to Trump’s rise and the party’s moral fall was, “LOL, nothing matters.”

The nihilism of that idea allowed a certain ironic detachment from the realities of the man they would all eventually support and what he would do to the party. At the time, only Trump could escape the transgressions and violations that defined him. Over time, more and more elected Republicans have adopted the same extended middle finger to law, norms, and morality.

If you take any small comfort from the seeming immobility of the Zieglers from their positions of public trust, remember: it’s Florida, man.

The rules are very, very different here.