Matt Gaetz's AG offer is a slap in the face to American women

Anyone paying attention knew that Donald Trump's White House would be full of minions, fanboys and yes men. But Trump's choice of Matt Gaetz as attorney general is an incendiary move that continues to shock — and is a major slap in the face to women.

Gaetz, a 42-year-old congressman from Florida, is one of the most extreme members of the House of Representatives. He is also being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for sex trafficking, an investigation based on allegations that Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl.

The Justice Department also investigated the allegations, but the probe was reportedly closed without charges being filed – and Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.

But just over a year later, Gaetz was named head of the same department.

The move also sends a strong signal that Trump is only interested in revenge against his perceived enemies – and that he is willing to use the dumbest, nastiest and fiercest partisans in America to get his way.

It's not a single series of troubling legal allegations that make Gaetz such an offensive choice, especially for women. The Florida firebrand has made a series of viciously misogynistic comments in which he insulted women advocates for women's rights as fat and ugly and even directed his ire at a young girl (who subsequently raised $700,000 for abortion care ).

He has pushed MAGA's strategy to marginalize female voters, arguing that it helps secure the more important votes of men (“For every Karen we lose, there's a Julio and a Jamal ready to take on the.” MAGA movement,” he told Newsmax, using a derogatory term for middle-aged white women and two stereotypical names for Latino and black men). After a leaked Supreme Court decision suggested the court would overturn Roe v. Wade and women protested for abortion rights, Gaetz tweeted: “Like many of the women rebelling against overturning Roe are overeducated, underpopular millennials who are sad from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with her cats and no bumblebees?”

Additionally, Gaetz is a vocal opponent of abortion rights and supported a bill that would have banned abortions after six weeks. He has supported changes to federal legislation that would allow government funds to be redirected from clinics that provide contraception and other actual health care to religious organizations that offer Bible studies. If he is the attorney general, he will have the power to bring the full weight of the federal government against abortion providers, abortion rights activists, doctors and women seeking abortions.

For example, an Attorney General Gaetz could seek to prosecute adults who help teenagers cross state lines for abortion care. He could target abortion funds and abortion care networks. He could focus on mailing abortion pills or enforce the Comstock Act and criminalize those who mail or receive abortion pills. It also seems likely that he targets LGBTQ people, particularly trans people: He has opposed anti-discrimination laws that would protect LGBTQ people and has mocked trans people for simply existing.

Furthermore, he has never served as a prosecutor or been a judge, making him a rather unsuitable choice for the office of attorney general. His only credentials seem to be that he is a die-hard Trump loyalist and is just as vindictive and toxic as the president-elect.

By electing Gaetz, Trump is also throwing all his campaign promises towards female voters overboard. The Donald Trump, who has vowed to moderate himself on abortion and who has scaled back his blatantly misogynistic statements in 2024, barely saw the ink dry on the ballots when he made this 180-degree turn and a He chose a man – from a sea of ​​majority male and almost entirely white Cabinet members – who has spent his career puffing himself up while demeaning and insulting women.

His appointment is certainly about Trump's desire to establish a loyalist above all else. But it is also a prediction of what is to come: a government that directly attacks women and our rights and, at best, simply deems women so completely unimportant that it gives enormous power over our lives to the men who degrade and detest us becomes.