#MeThree
American Conservative Union chief Matt Schlapp accused of getting handsy with a male, married Herschel Walker campaign aide
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Late last week, rumors emerged on the political internet that on October 19, 2020, Matt Schlapp, husband of Trump advisor Mercedes Schlapp and chair of the American Conservative Union, groped a male Herschel Walker campaign aide.
Roger Sollenberger of The Daily Beast broke the story:
The staffer said the incident occurred the night of Oct. 19, when Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union and lead organizer for the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, “groped” and “fondled” his crotch in his car against his will after buying him drinks at two different bars.
A staffer for Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign has alleged to The Daily Beast that longtime Republican activist Matt Schlapp made “sustained and unwanted and unsolicited” sexual contact with him while the staffer was driving Schlapp back from an Atlanta bar this October.
The staffer said the incident occurred the night of Oct. 19, when Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union and lead organizer for the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, “groped” and “fondled” his crotch in his car against his will after buying him drinks at two different bars.
The staffer described Schlapp, who had traveled to Georgia for a Walker campaign event, as inappropriately and repeatedly intruding into his personal space at the bars. He said he was also keenly aware of his “power dynamic” with Schlapp, widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in national conservative politics.
First, let us express our genuine sympathy for the victim, who, as I understand it on background from a GOP source, is a middle-aged, married man. To be part of the train wreck otherwise known as the Walker campaign is punishment enough for whatever bad karma this man has accumulated in his life as a political operative. Having to drive around town as Matt Schlapp is shaking your dice seems like more than any human, Republican or Democrat, should have to bear.
It sounds ugly and unpleasant: the victim has described it in a video that Newsweek reporter Katherine Fung saw as "scarring" and "humiliating." As he told the story,
Matt Schlapp of the CPAC grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length, and I'm sitting there thinking what the hell is going on, that this person is literally doing this to me.
From the bar to the Hilton Garden Inn, he has his hands on me. And I feel so...dirty. I feel so...dirty. I'm supposed to pick [him]...up in the morning and just pretend like nothing happened. This is what I'm dealing with.
Hoo boy. Can I get a witness?
Schlapp’s attorney says that his client “denies any improper behavior” and that he is “evaluating legal options for response.”
The staffer says, however, that the Walker campaign supported him, which makes them sound more decent than I would have assumed people who work for Herschel Walker are.
Then, there is the self-promoting and unhelpful 23-year-old Christian Walker, a MAGA conservative, religious, has sex with men, doesn’t identify as gay, and has appointed himself the moral arbiter of everyone in his orbit. Christian weighed in on Tik Tok about a fairly common phenomenon: married men who swing with guys. “He loves to get on stage and preach about family values and morality and act like he’s holier than thou,” said Walker, “and he can’t even stay loyal to his wife. Actually, he’s trying to get with me.”
This last, I am not sure I believe.
But me? I’m surprised it has taken this long for Schlapp’s alleged extra-curriculars to see daylight. These rumors—about the specific incident, which, as I understand it, was common knowledge in GOP circles almost as soon as it happened, and about Schlapp liking sex with guys—aren’t new. For over two years, from sources inside the Trump wing of the Republican party, I have heard that Schlapp, who is 55 and the father of five children, is either bisexual or gay.
I cannot overemphasize how rarely gay people lie about something like this and, at the same time, how frequently straight people reflexively dismiss queer gossip out of hand, so I understand if you are now annoyed with me. But, I believe the staffer 100%. Furthermore, I know at least one other person who was the object of a less aggressive come-on, but a come-on all the same, from Schlapp.
But my question is: what does this mean?
It doesn’t necessarily mean that Schlapp is lying to his wife. If it wasn’t already obvious, Christian Walker is a judgy little queer who is justifiably angry at his father, but this does not mean he knows what he is talking about when he dissects adults' lives and loves. Honestly, it would surprise me if Mercedes Schlapp did not know about, or even tacitly condone her husband’s one-night stands. Power couples frequently have as much, or more, going on in a marriage of egos and ambition as they do with sex. Furthermore, how could Mercedes miss her husband’s hijinks? CPAC conferences (and there are now four or five a year around the globe) involve convening thousands of people in hotels, many of whom (take it from me) are extremely good-looking white men who are eying each other constantly.
More importantly, it’s interesting that this news hit the press when it did.
In political life, timing is everything. This incident leaked to the media almost three months after the event happened. And it hit the news towards the end of a week when the GOP leadership might have preferred to publicly and collectively set its hair on fire than have all of us riveted to cable news watching extremists expose the party’s fissures. Yet, according to my sources in GOP circles, quite a few people knew about Schlapp’s assault on the aide the following day.
This incident reminds me of another moment on the extreme right. On the eve of CPAC 2017, Schlapp defenestrated queer, conservative, antisemitic gadfly Milo Yiannopoulos for the sin of suggesting in a video that being sexually molested by a priest could be fun. “In the homosexual world, particularly,” Milo referenced the joy of “relationships between younger boys and older men—the sort of ‘coming of age’ relationships—the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable sort of rock.”
As the right went about canceling Yiannopoulos (who announced in 2021 that he was now “sodomy-free” and no longer gay), one small fact was obscured: that video was not new. Furthermore, he had said almost the same things on Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2016. This evidence had been circulating for months and was then publicized by a small group of anti-gay conservatives who wanted to force Yiannopoulos off the stage at CPAC and out of the MAGA movement.
Similarly, Schlapp’s troubles have the look and feel of a political assassination genre in which he has participated. This makes me wonder whether what we saw in Congress last week has launched the beginning of a significant realignment in which powerful MAGA elements in the party will be exposed and purged by their enemies.
In other words, this may not play out as a gay thing but as a multi-faceted series of cancellations, expulsions, and realignments. L’affaire Schlapp, which has not yet entirely played out, should strike fear into the hearts of other well-known culture warriors in the GOP who have secrets, sexual or otherwise. So I am looking at you, Matt Gaetz. And at you, Lauren Boebert.
Because in today’s Republican party, it isn’t what your enemies know—it’s when they decide to use it.
Short takes:
Katie Porter will run for Senate in 2024, The New Republic’s Tori Otten reports. Porter is running for the Feinstein seat—even though the nonagenarian Senator from California has not yet announced her retirement (maybe she just forgot.?) “Porter’s Senate bid would give Feinstein an opening to retire gracefully, passing the baton to the next generation as Nancy Pelosi did to Hakeem Jeffries,” Otten writes. Hint, hint. (January 10, 2020)
At The Washington Post, historians Christopher McKnight Nichols
and Maxine Wagenhoffer compare Kevin McCarthy’s ordeal last week to the battle for the gavel in 1923. Massachusetts Republican Frederick H. Gillett was nominated nine times before he prevailed, also through making costly rule changes. But those changes were not permanent. “No longer needing the roughly 20 progressive Republican rebels and recalling the pain they had inflicted,” Nichols and Wagenhoffer write, Gillette “and his allies unwound the rule concessions they had made two years earlier. They punished and stripped the remaining insurgents of committee memberships.” (January 9, 2023)
That English teacher in Florida who lives to ban books about race and sexuality? It turns out she is a racist! And a homophobe! (“Really?!” “Yes, really!!!!”) At Popular Information, Judd Legum reveals that students have been complaining about Vicki Baggett for years. Currently, “Baggett is seeking to remove books like When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball from Escambia County libraries, claiming texts that detail historic discrimination amount to `race-baiting,’” Legum writes. “The form Baggett submitted to the school district says When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball "opines prejudice based on race" and is inappropriate for students in any grade.” (January 9, 2023)