“I knew you were a piece of s–t” is apparently what passes for civil discourse among MAGA’s rejects these days.
Dan Bongino, the recently resigned Deputy FBI Director, and Matt Gaetz, the disgraced ex-congressman whose Attorney General nomination imploded amid a sex scandal, are publicly tearing each other apart on social media.
The carnage, reported by The Daily Beast, is genuinely delicious.
WHAT’S GOING ON: Gaetz, 43, fired the first shot Tuesday morning after Bongino resurfaced on social media following his FBI exit.
The former congressman asked the AI bot Grok to detail Bongino’s trio of failed Congressional runs—twice in Maryland, once in Florida. Petty? Absolutely. Effective? Apparently so.
Bongino, 51, responded with the fury of a man who’s had this bottled up for years: “Maybe if I spent more time at shady parties with monied insiders, I would’ve won. I heard you’d know a bit about that. You’ve always been a d–k, by the way. Grifting off your daddy like a suckling little doggie. When I first met you in the Panhandle, I knew you were a piece of s–t. It’s written all over that phony face of yours.”
Gaetz clapped back with a lengthy, snarky response defending his politician father and claiming he was “the ONLY Republican in Congress who refused lobbyist and PAC donations.” He concluded his post by telling Bongino to “take a chill pill” and linking to a website that sells Ivermectin—with his own discount code. (Of course.)
Bongino then reshared a post reading: “Q: What’s the difference between Matt Gaetz and a bag of dogs–t? A: The bag!”
By early afternoon, Bongino’s response had racked up more than 10,000 likes—ten times what Gaetz’s original jab received. Even in MAGA infighting, there are winners and losers.
WHY IT MATTERS: Both men have considerably more free time than they did a year ago.
Gaetz, accused of paying for sex with an underage girl during his time in office (which he denies), abruptly retired from Congress in November 2024 despite winning re-election.
He now hosts a show on the far-right One America News Network and offers Cameo videos for $200—half the price that a teenage girl says Gaetz paid her to sleep with him in 2017.
Bongino, who reportedly clashed with others in the Trump administration over the handling of the Epstein files, resigned last month. Insiders have described him as the “fall guy” for the administration regarding those files.
BOTTOM LINE: When the MAGA coalition starts cannibalizing itself, the rest of us get to watch two men who rode Trump’s coattails to power—only to flame out spectacularly—call each other pieces of s–t on the internet. It’s not justice, exactly. But it’s something.