The coverage of Rep. Richard Hudson needing to restrain Rep. Mike Rogers to prevent him from attacking Rep. Matt Gaetz missed something, namely, what happened.
If you watch the video, Rogers approaches Gaetz and his words appear heated. But not only did he never touch Gaetz, he never closed enough distance to touch him even if he wanted to.
If Hudson had never intervened, then the public would never have seen any of this. Possibly he grasped something about the situation on the floor that we could not know at home.
But his over-the-top intervention — did he really need to grab the man’s face? — strikes as the most unwise move in the whole brouhaha.
Daniel J. Flynn, a senior editor of The American Spectator, serves as a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution for the 2024-2025 academic year. His books include Cult City: Harvey Milk, Jim Jones, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco (ISI Books, 2018), Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America (ISI Books, 2011), A Conservative History of the American Left (Crown Forum, 2008), and Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas (Crown Forum, 2004). In 2025, he releases his magnum opus, The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer. He splits time between city Massachusetts and cabin Vermont.
