In January, I was watching the impeachment trial of Donald Trump after the insurrection of the capital when a certain congressman caught my eye. His name is Madison Cawthorn, he is a congressman from North Carolina and at the age of 25, he is the youngest member of congress since Jed Johnson jr. Even Donald Trump said he was the future of the Republican Party. This fascinated me. My first thought was, “what did he do to get into the House of Representatives at such a young age?” Was he a legacy like Ron Paul or Matt Gaetz or any Kennedy? Did he go to Harvard at the age of 15? Is he a decorated veteran of the U.S. army? Surely this young, vigorous man had some outstanding quality that made people vote for him to be at the capital. So, I did what any researcher would do and looked him up on google. This extensive search led me to his Wikipedia bio and what I found out about him is less than stellar, something that would make you wonder what was his promise to the voters that voted him in?
Madison was a high school football star who worked at chick-fil-a. In 2014, during spring break he and his friends got into a car accident that left him partially paralyzed from the waist down. He claims that this accident had a negative impact on his life. Claiming that he was left for dead by his friend in a fiery blaze. That it messed up his chances of being admitted to the naval academy. While attending Patrick Henry College and majoring in political science, He claimed that the brain injury from the accident caused him to drop out of college after pulling straight D’s in his first semester.
Which doesn’t even make a lick of sense? You don’t need to major in political science to be a politician. Many of our political leaders didn’t major in that. However, the fact that he flunked out of a major involving politics while running for political office is pretty telling, right? That’s like someone practicing law without a license because they already received low marks on the BAR and refused to take it again.
Not only did he flunked out of college, he did not go to learn. At the Patrick Henry college, where he attended in 2016, Cawthorn found himself being the leader of a well-known club in the school called “the douche club”. More than 20 people said that Cawthorn was known for his inappropriate sexual behavior towards women. The earliest allegation goes back to 2014, before Cawthorn even attended the school. A woman claimed that he pressure her to sit on his lap and made her kiss him when she was 17 and he was 19. After this accusation, three more women came forward speaking on his predatory behavior at Patrick Henry College. Cawthorn would take them on these rides called “fun rides” and would make advances towards them. One of his former male acquaintances, said that he bragged about pulling a women into his lap and assaulting her. Two RA’s from the college, put out fliers warning students about Cawthorn and not to ride in his car. Obviously, he has denied most of these claims.
He worked as a staffer in former Congressman Mark Meadows office in 2015-2016, where he claimed to be a full-employee but only worked part-time. He is a business owner of SPQR holding LLC, a real estate investment firm that he launched in 2019, that had no income and he was the only employee. So, how did a subpar small-town high school football player with no college degree or military certification was able to get elected into congress? Through lies and pity.
He ran on a campaign of lies and pity. In a 2020 campaign ad he claimed that his dreams of joining the naval academy and his less than stellar performance at Patrick Henry College were derailed by this accident. He was known locally as the teenage boy who survived this horrible car accident. However most of the claims he made in the ad where exaggerated.
Madison Cawthorn Claims he was left for dead by his best friend in a fiery blaze. He also claimed that he was announced dead on the scene of the accident. So which one is it? Was he left for dead? Or was he mistakenly announced dead on the scene? Truth is, his former friend, his parents, and medical records dismissed these claims. Bradley Ledford, former friend of Madison Cawthorn, stated that he (Ledford) pulled him out of the wreck while Cawthorn proven to be incapacitated that night.
He claimed that the accident ruin his plans of joining the Navy. He claimed that he was accepted into Harvard and Princeton but turned down their offers of admission but that was a lie, he never even applied. However, Cawthorn admitted he was rejected by the naval academy before the accident. He claimed that he was looking into wheelchair racing and was looking to competing in the paralympics but he wasn’t performing on a competition level. Also he blames the brain injury he has as the cause of him flunking out but not the fact that he was trying to chase some tail and publicly outed as a campus creep. It’s also weird how a man who thinks his brain injury made him “less intelligent” thinks he’s the perfect candidate for congress.
Now, I know we should all be looking at this Madison Cawthorn’s journey from car wreckage to the House of Representatives as inspiring but it’s not. He’s nothing to aspire to. This man, other than working in Congressman Meadows’s office part-time (which I don’t even know how he was able to pull that off), was not qualified to hold office. He lied his way into Public Office. And the funny thing is, He was able to win over 2 candidates. A qualified military vet, morris davis, claiming he wasn’t patriotic enough and ran a smear campaign against Lynda Bennett saying that she was a “never trumper”. While Madison Cawthorn painted himself as this bright, young, example of the all-American boy and a war hero even though he never served this country. Voters in North Carolina voted in someone whose only qualification is what? Chick-fil-a and high school football?!
Madison Cawthorn is an example of how white male mediocrity is often rewarded and how the rest of us must work double or even triple to get a quarter of what he was given. White women and people of color often have to prove ourselves exceptional just to get to where Cawthorn is and still aren’t respected or held in high regard. People consider AOC “under-qualified” because she was a bartender but fail to realize she graduated from Boston University with a degree in economics and with honors. But Madison Cawthorn with his reputation as a campus creep was tooottally qualified to run for office. Am I saying that we should only pick politicians who at least have bachelors degrees? No. Am I saying that all white men are mediocre? No. I am just pointing out the double standard. Madison Cawthorn became the youngest elected congressman since Jed Johnson Jr through being mediocre. And if this is the future of the Republican Party then the party is truly a joke.
Edit: I also added that Cawthorn’s parents even said he lied about the accident
Source: thenation.com ,Mic.com, citizen-times.com
Never Broken 