After winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020, Madison Cawthorn tweeted "Cry more, lib." and staked his claim as Republicans' Gen Z wunderkid. Two years later, though, it is Cawthorn who is crying. Denounced and primaried by his own party after talking too openly about its sordid backstage goings-on, he was today defeated in North Carolina's GOP poll by Chuck Edwards.
Cawthorn recently sparked uproar in the Republican Party after claiming on a podcast that he had been invited to an orgy in Washington and had personally seen leaders in the efforts to curb drug addiction doing cocaine — one incident in a string of recent controversies surrounding Cawthorn that included calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a "thug" and the Ukrainian government "incredibly evil."Cawthorn also last month was cited for bringing a loaded handgun through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport — the second time in just over a year that airport authorities had stopped him with a gun. In March, he faced charges of driving with a revoked license for the second time in five years.
A final halfhearted re-endorsement by Donald Trump wasn't enough to save his bacon. But leaked photos and videos of Cawthorn cavorting in women's clothing and humping a male friend were enough to fry his chances among right-wing voters lately trained against gender trouble of any sort, even in prep-school douchebag jest.