Crime Is On the Rise, Thanks Entirely to Madison Cawthorn

It brings me no joy to say this, but Republicans appear to be right: Crime is sharply on the rise, thanks to their very own Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC).

The embattled freshman Congressman was cited early Tuesday for trying to bring a loaded gun through airport security at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, the local police department confirmed to Queen City News. Per TSA, the loaded Staccato 9mm handgun was detected at around 9 am at a checkpoint in the airport. It’s not yet clear whether Cawthorn, cited for a “weapon law violation,” will face criminal charges.

This wasn’t even Cawthorn’s first time getting stopped at an airport for bringing a loaded gun, which seems like a pretty big thing to happen once, let alone twice—especially for a sitting Congressman. Just last year, the 26-year-old was also stopped at Asheville Regional Airport, when yet another a loaded 9mm Glock was found inside his bag going through screening.

This news comes on the same day that the conservative outlet the Washington Examiner reports Cawthorn may be waist-deep in a “Let’s Go Brandon” cryptocurrency scheme. According to the outlet, a December 2021 Instagram post appears to provide evidence that Cawthorn participated in insider trading, when he purchased “LGBCoin” (I lost brain cells typing that out), possibly with nonpublic knowledge of a forthcoming, lucrative deal between the cryptocurrency coin and NASCAR driver Brandon Brown.

But wait, we’re not done! Just last week, Cawthorn was due in court over a series of traffic violations for speeding and reckless driving, and it’s not clear whether he even bothered to show up. Then, on Thursday, newly released footage from March showed the Congressman getting his license revoked after being pulled over for once again driving like a maniac and apparently using an invalid license that had been suspended back in 2019 for—you guessed it!—reckless driving. You’d think among all the many stringent, often elitist prerequisites for being a member of Congress, they would expect a valid license to serve. I guess Republicans only care about proper ID requirements when it comes to stopping Black people from voting.

The literal one-man crime spree has spent months railing about how Democrats have fueled a nationwide, Purge-like rise in crime by “defunding the police” (something that, unfortunately, actually hasn’t happened). But the whole time, it seems the call was coming from inside the House—after all, Cawthorn all but admitted so, himself, when last month he ran his mouth on a podcast about his Republican colleagues doing “key bumps” of cocaine in front of him and inviting him to their orgies.

Among the many crimes and questionable behaviors Cawthorn has now been outed for, lest we forget, he’s also been accused of sexual misconduct and even bragging about behaviors that technically constitute assault throughout his college years. Dozens of former classmates signed a letter in 2020 identifying him as a known sexual predator. These allegations against the Congressman seem particularly relevant, as his party attempts to whip the nation into a frenzy over imaginary “grooming” and sexual predation supposedly perpetrated by LGBTQ people.

As Cawthorn and his party sound alarms about imaginary, rising crime rates in America, all while Cawthorn, himself, appears to love doing crimes more than I will ever love anything, note that this is hardly his only act of hypocrisy. This is a man who was very recently waxing poetic about the fiscal wastefulness of Democrats, all while spending truly exorbitant amounts of taxpayer funding on a trip to a luxury resort. And last week, all while frequently spouting anti-trans, gender-essentialist nonsense, newly unearthed photos showed the Congressman at one point partying while dressed in women’s lingerie. It was, frankly, the only time he’s ever looked cool in his life, but it was wildly problematic that he often attacks LGBTQ people who do the same.

In any case, if you’re as sick of hearing news about Madison Cawthorn as we are, take some comfort in knowing Republican Party leadership are actually on the same page. Based on the party’s united condemnation of Cawthorn since the cocaine and orgy remarks, and now, the curious timing of all of these bad headlines about him, it seems no one wants the brat out of office more than his own caucus.