Cawthorned

About

Cawthorned is a slang term describing high-ranking Republicans, including congresspeople, leaking politically damaging scandals of a Republican congressperson who has angered the party to the press. The term is named after former North Carolina Representative Madison Cawthorn, who had myriad scandals leaked to the press in the weeks following an eye-popping accusation that some of his Republican colleagues had invited him to "cocaine-fueled orgies." Ultimately, the scandals played a role in Cawthorn losing a primary challenge after just one term in Congress. The term was applied to Matt Gaetz in October 2023 after he angered the majority of Republicans in Congress fighting to get Kevin McCarthy removed as House Speaker, and in the days after, Republicans began telling lurid stories about Gaetz's behavior as users online spread the slang term in memes and posts.

Origin

On March 22nd, 2022, Representative Madison Cawthorn made an appearance on the Warrior Poet Society podcast. At the 3:30-minute mark (seen below), he went off on a tangent about his Republican colleagues in Congress and the House who purportedly invited him to orgies at their homes. Additionally, he added that he witnessed these men allegedly doing key bumps of cocaine right in front of him. Over the course of one month, the YouTube video received roughly 235,700 views (shown below).

In the weeks that followed, Cawthorn became the subject of numerous scandals. He had a picture of himself in lingerie while on a cruise leaked to the press and also had a video of himself naked while humping a man's face leaked. Cawthorn described both controversies as joking actions he took amongst friends and called the videos "blackmail." He accused old-guard Republicans, aka RINOs, of leaking the videos because he "threatened the status quo." Come the 2022 election, Cawthorn was defeated by his Republican primary challenger.

A separate scandal involved Cawthorn inappropriately paying for the housing of his second cousin and aid, Stephen Smith.^[1] The investigation into this issue was spearheaded by a PAC called American Muckrakers. After Cawthorn was defeated in the primary, the group took to Twitter on May 18th, 2022,^[2] saying they had another politician to "Cawthorn-ize," marking the first time "Cawthorn" was used as a verb meaning to damage a political career by uncovering scandals. The tweet, shown below, was referring to Lauren Boebert.

Spread

On June 14th, 2022, Redditor Deviknyte asked the /r/OutOfTheLoop^[3] subreddit why people wanted to "Cawthorn" Boebert, gaining over 650 points in one year.

The term began gaining serious traction in October 2023 after Republicans appeared to begin publically mobilizing against Matt Gaetz, who had just spearheaded the successful movement to remove Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker, which over 200 House Republicans opposed.

On October 4th, 2023, Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin told CNN that Gaetz, who is in the midst of a sexual misconduct scandal, bragged to House Republicans about his sexual exploits, claiming Gaetz showed colleagues videos of girls he slept with and said he claimed to have "crushed ED pills" that he "chased with energy drinks" in order to "go all night" (video shown below).

The video made several commenters believe that the Republican Party was mobilizing against Gaetz the same way they did against Cawthorn, causing "Cawthorned" to trend on Twitter.

On October 5th, Twitter user @theliamnissan^[4] suggested Gaetz was getting "Cawthorned," gaining over 600 retweets and 2,800 likes in less than one day (shown below, left). The same day, user @keithboykin^[5] criticized Republicans for "Cawthorning" Gaetz, saying they only protected his allegedly heinous behavior until it was politically inconvenient (shown below, right).

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External References