Democrats need to cancel Jared Moskowitz
Between the baggage and the racism, his time has long runout
Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) is back in hot water again for posting racist comments on Twitter using his official account.
I began writing this post last week about the disastrous bill Moskowitz sponsored and helped get passed by Republicans in Congress (HR 6090).
Now that Moskowitz is yet again tweeting out racist comments, it’s time to push it out, even if it’s not in its final, polished version.
HR 6090 was drafted by a handful of Republicans plus one very problematic Democrat – Jared Moskowitz of Florida.
So let’s talk about Jared Moskowitz.
We knew Moskowitz was already in trouble with someone because Politico was trying to fluff his career the same way they did DeSantis last week.
BOTH of the PR pieces that came out last week were written by Politico reporter Gary Fineout – the DeSantis mouthpiece and cheerleader who makes a side-hustle by taking money from the DeSantis administration (among other groups and people) in exchange for his positive coverage.
Now, he’s fluffing Moskowitz.
So let’s talk about Moskowitz and why he is bad news for democrats.
Moskowitz received his last two appointments because of his close relationships with Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis, and has supported Republican legislation and conspiracy theories in Congress during his first term – including joining Matt Gaetz for the very serious, not all embarrassing, totally legitimate UFO hearings.
Moskowitz and Gaetz were part of a group of state legislators in Florida known for drugs, alcohol and parties with younger women. When revelations about Gaetz’ behavior exploded in January 2021, Moskowitz repeatedly defended his friend and even posed the question “Is there really a difference between 17 and 18?”
You might be wondering – how did a man with such unsavory friends and a history of being sex-trafficking-adjacent and defending sex between adults and minors end up in Congress?
Again – Matt Gaetz.
Gaetz ran DeSantis’ 2018 transition team and got Moskowitz the head position at the Florida Department of Emergency Management (DEM), where Moskowitz oversaw one of the worst responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the nation.
The warning signs were out there from the beginning.
Moskowitz spread conspiracy theories about COVID-19 – during and after his time as the head of the agency managing the response – and made overtly racist comments about DeSantis’ political appointees.
In early 2021, after media agencies exposed the “pay for play” deals DeSantis made with wealthy Republican donors for early vaccine access – which Moskowitz claims he personally managed and approved – Moskowitz resigned as the head of DEM, but stayed on to “help with the transition” for several months. (A year later, Moskowitz told a completely different story in which he had “nothing to do” with the vaccine distribution).
Two months after he announced his resignation, the Miami Herald outed Moskowitz as a source for DeSantis’ biggest and loudest political enemy (moi).
Moskowitz tried to do damage control (again using Gary Fineout at Politico), but after the Miami Herald published a full string of texts from Moskowitz, the fallout for him was brutal and he slinked away for five months. No one would work with him. He lobbied hard to get figurehead appointments – eventually being put on an advisory board of one Florida county’s COVID-19 task force five months later – but Moskowitz’ career looked dead in the water.
So Moskowitz started rehabbing his image by appearing on podcasts with Christina Pushaw, Bryan Griffin and Jeremy Redfern – DeSantis’ notorious far-right social media terrorists.
His loyalties to DeSantis clear, Moskowitz’ only chance of a comeback would depend on a favor from DeSantis. And that’s exactly what he got.
In November 2021, DeSantis appointed Moskowitz to the Broward County Board of Commissioners – the launchpad from which Moskowitz made his congressional bid in a heated and contested primary in which Moskowitz notably refused to condemn any of DeSantis’ policies.
To narrowly win his primary, Moskowitz became the only Democrat running for Congress to accept campaign donations from some of the most corrupt Republican financers in American politics – including deceased sex trafficker Kent Stermon (who Ron DeSantis lived with for a time in Tampa). He was only the only Democrat that Republican super donor Ken Griffin (DeSantis’ largest financier) gave to.
Despite the dark Republican money, despite only 1% of his total fundraising coming from small-dollar donors (the lowest among Democrats running that cycle for any state), the cover he gets from Republicans in exchange for his loyalty and Democrats who either don’t know better or are just like him has somehow managed to inoculate him from consequences.
Voters need to impose some consequences for Moskowitz. And if they don’t, party leadership should put him promptly put him in his place, because he’s not only undermining our democratic institutions and helping the furthest-right GOP members of the House, he’s embarrassing the party.
Moskowitz wrote a bill to rename a federal facility after Donald Trump, directed sexist and violent statements at his female colleagues in Congress (including a tweet telling AOC to “fuck off”), posted a bizarre sexual video of Joe Biden staring at a woman’s breasts, and today posted a racist comment about Koreans eating dogs.
On the scale of left-right ideology, Moskowitz’ voting records puts him nearly dead center in Congress, but he continues to masquerade as a progressive.
He voted against global warming mitigation. He voted with the GOP in condemning Biden’s administration on immigration – including voting “Yea” on the GOP bill to condemn Biden’s “open borders” policy. He has voted more in line with the most extreme members of Congress than any other sitting democrat.
His record is only saved by the fact that he has missed twice the average number of votes compared to the rest of Congress.
All of that is important context in understanding how a bill that is in flagrant violation of the First Amendment and seeks to cripple American universities gets sponsored by a “democrat.”
And I’ll discuss that bill more later this week.
Vital information that I did not know. Thank you, my eyes are now opened.
I'm embarrassed to admit I always assumed this wingnut represented the Trumpist Party in Congress because of his acting as mouthpiece/apologist for DeSantis and Gaetz, and I'm beyond embarrassed now I know he's a fellow Democrat (even if in name only). Arrgh!