April Fool’s Day is fast approaching, and Donald Trump hopes that his scandal twins, Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz, won’t give him another major headache in the special congressional elections to replace them next Tuesday.
Gaetz was the only Trump pick to fall by the wayside when he bailed out as attorney general nominee after he was dogged by scandals involving drugs and underage sex, allegations he denies.
Waltz probably thought he was quietly home and dry as national security adviser until he became the “f---ing idiot” who inadvertently included The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg on his Signal war plans group chat.
But now Matt and Mike, the scandal twins, present the president with a problem that’s not really their fault. Not directly, anyway.
The MAGA loyalists both won their Florida House seats quite comfortably in November in a state where Trump is king.
But their White House departures—even though Gaetz never completed the journey—left their seats open with their successors fighting special elections on Tuesday, April Fool’s Day.
No problem. Trump and his advisers were comfortable about replacing like for like when the president plucked Gaetz and Waltz for higher things.
But the decision to pull Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has revealed how nervy the president has become over the slim GOP majority in the House, where he needs to push through his “big, beautiful” spending bill and advance his agenda.
And suddenly, the prospects for two easy wins in deep red districts aren’t looking quite so rosy.
The Republicans hold a 218 to 213 advantage in the House—one of the slimmest margins in modern U.S. history. With four vacant seats, the chamber is on a knife edge at a time when Trump needs congressional backing for his federal revolution.
Stefanik’s UN sacrifice was deemed necessary because of the new uncertainty in Waltz’s old seat in Florida’s 6th Congressional District, in particular.
Trump carried the district by 30 points in November but the president’s own pollster, Tony Fabrizio, has shown the seat is now in jeopardy, according to Politico.
The internal Republican poll has Democrat Josh Weil three points up on Waltz’s replacement, Randy Fine. Alarm bells are sounding so loudly that Trump himself agreed to do a tele-town hall to try and bail him out.
Elon Musk also stepped in with some serious cash help after Weil raised $10 million to take the fight to the Republicans on their home turf while Fine was lagging with less than $1 million.
“Trump won that district by 30 points in November... We have a candidate that I don’t think is winning. That’s an issue,” Steve Bannon, Trump’s outspoken former adviser, said on his War Room podcast.
Waltz’s involvement in this week’s Signalgate scandal can’t have helped. The national security adviser was the fall guy—although he is still in his job—after admitting to adding a journalist to the chat group that received details of an imminent U.S. strike from Pentagon boss Pete Hegseth.
Referring to the president’s about-face on Stefanik, who won re-election to her New York seat by 24 points, Democrat pollster Zac McCrary told Politico: “You don’t have to take anyone’s word for it, just see how Republicans are acting. They were very blasé about opening up the seat and now on a full retreat.”
There are also some nerves in Gaetz’ old 1st Congressional District in northwest Florida. Jimmy Patronis, the state’s CFO, is expected, to win but his long shot challenger Gay Valimont isn’t looking like such a long shot anymore. The district is home to more veterans than any other in the country, and not all of them are happy about Musk’s DOGE cuts.
Congressional investigators accused Gaetz of paying women for sex—including a 17-year-old girl—and using illegal drugs. The former congressman, who now hosts a show on One America News Network, has consistently denied any improper conduct and claimed he was the victim of a “smear” campaign.
Even if the Republicans win both seats, they will undoubtedly be seen as a litmus test for the Trump administration’s tumultuous first few months.
If they lose one or both, the slim GOP majority in the House will be damaged, perhaps fatally, and House Speaker Mike Johnson will face a harder task to drive through Trump’s change agenda.
And the president will be left ruing his decisions to choose the scandal twins for higher office.
