A feisty Rep., Matt Gaetz (R-FL) continues to defend himself on his Twitter account against accusations that he has paid for sex with underaged girls by making bold pronouncements that he is standing up for Ameria -- and he keeps getting smacked down.

In his latest attempt to beef up his defense that the Republican Party needs him, the embattled Florida lawmaker labeled himself a "firebrand" fighting for the "soul of our country" which led commenters to point out that he is actually battling to stay out of prison.

According to Gaetz, "Firebrands don't retreat, especially when the battle for the soul of our country calls," which led one critic to point out, "Labeling yourself a 'firebrand' is one of the most pathetic things imaginable"

There was much more like that as you can see below:

According to a report from Politico, multiple donors attending a closed-door speech given by Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort Saturday night were dismayed and disgusted with the tenor of the speech as the president went off script and ranted about House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as a "dumb son-of-a-bitch."

Reports on Saturday night state that Trump, "at times veered wildly off-script from his prewritten speech, the text of which was reviewed by The Daily Beast earlier in the day. While at the private event, he inveighed against Republican, Democratic, and celebrity enemies, and again denounced the 2020 presidential election outcome as 'bullshit,' according to those in the audience."

From the moment Donald Trump rose to political prominence, the pundit class stubbornly clung to "economic anxiety" as the explanation for why white voters can't quit him. No matter how often the idea was deconstructed, no matter how much evidence contradicted it, and no matter how ridiculous it became, the notion that poverty—not race—was the central force in lifting a bankrupt billionaire to the highest office in the land had a firm hold in the national political imagination.

As recently as January's insurrection, multiple commentators, columnists and social scientists expressed surprise at the wealth, resources and status afforded by these deeply "anxious" insurgents attacking the US Capitol, or felt compelled to further debunk the zombie lie that Trump voters have embraced bigotry in response to economic hardship. There's only one problem with this: economic anxiety is real.