'Are you afraid of me?' 'Firebrand' Matt Gaetz mocked for running away from reporter

Rep. Matt Gaetz's "firebrand" reputation is being questioned by a self-described "good-natured midwesterner" journalist who greeted the Florida Republican with a "Congressman, hi!" then watched him run away.

Atlantic staff writer Elaine Godfrey Thursday shared her strange chase after Gaetz in a lengthy profile that spends much of its time detailing the firebrand's frantic flight from a reporter with questions.

"Usually, you need about 10 minutes to walk from the Rayburn House Office Building to the House Chamber," Godfrey writes. "But if you’re running from a reporter, it’ll only take you five."

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Gaetz reportedly caught sight of Godfrey outside his office door last November and responded by speed-walking away. Godfrey tried smiling and waving and then found herself wishing she'd worn shoes with arch support, she wrote.

“I just wanted to introduce myself!” she cried.

Instead of sneakers, Godfrey had brought with her a list of questions in hopes Gaetz might be willing to have a quick chat in lieu of the sit-down interview she'd repeatedly tried to schedule with his staff.

Godfrey said she hoped to have a meaningful conversation, but was ready for a heated one, because he is, as his eponymous podcast and memoir declare him to be a firebrand.

"But there the firebrand was, that day in November," Godfrey writes, "running away from me in his white-soled Cole Haans."

The Atlantic staff reporter then took off after the Florida Republican whose meteoric rise to House prominence she had hoped to discuss.

"Gaetz is a creature of our time: versed in the art of performance politics and eager to blow up anything to get a little something," Godrey wrote in explanation of her interest in the Florida Republican. "He has emerged as the heir of Trumpism."

There was just one problem with Godfrey's interview plans: Gaetz was willing to run.

"Gaetz broke into a light jog down the escalator, then flew through the long tunnel linking the Rayburn offices to the House Chamber," Godfrey writes. "Finally, I caught up with him at the members-only elevator, my heart pounding. I stretched out my hand. He left it hanging. We got on the elevator together, but he still wouldn’t look at me."

As detailed in Godfrey's profile, the encounter saw the Atlantic reporter able to ask one incredulous question, to which Gaetz responded with a silent glare and brisk walk toward the house.

“Are you … afraid of me?” she asked.