Republicans are hellbent on kicking Madison Cawthorn out for good

In 1965, when Lyndon Johnson was grappling with whether to fire J. Edgar Hoover as the head of the FBI, he said: “Well, it’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.” In the case of the beleaguered freshman Republican Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republicans are putting the squeeze on him for being inside the tent and still pissing inside it.

On Thursday evening, the Daily Mail published screenshots of a video of Representative Madison Cawthorn with his staffer Stephen Smith putting his hand on the congressman’s crotch. Cawthorn’s communications director initially said he could not give any response until he saw the video, but offered up an even more damning detail: Cawthorn and Smith are apparently cousins, which could mean that the congressman had violated a federal statute that says public officials cannot employ their own relatives.