Florida political sex scandal: The Trump GOP in a handbasket
Too true to be fake news
Jeffrey Denny
The most shocking thing is that it’s not shocking at all.
The infamous Christian and Bridget Ziegler were a glossy lifestyle magazine-glammy, wholesome Florida GOP “powerhouse couple” who loved Trump and Jesus equally.
Then God delivered the Ziegler’s delicious fall from grace. Which pairs perfectly with the Trump ethos and his feculent disgrace of the party formerly known as grand and “decent” Republicans who, though thin and thinner, still believe the worst threat to America is the best to reelect for tax and regulation breaks.
As SNL’s Stefon might say, the Ziegler story has everything. Bald-faced hypocrisy. Phony sanctimony like disgraced millionaire megachurch preachers. Secret kinky sex and videos. Alleged rape and hush money. Typical Florida — America’s corpus spongiosum — with its gaudy fraud-y shame-y smarmy greedy seedy proudly self-destructive dumbass “Real American” MAGA culture.
Florida constantly drags our country, from denying and spreading Covid and climate disaster, to crashing the economy into the Great Recession as an epicenter of bottom-feeding mortgage brokers and house-flippers. And it gets to pick our president.
Where else would Trump call home? Where else would embrace him? Florida is Trump. Might as well call it Trumpida.
As for the Zieglers, the facts are not partisan:
· They’re beloved crusaders for traditional conservative Christian family values. They spread the love of Jesus for believers and His hate for Democrats.
· Bridget Ziegler led the far-right, anti-LBGTQ group “Moms for Liberty.” She helped spearhead Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s parent-rights “don’t say gay” law, his tax attack on Disney “wokeness” for challenging the bigotry, and a nationwide campaign to ban school books, mention of gender issues and displaying the rainbow flag in classrooms.
· The Florida GOP website sold a coffee mug with a quote from Christian Zeigler: “Stand with parents, not perverts.”
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Meanwhile, the Ziegler couple enjoyed regular ménage à trois sessions with another woman.
· This presumably involved contact of a sexual nature between Bridget and the other woman.
· Same-gender sex is widely considered to be gay.
· Married couples enjoying three-ways are widely considered to be perverted.
· The Zieglers have three young girls. Presumably their parents protected them from the “gay” and “perverted” things going on. Although kids sense when parents are being suss.
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Back in regular life, Bridget helped flip the Sarasota School Board from a 3–2 liberal majority to a 4–1 conservative majority.
· This was a “huge achievement for [her] after serving on the board since 2014,” Florida’s Voice reported in a gushing profile of the Zieglers before their squalid secret life wasn’t.
· Florida’s Voice is a right-wing news site founded in 2021 and led by a local TV station staffer who quit for moral reasons not money to “cover Florida news honestly and factually without the corporate strings attached.”
· Per its website, Florida’s Voice is proudly funded by “Patriot-Owned Businesses,” presumably with no strings.
· The honest and factual Florida’s Voice provides Gov. DeSantis “an unfiltered platform for his message [and] returned the favor of his attention with flattering coverage,” the independent media watchdog NeimanLabs notes.
· The Florida’s Voice “senior reporter” who wrote the lavish Ziegler profile, Amber Jo Cooper, has little serious journalism experience, just producer stints at a local Fox affiliate. Yes, her name is “Amber Jo.” No, she didn’t write any follow-up about being fooled about the Zieglers like a good journalist would.
· In her Ziegler profile, Cooper effused, “Before she was elected to the school board, Bridget worked in the risk and insurance industry for 15 years as a Corporate Risk Consultant with two of the largest global risk and insurance brokerage firms.”
· Christian, a career politician, explained that despite the couple’s different professions, “There’s a lot of ‘cross-pollination’ in their fields, and it always keeps them engaged and interested,” Cooper wrote.
· A comedian might badly quip, “You have to be engaged and interested in ‘cross-pollination’ to play Triple Twister. And talk about risk management!”
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Not a laughing matter, one day Christian Ziegler dropped by the apartment of the other ménage woman after she backed out of a scheduled three-way. He came in and raped her, she said.
· Ziegler denied it, calling the sex consensual from his perspective, surprising nobody.
· To prove his innocence, Zieglar sent police a video of the encounter he recorded on his phone. Now he faces a possible third-degree felony charge for video voyeurism.
· As the sordid story of the Zieglers continues, Godless Democrats might point out the obvious irony that his name is “Christian.”
· Worth noting is that Ziegler’s leadership of the Florida GOP has left the organization nearly broke.
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When the Florida GOP learned of the Zieglar matter, top officials immediately fired him as chairman, one might assume.
· As many told the Washington Post, they worried about the “bad optics.” One official said, “We need to get this behind us and start paying attention to this important election year.”
· It’s also fair to assume at least a few officials thought removing Zeigler was simply the right thing to.
· These assumptions would make the proverbial ass out of you and me.
· Police began investigating Ziegler for sexual assault last October. The Florida GOP knew about it since December, but Ziegler resisted stepping down for the good of the organization. Like recent Ivy presidents and other true leaders who didn’t do anything nearly as wrong do.
· Finally, just before Christmas, the Florida GOP voted to strip Zieglar of his official duties and six-figure salary. But kept his chairman title for a week into the New Year. Christmas is a busy time for hardcore Christians.
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Through it all, Ziegler’s political friends backed him to the bitter end.
· “Who are we to sit back and judge him?” one county GOP official told the Post. “We’re not supposed to be the morality police.”
· For over a century, Republicans have anointed themselves as “the morality police,” fighting in the name of God for what’s good and right.
· This would include fighting for a certain “justice involved” impeached former president facing 91 criminal counts and pledging dictatorship and also retribution, like a vengeful God, for being held to justice.
· Fighting for what’s good and right apparently doesn’t include people of color, tired poor huddled masses, LGBTQ+, or anyone different from Trump followers.
· Only a hater would suggest the Republican family values thing is nothing but a cynical grasp and dying gasp for power by frightening poor dumb church sheep about craven libidinous libertines who violate God’s sanctity of marriage. Like the Zieglers. Who needed another woman to keep their marriage spicy.
· Ziegler is innocent until proven guilty of the rape and possible video voyeurism charges. He’s white, Republican, and financially comfortable, not Black, poor, and presumed guilty as charged.
On a happier note, before the Ziegler’s come-to-Jesus and the Florida GOP took down his name and “stand with parents, not perverts” coffee cup from its website, Christian offered Florida’s Voice reporter Amber Jo Cooper some timeless wisdom for fellow victims of the Godless Socialist pedophile Deep State:
· “You just have to have the confidence that what you’re doing and what you believe in, is right,” he said. “And that really has to motivate you, more so than any of these angry tweets.”
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
