Bye Forever, Madison Cawthorn! You Will Not Be Missed by Anyone

North Carolina Rep. and perpetual embarrassment Madison Cawthorn has officially lost his chance at a second term in office. Cawthorn lost his primary election Tuesday to current Republican state Senator Chuck Edwards.

Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s spokesman just told reporters at Hendersonville, NC event that the congressman just called Chuck Edwards to concede the race. #NC11

— Kailani Koenig (@kailanikm) May 18, 2022

Cawthorn has become a source of distress for his fellow Republicans in recent months, mostly for publicly suggesting they were holding cocaine-fueled orgies on Capitol Hill.

That’s far from all: Cawthorn has also been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and misconduct; he’s called women “earthen vessels” in an unhinged rant condemning abortion; he also once took to the House floor to define a woman as someone with “XX chromosomes, no tallywhacker”; he’s tried to bring a gun onto a plane—twice; he encouraged parents to raise their sons as “monsters”; following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he pushed pro-Putin rhetoric about the Ukranian government being “evil” and called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “thug”; and he’s repeatedly expressed support for January 6 rioters and defended “bloodshed” as a solution to nonexistent voter fraud, just to name some of his greatest hits.

But as has been proved by Cawthorn’s fellow extremist, controversy-obsessed colleagues, the Republican Party is pretty much fine with all of that. Saying they’re inviting him to orgies, though? That’s too much.

Cawthorn was called out by his colleagues in Congress for his coke and orgy comments and back home in North Carolina, Republican party leadership turned against him. He did manage to get Donald Trump’s endorsement but not until Monday—the day before the election.

“When Madison was first elected to Congress, he did a great job,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded that prohibits users from making fun of him and also doesn’t even really work. “Recently, he made some foolish mistakes, which I don’t believe he’ll make again…let’s give Madison a second chance!”

Yup, the best endorsement Trump could come up with for Cawthorn was basically just “boys will be boys.”

It should be noted that Chuck Edwards, now the Republican candidate to replace Cawthorn, also seems pretty terrible, starting with the fact that he’s staunchly anti-abortion. But he also seems Very Offline, and at the very least, we’ll be rid of the spectacle that Cawthorn loves to create around his own awfulness.

I’m sure Cawthorn will land a gig at OAN or Newsmax or some other right-wing monstrosity soon and we can continue to ignore him forever.

(image: Saul Loeb – Pool/Getty Images)