Watch Matt Gaetz flip out when a witness refuses to say a wall is a good idea

Well, this did not go the way Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) wanted.

In an attempt to derail a Thursday House Judiciary Committee hearing dedicated to dissecting former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Gaetz attempted to ask an expert witness on the panel about a paper she wrote in 2013 on the Mexican cartel and its impact on the drug trade in the U.S.

“Is it your impression that since you wrote this in 2013, that the circumstances on our southern border have gotten better or worse?” Gaetz asked the witness, Carrie Cordero, a senior fellow and general counsel and the Center for a New American Society, a bipartisan think tank related to national security issues.

Committee Chair Jerry Nadler broke in to say the question had nothing to do with this his hearing, giving Cordero an opening to not respond to Gaetz’s clearly off-topic question.

But Cordero replied — and in turn embarrassed Gaetz.

When I wrote that report, I thought that it was an issue that needed attention. It was not at the beginning of the Obama administration something that did get sufficient attention. There clearly is a changed circumstance. It’s 2019 now, there is clearly a humanitarian problem on the southern border that needs to be addressed. What you will not find in that article is any mention of a wall as a response to that challenge, nor any encouragement of the use of emergency authorities to solve that problem.

People seated in the audience of the hearing can be seen laughing and smiling at Cordero’s burn, given that Gaetz has been a heavy proponent of Trump’s ridiculous border policies, including the stupid wall some of Trump’s top defenders say won’t solve anything and fake national emergency declaration.

In fact, Gaetz even went to a city far from the border where prototypes of potential wall models were being built — and tried to play it off as if the structure was the actual wall, all to help Trump look like he was winning.

When Cordero refused to play along with his stunt, Gaetz then went on another sanctimonious rant, saying that “reforming our asylum laws” and tackling the humanitarian problems on the border is “a lot more important than hearing from people who know nothing about the Mueller report.”

Gaetz ultimately didn’t get what he wanted.

Instead, his attempt to look smart backfired and left the audience laughing at him, not with him.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.