AIPAC stated that Matt Gaetz was “confused” and anything but the life of the party after the former Republican congressman from Florida, who has criticized the U.S.-Israel relationship extensively, alleged that he was given a badge with a barcode for donors to scan at an AIPAC event.
Gaetz, nominated by Trump to be U.S. attorney general and who was the subject of ethics probes, said on the Timcast podcast on Tuesday—the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel—that at his first AIPAC reception, “you had to wear a name badge with a QR code, talk to donors and if they liked you, they scanned it to donate on the spot.”
“It was so weird,” he stated.
“The accusation about our fundraisers is, of course, a lie. Barcodes are on name badges for security reasons, not fundraising, and are scanned for that purpose,” AIPAC stated. “Maybe Matt Gaetz was confused, because he wanted people to scan his barcode and they didn’t even want to talk to him.”
Gaetz wrote back. “Are you actually denying that donors scanned people’s name tags to get their donation information?” he stated. “Actually, I prefer when nobody talks to me. More time for hummus.”
It wasn’t clear if he was referring to a reference that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson—a podcaster and political commentator who regularly shares antisemitic conspiracy theories—made recently to hummus eaters having killed Jesus.
