Mike Gallagher Prevented Mayorkas’ Impeachment— Now A MAGA Grifter Is Pretending To Primary Him

Alex Bruesewitz Is A Silly Trump Fan

Bruesewitz (l) and Gallagher (r)

WI-08 is the congressional district that covers northeast Wisconsin. Think Green Bay and Appleton. Historically, it’s leaned Republican with occasional swingy tendencies. Obama won against McCain there and when Republican Mark Green retired from Congress to run for governor the district elected Democrat Steve Kagan for 2 terms. Kagan was defeated by Reid Ribble in 2010 and when Ribble retired in 2016. Mike Gallagher was first elected. Trump beat Biden there 57.0% to 41.5%. Gallagher has never had less than 62% of the vote and in 2022 the Democrats didn’t even bother running a candidate against him. The partisan lean in R+20 and even if the state Supreme Court orders new congressional districts drawn, the district is still likely to lean red.

Gallagher is popular and doesn’t spend much energy worrying about electoral challenges. He was the first choice of the state and national party to run against Tammy Baldwin this year and when he declined, chaos ensued and Baldwin’s seat started looking very safe.

But this week Gallagher did something that few Republicans have the guts to do— he voted against a Trump demand for an impeachment, in this case an impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas. There was a rumor— that appears to be false— that Marjorie Traitor Greene was driven so insane by the vote that she bit Gallagher three times and damaged his ear. But what did happen was that the far right of his party turned on him and there is even a threat of a primary challenger from extremist MAGAt Alex Bruesewitz, a social media influencer. Never heard of him? He calls himself a political consultant and became a thing on the right by going on Tucker Carlson’s show in January, 2022 and offered to provide financial assistance to defendants in the J-6 insurrection.

Bruesewitz: “I'm sick of being on the sidelines watching this committee harass, attack, and bully so many of my friends, so many conservative activists, innocent people, for doing nothing but standing up with President Trump until the finish line. Last week I posted a video on January the 5th, right before the one-year anniversary of the certified election and I said that I'm going to stand financially with those who are going to be wrongfully persecuted and attacked. I've pledged tens of thousands of dollars. I’ve donated tens of thousands of dollars from my own money to the Patriot Freedom Fund and then five days later I get this email from Sean, who I'm sure he's a nice guy but he's going through a lot. Can you imagine having to sit next to dinky Adam Kinzinger all day? At the end of the day, I donate this money and I get this email, I'm not going to be intimidated. Today, I donated $20,000 to a gentleman who did nothing other than give a permit, sent paperwork for a permit from the Capitol Police for the protest on January 6th. I'm also going to donate $10,000 to Jeffrey Bossert Clark, the only person at the Justice Department who is willing to investigate voter fraud and he wasn't able to," he said. "He has four kids at home and all he did was offer to investigate voter fraud and now they are trying to attack him and cancel him and destroy his reputation. I've had enough of it I'm not going to sit by any longer and they can come for me. I am 24 years old. I've made millions of dollars already in my career, at the end of the day if I go broke in this fight I have my whole life to make this money back. So I hope my courage will lead to others to stand up and do the right thing… I'm not going to be on defense for long. We're going on on offense soon because at the end of the day the American people deserve to know the truth about what happened on January 6th. People like you have been laying out the truth. Darren Beattie. Julie Kelly. They tell the truth about what happened on January 6th. So we are going to go on offense now, I'm not going to be on defense for long and we are going to find out the truth.”

There are no reality based indications that Bruesewitz ever earned a million dollars or that he donated “tens of thousands of dollars”  to the insurrectionists. No one even knows what year he was born in and it appears most of what is “known” about him is nothing more than manufcatured p.r. spin. The most accurate recurring media report about him is that he’s a Trump super-fan. Although he does appear to be living in Florida, not Wisconsin’s 8th congressional district.

No one expects a grifter like Bruesewitz to actually primary Gallagher, but the threat is getting him a lot of buzz in MAGA circles. Gallagher, a 39 year old ex-Marine and mainstream conservative who has tried to steer a relatively bipartisan path, scoffed at the idea and has dismissed Bruesewitz as a clown.

UPDATE: Gallagher Is Retiring From Congress!!!

Gallagher announced today that he's not running for reelection, even more of a shock than his decision not to back the Mayorkas impeachment. Here's the social media statement he put out a few hours ago: