Matt Gaetz says Trump signed off on Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s campaign against Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, and other ‘half-Trumpers’

• Rep. Matt Gaetz says Trump endorsed his speaking tour with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
• Gaetz told Vanity Fair that he and Greene were acting as an “advance team” for Trump.
• At their events, the far-right lawmakers promote lies about the 2020 election and attack Trump’s critics.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Rep. Matt Gaetz said he and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have both spoken with President Donald Trump about their joint national speaking tour that will attack “half-Trumpers or Never Trumpers” and spread lies about the 2020 election.

The Florida congressman, who’s under federal investigation for allegedly paying a 17-year-old girl for sex, framed his series of rallies with Greene, a fellow MAGA enthusiast from Georgia who regularly condemns the COVID-19 vaccines, as a way to help clear the 2024 presidential field for Trump.

“Our thinking is we’re kind of the advance team for Trump if any of these, you know, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley kind of like half-Trumpers or Never Trumpers try to run,” Gaetz told Vanity Fair. “I’ve talked to the president about it. Marjorie has talked to the president about it. And he likes the idea of having the energetic characters in our party out there in the early-primary states keeping the band in tune, if you will.”

Greene opened the event at the Villages by asking the attendees to shout out the name of “their president,” prompting them to yell, “Donald Trump!”

“If Adam Kinzinger wants to be the frontman for the establishment to bring our party back to the days of Mitt Romney and John Kasich, you know what, I’m not going back,” Gaetz told the crowd at The Villages. “This is Donald Trump’s party and I’m a Donald Trump Republican.”

Greene and Gaetz began their multi-month tour of the country in May at The Villages, a conservative retirement community in Florida, a recently held an “America First” rally in Des Moines. Since then, the pair have traveled the country in an expensive effort to whip up the GOP base and attack any Republicans not fully aligned with Trump.

The two far-right members of Congress are using the tour to spread the lie that Trump won the 2020 election because it was “stolen” from him through voter fraud. Greene, who repeatedly promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory as a candidate, and Gaetz are among the most controversial members of the House GOP and are also particularly adept at raking in campaign cash from the party’s pro-Trump base.

But the tour hasn’t attracted the big bucks. As of late July, the pair spent about $287,000 on their events and raised just over $59,000 from the attendees, the Daily Beast reported.