Christian and Bridget Ziegler have been leaders of the extreme rightwing in Florida. They are (or were) close to Governor DeSantis and Donald Trump. But when they became ensnared in a sex scandal, they were exposed as rank hypocrites. Christian thus far insists he won’t step down as chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Bridget Ziegler was one of the three co-founders of Moms for Liberty, which led the fight to ban books about homosexuality and to harass transgender students. The website of Moms for Liberty now claims there were only two co-founders; she has been written out of their narrative. She’s a non-person. The editorial board of the Orlando Sentinel says it’s time for both of them to resign. Karma is a bitch.
The deepening troubles of Christian and Bridget Ziegler would be just another local news story if they were two private people. But they are highly public figures who are suddenly in a heap of trouble, and their sex life is in headlines.
He is chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, close to both Gov. Ron DeSantis and former president Donald Trump. She is a nationally known conservative culture warrior, a Sarasota County School Board member and a co-founder of the book-banning Moms for Liberty, which denounces all things LGBTQ. She is also a DeSantis appointee to the Disney World oversight board.
Christian Ziegler is accused, though not formally charged, of raping a woman at her apartment in Sarasota. She told police of a previous three-way sexual encounter with both Zieglers and said she was “mostly in” for Bridget — not him.
Sarasota police and the Florida Trident — the reporting arm of the nonprofit Florida Center for Governmental Accountability — say Bridget Ziegler confirmed the previous threesome. They had recorded Christian Ziegler promising his accuser that there would be another. Text messages showed that the woman had told him not to come to her house without Bridget. He went there anyway and admits to having sex with her, but insists it was consensual.
DeSantis wants Ziegler out, but claims to be powerless to remove him. (To that we say: Since when has that stopped him?) So do other leading Republicans: Sen. Rick Scott, all three Cabinet members and both leaders of the state Legislature. Conspicuously missing from their statements are expressions of concern for the possible rape victim.
The state party vice chairman, Evan Power, has called a closed-door Dec. 17 executive committee meeting in Orlando to “censure or discipline” the chairman after Ziegler refused to call the meeting himself.
Bridget Ziegler remains on the school board, feeding the nationwide mockery over the blatant hypocrisy between her private life and her public preaching. She is also under pressure to resign.
The presumption of innocence
Christian Ziegler is legally innocent unless he’s convicted. There is nothing on the public record that Bridget Ziegler could be charged with, since hypocrisy is not a crime. Neither is a ménage à trois among consenting adults. Her virulent hatred for all things LGBTQ in public while conducting a bisexual tryst in private is damning only in the court of public opinion.
But the Zieglers show contempt for public opinion and for the Republican political machine that enriched them and made them prominent public figures. They should retire discreetly to private life while the criminal investigation proceeds.
Whether she can ever again be a credible member of a school board, or maintain any connection with Moms for Liberty, is in serious doubt. She should resign, too.
Even if she doesn’t, DeSantis clearly holds power over the position he gave her, on the board of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. Why hasn’t he yanked that appointment, or demanded that she step down?
“She is nothing but a distraction from before and only getting worse and it will never go away as long as she sits there,” fellow School Board member Tom Edwards told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
A pariah to the cause
Some organizations see the hypocrisy in the own ranks.
Moms for Liberty, its credibility further damaged, raced to distance itself from Ziegler and announced that she left its national leadership three years ago, even as she continued to propagate its ideology of intolerance.
She’s also been jettisoned from an organization that “trains conservatives.” Her latest financial disclosure form lists $64,101 in income from the Leadership Institute LLC in Arlington, Va., nearly twice her school board salary of $33,916. Until Wednesday, it listed her as vice president of its School Board Leadership Program. Her name disappeared later that day from the staff list…
Christian Ziegler, meanwhile, regurgitates the standard defense of influential men accused of sexual assault. He claims he’s the victim, if you can believe that.
‘A country to save’
“We have a country to save, and I am not going to let false allegations of a crime put that mission on the bench as I wait for the process to wrap up,” he said.
Like Trump, who supported his election as party chair, and like DeSantis, whose slogan is “Never Back Down,” Ziegler advised a Moms for Liberty national conference to “Never apologize. Ever.” It was a reference to a Moms for Liberty chapter that apologized for using a quote from Adolf Hitler in its newsletter.
As a political strategist, he is ruthless. “Until we get every Democrat out of office and no Democrat considers running for office, we’re going to continue to step on the gas and move forward in Florida,” he said on X, formerly Twitter, last February, when he was elected party chairman.
Until no Democrat dares to run?
Across Florida, teachers are afraid to acknowledge to their students that same-sex relationships exist. Books are being taken off library shelves because they tell the truth about the modern implications of slavery and racism. Works of towering literary merit are being treated like smut because of brief passages describing sexual encounters. Teenaged victims of rape face the possibility that they will be forced to carry their attackers’ babies to term. Transgender Floridians are terrified they’ll lose access to the health care they depend upon.
This is the world the Zieglers helped to make. Now they should live by its narrow, hateful strictures.
I disagree with the editorial. Christian and Bridget committed no crime. He is a bully, but everyone knew that. Let him remain as the face of the state Republican Party. Bridget inveighed against the dangers of gay sex, but she indulged in it herself. She even harassed a member of the Sarasota school board because he is gay. She should remain on the school board and own up to her bisexuality. Maybe contrition will lead her to new views, inspire her to empathy, and enable her to retract her intolerance. We can always hope.
Karma is not a bitch. She is just fair.
I must respectfully disagree. If Duane had said it, I might agree, but coming from Diane, karma is a bitch, a long, belly laugh inducing bitch. Damn funny. Pardon my Swedish.
There isn’t any Harvy Harvy, Karma Karma.
But the FSM has been know to entangle his/her/its noodly appendages in people’s hair every now and again just for giggles.
My take: More Repugnicans need to have more ménages à trois and other frolics. Might loosen them up a bit and make them a little less uptight and angry. Have you ever noticed that Repugnicans tend to look like they just swallowed a bug AND are having a flare-up of hemorrhoids? Think Ron Ron on the stump.
But then they are more likely to do what Repugnicans usually do–indulge in the behavior while condemning it publicly.
Oh, and if you are going to take a job as a pool boy for a wealthy Repugnican, you know what you are letting yourself in for.
You’ll appreciate that we have confirmation that DeSantis is from beelzebub. He has ‘parseltongue’ which is even creeping out the right wing. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ron-desantis-tongue-thing_n_654b3f90e4b0069a043
Ewww. Trying to get that picture out of my head.
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=ron+desantis+tongue&&mid=B153E6E3E0BDE55E5CCDB153E6E3E0BDE55E5CCD&&FORM=VRDGAR
Ron is getting lots of flack for his weird faces. In the last debate one commentator was heard on a hot mike saying, “He looks like someone shot his dog.” https://www.tiktok.com/discover/ron-desantis-funny-faces-expressions?lang=en
haaaa!!!!
It appears that maybe what the Republican Party has become is a cabal of projectionists. From the sexual assault of political interns by Matt Schlapp, chair of CPAC, to the kinky app used between Mike Johnson and son to check out their pornography usage, we are confronted with a homophobic sex crazed culture that cannot help themselves. The Ziegler’s just represent the ongoing revelation of family value hypocrisy so rife in the realm of “culture warriors.”
It’s is the projection/attack cycle of lies that the GOP constantly uses. They claim the left is responsible for what they do or intend to do. Some right wing extremists claim that Antifa was behind the attack on The Capitol on January 6th.
It’s what happened when human sexuality is fetishized and there’s no treatment of it as a normal, essential part of being human. Frank, fact based sex education is the antidote, which the xtian right opposes, claiming that sex is sin and teaching about it will make children sinful.
Such education makes sexual abuse of children more difficult because kids are taught about their own bodily privacy and boundaries. It also disrupts the pipeline of child brides.
STDS and pregnancies are way down among young people in the U.S., the average age when they start having sex is way up, and they are engaging in a lot less of it. I think that this has to do with the ready availability of actual information about sex today. Kids are smarter about this and are waiting, except in the deep red parts of the country where the numbers are still alarming because ignorance still prevails.
Reading this, my first thought was of a Democratic Senator who resigned because of the uproar from a photo showing that he was pretending to touch a woman reporter’s breast while she slept on a flight out of Afghanistan.
The reporter was wearing a bulletproof vest that covered her torso and breasts.
How loud were the Democrats demanding he resign?
How loud were the Republicans?
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/21/17352230/al-franken-accusations-resignation-democrats-leann-tweeden-kirsten-gillibrand
Democrats lost a great leader when they forced Al Franken to fall on his sword prematurely without due process. He should have waited for a hearing and evidence. The GOP does not eat their own. In fact, they ride out scandals that are much worse. Just look at Trump and Ken Paxton, both accused of much worse. They tolerate scoundrels to hold onto power.
What happened to Franken was a travesty. He’s a wonderful man and brilliant. We needed him where he was. What a freaking crying shame.
Agree that Franken should not have been ousted from the Senate.
Just saw Al on CNN. Do you think the time might be right for a come back? He said that people constantly tell him that he shouldn’t have resigned.
The Daily Beast has been covering this pretty extensively and has a great recap today. I plan on attending Tuesday’s meeting to watch the show. Maybe I’ll sell popcorn.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sarasota-residents-want-maga-couple-bridget-and-christian-ziegler-gone-after-rape-threesome-allegations?ref=home?ref=home
Saying Gay
There is some history that may be of interest in the Wikipedia entry for Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services, for example, the political opinions expressed to the government in 1993 and 2007.
John Paul II who demanded the faithful act in the public square moved the “military service” operation from NYC and set it up as an independent archdiocese in Wash. D.C.
Democracy will fail if the military is not both non-partisan and secular. Gen. Michael Flynn, after retiring, said there should be one religion in the U.S.
Full report, please!
Maybe contrition will lead her to new views, inspire her to empathy, and enable her to retract her intolerance.
What a beautiful thought, Diane! Bless you and yours! –Bob
I agree with Diane, the Ziegler’s should not resign. After all is said and done, they are no different than Trump or the other fools who run in their circles: sex, graft, con artists, and on and on and on. Nice little tight circle of everything ugly in our country. The ones who resign are the supporters who follow these morons. Turn in your voting cards are the nearest remote voting box
I think you have to do that yourself, Mr. Angulo.
Mr. Rasco,
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