The Prince of Oversight
When Donald Trump’s now-notorious Access Hollywood tape first leaked in October last year, Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz reacted to the news the way he usually does—he got himself in front of a camera, and fast.
Within hours after the story broke, he was on the set of Salt Lake City’s Fox 13 News, declaring, “I’m out. I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president.” Chaffetz was the first Republican in Congress to officially withdraw his endorsement from Trump, and he milked the moment for all it was worth—going on for several minutes in the interview about Trump’s “abhorrent and offensive” language, about the “awful place” the nominee had put the country in, about how he could no longer look his teenage daughter in the eye while supporting this candidacy.
Two and a half weeks later, he announced he would vote for Trump after all.
The apparent reversal did not escape the attention—or derision—of the political press. (“Jason Chaffetz just set some sort of modern record for flip-floppery,” wrote one Washington Post blogger.) To the congressman’s detractors, the episode encapsulated all the worst traits Chaffetz is accused of: the shameless camera-mugging, the brazen partisanship, the wet-finger-in-the-air opportunism. Chaffetz, though, has no regrets.
“Look, I think I went through a lot of the gyrations that people in Utah and across the country [did],” he said in a recent interview. But in the end, he
