Brian Mast
They would rather lose a war than use the wrong pronouns, and we've had enough. Brian Mast at the 2024 RNC
Brian Mast is a Republican congressman from Florida known for his close ties to Donald Trump, ethically questionable comments and associations, and also for voting to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Mast has been in Congress since 2017 and during the Trump presidency he voted with Donald Trump 92.7% of the time. After Trump was indicted he said “This is complete and utter bullshit. A far-left D.A. is attempting to fulfill a moronic campaign promise and following Democrats’ un-democratic playbook of weaponizing the federal government against Joe Biden’s top political opponent.” He has been previously floated for Veterans Affairs Secretary by the AP in 2018 and then again by Punchbowl News in July 2024.
While in Congress he has taken a variety of hard-right MAGA stances including voting to defund NATO, voting against aid for Ukraine, and voting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He has also been a vocal leader in launching an unprecedented amount of investigations into the Biden administration’s State Department. Instead of focusing on “national security matters or preventing waste, fraud and abuse… many [of the investigations] seem…designed to stoke culture wars to rev up the Republican base ahead of November’s presidential election.” He has also been accused of questioning the innocence of babies that were killed in Gaza saying “these are not innocent Palestinian civilians.”
While in Congress Mast also likely violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK Act) three separate times. The first time was in 2021 when he purchased “up to $100,000 worth of Virgin Galactic stock about a month after the space tourism company’s president testified before a congressional subcommittee of which Mast is a member”. He also disclosed his purchase of this stock after the federally mandated deadline. The second time was when he sold stock worth up to $50,000 in Ideal Power but reported the sale months later. The third time Mast was “more than a year late disclosing an exchange of his shares in Aphria, Inc., for shares of Tilray Brands, Inc”.
In 2017, Mast was linked to a million dollar marketing scam because of his connection to World Patent Marketing, a Florida company accused by the Federal Trade Commission of running a multi-million dollar scam. In February 2016, Mast was named to the company’s advisory board, shortly before its owner, Scott J. Cooper, donated over $5,000 to Mast’s campaign. The FTC alleges that the company defrauded thousands of clients by charging them for patent and marketing services that were never delivered.
In 2020, it was revealed that Mast had made inappropriate comments on Facebook that included comments about rape and sex with minors. According to Florida Politics, Mast’s friend and campaign manager “uploaded a picture of him at a bar during a trip to South Africa. In a comment on Ledonni’s photo, Mast wrote, ‘im so proud of you… i hope you hook up with at least fifteen 15 year olds over there…. its legel there right’”. He also commented “how about don’t turn this rape into a murder” on Facebook responding to a post asking for pickup lines.
Recently, Mast spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention where he said things like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “would rather lose a war than use the wrong pronouns, and we’ve had enough”.
In Mast’s 2018 congressional campaign, one of his biggest donors was Alticor which is run by the DeVos family. In the same campaign he also accepted donations from Igor Fruman, a soviet-born associate of Rudy Giuliani who was arrested for “engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and State office,” among other crimes.