The other sexual harassment scandal
taking over the political world right now.
Also tonight, serious questions are swirling
around the youngest member of Con-Congress,
an up-and-coming Republican with an increasingly high profile.
NEWSWOMAN: He is considered a rising star
in the Republican Party,
but Congressman Madison Cawthorn's past
and the political persona he has cultivated
is littered with dark allegations.
Cawthorn faced numerous allegations
of sexual harassment while attending
Patrick Henry College in Virginia just four years ago.
Caitlin Coulter went to school with Cawthorn
and says she was taken on what he called a fun drive.
His M.O. was to take vulnerable women out
on these rides with him in the car and to make advances.
Cawthorn asked her about her purity ring
and her sexual experiences.
Coulter says she felt something was off
and shut down the conversation.
He got really upset and he whips the car around
and started going back to campus at 70, 80 miles an hour
on these one-lane roads.
Um, and it was-- it was really scary.
"There was a lot of sexual innuendo," Leah Petree told CNN.
"It got really uncomfortable walking to and from class.
"He would yell out, 'Are you ready to take
that fun drive today?'"
Oh, damn.
That guy doesn't sound fun at all.
This guy was apparently sexually harassing women
while driving like a crazy person?
It's like if Mario Kart let you play as Harvey Weinstein.
And just to be clear,
this wasn't just making a few people uncomfortable.
No, Cawthorn reportedly kissed women by force,
put his hands up their skirts,
and pulled one girl onto his lap
and put his finger between her legs.
In fact, it got so bad that R.A.s at the school
started warning students to stay away from him.
And you know you're doing something wrong
when you're in the same category as STDs and alcohol poisoning.
But the question you may be asking is,
who is Madison Cawthorn
and how did he go from college creep
to congressman creep?
Let's find out in another episode of Fringe-Watching.
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One year ago,
Madison Cawthorn was not expected
to be the next congressional representative
from North Carolina.
But he narrowly beat a more established conservative
in the Republican primary
by falsely smearing her as a Never Trumper.
Because, you see, at this point,
Never Trumper is the worst insult
that you can say to a Republican.
It goes: expert,
Prius driver,
and then Never Trumper.
That's the Republican version of the N-word.
"You Never Trumper!"
"Don't you call me-- You take that back.
Why, you don't use that word on me."
"Okay, but you don't like Trump sometimes."
But what really propelled Cawthorn into office
was his compelling personal story,
even if it wasn't 100% his.
NEWSWOMAN: Fresh questions about his own account
of the car accident that left him wheelchair-bound in 2014.
CAWTHORN: He was my brother, my best friend.
He-he leaves me in a car to die in a fiery tomb.
NEWSWOMAN: Bradley Ledford, Cawthorn's friend
and the driver of the car, telling The Washington Post
that Cawthorn's accounting of the accident was not true.
Cawthorn's own parents
undercutting their son's story, too,
saying the driver of the car rescued him.
That accident went on to be the core part of the narrative
Cawthorn weaved about himself as he ran for Congress.
ANNOUNCER: He planned on serving his country in the Navy
with a nomination to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
-(siren wailing) -But all that changed in the spring of 2014,
when tragedy struck.
NEWSWOMAN: But in this 2017 deposition
related to the accident, obtained by CNN,
Cawthorn admitted that he was rejected by the academy
before the accident.
So, this guy got rejected by the Naval Academy,
then got into a car crash,
and then claimed the crash was why he got rejected?
Well, you know what they say: when life gives you lemons,
blame the lemons for everything and you hope no one checks.
And, look, man, this is a horrible thing
that Cawthorn experienced.
But it's tragic enough on its own.
And it's also genuinely inspiring
that he came back from it,
which is probably why it's so weird
that he felt the need to lie about things
like his friend abandoning him to die.
I mean, dude rescued him from a car,
and, in return, he threw him under the bus.
And once people began digging
into the rest of Cawthorn's story,
they began finding lies everywhere.
For instance, he claimed
he turned down Princeton and Harvard.
That was not true.
He claimed to be a successful business owner,
even though his supposed investment company
reported zero income and had only one employee,
himself.
He even claimed repeatedly
to be training for the 2020 Paralympics,
despite never being an elite athlete,
something an actual Paralympian compared to
"a kid saying they want to play in the NBA
when they're on the fourth-grade basketball team."
Which would obviously be ridiculous.
I mean, no fourth grader could play in the NBA,
except maybe for the Pistons.
I mean, they... they need help.
So, Madison Cawthorn has basically lied
about every major event in his life.
And he's lucky that he's in politics,
because there's no other career
where you can be caught lying that much about your résumé
and still be allowed to keep your job.
So, instead of attending Princeton or Harvard,
Cawthorn went to a conservative Christian college
where he led a squad known on campus
as "the douche crew."
Which is impressive, especially when you think
about how much competition there is
for that name on a college campus.
You know? It's like working at a hedge fund
and being known as the guy with the coke problem.
But after earning mostly D's,
Cawthorn dropped out after only one semester
to go and see the world.
NEWSWOMAN: This 2017 Instagram post
from a visit to Adolf Hitler's vacation home
in Germany, the Eagle's Nest,
where Cawthorn refers to Hitler as "the Führer."
NEWSMAN: Posting, "The vacation house of the Führer.
"Seeing the Eagle's Nest has been on my bucket list
for a while. It did not disappoint."
I'm definitely not a Nazi. Uh, I’m not a white supremacist.
Okay, you know you messed up
if you need to follow your Instagram post with,
"I'm definitely not a Nazi."
I mean, nobody's posting kitten pictures like,
"Just to be clear, I definitely think the Holocaust was bad.
Meow."
And it's not even that he visited Hitler's vacation home
so much as how he wrote about it.
He called it "the Führer's house."
I mean, that's an extra level of respect
when you're using Hitler's preferred pronouns.
I mean, he even included the two dots over the "U."
What is that, the-the umlauts?
Yo, that takes effort.
I don't even know how you do that.
I think you need to buy, like, a special keyboard.
I can barely find the colon.
Where are you finding the umlauts for Hitler?
But maybe the strangest part of this post is that he said,
"It did not disappoint."
The only way to make this post worst was if it did disappoint.
"Just got to the Eagle's Nest.
-Bummer. Not that Hitlery." -(phone chimes)
So this was a little embarrassing,
but it didn't stop Cawthorn
from getting the ultimate stamp of approval.
Where's Madison? Where is Madison? Is he here?
-Right over here. -Madison Cawthorn, a real star.
You're gonna be a star of the party.
NEWSWOMAN: He rose to national prominence
and then gained national attention
at this summer's Republican Convention.
When I'm elected this November,
I'll be the youngest member of Congress in over 200 years.
And if you don't think young people can change the world,
then you just don't know American history.
George Washington was 21
when he received his first military commission.
Abe Lincoln-- 22 when he first ran for office.
And my personal favorite, James Madison, was just 25 years old
when he signed the Declaration of Independence.
Yes, that, my friends, is incredible.
Or it would be
if James Madison had actually signed
the Declaration of Independence, but he didn't.
I guess Cawthorn is so into lying
that he's even padding other people's resumes now?
I mean, sooner or later, this dude's gonna
get his alternate realities completely mixed up.
And let's not forget Thomas Jefferson,
who left me for dead in that car accident.
And please, don't get me wrong.
This isn't the biggest deal in the world.
In fact, I'm kind of impressed
that Cawthorn picked the one Founding Father
who didn't sign the Declaration of Independence.
Look at those signatures. Look at all those signatures.
They were passing that thing around
like an office birthday card.
And so, Madison Cawthorn made history
as the youngest member of Congress ever.
And he celebrated this milestone in American democracy
by immediately trying to undo American democracy.
CAWTHORN: My first act as a member
of Congress will be to object
to the electoral college certification
of the 2020 election.
If you don't start supporting election integrity,
I'm coming after you.
Madison Cawthorn's coming after you.
Everybody's coming after you.
Get on the phone, call your congressman, and feel free...
You can lightly threaten them.
Yes, just a few weeks
before rioters stormed the Capitol building,
Madison Cawthorn was telling people
to lightly threaten their congressmen.
which I guess is when you say you're gonna kill a dude,
then throw in some funny memes just to balance it out.
But you know, in many ways,
the Republican Party couldn't have asked
for a better star to push their lie.
Because unlike the Paralympics, this is something
he's actually been training for his whole life.
So that's Madison Cawthorn.
He claims the election was stolen,
lies about everything in his life,
and has dubious opinions about Nazis,
and an alleged history of sexual assault.
What I'm saying is, as soon as this guy can get a fake I.D.
saying he's 35, ooh, my friends, he's gonna be president.