Directed by Daniel DiMauro & Morgan Pehme.
This documentary took a different tone than I expected. When I saw the main politician it planned to follow around for a year was proud bomb-thrower Matt Gaetz, I figured this would be the thousandth "Look how evil the Republicans are" doc in our post-Michael Moore world. The directors instead focus on what "draining the swamp" actually means to Gaetz and others in DC and how they plan to do it.
The other two that get the most screen-time are Thomas Massie and Ken Buck, two more Republican House members who genuinely want to reform Washington and make Congress work again.
This may seem impossible with a TV-ready troll like Gaetz, but what we see is a true Trump believer who thinks he can be bipartisan and hyper-partisan at the same time. I now view Gaetz as a full formed human with whom I disagree strongly to his approach to Trump and to publicity stunts. But we see that he does have Democratic friends and colleagues where they work on serious reform.
We all know that Congress is basically a place where our Reps have some hearings, give some soundbites, and then spend the rest of the time trying to raise money. The doc singles out Newt Gingrich as the main reason why money has flooded into Washington and how "bipartisan" became a dirty word. We also see how bitter partisanship is exactly what the Top .1% would want. Maintaining the status quo is best for business.
Because this takes place over the year from the Mueller report to the impeachment vote, we get sections of that. When dealing with these, we see Gaetz, Massie, and Buck settle comfortably into their talking points. We also see how Congress can't seem to focus on more than one thing at a time. Let's do a 3400-page budget bill and make everyone vote on it hours after they get it!
In the end, Gaetz decides to become the first Republican House member to swear off Super-PAC money. If he really wants to reform DC, he needs to set a good example. He might also want to look in the mirror at how he's handling TV.
