One day after withdrawing his name from consideration for U.S. attorney general, former Congressman Matt Gaetz has launched a new side hustle making personalized videos for a fee on the website Cameo.
Gaetz joined the platform Friday, the same day he announced he would not be sworn in to Congress in January despite his re-election. His fee was initially set at $250 per video, according to Semafor, which first broke the news. By Saturday afternoon, he was charging $525 per video.
A Cameo spokesperson told the Pensacola News Journal that Gaetz joined the website on Friday. Gaetz is also promoting his Cameo account in his bio on X.
Gaetz’s new gig comes on the heels of a tumultuous few days in his political career. Last week, after President-elect Donald Trump announced Gaetz as his pick for attorney general, the Florida Republican promptly resigned from Congress, upending a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use against him. (The Justice Department ended a sex trafficking probe against Gaetz last year without bringing any charges.) Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.
The release of the committee’s report then became the subject of intense debate among lawmakers. Gaetz’s allies pressured the committee not to make its findings public, though multiple Republican senators said they were interested in seeing the report prior to his confirmation hearing. With Gaetz no longer in contention for AG, it could relieve the pressure on the panel to release its report.
Gaetz follows another high-profile Republican congressman who went to Cameo to capitalize on his notoriety. Late last year, former Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., began making personalized videos on the platform when he was expelled from the House after an ethics investigation found he had misused campaign cash for personal expenses. Santos has since pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges.
While it’s still too early to gauge Gaetz’s success on the platform, Santos proved to be wildly popular. Cameo CEO Steven Galanis told Yahoo News that Santos surpassed his $174,000 annual congressional salary in his first week after joining the website.
