‘He’s Not OK’: The Entirely Predictable Unraveling of Madison Cawthorn

In August of 2015, 16 months after the accident that nearly killed him and left him unable to walk, Madison Cawthorn exchanged text messages with the friend who had fallen asleep at the wheel. Brad was going to college. The house where Cawthorn was living was renovated for his wheelchair. He was trying to recover millions of dollars in medical bills from Ledford and his father. After a while it was clear that Cawthorn didn't want to be with the teens.

The way we used to hang out was lamented by Ledford because of the tension of the court case.

I miss everything, Ledford said.

Cawthorn unleashed one long, raw message, screens and screens of anguish and loss.

He said that he misses being able to defend himself, dress himself, and use the bathroom.

After contemplating suicide for four and a half years, Cawthorn ran for Congress. At a young age, he achieved his most ambitious career goal, turning a stirring story of overcoming adversity into a shocking political victory. He put himself on a short list of the chamber's most known figures after being sworn in. Cawthorn's electoral career may be over as quickly as it began, as he is mired in controversy heading into his first reelection. Seven Republican challengers have lined up to try to oust Cawthorn in Tuesday's primary because of his indiscretions.

He was stopped for driving with a revoked license. He tried to bring a gun onto the plane. He made comments about orgies and cocaine use by his Capitol Hill colleagues. He called the Ukrainian president a thug and suggested that Nancy Pelosi was an alcoholic. His role in the insurrection on Jan. 6 of last year, his growing catalogue of alarming provocations on social media, and his politically imprudent decision to announce he was changing districts all add up to this. His marriage lasted less than a year.

The implications of Cawthorn's troubles are broad. More than 70 interviews with people who know Cawthorn, who have worked for him and against him, allies and enemies, activists and operatives, and long-time watchers of politics in the mountains of western North Carolina paint a picture of a man in crisis. They say that Cawthorn is an immature college dropout with a thin work resume who was neither qualified nor prepared for the responsibility and the scrutiny that comes with the office he holds. They say that he is a person who is susceptible to the twisted incentives of a political environment and a Trump-led GOP that prizes outrage and partisan attack.

The former Republican chair of the 11th District is running against him.

The consequences are getting worse. Without whom he would not have gotten elected, Cawthorn lost the trust and support of some of the most influential Republicans in and around Henderson County. He lost the support of the top two Republicans in the state Legislature, House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger. While Cawthorn is seen as a favorite of Donald Trump, he has not received an endorsement email from the president in the way he has in the past.

“Politics is like a vice amplifier … And then when you’re a young man who has a terrible accident like that, and your identity is kind of stripped from you, all of that is amplified even more.”

A recent poll shows Cawthorn lagging but still in the lead, his closest competitor being a state senator from the area who has the backing of Tillis and some of the best strategists in the state. Cawthorn needs to get at least 30 percent of the vote to avoid a second round in July, but he is running out of money, has no ads on local TV, and is hiding when he does.

The people in Cawthorn's district believe that the accident ravaged his body and messed with his mind but that he won the election and that this has hurt him.

Politics is like a vice amplifier, where everyone needs to be important to be recognized. A GOP consultant who knows Cawthorn said that when a young man has a terrible accident like that, his identity is stripped from him.

In his wrenching messages to Ledford that are part of public court records, Cawthorn expressed understandable bitterness that once he was something, and all of a sudden he was not, what was he now?

He wrote that he was no longer healing.

He said it was impossible for him to be around you.

Cawthorn poses with his parents on the front porch of their home in Flat Rock.

Cawthorn stared blankly.

Three days after sending the texts to Ledford, Cawthorn sat in an office in Florida for a deposition in his first auto negligent lawsuit against his friends.

Cawthorn was not doing well. He told his family that he would stand up for them the next time they sang him, after he had spent a week at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. He was three weeks past his 20th birthday, and he was the handsome second son of a financial adviser father and homemaker mother. He was a paraplegic.

The attorney for Ledford's father's company asked if he could give him a list of 10 things that he enjoyed doing before.

Cawthorn said that he could not work out. I can play football. I cannot stand up and pee. I can't wake up by myself. I will probably never be able to procreate. I can run. I can jump. I can not wrestle with my brother. I can't get through the day without pain. I can't wake up in the morning without forgetting that I am paralyzed and falling out of my bed. I can't be too far away from my doctors. I can climb anything. I can't go on adventures in places. I can hike. I can ride horses. I can bail hay. Do you want me to continue?

The lawyer asked, "How do you know that?"

Just because I can.

Who told you?

My urologist.

That will never change?

It's unlikely that I'll walk or procreate because of my injury.

The hazy mental snapshots of what little he could remember from the days and weeks after the accident were recounted by Cawthorn in the course of the deposition. The helicopter to the hospital had life-threatening injuries and was incapacitating, according to the Florida Highway Patrol report. The lights above his head are bright. The nurse is holding something.

When he was in Atlanta, Cawthorn had his first conversations with his therapists. They told me that I was going to be in a wheelchair.

He wanted to play football. He wanted to be a marine.

One of the attorneys asked if he wanted to be a congressman.

Cawthorn said that he did.

Is that still a goal of yours?

Cawthorn said that was absolutely true.

Cawthorn spoke with Cruz and his supporters after the Get Out the Vote rally. Angeli Wright is a reporter for the Citizen-Times.

He made a vision board or goal board back home in North Carolina. Mark Meadows was the congressman from Cawthorn at the time, and he got a part-time job as an assistant in his office in January of 2015. He had said during the deposition that he was full-time, but he wasn't. He worked for us and answered the phone, but he didn't do much.

The most intense stretch of rehabilitation was more than a year away. That didn't mean he was recovered.

He once said that he didn't feel like a man.

He wondered what his purpose was.

“As a child I thought I wanted to rule the world… As a young adult I know I do.”

Cawthorn said that one day his dad had a really tough conversation with him. He stayed up for more than four hours making a list of pros and cons of staying alive.

He said that he took the thought of suicide completely out of his mind.

He said that he decided he was going to live his life.

In the fall of 2016 he attended Patrick Henry College, a school with less than 400 students that prepares Christian men and women who will lead.

His time on campus was a disaster. He said in a deposition that his average grade in most classes was a D. In a speech he made to the student body in a chapel on campus, he claimed that he had gotten into the Naval Academy before the accident and that Ledford had left him to die in the car. In his short time at PHC Cawthorn, he established a reputation for predatory behavior and gross misconduct towards our female peers.

In a second deposition in a separate accident-related lawsuit, Cawthorn admitted that he had lied in his first deposition about having been accepted to Harvard and Princeton. Cawthorn was living in an apartment with Stephen Smith, a cousin who was becoming his best friend and primary help because of the thick carpet that made it hard to wheel around. He didn't have a job. He was not going to school.

One of the attorneys asked Cawthorn if he had been doing anything since he got back to North Carolina.

He said it was just trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.

Do you plan on going into politics after you finish your degree in political science?

He said that the plan was the future. That would be the plan.

He gave motivational speeches at colleges and churches throughout the year. He started a real estate investment company and bought a single 6-acre lot for $20,000. He talked excitedly about training for the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo, one of his posts was a slow-motion video set to patriotic country music of Cawthorn straining in a racing chair. It became a source of confusion and amusement for Paralympians who didn't know him and didn't see his name on lists that would lead to such a feat. He began to wear camo, smoke cigars, shoot guns, and do dips in the gym with his wheelchair on social media.

Cawthorn traveled with his parents, cousin, and the woman he would marry to Boston, Cuba, and the Swiss Alps. He drank from a pineapple in the Bahamas, jet-skied in Miami, scuba-dived in Mexico, and swam in the Dead Sea.

He played a big part in a late-night game show on a cruise ship in 2019. Cawthorn wore women's lingerie. According to Cawthorn, this cruise left from Miami in early 2019, but two people. They said that they were at the show and had specific recollections of Cawthorn.

He was one of the contestants, but he won the show, according to a woman from Tennessee.

When we got there, the host said that if you are easily offended, then this is not the show for you and gave people time to leave. He said there were about 400 people in the theater on the ship and they were divided into 10 teams. He said that the teams vied for points based on which team did the craziest thing. Cawthorn's team was declared the winner.

Cawthorn stood out. Colleen said that people emerge as the most outgoing or ambitious due to their eagerness to be the most outrageous. The wheelchair made him memorable. Matt said that he was the disabled guy who got applause.

Ball told me in an email that Madison is the winner and a star.

MarkMeadows decided not to run for reelection in order to become Trump's fourth White House chief of staff. The following morning, Cawthorn filed his first papers with the FEC. He proposed to his girlfriend a week later. The week after that, he officially announced his candidacy.

The White House chief of staff spoke to Cawthorn, a candidate for his former congressional seat and a former part-time staffer in his office, before a Trump speech in Mills River, N.C., on August 24, 2020.

Cawthorn won the congressional seat because he got more votes in the primary than the candidate who finished third, which was enough for him to win the seat.

He cast himself as a conservative Christian Republican for freedom, liberty and the Second Amendment against the left.

Before the primary on Super Tuesday in the first week of March 2020, Cawthorn was the only one of the dozen Republican candidates to speak up at a forum at a community college in Asheville on behalf of reporters the rest wanted to kick out.

He told me that he would support him and help him. Will you support him if he does and you don't?

One week into the campaign, Cawthorn told Kyle Perrotti that they were going to win in silence.

Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University who has tracked Cawthorn as intently as anyone and is at work on a book about the district, said that you did see.

He won in late June. By a lot.

He was on The View a few days later.

He is just 24 years old, his name is Madison Cawthorn, and he scored one of the big upsets in the primaries on Tuesday in North Carolina.

He said that they kept politics local.

He spoke to the New York Times.

He told the Washington Examiner that he had experienced more pain and suffering than the majority of people.

Let liberals have a conversation. He said from the stage at the Republican National Convention that conservatives should define what they support and win the argument in areas like health care and the environment. With the help of his friends, he stood up from his chair at the end of his speech. CNN's Chris Cillizza said it was moving that he had been vaunted as a future star of the party.

Cawthorn spoke with Jewish Insider in September and praised Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He disagreed with her policy platform, but he admired the woman who had become a standard-bearer for young progressives.

During a debate with his opponent, Cawthorn said that black lives matter.

In late October, speaking with a reporter from the Hendersonville Lightning, Cawthorn sounded completely different from how he sounds today.

The reason President Trump didn't endorse me was because I was willing to be very critical of him. I don't plan to vote for Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

Cawthorn said he didn't care for Trump's statements.

During the summer and fall, there was a report in which one teen from his area recalled trying to pull away when he tried to have sex with him. He was invited to the White House. The Washington hotel is owned by Trump. The RNC. A big difference between a failed advance and being forcefully is possible, according to his spokesman at the time.

When Cawthorn won, he sent a very Trump-esque, red-meat tweet.

Cry more, lib.

Cawthorn said in interviews that he shouldn't have done that.

Cawthorn's older, more experienced advisers were alarmed by the first sign of a change. The sheriff was the one who helped Cawthorn from the beginning. Cawthorn called Erwin a "coward" and a "little bitch" after he won the election.

“I’ve seen this through the years, but not to this degree, because people I think just don’t have the trauma that he has.”

When he wanted an older, more experienced woman to be hired for a position in the district office, Cawthorn wanted a much younger woman instead.

He has an extreme version of successful person syndrome, according to a Republican strategist who is familiar with Cawthorn and the campaign.

He hears you, but he doesn't listen.

A sign for the Cawthorn campaign is defaced by another sign for his opponents.

Cawthorn's first month in Congress was the last gasp of his best self.

He was sworn in on January 3, 2021. He started contesting the election of Joe Biden. He was one of the speakers at the Save America rally.

He spent parts of the next few weeks as Congress moved to impeach the outgoing president.

He said the people who attacked the Capitol were weak-minded and that what happened on the Hill was the same.

You don't represent me if you are waving these American flags and the other flags. That is not my movement. He told Nuzzi that he was not part of his party.

Even though a lot of those people probably would have voted for me, he said.

He said on CNN that the election was not fraudulent.

He told Story Hinckley from the Christian Science Monitor that he was praying for Biden.

The less penitent he has been, the longer he has been in office.

He began selling Covid masks that said "USELESS" in a speech on the House floor. He called on Harris to invoke the 25th Amendment and oust Biden from office in a letter. During the Veterans Affairs committee hearing, he cleaned a gun. He went to the airport with a gun. He went to the school board meeting with a knife. He said the insurrectionists in jail were political prisoners months after he said the election was not fraudulent. He was stopped for going 89 miles per hour in a 65-mile-per-hour zone. He was pulled over for going over the speed limit. He told mothers to raise their sons to be monsters. He accused his Capitol Hill colleagues of doing orgies and doing cocaine, and Republicans from the mountains to Raleigh to Washington began to think enough was enough. The pictures and videos started to make their way around social media and even into campaign ads.

Madison Cawthorn has fallen well short of the most basic standards western North Carolina expects from their representatives. McCarthy wants to turn himself around.

He was not at the forum for the candidates running for his seat at the Lambuth Inn because he was at a Christian retreat. The seven other candidates spent the first half of the two hours talking about tax cuts, Joe Biden, inflation, and their anti-establishment Christian cred. There is a referendum on Cawthorn.

There is an elephant in the room that we haven't been talking about, and that is the empty seat, said the former district GOP chair who is now running against him.

Rod Honeycutt, a retired Army colonel who has been running since last summer, said that a young man is in trouble.

Matthew Burril casts his candidacy in a faith-based light. Cawthorn wanted his support in 2020.

Bruce O Connell, the owner of the Pisgah Inn, was standing near the exit with Karen Wilson, his partner and campaign coordination. He told me that the night before, he and Wilson went out to dinner with Cawthorn. Most of the others running had been at an NAACP forum in Hendersonville, but O Connell and Cawthorn decided to attend the Republican club of Swain County. He said that they ended up at an Italian restaurant in Bryson City.

Wilson left their dinner with Cawthorn wondering if he would win if he didn't.

Relieved, she whispered.

She said she got that clear sense.

She mentioned his accident, his candidacy in 2020 that took him in a little more than eight months from a no-name who had just gotten off a cruise. She told me that Cawthorn seemed to have shifted uncomfortably in his wheelchair. She said he talked a lot about his hope for a cure for the disease. She said that he has to do things because he is in pain.

He struggles, said Woodhouse.

Rhode, a native of Hendersonville who is working for another candidate against Cawthorn, said that Madison is in a lot of pain.

A lot of people I have talked to think that something happened to him beyond his physical impairment when he was in that accident.

Hunter Clark, a former intern in Cawthorn's district office, said that he thinks he could have done more had the accident not happened.

A friend of Cawthorn told me that if you wake up being paralyzed and go through a really hard time, then you're better.

I see him as a young man who has been through a traumatic event and has been politically radicalized by the far right, in a way where he also gains access to significant power.

She said that young men are susceptible to radicalization when they feel isolated and invisible.

Jim Blaine, a North Carolina-based Republican consultant who has done polling on this race, said that the guy needs to figure out who he is.

In the middle of last week, in the middle of a campaign, his main district office was locked. His campaign has more debt than cash. He shot skeet last week. He had a charity event at a restaurant. A supporter positioned his truck to block the view of a photographer at a meet and greet at a gun store in Cherokee County. He told me that he saw Cawthorn over the weekend at the Western North Carolina Agricultural Center.

There is a broken link on the endorsements page. The most important endorsement is just one. Cawthorn said in mailers and text-message blasts that he has Trump. Last March at Mar-a-Lago, Trump cut a video with him offering his complete and total, as I like to say, endorsement. He has a big voice. After that, Trump said of Bo, a different congressional candidate in North Carolina, "You know, Bo, you have my complete and total endorsement, OK?" Two people are running for Congress in Georgia. He endorsed a person for Congress in California. He endorsed a person for the commission. He didn't do it for Cawthorn. Susie Wiles, the CEO of Save America who is heavily involved in Trump's endorsements operation, told me Thursday that Trump has endorsed Cawthorn but not with a formal statement.

He is due in court in June for speeding and driving with a revoked license. He brought the gun to the airport in Charlotte in October.

Cawthorn had a prebuttal to the story. He said it would be boring.

He could still win. He might have lost politically.

On his radio show the other day, Sean Hannity asked what was going on with him.