Hoo-boy. In more than a decade of covering Florida’s political scene, never have I ever opened a story with those two words. But here we are, all because Matthew Taylor, the almost-famous, almost-welder, almost-comedian, almost-county-commissioner, almost-governor, almost-nuclear-radiation-expert, almost-legitimate-journalist, almost-Florida-resident…has now added almost-gay-porn-star to the mix, and somehow managed to blame The Capitolist for his own scandal that we didn’t know existed until he helpfully announced it himself.
Taylor’s campaign for Florida Agriculture Commissioner veered into uncharted territory this week after a previously unknown media outlet called PopulistSentinel.com published allegations that Taylor once filmed a porn video and posted it online. In this very personal performance, he allegedly does some X-rated soul-searching, in the same sort of way a TSA agent might do some soul searching if they suspected you were smuggling souls – ahem – “south of the border.”
I say “allegedly” because I am pleased to report that I have not seen this abomination of a video, that’s because it’s been mercifully scrubbed from the internet. Even so, Taylor admitted it was him in the video, albeit his admission ignored the facts and instead described the video as getting “caught with my pants down.”
Never one to let a crisis go to waste, Taylor immediately took to social media with a confession-meets-conspiracy-theory monologue – in which he pointed his digital rectal examination appendage at The Capitolist for exposing him through the employment of a private investigator to root out the pornographic video.
“A journalist who once worked for Rick Scott reached out to me,” Taylor said on Facebook in which he superimposes himself over text with my name and “The Capitolist” visible on the screen. He then continues: “He said he was gonna hire a private investigator, and I guess he did, because the guy caught me with my pants down.”
Here’s the thing: I sincerely have no idea what Matthew Taylor is talking about. Almost all of Taylor’s statements contain exactly zero truths. Despite his latest claims, I’ve never had a conversation with him about hiring a private investigator, nor did I hire one. The Capitolist didn’t even write the story about Taylor’s porn video and we have no association with the media outlet that did. Until this week, we were blissfully unaware that Taylor had ever dabbled in porn acting of any kind, let alone the kind that is apparently so embarrassing that even a “brutally honest” social media influencer would feel compelled to root it from the bowels and dank crevices of the internet.
Facts and truthfulness don’t seem to be Taylor’s strong suit. Our previous story detailed his evolving list of alter egos and contradictions. He’s the guy who branded himself a “Florida Cracker” while living on a porch in West Virginia. The same porch that, unfortunately for his narrative, matches real-estate photos and county property records that make it very hard to claim he’s still a Florida resident. When confronted, he told The Capitolist he’d simply “taken a vacation” and that any claims he moved north were false, while filming fully-clothed non-adult videos with Appalachian foothills in the background.
Taylor has also cracked jokes about violence during an argument with his wife, while also admitting to being Baker Acted and then posting part of his own mental-health evaluation which notably included a note about his “preoccupation with the environment and radiation.”
Now he wants Florida voters to support his failing campaign (again), but why should they take this guy seriously? For a man who invests a lot of time trying to expose scandals, he might want to stop producing them himself.
