Madison Cawthorn: The Paralympic liar who stoked the fire at the Capitol

When Madison Cawthorn first emerged as a Trumpian Republican candidate for the 11th Congressional district in North Carolina, he came trailing a compelling backstory.

A 24-year-old in a wheelchair, he had been all set to enter the prestigious United States Naval Academy at Annapolis before a car accident left him paralysed from the waist down. Declared dead at the scene of a crash where his friend abandoned him in the fiery wreckage, he had dropped out of college due to a broken heart and was training for the 2020 Paralympic Games until a back injury prematurely ended his dream.

A script so dramatic and multi-layered as to be almost incredulous. And it proved to be exactly that as holes quickly emerged in the narrative. The voters who sent him to Washington didn’t care a jot but it turned out Cawthorn had been rejected by the Naval Academy long before the accident and, far from being left to die, his best pal had actually dragged him from the flames, very much alive.

Most revealing perhaps was the admission by several Paralympians that they knew of him before he ever gained national notoriety

His entire professional resume was mostly a work of fiction, and, as for training for the Paralympics, well, that was a yarn of an especially sordid stripe.

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“There have been a few highs and some lows since I started training, but mainly there have been undistinguished normal weekdays,” wrote Cawthorn about a work-out in 2019. “Today was just like another Tuesday, it held no promise of glory or adrenaline. I woke up, hit the track, went to exhaustion, and then got back in my truck and left. The difficulty of training has faded now it is just the monotony and patience that is the test. (But I also hit my best three mile time of my life today ??????) 584 days away from the games!”

That post was accompanied by a photograph of a sweaty, spent-looking Cawthorn in his wheelchair on a track. The kind of shot a Paralympic athlete in training might routinely take. Except, all was not quite as it seemed. His social media regularly trumpeted his ambitions to shatter the wheelchair 100m world record and to qualify for the Paralympics but he had never registered as a Paralympic athlete and, according to all available records, hadn’t raced a single time against those with genuine hopes of reaching the games.

In one post, he made reference to preparing for something called the US Open. There is no Paralympic event bearing that title and, beyond all his regular online braggadocio, there was not a shred of evidence of him competing or achieving in a way that suggested this was anything more than a chimeric aspiration.

“It’s like a kid saying they want to play in the NBA when they’re on their fourth-grade basketball team,” said Amanda McGrory, a Paralympian, and archivist and collections curator for the Paralympic Committee, explaining how ludicrous his claims were. “You have to be involved in a team, usually your college or a local club. And then from there, you establish times at qualifying races, and then from there you get scouted.”

Shamelessly peddled

That quote was from “The Ignominious Deceits of Congressman Cawthorn”, a forensic deep dive by The Nation magazine into the myriad lies, exaggerations and half-truths he shamelessly peddled since first standing for election. Most revealing perhaps was the admission by several Paralympians that they knew of him before he ever gained national notoriety.

His Instagram feed had long been a source of amusement to these serious, dedicated competitors. They regularly scoffed at this deluded character making bold pronouncements about a sport they knew he had nothing to do with.

A man capable of lying about that part of his life is, of course, capable of lying about anything. On January 6th last, Cawthorn rolled onto the podium in front of the White House and delivered a rousing speech to the demented refuseniks protesting the outcome of the presidential election. A rant full of conspiracy theories and inflammatory rhetoric.

“Wow, this crowd has some fight in it,” he said. “But, my friends, the Democrats, with all the fraud they have done in this election, the Republicans hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice…But, my friends, when I look out on this crowd, I can confidently say, this crowd has the voice of lions.”

When the very same people he riled up went on to attack the Capitol that day, Cawthorn phoned into a right-wing radio show and claimed the violent attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden was the work of Democratic Party operatives. On the first anniversary of his contribution to that debacle, as he remains a person of interest to those investigating the role played by Republican politicians in the affair, his national profile has grown significantly via more and more outrageous statements.

A man with a documented history of sexual harassment allegations has described women as “earthen vessels, sanctified by almighty God!”, called on parents to raise young men to be monsters, and distorted American history for political gain on a near daily basis. Even in post-Trump politics where bloviating is the default setting, facts pliable, and truth in the eye of the beholder, Cawthorn cuts an especially mendacious character.

The fantasist’s practiced knack for barefaced lying that he once brought to bear on his imagined pursuit of Paralympic glory is now trained on more serious matters. The country is much the worse for that.