He knows how to make a stink.
Longtime New York congressman Jerry Nadler has become famous as a champion of progressive policies in the House of Representatives. But among his colleagues in the chamber, he has also earned the dubious distinction of being its smelliest member.
“He’s the kind of guy who when he makes his way onto the floor he barrels through everyone, and sometime he doesn’t really need to barrel through because his stench kind of clears the way and it equates to his personality, which is nasty and most people want to keep away from,” said Anthony D’Esposito, a former GOP congressman from Long Island recently named inspector general of the Department of Labor.
A half dozen of Nadler’s current and former colleagues—on both sides of the aisle—were even more savage behind the scenes, pooh-poohing the New York liberal. One House Democrat said he wasn’t just rancid but also frequently out of it.
“Members of Congress don’t want to sit next to him because of it,” the House Democrat told the Washington Free Beacon. “Yeah, he smells. I don’t know what he does. Maybe he doesn’t take a bath, I don’t know what it is.”
“They removed him from his chairmanship because they didn’t trust his ability to handle the job. He’s constantly falling asleep on the floor and constantly falling asleep everywhere.”
Nadler, 77, was ousted as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee in December amid mounting concerns that he was no longer up to the job. In 2019, then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi sidelined him during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment hearing over similar cognitive concerns. Videos of Nadler napping during hearings have become commonplace online.
Many members speculated the congressman’s odor emanated from underlying health issues, which have dogged Nadler for his entire career. In 2019, Nadler nearly collapsed during a Manhattan press conference and had to be rushed to the hospital. The congressman underwent gastric bypass surgery in 2002 to remedy his morbid obesity—he was at one point so enormous he could not ride a subway, he once noted on his website.
“He reeks. It’s not just like a guy who didn’t take a shower. I don’t know if it’s surgery or a colostomy bag, but it’s bad,” another member of Congress from New York said.
“When [former House speaker Kevin] McCarthy was sworn in he had a bipartisan briefing with the congressional budget office and I sat in the Capitol visitor center theater and Nadler sat in front of me and I had to get up and move. It’s overpowering.”
Another former GOP congressman said he also believed it was a medical issue and speculated “bedsores.”
Talk in Congress of Nadler’s malodorous musk has been an open secret for years—and has occasionally been the butt of public jokes.
“Congressman, I don’t know how to ask this in a respectable manner, but do off-smelling people offend you?” Fox News host Greg Gutfeld asked McCarthy during an appearance on Gutfeld in June 2022.
“Are we talking about Jerry Nadler?” McCarthy quipped to audience laugher.
Trump has long clashed with Nadler, a feud that stems from his days as a New York City real estate developer. Trump has disparaged the congressman as “Fat Jerry” and a “sleazebag.”
Nadler did not respond to a request for comment.
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