Alan Ritchson, star of the “Reacher” TV series, is an outspoken Christian who’s known for speaking his mind. While promoting the Feb. 20 release of “Reacher,” Season 3, the 42-year-old actor made headlines for using an expletive to describe former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz.
Ritchson and Gaetz attended high school together in Niceville, Florida. But what the actor said about Gaetz, President Trump’s original pick for U.S. attorney general, was anything but nice. In a recent interview with GQ magazine, Ritchson called the former congressman a crude name and then stated bluntly, “We are adversaries.”
“It’s shocking to me that the panhandle of Florida continues to vote for somebody—knowing everything we know about him and the promises that he’s made behind closed doors about pardoning certain criminals—he’s just not a good dude!” the actor said of Gaetz, who’s a Southern Baptist.
Ritchson, who has called President Trump “a rapist and a con man,” continued:
There’s part of me that wants to get into politics to outdo somebody like [Gaetz] for good, and there’s part of me that’s like, I’m not duplicitous enough to succeed in politics. There are certain people that do a good job of staying true to who they are, but they’re ineffective. I think Bernie Sanders is a hero. But it’s like, what has he accomplished?
Matt Gaetz: ‘Hollywood Apparently Changes People!’
Last April, Ritchson told Bill Maher he wants “less vitriol in the world.” And last September, Ritchson said people whose religious and political beliefs differ from his aren’t his enemies. But the actor clearly draws the line at Gaetz, who has denied allegations of statutory rape and other ethics violations.
Gaetz represented Florida’s 1st district from 2016 to 2024. He resigned from Congress last November, after Trump tapped him to be attorney general. Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration after eight days, saying his nomination had become a “distraction.”
After Ritchson’s comments about Gaetz went viral, the former congressman posted, “Hollywood apparently changes people! Alan was a year behind me in high school and we were both on the Speech and Debate Team. We were not ‘adversaries’ as I won debate championships and Alan did more acting stuff.”
In his Feb. 20 post, Gaetz added, “As I recall, his older brother Eric won more often than Alan did. He was always very nice to me (and everyone) and his mother, the computer lab monitor, loved me. At her invitation, I even went to his dad’s retirement party from the Air Force. It was held at a karaoke bar … I sang ‘centerfold.’”
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