Andrew Gillum, whose prominence in politics once gave high hopes for the Democratic Party, opened up about his past scandal in a Florida hotel, saying his actions were a result of someone slipping drugs in his drink and that everyone makes mistakes in life.
On a recent episode of “The Breakfast Club,” Charlamagne Tha God — known for grilling some of his guests — didn’t waste rehashing the hotel scandal involving the former Democratic gubernatorial candidate, where he was found inebriated in a Miami Beach hotel room with two other men. One of them was reportedly a male escort.
In 2020, the police had been called because one of the men appeared to have experienced an overdose, and suspected crystal meth was found in the room, the Miami Herald reported.
Although Gillum has already publicly spoken about entering rehabilitation for alcoholism after the incident, he had a lot to say about it during the podcast interview. “You can’t be more hurt than me,” Gillum said. “You can’t be more angry, more disappointed, more let down, more whatever than me.”
He continued: “What I would say if I were telling the truth about the situation, I would compare it to you deciding that you wanted to go out to a club for whatever reason for giving you motivation, but the main motivation was you wanted to have a good time, wanted to be seen.
“And when you were there, someone slipped your drink of Quaalude and everything from the point of you having had that drink to waking up the next day is a mystery to you,” said Gillum, who initially said he was in Miami that night to attend a wedding.
Quaalude, also known as Methaqualone, is a sedative and hypnotic drug, acting as a central nervous system depressant that induces sleep, according to PBS.
“If we were of different genders, we might talk about this even more differently. I made a choice to go somewhere at 5 in the afternoon, with the expectation of leaving in 30 minutes,” Gillum said. “After my drink, I don’t have a memory for six hours. Every picture, every video, and everything we’ve collected that was taken shows me the duration of that time looking with no ability of consent, approval, or anything else. And so, I put myself in that situation. Yes, we all make choices.”
Gillum publicly stated that he is a bisexual man in a past interview with Tamron Hall, saying, “I don’t identify as gay, but I do identify as bisexual,” according to a report from People. “And that is something I have never shared publicly before.”
It was his first public statement about his sexuality, which his wife, R. Jai Gillum, expressed her support during the interview. She said, “love and sexuality exist on a spectrum,” adding that she cares about “what agreement do we make to be in a relationship with each other.”
Why Is Andrew Gillum Talking Now?
The interview on the popular radio show was to introduce a new podcast called the “Native Land Pod,” featuring Tiffany Cross, Angela Rye and Gillum, who joined the radio show to promote it.
On the podcast, Rye said, each host will talk about their personal stories, “our political circumstances,” and politics and offer a fair analysis of issues involving both Democrats and Republicans.
Paying homage to the indigenous community is what inspired the name of the podcast, Cross said.
“We recognize that this land was stolen and America wasn’t founded on peace and prosperity as the fairytale would have you believe, it was taken with blood and fury from our indigenous brothers and sisters. So we acknowledge them,” Cross said.
Meanwhile, Gillum also said felt his so-called friends were “aloof, disappeared, vamoose,” after his hardships hit the fan. Charlamagne responded: “You couldn’t have thought they were your real friends.”
But Gillum disagreed, insisting those were people in his inner circle whom he didn’t expect to leave his side.
“Everything that happened, my run for governor of Florida, I had assumed that people who benefited financially, personally, who got their jobs or holding those jobs and those advances because of doors you open,” would have his back, Gillum said.
“These are people who I could go into a bunker with. …These are people who I had put on a friend list after scrutiny and expect that they’re gonna be there for me, not because I raised up in the newspaper.”
Gillum continued: “And I’m standing with him in the gap until somebody proves me otherwise, or proves me different…when none of that shows up, lonely, angry, mad, and all that stuff, you know, is for the birds. I’m just so thankful that God revealed for me people in my life who would say and hold me and say, you know, expecting those folks to show up as you would. And I understand how that happened, but their reaction was simply them doing what they knew how to do.”
