Op-ed: Nvidia’s CEO joins the parade of Trump allies brought down by scandal

Russell Brand is going to prison. The British comedian and actor reinvented himself as a MAGA-friendly Christian influencer while retaining, well, his talent for making a spectacle of himself. He was sentenced to 10½ years after being convicted of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others.Weeks before his conviction, Brand moderated a panel at the Make America Healthy Again summit, appearing onstage with Mehmet Oz. He also posed for photographs with Oz and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.What a loathsome trio.Brand had become part of the MAGA universe, embraced by people who have made a political career out of lecturing the rest of us about morality, family values, protecting women and supposedly heathen queers.The image of Brand smiling alongside the Trump administration’s health care leadership now looks like an ugly metaphor for a Republican Party that has spent years excusing, minimizing, and even celebrating the behavior of men who should have been political liabilities.And that’s without even getting into Kennedy’s notoriously lurid libido.Then there is Brand’s Trump-adjacent counterpart in scandal, Jensen Huang. The former Nvidia CEO resigned after reports of extramarital affairs, including a relationship with a woman U.S. intelligence suspects is a Chinese spy. China denies the espionage allegation.Brand and Huang are fittingly slimy symbols of the seamy Trumpworld culture on display as a roster of scandal-plagued GOP candidates went down in the midterms.Consider the Republican candidates whose personal conduct and sex-related scandals hung over their campaigns. Florida Rep. Cory Mills, who denied allegations of sexual misconduct and domestic abuse, lost his Republican primary to Ryan Elijah. A House Ethics Committee investigation added to the controversies surrounding Mills.Related: A Republican’s sex scandal exposes the media’s evolving shrug toward congressional disgraceHis defeat reminded voters that even