Ironically, this actually cost him a lot of friends in that movement. He pretty much exposed himself as a fraud when someone found out how much money it was costing (the taxpayers as well as him personally) to keep his own frail mother alive in an assisted living facility. I suspect this was the main reason why he'd been out of the news for so long that I began to wonder if he was still alive.
I didn't know this. Well, there are exceptions to every rule for liberals.