For the past few days, fans of The Bachelor have been buzzing about a video featuring current lead Matt James and some buddies golfing and body shaming contestant Victoria Larson. Although Matt isn’t the one making disparaging comments, he’s been dragged into Golfgate nonetheless. The man throwing shade at Victoria has been identified, but his connection to Matt has been in question, leaving fans wondering what ties he has to the rest of Bachelor Nation.
It’s unclear who shared the video first. But when it was reposted by a Bachelor fan account, things quickly heated up. Victoria slyly addressed it with a savage meme on her own Instagram account, and added, “Cute…. I love my body :),” in the video’s comments. The man body shaming Victoria was identified as Gerard Gilfone (who also goes by Jersey Jerry and “The Don”), who posted his own response to the blowback. His retort was a second opportunity for him to slam the Queen, and he described her as “the most ignorant, obnoxious, self-entitled person on the show.” But just because Gerard went golfing with Matt, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re friends. Further sleuthing into Jersey Jerry’s account offers more details into his Bachelor connections.
Under the username jerrythekid21, and describing himself as an “average blue collar guy,” Gerard has a modest following on Instagram full of fans eager to repeat “it was always Jersey Jerry,” one of his many catchphrases. His feed is filled with videos of his online persona giving expletive-laden diatribes against various companies, as well as pitching a line of “blue collar” nail scrub brushes, and going into great detail about horse racing. Another persona emerged recently, dubbed the “Love Doctor,” who gives fans romantic advice like, “sometimes you gotta give up the p**** for the boys,” and that white toenail polish represents “pretty p**** energy.”
Gerard went golfing with Matt, but it’s notable that Matt doesn’t follow Gerard on Instagram. Tyler Cameron, however, does follow Gerard, but he doesn’t seem to “like” his posts with any regularity. It’s hard to say how close the two Bachelor Nation fan favorites are with Gerard, but it could be a matter of happenstance. According to an Instagram Story, Gerard took a trip to Jupiter, Florida, six days ago, where he met up with Tyler. He posted a video of the two of them cruising around on a boat, and a couple days later he met up with Matt and Tyler at the Breakers West Country Club. During the game, both Matt and Tyler posted about Gerard on their respective Instagram stories.
Matt and Tyler weren’t the only ties to Bachelor Nation during the golf game, as Gerard also name-dropped JP Caruso as being in attendance. If the name JP Caruso rings a bell, it’s because he’s a close friend of Tyler’s and was a member of the Bachelor Nation alum’s Tik Tok “Quarantine Crew.” JP Caruso was also supposed to be on Clare Crawley’s season of The Bachelorette before production shut down due to coronavirus.
While it would seem that Matt and Gerard aren’t exactly besties, the current star of The Bachelor is under fire for the company he kept. Fans are also upset with Matt because even though he wasn’t the one doing the body shaming, he didn’t initially do anything to shut it down either. Matt did eventually speak out about this.
Source: Gerard Gilfone