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Nov. 18, 2021 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
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Episode 16: Mark Meadows Responds – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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The embattled Congressman Matt Gaetz.
Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!
You are in the right place!
This is the movement for you!
You ever watch this guy on television?
Like a machine, Matt Gaetz.
I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.
Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.
They aren't really coming for me.
They're coming for you.
I'm just in the way.
Welcome to Firebrand.
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Today, we have an exclusive, explosive interview with President Trump's former Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, who also served in the United States Congress and has some very strong views about how Republicans need to address the fight we are currently in against the Democrats, against the Biden regime, the media.
And even some of those folks over at the Department of Justice who have been weaponized against those they don't agree with politically.
But first, it's always interesting to expose the double standards that exist, particularly when it comes to the safety of members of Congress.
Steve Scalise, my fellow congressman, was shot at congressional baseball practice by a mentally ill, CNN-obsessed Bernie Sanders supporter.
A little redundant, I know.
His recovery has been miraculous and inspiring.
A Democrat, Gabby Giffords, was nearly killed by a deranged lunatic before Steve.
We oppose political violence in the United States, regardless of the politics of the target.
It shouldn't happen to Scalise, AOC, Ted Cruz, or even Ilhan Omar.
But when death threats happen to Republicans, when they happened to me, they are often treated differently by a politicized Department of Justice.
To the DOJ, America First conservatives are second-class citizens, political dissidents, insurrectionists, the enemy.
Our fellow Americans.
I don't blame Joe Biden or even Merrick Garland.
The DOJ's double standard against conservatives?
Well, it existed under Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr, too.
I exposed the hypocrisy on Tucker Carlson's show all the way back on July 16th of 2019. Check this out.
Gates, you pathetic piece of s**t.
Do you know that I could blow your s**t?
Clean off your shoulders from over a mile away.
Watch your back, you pathetic little piece of.
You got your head so far up from.
I could still take it off your shoulders.
you Gates, I'm coming after you.
So that's about as clear-cut as it could be.
Those are threats.
They're a crime.
Here's the remarkable part.
According to Gates, the FBI has already identified the person you just heard, the person who threatened him.
But a federal prosecutor has decided not to bring charges.
Congressman Matt Gates of Florida joins us tonight.
Congressman, am I misstating any of that?
No.
I received word late last week that the U.S. Attorney's Office, where this individual lived, had reviewed the information and had deemed these messages, and I'm quoting directly, a non-threat.
It's obviously a crime, a federal crime, to make these types of threats against any federal official This year, we're on, not this Congress, I should say, we're on record for 10,000 threats against members of Congress.
And I condemn them, whether they're against Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, you know, this is just no way to operate within our country.
I just wonder, like, is it the fact that I've been a critic of some of the senior officials at the FBI that maybe leads to different treatment for the people who threaten me, as opposed to the people who actually get arrested, who have threatened Eric Swalwell, you know, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib.
Those people actually get arrested, whereas when people threaten conservatives, I hope there's not a double standard.
But, I mean, you heard the messages, and there were even other messages where they threatened my family, Tucker.
Was never arrested.
Jurisdiction had been given to the United States Attorney in the Northern District of California.
They decided he was just blowing off steam.
The law says different.
18 U.S. Code Section 115A1B states, That whoever threatens to assault, kidnap, or murder a United States official, a United States judge, a federal law enforcement officer, or an official whose killing would be a crime under such section with the intent to impede,
intimidate, or interfere with such official judge or law enforcement officer while engaged in the performance of official duties or with intent to retaliate against such official judge or law enforcement officer on account of the performance of official duties.
Shall be punished as provided in subsection B. Killing me would of course be a crime.
But the threat itself is also a separate distinct violation of federal criminal law.
The Department of Justice simply doesn't seem to care.
I bet they would care if I were a prominent Democrat.
He didn't intend to actually kill you, deemed the U.S. Attorney's Office run by David Anderson in the Northern District of California.
I guess the US Attorney can read minds.
But nevertheless, he did intend to threaten me.
And that should have been the dispositive legal analysis.
Unless, of course, the target of the criminal threat is a critic of the Department of Justice.
I sure qualify there.
Then I guess the rules are different.
Whether it's Capitol protesters being held without bail or Republican congressmen being treated differently than their counterparts across the aisle, podcasters being indicted, or unequal enforcement of the law, we see these as norms today.
The DOJ actually stopped the arrest of another person who threatened to kill me even after the Capitol Police recommended his arrest.
I explained it on the floor of the House of Representatives here.
I thank the gentleman for yielding because I think someone may be trying to kill me.
And if they are successful, I would like my constituents and my family to know who stopped their arrest.
Madam Speaker, on October 8th, 2021, a Twitter handle styled CIA Bob is at your door tweeted to at Rep Matt Gaetz.
Looky here, pal.
I lived in Portland.
Portland has ordered a hit on you.
I accepted the contract.
Have a good day.
Following this tweet, this individual traveled to Washington, D.C., and the Capitol Police recommended his arrest.
That's information that was just shared with me by the Investigations and Threat Assessment section of the Protective Services Bureau, and specifically George DeCesso.
And George shared with me that the Capitol Police recommended the arrest of this individual, and that the Department of Justice Refuse to do so.
Decline to do so.
And on the eve of the Attorney General testifying before the Judiciary Committee tomorrow, it is just yet another example of the Department of Justice having a double standard.
If my name weren't Gates, if it were Omar or Tlaib, you bet this person would have been arrested because that's what the Capitol Police recommended.
But the Department of Justice doesn't seem to care so much when it's Republicans.
Adam Colbreth apparently has seen this podcast, the Welcome to the Woketopia episode.
You should actually go back and watch it.
It was the foundation of this tweet that he sent threatening to kill me and exclaiming that a contract had been issued on my life following that very episode.
Adam Colbreth traveled from Georgia to Washington, D.C. after threatening to kill me.
I wonder why.
Capitol Police recommended his arrest.
They intercepted him, but they were blocked by Assistant Attorney General Greg Rosen.
Rosen told Capitol Police that Culbreth was just mentally ill.
Guess he wasn't worried that those people could ever be radicalized to violence?
Oh wait, that's exactly what happened to Steve Scalise.
Washington Correspondents that the president and the vice president have now been informed of what have happened and you can see here What looks like, that looks like a member of Congress that I recognize, but we'll wait for confirmation.
We do have it, Nora.
We've told her the congressman who was shot in the hip has been identified as Steve Scalise.
He is the Republican House majority whip.
And as you can see there, it appears that they are medevac-ing him.
The Alexandria Fire Department and first responders are medevac-ing him to get And the shooting happened in the dugout of the baseball field.
And as of this time, we do not know the name of the shooter and his motive or intent.
A 2010 publication of Time magazine stated, quote, Some historians argue that the goal of the program was to create a mind control system by which the CIA could program people to conduct assassinations.
Now, we don't endorse the idea that such a program existed.
I simply don't know either way.
But it's worth noting that Time magazine is hardly part of what Hillary Clinton called the vast right-wing conspiracy.
And if the CIA was using people to commit assassinations, they probably wouldn't exclude from recruitment those who were mentally ill or unstable.
Andrew Culbreth then left D.C. after his arrest was blocked by Mr. Rosen at the Department of Justice, and he found himself in Langley, Virginia.
I wonder what he was doing in Langley?
Not a lot of people are just casually hanging out in Langley, Virginia.
Awful spooky.
Before a lot of people commit violence, they leave clues online.
Why is CIA in this guy's Twitter handle?
Did I mention he was traced by the Capitol Police to Langley?
Cold breath later traveled to West Point, New York.
He checked himself in and out of a mental institution quickly and I have no idea where he is today.
I sure hope this podcast doesn't get me killed by a mentally ill person or those who might be programming him.
Now, after I gave that speech on the floor, someone was arrested, but not Adam Kolbreth.
Isn't that interesting?
The FBI actually arrested a man named Eugene Ewellsman.
He's a five-time Emmy-nominated cameraman who has worked for the likes of CNN, ABC, and NBC. He threatened to kill me and told me to watch my kids.
Just a typical mainstream media weirdo and a dangerous one at that.
It's almost like they needed to show that they would arrest some people who threatened to kill me, but not Adam Culbreth, the mentally ill person with CIA and his Twitter handle who scurried off to Langley after being intercepted by Capitol Police in D.C. and being relieved of culpability by a politicized Department of Justice.
Unequal application of justice, depending on politics, or far worse.
We'll keep you posted.
And now, please enjoy this interview with President Trump's former Chief of Staff and my good friend, Mark Meadows.
I'm here with the chief's chief himself, my good friend Mark Meadows, reacting to all the exciting news about his upcoming book, The Chief's Chief.
Mark, it's great to be with you.
Start by just letting people know, is there a scene from your upcoming book that lays out the Trump leadership style?
Well, there is.
And I think for you and I, who got to see the president up close and personal, we got to see that side of him that, quite frankly, the cameras never pick.
But when you look at it, I've got one scene in there where he's got a whole bunch of his advisors sitting in front of the resolute desk.
You know, he essentially takes one person and he says, what's your opinion on that?
And he lets them espouse it.
And then he knows that this other person in the room, So Stephen Mnuchin, Peter Navarro, having two different points of view on China.
And so he says, well, Peter, what do you think?
Well, then a fight breaks out.
I mean, almost to the point where it makes me uncomfortable.
You've seen it before.
You've been in those Oval Office conversations where it actually, you know, the friction, you can feel it.
You can not only feel it, but you can taste it.
You can see it.
And yet, here was this friction.
He sits back and just watches the fight.
And you've been one that has been a friction.
You know, we talk about firebrand, but you've been the one who's created friction in the Oval.
To many of the advisors, you know, when I was serving as the chief, many times they didn't want to see Matt Gaetz there because Matt Gaetz would tell the president the truth.
And so that conflict goes back and forth.
We share how that works out, and then the president makes a decision.
He says, based on this information, let's make this decision, let's get it done, and let's get it done today.
And so that Trump-time kind of decision-making, and what I call creative chaos, because he creates a chaos and then makes order out of it, is something that was a thing to behold.
And it's not just about politics.
I think people will actually learn about management styles from your book, The Chief's Chief, because you really see in President Trump a leader who did not like sources of information to be constrained.
And other people who served as Chief of Staff to the President thought that their job was to manage the inputs and ensure that he only got the interactions or exposures that they curated for him.
And you had seemingly the exact opposite view.
You wanted to open up the president to different thoughts, perspectives, interpretations, because you knew he was really the central note of the government, right?
Well, he is, and he was the one that was elected the 45th president of the United States, and you and I were not.
And so when you look at that, you know, I can remember One of those times where you called and you said, you know, listen, the president needs to weigh in on this particular issue.
It was, you know, a legislative issue that was coming up.
I said, well, why don't you come over and tell the president?
And the interesting thing is people are not used to that, you know, where you have members of Congress where you've got direct input.
I was willing to give it.
But he wanted to hear from you.
What did Matt think?
What does Jim think?
What does Devin think?
So he actually wanted to hear that perspective directly.
In fact, if he thought you were going around him to try to manage his expectations, he could smell that a mile away.
Your relationship with President Trump wasn't all roses.
I remember when I first got here, you actually were leading the opposition against a very bad healthcare bill.
Jim Jordan called Paul Ryan's strategy the dumbest legislative strategy in history, and you actually had to serve as a ballast against some of the special interest influences in that bill.
How do you go from being somebody very opposed to the President on one particular matter to being quite literally his most trusted advisor?
Well, it's interesting.
You remember that time.
I remember that time.
Jim Jordan remembers that time.
I can remember being tweeted at, you know, and when you're tweeted at by the President of the United States, it makes you Twitter famous, but not necessarily in a good way.
And so, yeah, it was a tough time, but I think that goes back to your first question, Matt, is the way that President Trump gets information, he wants you to shoot straight with him.
He doesn't want it sugar-coated.
And what he respected is the fact that we had a particular position, We were willing to go against Paul Ryan.
We were willing to go against the Speaker of the House.
We were willing to say that Paul Ryan was leading him astray.
I've got one scene there in the book because it talks about that relationship.
Bucket one, bucket two, and bucket three.
You remember that because he says, well, in bucket one, we're going to pass these things that Paul Ryan did.
Bucket two was going to be the administrative fixes that the Secretary of HHS. And bucket three was going to be all those things we were going to be able to negotiate with the Democrats and get done.
But that's where the real savings came.
And I remember telling me, there's something in bucket three, but it isn't health care.
No.
And calling it like it is, he appreciates that.
And when you disagree with him, to let him know that.
But my disagreements with him oftentimes were in the privacy of a one-on-one conversation, not going out, leaking it to the Washington Post or whomever.
Mark, it really was interesting to many people that this brash New York business person could get along with this, like, genteels, you know, Highlands, North Carolina, Cashers, North Carolina, Southern gentleman.
But I think that the essence of your relationship is that you both understood real estate.
And development.
And Donald Trump really viewed a lot of the problems in government like a real estate deal.
You had to be willing to walk away.
You know, a win on something was better than sunk costs.
Seeing things for the opportunity that they presented rather than their status, you know, sort of moment in time existence.
Do you think that the fact that you and Donald Trump have both been real estate developers created a foundation for your relationship?
Well, it did.
It's interesting you say that.
We talked about real estate.
We still talk about real estate today.
Quite frankly, some of the deals he talked about, I was impressed with.
And I thought I had a pretty good foundation, but he talked about buying easements and things that he did.
And it was really impressive.
But it was not just real estate.
We could talk about Perry Mason because we both watched Perry Mason.
We could talk about Columbo.
Some of those, in fact, both of those you're watching reruns.
They were before your time.
But the interesting thing is that we had some of the same dynamics.
And when he brought So you boomer bonded.
We boomer bonded.
And you're the one that always remember, you always remind me about my boomer background.
Someone has to, Mark.
And you do.
And I tell you, it's not something that I can change.
So what you're going to do is just have to manage around that.
I'm sure it's not your only immutable trait that you'll have to apologize for.
You know, Mark, when you took this job as chief of staff, I think you were largely set up to come in and Build on the great economic successes of this presidency and this legislation on taxes, on deregulation that you helped craft in the Congress and you found a job that was very different than that which you likely expected because you take over right as this pandemic is being birthed onto the world from China.
How did the administration think of the pandemic in the early days and perhaps are there some unsung heroes Some folks that really were clarion voices that we should look back to now and say, gosh, that was a really patriotic and valuable contribution to the country.
You know, it's interesting because early on, I thought we were going to just cruise.
We had, listen, this China virus was a thing that, you know, is going to be beaten in a couple of weeks.
And even though the president had made some critical decisions in January before I took the job, you know, it was one of those, well, gosh, 15 days to slow the spread.
I can remember when I said, listen, if we close it for 15 days, how do we ever get it back open?
And here we are.
You know, over a year later, still trying to figure out how we can open up parts of our economy.
And yet there were some decisions that were made with Secretary Mnuchin and candidly, more importantly, the President of the United States that people don't realize.
There was about 21 days when the economy had been shut down.
That key decisions that were made by the President and by the Secretary of Treasury stopped us from being in a depression that we would still be in today.
Wait a second.
Your unsung hero of the coronavirus is Steve Mnuchin?
No, no.
It's Steve Mnuchin who got all the flexibility to create all the Fed policy he wanted for big business while a lot of folks on Main Street are suffering.
With all of that, let me push back just a little bit.
But what I'm saying there is that for 21 days, he was able to allow for policy that allowed that V-shaped recovery that we're talking about.
Now, in doing that, it couldn't be anything that was permanent.
It couldn't be anything that, quite frankly, we shouldn't be doing.
But flexibility at that particular point was the key aspect.
But the unsung hero, if you really want to look at it in real detail, You may have recalled early on they were talking about little pigs being killed and it was a little footnote.
If somebody Googles it today, they can find it.
But we have two different supply chains here in the country.
We have a supply chain that actually Supports restaurants and a supply chain that actually supports grocery stores.
Those two don't intermesh.
I didn't know that until we have this crisis where we're going to run out of chicken and pork and all of the proteins where we're going to have this.
So you know what the president did?
Mark, if that's going to be a problem, get them all on the phone.
Literally had the head of every single group on the phone negotiating in real time saying, we'll give you protection here, we'll give you protection there.
So the unsung hero throughout the entire process was a president that continued to make decisions based on information from other people.
The two unsung heroes, Donald Trump and Steve Mnuchin.
What about folks in the administration that maybe had a different type of impact?
As we have the benefit now of time, and you were right there in the room as these decisions were being made, are there people in the administration that polluted the thinking with bad advice or bad tactics?
I think you hit on this a little bit earlier.
What happens is there was a lot of people that really had a West Wing address that didn't really have the President's best interest at heart.
And by that, that's what I was most surprised about.
You know, if people ask me, what are you most surprised about?
I was most surprised that people would run to the press to leak things that one were not accurate but two even if they were accurate shouldn't be shared with the press should have been shared with the president of the United States but then the other part of that Matt that was was key when you start looking at some of these individuals it was all about their resume not about the president's accomplishments not about what we could get done it was about their resume and what job they would get done or get next and
so Wouldn't it have been easier to just tell everybody in the Trump administration, if you had any association with Trump, that the woke big corporations wouldn't hire you anyway, so you might as well use the time.
You might as well go ahead and use it to the benefit of the American people, because that was, in essence, what was happening.
You know, when I took the job as Chief of Staff...
So was Dr. Fauci a positive or a negative impact?
He was a negative impact.
Was Dr. Birch a positive or negative impact?
So they were negative impacts when it came to actually accomplishing.
I can remember getting a call from one governor that we happen to know.
And that governor called me and said, listen, I don't want any more help from Washington, D.C. on handling the coronavirus because the things that they're saying are not based in science and they're not based on what we're seeing in real time on the ground here in our state.
And said, please, keep your health in Washington, D.C. The book is The Chief's Chief, but I also hope that you reflect a little on your time in Congress.
You know, in Congress, I always said you were the best strategist at understanding where the puck was going, how we could meet the needs of the country.
What grade would you give Republican leadership in Congress now in combating the Biden administration?
They're not skating to where the puck is, and so I would give them a grade of a D. We might have Bidenflation, but there's no grade inflation from Mark Meadows.
You know me.
I believe that on this tactic and strategy, listen, you need to make Democrats take tough votes.
You need to make sure that when you've got them on the ropes, that you don't throw in the white towel of surrender.
And that's what's happened.
We saw it with the infrastructure vote.
You know, a few weeks ago, it's interesting.
13 Republicans jump across, give Biden a win, give Nancy Pelosi a win when she couldn't get to 18 on her own.
And here's the issue.
They think that they're going to get money.
I've looked at their congressional districts.
None of those people, none of them, That voted for this bill will get the majority of this money that's coming into $1.2 trillion.
Now, they can go home and say they got money for roads and bridges, but it didn't come into a theater near them.
It's sad even if it is, right?
I mean, it was really hard for me to vote against the NDAA. Of course it is!
When you have a base there in your home district and you love the military and you defend them.
You've defended them at times when I wouldn't even defend them and you were willing to do that, Matt.
But here's the thing is, when you're willing to put the interests of the American people first, And you're willing to vote and take a tough vote.
Listen, everybody can come up here and make easy votes, but when you take a tough vote, I mean, you need to take a tough vote for the right reason going forward.
And honestly, those 13 Republicans didn't do that.
And you have called for them to lose their positions of leadership.
And what shocked me after you made that announcement, I heard from almost every member of the Republican conference, folks' hair was on fire, but I was shocked at how many of the 13 hold positions of Oh yeah, of course.
They're the who's who of the establishment.
I mean, you're exactly right.
They actually have- So what does it mean if there is no punishment?
Because you and I have seen the case where everybody bangs their chest about how frustrated they are.
They go home, they go on a foreign trip, they come back to Washington, and it's on to the news of the day.
What does it mean if there is no consequence, no punishment?
Will we see it again?
We will see it again, and it means that there's no difference between Republicans ruling and Democrats ruling.
And that's a strong statement, but let me just say this.
Obviously, we want to make sure Republicans have the gavel.
We want to control a number of those things.
But here's the other part of it.
If you're always going to have You know, the dirty dozen, or at this point, a baker's dozen, actually go and side with the other team.
Then what's America, I can tell you, I heard from all over the country, they said, what in the world is going on?
We give them a win.
But it also talks about leadership.
If you're going to be the Speaker of the House, you've got to be able to control those members, and those members with particular positions of authority, and big money that comes from the NRCC, and I know you can't talk about that because we're here in your official capacity, but I'll talk about it.
When that money comes in, there shouldn't be a dime's worth of money going to those individuals if they're going to vote like Democrats.
Let the DCCC support them.
Strong leadership from the Chief's Chief.
Final question.
We see Biden's poll numbers collapsing.
We see his presidency collapsing.
We see a Democratic caucus that has no organizing principle because their only organizing principle before was that they hated Trump.
And he's playing golf down in Mar-a-Lago.
And playing well, by the way.
I would imagine.
But now we're starting to see Democrats, I think, try to escape their legislative failures by weaponizing the Department of Justice.
And one thing I noticed, when you were Chief of Staff, there was a liaison from the White House to the Department of Justice that was thrown out of the building.
And I continue to hear folks at the DOJ and their supporters say, well, the DOJ should be independent.
And, you know, I remember in high school I learned the three branches of government and I sort of thought the Department of Justice was a part of the executive branch of government, not its own fourth branch of government.
And so in the broadest possible terms, how should Americans think about the Department of Justice as an independent, runaway trained entity or as part of the executive branch?
Listen, it needs to be part of the executive branch.
Civics 101 would tell you that.
Civics 102, 103, all of them would say that, and yet we somehow have a different definition.
Part of that was born out of what you and I worked on early on, this whole Russia hoax and what happened with the FBI and DOJ at that point.
They thought they were independent.
Exactly.
They didn't think they worked for anybody under the Trump administration.
Everybody says, well, you know, now you've got Garland and it's a different thing.
But it sort of seems like maybe a different person is the attorney general.
But the operation of the Department of Justice in many ways has really never been part of the pull of gravity of the executive branch of government since Donald Trump won the nomination.
Well, without a doubt.
I think the other thing is there's a lot of fine people that work at the FBI and DOJ, career people that have done an outstanding job.
And what we've allowed is the media and a few people at the very top to pervert the way that we look at DOJ and FBI, but also the way that it And so we've got to make sure that the rule of law is exactly that, that Lady Justice has a blindfold on and that she's not peeking out from underneath that blindfold to figure out who's guilty or innocent.
Yeah, the only people wearing the blindfold these days are counting the ballots.
But look, the book is The Chief's Chief.
It is going to give folks not only a view of the Trump presidency you haven't seen before, but a view of leadership.
And I think that is precisely the type of leadership that we need to be able to access and mobilize for the benefit of our people.
Thanks for joining me, Mark.
Best of luck on The Chief's Chief and beyond.
Thanks so much.
Appreciate it, man.
Thanks for listening to Firebrand.
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