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Dec. 16, 2021 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
49:34
Episode 20: Naturally Infected (feat. Rep. Thomas Massie) – 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?
It's 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.
Upcoming in this episode, we've got an interview with Congressman Thomas Massey regarding natural immunity.
We'll dive into the opioid crisis and ensure that we give you the best update regarding the oversight that has to happen for the House of Representatives to be worthy of the great people of this country again.
Now, I don't ask for much.
There's no advertisement that you have to endure as a part of this podcast, but we really would appreciate it, especially if you're on a listening platform.
Give us that five-star rating.
It helps our content reach more folks.
So first, recently in the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jim Jordan tried to bring up a resolution to address the deep concerns we have over the counterterrorism division at the FBI placing threat tags on people who are attending school board meetings.
Here's how that went.
Here's what the October 4th memo said.
Quote, I'm directing the FBI to convene meetings with local leaders.
These meetings will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting.
Dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting.
A snitch line on parents.
Started five days after a left-wing political organization asked for it.
That's not political.
I don't know what is.
And remember, these important questions asked by Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
It also concerns us that your actions may have been motivated by your family's financial stake in this issue.
Published reports show that your son-in-law co-founded a company called Panorama Education.
We now know that that company publishes and sells critical race theory and so-called anti-racism materials to schools across the country.
And it works with school districts nationwide to obtain and analyze data on students, often without parental consent.
My first question is this.
Are you familiar with Title V of the Code of Federal Regulations, which addresses the rules of impartiality for executive branch employees and officials?
I am very familiar with it and I want to be clear once again that there's nothing in this memorandum which has any effect on the kinds of curriculums that are taught or the ability of parents to complain about the kinds of...
I understand your position on the free speech of parents.
Not a position...
Wait just a minute.
The question is, the question is, The thing that is concerned many of those parents that are showing up at these school board meetings, the very basis of their objection and their vigorous debate, as you mentioned earlier, is the curricula, the very curricula that your son-in-law is selling.
This memorandum is aimed at violence and threats of violence.
I understand that, but did you, excuse me, did you seek ethics counsel before you issued a letter that directly relates to the financial interest of your family?
Yes or no?
This memorandum does not relate to the financial interests of anyone.
It's against...
I take that as a no.
I take that as a no.
Instead of dealing with this seriously troubling matter, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler brought up legislation by Representative Eric Swalwell to address cold cases.
We chose cold case legislation over the very hot matter of political targeting and lies from the Department of Justice.
I wasn't quite done making the point and had a little debate with Representative Scanlon of Pennsylvania.
Take a listen.
I would just seek unanimous consent to introduce a USA Today article dated November 29th, 2021. Fact check.
The FBI is not using threat tags on parents who protest at school board meetings.
The good news is the American people aren't falling for it.
The bad news is we don't know how many.
That's my question.
How many people who showed up to school board meetings, who sent an email, who made a phone call, who expressed their First Amendment rights, how many of those people right now are under any tag or designation or supervision.
If you threaten their children, and we've seen all of those things happen, we've seen property damage at people's homes, unpaid positions by community volunteers, and they're being targeted and threatened, then somebody has got to look at that.
If there's a threat to violence in communities, there's no attestation or evidence that law enforcement in local communities can't deal with that.
This isn't a threat.
This is threat construction.
Everyone knows what's going on here.
The House Judiciary Committee should be investigating these things, and what we'll find in that investigation is when the FBI and the Department of Justice want to go after people, want to go after Trump, want to go after political opponents, want to go after organizing parents and communities, they seed a lie, and they get that lie retold, and then they use it to target people.
What a shame.
I yield back.
oversight is coming.
They're terrified because they know it.
I set the frame at a recent press conference with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
This report must be a guidepost for ongoing Republican oversight effort in the Congress, because we are going to take power after this next election.
And when we do, it's not going to be the days of Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy and no real oversight and no real subpoenas.
It's going to be the days of Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Dr. Gosar and myself doing everything to get the answers to these questions.
So what I have laid out is a new way of thinking about the role of Republicans in Congress.
This was observed by Steve Bannon on The War Room Podcast.
If Republicans need to know how to be led in an effort of rigorous, dogged, fair, but determined oversight, I'll show them how to do it.
So will Marjorie Taylor Greene.
What we are not going to do is go back to the days of, you know, I would say kind of the George W. Bush era of Republicanism, where there was just this exasperated surrender to the frame that they set.
This is a theory of governing, right?
And it's fresh and it's new.
This is Trumpism in power.
That's why we went to the 4,000 shock troops we have to have that's going to man the government and get them ready now, right?
We're going to hit the beach.
You have the landing teams and the beachhead teams, all that nomenclature they use when President Trump wins again in 2024 or before.
Dogged, fair, robust oversight of the Biden regime.
This must be our focus to save the country.
And it's coming.
It seems like almost every week in Congress we addressed opioid legislation.
In fact, since 2013, members of Congress have introduced over 500 opioid research awareness or prevention bills.
In recent years, opioid appropriations have spanned the bureaucracy, including HHS, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the DOJ, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, the Department of Labor.
The Department of Health and Human Services alone has spent over $9 billion in recent years on these very issues.
Through these useless bills and crazy appropriations, we've created task forces, we've mandated studies, we've sent countless tax dollars to continue pretending that lawmakers are actually looking for a solution to the problem.
Maybe it's the lawmakers who are the problem.
Because here we are.
Our nation only grows sicker, more addicted.
Tens of thousands of people die every year.
Meanwhile, Congress is just chasing the dragon of failure.
But the drug Congress is hooked on most is the most powerful known to mankind.
Of all the drugs under God's blue heaven, there is one that is my absolute favorite.
I'm talking about this.
Corruption.
Follow the money.
The opioid market is big business, and Congress gets its taste.
Congress paved the way for the opioid crisis to attack our families and communities.
Here's how.
In 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Act regulated and taxed opiates, and that raised the cost of entry to the market and extraneously created the cartel-esque opioid manufacturers.
This is essentially the turn-of-the-century precursors to the Sackler family.
In 1970, the Controlled Substances Act clarified specific drugs into five categories.
Notably, making marijuana and other psychedelics more illegal than hard drugs, such as the lethal opioid-based drug heroin.
In 1986, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act established penalties for controlled substances, including mandatory minimums for opiates.
This raised the black market value of heroin for prescription-starved pain relief patients.
Through all this time, the federal government was authorizing and building a wall around opioid production.
In this past decade, they've abruptly cut the supply with well-intentioned legislation that has caused a transitory opioid addiction crisis to fentanyl and heroin.
Patients that have been over-prescribed and addicted to their pain relief prescriptions then became the targets of the heroin dealers of Mexico and others in the black market who have all become very rich during these changes in U.S. policy, by the way.
If only the U.S. government weren't prohibited from researching the pain relief efficacy of marijuana for the last hundred years.
So that brings us to like the mid-90s, the early 2000s regime, where encouraging and allowing patients unlimited access to opioids exploded this crisis.
And Purdue Pharma, they were at the center of it.
They owned and operated this system that really was the modern-day cartel of opioids.
It was run by the Sackler family.
They were once listed as the 19th richest family in the world by Forbes.
They developed OxyContin.
And, often corruptly, they convinced doctors and regulators that it was not addictive.
Purdue Pharma used its widespread influence on K Street to keep perpetuating this crisis.
I'm currently at 1,200 milligrams of long-acting oxycodone.
The brand name is OxyContin.
Most people, when they hear that, think, my God, you must just lay around in bed all day, really zoned out, you can't do anything, you can't function.
Now, this medication does not turn you into a zombie.
It has turned me into an active person again.
I look completely different.
I feel different.
Life is wonderful again.
I have found life again and it's worth living now and I'm so grateful.
The fact remains that the main area that we can improve on and the approach that's available to every doctor with a prescription pad is just for us to do a better job of prescribing strong pain medications and I mean opioids.
The politicians cashed the checks, and the regulators got pharma-funded golden parachutes.
A knee-jerk reaction has now, of course, occurred, making things even worse.
Government regulation, prohibition, and other top-down approaches to controlling human behavior have always failed to control human behavior.
As of last year, the overall opioid prescribing rate had fallen 48% since 2012. You'd think that's good, right?
But during the same period, opioid-related deaths more than tripled.
Last year, about 83% of those deaths involved illicit fentanyl.
So you can see people making the transition as a result of lower prescribing, but with no therapy to transition to, they're going to the black market and they're dying.
Since the beginning of time, illicit markets always responded to consumer demands.
In fact, roughly 80% of the people who use street heroin first misused prescription opioids.
80%?
It's staggering.
Increasing the FDA's presence in regulating doctors and scaring them from losing their licenses and ensuring that they don't give opioids to patients in need or don't present therapy alternatives, they're clearly not solving the problem.
Additionally, increasing the DEA or the activist DOJ's war on drugs initiatives are not going to work.
I made it clear to then-President Trump's acting head of the DEA in this hearing all the way back in 2018. Take a listen.
Opioids are prescribed principally as a chronic pain solution, right?
Correct.
The National Academy of Sciences issued a report in 2017 entitled The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids.
Are you familiar with that work product?
No, sir.
I'll quote from it.
It says, there is conclusive or substantial evidence that cannabis or cannabinoids are effective for treatment of chronic pain in adults.
Do you have any basis scientifically or from any evidentiary standpoint to disagree with that conclusion?
Again, this is why I think we always talk about the research of the benefits of marijuana.
So you support research into medical marijuana?
We've said that all along, that we support the research of marijuana.
And after you implemented a rule in August of 2016 pushing the Department of Justice to create more research-based cannabis, they haven't issued any more of those permits, have they?
Or haven't granted any?
So they haven't been granted, but I think there's an important distinction that has to be understood.
So when we put that rule out, it was in the efforts to help the research community.
But if none of the research permits have been granted, how has it helped them?
Because there is an issue with how we put that solicitation out or that rule out.
So you're the acting administrator of the DEA. You cannot cite a single study that indicates that medical marijuana creates a greater challenge with opioids, and you're unaware of the studies, including studies from the National Academy of Sciences, that demonstrate that medical marijuana can be an acceptable alternative to opioids.
Is that what I'm understanding?
Yes.
You see, Democrats have this opportunity right now to pass responsible marijuana reform and liberate this as an opportunity to address pain at a lower acuity.
Instead, 57 bills fixated on opioids have been introduced in the 117th Congress, but we can't move a marijuana bill successfully.
While I don't call on the extinction of this opioid analgesic drug in hospitals for surgeries and relief from cancer-related pain, it is long past time to 1. Cut off the quality-of-life motivated prescriptions, And two, dedicate real resources to researching non-addictive alternatives.
A Quinnipiac University national poll shows that nearly 90% of Americans support medical marijuana.
A Pew poll finds that two-thirds of Americans support the full legalization of marijuana.
Every Congress, there are countless bills introduced to end the federal prohibition on marijuana.
Why is it still a Schedule I drug making it more illegal than opioids?
The Democrats, particularly the Congressional Black Caucus.
I think it's important that we support this bill by beginning to deschedule marijuana, working on these initiatives to make sure that the bill will add equity to minority communities and ensuring that they have a voice in the growing industry as well.
What I have also seen is that we have a tale of two Americas.
On the one hand, we have a wealthy white business America that dominates the medical cannabis, especially in Florida.
We have found that to be true.
But on the other hand, black and brown citizens of my community are suffering the consequences of these one-sided laws.
But in Florida, since the gentlelady mentioned it, we actually thought we were so concerned that communities of color may have been locked out of access to large-scale agricultural operations to be able to meet the need that we required in the state of Florida that licenses at some point had to go to black farmers who were members of the Pigford class in a class-action lawsuit brought by sharecroppers.
And so again, the charge That the state of Florida has only helped rich white people in the marijuana industry is unsupported by the evidence.
It is belied by the fact that the very first license in Florida went to Costa Farms, a minority owned business.
And it is further disproven by the fact that by taking an approach that has been signified by Representative Buck to go one step at a time, You actually can get to the restorative justice and minority access precisely as we've done in the state of Florida.
I yield back to the gentleman from Colorado.
Just recently, the House passed apologetic feel-good legislation regarding the government's role in solving the opioid crisis, the ID Verifications for Opioid Prescriptions Act, and the Opioid Abuse Awareness Campaign Act.
Yes, an awareness campaign.
The 90s called, and they want their drug policy back.
These are okay-sounding bills, I guess, sent to assure the American people that everything will be okay because the government is A, stepping in to regulate prescription distribution even more, and B, the government will authorize the use of your tax dollars to lead a campaign to warn against the use of fentanyl, the drug that the U.S. government is responsible for protecting and distributing.
Instead of continuing Congress's addiction to failure and new programs, we should acknowledge that the federal government has totally screwed up drug policy in America, and we should use the federalist system to save the lives of our people.
Pass the States Act.
As you'll see, Thomas Massey is one of the smartest folks in Congress.
I pulled him aside after a recent hearing in the House Judiciary Committee to talk about natural infection immunity and some other items.
I hope you enjoy.
I'm here with one of Congress's most brilliant members, Thomas Massey of Kentucky.
Thomas, I know you don't like to talk about this too much, but where'd you go to school?
A little trade school down the river from the art school in Massachusetts, MIT. Though we've been colleagues and worked together on a number of issues, I recently learned about your academic record there.
How many B's did you get at MIT? I got two.
What classes?
This is the hard questions on Firebrand.
Okay, one was the intermediate microeconomics and one was digital processing.
Any C's?
No, no, no.
So what was it like when you were there on the oversight committee questioning John Kerry and he, instead of responding to specific scientific data points, said you were not a serious person, said that you lacked sort of an understanding of science and data.
Did that strike you as a bit condescending coming from You know, a politician who essentially married wealthy in order to get a claim that, like, otherwise would never append a person like John Kerry?
You know what?
I wasn't personally offended, but his opening statements, he said when President Trump decides to listen to educated adults, then he might understand.
And so that's when I looked into John Kerry's credentials and found out that he was indeed a scientist.
He had a science degree.
And so I asked him about it.
Isn't it true you have a science degree from Yale?
What's that?
Bachelor of Arts degree.
Is it a political science degree?
Yes, political science.
So how do you get a Bachelor of Arts in a science?
Well, it's liberal arts education and degree.
It's a bachelor.
Okay, so it's not really science.
So I think it's somewhat appropriate that somebody with a pseudoscience degree is here pushing pseudoscience in front of our committee today.
Well, Thomas, I bring it up because it seems that the body doesn't always quite know how to deal with you because you are a data first person.
You are on the front end of a lot of scientific issues that arise in the country.
You served on the science committee where you focused on a lot of that stuff.
And when COVID really started to become central to American consciousness, I remember very early, you were one of the first to seek out an antibodies test because you wanted the data as to your own person and your own health.
Do you mind sharing sort of how you made that decision and how you've lived as a consequence of that result?
Oh, sure.
Well, first of all, I ask people who get the vaccine because they want to save grandma and, you know, stop the spread of the disease.
Did you go get an antibody test after you got the vaccine?
Like if you're relying on this to save people's lives, did you spend the other 50 bucks to see if it worked?
And of course, almost nobody does that.
But I had an antibody test 18 months ago that came back positive with high levels of antibodies.
And so I've been interested personally as to whether the vaccine improves on that immunity and how durable and long-lasting is that immunity.
And so when the vaccines were first approved by the FDA and then the CDC published a short little blurb, I noticed there was a typo in there.
Of course, I characterized it as a typo.
This is December of last year.
We're a year later.
And they said that the vaccine was 92% efficacious for those with evidence of prior infection.
And I'm, whoa, that's a pretty tall claim.
Let me go look at the data.
And I looked at the data and it showed that it was minus 7% efficacious for those.
And where did you find that data?
From the FDA. So not some private group, not some obscure website, but from the federal government's own collected data.
Yes, it's still there.
The data's still there.
You can go see.
The remarkable thing is they really didn't have much data.
There were 1,200 or 1,300 of the 30,000 who participated who had evidence of prior infection.
And so they split almost evenly, showing that the vaccine really didn't have much of an effect at all for those people.
And so I called up the CDC, the director here in Washington, D.C., and I said, I think I found a typo.
I didn't say you all are lying SOBs.
And she said, let me get our top scientists on the line with us.
And she came on the line and she said, we're going to start calling you Eagle Eye Massey.
We went over this study and we just never found this mistake.
But it's right here in the thing.
And I'm like, oh, so you'll fix it, right?
Oh, yeah, don't worry.
So I, by the way, I recorded six phone calls with the CDC because I anticipated this might happen.
The point of that sentence was to suggest that you don't need to test your antibodies before you get vaccinated.
Right.
It doesn't.
It's in the wash.
Right.
Yeah, it's wash.
So, but we did, the word was taken out and literally nobody had picked up on it, including us.
When we read the version that was published.
Hopefully I was somewhat helpful.
We really appreciate it.
We know we can't be perfect.
We know we're going to miss things.
We're glad that this one doesn't seem to be doing anyone any harm.
But it gave us a smile that you found it.
It was very impressive.
Yeah, it's interesting how recordings can be an instant cure to selective amnesia in 100% of cases.
Right.
Well, and so they said they would change it.
By the way, you got to remember the vaccines were just rolling out.
This is December of last year, coming into January.
They were in limited supply.
And the reason this question was important was who do we prioritize?
In a period when the vaccines are limited, should we be giving them to 25-year-olds who've already had COVID and recovered who work in the accounting department at a big hospital, or should we be giving them to nursing home patients or 60-year-old retirees or whatever?
Because in Kentucky, they were in short supply.
And a month later, the vaccines came out and they had refused to change it on their website.
I challenged them on it again.
They changed it to something vague.
Well, Thomas, give me the motive.
Explain to viewers why the federal government would purposefully maintain false information on their website that you have pointed out to them and which they have admitted as false.
In the beginning, I tried to impart the best motives possible to them.
Maybe they thought that people would think they already had COVID and without getting a test.
But why wouldn't they just fix something that's wrong on their website that they acknowledged was wrong and found by Eagle Eye Massey?
Because their basic assumption is that Americans are stupid and that they are the science.
And that there are such things as noble lies and they I mean, COVID, if it's anything, the government's response to COVID is a series of noble lies that have been reversed multiple times.
Well, I think that's a very charitable characterization.
I'm trying to be charitable, but my charity ran out.
And they have caused people to die early on when there were limited numbers of vaccines available.
And now because they refuse to recognize natural immunity, they're putting people at risk who don't need to be put at risk because any extra benefit that might come to somebody who's already been infected and recovered from the vaccine In most cases, I believe, does not outweigh the risk that that person faces.
Well, let's drill down into that.
What is your best analysis just of the data when you look at the effect of natural infection immunity versus the immunities that append to a regimen of vaccine?
Well, you can go back and look at the original Pfizer data and the Moderna data, which is published, and then the Cleveland Clinic study, which has 50,000.
I'm like, wow, do they even have 50,000 employees?
How can this be true?
And it's true.
They have 50,000 employees in their network.
And they showed that it was As durable or more durable.
And then you've got the whole nation of Israel as a study, and they've shown that it's more durable in Israel.
Is there a single study that you're aware of, that you've read and reviewed, that shows that vaccination provides longer lasting, stronger immunity than natural infection immunity?
No peer-reviewed studies.
There are a couple of contrived studies the CDC has done.
There's one that has 53 authors.
It's like six or eight pages long and it has 53 authors.
Those are 53 people that want funding from the federal government who have volunteered the imprimatur of their degrees and their education and their background to put toward this another noble lie.
Do you believe that Big Pharma has corrupted the way we think about vaccines versus natural immunity?
Well, so I was the first to expose.
By the way, this was when factcheck.org came after me.
I was like, well, let's go find out who's funding the factcheck.org vaccine program.
And there it is, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The Johnson in there is Johnson& Johnson.
We don't always recognize it when we just see one Johnson.
Right.
And so I'm like, well, okay, just because the same person was involved, that doesn't...
So I look, they've got $2 billion of Johnson& Johnson stock in the portfolio of this institution.
And they're the ones funding the fact check that's trying to fact check me.
So there is a very specific example.
You can go to the financial disclosures.
You can look all this up.
It's not a conspiracy.
It's true.
You and I made a movie about corruption in this town and the way that Political donations and kind of member management gets people to behave and vote different ways than they otherwise would.
And frankly, they promised their constituents and that's a bipartisan critique you and I have at the institution.
It's called The Swamp on HBO. Everybody should check it out.
You get a free trial, not even have to pay.
But Thomas, I wonder if that dynamic Of money and swampy corruption doesn't just influence the elected leaders, but also influences a lot of these bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci, like people at NIH who want to leave government service and then go work for the pharmaceutical industry.
And so now they're essentially carrying the water of Big Pharma.
I don't want to put words in your mouth.
That's my assessment of what's going on.
But do you think that that's incorrect or too judgmental on my part?
First of all, there's no national immunity lobby here in Washington.
Well, that's the key, right?
If there were...
We'd be recognizing natural immunity, but it doesn't exist.
But one hire that's really paid off for Pfizer is to hire Scott Gottlieb, who's the former FDA director, to be on their board.
And guess what?
They are the only one.
This is another thing that's not a conspiracy because you can go find it.
It's on the CDC's website.
But they're the only one who have full FDA approval.
By the way, that vaccine is not available in the United States according to CDC's website.
But I think that really is the big grift here.
We have so many influences from big pharma, and no one has figured out how to make money off of natural infection immunity.
If natural infection immunity resulted in some windfall profit to some industry, wouldn't it be more part of the discussion here in Washington?
It would be.
By the way, I talked to the CEO and some scientists of a company that has a conventional killed virus type vaccine.
130 million doses of this have been given in India.
They're trying to get the FDA to approve their vaccine in the United States, and they're not having much luck.
I said, maybe you should hire a former FDA director.
It seems to have worked out for Pfizer.
And, you know, Derna has some link to it.
Certainly worked out for them.
You and I have constituents who are going to be driven out of the workforce, going to be driven out of military service.
Already are.
I mean, you are not on the Armed Services Committee, but you were really putting pedal to the metal on legislation to help our service members.
Walk me through your thought process on the military, natural immunity, and vaccine.
Thank you.
HR 3860. I introduced it when vaccine mandates were a conspiracy.
Joe Biden was saying, we're not going to do that.
Wouldn't be our place.
No, I don't think it should be mandatory.
I wouldn't demand to be mandatory, but I would do everything in my power.
Just like I don't think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide.
Jen Psaki was saying, no, we don't have the power.
Can we mandate vaccines across the country?
No, that's not a role that the federal government, I think, even has the power to make.
And I was getting reports from constituents who are in the military.
This is coming down.
We know this is coming down.
So I introduced HR 3860. Thank you for being one of the first co-sponsors of that.
We're up to 50 co-sponsors now.
And it just basically says that you can't force members of the military to take the COVID vaccine.
People, they love to point to George Washington, General George Washington, before he was president.
They say, well, he mandated the inoculation for smallpox.
So I got to looking at that.
I went back and found the documents.
There are two documents where he says it's for the people who haven't already had smallpox.
Even General George Washington recognized natural immunity.
So I got to wondering, did he take the inoculation?
So I called Mount Vernon, the repository for all of his records.
And it was amazingly efficient to get to the person.
Within 30 seconds, they put the person on the line who knew everything about George Washington.
And we asked her, we were like, did George Washington take this smallpox inoculation?
She goes, why would he?
Why would he?
He had had smallpox as a teenager.
There was no need for him to take it.
Of course he wouldn't take it.
So the George Washington is opposed to natural infection immunity in favor of vaccines is actually just another fable.
It's fake as all get out.
Wow.
Remember how compelling that legislation was to my constituents.
And so during the National Defense Authorization markup, I took the framework of your legislation and I introduced it as an amendment to protect our military families.
And I expected the Democrats to fight me.
What I didn't expect is that the leading Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Congressman Mike Rogers of Alabama, would lead the debate against the amendment that you crafted that I introduced.
How should we think about Republicans who are going along with the narrative from Dr. Fauci and the Biden regime and really big pharma that 100% vaccination ought to always be the goal and we ought to limit exemptions to the greatest degree possible?
Well, you shouldn't really trust them with your life or your vote, in my opinion.
We forced this vote in other committees.
Well, the Judiciary Committee, we had a vote on this to defund vaccine mandates, and we had a vote in Transportation Committee to defund vaccine passports.
And mandates.
In every single instance, the Democrats voted effectively for the mandates or the passports.
I can't remember who.
We had one or two defectors in there on the Republican side.
But let me go a little bit further.
How did Biden seek to promulgate and enforce?
Who was his army going to be for the three vaccine mandates that have been ruled out by the courts?
He was going to weaponize the OSHA, right?
In other agencies within the government, the federal contracting process, he was going to weaponize that.
He was going to weaponize CMS. And so anybody who thinks that we can pet the rattlesnake when we're in the majority and feed it, which are these agencies, that they will be kind to us if we feed them.
OK, better remember that nobody at those agencies told Joe Biden, hey, you're asking us to do something that's unconstitutional and illegal on its face.
They just complied, and they were gleefully and happily going to subjugate the American people and make them lose their jobs, and a lot of people already have.
Well, and I'm concerned that that problem is actually getting worse because I know people who are liberty-minded, constitutionally oriented, who serve in these agencies, who are having to leave federal service as a consequence of not complying with a vaccine mandate.
People who believe that as a consequence of their natural infection immunity, the vaccine presents only risk for them.
And so I worry that the administrative state is becoming more monolithic, not less, and becoming more threatening to our liberties.
And on that point, Thomas, there was a moment in your time in Congress that was behind closed doors, that was with our colleagues, that I remember...
And it was so true.
You stood up when a group of people in our party were trying to drive you out of Congress, were trying to support other candidates against you.
And you said, there are a lot of Americans who wouldn't be Republicans if I wasn't a member of the Republican conference.
And it's because you embody, I think, a traditional embrace of constitutional principles that people are attracted to, even if they aren't Republicans.
Could you explain that sentiment, the notion that you bring something to the party that we wouldn't be able to sort of claim as our space in the absence of your contribution?
I feel like what I bring is a mirror and I try to hold it up to everybody and say, okay, look at yourselves.
What did you campaign on and what are you doing here?
And if the American people could see what we're doing here behind closed doors, would they vote for your reelection?
That's the question you need to ask yourself.
I remember a moment on the floor of the House where one of our Republican colleagues came down and was just berating Marjorie Taylor Greene.
For asking for a vote, for having the audacity to put things on record.
And he said, I know you're trying to do the right thing, but you need to consider this.
And I interrupted and I said, if your constituents could see what you're doing right here, they would be highly upset.
And he went off on me.
He said, I'll worry about my district.
You worry about yours.
I said, well, what you're telling Marjorie, go down to the microphone and say it for the world to hear and see how that works out for you.
Yeah, we always get more candid conversations sometimes off the mics than on them, but that's what we change here on Firebrand.
The controversy you've been in recently is about something like a Christmas card.
And here's what I think a lot of folks don't know.
You did not originally have the intention to have a firearm Christmas card.
But the Massey family actually has firearms around.
You live in a rural part of Kentucky.
Firearms are sort of a part of life.
So maybe just tell us, how does the Massey family think about firearms?
And do you view them as solely this tool of destruction?
Or is there maybe just a more Modest approach to this type of life that a lot of Americans wouldn't understand.
Well, first of all, we live in a place where there are like three sheriff's deputies to cover hundreds of square miles.
Everything's been adjudicated by the time the police show up, okay?
So you got to keep that in mind.
They're not...
Minutes away.
They are an hour away.
But also it's just a tradition of owning guns for all the reasons.
Not to hunt, not for this or that.
And here's how the Christmas card picture happened.
I didn't mean to trigger every leftist on every continent in the United States.
With this Christmas card.
With this Christmas card.
So we took Christmas card pictures of us doing something.
Also like to do, which is playing music.
So we're all holding musical instruments in the actual Christmas card.
And my mail vendor said, all right, you need to send me that card.
We got to get these out by Christmas.
So this weekend, I'm going through that file folder and I found this little gem where we just decided to pick up all the guns and pose.
And I was like, wow, the world's not going to see this.
Be kind of fun just to share it.
And I shared it and I didn't just kick the hornet's nest.
I agitated every hornet on the planet.
BBC was running specials on the Thomas Massey Christmas card.
The Archbishop of Canterbury weighed in.
And I mean, shouldn't he be making like those chocolate eggs right now?
Right, right.
I'm hungry just when you mentioned Canterbury.
That made me want one of those chocolate eggs.
But I think what a lot of people in my district saw through that is that firearms are not, in and of themselves, some deeply offensive thing to other people.
A family that is well-versed on firearm safety and on the The basic practices that allow you to protect your property, protect your home, that those things are not viewed as confrontational in rural America, whereas I really think in some of these ivory towers of elitism, they thought that you meant some offense by that.
No.
And here's what I take objection to, is this idea that you should be ashamed that you have guns.
Right.
Look, you can see in the picture we're all exercising excellent trigger discipline.
Everybody in the family knows how to use those, how to shoot them safely, and knows what the consequences of using one are.
It's just, it's part of our culture and we shouldn't be drummed out of society for having this as part of our culture.
And no, gun owners don't mean harm to others simply by owning guns.
I think that's what a lot of folks misunderstand.
We're preventing harm.
Great point.
So, in retrospect, I tried to figure out what was it about this picture that triggered so many people?
And I realized in Ghostbusters, they say, don't cross the streams.
There's three streams.
And what happened is I had family, guns, and Christmas all in one picture.
And it just, any of the two might have been okay, but the three is an explosive cocktail for liberals.
Well, if you want more of those explosive cocktails, definitely follow Thomas on social media.
He provides some of the most candid, honest, and I think breakthrough assessments of what's going on in the body.
How can folks stay up to date with you on your social media?
Don't forget my hashtag, Sassy with Massey.
We'll put it up.
If you can't say something nice, have the decency to be sassy.
How can folks follow you?
Look for hashtag Sassy with Massey or you can go to RepThomasMassey on Twitter or RepThomasMassey on Facebook.
I'm not yet banned.
I have been suspended for a couple tweets.
This may be the episode that gets Firebrand pulled off of YouTube.
We're principally a rumble and anchor system, but this could be the one.
But I tell you what, it shouldn't be threatening or frightening to people to simply look at data regarding what the government is telling us to ensure that that matches with what they've told us previously.
And I'm sure glad to fight alongside you for folks who simply want the science that informs natural immunity to be part of our public policy approach to combating this virus.
Appreciate what you do, and I hope you're driving the Republican message and our ideology for quite some time.
Amen.
That's what I'll do, and I'll keep the party honest, just like you.
Thanks.
I recently joined my congressional colleagues Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, and Paul Gosar at a press conference to share a report regarding the condition of the January 6th detainees.
It's titled Unusually Cruel, and you can find it on my congressional website.
Unusually cruel walks through the conditions in the D.C. jail.
These are the political prisoners of 6th January.
The January 6th detainees have been subjected to a version of American justice that is different and worse and unfair.
And that's what we stand against.
I'm nobody's lawyer.
I'm nobody's defender.
I defend the Constitution and our principles of justice.
And when I see people unable to access medical care, which has happened, people unable to access counsel, which has happened, people unable to access evidence.
And also spiritual guidance and the religious practices.
Sure, religious services.
I mean, dietary needs.
Just basic things that you wouldn't want deprived of any American accused of a crime.
We made clear that we were not acting as any one person's defender or lawyer and that we oppose political violence.
Whether we agree, disagree, and I can tell you right now, I completely disagree and am very against the violence that happened on January 6th at the Capitol.
We should all, all disagree with how these people are being treated.
Look, I was known as a law and order judge and chief justice, and I believe in punishing people for their wrongdoing, and there was wrongdoing on that day.
I've repeatedly called for all individuals arrested for illegal acts on January 6th to be treated fairly.
They are deserving of equal justice under the law.
What we do believe is that every American should be treated fairly under our Constitution and that there shouldn't be special punishment, confinement, or torture based on politics.
They have been beaten by the guards.
They are called white supremacists.
They're denied time with their attorneys.
They are denied the ability to even see their families and have their families visit there.
When they're being force-fed gluten food and they have celiac disease, and so the food that they eat makes them sick every single day to the point where they will go without days.
Go days, I'm sorry, days without eating in order to just feel better because they are not given better food.
I think we can clearly see that there is serious abuse happening here.
They are being denied the right to attend chapel in a religious service.
They aren't even allowed communion.
Many have described having to burn their hair by utilizing harsh chemicals to even trim.
Others have no access to toilets.
And many share horrible stories of lacking adequate medical treatment.
They're keeping this elderly gentleman in jail.
You look at his hand, and it's obviously dark.
Looks like it's going toward gray or black.
You know, that's normally leading toward amputation when it gets that bad.
But they haven't given him proper medical care.
Another inmate had his finger going just sideways at the last joint.
He said it was broken by one of the guards and they won't allow him to get medical care for that.
There are just all kinds of things there.
And to be clear, it's not just the inmates that have suffered.
As Marjorie and I toured the DC jail, some of the conditions were so astounding, I asked more than one guard Have you ever worked in a facility that had these kind of problems?
And quietly they would say, never, no.
Leave it to the political activists masquerading as news anchors at CNN to miss this point in the most spectacularly stupid of ways.
Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, among those who had a press conference, they wanted to defend the people charged in the insurrection, saying they were being treated unfairly.
And at that event, Congressman Gaetz went on to say that he still likes the idea of Donald Trump as speaker, if the Republicans were the majority.
So they poke their own leadership, and they just say things that, forgive me, are not American, not patriotic, about defending people who stormed the Capitol building.
That was CNN's John King, and he is clearly an imbecile.
I didn't even bring up Trump as Speaker.
A reporter asked me about it, and I responded honestly.
And frankly, Speaker Trump has a great ring to it.
And you see that it just triggers them into these frantic false allegations.
Like that we are unpatriotic.
Pardon me, but I don't take lectures on patriotism from a network that peddled the Russia hoax for years, only to then hire some of the greatest affront to patriotism in our time, Andrew McCabe and James Clapper.
Andrew McCabe repeatedly told lies about his media leaks and political activity when he was questioned by the Department of Justice's Inspector General.
That's against the law.
In fact, the greatest threats to our nation, liars like Clapper and McCabe, they benefit directly, financially, from the corrupt, unpatriotic revolving door between the deep state and CNN. CNN says we are unpatriotic for demanding the fair application of constitutional rights to all Americans, regardless of politics.
Nothing could be more patriotic than that.
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