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March 31, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
29:22
Episode 33 LIVE: Biden & America in Crisis (feat. Rep. Andy Biggs) – 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 can cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws.
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.
You know, just this week, Andy, in the House Armed Services Committee, the Biden administration sent Dr. Celeste Wallander, who is a top official at the Department of Defense, to walk us through the force posture that America ought to consider in Europe.
And just get ready for the level of discomfort she had answering basic questions about what you just described, the lack of competence in the United States president.
Take a listen.
For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.
And you're going to see when you're there, sometimes you've been there, you're going to see women, young people standing in the middle of the front of a damn tank.
And to clarify on chemical weapons, if chemical weapons were used in Ukraine, would that trigger a military response from NATO? It would trigger a response in kind.
Dr. Wallander, we're not sending the 82nd Airborne into Ukraine, right?
Correct.
And regime change in Russia is not the policy of the United States, is it?
Correct.
And God forbid, if the Russians used chemical weapons, we would not respond by using chemical weapons against the Russian people, right?
Correct.
So why does the President keep speaking out against U.S. policy?
Congressman, the President has made clear that he has not changed U.S. policy and regime change.
No, no, but why does he speak against it?
That he is appalled by the horrors, as I think we all are, of what Russia is wreaking in Ukraine.
But how could it not confuse our allies and our fellow Americans To have the President saying the exact opposite of what you just correctly defined as U.S. policy.
My understanding from allies is that they value U.S. leadership.
They are confident in American commitment to the NATO alliance, in particular, the President's words that the United States will deter Russian attack against NATO and defend every inch of NATO territory.
That's all fascinating, but it doesn't get to the question of speaking directly against our policies.
Does the Department of Defense assess that the President is likely going forward to speak against U.S. policy on other matters?
Congressman, I can't speak to that.
I don't believe that there is any such assessment.
Maybe should, I mean, do we have a plan in place for the next moment, right?
I mean, because this didn't happen once, it didn't happen twice, it happened three times on, like, highly consequential stuff, like regime change and chemical weapons and sending our service members into Ukraine.
And so I sort of wonder whether or not we have to have contingency plans for a president who seems to be a little confused on those matters.
And you're saying there is no such contingency plan?
I'm telling you, Congressman, that the Department of Defense leadership is focused on sustaining and advancing American national security policy of this administration.
Is the Department of Defense leadership frustrated by the President's statements against U.S. policy?
Congressman, I think that is an inappropriate characterization of the Defense Department's commitment.
But it's not a characterization.
It's a question.
Is the Department leadership frustrated?
I'm not characterizing.
I'm trying to Ascertain how hard this job must be to get our force posture aligned, to get our information operations that Mr. Giramendi asked about in line, when you've got a president who seems to be misaligned on these key questions.
Congressman, I can only speak for myself.
I think it's appropriate, and you have the right to ask the question, and so speaking for myself...
I'm sorry, but you can't be the witness.
If you ask a question, you've got to give her at least five seconds to say something before you then interrupt.
Badgering the witness, Andy.
Was that badgering to you to ask the Department of Defense how they intend to deal with what is likely to occur in the future?
I mean, we've seen it on three big things, but do you think we've seen the last of Joe Biden speaking against US policy?
No, first of all, you were not badgering the witness.
I thought you were overly kind to the witness, to be honest with you.
I mean, she clearly did not want to answer an incredibly uncomfortable question like, yeah, we think our boss is losing it, okay?
I mean, that's really what you're asking in a very nice diplomatic way, and she didn't want to answer that.
But, yeah, you're going to see more.
I just wrote a piece about...
How would you like to be the cleanup team behind Joe Biden?
And then when you go out there, he says, we're walking it back.
And then he says, I'm not walking it back.
But when you talk about this...
Cleanup on Isle Biden is sort of the everyday standard.
Yeah, they got that mop bucket on wheels rolling it around.
But do we need better preparation and planning for the likelihood this is going to continue?
Because I think you see just a series of these foreign policy failures from Afghanistan to the inability to contain Vladimir Putin.
We all know that big problems are coming with China.
We focus on those issues a great deal.
And so how should our own government think about preparing for the inevitability of these Biden gaffes and walkbacks?
Well, they're gonna happen.
I think the American people now know that he's degenerating, okay?
He's mentally What does Putin think?
I think the fact that Afghanistan went so bad and that Biden appears to be so incompetent and weak emboldened Putin.
I think the same thing with Xi Jinping.
These things we knew were potential, but they were at bay under a very strong leader in President Trump.
But under a weak leader, you've got Kim Jong-un, who's firing ICBMs over Japan on a regular basis now.
You've got India being forced...
And pushed into the arms of China now.
They had a shooting war going on on the border between India and China.
And Biden says, we're going to sanction you.
When you start looking at the international policy perspective, there's probably been...
I can't think of a more, quite frankly, incompetent leader than Joe Biden, an American leader than Joe Biden.
I can think of a few other foreign leaders, but not a more incompetent American leader.
And speaking of a lack of competence...
We really are watching in Ukraine, Russia, unable to bring all of the elements to the fight together at once.
You know, I mean, we understand that when America goes into the fight, you've got your ground assets, your air assets, your cyber assets, your information assets, that you have to coordinate their entry to the fight.
And the lack of command and control, the lack of materiel support seems to maybe have led us to the belief that we could have overestimated Russia in that same Armed Services hearing.
We saw Congressman Norcross, a Democrat, ask the question of General Waller, who commands American forces in Europe, have we misunderstood Russia?
Take a listen.
Have we overestimated, and outside of the Ukrainian resistance and what they're doing in the fight, have we overestimated their technical abilities, particularly with the Russian armor?
We may have, Congressman, and I think once we get to the post-conflict phase, we need to go back to these very areas and make sure that we conduct a comprehensive old domain after-action review and find out where our miscalculations were in our forecast.
I mean, you always get the most candid version of these generals when they're on their way out of command.
So, General Waller has been in Europe, that time is set to conclude, and I think he gave a very accurate assessment.
And so, what questions do we need to be asking in Congress if our own national security intelligence and analysis told us that the Afghanistan government, led by Ghani, was going to stand But that Russia was going to, in a matter of days or weeks, just totally overrun Ukraine I mean, don't we have an obligation to the people as the board of directors of this country to ensure that we have more accurate assessments of the enemy?
Yeah, I think we do.
And I'm glad you brought up Afghanistan and the bad IC intelligence community prognostications there.
And it makes me, quite frankly, as I listen to that, it certainly appears that it's the case that Russia, we may have overestimated Russia.
But at the same token, Russia sat there in not the wisest position with a 40 mile long caravan for like five days and Ukraine basically inflicted very little damage on that convoy.
So I wonder now even, this is how twisted you can get in this.
Is the intelligence good now that Russia really is not advancing and poised to actually overrun Ukraine inevitably?
Or what?
I mean, you see what I'm saying?
How do you trust them?
Well, and you and I fight in the Judiciary Committee every day to ensure that these national security authorities, these tools that we expected to use against foreign adversaries and terrorists, aren't turned inward against our own people.
So, I mean, you know, here we are kind of evaluating the national security apparatus at a 10,000-foot view, and you're saying, wait a second, you're seeking new authorities and new departments and new ways to target parents at school board meetings, to politicize the Department of Justice, and yet on these highly consequential questions about Russia's capabilities, about the Afghanistan government's capabilities, we seem to be swinging and missing.
I want to go from Ukraine's border to ours.
And for our viewers, you need to know this.
Andy Biggs has led more congressional trips to the border than anyone else in the Congress.
And when there are key questions up before the Congress on matters of immigration and border security, I sit near Andy on the floor.
Everyone comes around to get his perspective.
And you really are on a one-man mission to evangelize this Congress about the threat that exists on our southern border.
For people who aren't as dialed in on this, first just walk us through, during the Biden presidency, how many people have come into our country illegally And what are you seeing going forward?
The estimates anywhere from two and a half to three million people have come in illegally.
Already?
Already.
Already.
They're here.
That's in 14 months.
We believe that it's a 1.2 million people actually remain here.
It could be as high as 1.8 million.
But the reality is, for folks at home, you need to understand, we have ports of entry.
That's where you would go if you were legally, if you were interested in actually claiming asylum, you'd go there and you'd say, I'm claiming asylum.
We have customs officers, everything else.
Everything else is between ports, and there are miles and miles of open stuff, you know, open borders.
Some fencing here, some fencing there, a Rio Grande River.
But this administration basically has said, we're going to allow everybody to come in and we'll determine at that point whether we're going to send you back or not.
But if we decide to keep you even for a few hours, they're going to transport you somewhere in the country.
What you identified there that's so true is that this is on purpose.
This is not that we don't know how to solve the problem.
There are purposeful steps that have been taken.
By Secretary Mayorkas, who you have introduced articles of impeachment against.
And regarding Joe Biden, I guess border czar Kamala Harris hasn't figured it out quite either.
But when you lead these trips to the border, we get the raw, unvarnished truth from the people who America relies upon to provide our nation security and protection.
This is from Code L Biggs.
We have a border chief telling us about how the Biden policies compare to the Trump policies.
Take a listen.
Are we on a positive trajectory?
Or given the likelihood of this change in authorities on April 1, are you telling me that we're at the front end of the wave with those numbers?
I think we're...
So there is no doubt.
I'm speaking a matter of fact here.
That the policies that we had in 2019 and 2020 when it comes down to the Remain in Mexico, the Migrant Protection Protocol, the third-party asylum, all those things that were done that minimized the reward opportunity for the migrants, when those were put in place, that made a huge impact.
When those were taken away, here they come.
So the only thing we have now is either a physical barrier where it exists, CDC expulsion authorization under Title 42 or space in ERO's capacity, which is very limited, right?
So without any of those, it ain't gonna happen.
It's only gonna get worse, right?
Only gonna get worse, Andy Biggs.
Tomorrow's April 1. What's gonna happen?
Well, it's already started to happen.
So what's going to happen is Title 42 goes away.
For people who don't know what that is, that is the ability to turn people away based on a health reason.
And in this instance, it's COVID. And I remember when you were fighting hard for this because you thought, well, hell, if we're going to have to deal with lockdowns as a result of COVID, can the border be the first thing we lock down?
Exactly right.
And so CDC finally, under Trump, came out and said, you know, Title 42 enacted.
We've got a COVID situation.
So they started turning people away.
I'll give you an example.
And sending them back, right?
Yeah, sending them back.
Sending them back home to...
And we just basically said no.
Novel concept.
Yeah, novel concept.
So the first two weeks in March, 100,000 people were apprehended at the border.
Two weeks.
100,000 people.
Of those 100,000 people, we turned away about 49,000 of them under Title 42. We just sent them away.
We brought in about 50,000, a little over 50,000 under Title 8, which is, we won't get into that.
And those people are now distributed throughout the country.
What's going to happen when Title 42 goes away in that same two-week period?
Everybody'd be coming in.
They'd be allowed to come in, and they'd be transported throughout the country.
That is what we call a pull factor, an incentive for people to come.
The cartels know it.
They advertise that.
NGOs advertise that.
So they've been preparing.
Oh, yes.
The smugglers and the cartels have been preparing for tomorrow.
Yeah.
How many people are going to come across this border illegally in the month of April?
Well, at least you want everybody known and unknown?
Yeah.
Oh, about 350,000 to 400,000 people.
It is demoralizing to hear that because it means we have no border.
And that's you and I discussing it from the comfort of my Washington office.
The morale of the heroes who are out there wanting to work for CBP is degrading.
In very dangerous ways.
They have people like AOC and the squad calling them racist and evil, but these are patriots.
And I want you to hear from one of them and react.
You know, it's different when we're catching 100,000 pounds of marijuana and 50,000 pounds of kilo of coke and we're putting people in jail.
That's a whole different busy.
That's a fun busy.
That's calling your wife and I work at a double shift busy.
Not, I'm doing my eight and I'm getting out of here busy.
So, by all means, you were going to say something.
And just to piggyback on you, it's exactly correct.
Like, for example, me, I'm a veteran, right?
You have that mindset of protect and serve, right?
So you get out of here and you're full of pride.
As an instructor at the academy, you say, hey, this is why you're here, guys.
We're border security, right?
And then when the job becomes immigration, You're sitting there behind a computer and you're processing, you're processing, you're processing, and then you see the different kind of demographic.
Also, you know, you have women in high heels from, you know, well-off countries and they're coming in.
You just became that guy.
So your whole mindset switches.
And I feel the frustration of our agents that come with that same mindset.
And they go to the academy and they're built.
That mindset is built and our sense of pride as agents.
And then they come here and they see what reality has become.
Your reaction to an Arizonan feeling that way about their job?
Well, he's very typical.
The morale is in the tank.
People are busting their buns.
They get no support.
They tell me, they say, Andy, we get no support.
We don't need more money, no more salary.
We don't need more guns, vests.
What we need is policy.
Change the frickin' policy.
And the policies that are really harming are...
Border security.
That executive order Joe Biden signed on day one.
I mean, you know, your team drove me by.
Millions of dollars of wall that is just laid up in the sand in Arizona that could be stood up to provide protection.
And I mean, the morale wasn't this way under President Trump.
They knew Trump had their back.
And, you know, it's really something.
I think it's going to be a very ugly month.
I mean, is this going to be one of the worst months we've faced with the cartels and smugglers preparing for it?
Yeah, but you're just at the start of the busy season, so it's going to get worse every month, every month thereafter.
So the Biden administration is trying to put a gloss on this.
It's going to get worse, Matt.
I mean, and the reality is you've got caravans that are already forming as far away as Panama and And Columbia, and they're getting ready to come on up.
And it's going to be a steady stream of people, and this administration is doing nothing to prepare for it.
I do think the Republican conference is waking up.
You know, I mean, Congressman Biggs and I sit in a particular place on the floor with a lot more of the conservative thinking, Freedom Caucus-minded folks, Thomas Massey, Marjorie Taylor Greene, those are the folks that are kind of in our vicinity.
And yesterday, our good friend, who might not see the world precisely as we do, he aligns more with some of the more centrist caucuses, Congressman Jeff Van Drew, great guy, terrific public servant, he comes over and sits with us and says, I asked him, I said, Jeff, you know, when we take over, what's the most important fight we gotta win on behalf of our people?
And he said, the border.
And what does it tell you that a former Democrat, more moderate-leaning Republican, From New Jersey, no less, understands this is the most important fight, and we did not prompt him on that.
Yeah, I mean, the reality, Matt, is I'm reading stories even that moderate Democrats are complaining to Biden.
You've got Arizona senators who are not necessarily moderate who are asking Biden, please do something, and they're asking him, don't remove Title 42. Keep 42 in place, because otherwise it's hopeless.
We need to keep Title 42 in place, and there's someone else we need to keep in place, and that is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
There has been a very focused, well-resourced, planned out campaign to destroy Justice Thomas.
One of the very best public servants we have, probably the best member of the Supreme Court we have in this country.
Take a listen to how the mainstream media is trying to set up Clarence Thomas' recusal, maybe even resignation.
I'm curious if you believe Justice Thomas, these text messages that have come out from Jenny Thomas to the former White House Chief of Staff, saying some bizarre conspiratorial things.
It's not against the law to believe in conspiratorial things.
But I'm curious, given the precedent that Loretta Lynch, as Attorney General, when she recused herself after a tarmac meeting with former President Clinton, The Justice Department was looking into something involving Hillary Clinton.
Is that a precedent Justice Thomas should follow and recuse himself on January 6th cases?
The fact that a spouse of a Supreme Court justice was part of that QAnon effort is really disturbing.
I think Justice Thomas has to recuse himself from anything related to the Trump administration, anything related to the January 6th Commission, or anything related to our effort to hold individuals accountable for their participation in this attack on our democracy at the bare minimum.
Senator Klobuchar made a pretty powerful case, it seems, for Thomas to recuse himself.
Do you agree with that?
You know, when Judge Roberts, Justice Roberts, concluded that a press report of the exchange between Mr. Gorsuch and Ms. Sotomayor was in error, the Supreme Court put out A statement.
I would hope that they would put out a statement.
A statement saying what?
A statement to the fact that the judge, Justice Thomas, would recuse himself on any cases involving the January 6th.
But that's not the court to say, that's Thomas to say, right?
Yes it is, but I still believe that there needs to be a statement.
Look, I think she was unhinged.
I know she's a conservative activist.
I'm an activist.
Yeah, it seemed a little wrong.
Boy, that went really over the top.
Andy, this is not just a smear attempt. this is not just a smear attempt.
This is a smear attempt with a very specific and focused goal to get Clarence Thomas off the court.
Your reaction?
Well, they want to basically impeach him is the ultimate thing because they want him off the court and you're exactly right.
Why do they want him off the court?
I came to the conclusion many years ago that there's nothing more important to the left in America than abortion and protecting Roe v.
Wade.
And they're scared to death that Clarence Thomas, if he stays, that there's a potential that Roe...
You think this is about Roe.
You don't think this is about January 6th.
No, not at all.
You think this is really about abortion.
Absolutely right.
Wow, that's a hot take.
It is a hot take, but I think that's where it is.
Look, they don't care about the January 6th thing.
January 6th, you're arguing is a veneer, that it is the tool that they are using to try to block changes that they ultimately think are coming from a court that is likely to overturn Roe.
Exactly right.
I mean, look, think about January 6th.
You've got an illegitimate committee in Congress.
They have no real authority.
The Supreme Court is not probably going to ever weigh into that political issue.
They're using it as a distraction so they can bring him in and say, oh, see here, you know, we want to get rid of you.
So he's not there on Roe v.
Wade issues.
That's what I believe.
That would be deeply sinister, but it shows the depths that the left is willing to go to with a total assist from the mainstream media.
You saw Chuck Todd, Donna Brazile.
They were lined up, ready to kind of set up Ocasio-Cortez and the left to make this impeachment push.
If that impeachment comes, it'll be in the House Judiciary Committee.
You could bet Andy Biggs and I will be there to defend Justice Thomas.
Absolutely, 100%.
Joe Biden released his budget.
This is something that I think shows the values, priorities, goals, and objectives of his administration.
Some key points that stood out to me.
Raising the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%, driving American dollars offshore.
Of course, President Trump inherited the largest corporate tax rate in the world at 35%.
We also see gun control in the Biden budget.
$1.7 billion for ATF to continue their tracking and tracing.
Of the gun sales that occur in our country that are not the business of the federal government.
And then you and I are very America first when it comes to foreign policy.
We stand frequently against the corrosive effects of globalism.
$2.6 billion in the Biden budget for global gender equity.
$200 million for the Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund.
$1.8 billion for USAID. Andy Biggs, your reaction to the Biden budget.
Well, a Biden budget is a total fiscal non-starter.
It's malpractice all the way through.
And I can't let this go without just mentioning, because you mentioned what I consider to be some of the most horrific parts of it, but the waste and fraud And the improper payments will continue to go out.
And if they were a single funding unit of this budget, they would be the fifth largest funding portion of this budget.
Explain to people how fraud is actually number five in terms of what the American budget funds under the Biden plan.
Yeah, so you're gonna fund things like Medicare, Medicaid, you're gonna fund the Defense Department, you're gonna fund, then you start getting to things like hard debt, and then you get into fraud and waste.
Wow.
And that's where it is.
Right after debt service?
Yeah, basically, yeah.
Unbelievable.
How much money in the budget should go to USAID? Zero.
How much money should go to the UN? Oh, no, we should not be a member of the UN. Oh, you know, the Biden budget fully funds the UN commitment.
Yeah, well, they probably fully fund WHO and all these other multilateral institutions.
World Bank?
Yeah.
$1.4 billion for the World Bank?
You think that's building anything in your neighborhood?
It ain't touching.
It ain't helping America.
Let's put it that way.
None of those multilaterals give a rip about America except for they want our money.
When we get the majority back, will we write a budget that balances?
Heavens no.
Now, you and I are going to want to.
But you have such low confidence in Republicans and the majority that you do not believe that they will present a balanced budget.
No.
They'll say we're going to balance it in 8, 10, 12 years and this is how we're going to get there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Aspirational balance.
Aspirational balance.
But they never want to make the hard decisions.
And that's what it takes.
I remember when Paul Ryan told us that the budget wasn't real.
Yeah, I do too.
And so we should just be willing to vote for an unbalanced budget.
And we asked the question of Paul Ryan, the former budget chair, well, if the budget isn't real, could it at least balance?
Exactly right.
We couldn't even get the not real budget to balance.
Yeah, and well, I don't want to get the roots of this thing, but I mean, when you and I were there, and he said that I could not believe what I was hearing.
But the idea was because we needed to do it with all these crazy procedures and processes to do another bad bill that they wanted to do because they said the Senate won't do it.
I am so sick and tired of that excuse.
Well, the Senate's not going to do it.
How about we and members of the House do our job and then put the pressure on those guys?
Members of the House, do your job.
Andy Biggs told you how to do it.
Secure the border.
Balance the budget.
Protect folks like Clarence Thomas who are advancing the interests of American liberty.
And let's make sure that in Ukraine we don't have a president who is falling and stumbling all over himself, all over the world.
Andy, thanks for being here for this historic moment.
I want to thank our congressional staff, particularly our communications team led by Joel Valdez, for putting together the show.
You can always listen on your podcast listening platform of choice.
Make sure to subscribe and be on those video channels so that you get our live updates.
We'll be back tomorrow with a live deep dive into the Hunter Biden laptop, the chain of custody, how it was introduced to the Judiciary Committee.
You won't want to miss it.
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