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April 4, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
32:47
Episode 35 LIVE: Woke Deterrence – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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Thank you.
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 of laws.
So we're going to keep running the 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.
We also know the Justice Department is intensifying its investigation under Hunter Biden, the president's son.
I assume the president has had no contact with the Justice Department about that?
Neither the president or any of us at the White House have had any contact with the Justice Department about that.
Is the president confident Hunter Biden didn't break the law?
Of course the president's confident that his son didn't break the law.
But most importantly, as I said, that's a matter that's going to be decided by the Justice Department, by the legal process.
It's something that no one at the White House has involvement in.
Wow.
There it is.
The White House on Sunday sending the message that the president will not be happy if Hunter Biden is prosecuted.
Now, they chose this exact moment yesterday with George Stephanopoulos to send the message.
The White House knows that every cabinet secretary will see that interview with Ron Klain.
Ron Klain is the White House chief of staff.
He could have said it wasn't appropriate for the White House chief of staff to be commenting on the Hunter Biden investigation.
But he didn't.
Just as a human, Ron Klain could have said, it's not appropriate for any man to comment on how a father views his son.
But he didn't do that either.
He said, of course, President Biden believes that Hunter Biden did not commit a crime.
That was a message, a very direct one.
Protect Hunter Biden.
They know we've got the laptop in the congressional record, the Russian disinformation narrative has totally collapsed, the Biden crime family is getting exposed, and there is much more to come.
On this story.
Welcome to Firebrand.
We are live.
We're broadcasting from the Longworth House office building, and it's just great to have you.
This is our Instagram debut.
Our audience continues to grow each and every live show.
Nobody else in Congress doing this simulcasting on multiple platforms, getting you the information directly, and then you have it first.
So it's a big week coming up in Congress.
The war in Ukraine is raging on.
And Putin is clearly changing his goals in that conflict.
As we continue to see some pullback from the outskirts of Kyiv, concentration in the Dombas region, it's pretty evident that Putin is playing a worse hand now in eastern Ukraine than he would have had had he not engaged in this terrible violence and bombing in Kyiv and Kharkiv and other areas to the west.
I mean, there are a lot of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine And I believe that Vladimir Putin has really damaged his campaign in eastern Ukraine as a consequence of what he's done in the north and the south and in the west.
And we'll continue to cheer on those Ukrainians who are on the front lines of freedom for sure.
But tomorrow...
The woke generals, Millie and Austin, are testifying before the House Armed Services Committee.
I am going to have a lot of questions.
You look at what's going on in Afghanistan, Ukraine, North Korea, China.
It seems as though America's hand continues to get worse in those places compared to the strength during the Trump administration and during really the embrace of the America First agenda.
I've also got in this show an interview with Ana Paulina Luna.
She's an Air Force veteran.
She served in Northwest Florida in my district, and she's also a military spouse.
So we get her perspective on what military families are expecting from their DOD leadership.
So tomorrow I get five minutes to question Millie and Austin.
I probably could spend five days doing that, but I get five minutes.
So let's crowdsource some questions.
We've got our comment screen.
If you're watching, throw a question you'd love to see me ask Millie and Austin in and maybe it'll be your question that I end up asking during the Armed Services Committee.
It certainly helps to get all the input I can get.
But first, let's go back To the last opportunity I had to question the woke generals.
This is from the House Armed Services Committee.
Take a listen.
February 26, 2020. House Armed Services General Mark Milley.
We know we're not going to defeat the Taliban militarily and they're not going to defeat the government of Afghanistan militarily.
You really blew that call, didn't you, General?
I believe that that was a Issue of strategic stalemate in that if we had remained in Afghanistan with the advisory levels of effort, then the government of Afghanistan...
Well, that's an interesting answer to a question, it's just not one I asked.
You spent more time with Bob Woodward on this book than you spent analyzing the very likely prospect that the Afghanistan government was going to fall immediately to the Taliban, didn't you?
Not even close, Congressman.
Oh really?
Because you said right after Kabul fell that no one could have anticipated the immediate fall of the Ghani government.
When did you become aware that Joe Biden tried to get Ghani to lie about the conditions in Afghanistan?
He did that in July.
Did you know that right away?
I'm not aware of Was President Biden lying?
You're not aware of the phone call that Biden had with Ghani, where he said, whether it is true or not, we want you to go out there and paint a rosy picture of what's going on in Afghanistan.
You're the chief military advisor to the president.
You said that the Taliban was not going to defeat the government of Afghanistan militarily, which, by the way, they cut through him like a hot knife through butter.
And then the president tries to get Ghani to lie.
When did you become aware of that attempt?
Well, there's two things there, Congressman, if I may.
Is what I said was the situation was stalemate, and if we kept advisers with there, the government of Afghanistan and the army would have still been there.
That's what I said.
Whether that's right or wrong, I don't know, but...
Seems wrong now with the Taliban in control.
Well, we would throw all the advice.
I have a question for Secretary Austin.
Secretary Austin, are you capable of assessing whether another has the will to fight?
No, we're not, and that's the point that the chairman made earlier.
That's just like an incredibly disappointing thing for the Secretary of Defense to simply say, I can't assess whether someone has the will to fight.
But it is consistent with your record.
I mean, during the Obama administration, I think they gave you about $48 million to go train up some folks in Syria to go take on the Assad government.
And I think your testimony was that only four or five survived first contact with the enemy.
So what confidence should this committee have in you or What should the country have in you when you've now confessed to us, and whether it's the swing and a miss in Afghanistan that General Milley talked to the Senate about yesterday, total failure, or whether it was your failures in Syria, you don't seem capable to look at a fighting force and determine whether or not they have the will.
Is that an embarrassment?
You recall, Congressman, that the end result was the SDF that we stood up that was very, very instrumental in turning the tide of A battle up in Syria.
Oh, yeah.
Turned it so much.
You've got Assad in power in Syria.
You've got the Taliban in power in Afghanistan.
I mean, where have you been?
The focus was ISIS, Congressman.
And those forces had significant effect on the ISIS network.
It just seems like you're chronically bad at this.
And you have admitted that, I guess, which is...
to your credit but you know when when people in the military like Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller stand up and demand accountability when they say that you all screwed up when they point out that General Milley's statement that That the government of Afghanistan is not going to get defeated by the Taliban.
Well, he ends up in the brig, and you all end up in front of us, and your former employer, Raytheon, ends up with a lot of money, and we have poured cash and blood and credibility into a Ghani government that was a mirage.
It fell immediately.
And while the guy sitting next to you was off, you know, talking to Phil Rucker and was off doing his thing with Bob Woodward, We were buying into the big lie.
The big lie that this was ever going to be successful and that we could ever rely on the Afghanistan government for anything at all.
You know, General Mill, you kind of gave up the game earlier when you said you wanted to address elements of your personal conduct that were in question.
We're not questioning your personal conduct.
We're questioning In your official capacity, going and undermining the chain of command, which is obviously what you did.
You've created this whole chain of communication narrative.
Did not undermine the chain of command in any manner shape or form.
Yeah, you did.
You absolutely did.
Did not.
Well, you know what?
You said yesterday that you weren't going to resign when senators asked you this question.
And I believe that you guys probably won't resign.
You seem to be very happy failing up over there.
But if we didn't have a president that was so addled, you all would be fired, because that is what you deserve.
You have let down the people who wear the uniform in my district and all around this country, and you're far more interested in what your perception is and how people think about you in insider Washington books than you care about winning, which this group is incapable of doing.
Linda says that if I've only got five minutes, I better talk fast.
Dina says, I need more than five minutes.
And you know what?
I totally would do that.
Every member gets five minutes on the committee, Republican and Democrat, and you can bet I'm going to be the one asking the toughest questions, just as you saw right there.
Florence just responded with four...
Angry face emojis.
So I don't know if Florence is angry at me or General Milley, but I will try to channel her energy to make sure that we have an effective committee day tomorrow.
We're back live now in my congressional office in Washington, DC. If you're watching now, just take one moment and turn your notifications on.
This is the way you get the live shows, the fastest access to the critical information driving Congress.
We're going to be doing these a lot.
We want to make sure You get that critical information.
So tomorrow I get to question Millie and Austin, just as I did in the clip we played.
And one concern is this notion of integrated deterrence.
Think of integrated deterrence like Woke deterrence.
And spoiler alert, it doesn't work.
As President Trump put it so deftly, everything woke turns to shit.
Leftists want us to believe that the global LGBTQ, whatever other letters are added on the end, that those policies are so valuable that they will stop armies and invaders and missiles.
Now look, I support a strong military.
But strength, not like diversity is our strength, strength like the best bombs and aircraft and people and tech in the world.
Strength means we have to be able to crush any foe on the planet if needed.
But we should never confuse adventurism for strength.
As we're seeing from Russia, adventurism can expose and display a great deal of weakness.
We saw that for our country as well during like the era of adventurism hopefully coming to an end.
The notion of integrated deterrence though overemphasizes the heft and utility of soft power.
It diminishes the value of hard power and it is dangerous and it fails.
This point was made brilliantly by Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin.
Now in this clip, Gallagher is questioning General Walters, who is the commander of UCOM. Take a listen.
Would it be fair to say that deterrence failed in Ukraine?
Number one, I would say that NATO solidarity remained, and NATO's ability to effectively deter remained, and I can't argue with your conclusion.
So deterrence failed in Ukraine.
Specifically, integrated deterrence failed in Ukraine.
And I don't bring that up to score a partisan point.
I just think it's worth understanding Why that happened, particularly as we now have anonymous senior Pentagon officials bragging to the Washington Post about the success of integrated deterrence in Ukraine.
Now, it may be true that right now NATO is as unified as it's been in decades.
I celebrate that fact.
And the fact that Russia has not expanded its war into NATO territory is a good thing.
But it is also a low bar for geopolitical success.
And the fact remains, as you have just confirmed, that we attempted to deter An invasion of Ukraine, largely using non-military instruments of national power, and that attempt failed.
Now, it may be true that nothing could have deterred Putin from doing this.
We'll never know.
That's a counterfactual.
But integrated deterrence, as conceptualized by the Pentagon and as implemented in the specific case of Ukraine, as a matter of fact, failed.
And I yield my second.
Woke deterrence fails.
That's what Gallagher proved.
Yet week after week, we hear from Biden administration officials, from the Defense Department, to the State Department, to USAID, acting as if wokeism is somehow America's new prized export that the rest of the world can't wait to get their hands on.
Take a listen to a recent hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, like in a time of all of this strife, in a time when China's flying sorties over Taiwan, when North Korea is launching missiles over Japan, Russia is invading Ukraine.
Listen to what the Foreign Affairs Committee under Democrat leadership is focused on.
We can accelerate the pace of change for LGBTQI plus persons worldwide.
We can take a transformative leap forward for full equality for all persons in our lifetime, regardless of who they are or who they love.
So the kinds of projects we envision supporting would include, for instance, responding to the increase in hate speech targeting LGBTQI plus persons during political campaigns, Fostering dialogue with political parties to integrate inclusive policies into their platforms, ensuring voting rights for all persons, regardless of sex assigned at birth, and even fundamental concepts like advocating for diversity in government.
I also want to highlight the fact that the US will soon make passports available with the option of choosing a third gender, which is an enormous achievement.
Let's think about COVID for a moment.
Out of 4,500 recorded COVID-19 resource mechanisms, only one explicitly described funding to support LGBTQI plus communities.
Globally, there's approximately $560 million a year given in philanthropic funding to support LGBTQI rights.
One could argue that number could be a lot bigger.
One of our biggest concerns with regard to the situation in Ukraine is, how are people going to get access to HIV meds?
How are people going to get access to hormones?
What's going to happen when people need routine health care and they have to find a doctor who's not going to mock them for being LGBTQI? One study by Human Rights First found that 81% of LGBTQ asylum seekers near the border in Mexico were the victim of an attack or an attempted attack, including rape, human trafficking, kidnapping, and violent assaults within just one month of when they were surveyed.
That is shocking.
Yet the Title 42 policy remains in place.
How does the Biden administration's continued Title 42 policy reconcile with U.S. efforts to advance LGBTQI plus rights abroad that you're leading so ably?
Thank you for that question, Representative Levin.
I'm actually not well versed in this issue, so I'll have to take that back as well.
Wow.
Deborah said, God made two genders.
You're right, Deborah.
But this is crazy.
What you just heard was a Biden administration official saying that they use your tax dollars to try to get political parties in other countries to accept their leftist agenda.
We shouldn't be doing that anywhere at all.
We certainly shouldn't be spending American tax dollars to try to shape and influence the politics of other countries.
It's just not the behavior of a serious nation or a serious Congress.
If Republicans retake the majority, you will not see hearings like this.
What you just saw partially explains why several of us voted against the Biden iteration of the Russia sanctions bill.
So the Russia sanctions bill Included provisions that would have given Joe Biden and the Biden State Department the ability to designate anyone, anywhere a human rights violator.
So put that together with the clip you just saw.
If someone goes to a political party in another country and says, you know what, we want you to accept our perspective on gender issues.
And if that person doesn't do it, the Russia sanctions bill, no matter where that person is, would have authorized the president to use immense powers to be able to wipe them out of the global financial system.
It's very scary stuff.
And you really start to have to wonder, with all of this focus on the superfluous and the frivolous, what critically important work isn't getting done for the benefit of our country and our people, our businesses, our wages, the U.S. dollar?
So military families are the bedrock of the community I represent in Northwest Florida.
Whenever I have the chance to get a perspective from military families, I greatly appreciate the feedback.
Ana Paulina Luna stopped by the office recently to chat about the leadership in Joe Biden's Department of Defense.
Take a listen to that conversation.
We're here with Ana Paulina Luna, Air Force veteran, military spouse, and while Ana lives and works in other parts of Florida now, she actually has a connection to Northwest Florida.
Ana, tell our viewers about your time in my particular area of the state.
So I had actually just gotten stationed in Florida.
I had no idea how amazing the Panhandle was, but got stationed there at Hurlburt Field, and my husband was actually assigned also to the 23rd STS. Which is a combat control squadron at Air Force Special Operations Command.
So beautiful area, obviously have an incredible congressman, but huge military community that I know is very supportive of you.
Well, you have this unique position of having been in the uniformed service and also serving as a spouse.
And I really say that because I see the service of military spouses and really military connected family members every day and the unique patriotism What do you think military-connected families want to hear from the current DOD leadership?
We've got Secretary Austin and General Milley coming before the House Armed Services Committee, and I'd be fascinated as your perspective on what military families really think about the current incarnation of the military under the Biden regime.
I can tell you from my own personal experience having a military member serving and then also, you know, in 2014 my husband was shot in Afghanistan.
What we're seeing now with this leadership is people that are grossly disconnected.
You know, with the withdrawal in Afghanistan and many family members and military service members that were so just disenfranchised with how that operation even took place, I can tell you that if we want to Make the American people happy.
We have to have competent leadership.
And what's currently happening under this administration is clearly they're talking a big game.
They're focusing on issues that have nothing to do with military strategy.
And honestly, it's not a good position to be in because as you can see now with everything happening in Ukraine and Russia and now with China talking about going into Taiwan, we need leadership that's competent.
We need people that know what they're doing.
We need strategists.
And we don't have that out of this current administration or leadership.
And we're looking at the president's budget now, and it seems to focus on a lot of things in the military that don't lead to those strategic goals and objectives that you discussed, like China, like containing Russia.
Instead, doing these various mandatory training programs about gender and the like.
How do military families think about some of this required training that isn't really training around the mission, but more around this cultural wokeness?
I can tell you that I actually sat through, so my husband got out of the military in December, and I sat through one of the trainings where I actually asked him about the race, age, and gender of his five closest associates.
The fact that the military is focusing on that instead of focusing on training, mission readiness, and basically the qualifications for a job is something that baffles me.
Going back to what happened when my husband was shot, obviously as a military family, I'll be frankly honest, we actually really did struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder with the transition of him Getting out of the hospital.
These are things that the military should be focusing on, and the fact is that they're pushing an agenda for a reason, an agenda that's tied to Marxism.
I do believe that they're intentionally fracturing the military and trying to push out conservatives, and that's scary to me because ultimately, at the end of the day, the military is supposed to serve the American people, not special interests or political.
Opposition.
So you think it's a purposeful purge?
Yes.
These things like the vaccine mandates, like the targeting of our service members over extremism, like of all the problems we have in America, I don't think that extremism among the uniformed military ranks is some great threat to the country.
No, it's not.
And to be quite honest with you, when someone's getting shot at, like with what happened with my husband, the last thing that they're thinking about is if someone has had, you know, their wokeism training up to date with CBTs.
To be quite honest with you, what's happening now is you're seeing this purge it's evident many military members agree with what I'm saying but they can't say it because if they do They're afraid of being punished or kicked out.
And a lot of these people are single-family incomes or single incomes as a whole.
So you have stay-at-home spouses with children.
And so when you have that type of hold on the military, it becomes dangerous.
And I think that as we move forward, if we take back the House, which I think we're projected to, I think that we need to move forward with intenseness.
I think we need to move forward with strength because these people are not going to listen to the service members.
They're pushing us out.
And frankly, at the end of the day, I'd say that the only two people that push for war are ones that haven't experienced it or ones that are getting paid.
The Perspective for Military Families with Ana Paulina Luna.
Thanks so much for stopping by.
Thank you.
We're back live in my congressional office here on the Capitol Complex.
And Wayne Holmes in the comments section says, for all the veterans, give them hell, Matt.
And Linda asks, why hasn't Biden been impeached?
Well, of course, because Nancy Pelosi would not allow the articles of impeachment that I've sponsored with Marjorie Taylor Greene to come to the floor.
Joe Biden certainly deserves impeachment for what's happening on the border.
A whole lot more on that.
You can look back at our conversation today.
with Congressman Andy Biggs.
A lot of content from the border, a lot of information that really everyone's gonna be talking about right now.
The Title 42 changes.
Just as you're thinking about this, right, and we told you about it last week, everyone's talking about it now, the changes in Title 42 take a tool away from our country to send back illegal immigrants who pose a public health risk to our nation.
And this should not be changed.
Even Democrat Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona said, Sharply criticizing the Biden administration for this change in Title 42. Think back to the Obama days, right?
What Jay Johnson, who was Obama's Homeland Security head, declared was that if 1,000 people every day are crossing illegally, that's a good day.
And if 4,000 people are crossing illegally a day, that's a crisis.
That was Obama's Homeland Security head, Jay Johnson.
Right now, we are at 7,000 a day, and we are going to go to like 17,000 a day just as a consequence of this change to Title 42. Just like the Afghanistan withdrawal, it's another circumstance where there is no plan.
There is no sequence of events that make sense for our country, just the total ineptitude.
That you see from the Biden administration.
I agree with actually a comment that Senator Haggerty of Tennessee made recently that we ought to be able to look at the fentanyl crisis caused by our open border as a public health crisis.
The fentanyl crisis most certainly is something that concerns many Americans, that has impacted many American families.
And if we thought about the fentanyl crisis like a Title 42 public health concern, then we could continue the business of deporting people immediately.
Not waiting five, six, seven years to have a hearing that they don't show up at that results in a deportation order that we never enforce.
That's what's happening far too often.
This Title 42 change, get ready.
There is a run coming on the border.
This is going to be a major issue.
And you know what?
It's just not going to be enough to finish the wall.
We have to deport people who are not in our country legally.
Millions have already come in, potentially millions more.
We could have our first three, four, five hundred thousand month when you include the gotaways and certainly the people who come across that evade detection.
It's going to be the biggest story.
Also breaking news right now.
The energy crisis.
Listen to this.
The national average for gas is now at $4.19.
Crude at $104.75.
Gas prices are up 81% since the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden Jr. And the average American household will pay $2,000 more this year in fuel and gas costs as a result of these policies.
$2,000 now.
You're not going $2,000 further for that.
That's with the same consumption.
And look, it's a tax increase in the budgeting and in the assumptions of American families.
It's bad government policy that's resulting in more money coming out of your pocket.
Gas prices, the Democrats' embrace of some of these leftist energy initiatives, stopping the Keystone Pipeline, greenlighting Nord Stream 2, it's all had an impact.
Now we see what a failure that is for the Biden administration.
Thanks so much, everyone, for joining.
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