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April 29, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
36:16
Episode 40 LIVE: Burned By Biden – 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 applause.
So we're going to keep running those stories to get hurt again.
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.
Happy Friday, everyone.
This is Congressman Matt Gaetz simulcast streaming our podcast from the Capitol Complex here in Washington, D.C. We've got a lot to talk about.
It seems every day we could talk about different failures of the Biden administration, whether that's on domestic policy, foreign policy, military policy, health policy.
We got the Comments section going.
A shout out to all the folks on Facebook who are letting their voices be heard.
Jameson says that Joe Biden has just given us Obama's third term.
That's quite something.
Vicky wants to know who's going to run for VP. And just keep your comments coming in.
I love seeing them.
Love getting your perspective.
And we got to go over a lot today.
We got to go over...
A big moment in the House Armed Services Committee where you had the Secretary of Defense directly contradicted by the Secretary of the Air Force on the critical issue of hypersonics.
We're going to go over the latest in combating Russia and dealing with the conflict in Ukraine.
A bizarre racist attack against Clarence Thomas that played out over the course of a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee Also going to give you a key update on marijuana policy.
But first, I want to make sure everyone is well aware of a show we did earlier in the week, Biden's Military Purge, episode 33. We talked to three terrific service members for the United States Armed Forces,
two Air Force folks, one medical doctor who's serving in the Army, and one One of the individuals, Captain Jordan Carr from the Air Force, she created a Twitter account to try to share the content from that interview, to create a platform for people who wanted information about how our military is dealing with these mandates.
And like, almost within, I guess within like what, 24 hours of her being...
Less than seven hours I'm hearing from our staff.
She's on Twitter.
She's already facing bans, deplatforms.
And, I mean, if we live in a country where our own military can't share their experiences on matters like this in their own personal capacity as Americans, Then that directly contributes to the problems we have in military recruitment.
I mean, right now, you look at the United States Air Force, we don't have the number of pilots we need.
We need more pilots.
You think these vaccine mandates are helping you get more pilots while you're driving some of them out of the Air Force?
You think that embracing white rage at our Service academies and in the diversity, equity, inclusion portions of the military is attracting more people to want to wear the uniform and what get smeared as racists.
It's ridiculous and it's making America less safe and less ready.
You know, the Obama administration did all they could to starve our military of the resources for body armor, for technology, for the pacing challenge of China.
It took a lot for the Trump administration to really rebuild that and to get us back on track.
And now the Biden administration is choosing this different tool.
They're not attacking our military by defunding it as much as the Obama administration.
They're attacking our military through these purges.
Purges on mandates.
Purges through wokeism.
Go check out the Biden military purge.
And as you watch Captain Carr, think about whether or not this is someone who ought to be able to have a voice in a democracy, in a republic such as ours.
Very important.
So staying on, the matter of the military.
Many of you will remember that when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin came to give testimony, I sort of juxtaposed the embrace of wokeism against some of the degradations in America's standing in In very competitive areas of weapons development, particularly hypersonics.
I'm very interested in hypersonics because hypersonic munition systems can carry different types of payloads.
They can carry the types of payloads that we see being used in the Russia-Ukraine conflict right now.
I mean, Russia used the first hypersonic weapon in combat ever during this conflict.
That's going to make them more capable.
Everybody learns from utilizations like this.
They can also carry nuclear payloads.
We're seeing right now the impact and the influence of nuclear deterrence.
And other countries, the Gulf monarchies, others could see this as a real opportunity for a nuclear arms race, for proliferation.
We don't want to see that type of prolif.
We don't want to see that happen.
That will make the world less safe.
But it's hard not to see how the immense resources being developed in some areas of the world aren't going to pair with technology solutions like hypersonics and like nuclear.
And so if that happens, the United States of America must be at the front edge of hypersonics.
We have to have the best offensive systems for deterrence.
We have to have the best defensive systems to protect the homeland.
And that means research, development, testing.
That means having the size of a force being sufficient, the capability.
It means being able to hit different sized targets, moving targets, targets that could be an aircraft carrier under some circumstances.
And so because we need that really wide suite of capabilities, There's a whole lot to do to keep up with a country like China that's very invested and very aggressive.
So I asked the Secretary of Defense, gosh, why are we doing the critical race theory and the pronoun stuff and not doing the really important work Of keeping pace with China and hypersonics.
And the Secretary of Defense, you're going to get the clip in just a minute, but he responds that I'm wrong, that we're not really behind in hypersonics.
There's no basis that I would have to ever make a claim that the United States would be behind in hypersonics.
I mean, he was just lying to us.
Or, I mean, just as bad as lying would be if he was ignorant to what was going on in our military from a research standpoint, from a fielding weapon systems standpoint.
And so I knew the time would come when someone else from the military would come in, give us a more technical briefing, a deeper dive with the Air Force and munitions, and I knew that I would have the opportunity to ask the question, who's ahead?
And lo and behold, it was this week.
We had the Secretary of the Air Force, the top civilian in the Air Force, Admitting that what the Secretary of Defense said was total nonsense.
Take a look at them back-to-back, side-by-side.
We'll come back and we'll share some more perspective.
Take a listen.
We're behind in hypersonics.
We failed to deter Russia.
Last year...
What do you mean we're behind in hypersonics?
Okay, who's ahead in hypersonics?
How do you make that assessment?
China has moved to deploy hypersonic weapons more aggressively than the United States has, definitely.
They have fielded more capability than we have, and they have fairly aggressive development programs in a number of areas.
I wouldn't put a number...
More aggressive than ours.
They're testing and developing more.
They're fielding more and they're more capable.
Right?
That's the essence of this thing?
They have invested more and they are more capable, but you have to be very careful about these comparisons.
Thank you.
That is just like exactly the opposite of what Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
How do you make that assessment?
I don't know.
I make that assessment because China is fielding hypersonic weapons systems and we are still developing them.
I make that assessment because Russia actually used one.
By the way, your own people Brief us that we are behind and that China is winning.
Are you aware of the briefings we get on hypersonics?
I am certainly aware of briefings that we provide to Congress.
No, no.
I don't think you are aware, actually, Mr. Secretary.
That was really something.
And I guess we do have to find out whether or not it was a purposeful lie for some sort of theatrical moment or whether or not there really is an inability for the Secretary of Defense to focus on this critical area of technology that the Chinese are advancing aggressively and where we're behind.
So we need to catch up.
We need to...
Do that by building out our range capabilities.
I don't think we should be testing and developing hypersonics over the Pacific Rim for obvious reasons.
There are a whole lot of eyes and ears out there over the Pacific Rim, but goodness gracious, over in different ranges in the Atlantic.
In the Gulf of Mexico test range, which Floridians are well aware of, we could have better telemetry, we could have better radar, better sensing systems.
Build those up, have a great envelope for testing, and make sure that America always holds the high ground.
And one reason we have to do that is because we are increasingly seeing Russia engage in malign influence.
And so I want to take a moment to get into Russia, what we see vis-a-vis their malign activities in Ukraine and that we've seen around the world.
You know, they engage in espionage and they get people into countries and those people are spies and then they do their naughty business and that doesn't facilitate a rules-based order that I think every reasonable person So that you don't just have might makes right and these horrific images that continue to bombard us from Ukraine.
But that system requires us being a little bit smarter and a little bit tougher.
And we hear from Democrats all the time, oh, you know, Trump was, oh, he was so soft on Putin and Matt Gaetz because he defended Trump.
He was like Putin's lawyer.
We heard all that nonsense.
A key metric in how tough we are, how many diplomats we're willing to expel.
So go ahead and put that graphic up.
And this is a real comparison right here from Obama expelling 35 Russian diplomats, Trump expelling 60, and Biden only expelling 12. So for all the saber-rattling, for all of Joe Biden saying that he's for regime change in Russia, I don't even know if that was a senior moment or if they've walked that back considerably, but he's only expelled 12 Russian diplomats.
And so maybe like before we're interested in getting Russia out of Ukraine, we ought to be interested in getting Russia out of the United States where they could be harming our businesses, setting up cyber attacks that would impact quality of life here in America.
There is a whole lot to talk about regarding what Biden does want to do.
If he doesn't want to expel these diplomats from the United States at the same rate of certainly not Trump and not even like Obama, We shouldn't be sending $33 billion to Ukraine, as the administration has proposed.
And I really see this as a circumstance where cash is finding its way to a money laundering mecca.
And Ukraine, before this conflict, was widely known as a place where a lot of people went to wash their ill-gotten gains.
And so since that infrastructure of money laundering is well established and set up in Ukraine, you now see Based on this conflict, the desire for some in D.C. to send $33 billion in all kinds of different forms, in weapons, in food, in cash.
And that's really troubling to me, especially when I think about how hard we had to work to get any real money for our own border, for the wall.
When we wanted the resources to go out there and Protect American families and the American economy and American national security.
The Democrats put us through the ringer on it.
And now we're just going to like at the snap of a finger send $33 billion to Ukraine?
I held a telephone digital town hall meeting last evening.
We've got that link available on Rumble.
And you can see the constituents I represent in Northwest Florida to the tune of like greater than 80% are not on board with this notion of Just sending unlimited resources, seemingly, to a government that we certainly want to win.
We want Ukraine to win and we want Russia to lose.
But at what expense?
Also, there was a vote this last week on whether or not the money and assistance we supply to Ukraine should ever be paid back.
Now, there are a lot of Russian oligarchs out there with a lot of assets, and I actually voted for legislation that would facilitate the seizure of those assets for the benefit of Ukraine.
I think that's reasonable.
If Russian oligarchs are supporting Putin, he's engaged in this brutal war, maybe they ought to be a part of repaying Ukraine or helping to rebuild Ukraine more than, say, other folks like us, like my constituents in northwest Florida.
So I'm for seizing the Russian assets and seizing the assets of the oligarchs.
What I'm not for is saying that there's a blank check for Ukraine aid and that we would never expect payback.
Now, down the road, it might be part of a global deal.
It might be part of some circumstance to get a resolution that stops violence for us to say that we're going to forgive debt.
But why at this point would we go out there and say, no matter what weapons, no matter what aid, America, we don't want to be paid back.
That just seems foolish.
That doesn't seem like what your leaders should be doing to represent you.
I'm shocked that almost all the Republicans are clawing over one another to vote for any bill that makes them look anti-Russia and pro-Ukraine.
But I believe that Americans actually deserve discerning leaders who will read and review the bills and the legislation and evaluate their second and third order effects.
As bad as the Russia-Ukraine conflict is, I don't think that Americans should be shouldering suffering for it.
Whether it's the farmers that are seeing fertilizer increase, whether it's people who drive to and from work, sometimes farther distances, just getting crushed by gas prices.
When you see the price of your grocery cart, when you check out at the supermarket, You know, I don't think that Americans should be shouldering that burden.
And there are smart ways to do this by putting pressure on Putin and the oligarchs.
But the notion that we're going to flood Ukraine with cash and weapons for anyone that's willing to shoot at a Russian, I mean, didn't we do that in Afghanistan?
Wasn't the American posture in Afghanistan essentially, if you're willing to shoot at a Russian, we'll give you all the arms, all the weapons, all the aid, and we'll never look back.
And it didn't exactly turn out well for us.
So we can be more discerning, we can be smarter, and we can still be tough on Russia.
And I think that certainly we need to have strong Republican opposition to this Biden plan for the $33 billion.
Much more on Russia to come.
I do have to shift gears a little bit here and go to what happened in the House Judiciary Committee with racist attacks on full display against Clarence Thomas.
First, I'm going to go to the comments section.
Alex says, thank you, Mr. Gates.
Margaret says, I do not believe in Brandon.
And Sherry said that watching the show and seeing our perspective has helped give her hope.
And We do want hope because we can make this stuff better, but we have to get down to some of the root causes for the pain that our fellow Americans are feeling and how that's directly linked to the policy choices of the Biden administration.
So back to the House Judiciary Committee.
You see a very coordinated, well-funded effort to destroy Clarence Thomas as the result of views held by his spouse.
I mean, sometimes you can't even make this stuff up.
But what Democrats know is that they're way overreaching on the mandates, on the medical tyranny, on the January 6th committee, with what they've done with a lot of January 6th defendants.
With the utilization of the national security apparatus to target a political movement they fear.
And what they're trying to do is clear the decks on the Supreme Court for one of America's greatest public servants, Clarence Thomas.
I think Clarence Thomas is my favorite member of the court.
And they're trying to do everything they can to discredit him, to get him to recuse himself, maybe even to impeach Clarence Thomas.
I wouldn't put it past these Democrats to fashion up articles of impeachment against Clarence Thomas because this is the type of bare-knuckles politics they play.
When they can't win by smearing Clarence Thomas in his confirmation hearings, when they can't win against Gorsuch or with their terrible smears against Kavanaugh, Well, they just go to the next opportunity to try to destroy someone, to try to remove them, to try to seize that power for themselves.
And so that's what's on display with Clarence Thomas.
And what I found interesting and what this hearing revealed is that Benny Thompson, the Democrat chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, The Democrat chairman of the January 6th committee actually launched a racist trope at Clarence Thomas.
Take a listen to what we learned.
When someone calls a black person an Uncle Tom, is that a racist attack?
Yeah, I think it is.
I think it's a disgusting attack.
Do any of the other panelists dispute that testimony?
Does anyone think that there's a non-racist way to call a black person an Uncle Tom?
How should we think about the fact that the chairman of the January 6th Committee, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, used what all of you concede as a racist attack against Justice Thomas?
Congressman Jeffries asked me for an example.
I gave it to him.
I'll let others address it, but I just think it is indicative of the hatred that is That is directed towards Justice Thomas for his views, which, in fact, if you look, I wrote an article on this of comparing Justice Jackson and Justice Thomas's views on a number of issues in terms of polling.
And by and large, black rank and file, black Americans rank and file Agree, I think, on abortion, on guns, on voter ID, across the board.
And yet somehow he's portrayed as being an Uncle Tom or a sellout or whatever the disgusting characterizations are.
And it's just this continual attack on Justice Thomas.
And thank God he's had the backbone to never bend in the face of these attacks.
And I think And I think this hearing today is a continuation of that.
Everyone's focused on Justice Thomas.
And let me just address the January 6th case where, you know, that case has to do with Executive privilege over internal White House documents between the president and his closest advisers, they have nothing whatsoever to do with Jeannie Thomas' communications with Mark Meadows.
Those wouldn't be covered by executive privilege.
So Justice Thomas was voting on documents that were not at all related to his wife.
That's why I say, up until this point, there could be cases down in the future, as every justice does.
When the case comes before the court and they look at the litigants, they look at the parties, they look at what's at issue, they decide whether they recuse it.
So that I understand your testimony.
You believe it's a racist trope to designate Justice Thomas as uniquely unintelligent or persuadable?
You believe it's a racist trope to call him an Uncle Tom?
And you believe that this committee is a continuation of that effort?
Yes.
I believe it started when he first came to town in 1980. Let's hope it ends.
I yield back.
Wow.
I mean, what the cameras didn't show there is that on that panel, you had people that were white and black.
You had witnesses that were called by the Democrats and witnesses that were called by the Republicans.
And it's undisputed that Benny Thompson, who is himself black, Called Clarence Thomas an Uncle Tom.
And regardless of race, regardless of party affiliation, every person on that panel agreed that what Benny Thompson did was racist.
That was a racist thing to do.
And it aligns with these other tropes that they've intended to use against Clarence Thomas.
So I was glad to be there to ripen the testimony of the witnesses that were able to bring into sharp relief the effort that is truly underway and how important it is that we stand with Clarence Thomas, that he preserve his seat on the court, and that he have the opportunity To issue important rulings on the matters of the day.
So you're joining us here on Firebrand Live.
I'm in my Washington office.
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Some content that is not coming out of the Biden White House is marijuana reform.
And so I want to take a moment...
To really highlight an important study that might give us a lot of information about value for adult use laws as an alternative to Big Pharma.
So last week, Shyam Rahman, who's a doctoral student at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, And Indiana University doctoral student Ashley Bradford published their research in health economics.
That research finds that recreational marijuana access reduces demand for prescription drugs.
Bad news for Big Pharma.
And while the impacts of substituting cannabis for prescription drugs have been examined in states with medical cannabis laws, this study is different because it considers the effect that cannabis substitution has in states with fully recreationally legal adult use laws.
Doctors and the medical system are, in my opinion, the safest way to administer and consume any medication.
However, this study shows and illustrates that in the absence of available research over the last decade, individual behavior, self-medicating, individual agency, It's been sufficient enough to replace the imperfect prescription drugs that in many cases are addicting us and killing us at a far higher rate than marijuana ever could.
So the study used quarterly data from all Medicaid prescriptions from 2011 to 2019 to investigate the effect of state-level adult-use recreational marijuana laws on prescription drug utilization.
It found significant reductions in the volume of prescriptions with the drug classes that align with medical indications for pain, depression, anxiety, sleep disorder, psychosis, and seizures.
The findings indicate that in addition to the lethal opioid crisis, cannabis is proving to be a medical alternative to prescription drugs for many other conditions.
It occurs that this is safest when patients have legal adult use access to cannabis without the risk of big governments incarceration or prosecution.
I support the medical cannabis system including in Florida where I wrote a bunch of those laws.
And in Florida we stand to benefit from streamlined research grants at large scale to learn more and help more people unlock potential.
However, the conclusion of this study, that recreational cannabis use is weaning people off of prescription drugs, it's just hard to ignore.
Unfortunately, there's this tumultuous road ahead.
Even with legitimate research and factual basis and evidence at hand, the cultural stigma hangover of the boomer era weighs heavy.
Take a listen to this clip from The Briar Show.
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.
That was President Trump's acting head of the DEA and it was just shocking to me that the people who have impact and influence over drug policy seem to be like purposefully ignorant of some of this research and particularly the study I'm highlighting today.
It's like now we live in a world where 37 states and the District of Columbia currently permit the use of medical marijuana with a prescription While 18 states have this circumstance where there's adult use.
It's regulated, but it's adult use even without the medical complex.
So let's make it 50 states for both.
I was one of three Republicans this month to vote for the MORE Act.
I was joined by Congressman McClintock of California and Congressman Mast, my fellow Florida man from down on the Atlantic coast of Florida.
And the Moore Act would have descheduled cannabis, making it federally not illegal to the same degree that it is today.
That would have allowed states to be able to flourish under their system.
It would have allowed expungement of criminal convictions for non-violent cannabis possession, among a number of other things.
But best of all, the Congressional Budget Office says that this bill would actually reduce the deficit by $2.88 billion over the next 10 years.
Deficit reduction through marijuana reform.
Imagine that.
So there are much larger priorities of the United States federal government than to go around arresting people for inhaling a plant material or even for self-medicating in some circumstances based on the data in this study.
Oftentimes, folks are safely in the environment of their own homes.
So the real issue here is Joe Biden's betrayal on marijuana.
If you go to JoeBiden.com backslash Black America, as part of Joe Biden's fundraising website, you will see a page entitled, Lift Every Voice, The Biden Plan for Black America.
In Biden's list of his unaccomplished plans for Black America, he says, quote, Biden will work with Congress to reform federal sentencing and provide incentives to state and local systems to do the same.
He will end, once and for all, the federal crack and powder cocaine disparity and decriminalize the use of cannabis and automatically expunge all prior cannabis convictions and end all incarceration for drug use alone and instead divert individuals to drug courts and treatment.
Joe Biden, where are you at?
The House has passed legislation that fits one of your presidential demands, and it's headed to a death in the Senate.
And I'm here to remind you, and Kamala, you're missing a critical moment for a policy accomplishment.
Do what you said you would do and by the stroke of the president's pen we could have substantial marijuana reform in this country.
Instead, unfortunately, Joe Biden is like Thank you so much for joining us on Firebrand today on Friday.
So next week, we've got a district work period.
So it might be a little while, but it gives you the opportunity.
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