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May 10, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
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Episode 41 LIVE: Pro-Life, Pro-Living – 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 could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
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.
Growing life, sustaining life, success, progress on America's farms, it's getting tougher.
And inside the womb, it may be getting easier.
Welcome to Firebrand Live.
I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz, and we are streaming live from my office on Capitol Hill.
The best way to enjoy this report live, so that you're not listening to it later, watching it later, is to make sure that you are subscribed to your platform live.
with notifications turned on.
So we're going to talk about the overturning of Roe v.
Wade, how politicians are reacting to it, I'm actually really intrigued by the messages that are being sent by what's not being talked about.
So I'll take that on.
You'll see everything from Newsom to Pelosi to my take.
But it's Election Day in America today.
That's right.
In states like Nebraska and West Virginia, voters are going to the polls.
And while this isn't a political show, we want to encourage everyone to participate in this great country.
Vindicate your rights as a citizen.
Get out and vote regardless of your candidate of choice.
regardless of your political persuasion.
And one can't help but note how the outcomes in these primaries, particularly on the Republican side, influence the policies that we are willing to talk about.
You see, that's where you make the connection.
When a guy like a J.D. Vance wins a primary in Ohio, that helps those of us who want to elevate the issue of illegal immigration in the Congress.
And when you get the more moderate establishment candidates that win, well, then you see a shift toward those policy issues.
And that's what we cover in the show, policy.
Can't help but notice President Trump going into today's Election Day, 55-0 in his endorsements and And again, what that informs on within the walls in Congress, the agenda, the schedule.
What are the things we're going to talk about and what are the issues we're going to be willing to fight about in a world in which these are some of the primary outcomes?
Now, there is an issue...
Very much on the ballot in West Virginia.
And I think this is very interesting.
You've got a race in West Virginia that actually pits two Republicans against each other in a primary today.
David McKinley and also Alex Mooney.
Two West Virginians.
West Virginia loses a seat as a consequence of depopulation and redistricting.
So they end up in the same race.
And the whole race has come down to the Biden infrastructure vote.
On that vote, you had Mooney voting no.
You had McKinley voting yes.
And so you've had people like Republican Governor of West Virginia Jim Justice, even Democrat U.S. Senator Joe Manchin supporting the infrastructure bill, saying it's good for West Virginia.
You've had Congress members like Alex Mooney opposing that infrastructure bill.
So if you see a Mooney win today, that's bad news for the Democrats, even though it's an outcome in a Republican primary, because it shows that this infrastructure bill that is not only the signature accomplishment of the Biden presidency, it is the only thing that they could possibly trumpet as an accomplishment. it is the only thing that they could possibly trumpet
And if it's not driving votes, if it's not a voting issue, then I think you really see a narrative that's without any sort of cohesion or central focus or grounding in the challenges that are really very prevalent out in the country and challenges we're definitely going to talk about in the show.
So that brings us to Congress this week.
And we are getting news that a $40 billion package for Ukraine in arms, in aid, in cash, is being decoupled from a vote on COVID. Now, first of all, what is so freaking wrong with Congress that you would ever couple Ukrainian aid with coronavirus response?
Regardless how you think of those things, they definitely don't belong together, but it tells you something about how your government behaves and responds that they would think about this not as a policy debate, but as a political fusion of these issues.
Now, for me, it's not that difficult because, as I'll explain, I'm against both of them, but really nuts that they thought about joining COVID and Ukrainian aid.
To most people, you would think your government would actually be sophisticated and mature enough to address those issues on their own merits independently.
It does look like that's going to happen.
I think the COVID obsession needs to come to an end.
We cannot continue to print money to subsidize COVID fear porn policies.
You want to know why we have inflation problems in this country today?
It's not because of Vladimir Putin principally.
It's because of our government.
It's because we print money and thus devalue the dollar as a fundamental economic institution in American life.
So I'm not going to be voting for the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer COVID additional relief package because in Florida, frankly, we've seen how to respond to this.
Okay?
More freedom, more economic activity, more personal choice.
And by the way, for those who want to stay locked up for their personal health reasons, who want to get vaccinated, that's entirely their right.
We should not judge them for that.
Let them do their thing.
But I think...
Americans who want to go back to work, who want to open businesses, who want to interact with family members, ought to be able to do that as well.
So in this COVID package, you've got, you know, the hospital industrial complex and the pharmaceutical industrial complex doing their thing.
I won't be voting for it.
But the $40 billion for Ukraine, that is undeniably the military industrial complex.
And after seeing what the big pharma lobby got and the big hospital lobby got, No doubt the war lobby wants to get right back at it.
They certainly don't want to see the savings that the American people should realize is a peace dividend with hostilities in Afghanistan coming to an end, at least as far as Americans go.
No, they don't want that peace dividend realized for our country.
They want us to continue to spend money just littering weapons abroad for the use of others who sometimes don't share our values.
Ukraine is the money laundering capital of Europe.
And in a lot of ways, this $40 billion is a money laundering operation for the elites.
And you saw how quick it went from $33 billion to $40 billion.
It's just astonishing to me.
By the way, Customs and Border Patrol are going to be requesting through the Biden administration about $17 billion.
So it tells you a lot about your leaders and your government.
That they are just lickety-split, going to send more than twice as much money to Ukraine to defend their borders than they are defending our border through Customs and Border Patrol.
It is a definition of values.
My grandfather used to say, don't tell me about your values.
If you show me your checkbook, I can tell you about your values.
And in this case, America's checkbook seems to be valuing Ukraine more than Europe does.
And more than even we value the critically just devastating crisis on our southern border with Mexico.
And here, within this country, not for nothing, but there's like no baby formula anymore.
$40 billion for Ukraine when you have a baby formula collapse in the marketplace here in our country.
And astonishingly, it was a CNN Data Assembly report from the CEO of Data Assembly, Ben Reich.
And here's a quote directly from this report about the real problems with baby formula.
Quote.
This issue has been compounded by supply chain issues, product recalls, and historic inflation.
Unfortunately, given the unprecedented amount of volatility due to the category, we anticipate baby formula to continue to be one of the most affected products in the market.
So just take a listen how bad this is by the numbers.
Right now, 40% of the nation's formula is out of stock.
That's right now.
And you already heard it's going to get worse.
That number is actually 10 points higher.
Half of the stock is gone in South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Texas, and Tennessee.
And now, stores are starting to ration formula in America.
Rationing baby formula in the United States of America.
And how significant is that?
67% of babies are fed partially through formula.
And if that's not bad enough, we just got in some blisteringly bad crime statistics.
Nine cities all have record-breaking murder numbers for 2021. Portland, Milwaukee, St. Paul, L.A., Albuquerque, New York, Chicago, Columbus, Ohio.
Philadelphia.
By the way, the same Philadelphia that hosts the 76ers that unfortunately are on a little two-game run against my Miami Heat.
But the one thing all those cities have in common?
Run by Democrat mayors.
Run by Democrat city councils.
And what's so sad is that these Democrat policies are failing the people most in the places where they've been most reliant on Democrats to look out for them and to provide some degree of safety and comfort.
And it doesn't happen, and it's very bad, and it's particularly bad.
Historic murder numbers in these nine Democrat-run cities.
You know what else is murder?
Abortion is murder.
And this draft decision that we have now seen represents the overturn of Roe v.
Wade and something that Republicans and conservatives and just pro-life people have been praying for and hoping for and working towards for so long.
And you know what?
We even hear From California's golden boy, the governor there, Gavin Newsom, that we are winning.
Where is the Democratic Party?
Where's the party?
Why aren't we standing up more firmly, more resolutely?
Why aren't we calling this out?
This is a concerted, coordinated effort.
And yes, they're winning.
They are.
They have been.
Let's acknowledge that.
That is what focus gets you.
When you actually do the work to craft the bills, to create a culture of life, we can win.
And I think so often in Washington, D.C., the Republicans are willing to oversee managed decline, to just surrender less and less ground to the left over time.
But there was a movement that In the pro-life community that would not allow the politicians off the hook.
We got the right judges, they were confirmed, and now Roe v.
Wade is going to be overturned.
One of the principal goals of the pro-life movement.
And it's quite something that The Democrats don't seem to be taking the issue head-on in every circumstance.
I think Democrats know that running on an exclusively pro-abortion position is vastly out of touch with a lot of American people, and so they're trying to use this decision that overturns Roe that would allow states to have restrictions on abortions Well, they want to change the subject to almost anything else.
Take a listen.
This is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Face the Nation talking about her reaction to this decision.
Take a listen.
This is about respect for privacy.
What's next?
What's next?
Marriage equality.
What's next?
Oh, so it's about marriage equality.
It's about privacy.
It's about contraception.
You've heard a lot of Democrats saying, oh, contraception is potentially going to be unavailable for people as a result of this decision.
Look, there is no serious effort to limit people's access to basic contraception.
I support access to contraception.
That in no way rubs negative to the pro-life movement.
So we can stop the murder of unborn babies with the overturning of Roe, by accepting a culture of life, by advancing pro-adoption policies, which, by the way, is a huge part of this.
I am very proud of the work I did in the Florida legislature to work on policies, to cut the red tape for adoption, to create incentives for adoption, to do everything possible to create that positive pro-life culture.
But here's what you're going to hear from Democrats.
Oh, well, we could ban interracial marriage because of this decision.
We could ban gay marriage.
No one's talking about doing that.
This is different.
And in the decision itself, actually, Justice Alito...
It takes a moment to express that there's something about this abortion issue and the flawed science and the flawed law that underpins Roe that makes the court's robust reasoning specific to this.
So don't buy into the fear-mongering that this vastly changes the whole concept of reproduction in America.
No.
This is to overturn Roe.
Bad law to return this authority to elected people.
And then you know what?
If you don't like what abortion law is, you have somebody to go vote for or vote against.
And my suspicion is abortion law will be debated by elected officials.
The problem with Roe is you had nobody to go vote against if you didn't like it.
It was just a court seizing jurisdiction on unsound constitutional principles that relied on penumbras rather than actual text.
The freak out on the left has gotten so broad and away from the specific focus of abortion that we had Senator Gillibrand of New York questioning whether or not women were even still citizens in America.
Take a listen.
And I hope every human being in this country understands that when you take away a woman's right to make her decisions about her health and well-being, she is no longer a full citizen.
Look, reasonable people in America can disagree on the matter of abortion.
And by the way, one of the reasons why we had to overturn Roe is because science regarding viability has changed since the 1970s.
And as science changes and as our understanding of viability becomes more accurate, our laws ought to reflect that.
the political discussion we have in this country, our campaigns ought to be responsive to those changes in science and to enhanced viability.
So reasonable people can disagree about abortion, but that was not reasonable.
And frankly, what we see from a lot of the people that are, you see them in these viral videos, you see them everywhere, protesting for a pro-abortion, pro-murder position, it's just wild.
And I was observing, like, these people who are out there protesting because they, like, want their abortions or whatever.
And I'm thinking to myself, for a lot of them, that probably wouldn't be an issue because they strike me as very lonely people.
And not for everyone, but I think in some cases, like, people's personal loneliness has, like, manifested in their pro-abortion view.
So I released this tweet.
How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, underloved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats and no Bumble matches?
There was quite the reaction to that.
But I want you to know what I was talking about.
Again, I was asking the question, what percentage of this overall universe of people who are like so animated about this that they go out and protest are like deeply lonely people?
And frankly, I think a lot of millennials of every gender got sold a bill of goods that like, oh, well, the best way you're going to meet the best partner is to drive toward the highest degree of education.
And now people are wanting Joe Biden to go cancel their $50,000 in student debt that they got to get a master's degree in intersectional feminist studies.
and they find themselves out at some crazy protest, probably looking and sounding a lot like this.
I'm killing them.
I'm killing the baby!
Ladies, if you get pregnant, run on down to the abortion clinic and have that little bastard suck!
For 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has been an institution for the enslavement of women.
Without this basic right, women can't be free.
Without this basic right, women can't be free.
a portion I demand and without apology.
I have a right as an implicit.
I have a right to my choice.
Get out of here!
Thank you.
What we believe is that people who reasonably disagree about the matter of abortion ought to be able to access our halls of Congress, our state legislators, to be able to discuss and present evidence and look at when a heartbeat really starts, when a soul has been created.
Not to allow unelected judges to universally resolve this.
We still have a lot of work to do in the pro-life movement to ensure that from The moment of conception all the way through life that we are being pro-life, that we enhance foster care, that we do everything possible to assist mothers who have unwanted pregnancies with options that don't include abortion.
But that Was the sickness, the vile, just odious behavior of the people who would want to use intimidation and who would want to, I think, go to measures that were beyond normal politics to try to achieve the outcomes that they desire.
That is not the country we live in.
Those are not the people that I think represent where a vast majority of Americans are on this issue.
So we'll continue to cover Not only this decision and the ongoing jurisprudence from it, but the legislative action here in Congress and throughout the several states that I think is sure to follow.
But to be pro-life, we have to support the things in America that drive life and sustain life.
And if you've been paying attention, you see that American farmers are in a total state of crisis in this country.
It's not an accident and it's not a mystery.
It is a direct result of the policies of the Biden administration.
Just take some of the headlines that we've been seeing.
This is an Axios article.
Go ahead and put that on the screen.
Soaring fertilizer prices put global food security at risk.
Look at these spikes.
Here's what I could tell you and here's what you're about to hear.
Because we're about to have on the program Shannon Nixon from Nixon Farms from my congressional district.
But look at those spikes.
The margins on American farms cannot support that type of variability in what is a fixed cost.
And in a lot of places, you've got to fertilize the land.
Let's grab another article.
This is out of Michigan.
Fertilizer shortage could cause food shortages in Michigan.
It's like, not Africa, not Latin America, not Europe.
But in America, these fertilizer shortages could result in lack of food security.
And it's totally wild, and it's completely terrible.
You even had one of Joe Biden's top people, Samantha Power, talking about it recently.
Take a listen.
Fertilizer shortages are real now because Russia is a big exporter of fertilizer.
And even though fertilizer is not sanctioned, less fertilizer is coming out of Russia.
As a result, we're working with countries to think about natural solutions like manure and compost.
And this may hasten transitions that would have been in the interest of farmers to make eventually anyway.
Never let a crisis go to waste, but we really do need this financial support from the Congress to be able to meet emergency food needs so we don't see the cascading, deadly effects of Russia's war extend into Africa and beyond.
I can't believe she said the quiet out loud.
Don't let a crisis go to waste.
That actually was from the Obama administration and Rahm Emanuel and the crew there that was willing to accept pain for our fellow Americans so long as they were able to advance this kind of neoliberal agenda.
We had votes in the Congress regarding Belarus and Russia and sanctions, and those votes impacted the price of fertilizer.
I mean, that massive spike that I showed you on that line graph, that didn't come out of nowhere.
Even Samantha Power acknowledged that what's going on in Russia and Ukraine and Belarus and our reaction to it has a direct impact on these markets.
And here's my problem.
I wasn't willing to take those votes to act tough on Putin.
In a way that just abandoned farmers and consumers and low-income people without a plan.
And then in that clip you see Samantha Power say, well, where's Congress's plan?
Well, you know what?
It was the Biden administration that sought these sanctions with no plan.
For what was going to happen to our fellow Americans.
I wanted to go on the ground.
I wanted to get the perspective directly from a farmer in my district regarding how costs and how kind of radical woke environmentalism, how provocation with Russia is impacting his business in real time.
This is Shannon Nixon, Nixon Farms, Northwest Florida.
I had a great time as you could tell.
Out of the swamp of Washington, D.C. and out with the good folks of Northwest Florida.
Hope you enjoy that conversation.
So I'm here with Shannon Nixon at Nixon Farms in my district in Northwest Florida.
Tell us about your farm.
Typically we grow cotton, peanuts, soybeans.
We grow a little bit of wheat, a little bit of oats.
I farm about 700 acres.
I'm a very small farmer, but Even though small in scale, it still costs a lot of money to do what we do.
So you require to operate this farm petroleum-based fertilizer?
Absolutely.
And what have you seen regarding the cost of it?
I could give you an example.
We use a product called 28005. And back in January of 2021, I was quoted a price of $255 a ton.
January of this last year, it was $750 a ton.
I'm sure it's went up since then.
I love the way statisticians do inflation.
When I see that there's 5% and 10% inflation, I kind of chuckle.
Even our Baker math is better than that.
I hear from so many people who In the, you know, urban areas of our country and the suburban areas say, I go to the grocery store and filling up my basket used to be a couple hundred dollars.
Now it's, you know, four, five, six hundred dollars to fill up that basket sometimes.
They don't see that that's the diesel price that they're paying.
They don't see that that's the fertilizer price that they're paying.
But it all really starts here.
Let me read you three headlines just from today.
Mothers find barren shelves as they search for baby formulas.
That's in the Daily Mail.
Rising fuel prices could lead to fewer trucks on the road from the National Desk.
And then, we are nowhere near the bottom.
CNBC, top economist, says global markets are going to crater.
Are you optimistic right now as a farmer in Northwest Florida?
As a farmer in Northwest Florida, and I think this would be any farmer in the nation, there's a lot of uncertainty right now.
Costs are definitely a big obstacle for us to overcome because we always budget before we do our budgetings for the crop year.
And we had to go back several times because they just kept changing.
Fertilizer cost and not only that, availability.
Some things you can't even get if you have all the money in the world.
So it's a very definite supply issue.
We kept thinking that it was getting better, but I think some things are just getting exponentially worse.
There's a lot of political ramifications.
We can all sit here and point fingers, but we know that elections have consequences.
It's not so much the supply, it's the anticipation of the supply.
So talk to me about how that affects the business plan of a place like this.
When you've got fertilizer going from 255 a ton to 700 a ton, when you've got the Roundup going up by not just 5-10%, but by multiples, how do you absorb that?
Well, we don't know.
This is uncharted territory.
We don't know how we absorb it.
Is it going to mean that there are going to be fewer investments in irrigation, in more fields, or I can tell you most every farmer has cut back on fertilizer because the land is kind of like a savings account.
You know, if we've been doing good fertility progress, we have some stored nutrients.
But wait, by that measure, once you withdraw from the savings account, you're in real trouble.
We're going to be bankrupt from a fertility standpoint.
I think the problem is coming later on.
I think we're setting ourselves up for next year.
Are you saying that because of what we're doing to the land, not making that investment back in the land and fertilizer, that it's actually going to get worse before it gets better?
Unless we come up with some alternatives for nutrients.
Look at...
One thing I think that you guys...
Well, wait a second, because I got to go into specific votes that directly affect this.
Where I was on the outside of a majority of Congress, because a lot of these petroleum-based fertilizers We get from Russia.
We get from Belarus.
And the ones we don't get from there, that whole global market is impacted by them because they're big producers.
And I had to take a vote as your public servant on whether or not we were going to end all that.
And there was no plan on how we were going to replace it.
You just said, well, that depends on whether or not we have a plan.
There was no plan.
There was just Force people to pay more money.
And I took a lot of crap for that.
A lot of people said, oh, that must mean you love Putin.
Well, I don't love Putin, but I do worry about what we are looking at six months, 12 months, 18 months down the road if you're seeing two and three time increases on what it takes to operate a 700 acre farm.
Well, this is an interesting side note, and maybe this is not politically correct, but We do have a Russian connection to farming, whether we like it or not, because there's a lot of technology in farming.
All of these planters, all these tractors, they're running off the GPS. All of this equipment used to have mechanical road markers.
We don't have road markers.
We depend on that technology.
Most of the GPS satellites we use, a lot of them are Russian.
GLONASS. Have you ever heard of GLONASS? Yes, sir.
Those are owned by the Russians.
And I'm not a Putin fan.
I'm against Putin.
But I'll tell you this.
When we went to GLONASS, our accuracy went up exponentially.
So, you know, we are in a geopolitical situation because what if Putin decides to scramble the signal on those?
What are we going to do?
Do we have anybody in Washington that can leverage themselves and say, hey, you know, We need to get these satellites back going.
So our food supply is not just in jeopardy from one venue.
It has multiple venues.
Well, let me ask you a question, Congressman.
What do you think can be done to help change this?
Because I think people need a little bit of good news.
I think people need hope.
I think that a lot of farmers feel very desperate because I talked to some of my colleagues and they say, you know, if a certain If a piece of equipment breaks down, you're not going to fix it this year.
And that's true.
We've never been in this situation before.
Is there a way?
Is there something that we can do?
Because I think people feel pretty helpless.
We've got to stop printing money.
We have printed so much money over the last few years.
We've taken a complex, sophisticated food supply system and we've just sort of run it awash.
And we don't make enough of the stuff that we need here, which means that when we have global supply chain issues, you know, Xinjiang province gets a cold and we get pneumonia in this country.
And my sense is the Obama years were depressing.
We had no real growth in our economy.
And then very quickly, we saw how energetic leadership could get us to where we were producing stuff.
We were making stuff.
We went from being the energy importer to being the world's greatest energy exporter on a lot of fronts.
And it didn't take like passing 27 new laws and you know a whole bunch.
It was almost like willing us to success and achievement and I think we can get it again.
And if there's any benefit to the pain that so many Americans are feeling right now, I think they're actually starting to connect the dots more.
That if you attack ag, you're going to feel that when you go to the grocery store.
If you embrace the most radical forms of environmentalism, you're not going to be able to get around anymore and you're going to see that 599 gas or worse.
You go and create conflict with other countries and you If you visit the pain of what's going on in Russia and Ukraine on Americans and on the global fertilizer market, you're not going to do that without consequence.
And so part of what I try to do truly is just let people know what's going on.
And I think the more people connect the dots, I think the more sophisticated we'll become in our decision making.
There's a lot of things in place that I see that's not on anybody's radar.
That could really work against us in this country.
So I do applaud you.
And I think you've got probably the hardest job that anybody's ever had because you're going to have to be the one that stands up there and takes the brunt.
You're going to have to tell these people that, hey, we got a problem.
Well, if you'll plant the peanuts, I'll go pull the weeds up in the swamp where I work.
How about that?
Oh, I thought you was going to come help me pull some weeds.
All right, man.
Well, thank you.
I really appreciate your shit.
We're all in this together.
Amen to that.
That's Shannon Nixon from Nixon Farms in Baker, Florida.
Very much enjoyed doing that, and I think there's some real truths that we need to reflect on and that we need to certainly amplify here in Washington, D.C. Thanks so much for joining me.
We're going to try to have a report available for you tomorrow regarding some of the work that's going on in the committees in the Congress.
Roll the credits.
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