Episode 42 LIVE: Ultra MAGA – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
|
Time
Text
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 keep hurting him.
If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!
You are in the right place!
This is the movement for you!
You ever watch this guy on television?
It's like a machine.
Matt Gaetz.
I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.
Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.
They aren't really coming for me.
They're coming for you.
I'm just in the way.
Welcome back to Firebrand.
We're broadcasting live from our Capitol Hill office here in Washington, D.C. There is a lot going on in the Congress today.
I'm gonna have you hot clips from the House Armed Services Committee, floor action, the big news, the $40 billion that the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved Late last evening to send to Ukraine, there were 57 who voted no.
Think about that.
Out of 435 members of the House, there were only 57 who voted against this at a time when, as we covered extensively on the podcast yesterday, Americans can't get baby formula in some places.
But we got $40 billion to send to Ukraine.
And we hear the typical members of the Uniparty Republicans and Democrats making the case that more than your job, more than this inflation, what you ought to care about is the great battle of the titans to decide the history of the world is what's going on in Ukraine.
Here's Senator Lindsey Graham.
There is no off-ramp in this war.
Somebody's gonna win and somebody's gonna lose.
And I hope and pray and do everything in my power to make sure Ukraine wins No off-ramp?
That's what we have to share with the American people?
Look, there's always an off-ramp.
And we keep acting like Russia is not a country with enough nuclear warheads to blow up the entire planet Earth multiple times over.
Incredibly irresponsible.
And if there's no off-ramp, then we are already in this thing.
You got dog walked into this war without even really knowing about it.
And now they're admitting it.
Here's Democrat Congressman Seth Moulton making principally the same argument as Lindsey Graham.
If they wrap this in the Senate with a Ukraine funding and a COVID funding, you guys okay with that, Congressman Moulton?
Look, I'm going to support it because it's the right thing to do for Ukraine.
I mean, obviously, there's a lot of politics involved and there will be domestic debates here at home about other policies and whatnot.
But at the end of the day, we've got to realize we're at war.
And we're not just at war to support the Ukrainians.
We're fundamentally at war, although it's somewhat through a proxy, with Russia.
And it's important that we win.
We are at war with Russia and there is no off ramp.
That is what the regime is telling you.
And I think that's crazy and irresponsible and a terrible thing to do while the American people are essentially left in the dark.
Didn't Joe Biden promise us that he was going to be like the presidency that returned everything to this like copacetic state of normal and we wouldn't have to get agitated anymore?
Bring back the mean tweets and spare me the war with Russia that we are in, that we are unable to get out of.
I've just stepped off the floor of the Congress.
I delivered my remarks.
They're already everywhere.
Christina Wong's Breitbart covering them.
We see these remarks getting shared by the Columbia Bugle, but we want it here for the Firebrand audience.
My response to Lindsey Graham and Seth Moulton about this war with Russia.
Take a listen.
Madam Speaker, I rise to warn of a dangerous bipartisan consensus that is walking us into war with Russia.
In the days following Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, Senator Rob Portman said, I haven't seen this kind of unity since 9-11.
It's a nice statement, but what does it really mean?
Unity always seems to come before the worst decisions we make.
Our drive to unity often overruns our reason and discernment.
The post 9-11 consensus gave us the Iraq War, the Patriot Act.
The COVID lockdowns and mandates came from unity bundled by fear.
Defund the police took off because dissent wasn't allowed.
You were shouted down as a racist.
Just as now, questioning our actions in Ukraine makes you a traitor.
Do we have amnesia in this house?
Is memory loss a consequence of the gerontocracy of Congress?
Just a year ago, we lost a war against goat herders waving rifles.
Now we're rushing to fight a nation that possesses 6,000 nuclear warheads?
Representatives now recklessly assert that we are at war.
Congressman Moulton said last week, quote, we're not just at war to support the Ukrainians, we're fundamentally at war, although somewhat through a proxy, with Russia.
The clandestine services are supposed to be the quiet professionals.
Seems now they can't stop bragging to news outlets about how America helped Ukraine assassinate Russian generals and sink Russia's flagship.
How exactly is this supposed to end?
It's as if the administration is probing Putin's nuclear red line.
A game of chicken between nuclear powers is insane, and this from Joe Biden, who campaigned to be America's calming sedative.
From Russia, I worry about nuclear weapons, not broken tanks.
Last night, this House approved $40 billion for Ukraine as American Families Go Without Baby formula.
To put that in context, Biden's budget calls for $15.3 billion for Customs and Border Patrol.
So apparently Ukraine is more than twice as important as our homeland.
Two weeks ago, we voted on the Ukraine Lend Lease Act.
I was one of just 10 representatives to vote no.
And here was the response from MSNBC. GOP's Putin wing balks at supplying weapons to Ukraine.
So you're a supporter of Putin if you think it's a bad idea to give the White House blanket permission to send, quote, any weapon, weapon system, munition, aircraft, vessel, boat, or other implement of war to Ukraine while surrendering our rights to repayment.
We are sending so many weapons to Ukraine that we're depleting our own stockpiles.
And we aren't just sending bullets and rifles.
Now we're sending howitzers that can fire up to 15 miles.
This means weapons we supply and train Ukrainians to use could potentially strike Russian territory.
And these weapons aren't just ending up in the hands of the Ukrainian military, either.
One official said weapons, quote, drop it to a big black hole.
Many of these are ending up in the hands of the Azov Battalion.
40 House Democrats called them a neo-Nazi foreign terrorist organization just three years ago.
Now that they're killing Russians, are these avowed ethno-nationalists apparently not so bad?
Democrats go on a daily snipe hunt for white supremacy here in America, and yet they're fine giving rockets to actual white supremacists in Ukraine.
Taking the position that we arm anyone to the teeth who will shoot at Russians has actually not always worked for America.
It's javelins to neo-Nazis today.
Stinger missiles to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan yesterday.
In Syria, another conflict that Washington had consensus on, we supplied jihadist terrorists in their fight against Assad.
Assad, like Putin, is an evil man, but does that mean the American taxpayer must arm his enemies without any further inquiry?
I don't think so.
And I would imagine most Americans don't think so.
But that's why we never have real debate on these issues.
The swamp would rather talk about saving democracy than our actual dangerous reality.
And if we are at war, like Congressman Moulton says, then why not vote on an authorization to use military force?
Or are we just going to operate in Ukraine like we have in Yemen and throughout the world?
Forever undeclared wars.
I suspect many in this body won't want a vote or a debate because regime change in Russia is their actual objective, not defending Ukraine.
And to achieve this goal, they're willing to send billions to Kyiv that will line the pockets of corrupt officials just like we did in Afghanistan.
We are sleepwalking into a war, and the American people are left in the dark.
We're back live here in my house office building on Wednesday, and the comments section fired up.
Russ has been putting out a manuscript in the comments section on Facebook.
I can't read it all, Russ, because there's a whole lot there, but I do appreciate your support for our military members, their families, our first responders.
Got a lot to say about the woke corporations.
And the 2000 Mules documentary.
We are going to have so much coverage coming up about election integrity and the way that geotracking and technology tools are actually showing you how just thorough the effort to steal the 2020 election was.
We are talking about Ukraine, but I gotta say, Ukraine is not the only country that is the subject of a series of regime lies to the American people.
This government, our government, is lying to you about Saudi Arabia.
Since September 11, 2001, there's been widespread speculation that Saudi Arabia had some involvement in planning, organizing, financing the terrorist attacks in New York City.
We all know they were part of the execution.
15 of the 19 hijackers were of Saudi nationality.
The government of Saudi Arabia has staunchly claimed to be innocent, unattached, and otherwise rather offended at all the activity on 9-11.
The truth cannot hide forever.
On September 3, 2021, Joe Biden issued an executive order directing declassification review of documents related to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, which I supported and that we talked about on Firebrand.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia deserves intense focus on this exact front.
President Joe Biden recently ordered the declassification of documents evidencing Saudi Arabia's 9-11 connections.
Though Biden did this under political pressure from 9-11 families who were going to exclude him from 9-11 ceremonies, we enthusiastically endorse this declassification.
Now, we're going to learn a lot.
We sure did learn a lot.
Five days after this executive order was administered, the Saudi Arabian embassy released a, quote, statement on the release of classified 9-11 documents, including the proclamation that, and I'm quoting directly here from the Saudis, no evidence has ever emerged to indicate that the Saudi government or its officials had previous knowledge no evidence has ever emerged to indicate that the Saudi government or its officials had previous knowledge of the terrorist attack or were in any Any allegation that Saudi Arabia is complicit in the September 11 attacks is categorically false.
That's right.
That's what the Saudi Arabian Embassy said in an official statement in response to this decision regarding the classification of the 9-11 documents.
Sounds a little defensive.
Thou doth protest a bit much.
Two weeks later, I was reporting something quite different on our eighth episode of Firebrand.
It's called Criminal Consulates.
It's a great episode.
Check out this clip from that episode.
Saudi Arabia's Los Angeles Consulate was directly involved in assisting two 9-11 hijackers.
Housing, bank accounts, logistics, their American experience, coordinated and curated by Saudi government officials.
So on May 5th, Insider published this article titled Declassified FBI Memo Confirms Direct Connection Between the Saudi Government and 9-11.
This was spawned not by anything that the United States government released, but by newly released evidence from British intelligence, which further suggests that Omar al-Bayomi, who met two of the 9-11 hijackers and an imam with al-Qaeda ties before 9-11, who met two of the 9-11 hijackers and an imam with al-Qaeda ties before 9-11, that al-Bayomi was The connection is real.
It is obvious.
There is a money trail.
There's certainly evidence that the Saudi government, al-Qaeda, and the plane hijackers were connected in the planning, preparation, and execution.
But the money factor makes it clear.
If the U.S. intelligence agencies continue to open the seals of the existing evidence, the American public and the rest of the world will get answers.
This is where Omar al-Bayomi resurfaces.
Here's a Bayomi recap from Episode 8 of Firebrand.
Take a listen.
As you can see on this chart, Omar al-Bayomi and Fahad al-Tumari are top dogs in this uncovered, Saudi Arabia-supported, Los Angeles-based terror network.
Let's start with al-Bayoumi.
Omar al-Bayoumi is a Saudi intelligence agent.
I'm sure he's bonesaw trained.
Al-Bayoumi was the advance team for two of the 9-11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mindhar.
They had nowhere to live, fresh from the desert, probably still had sand in between the pages of their Quran, and Al-Bayomi secured their housing.
After meeting both of the terrorists at the Mediterranean Grill in 2000, Al-Bayomi finds them an apartment in San Diego.
He even signed financial documents to secure that apartment and bank accounts.
On the record, Biomi declares this a chance encounter.
Now, I've had a lot of chance encounters in my life, and some of those I certainly regret.
But chance encounters typically don't start with kebabs and hummus and end with opening bank accounts together or signing financial guarantees to lock in rent agreements.
I wouldn't even co-sign a rent agreement for most of my friends, much less a chance encounter at a terrorist hangout.
We are supposed to believe that the Saudi government officials who opened bank accounts with two terrorists and secured housing for terrorists were somehow not involved when those very jihadists flew planes into buildings.
So it was obvious to me then, and it is even more evidenced now after the Brits released this information.
But the FBI, they had memos on Al Biomi and his involvement in 9-11.
They've existed for years.
But it was a recent reveal of documents by the British government, not by their own volition, but as a consequence of litigation from the 9-11 victims' families.
It was a civil suit, and it confirmed our beliefs.
In a once obtained document from Albiomi, British investigators discovered a drawing of a plane descending toward a target, including an equation that an FBI source said was used to calculate, quote, the height of an aircraft necessary to see a target.
So the Insider article also reports that the evidence declassified by the British government also includes videos showing Bayoumi filming himself and his circle during his time in San Diego.
One of them shows him embracing a local imam who at the time had ties to al-Qaeda.
Like al-Bayoumi, al-Waqi was used by the hijackers.
This was the imam.
He was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen.
So this guy's hugging the people that are so bad, we're drone striking them in Yemen.
He's providing the rent and materiel and logistical assistance to the hijackers.
And now, because of what we learned on May 5th, we know he was getting paid by the Saudis.
And we know that their denial was full of it.
A second video shows Khalid al-Mindhar, one of the two San Diego hijackers, in the kitchen of the apartment that Bayomi helped him rent.
At one point you can even see those doubting Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9-11 coming to the conclusion here that there is clearly significant activity at play.
So how many more diagrams?
Hugs with imams that are involved in terrorism?
How many rent agreements?
How much logistical support?
How much video evidence do we need?
Omar al-Bayomi has now returned to Saudi Arabia, of course.
But the deposition he gave in the civil suit involving the families of 9-11 victims remains under seal.
And it is time to release all the al-Bayomi files.
And you know what?
It's time for the Saudi government to present this guy for questioning to our victims' families so that we can get to the bottom of it.
And if they won't do that, what kind of friend are they?
I've called for the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles to be closed and now as a result of Information that 9-11 victim families got in litigation, not in our country, but in the UK, we know that al-Bayomi was getting paid by Saudi intelligence.
And we know why.
It was 9-11.
It was horrible.
And look, if the current leaders in Saudi Arabia want to move past this, if we're supposed to believe that MBS is some new type of enlightened leader because he lets women drive...
Then he should prove it.
He should expose the elements of the Saudi government, of the royal family who were involved in this, and he should help us bring them to justice.
But if MBS is going to cover for these guys, if he's going to protect al-Bayomi, if his government entities are going to release these statements just repeating their denials, then it really calls into question what kind of friends they are.
Now, we're still sending them All kind of military equipment.
We especially send the Saudis some of the most elite fighter jets in the world.
And part of them buying those jets isn't just buying the steel.
They buy the training.
They buy the work that is done to develop the capabilities and skills of the various pilots, technology, network communication, and the like.
And oftentimes that training is It occurs in our country.
Some of it occurs in my district in Pensacola.
And on December 6th, 2019, a Saudi flight student opened fire on my constituents, killing three sailors, injuring many others, summoning as a response just tremendous effort and patriotism and bravery from uniformed military and from our local law enforcement.
Now we see that some folks are trying to determine the extent of Saudi's involvement in that activity.
Was it recklessness?
Was it negligence?
Something worse?
Not recognizing radicalization?
So just today, we had a hearing with the Secretary of the Navy And it's my hope and it's my belief that the Navy is going to do more than they have done for the benefit of our sailors and our brave law enforcement.
Take a listen to that exchange.
Admiral Gilday, I come from Pensacola, a proud Navy town.
And our community was rocked December of 2019 when a Saudi student opened fire, killed three sailors, injured others, injured members of our law enforcement.
And I've been to many briefings since then.
In public and in private, and the picture emerges that definitely the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was not doing enough to send only their best people, as one might say.
They were not doing enough to monitor potential radicalization.
And frankly, we weren't doing enough to ensure that that was happening.
What assurance can you give my constituents in Pensacola that we have improved?
So sir, since that incident, under then Secretary of Defense Esper, significant changes were made in the screening process for all foreign students from any military, including our NATO allies, that come to the United States to train with us.
And so I met as recently as yesterday with a senior leader from a partner nation who Who expressed concern about the amount of time it's taking to get his sailors into our country to train.
And I explained to him how important it was that we work together to go through this process very deliberately and methodically so that we don't make any mistakes.
And he accepted that.
But we have leveraging the intelligence community and the FBI made significant changes.
I really appreciate that.
And as much as we want to host these missions for the benefit of global security, we have to put the safety of our sailors, of our service members first.
And, Admiral Gilday, there was, in 2019, base-specific guidance for these Saudi students, wasn't there?
There was, yes, sir.
And there also were specific rules for the installation regarding these students that were there, right?
Yes, sir.
And there were arrival packets for each of the Saudi students who arrived with their specific information such that we knew it, right?
Yes, sir.
They were assigned liaison officers with each of those students.
They were assigned in-boarding processes for each of those students.
Yes, sir.
And on January 13, 2020, there was a memorandum issued by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence for continuous review for international military students, right?
Yes, sir.
And there have been written policies and procedures off that memo subsequently, right?
Yes, sir.
There have been many changes.
And we've specifically required changes from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, right?
We have.
All these things are probably not that difficult to find, right?
Would you be willing to provide those things to my office that I've just asked for?
Yes, sir.
We'll provide a detailed briefing for you.
That is incredibly helpful and comforting.
I know it's a work in process.
I know the social media tools and the technologies change.
My one concern is that the first responders who were running in the direction of the bullets to save our sellers, they are in litigation now with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
And I posit no perspective on how Course will rule on those things.
I'm certainly not asking you to do that.
But they've made a FOIA request of the Navy for the things that I've just asked you to provide and that you said would not be all that difficult to put our hands on.
And that FOIA request has been pending since March 23rd.
And the correspondence from the Navy back sort of says, well, gosh, this is voluminous.
There may be other people who block our access to it.
And I just think that the Navy ought to stand up for our sailors and their family members.
I want your assurance that the Navy will do everything possible to provide the documentation and evidence, because the way this has to work in court is that there's this JASTA law where there have to be specific elements pled and there has to be evidence for those elements to unlock discovery.
And some of these documents that these litigants are asking To get from the Navy are necessary to sink jurisdiction in that matter.
So again, I won't ask you to opine on the status of litigation or the law, but just these things that seem pretty basic, I'm very grateful for your focus on it and for your willingness to facilitate the delivery of those records.
Yes, sir.
We'll find out what constraints might be in the way here that are causing...
I'm sorry, who might be in the way?
We will take a look at what constraints may be inhibiting the release of those documents under that FOIA request.
But I owe you a more detailed answer in terms of the...
I'm just used to this with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where they seem to have a lot of people sympathetic to their cause, wandering around the Justice Department and wandering around elsewhere.
I take your sincerity here that you're going to do everything possible to make sure that we resolve this and that we get better going forward.
You notice how the tune changed when I mentioned that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was being sued.
When I started by just asking like the basic questions, do you have these records that these people that showed up on our military bases have packets that you could produce?
The answer was yes, we can get those.
We'll provide them to you.
And then when I explained that the reasoning is that we have Americans who are seeking redress, you automatically saw Admiral Gilday become far more reserved and say, well, I've got to take a look at what might be getting in the way.
And it really brings us back to the point with Albiomi and 9-11.
I mean, the American system ought to be better at generating the truth and the records and the evidence than the British system when it comes to the stuff happening in the United States of America, like 9-11, like my constituents getting shot by this terrorist who was working for the government of Saudi Arabia when he committed these murders in northwest Florida.
So I'm going to stay on this.
I'm going to stay on the Navy.
The Navy needs to be on the side of America's sailors.
And our law enforcement, they do not need to be acting as some proxy for Saudi Arabia, and they don't need to be out there whitewashing the activities of Saudi Arabia or standing in the way of evidence.
Too many entities within our government are already standing in the way of the 9-11 evidence, and I am not going to allow this to happen to my constituents in Pensacola, Florida.
It will not happen.
We're getting to the bottom of it, and I will report further on Firebrand if necessary.
We do see now a real confluence of events around the strategy of Democrats in the Congress and politically.
You saw the Ministry of Truth set up by this Nina Jankiewicz lady under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security.
We've covered that a lot on Firebrand.
The January 6th committee is about to hold their hearings.
You see The Supreme Court threatened.
Now they're talking about packing the court again.
They're outside people's homes, rallying up their armies, their call to arms, as some might say.
I think that was Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago.
But there has always been, I think, an effort to take their disdain for Donald Trump and to turn that on the rest of us.
A political movement that they fear.
And we saw direct evidence of this from the President of the United States, Joe Biden.
Take a listen.
Senator Rick Scott of Florida, United States Senator, who's leading the Republican National Senatorial Campaign Committee, released what he calls the ultra MAGA agenda.
It's a MAGA agenda, all right.
Let me tell you about this ultra MAGA agenda.
It's extreme, as most MAGA things are.
I don't want to hear Republicans talk about deficits and their ultra MAGA agenda.
So initially it was an impeachment of Trump, but now it's ultra MAGA. It's all of MAGA. By the way, I've looked at Senator Scott's plan, and I think it deserves debate, discussion.
Of course, a lot of plans can be changed over time, but I'm grateful that Rick Scott, my senator, at least had the guts to put out an agenda and a plan.
Too often, Mitch McConnell and other Republicans are just willing to be defined by what the Democrats say or do, and I think putting out an aggressive, bold plan, as Rick Scott did, is a sign of leadership, and it's something that more Republicans ought to be willing to do.
That way the American people can bring into technicolor what we believe and how it will help them.
What the Democrats are trying to bring into technicolor is fear.
And you saw Joe Biden right there in that clip trying to stoke that fear.
And what they believe is the great theater, is the great forum, is the great platform to really bring all this fear together and use it in the midterm elections, it's the January 6th committee.
Now, a lot of folks say, ah, well, you know, the Democrats, they're screwed on this January 6th committee.
And the American people have moved on.
The American people are looking at grocery bills, gas prices, inflation, limited economic opportunities, crushing effects of the slowing growth that we've seen under President Biden.
But here's what I'll tell you.
They get better at this every time and Republicans might not want to hear that like I remember being in grade school and like the North Korean missile program was always the butt of every joke it was like synonymous with failure if you're talking about the North Korean missile program you were talking about something that wouldn't work that was laughably bad and now you should hear some of the briefings we get about that program and its capabilities and the real concern that Americans ought to have over it and the reason is They
tried and tried and failed and failed, and they got better.
Democrats have done the same when it comes to this impeachment strategy.
The Russia hoax was a nightmare for them.
The Mueller hearing was a disaster.
We dispositively won that.
Jim Jordan, myself, Ron DeSantis, Mark Meadows, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert.
We won.
They lost.
And they got like a little bit better on the Ukraine impeachment, right?
Well, then they got actually to an impeachment, rather than it fizzling out as a consequence of no evidence.
And the reason is because their tactics changed, right?
In the Ukraine impeachment, you didn't see the Jerry Nadler strategy of, the moment we get something, we're going to hold a hearing and put it out.
That just became like a kaleidoscope of information that the American people never really saw drawn into a consistent frame or focus.
But on Ukraine, Adam Schiff...
Evolved the strategy.
He changed the tactics.
He brought Democrats down into the bunker.
And then they had secret depositions and selective leaks to try to frame up what didn't really exist.
Now, President Trump blew a hole through that when he released the transcript, which they never thought he would do.
And I would like to say my Republicans and I went down and we jail broke the truth out of that skiff by storming the skiff when they were engaged in improper activity down there.
That forced them to the surface.
But they still didn't get a conviction, weren't successful.
Then January 6th comes around.
They build a multimedia plan.
They get better storytellers.
They get better venues.
And in the January 6th impeachment of President Trump, you see they actually not only impeached him in the House, but they actually got Republicans, you know, more than just one or two, to vote for that impeachment in the United States Senate.
So each time a little better.
And now what they're doing is not an impeachment of Trump, but the January 6th committee is an impeachment of MAGA. It's an impeachment of America first.
And Joe Biden gaslights it himself right there.
And what they're really looking forward to is that now they have a system where they don't have to tussle with me and with Jim Jordan.
And you can hear him confessing it on MSNBC News.
This is Jason Johnson's program on MSNBC, and he's interviewing one of these liberal commentators that are on.
Take a listen.
One of the things that's going to be very unique about these proceedings, that's going to be varied, even from the Mueller proceedings, different from impeachment, there's not going to be the Jim Jordans, the Matt Gaetzes, the Louie Gohmerts, the Steve Kings, the clown show.
They're not a part of this hearing.
Because Kevin McCarthy made the ingenious decision not to put anybody forward that could actually defend the president.
So this hearing, these proceedings, it's going to be wall-to-wall message discipline.
It's going to be wall-to-wall controlled by people who believe in the purpose of this committee.
There's not going to be any filibustering of witnesses.
There's not going to be any random redirects talking about things that have nothing to do with the topic, like child pornography.
It's not going to be a repeat of what we saw during the confirmation hearings.
It's going to be straightforward.
It's going to be direct.
It's going to be on message.
And Republicans will have no way to disrupt it.
And I believe that as Donald Trump is watching, that he's going to lose his mind wondering, why isn't anybody out there defending me?
It was a huge tactical mistake by Kevin McCarthy.
I don't think it'll just be President Trump wondering why there aren't Republicans on that committee.
I think it'll be a lot of our fellow Americans who are saying, wait a second, shouldn't you see a Mike Johnson, a Jim Jordan, a Matt Gaetz on that committee providing, I think, appropriate context?
But you heard it there.
You heard the absolute signal.
Wall-to-wall control.
That is what they want.
Wall-to-wall control because they cannot win a fair and honest debate.
Other things going on in the Congress right now, if you just heard those bells, that's a signal that it's time to vote, so I'll be heading down to the floor in just a moment.
But late last night, as part of the Ukraine deal, the House of Representatives passed a resolution changing House rules so that staff could unionize, congressional staff could unionize.
And I want you to know, I'm totally against that.
And it's not because I don't think unions do good things for some people, but this is not a business.
This is government, okay?
We have a certain number of dollars that we lay out for the provision of our services to our constituents, like this very service of a video report in real time about what's going on.
And I would not have been able to build this podcast for you if we had unionized rules because I had to bring in special people with special talents who maybe didn't build up an extended resume of working their way up from the lowest level of a congressional staff.
They had done other things in the private sector or even people in Congress who get promoted quickly because they are very good at their job.
You see, that doesn't happen in a world in which you have to honor seniority above all else, which is typically what's enforced by unions.
So I'm against it.
I think that if it becomes required in any way or if there's any sort of effort to coerce union membership, then that would be very unfortunate.
That would be a bad thing for our constituents.
That would be a bad thing for the country.
So I will continue to follow it.
I'll continue to give you updates.
Another story I want to make sure that folks check out.
This is from...
Breck Dunn at Fox Business, GOP primary voters want Congress to crack down on big tech survey fines.
So, great to see that Republican voters are really catching up to this.
We still have far too many Republicans in Congress who are willing to do the bidding of big tech.
If you're interested in the specific proposals or the specific timelines, go back and check out our big tech episode.
It was live with Ken Buck.
And you'll really get a sense of what the game plan is and how we go at this thing.
And frankly, it's going to be a bipartisan effort.
And I'm okay with that because big tech is kind of like the Death Star and we have to shoot everything we can at it in order to have a chance for free speech to prevail.
Thanks so much for joining us here on Firebrand.
Make sure you are subscribed with notifications turned on.