May 18, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
40:25
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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 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. | |
| Welcome to Firebrand Live. | |
| We are simulcast streaming out of my congressional office in Washington D.C. on Capitol Hill. | |
| We're going to get to the voting problems and the counting problems in Pennsylvania. | |
| We're going to delve into the war that's been reignited in Somalia without Congress ever having voted on it. | |
| The latest on January 6th and the DOJ and their collusion together to try to criminalize and go after a political movement they fear and even more information on the Biden administration's war on farmers. | |
| But first, there were some sharp words last night among some Republicans regarding the need for an all-night voting session regarding the matters before our legislative body. | |
| So, in fact, it's not just Pennsylvania. | |
| Congress, too, has a voting problem. | |
| Let me explain. | |
| I bet you didn't know that millions, billions, sometimes trillions of dollars are spent, your money, without your representatives having to cast a vote either in favor or in opposition to the measure or the spending. | |
| It's corrupt and it's on purpose. | |
| They're called suspension bills. | |
| Sometimes they require suspension of logic and reason. | |
| Leadership from both the majority and the minority negotiate a special portion of the legislative agenda each and every week where both agree not to call for a recorded vote. | |
| Collusion! | |
| Political collusion! | |
| The result is much more power for leadership. | |
| They get to act as the gatekeepers and way more power for the lobbyists who fund them. | |
| Well, a rambunctious bunch from the House Freedom Caucus opposes this clandestine method of legislating. | |
| So they sit on the floor, day and night, and they demand recorded votes. | |
| The result of those demands this week has been marathon voting sessions. | |
| Fine by me. | |
| I'm a bit of a night owl anyway. | |
| But the establishment, the leadership of both parties, hates having to cast votes on matters that they had negotiated under suspension. | |
| Some have even threatened retaliation against the Freedom Caucus. | |
| Let me repeat that. | |
| Some Republicans have threatened to retaliate against members of the Freedom Caucus for demanding recorded votes. | |
| And again, we're in the minority. | |
| It's not like we have an unlimited number of tools. | |
| Demanding a recorded vote is one of the few things we can do to hold this corrupt administration and the Pelosi Democrats accountable. | |
| Now, moments ago, I spoke with former Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Biggs of Arizona and Texas Congressman Chip Roy about the fight brewing between the Freedom Caucus and the leadership on the matter of suspension voting and recorded votes. | |
| Take a listen. | |
| I'm here with Congressman Chip Roy of Texas, Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona. | |
| They've been calling for recorded votes on the floor of the House of Representatives. | |
| Chip, explain why. | |
| Well, first of all, I think the American people understand it's our job, right? | |
| The baseline for what we do here as representatives of the people should be to vote. | |
| There can be exceptions to that. | |
| We can agree as a body to voice vote something, unanimous consent something, but it ought to be when there's general agreement, it ought to be when we're in the chamber, and we ought to have the time to vote, I mean, to review bills, look at them, have a debate over it before we're voting, and that's not the way this process works. | |
| It is designed by a cadre of leadership to jam bills through in order to Curry favors and to have power in this town instead of us being able to represent the people. | |
| And Andy, why do you think it's important for people to actually record a vote rather than simply allowing voice votes to be the imprimatur of approval of the body? | |
| You have to let the people know who you represent, how you're voting. | |
| You cannot just come up here and mask what you're doing behind This mob mentality of voice votes. | |
| And that's really what happens. | |
| So the people need to know what you're doing. | |
| And if you're actually recording your vote, guess what else happens? | |
| Members actually read the bills and they study them. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And I can't tell you, I know all of you have experienced this. | |
| People come and say, hey, what's this bill about? | |
| Because they haven't read it. | |
| And if they can get by with a voice vote and hiding, then it doesn't matter. | |
| There's no culpability there. | |
| No responsibility. | |
| The leadership of both parties has said to us, these aren't controversial matters. | |
| This is the naming of a post office. | |
| This is some ceremonial matter. | |
| But Chip, you were informing a number of members last evening on the floor of very substantive things that conservatives might reasonably have objections to. | |
| Any examples of that for folks? | |
| Yeah, I mean, first of all, just real quick, just the people know how this works. | |
| We go home to our districts on a Friday, some email goes out, and we're coming back in for votes on Monday. | |
| And if we show up for a vote that night at 6 o'clock, they've already voice voted a bunch of stuff on the floor of the House of Representatives with nobody in the chamber but like three people. | |
| So that's what the American people need to understand what we're actually talking about. | |
| All we're doing is having one of us volunteer to come in on a Monday, represent the rest of us to, you know, enforce our rights, and then say, hey guys, we're just demanding the yays and nays. | |
| Now, the kind of bills we're talking about, they say, oh, they're non-controversial bills. | |
| Well, there was one that was a naming of a post office, for example, in which an individual judge had been a part of a ruling of banning prayer in schools. | |
| Now, we have a debate about those things, but we wanted to say, hold on a second, should we be naming a federal courthouse after a judge that did something so directly out of line with the people? | |
| Or how about the literally, I think, $300 million worth of items that I know would have been attributed to our friend Thomas Massey, for example, If you compare how he voted actually voting versus voice votes, $300 million worth of stuff. | |
| There were a number of bills that had diversity, equity, inclusion. | |
| There was a, I think it was a veterans contraception bill, which, look, I'm pro-contraception, but it had some funding in there that was controversial. | |
| We ended up, that got passed by voice vote last Congress. | |
| This Congress, we ended up stopping it, and then they had to do a rule on it, which means you actually have to debate it on the floor. | |
| Debate it. | |
| And we should. | |
| You know, I noticed that it wasn't just the Democrats that were very upset about this. | |
| There were a number of Republicans who really objected to having recorded votes on the floor. | |
| What do you think motivates Republicans to not want to cast a yay or a nay on some of these matters? | |
| And I think you're right, Chip. | |
| I think the American people would be shocked to know that $300 million was to be spent without members of Congress actually ascribing their name to that approval of dollars. | |
| But what's been the reaction? | |
| Let me add one thing to that and then you answer. | |
| It was billions in the last Congress because of the CARES Act and so forth. | |
| I mean, I'm talking billions, right? | |
| I mean, Thomas Massey famously objected to almost $2 trillion that they forced through on a voice vote without us being in the chamber. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So... | |
| So when we consider why do they not want a recorded vote, it's hard to get through everything. | |
| But one of the guys that was in my face last night, a Republican, was telling me he's got better things to do than be on the floor and voting. | |
| And I said, well, like what? | |
| He said, well, you know, I can't do my social media and I can't do media hits. | |
| And I said, well, shoot, you're on the floor. | |
| You can do it. | |
| You got your phone. | |
| You can do social media here. | |
| I think it boils down to this. | |
| There's either lassitude, they're lazy, they don't want accountability. | |
| Maybe there's a more malevolent intention. | |
| You know, maybe leadership wants to control a little bit, but I can tell you what. | |
| They do hide these bills. | |
| I mean, one of the bills that actually changed our banking system was in a voice-voted bill. | |
| I mean, so there's a whole series of this that goes on. | |
| I just don't trust them. | |
| All three of us... | |
| Did you serve in state legislature? | |
| I did not. | |
| Okay, so Matt and I did. | |
| Were you ever able to hide just behind a voice vote? | |
| It was always... | |
| We called it the Board of Truth, is what we called it, because you were going to be recorded. | |
| Because people say, oh yeah, I'm with you, I'm with you. | |
| And then all of a sudden, they're not with you. | |
| You need accountability. | |
| I think these people, by and large, they like the office, they like whatever perquisites they think they have in the office, but sometimes they just don't want to do the work. | |
| Yeah, I think it's all about power. | |
| And you and I have talked about this. | |
| This is about the ability of a small group of people to control everything that goes through the floor. | |
| And then they're able to essentially hide the large growth of government, hide the things that they're able to do. | |
| And frankly, curry favors, as I said before, buying and selling votes, essentially. | |
| Hey, I'll take care of you. | |
| We'll get that done. | |
| How many bills have you gotten passed by suspension, Matt? | |
| Zero. | |
| Zero. | |
| How many? | |
| No, no, they took it to a rule. | |
| They took it to a rule, right. | |
| This is my point. | |
| You know who gets the favors. | |
| It's the committee chairs, it's the leadership, it's all the people who do the right things. | |
| So not allowing actual votes on the floor functions as the currency for the political corruption of Washington. | |
| Buying and selling votes, and I would add, doing favors for the lobby corps. | |
| The lobby corps gets a lot more votes on suspension than any of the three people at this table. | |
| And nobody elected them, and so I want to express my gratitude to Congressman Roy, Congressman Biggs, We're actually calling for votes. | |
| And I don't think anyone in Congress should be ashamed or inconvenienced by that which is our job. | |
| So I'm grateful for the two of you. | |
| I'm grateful for the Freedom Caucus showing leadership on this. | |
| And you know what? | |
| If it makes the establishment and the leadership and the lobbyists uncomfortable to have recorded votes on that Board of Truth, then so freaking be it. | |
| Thank you guys for joining me. | |
| Thanks, Matt. | |
| That's Chip Roy and Andy Biggs making the accusations of laziness, lack of accountability, leadership control, centralization of power and they're not making those accusations against the Democrats. | |
| They're making those accusations against the Republicans who We got the live stream. | |
| We got the live chat fired up. | |
| A lot of you weighing in on Getter, a victory rider, saying that suspension makes for corruption. | |
| And I agree with that. | |
| And on Facebook, Charlotte Currie saying the Democrats are evil, which may or may not be true, but certainly when Republicans are working in concert with the Democrats to prohibit the transparency and accountability and oversight of the Democrats. | |
| That must be central to the mission of the minority. | |
| We have a problem, not just with the Democrats, but with the Uniparty, with the corrupt collaboration that oftentimes leads the American people, but leaves them behind. | |
| And it's really unfortunate, and I completely stand with my colleagues Chip Roy and Andy Biggs and anyone that wants to make Congress actually get back to doing its job and not just trading favors with the leadership and doing the bidding of the lobby corps. | |
| Now, to get great representatives in order to do that, to have a body full of more folks like Chip Roy and Andy Biggs, we must have fair elections. | |
| A lot of folks in the comments talking about the 2,000 Mules documentary. | |
| Believe me, this is very big. | |
| We've already made a lot of hay about this film by putting some of the content out on our platforms, and I've been in discussions with Dinesh D'Souza, who's the producer of that film, Regarding the critical next steps to get Congress activated and informed and to find somebody in some state, in some law enforcement capacity, willing to take this evidence and then trace it back to these nonprofits that were laundering ballots. | |
| I mean, I'm good friends with Dinesh D'Souza. | |
| I think he's a great intellect, a great commentator. | |
| I think it's a great film. | |
| But if there's any criticism of 2,000 Mules, it's that it lets a lot of these ballot stash houses off the hook. | |
| We know that there were groups, for example, just in my state, like Andrew Gillum's group that he stood up to, you know, Stacey Abrams' eyes, the state of Florida. | |
| They were, in many cases, submitting fraudulent requests for absentee ballots that they were going to use to Taint the election. | |
| To empower the mules. | |
| To give them the votes and then to drop them off at the ballot boxes that Mark Zuckerberg got a lot of government entities to put in as a condition for the funding that he wanted to provide. | |
| So it's a full ecosystem of fraud. | |
| 2,000 mules is part of it. | |
| But another part is the total failure of the elections infrastructure in some states to actually be able to effectively Conduct elections, count the votes, and deliver a timely result. | |
| Check out this news report on what's going on right now in Pennsylvania. | |
| Let's begin our election coverage with the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race. | |
| It is too close to call between the top two candidates, and it may stay that way for some time with mail-in ballots still left to be counted. | |
| Here's where the race between Mehmet Oz and David McCormick stands right now. | |
| Both are at 31 percent, with Oz leading McCormick by just over 2,600 votes. | |
| They have exchanged the lead throughout the early morning hours. | |
| Some precincts waited until today to start counting mail-ins. | |
| And then there is the issue in Lancaster County. | |
| It could take days to process at least 21,000 mail-in ballots there that cannot be read by a machine due to an ID error. | |
| The department recommends the best practice of assigning two-person teams to hand-mark new ballots. | |
| One will read out the markings from the original ballot. | |
| The second party will mark the ballot. | |
| There is also an observer who watches the process to make sure that the remarked ballot is accurate. | |
| The tight race between Oz and McCormick could trigger an automatic recount if the winning margin is within half a percent. | |
| Acting Secretary of State Lee Chapman is required to order the recount no later than 5 p.m. | |
| on the second Thursday following the election. | |
| Recount? | |
| They haven't even finished the actual count and it's the day after the election. | |
| Pennsylvania has a vote counting problem and it spans multiple elections and it should be fixed. | |
| Of course it involves vote-by-mail, which is the easiest form of voting to infect with fraudulent ballots. | |
| 2,000 mules was one example of that. | |
| I mean, where do you think those ballots came from that ended up getting muled into those boxes? | |
| They were vote-by-mail requests. | |
| So that's a key link in the ecosystem of fraud. | |
| We still don't know who won the Senate GOP primary in Pennsylvania the next day. | |
| The problem in Pennsylvania lies with how the vote-by-mail votes are counted. | |
| I don't care if Republicans made these rules. | |
| Matter of fact, if Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature voted for this crazy system, then they should change those laws. | |
| And here's how it works, right? | |
| In the state of Florida... | |
| Where we fixed a lot of our problems with the elections. | |
| We count the votes as they come in by mail. | |
| So you have a manageable number of ballots and you have people that can verify the signatures, verify that the person is still alive, verify that the person is a citizen of the United States eligible to vote. | |
| And you can do that in small batch counts as the mail vote comes in. | |
| Now, do they do that in Pennsylvania? | |
| No. | |
| As the mail comes in, oddly, they stack up in boxes like hundreds of thousands of vote-by-mail votes, and they do nothing with them, leaving them vulnerable to fraud or tainting or infection or bad chain of custody until Election Day. | |
| And then only on Election Day do they actually open the mail and start counting the votes. | |
| And so, of course, then it's total pandemonium. | |
| And that's what they're counting on to execute on fraud. | |
| Election laws can change quickly. | |
| We saw that during coronavirus. | |
| We saw that in Florida where we went from the laughing stock in the country to the model for America. | |
| And so I'm calling on the Pennsylvania legislature. | |
| Clean up this mess. | |
| Stop holding the place as like this total quagmire of elections. | |
| Count the votes as they come in. | |
| Give us reliable, secure results. | |
| That's what the American people deserve. | |
| Another matter that has not been voted on but that's deeply troubling to me is Joe Biden's new war in Somalia. | |
| That's right, President Trump ended United States hostilities in Somalia and supported this decision with reason and the America First foreign policy. | |
| I counseled with the former president on this matter quite a bit in the final days of his first term. | |
| My suggestion was that we do everything we can to get those troops out of Somalia, close that down, and then my hope was that Joe Biden wouldn't reignite our hostilities there. | |
| Now, unfortunately... | |
| Joe Biden has reversed the Trump decision on Somalia, and he is sending hundreds of American troops to Somalia with no approval from Congress. | |
| This from Breitbart. | |
| President Biden sends U.S. troops back into Somalia. | |
| Just quoting briefly from the piece, it says... | |
| The president has authorized the Department of Defense to return a small, persistent U.S. military presence in Somalia. | |
| It always starts with a small, persistent presence. | |
| We had a small, persistent presence in Syria under President Obama before our involvement there expanded well beyond what Congress had authorized or what the American people even wanted. | |
| It is foolish to re-engage in hostilities in Somalia. | |
| It is not in service of America's interests, and it is consistent with the Biden administration legacy of failure at home and embarrassment abroad. | |
| I objected to the Biden-Somalia unauthorized war yesterday in the House Armed Services Committee. | |
| I called out the progressives who acted like it was a big deal to flex congressional muscle on war powers during the Trump administration. | |
| But now, hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. | |
| Take a listen. | |
| We learned through a New York Times leak last night that America is going to re-engage in the war in Somalia. | |
| This as we are sleepwalking into a war with Ukraine. | |
| And the authorization to go into Somalia is presumably linked back to the 2001 AUMF. And it just seems crazy to me that we would have a re-engagement of hostilities in Somalia after the Trump administration Withdrew us from that conflict, not just without a congressional vote, but without even really a clear statement from the administration as to our goals. | |
| But through New York Times leaks now, are we starting wars through New York Times leaks? | |
| I think there are fewer members of Al-Shabaab than there were like viewers of CNN Plus And yet, here we are re-engaging. | |
| We are at a briefing, I understand, on the Army's military modernization. | |
| Sadly, despite the good and needed efforts here, the Army that we've modernized the most is the Taliban's during this administration. | |
| It's probably not even close. | |
| I used to be able to count on progressives in the Congress, Who joined me in opposing a war in Yemen, who joined me in pushing back against presidential war powers with Iran, who agreed that it would be crazy to start World War III over the Kurds. | |
| But on the issue of Ukraine, the progressives are signed up for the $40 billion-plus to fund the war. | |
| We didn't hear a peep from them on Somalia. | |
| Progressives in the House were anti-war. | |
| On matters that related to the Middle East, but presumably not on similar matters that relate to Europe and Africa. | |
| And so I know it's not particularly pertinent to the modernization of the Army, but we are having to make zero-sum funding decisions. | |
| I think many of the projects we've been briefed on today are critically important to preserve our ability to fight our pacing adversaries. | |
| And when we get into these, like, skirmishes and sand dunes all across the world, I think that it deviates from the important work that the subcommittee is being briefed on today. | |
| War without winning. | |
| War everywhere. | |
| Victory nowhere. | |
| That's the Biden foreign policy. | |
| We're back streaming live in my congressional office on Capitol Hill. | |
| We are on Getter. | |
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| Make sure you have notifications turned on because we don't go live at the same time every day. | |
| This way, you will be the first to get this critical information. | |
| You'll know exactly what's happening in the United States Congress. | |
| And leave us some comments. | |
| The comments... | |
| We've got a lot of Pennsylvania viewers today. | |
| We've got Mike saying, I've seen them cheat with my own eyes. | |
| And a lot of people are actually saying that filling out fake ballots in Pennsylvania, we need to open our eyes to what's going on. | |
| And as Joe Biden is engaging in just the reckless utilization of our military, sending hundreds of America's best and bravest to Somalia, they are abandoning our own border here in the United States of America. | |
| Homeland Security Secretary Ali Mayorkas testified before the House Judiciary Committee that he has, quote, operational control of the border. | |
| If you have eyes and ears and can watch any type of news, you know that is obviously bullshit. | |
| 234,088 people were encountered at the border just in April. | |
| It is the most in a single month in America's history. | |
| But operational control, am I right? | |
| 117,000 of these people were released into the interior of our America. | |
| And they call us racists if we argue that these policies are harmful to Americans of all color and kind. | |
| You know what? | |
| If we love this country as we should, we should love our border. | |
| And when we have these historic Invasions, when we have these numbers like we've never seen before, it shows that the word is out, not just in Latin America, but all over the world, that our border is a turnstile. | |
| They have no operational control. | |
| If this is their definition of operational control, the most people ever in a single month encountered 117,000 released into our country, though by the way will like never have to go home, then they don't even know what operational control means. | |
| It's on purpose. | |
| They're hurting us. | |
| Another bad element of the week for the Department of Homeland Security has been the Ministry of Truth. | |
| You've seen Secretary Mayorkas testify about the need To have the U.S. government fight disinformation. | |
| And don't worry if you encounter something that isn't factual. | |
| The Department of Homeland Security, Ali Mayorkas, the person who cares nothing for our border, he's going to be there with his ministry of truth to save you from disinformation. | |
| Well, hot breaking news right now. | |
| R.I.P. to the Ministry of Truth. | |
| That's right, Secretary of My Work is putting out word that the Disinformation Board, chaired by Nina Jankiewicz, is now officially on pause. | |
| And I want to thank the American people for this, because you see, What's going on with the Ministry of Truth and COVID disinformation and deplatforming and targeting political movements, it's all connected. | |
| But this Nina Jankiewicz was such a nut. | |
| And you all saw that and you amplified it and you exposed it. | |
| And then you know what? | |
| The Biden team, they saw the polling. | |
| They saw that the American people don't want to be told what's true or false from a bunch of woketopians. | |
| And the result has been that they back down. | |
| So you see, you do have agency. | |
| We have a say in what goes on in our government. | |
| Too often the Republicans up here in Washington think that, well, we're just relegated to the minority, so there's nothing we can do. | |
| No, we can do the oversight. | |
| We can expose the... | |
| Terrible decisions that are being made. | |
| The people that are being given the empermata of government to harm our fellow Americans. | |
| And when we do that, we can actually get some wins for our people. | |
| It's a win that the disinformation board has been put on pause. | |
| It should be relegated to the dustbins of history and all the better for it. | |
| But don't think that the radical left is stopping there or giving up. | |
| There's been a whole lot of activity with the January 6th committee as they prepare for public hearings in the summer and fall to lead up to the midterms. | |
| Why? | |
| Because the Democrats and their sad little Republican puppets, Cheney and Kinzinger, well, they know that there's not really an agenda or a narrative that the American people will run to to vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterms. | |
| And so they're trying to scare people. | |
| They're trying to act like anyone who is MAGA or ultra MAGA. | |
| We covered that in our last episode. | |
| They're dangerous. | |
| They could harm you. | |
| They're bad for our democracy and our politics. | |
| Nonsense. | |
| Many in the media and on the political left have been calling for greater criminalization of political activity from January 6th and beyond. | |
| Frank Figluzzi is a frequent guest on MSNBC and admittedly, while they call him a former prosecutor, he's a total hack. | |
| But just listen to him today on Morning Joe. | |
| We'll break it down on the other side of the clip. | |
| NBC News has confirmed that the Justice Department asked the House Select Committee investigating the attack to share transcripts from their closed-door interviews. | |
| The committee's chairman, Congressman Betty Thompson, says his panel is willing to talk to the DOJ, but they cannot give investigators full access to their work just yet and labeled the request premature. | |
| The Justice Department has already charged nearly 800 people in connection with the attack. | |
| More than 280 have already pleaded guilty. | |
| Joining us now, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI and MSNBC national security analyst Frank Figluzzi. | |
| Frank, first of all, how big a development is this? | |
| And I guess, can they say no? | |
| We won't give you the documents? | |
| All of this tension and frustration we've kind of sensed between the committee and DOJ may have been a deliberate effort by DOJ to stay out of the business of the committee, to avoid any public perception that the committee is dictating to DOJ or vice versa. | |
| DOJ is allowing the committee to do their investigative work for them. | |
| I don't think that that's the case. | |
| I think it's a deliberate DOJ doing their thing, committee doing their thing. | |
| And now to your question, can the committee say no? | |
| They have, but they haven't said no. | |
| Can the committee say no? | |
| You know what? | |
| That's not going to happen. | |
| We've got William Ross on Facebook who says, well, can they run the Ministry of Truth in secret? | |
| We've got to watch out for that. | |
| Very good note, and we'll keep you posted. | |
| But it leads into this discussion with Frank Figluzzi. | |
| You see, the January 6th committee has functionally been operating in secret with a large number of their depositions and investigation materials and review of documents. | |
| And they learned something during the Ukraine impeachment, during the failed, aborted Russia hoax impeachment. | |
| They learned that if all the information comes out, then we can dissect it, analyze it, Put it in context and make our reasonable argument fairly to the American people. | |
| Well, they don't want that. | |
| They want to specially curate and select and basically put on legislative theater before the American people. | |
| But it's not just theater for theater's sake. | |
| The signal that you just got from Frank Vigluzy is that the January 6th Congressional Committee is actually hustling up evidence, making subpoena requests and demands, and then they're funneling that information to the Department of Justice to criminalize politics and political disagreement. | |
| So don't view the January 6th Committee and the Department of Justice as separate entities going about their own thing. | |
| What you just saw there from MSNBC, from Morning Joe, from basically the talking points of the radical left, is this effort to fuse the legislative activity with criminal investigations intended to crush people, to bankrupt people, and really to get people to self-censor. | |
| Oh gosh, I didn't You know, have a MAGA sign in my front yard. | |
| Oh no, gosh, I just donated to President Trump for his policies, not because I support him. | |
| You see, that's the whole thing, is to get people who think America first to retreat from their First Amendment rights, to be engaged and involved, and to drive change. | |
| One place the Biden administration is creating a lot of negative change is on America's farms. | |
| The Biden administration is in war. | |
| Here's the latest battle in that war. | |
| Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced a new rule aimed at clenching its grasp on private industry in the name of, of course, climate change. | |
| Many people, including me, openly acknowledge that the earth is warming. | |
| You may remember my Green Real Deal legislation, which calls for free market solutions to address and mitigate carbon emissions. | |
| By contrast, the Biden SEC is attempting to transform the Securities and Exchange Commission, an independent federal regulatory agency charged with protecting investors and maintaining fair and orderly functioning marketplaces, facilitating capital formation, into the Scientific facilitating capital formation, into the Scientific Environmental Committee, | |
| This is the latest attempt by Joe Biden through this like, you know, appointed SEC chair, Gary Gensler, to politicize innocuous federal agencies and to convert them into arms of the Woketopia for enforcement. | |
| This climate rule harms businesses in America, especially the smallest businesses who don't have economies of scale to manage these extraneous and unnecessary burdens of reporting and greenhouse gas emissions and assessment of physical risks to their operations from natural disasters. | |
| They even want in this rule for businesses to assess their transition risks as a result of climate change. | |
| And again, this isn't just like the biggest companies. | |
| Oftentimes, smaller companies want to be in the position to be acquired, and so they have to start complying anyway. | |
| The SEC estimates that their plan will raise top-line compliance disclosure costs from $3.9 billion to $10.2 billion. | |
| That's an average of $420,000 a year for a publicly listed company. | |
| You know who stands to lose most from this rule? | |
| The farmers, who have already been the victim of increased tariffs on fertilizer imports and sanctions that they're oddly having to pay the price for. | |
| The increasing price of essential agricultural inputs has also been very damaging to our farmers. | |
| We did a segment on this with Shannon Nixon from Nixon Farms from our district. | |
| You should check it out. | |
| Now, as for reporting greenhouse gases, there are basically three scopes that are mandated in this new rule. | |
| Scope one would require reporting of direct emissions. | |
| I guess that would require our farmers to be out there sniffing the farts of their cows. | |
| Second, they're supposed to analyze the scope of requiring indirect greenhouse gas emissions from the generation of electricity and steam and heating and cooling reported by the company. | |
| So basically, you have to become like Sherlock Holmes to figure out the carbon footprint of the electricity you buy. | |
| Now, reporting of this would also be extended to include indirect emissions that occur both upstream and downstream, including on-farm data day-to-day operations. | |
| This would happen for all publicly listed agriculture companies of varying sizes, and the recording requirements are burdensome, costly, and unnecessary. | |
| Now, why are they doing it? | |
| Are they trying to push medium-sized small farms out of business? | |
| Are they trying to stop them from being able to be acquired? | |
| Are they stopping them from being able to exist and pass along from one generation to the next? | |
| Only the largest agricultural companies who are well equipped for compliance and reporting will make it out of this. | |
| It could lead to consolidation in agriculture that's already occurring at an alarming rate and that is harming our supply chain and that is really contributing greatly to inflation. | |
| The SEC has exceeded its regulatory authority, not to mention the farmers across America who already comply with crazy regulations from the Department of Agriculture and the EPA. Our farmers need feed, fuel. | |
| They need this to drive America, to feed America. | |
| Our farmers plant seeds and kill weeds. | |
| Bureaucrats in the grimy halls of D.C. and New York are great at inventing rules and restrictions, but I wouldn't count on any of them to make our food unless you want a diet of nothing but the Impossible Burger. | |
| We must push back against this war against our farmers for the sake of our great country. | |
| One other thing I wanted to note before we check out today, there's been an explosion in congressional podcasts, and I think that's a great thing. | |
| The reason we give you these reports is because we think that our constituents deserve a direct, unedited version of what the heck is going on in Washington, D.C. We're here to pull back the veil and let you know what's up. | |
| And so if more members of Congress, like Andy Biggs, who started the What's a Biggs Idea podcast, or Tim Burchett, who started Tennessee Talks, or Mike Johnson has a podcast with his amazing wife Kelly, you should check that out as well. | |
| If we have more of this, if we build up an ecosystem of congressional podcasts, well then you'll be able to see directly what your lawmakers are thinking and working on, and that will drive The accountability and transparency and oversight that we are fighting for every single day in Washington. | |
| Thanks so much for tuning into the show. | |
| Make sure you are subscribed, however you're participating today. | |
| Make sure you keep those comments coming. | |
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| Have the notifications turned on and join us for the next Firebrand. | |
| Roll the credits. |
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