All Episodes
Previous Next
May 26, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
36:31
Episode 46 LIVE: Dark Days Ahead – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
| Copy link to current segment

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 for the Democratic Party.
He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws.
So we're going to keep running for a story is to keep hurting him.
If you want to stand for the flag and kneel in prayer and 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.
Usually we do these episodes out of our congressional office in Washington, D.C. But we are on location today in the beautiful Sunshine State in Pensacola, Florida.
There's so much going on.
We've got a report on military wokeness.
We've got stunning admissions from members of the Biden administration, even a former member of the Obama administration, about the total failures of these policies and the ascendancy of America first as a consequence of what our country has been going through under the presidency of Joe Biden.
A report on this crazy agreement with the World Health Organization to surrender American sovereignty.
But of course, we began in Ukraine.
I've been telling the American people that the regime is just so thirsty for direct kinetic conflict with Russia, war with Russia.
We even heard Majority Leader Steny Hoyer talk about the fact that we are at war with Russia.
Well now, an exclusive report from the Wall Street Journal.
Pentagon weighs deploying special forces to guard Kiev embassy.
You'd think that they would have learned their lesson from Afghanistan that having a small force of marines trying to protect an impossible diplomatic mission in the middle of a hot war zone that we have no control over is insane and it already cost American lives but here Here we see it.
Quoting now directly from the Wall Street Journal article, quote, Some U.S. military officials would like to return to Ukraine the special forces and other troops that were conducting train and advise operations for the Ukrainian military.
It always starts with the train and equip missions, the train and advise missions.
Remember, the United States' involvement in the civil war in Syria began when Obama decided he wanted 40 advisors.
But as we know, it can get far more deadly, it can get a lot more bloody going beyond that.
Back to the Wall Street Journal article, quote, On May 8, Kristina Kievan, the senior diplomat in the U.S. mission to Ukraine and a small group of U.S. diplomats, temporarily based in Poland, returned to the U.S. embassy complex in Kiev to commemorate Victory in Europe Day with Ukrainian officials.
Here's the important part.
They were escorted by U.S. Special Forces assigned from the Joint Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, who provided for their security.
The first known instance in which American forces entered the country since invasion.
But that date, May 8th, really calls into question whether or not these special forces were also providing security for the Pelosi visit, for the Mitch McConnell visit.
Are we really at a point where photo op foreign policy risks the lives of American service members, risks starting World War III? We are now in a circumstance where people in Washington, D.C. are advocating directly for a reinsertion of U.S. troops into the conflict in Ukraine.
And they were lying to you when they told you they didn't want boots on the ground.
How many times did we hear from Joe Biden?
Oh, we're not going to put, you know, boots on the ground.
We're not going to have...
This air combat engagement over the skies of Ukraine.
But now we see the very initial steps of getting into precisely that dynamic.
And it's something that I am definitely against.
The foreign policy elites.
Are doing everything they can right now to plow U.S. arms, materiel, and cash into Ukraine.
And the reason they are rushing to do it now is because they believe following the midterm elections, there will be more America first voices that inform on U.S. foreign policy.
And we know this Because a member of the foreign policy elite told us.
Just this past Sunday, Charles Kupchan, former NSC official for European affairs under the Obama administration, he gave an interview on Fareed Zakaria's program on CNN, and this is what he said about the America First movement.
I'm very worried that as we head to the midterms, the America First wing of the Republican Party is going to get stronger and stronger.
We've seen primary candidates, J.D. Vance in Ohio.
He won that primary.
What was his policy toward Ukraine?
I don't care what happens on the border between Ukraine and Russia.
And you know what?
Charles Kupchak is right.
We are the movement winning elections, and we will be putting people in the government to assure that we do not just spoil American blood or American treasure everywhere in the world, that there happens to be a conflict that the war lobby and the defense industrial complex want to be able to profit off of.
And you know what?
They're going to do very well as a result of this $40 billion package, but it is not a good thing for the American people.
Just this past week I had a telephone town hall meeting among Northwest Floridians and we talked about this $40 billion aid package and like 75% somewhere around that range of the people in my district on this call were opposed to that.
I mean, this is a very conservative part of the country.
This is an area with a lot of military and veterans, and gun control was actually more popular than the $40 billion to Ukraine.
So I know that's not a scientific survey, but it is reflective of where the people are who will join a congressional telephone town hall.
It is reflective of where I think a majority of the people are who are paying attention.
It is not for your benefit that they want to send America's bravest and America's dollars to a place that is not prepared to deal with it.
And this could potentially extend a conflict that I know all of us want to end, and we want the conflict to end on Ukraine's terms, but continuing to plow cash and arms into this particular conflict.
Very, very dangerous.
The American people see it, and the blowback Will be an ascendancy of America first in the Congress.
That's what the national security apparatus is telling you.
And if our military is not making poor decisions regarding the conflict in Ukraine, they are advancing a level of wokeness that is completely crazy.
Let me explain.
We should assign people to our bases and our installations based on their skills and based on the needs of America's security.
Not based on wokeism.
Now we do have policies to provide for family members.
Gosh, if we had a member of our military who could have a family member that could only receive a certain type of medical treatment at a specific place, we would do everything we could to accommodate them.
And our military has policies to do that.
But we have now heard reports that those compassionate care policies are being tortured and perverted into a basis to not have military service members in states like Florida and Texas that have sensible laws reflecting the values of our communities.
Everybody in the national media went crazy over what they called the Florida don't say gay law.
Matter of fact, the law didn't say that at all.
Nonetheless, the publicity, the narrative formation could potentially lead to service members saying, well, I have a trans family member.
I have a gay service member, so I don't want to go to the state of Florida.
I don't want to serve at one of those installations.
Maybe someone doesn't want to go to Texas because they're offended that they believe that they don't like Texas' view on abortion rights.
And I asked the Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, about whether these policies were affecting our military, whether they were being used in this way.
Take a listen.
That if a service member has a transsexual family member, or a family member who might one day want to become a transsexual person, that the Air Force might not send that service member to a state like Florida or a state like Texas based on our laws?
What we do, and we've been doing this for a very long time, is whenever anybody comes up for assignment, they go through a questionnaire about their family and their medical needs and special education, things like that.
And based on that questionnaire, we examine whether in the region they might be assigned to, there might be some issue with providing them with what they need.
And then if that's the case, we don't assign them there.
We find something else someplace else where then we go.
There are about 35,000 servicemen that are under that program right now and about 55,000 people that are affected by it.
So it has a lot of broad applicability.
But usually we would think about this exceptional family member program like, If a service member had a child with a specific heart disease and they could only get treatment at Johns Hopkins, you might not send them to a place where they wouldn't be able to access that treatment.
What I think is new is that you're now applying that to transsexuals and people who might want to be transsexuals.
So again, I want to ask the question very directly.
Is it the position of the Air Force That if someone has a transsexual family member and they don't want to go to a state like Florida or Texas, that you will accommodate their request to not go to Florida or Texas based on the gender issues of a family member.
If a service member is under treatment for a recognized medical condition, such as gender dysphoria, and they cannot get that treatment in the state to which they might be assigned, then they could be assigned to another state.
And it's not just if they're under treatment.
Captain Donna Donsworth told the Washington Post, family members receiving gender-affirming treatment, or likely to receive such treatment, So, isn't it true?
Did Captain Downsworth misstate that?
I'd have to expect the exact wording of how the program is set up.
But there has to be an identified actual need for medical treatment, not just the potential for one.
It has to be more than that.
That's my understanding.
A family member choosing to change their gender would qualify, is what you're saying.
I'm sorry?
So, I mean, a family member choosing to change their gender would alter The options you have for where you could put that service member.
I think more would be required.
There would have to be a medical need that needs to be met.
Just that decision by itself probably wouldn't be enough, but I don't know.
And I'm concerned that it's going beyond medical needs in some of the statements of some of the folks who work for you.
I'm now quoting from Under Secretary Gina Ortiz, who said, we are closely tracking state laws and legislation to ensure we're prepared to mitigate effects to our airmen, guardsmen, and families.
And again, this is dealing with the A transsexual issue with the Exceptional Family Member Program.
So which state laws and local laws are you particularly concerned about?
We have people in our major installations who track local conditions, including state laws, all the time.
Which ones?
That's what they do.
All of them.
If there's a change in divorce laws just occurred in one of the states, it could affect our members.
So our people have to be aware of that so they can provide counseling to people if they need it.
And now we get the whole story.
This report from the Daily Wire.
U.S. Army considering letting soldiers change base if local laws offend their choice of gender.
I mean, this is explicitly a way to punish the military mission in Florida, punish the military mission in Texas, and it's going to hurt readiness.
This is quoting from the Daily Wire piece, quote, And they are citing a report from Military.com.
This is going to hurt America's readiness and it also is going to deprive us of access to key investments that we've made for our military capabilities.
I mean, if we now live in a world where DOD has gone so woke that they want to punish the military mission in Florida, in Texas, in Oklahoma, in Arizona and other states, well then, The investments we made in the Gulf test range, in other weapon systems, in our supply chain and where we build things to be able to ensure that our military is capable of victory.
All of that will take second fiddle to wokeism coming out of the Pentagon.
And it's crazy.
And so I asked the Secretary of the Air Force about it.
Now we see it evolving in the Army.
This is what we'll fight for.
We'll fight for a military that is prepared, that is capable, that is lethal, that is survivable, and that is unwoke.
Because that is what the patriotism of our service members and that is what the security of our country demands.
The crisis on our border continues to escalate and get worse.
I know there's been a lot of news about Title 42 and a judge recently ruling that the Biden administration couldn't revoke it under our current conditions.
But the reality is that Title 42 is already long gone in the practical procedures being deployed on our border.
Border agents, border patrol, they need to get ahead of the wave, they tell us.
And so they're already cycling people into the country and not deporting them as a consequence of Title 42 or really any other law like Remain in Mexico, like Save Third Country.
These laws that the Trump administration put in place to protect us are not being used by the Biden administration and it's on purpose.
We've also got a new report.
Joe Biden has appointed five new immigration judges, one of whom is Romy L. Leonard, and she was on the board of a total left-wing anti-borders group called the Detention Watch Network.
And the stated purpose of the organization that the latest Joe Biden appointee to one of these judgeships held was to stop deportations.
Not limit them, not focus them on criminals, not ensure that it's the worst of the worst that we deport to stop them, to just straight up stop deportations.
Now, how fair is that for our country, for our fellow Americans, to have the person that is supposed to adjudicate asylum claims holding the view and associating with the position that no one should be deported at all?
You see, they're trying to rush all this through as fast as they can to get people across our border, To erode voter ID and then ultimately to have these illegal aliens voting in our elections and reshaping our country unfairly and undemocratically.
And they say we are the threat to American democracy.
This is the threat to American democracy.
An open border and elections that are unsecure.
That is the problem.
And this Romy Leonard appointment is certainly an example of that.
And of course we see the immigration crisis accelerating under the failed leadership of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Ali Mayorkas, who really is a sociopathic liar.
That's what he is.
He has the ability to stone-cold lie in the face of facts that are just readily apparent to any American.
And so take a look at the statements of Ali Mayorkas and figure out whether or not you believe him or your own lying eyes.
The bottom line is that U.S. borders are not open.
The immigration situation here in Del Rio has never been this bad.
Just yesterday alone they apprehended more than 900 migrants in total.
The restrictions at our southwest border have not changed.
Border Patrol here completely overwhelmed, overstretched.
They can't be everywhere at once.
This was a human smuggling stash house that was busted in Alton, Texas yesterday.
More than 100 migrants being kept there by those human smugglers.
The United States continues to enforce its immigration laws.
We are prepared.
These migrants continue to show up by the hundreds pretty much every single hour.
The number of migrants under that bridge has now swelled to more than 14,000.
Individuals and families continue to be sent back.
But that's mostly single men being sent back.
A lot of the women, children and family units will be able to stay.
they'll be processed and released into the U.S. Consistent with enforcing our laws.
Do you have a message for U.S. President Joe Biden?
Yeah, I have a message for Joe Biden.
We see what he's doing in the whole body watch.
Where are you from?
Ghana.
You're from Ghana.
You're from Haiti.
Where are you from?
Venezuela.
Venezuela.
We all appreciate him because he's very good man, very humble.
He's a man of people.
The federal government has apparently been moving illegal immigrants all around the country in the dark.
Hey, where are you from?
What city?
Donde?
The bottom line is that U.S. borders are not open.
Dr. Jason Furman is a former economic advisor to President Obama and Now he's a professor at Harvard and he was on Face the Nation to discuss the state of the economy and how it's affecting people.
Take a listen.
Look, I'd put some perspective on what we're going through right now.
The market is not the same as the economy.
When you look at the economy, you see a 3.6% unemployment rate.
You see 500,000 jobs being created a month.
You see consumer spending quite strongly.
Our economy is heading to darker times right now because you have far too many dollars chasing far too few goods.
Part of that is a consequence of Joe Biden's failures with the supply chain.
But of course, what has exacerbated this dynamic the most is expansionist Fed policy and massive government spending.
Those two things always were going to create an inflationary cycle, and now it's a cycle that people are getting absolutely crushed in.
The American Rescue Plan was to be the signature legislative achievement of the Biden era.
It would be almost the only thing Democrats would be able to run on.
But even Jason Furman acknowledges that the American Rescue Plan exacerbated the problems that really are driving the concerns of many Americans today.
Take a listen.
Look, in March of 2021, the president signed the American Rescue Plan into law.
That's part of why the United States has had a faster recovery than any other economy, but it's also part of why we have incredibly high inflation.
I wished at the time that he did something smaller.
I think it was larger than it needed to be, but it's good that something happened.
Even Liberal Vox acknowledges in their May 12th article that in fact Biden's American Rescue Plan worsened inflation.
The question is how much?
So this is the connection people have to make.
Inflation isn't occurring because of Vladimir Putin.
It's not occurring because of some uncontrollable foreign dynamic in the global economy that we can have No effect on or no say in.
The reality is it's the policies of Joe Biden that have created this inflation and that are projected to continue to do so.
I mean, we are not going to see 2% inflation for a while.
Next year, best case scenario, perhaps 3% inflation.
But that still, year over year, will be something that will be of tremendous concern to many families throughout our country and to many family budgets.
Many Americans have expressed concern to our office regarding Joe Biden's attempt to surrender American sovereignty and American decision making to the World Health Organization.
So I wanted to go into this issue with more detail.
The WHO is seeking a new instrument to be able to rapidly effectuate change in the member states to an agreement that they would oversee, that they would staff and that would limit our flexibility to have decisions like we saw in the that they would staff and that would limit our flexibility to have decisions like we saw in the state of Florida They are seeking international health regulations and take a listen to how they want to do it.
They want an emergency committee to assess health threats and outbreaks and recommend responses.
They want a country review mechanism and they want to expand the power of the WHO to declare really almost anything An outbreak or a pandemic.
This would go well beyond just a respiratory virus.
It would give them vast sweeping powers over American life.
They would have a regional group of directors that would potentially have the ability to constrain the United States to like the views of Latin America.
We certainly wouldn't want that.
And they would have investigatory powers.
They would have border closure powers.
They would have travel restriction powers.
They would have the powers to institute lockdowns or change employment conditions.
And certainly masks, vaccinations.
They could essentially commandeer and involve non-state actors.
And they could impose censorship through restriction of information as a disinformation or misinformation.
And of course, CNN is all in, publishing an op-ed recently.
We need the Global Pandemic Treaty.
This is as America lasts as it gets.
I do not believe in the WHO to not just be a continued tool of the Chinese Communist Party.
The WHO blew it in the coronavirus pandemic.
They are the last people we should be turning to for future decision making.
And I believe that the left right now understands that they're going to have less control after the next elections.
After the midterms, the House, the Senate, potentially both, out of the hands of the Democrats.
And so they are trying to surrender as much of your power and your liberty and your decision making to this global entity as they can before they lose the opportunity to do so.
We need massive communication to people who are in the decision making in the United States Senate.
We need to reach out to Republicans, Democrats, all lawmakers to oppose this surrender of American sovereignty.
It's as serious as it gets and it will not end at true health pandemics.
They'll declare climate change a pandemic.
They'll declare gun violence a pandemic.
They'll declare anything that will give them the power to institute these lockdowns with greater frequency.
They will speak that into World Health Organization speak and pandemic speak, and we must be extremely resistant to that on all fronts.
Pegasus is a spying technology developed by Israel.
We told you about its capabilities and threats in a prior episode.
Take a listen.
Pegasus is the name of a Trojan horse spyware program created by the Israeli cybercrime company NSO Group.
And as of 2022, Pegasus was capable of reading texts, tracking calls, collecting passwords, location tracking.
Accessing, targeting a device's microphone and camera, and harvesting information from apps.
WhatsApp, Signal, even peer-to-peer.
Essentially, once they're in, they have total control of your phone.
And getting in no longer even requires human error or even human action by the target.
This would be the end of phishing exploits.
Well, thank goodness this technology wasn't just like created by our greatest ally, Israel, right?
Not so fast.
NSO Group has sold this technology to countless state actors and even local police forces all over the world, from Mexico to Saudi Arabia.
And recently, it has been confirmed that our own FBI paid $5 million for the Pegasus software.
It's even likely that Mexican drug cartels are using Pegasus through their corrupt collusions with Mexican government officials.
And these are just the customers that we know about.
There's probably non-state actors too.
We questioned the FBI cyber chief about the FBI's interest in Pegasus, its use, how it intended to apply the license that it had acquired for $5 million.
Here's the FBI cyber chief on March 29th giving his explanation for the FBI's interaction with the software.
Are you aware of a piece of software named Pegasus that's provided by NSO Group, Israeli software company?
Yes, sir.
Does the FBI use this program?
It looks like they had a license to it for five million dollars.
So, the FBI has not and did not ever use the NSO products operationally or in any investigation.
We did buy a limited license for testing and evaluation.
Those limited licenses are part of our normal exploratory process to understand what other technologies are out there.
But again, we have never purchased it for use operationally or in an ongoing investigation.
So your division hasn't used this spyware domestically?
No, sir.
Have you detected the use of this software domestically?
Sir, there's reporting in the media about Apple filing a lawsuit against NSO and there's a lot of information in that article.
I can't comment further on your question truly due to classification, but if that is of interest to you we could consider a background briefing.
Does the FBI itself exploit the SF7 flaw to access cell phone contents?
Sir, I'm not in a position to answer that question.
I don't know the answer.
Previously, Congressmember Massey asked you about a briefing.
I just want to make sure, will you commit to a bipartisan briefing classified on Pegasus and the NSO group and the SF7 issue?
Sir, yes and if I can expand.
I mean it's very important for me personally as a representative for the cyber program at the FBI to keep that as an open invitation in both directions between all of you and me and from me to all of you that whatever information that you would want access to we would try to facilitate that.
But now, we are getting information reported by the New York Times that seems to suggest that the FBI had a far more thorough interest in Pegasus than merely looking under the hood.
Remember, in that March 29th briefing, the FBI cyber chief wants you to believe that the US taxpayer paid $5 million for Pegasus just to see what its capabilities were.
No real interest in ever using it as part of operations or investigations.
Here's the headline from the New York Times.
FBI told Israel it wanted Pegasus hacking tool for investigations.
Here's the lead.
The FBI informed the Israeli government in a 2018 letter that it had purchased Pegasus, the notorious hacking tool to collect data from mobile phones to aid in ongoing investigations.
Still on the FBI story from the New York Times.
Quote, the FBI's description of its intended use of Pegasus came in a letter from a top FBI official to Israel's Ministry of Defense.
It continues, the 2018 letter written by an official in the FBI's operational technology division stated that the bureau intended to use Pegasus, quote, for the collection of data Right there.
No limited look.
So was the FBI lying to Congress or was the FBI lying to the government of Israel?
My guess is they're probably far more willing to lie to Congress than the government of Israel.
Like, why would we go to the lengths in 2018 Telling the government of Israel, not that we had acquired a limited look, but that we had in fact purchased Pegasus and that we were intending to use it in investigations.
Now, on that March 29th date, we had the hearing that resulted in a commitment from the FBI Cyber Chief to give members of Congress a classified briefing on the use of Pegasus.
Was Hunter Biden a target?
Was Joe Biden a target?
Was Donald Trump a target?
Were there any members of Congress who were targeted by Pegasus?
We want answers.
And to this date, the FBI has been recalcitrant in agreeing To the hearing, to the briefing that they had promised Congressman Ted Lieu of California, a Democrat who doesn't like me very much, and Thomas Massey, a Republican of Kentucky.
So we need to have that understanding.
We need to have that briefing.
And the FBI cannot continue to hide behind their contradictory statements to Congress and to the Israeli government.
Thanks so much for joining our report from here in the beautiful Sunshine State.
Make sure that you are subscribed.
Make sure you have your notifications turned on.
That way you'll always have the information first when we go live.
Give us that five-star rating or review if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
And join us soon for more Firebrand.
▲
Export Selection