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June 14, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
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Episode 52 LIVE: Made In America Coups – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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Thank you.
Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
So we're going to keep running those stories to get hurt again.
If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!
You are in the right place!
This is the movement for you!
You ever watch this guy on television?
It's like a machine.
Matt Gaetz.
I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.
Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.
They aren't really coming for me.
They're coming for you.
I'm just in the way.
If I hear one of my MAGA friends once again talk about debt and deficits, I'm going to be good.
Look, this is not your father's Republican Party.
This is a different deal.
It really is.
I've worked with a lot of honorable Republicans, very conservative Republicans over the year when I was a senator.
But this is the MAGA gang.
This is the MAGA crowd.
I really mean it.
They have a fundamentally different view of the role of the government and who should pay what.
The MAGA gang is right here, and you are welcome to join.
Allow me to extend the invitation.
We're broadcasting live from the Longworth House Office building in my congressional office on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. And the MAGA gang that Joe Biden talks about We are in charge of the Republican Party.
That is the thesis in a huge piece just published by Time Magazine this morning.
Molly Ball has the byline, How the MAGA Squad is Building Power to Control the Next Congress.
The piece features the role of this very show, Firebrand, in driving policy and perception on Capitol Hill.
And I'm quoting from the piece now.
Torching the news cycle is what Gates and Green love to do.
Gates and Green are the ringleaders of the GOP's most hardcore pro-Trump congressional faction.
The MAGA squad, as you might call them, is not a formal caucus, but its numbers are growing.
There have long been rabble-rousing right-wingers in Congress, but this group makes the Freedom Caucus seem tame.
Democrats and many Republicans deride the group as gadflies, irrelevant to the serious business of lawmaking.
But in fact, the MAGA squad has been cannily building leverage and clout in the halls of Congress.
Now with the primary season in full swing across the country, they're looking to pad their numbers Recruit like-minded firebrands in red districts, endorsing and campaigning for fellow insurgents in intraparty contests, and even in some cases, campaigning against their own colleagues.
The MAGA squad.
They're here, they're weird, and pretty soon, they may be in control of the GOP Congress, if they aren't already.
It's an interesting piece.
You should check it out.
It's Time Magazine, so of course there's going to be stuff there that's editorialized and not particularly true.
But nonetheless, I think the central thesis is one that is controlling We are those who are carrying the torch of the America First policy agenda.
And if there's anything that Molly Ball's piece, I think, underserves, it's those very policy objectives, those goals, to ensure that we have focused, effective foreign policy, that we aren't dithering all over the world in forever wars, that we actually have trade and economic nationalism values, In our country and trade policies that build up the American worker instead of building up the economies of other countries.
And we believe in restricted immigration.
I wish that would have been more central.
But these are the issues that are animating people all over the campaign trail.
That ultimately informs who gets to Congress and what drives the agenda.
And it is true, I expect Republicans to be in control, and I'm doing everything I can to make sure that we are worthy of the trust that our constituents place in us.
I don't want to win this thing by default.
We're going to go over in the show today a number of Joe Biden failures at home, abroad, where he's missing the mark on the economy and the utilization of American force in other countries.
But I don't want to just win this election because he is just in this precipitous decline and bringing our country into decline.
I want to have a mandate to actually govern around the ideas and the policies that led to an economic boom for our country and pride around the world.
And if that means the MAGA squad has to be the tiller in the water for the Republican caucus, so be it.
I'm ready to serve and I look forward to getting more backup and adding to our growing ranks.
So Joe Biden understands that right now the American economy is failing.
It's failed on a number of fronts and he sees how this is a drag on Democrats.
The White House knows that Joe Biden has to look at least engaged or informed on some sort of domestic economic agenda.
Seems like lately when you see Joe Biden talking it's about China or about his global trips or about Ukraine and Russia.
And the American people, rather reasonably, are feeling like we're not even a priority to the American president.
And so he makes this big trip out to Long Beach, California, the port of Long Beach that I personally observed backed up for miles with an utter failure of the American economy while he was subsidizing people to stay at home and not work.
But now he gives this big speech.
He's going to lay out the domestic economic Biden agenda.
He's going to do the reset.
He's going to reclaim the mantle, use the presidential bully pulpit.
And the first point he makes is that maybe you're at fault because you don't understand the supply chain enough.
Take a listen.
When I first started talking about the supply chain when I came here well over a year ago, the American people understand and we wondered, supply chain, that's not a usual part of their jargon every day.
But they understand it fully now.
They understand it.
So it wasn't that Joe Biden didn't understand how his policies of printing a ton of money and providing a bunch of stuff for free, like, that caused inflation.
He doesn't get that.
He thinks that because you don't understand the supply chain, because it wasn't part of your jargon, that, you know, this was something that was just unavoidable.
Another point.
When making a major domestic economic speech, of course, any American president would have to spend about half the time blaming, guess who?
Vladimir Putin.
That's right, it's the Putin tax that you just didn't know you were paying.
Take a listen.
But we've never seen anything like Putin's tax on both food and gas.
Today's inflation report confirmed what Americans already know.
Putin's price hike is hitting America hard.
I'm doing everything in my power to blunt Putin's price hike and bring down the cost of gas and food.
Bass Reeves joining in the conversation on Facebook saying he's a joke.
Brandon couldn't fix a sandwich, let alone any of the stuff that he's creating.
I had to edit a little bit of that for language.
But we don't want the explicit tag.
What is the Putin tax?
Like, what is he talking about?
A lot of these issues relate to supply chains that don't run through Russia.
Look around your house.
How many times do you see on stuff in your house made in Russia?
But of course, the sanctions that Joe Biden championed, without any backup plan, without any real understanding how different elements of the economy would be impacted, did impact the price of the food you buy and the energy that you use for your home and the fuel that you put in your car.
We covered that when we had, you know, the great episode that looked at the war on America's farmers.
We actually went out and talked to folks in northwest Florida Working on those razor-thin margins, and they wish Joe Biden actually had a plan to deal with Putin, but the Putin plan is a politics plan.
So when things go wrong in Joe Biden's economy, when his own Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, says, gosh, I really blew that inflation call, well now they reframe that and say, it's the Putin tax.
But when Joe Biden's not blaming Putin, you know who he's blaming.
That's right, MAGA. Take a listen.
If I hear one of my MAGA friends once again talk about debt and deficits, I'm going to be good.
Look, this is not your father's Republican Party.
This is a different deal.
It really is.
I've worked with a lot of honorable Republicans, very conservative Republicans over the year when I was a senator.
But this is the MAGA gang.
This is the MAGA crowd.
I really mean it.
They have a fundamentally different view of the role of the government and who should pay what.
Well, under Joe Biden's view of the government, you should just all pay more.
Like, that's the problem with this argument.
It is nonsensical to suggest that the MAGA wing of the Republican Party is trying to shift the burden to low- and middle-income people.
You know how low- and middle-income people are hurt?
Inflation!
Because inflation is excessively regressive.
In the way that it impacts the American economy.
Gary on Facebook says their plan is to put us under their control.
And in a lot of ways, this failing Biden economy makes the American people more susceptible to that control, to the false promises of socialism that have failed in so many other lands.
Maybe we should blame the America Last policies of the establishment for these failures rather than MAGA. You know, the policies that offshored making things that we need in our country.
Of course, the elites grifted off of that.
They financially benefited off of that globalist system.
But it was members of both parties.
Not MAGA, who led to this offshoring and to a lot of these bad trade policies that mean that the American people are at risk because so much of what we need is made elsewhere.
Joe Biden himself said the quiet part out loud in Long Beach.
People at home trying to make it, you know, paycheck to paycheck are wondering, like, what in God's name do nine, understand, nine shipping companies have to do with it?
Well, almost everything you're doing, everything from what you're eating to what you're having to drive to what you're, what you need in your home, it relates to supply chains and what's coming from abroad.
We are back broadcasting live out of the House office building, room 1721 in Longworth in Washington, D.C. And there you have it.
Joe Biden saying, well, gosh, everything that you need is somewhere else.
So when things go wrong, that's really tough and he feels your pain.
Look.
Our vision for economic nationalism ensures that we are more resilient against the fragility of a supply chain that seems to put the American people under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party.
Who do you think runs all these transit enterprises that have privileges at Chinese ports?
You think those are the good folks in China?
Those are the people with government connections because government is fused with business in that economic system.
And frankly, that's increasingly what the left wants to see in our country.
What they don't want to see...
is American independence, whether it's the stuff we make or the energy we use.
Joe Biden doesn't at all understand how the energy economy works and how rising energy prices create compounding inflation at different levels of the economy.
What he thinks is that American companies just need to drill more despite the things that Joe Biden himself has said.
Take a look.
By the way, one thing I want to say about the oil companies.
They talk about how they have 9,000 permits to drill.
They're not drilling.
Why aren't they drilling?
Would you close down the oil industry?
I would transition from the oil industry, yes.
Oh, that's a big statement.
It is a big statement.
Why would you do that?
Because the oil industry pollutes significantly.
Here's the deal.
That's a big statement.
Well, if you let me finish the statement, because it has to be replaced by renewable energy over time.
So Joe Biden says he's going to put the oil and gas industry out of business.
He's going to completely replace them.
And then he's mad.
Why aren't they drilling?
He goes to Long Beach and asks the question.
He answered the question.
You cannot...
As a candidate, say that you want to put people out of business, and then when your president and your policies put the country in a jam, become exasperated that they're not willing to make the capital investment.
So he's done this.
Don't buy into the Putin tax.
Don't buy into this notion that all of this is just happening globally and there's nothing that America can do to escape a dim fate.
They did this to us, and that's why MAGA exists in Congress, to ensure that they're unable to continue to do so if you give us the power of oversight.
One specter of policy where the Biden administration is utterly failing is foreign policy.
So let's look at a global perspective.
Under this disoriented foreign policy of Joe Biden and the just ghoulish establishment experts that he's assembled, America is pursuing many of the neoconservative interventionist policies abroad that failed our country during the George W. Bush era.
And I say that as a Republican.
Many of those policies are continuing to fail today under Joe Biden.
We spent 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite President Trump's attempt to disentangle America from these foreign failures.
But now, Joe Biden has sent our troops right back into the fray, increasing American troop presence in the paradises of Syria, Somalia, and of course, and most notably, Ukraine.
And like the $40 billion we sent to Ukraine, we support all these endeavors with your tax dollars.
What do we get out of these massive shipments of U.S. materiel and cash and personnel overseas?
Nobody really knows.
When pressed, most of the regime's apologists just ramble on about protecting democracy abroad or countering some obscure Islamist organization that, like when we destroy it, ultimately fractures into a hundred more different cells.
In Syria and Libya and Iraq...
We go topple these strong men and then we plunge their countries into civil war and sectarian violence.
You're welcome for all the liberty and freedom.
Look at what's happening in Iraq right now.
There was a very interesting piece that came out where Muqtad al-Sadr is actually withdrawing many of his political representatives and the people in his political coalition and his party from the parliament in Iraq.
Now do you think Muqtad al-Sadr Stopped caring about politics?
No, he's given up on the parliamentary political system in Iraq.
So, trust me, mark my words, things are about to get a lot worse in Iraq as they fail to be able to use the scaffolding of a fledgling democracy to stop blood from spilling in their streets.
The Wall Street Journal recently published a searing critique of U.S. interventionist policies in Africa.
In Africa.
We, with your money, with your neighbors, train primitive armies from assembled tribes that we call countries.
But like, are they really?
Are these African nations really like nation states the way we would think about them?
But we go do all these train and equip missions and seldom does it end well.
In Mali and Burkina Faso and Guinea and Sudan and in many more places, there are armies that we've worked with Who've decided that they don't like their civilian governments anymore and they overthrow them.
Sometimes with bloodshed.
Sometimes it's a bloodless coup.
Often the officers and soldiers we train are engaged in the very animation of that violence and that work.
Are there better uses for the US military than like training the next generation of African warlords to become more capable in executing their coup d'etat?
It's not like this was an impossible outcome to predict.
Third world generals, or warlords, they get training, funding, and weapons, and then they decide to seize power.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and General Milley have admitted that they don't have the ability to assess another military's will to fight.
Here's that clip.
Secretary Austin, are you capable of assessing whether another has the will to fight?
No, we're not.
And that's the point that the chairman made earlier.
So, they can't gauge the will to fight.
And I guess they can't gauge the will of some of these folks we train to, like, not overthrow their civilian leadership as well.
Maybe we can't really gauge loyalty.
It is really unwise for us to be training future African coup leaders, sometimes even at West Point.
And it's probably more going on than you even know about.
Many of the American patriots who spend time away from their families training Africans in Africa are actually my constituents stationed at Eglin and Hurlburt Air Force bases specifically.
Rear Admiral Jamie Sands, commander of U.S. Special Operations in Africa, said, quote, There's no one more surprised or disappointed when partners that we're working with or have been working with for a while in some cases decide to overthrow their government.
Yeah, I would say that would probably be surprising and disappointing.
Is it really surprising anymore, though?
But as the Wall Street Journal piece points out, when it happens over and over, Maybe we shouldn't be so surprised.
If the guy in charge of training African militaries doesn't and can't tell when our African counterparts are planning to overthrow their government, then who can?
What a mess.
Now, all of this alone is enough cause for concern.
But when we have been distracted abroad, training African warlords to be coup-proficient, trouble is brewing here in our own backyard.
Russia and China and Iran are taking serious provocative steps in our geopolitical neighborhood.
We are so busy mowing the grass of the folks down the street.
We forgot to pull the weeds in our own backyard.
Recently, the Washington Post has reported that Nicaragua has authorized the entry of Russian troops, planes, and ships into its territory for the purpose of training and law enforcement and emergency response.
Russia being in the region seems to be the freaking emergency.
You might also remember that President Ortega of Nicaragua spent days as the president of the Marxist Sandinista Junta of the National Reconstruction.
But that's not all.
Venezuela just signed a 20-year cooperation plan with Iran.
The plan includes oil cooperation, petrochemicals, defense, agriculture, tourism, and culture.
It even includes the repair of Venezuelan refineries.
It seems that our sanctions have actually driven Venezuela right into the hands of our enemies.
Do we even have a long-term plan here?
Surely strengthening the bonds between our enemies was not, like, top of the list for foreign policy objectives, but it's exactly what we have allowed to have happen in Nicaragua and Venezuela.
And the big winners are Russia and Iran!
Well, we gotta spend $40 billion in Ukraine to counter Russia.
There's more.
Reuters has published a great piece about China's domination of South America.
Under President Biden's watch, and with the exception of Mexico, our largest trading partner, China has overtaken the United States in Latin America, and the gap is widening every day.
Proust's former ambassador to China, Juan Carlos Cupanye, has admitted to Reuters that China is, quote, the most important commercial, economic, and technological partner with Latin America.
With economic dependency comes political reliance and domination.
Chinese investment through its Belt and Road Initiative has exposed the endgame for China.
Through trade and investment capital and infrastructure projects, China will expand until entire continents are under its control.
And while the United States piddles around in Somalia and Ukraine, China is setting the stage for the creation of puppet regimes just a few hours from our southern border, a short boat ride away in Venezuela's case.
A serious nation would confront the bears and dragons at our doorstep.
Instead, Joe Biden would have America treed by the world's chihuahuas.
The United States now more than ever desperately needs a new foreign policy aimed at securing our interests at home and protecting our neighbors and allies from Chinese expansionism.
This is our neck of the woods, and we can't afford to tolerate another Cold War in South America.
Sometimes modern problems require tested and tried solutions.
If we want to win the future, we need a new Monroe Doctrine.
It's time to get serious before it's too late.
It's time to protect our geopolitical home court.
That would be a responsible behavior from a real superpower.
But no, instead, on Capitol Hill, we're not focused on combating Russia and China and the Western Hemisphere.
We've got the January 6th hearings going on.
And let me just provide context here.
I don't watch all these hearings.
I don't think you should watch all these hearings.
They are largely contrived performances.
And so I'm not going to break down every allegation made.
I think that's what the left and their Republican puppets want.
I think they want all of us so focused on, you know, tweezing through their lies and distortions in these hearings that we're not out there actually talking about the real things going on that can impact American quality of life.
So in these J6 hearings, there are all these performances.
And one thing that just caught me They are engaged in a process that would never be allowed in a court of law.
It's like hearsay on hearsay.
And nothing demonstrates that more than when they have hired staff out there performing the narrative of the committee.
Take a listen.
My name is Marcus Childress, and I'm an investigative counsel for the select committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol.
On December 19th, President Trump tweeted about the January 6th rally and told attendees, be there, we'll be wild.
Many of the witnesses that we interviewed were inspired by the president's call and came to D.C. for January 6th.
So think about what you're watching there.
A hired staff member reading off of a teleprompter, In a committee room, edited by an ABC producer, played on primetime.
Did they even hire the investigators because of their investigation skills?
Or did they hire these people based on how well they would read a teleprompter and perform?
Did you have to try out to be a staffer on the January 6th committee by seeing how good your teleprompter skills were?
How good you were on camera retelling other people's stories?
So this wasn't direct evidence.
And there's a reason why courts don't allow this type of hearsay, because it's unreliable.
It necessarily flows through the biases and the lens of the person telling the story, not the person who actually witnessed direct events or can offer specific evidence regarding a specific allegation.
So I just was deeply, deeply struck by that and how There's another element of these hearings that just demands a debunking.
The obsession with linking Donald Trump to the Proud Boys.
Take a listen.
We learned that this comment during the presidential debate actually led to an increase in membership from the Proud Boys.
Would you say that Proud Boys numbers increased after the stand-back, stand-by comment?
Exponentially.
I'd say tripled, probably.
With the potential for a lot more eventually.
So the argument here is that Donald Trump was out there purposefully dog-whistling to the Proud Boys in a presidential debate in order to swell their numbers so that they would have a force that could overtake the Capitol Police and the Capitol and keep Trump in power.
Craziness.
Like, the predicate for this argument is that Trump somehow had the intent to invoke the Proud Boys by name to help their membership.
The problem is, that isn't what happened at all.
In fact, it was Chris Wallace in the presidential debate, formerly a famed CNN Plus, who brought up the Proud Boys.
I'm not entirely sure Donald Trump knew what the Proud Boys were before this moment where it was brought up by Chris Wallace.
Take a listen.
Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland?
Sure, I'm willing to do that.
Are you prepared to specifically...
Do it.
Well, go ahead, sir.
I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing.
So what are you saying?
I'm willing to do anything.
I want to see peace.
Then do it, sir.
Say it.
Do it.
Say it.
Do you want to call them?
What do you want to call them?
Give me a name.
Give me a name.
White supremacists and white supremacists.
Who would you like me to condemn?
White supremacists and white supremacists.
Proud boys, stand back and stand by.
So you can clearly see there that Chris Wallace is trying to bait Trump and bait the Proud Boys.
And it in fact was Chris Wallace invoking them that likely led to a rise in their membership.
Of course, when an organization gets mentioned on a nationally televised, internationally televised presidential debate, They're going to get more attention.
More people would take a look at them.
But that is not at the feet of Donald Trump as the committee would have you believe.
We are broadcasting live out of the United States Capitol Complex.
Tim on Facebook says the whole purpose of the January 6th committee is to stop President Trump's 2024 run.
A lot of people are talking about that and that very well may be the objective.
I think the American people see what's happening with great clarity.
We also have some breaking news about Twitter.
They hate conservatives.
We all know this because of the constant gaslighting that they engage in.
So here's some material for your next argument.
Look at this screenshot of Twitter employees discussing how they, quote, successfully deplatformed Trump.
But banning libs of TikTok may not be in line with their, quote, fiduciary interests.
They even admit banning libs of TikTok might erode trust given that users already think that they are irredeemably biased against conservatives.
Twitter suffers from the same disease as the federal government.
Thousands of people working in the HR wokeism sector.
It's a bloated mess.
And as we can see, the Twitter employees spend their time conspiring to undermine conservatives, probably because they aren't doing anything else particularly helpful to improve the platform.
Idle hands may be the devil's workshop.
Nevertheless, this is very telling.
Libs of TikTok has become public enemy number one to the left.
Why is that?
Well, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the account, it reposts videos of leftists saying absurd things on their TikTok accounts.
That's right, it reposts videos that the leftists are posting themselves.
It's literally a mirror.
And the account has gained a million followers.
So, to recap, one of the most popular and hated accounts on Twitter just reposts videos of liberals being themselves.
And it turns out that simply exposing the insanity of your average leftist may be the most effective strategy at winning the culture war.
Don't believe us?
We'll just take a look at their content conveniently located for your viewing pleasure at Libs of TikTok.
Thanks so much everyone for joining us.
We're going to have a lot of reports coming your way this week as the left continues their advance against freedom.
We have major reports on our work to protect the Second Amendment, to oppose the gun control that I think too many Republicans are willing to sign up for.
So we'll have a lot more on that tomorrow.
We'll be kicking off around noon Eastern, 11 o'clock Central.
Make sure you subscribe, that you've got your notifications turned on, and that you'll join us soon for more Firebrand.
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