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June 27, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
38:04
Episode 56 LIVE: Soldiers, Guns, & Narcos – 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 for 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?
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!
Congressman Matt Gaetz here, broadcasting live out of our office on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. A lot going on.
I want to update you on major developments with military policy that were debated extensively in the House Armed Services Committee.
Colombia is potentially going in the way of Venezuela with everything we're seeing in their elections.
And we start on the issue of guns.
That's right.
As Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden and the rest of that gang tries to deprive American citizens of their Second Amendment rights, we see the Trump Court, the Supreme Court, actually vindicating Second Amendment rights.
In this case, Clarence Thomas has once again proved why he is one of the most beloved dependable justices on the court.
In a 6-3 opinion released this morning and authored by Thomas, the Supreme Court struck down a New York handgun licensing law that required applicants to show a special need to defend themselves.
The state law required anyone applying for a concealed carry permit to show, quote, proper cause.
Naturally, quote, proper cause was never interpreted by New York courts to include self-defense or personal protection.
So other blue states like California, Hawaii, Maryland, and Massachusetts, New Jersey, they imposed similar restrictions where you actually have to prove the need to get your firearm license.
These laws were never enacted in good faith.
The bar was set so high that it was next to impossible to be approved for a carry permit.
And that was the point.
To keep you from owning a gun.
Never mind the fact that the criminals will have them anyway.
These laws were a clear violation of the Second Amendment and in line with the radical left's anti-gun agenda.
But thanks to six conservative justices and, of course, Trump putting justices on the court allowed us to get to that great number, this law exists no more.
And the more states see this and fall in line, the more citizens will be able to exercise their freedom.
The entire United States will soon become a shall-issue jurisdiction, meaning that when you apply for a carry permit, you will be issued one.
Subject, of course, to the usual restrictions requiring that you're not a felon and training and background checks and so forth.
And those are the conditions in many states.
But the key to this decision that was just released this morning You no longer must show a need to exercise this right to own a firearm.
As Justice Thomas states in the opinion, there is, quote, no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officials some special need.
It was the right holding, it was the right call, and it was long overdue.
For too long, Americans in blue states have been at the mercy of violent criminals, unable to defend themselves on their own streets, in their own neighborhoods.
The Second Amendment not only protects the right to keep and bear arms, it protects this fundamental Right to have them, to use them if necessary, to defend yourself, and to be able to get a gun without demonstrating the special need.
The Second Amendment on your right to self-defense does not end at the doorstep.
We've always known this, and now, thanks to this holding, it's the law.
Many thanks to the New York Rifle and Pistol Association for bringing this case.
It wasn't easy, but we thank patriots for fighting for our rights, and we urge others to do so.
The fight to save the Second Amendment isn't over, but we've won this battle and we're finally on offense.
It's great to see and we have to remain on offense in the Congress to ensure that we protect the Second Amendment against these red flag laws.
The United States Senate has, as we predicted, Pass the red flag laws that allow your federal tax dollars to be used to bribe the states to take away due process, to inject guns into like every marital dispute, business dispute, neighbor dispute.
Go back and watch our full Boebert episode where Lauren Boebert, the co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus, joins us and breaks down the elements of that legislation and what you should be opposed to.
So moving on to the world.
In Colombia, we see a country that is on the backslide.
I was born in Miami.
I spent the early years of my life there.
And I remember when you would meet a Venezuelan in Miami, they were typically people that were very well off.
I mean, Venezuela was the jewel of South America.
They had natural resources.
They had trade.
They had a stable finance system.
And then you know what happened?
The people of Venezuela voted themselves into socialism, and ultimately they're probably going to have to fight their way out of it.
Colombia was actually America's greatest partner in the region because the Colombians stepped up for themselves and won their country back.
Google Plan Colombia sometime.
It's often used as a model for how the United States can have foreign engagement that isn't us becoming the policeman for some other country or the piggy bank for another country.
Matter of fact, in Plan Colombia, for every dollar the United States put in, Colombia put in 10. And that allowed them to move to governments that were more responsive to the people and that were less tolerant of narco-trafficking.
Well, there's been an election in Colombia, and former Qatar mayor and ex-rebel fighter Gustavo Petro has been elected as Colombia's first left-wing president.
Mark this moment.
Doesn't end well.
Figures show he took about half the vote, a little more than half, 50.5%, defeating his rival by a margin of about 700,000 ballots.
So this wasn't an illegitimate election.
Petro legitimately won on a socialist platform.
The results represent a significant shift for Colombia, which has been run by moderates and conservatives for decades.
But who is Gustavo Petro exactly, this new president to be sworn in in Colombia?
Here's what we know.
In the 1980s, Petro was a member of the now-defunct M19 movement.
The rebel left-wing group was one of the many guerrilla groups fighting against the government.
He then served in the political opposition as a senator and congressman, as well as mayor of Bogota.
After serving in prison for illegal arms possession, He was able to engage in that public service, I guess you could call it that.
So during this campaign for president, Petro ran on a radical platform, promising to tackle inequity by offering free university education, pension reforms, high taxes on unproductive land.
He also promised to completely implement a 2016 peace deal with the FARC, which is a militant organization that's caused a lot of death in Colombia.
And the 50-year struggle with the FARC ended with a deal that politically empowered the FARC. And so you had folks like the current president who was defeated, Duque, seeking to not give the FARC tremendous political power.
Now you have Petro seeking to empower the very rebels who were fighting against the government.
Many of the president-elect's proposals are policies that deconstruct Colombia's well-established and high-functioning institutions, from the national pension program to the oil industry, as well as the redistribution of social security funds and the dismantling of the health system.
Petro also follows many of the neo-fascist elements of politics, including silencing his critics, stating his goal to grab control of private assets, befriending dictators.
Colombia has undoubtedly elected an anti-establishment president who will almost certainly undo decades of democratic and economic programs.
This just very, very tumultuous situation in Colombia right now is ideal for a soft fascist takeover.
The violent 2021 protests, which killed at least 21 people and injured thousands more, widened the distance between traditional Colombian politics and, you know, the Ivan Duque kind of current president model and this, like, neo-fascist, neo-communist element represented by Petro.
So what does all this mean in terms of the United States and our relationship with Colombia?
We know that Petro is more than willing to cozy up to dictators.
Like Maduro and Putin.
Petro was the only candidate for president in Colombia who refused to call out Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine.
He also stated that he wants to renew relations with Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, the socialist leader who has wreaked havoc on the Venezuelan people and Latin America in general.
Petro argued in one of the presidential debates that, quote, isn't that quaint?
So for perspective, narco-funded dissidents and guerrillas aligned with the Maduro dictatorship control much of Colombia's border with Venezuela.
According to recent intelligence assessments, Russia is militarizing that border and training Venezuelan militias known as colectivos, thus bolstering Venezuela's already complex system of institutionalized crime.
You cannot have, like, friendly relations with your neighbor that's a narco state that is sending people in your country to destabilize your economy, destabilize the safety of your citizens.
Oh wait, is that kind of what's going on with the U.S. and Mexico?
Hmm.
We have many Colombians in the great state of Florida who are concerned about the future of Colombia.
If Petro gets his way and the policies that he's intending to implement actually get enacted, we will likely witness Colombia turning into the next Venezuela.
The threat of a left-wing totalitarian ideology is spreading in the Western Hemisphere.
It is intensifying and we must remain alert.
I'm far more concerned about communism and fascism being on the march in Latin America than I am what's going on in the eastern portions of Ukraine.
We stand with Colombian Americans in praying that Petro does not entirely destroy the great country of Colombia the way we've seen Venezuela destroyed.
And to that end, we hope for the triumph of freedom and democracy in the Western Hemisphere.
We will be following this matter very closely.
A number of Northwest Floridians are attached to military missions that have a really, really strong connection to Latin America.
That's the area of responsibility for some of my neighbors, where they end up being deployed for train and equip missions.
And we want to make sure that we don't see Columbia move in this left-wing direction.
It would not be a good thing for Florida.
It would not be a good thing for Northwest Florida.
It would not be a good thing for the world.
Late into the evening, actually into the morning, the House Armed Services Committee was debating the National Defense Authorization Act.
This is something that happens every year and the great news is that there's over half a billion dollars for Northwest Florida's priorities that are reflected in that legislation because we have the highest concentration of active duty military in the country in our district.
We're incredibly proud of that.
One thing we are not proud of is wokeness At the Pentagon.
It is a cancer on our military.
And wokeness is now being corporatized through policies that are called DEI policies.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Who could be against those things?
They sound great, right?
Diversity, equity, and inclusion.
This is critical race theory on steroids forced down the throats of American workers so that big corporations can pat themselves on the back and virtue signal.
It's actually pretty disgusting.
But there was an effort last night to take these anti-American, arguably racist DEI policies and apply them to any company that does business with the United States military.
Floridians know that we have so many businesses that support the military mission.
Many of them are filled with patriotic Americans who love what they do, but they don't want to be focused on what their company's doing for Pride Month or whether or not they have critical race theory and their HR training.
They want to build the best missiles and munitions and technologies and capabilities in the world, and that's what we should have our military focusing on.
You think over in China, they're worried about their diversity, equity, and inclusion?
No.
They're worried about beating us, dominating us, making sure your grandchildren grow up speaking Mandarin.
Well, we're against that.
And I'm very proud to announce that last night, I joined with several colleagues and led the effort to block DEI from being applied to contractors who are doing work With the United States military.
There was an amendment offered by Democrat Anthony Brown of Maryland.
And one of my colleagues, Mike Gallagher, just an absolute brilliant guy.
He is a PhD.
He represents, I guess, the Green Bay Area in Wisconsin.
And he just leveled the DEI argument.
Take a listen.
All right, I suspect we're going to have a lot of diversity, inclusion, and equity debates.
So I just want to make one point, and then I don't intend to get involved in a lot of these debates.
The entire diversity, inclusion, and equity cottage industry is based on shoddy social science.
The most recent meta-analysis we have of DIE programs Like DIU-related training show that it's counterproductive.
A recent study looked at 50 academic studies and the result was that these programs are generally ineffective at achieving their stated goals, they reinforce pre-existing biases, they increase minority turnover, And they increase intergroup hostility.
So we're not achieving what you're trying to achieve.
Furthermore, whenever the services come and cite some study, if you actually take the time to read the study or the footnote, you realize that the social science is bogus.
So for example, the Navy came here and said, because they were saying diversity is our strength, they have this report that says diverse organizations are 35% more likely to outperform their non-diverse counterparts.
As if this could be quantified, right?
So to support this, they cite a 2015 McKinsey study called Diversity Matters, which looks at board diversity, using something called the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, where they quantify the racial composition of company boards.
And they claim that racial diversity correlates with greater earnings for a company.
Except the formula is so convoluted and dumb that a company with a board that has one white, one Native American, one Latino, and seven black members would score as less diverse than a board with six white and four black members.
They also break the data set into quartiles and they only compare the top quartile to the bottom quartile.
They omit half the data set.
So the correlation is weak to begin with, and if you actually analyze the whole data set, there is no correlation at all.
So my only point with all this is that these programs, this cottage industry, are based on, at best, inconclusive research.
And the picture that's emerging is actually one that shows they're counterproductive to the aim of promoting diversity or reducing intergroup hostility.
I yield the remainder of my time.
So after Mike Gallagher laid them out, we actually flipped two Democrats on the committee, Elaine Luria of Virginia and Stephanie Murphy of Florida, and they joined the Republicans, and we got DEI out of this legislation, one of the biggest wins that we were able to secure.
We're back broadcasting live here out of the Longworth House office building, and we got the live stream up.
I wanted to thank Blessed to be here from saying, let's get our country back.
And we also have Sherry saying corporate wokeism is BS. And on Facebook, Adam says communism kills.
I could not agree more.
Now, one of the areas where we did not get the win that our military members deserve in the National Defense Authorization Act, the vaccine mandate.
I worked with several colleagues to work on legislation so that there would be no vaccine mandate, that the people that were affected by the vaccine mandate would be reinstated with their rank and pay, and that the military would be required to have policies that recognize natural immunity. and that the military would be required to have policies Critically important.
We lost all of these votes, keeping the vaccine mandate in place and continuing to punish our brave service members.
That is so totally wrong.
Here's an exchange that I had with Democrat John Garamendi on this subject.
Take a listen.
This is the wrong place to be fighting the vaccination issue.
We're talking about the military, the American military's ability to be able to fight tonight.
You know who's not going to be able to fight tonight?
The pilots who are no longer flying for the Air Force, the SEALs who are being separated from the Navy, the thousands of troops who will not be able to wear the uniform in the United States Army.
They won't be fighting tonight.
And it's because of ludicrous policy that does not recognize natural immunity.
I'm in strong support of the Hartzler Amendment, and I firmly believe, across the entire enterprise of government, if Big Pharma could find a way to make money on natural immunity, we would have a broader public health strategy that recognizes natural immunity.
But because Big Pharma can't make money that way, This is not specific to the military, but across the enterprise of government, we don't recognize it.
And it's illogical to suggest that because we don't know the duration of the resiliency that natural immunity gives you, that you should not consider that as part of a health and readiness decision.
We don't know how long The duration of support and protection the vaccine gives is.
And by the way, that's not because we're not trying hard enough, it's because viruses evolve.
So as the virus evolves, and as natural immunity demonstrates antibodies, one could think of Natural immunity very much is Mother Nature's vaccine, giving human beings the ability to fight off the virus, to have lower levels of medical acuity.
And I'm sorry this debate is taking a little longer than some people would like, but there are lives that are being destroyed and ruined by these vaccine mandates and by the fail to recognize natural immunity.
So if we have to take a few extra hours to make our point and to debate them, we're going to do so because we got a lot of Brave patriots, heroes in this country who are taking off that uniform for the last time each and every day because of crazy policies.
Policies that are not based in science or logic or in how we view our freedoms.
I yield back.
The debate was spirited but we did not come out on top.
Not only did every Democrat vote to keep these mandates in place, they were joined by one Republican.
That's right, the worst Republican in Congress, Liz Cheney.
Now, I remember when Liz Cheney was going like totally woke, supporting Dr. Fauci, opposing the freedom of Americans.
I mean, out in Wyoming, it's a very pro-freedom group.
That's a message Liz Cheney is likely to receive resoundingly.
Remember early in this when she put up the tweet, the real men wear masks tweet?
Throw that up.
Yes, yes.
Is this not the image of American exceptionalism and greatness?
Dick Cheney with a blue mask on and Liz cheering that on.
So she's for the mandates.
And I think it shows a disrespect for our troops.
But you know what?
That's kind of in line with Liz Cheney.
Liz Cheney has no problem sending American troops to go die in foreign wars for the profit of her political donors.
But then she won't stand up for those very same troops and military families when they want to refuse an experimental vaccine when they are some of the most low-risk Americans possible.
I think those troops should be reinstated.
Here was my debate on that subject.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This is also on the vaccine mandate issue, but the amendment expresses the sense of Congress that in addition to disapproving of the vaccine mandate, that we believe that service members who have already been separated ought to be restored with their pay and with their rank.
And I would observe that in times of fear, our nation has proved time and again that we are capable of making very irrational decisions.
And that fear can come with the fog of war.
In the earliest days of our republic, The Congress passed and President Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Act in response to what was considered an imminent war upcoming with France.
These laws were a direct violation of our First Amendment rights, and after the perceived danger had passed, the illegal laws were repealed.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, a terrified nation looked inward, And our government forced the internment of Japanese Americans.
During the Cold War, driven by fear of communism, our government targeted and blacklisted Americans deemed suspect.
After 9-11, we passed the Patriot Act that allowed terrible invasions of the privacy of our citizens.
But the good news for America is that in many of these circumstances, after time had passed, the decisions did not stand up to logic or common sense or reason or the freedoms enshined in our Constitution.
And so we got rid of them And we did what we could to make right.
And this is indeed what is called for when we evaluate the horrendous military vaccine mandate.
A vaccine, by the way, that we know with 100% certainty does not prevent COVID. It is a vaccine created with the intent of preventing high-risk Americans from becoming fatally ill, but our service members are predominantly low risk.
Our military is one of the few jobs left in America where individual health and wellness is a mandatory condition to keep the job.
That's not the case in almost any other job that we can think of.
And yet, the Department of Defense's policy is forcing the services to fire thousands of service members at a time when we are indeed in a recruiting crisis.
Think of this.
According to testimony we've received, the pool of young adults fit to serve is around 23%, and DOD is calling it the Nintendo generation.
And a reason that we will now endure recruiting challenges going forward, a reason why recruiting tours are even being extended in the Army, is because young people look at this vaccine mandate and it makes them less likely to serve in the military.
I don't know that there are any young people who say, you know what, I want to serve in the military because of the vaccine mandate.
I know there are a great many who won't.
And so for us to be able to Endure that recruiting challenge and to be able to strive, I would suggest that the best thing the Congress could do is express our displeasure with the mandate and our desire that the Department of Defense reinstate these individuals who never should have been separated in the first place.
I yield back.
We're back live on Facebook.
Steve says, Liz is a joke!
I don't know if it's a funny joke.
She's pretty dangerous.
And also on Facebook, Glenn Jones says, Preach that hate, Matt.
Keep Americans divided.
You are a disgrace.
It's not an act of hate to stand up for our active duty service members who want to make sure that they have a patriotic contribution to our country.
They shouldn't be subject to an unfair vaccine mandate, and I will keep fighting for them out of love, not hate.
It's also love of country that causes us to want to secure our border.
An unsecure border is A threat to our economy.
It is a threat to our physical security.
But it is also a threat to our national security.
And we had a debate about this in the House Armed Services Committee because there is a bombing range right on the border and illegal aliens continue to cross into that bombing range.
It's the Barry Goldwater Range in Arizona.
And that's affecting our ability to test weapons and to field those weapons for our warfighters.
So I had what I thought would be a pretty simple amendment.
We would have a study and a report on the extent to which illegal aliens crossing into this bombing range would be harmful or problematic.
You won't even be able to guess how the Democrats responded to that amendment.
Take a listen.
The Berry-Goldwater Range in Arizona is a national treasure, a critical asset for research development, tests, and evaluation.
I was recently in Yuma, Arizona, met with officials who operate security on that bombing range, and they say that operations are affected every day, sometimes multiple times a day, by illegal immigrants who are coming into that space and limiting the operational testing envelope.
So this is an amendment to get a briefing from DOD about the effects of this illegal immigration on the operations of the very Goldwater Range and inform future legislative action on the subject.
That's the amendment.
My statute of amendment is simple.
It keeps the substance of the original amendment offered by Representative Gates but removes unnecessary inflammatory and racist language about immigrants from the text.
I'm rising in support of Mr. Gallego's amendment.
Illegal immigration is one thing to say that, but I think the terminology of illegal alien is the big issue.
So this is what's happening right here.
I offer this amendment so that we can evaluate the extent to which illegal immigration is affecting this bombing range.
Mr. Gallego's perfecting amendment does the exact same thing, but he says it's racist to call illegal immigrants illegal immigrants.
And all that the perfecting amendment does is change illegal immigrant to irregular migration.
This type of virtue signaling is ridiculous.
The use of language actually matters.
These people are not in our country legally, and I think that we should reflect on that, and that the policy on this road, we're not That gaslights policies of open borders throughout the entire enterprise of government.
And that's really the goal.
The goal is to just go to this open border system.
I mean, we are now in a world in the Biden presidency where every single month we break the record for the last month for the most number of migrant encounters possible.
And that affects our economy, that affects the crime rate, and it affects our military readiness because we cannot test at this installation.
For them to say it's not illegal immigration, It undermines the purpose of the amendment, and I would encourage my colleagues to reject the substitute.
I yield back.
Here's what you have to know here.
Even when Democrats agree with us on policies related to illegal immigration and illegal aliens, they won't even join us in supporting the description of those events as illegal immigration.
They won't allow us to call illegal aliens illegal aliens.
You see, they want to call it irregular migration.
Undocumented immigrants.
Like, undocumented makes it sound like someone left some paperwork behind.
Not that they broke into our country illegally without permission.
It's really crazy.
And when the left isn't virtue signaling on immigration, they're lying on important capabilities.
I introduced an amendment to the Authorization Act that would have called out Lloyd Austin's lies on hypersonics.
Lloyd Austin just blew up and exploded and was all kind of aggrieved at my suggestion that America was behind on hypersonics.
And you know what?
We are.
Take a listen.
This amendment lays out the sense of Congress that the Secretary of Defense did not accurately assess our hypersonic capabilities when testifying before the committee.
It observes that on March 1st, General Van Herc told us that China was doing tenfold what we were doing.
On April 27th, Secretary Kendall told us that China had fielded more capability than we had.
China has moved to deploy hypersonic weapons more aggressively than the United States has, definitely.
They have fielded more capability than we have, and they have fairly aggressive development programs in a number of areas.
I wouldn't put a number...
More aggressive than ours.
They're testing and developing more, they're fielding more, and they're more capable.
Right?
That's the essence of this thing?
They have invested more and they are more capable, but you have to be very careful about these comparisons.
Thank you.
That is just like exactly the opposite of what Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
On May 12th, our distinguished chairman, Mr. Smith, said on hypersonics, I think it's really important we point out we're behind the Chinese and the Russians right now because they have deployed them.
On hypersonics, I think it's really important to point out we are behind the Chinese and the Russians right now because they have deployed them.
Okay, I'm impressed that we're coming up.
We've got a bunch of programs that are moving forward.
We're going to get there.
We haven't deployed them yet, so we've got to keep moving.
We're moving in a good direction.
I'm quite confident that a year from now when we have this conversation, we will be caught up, but I don't want to give anyone the misimpression that we're caught up.
We're not.
And yet, on April 5th, when Secretary of Defense Austin came before us, he and I were in a bit of a disagreement about something, and I suggested that we were behind in hypersonics.
And he erupted at that suggestion, saying that, how could I possibly believe that we were behind in hypersonics, when in fact we are?
I've also seen that we're behind, Mr. Secretary.
We're behind in hypersonics.
We failed to deter Russia.
Last year, China flew more sorties— So what do you mean we're behind in hypersonics?
How do you— Okay, who's ahead in hypersonics?
How do you make that assessment?
It was a briefing that Mr. Cooper called that really, I think, informed my perspective on the issue greatly.
I know we can't discuss all those elements here, but every member of this committee knows that we're behind in hypersonics.
And yet we had a Secretary of Defense sit before the Congress and the rest of the country and just lose it at the suggestion that we were.
And for us to continue to gain, the reason this is important for the sense of Congress is because for us to gain the confidence of The members we need to pass these bills, it's really important, I think, that we reflect on this specific capability, what it means in terms of nuclear deterrence, global deterrence, and we have to be honest.
We have to be honest, and for us to do that, I think we have to point out that when the Secretary of Defense was here, he was not.
I yield back.
We love our troops.
Secretary of Defense, maybe not so much.
He lied to us.
And to send $850 billion to a liar is something that we should scrutinize very, very closely.
Thanks so much for joining us.
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I love to get your perspective on the things that we're talking about.
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Thanks for being a part of our Firebrand audience.
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