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Nov. 10, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
34:10
Episode 74 LIVE: McCarthy, McConnell, McDaniel: McFailure (feat. Russ Vought) – Firebrand with Ma…
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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 keep hurting him.
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.
It will disappoint our expectations.
The media will tell you that Biden's closing message on ultra MAGA and threats to democracy worked.
Establishment Republicans will blame Trump, as they always do.
Never mind that other presidents from George W. Bush to Barack Obama failed to keep their otherwise winning coalitions together during non-presidential elections.
As I wrote in a recent column published in the Daily Caller, quote, we had an economic boom under President Trump, secured the border, and rewrote the political map.
Why would we stop the progress now and go back to Republicans supported by Wall Street?
We shouldn't bench our star quarterback at halftime.
There are so many more accomplishments left for us to achieve with President Trump.
There's still much swamp to be drained in every administrative agency of our government.
There's still miles of wall to be built and long-time counterproductive foreign policies to be reversed.
President Trump was and is targeted by the intelligence community because he applies intelligent thought to avoid wars, not start them.
The saying goes, if you're taking flack, you're over the target.
President Trump has not stopped taking flack from the lying media, the non-stop investigations, and that's because he's the swamp's worst nightmare.
So advocacy organizations will say that unmarried women went overwhelmingly against Republicans and that the red wave hit a wall.
Matter of fact, one of our Twitch commenters just put up that 68% of unmarried women voted Democrat.
Now substantial data suggests that we've got work to do there and we shouldn't be so arrogant as to assume we know how or why that dynamic fully played out.
So we should listen, learn, and lead.
But to lead in a slim majority, we need leaders, not people who have sold shares of themselves for such a long period of time to the lobbyists and PACs that they no longer have agency over their own decisions.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wants to be Speaker.
He is not my first choice, or frankly, even in my top 100. Before the election, audio recordings were leaked of conversations between McCarthy, Liz Cheney, and House Whip Steve Scalise.
Because I was criticizing Liz Cheney with words, they thought I might be putting people in danger.
Steve Scalise, who wants to be a majority leader, said that my criticism of Liz Cheney might have been criminal.
Here's my discussion with Tucker Carlson on that matter.
Congressman, thanks so much for coming on.
So you were accused by Kevin McCarthy, the guy who is in line to be Speaker of the House, of committing an act of violence by giving your opinion, by saying he was against the former president.
Like, is speech violence?
What do you make of this?
Well, I was just describing the facts.
You had a group of people who were going to try to join with Democrats to impeach President Trump, and that is precisely what has played out.
You mentioned he's in line to be Speaker.
I mean, I don't know that Kevin McCarthy's in line to be Speaker.
I don't know if the guy could get an account on Truth Social at this point, based on the inconsistency between the recordings and what he says to us.
And it is debasing for Republicans to give this guy a standing ovation after he smears Trump, lies to the country, and then tries to sick I mean,
at the time, I was protecting President Trump from impeachment, and Kevin McCarthy was protecting Liz Cheney from criticism, and now she is owning them with their own words.
And maybe Liz Cheney has done us a favor because now, finally, you don't have to be a lobbyist with a $5,000 check to know what Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise really think.
You know, I was upfront about the fact that I was going to politically oppose Liz Cheney.
I went to Wyoming.
I made my case there.
This notion that you can have these sniveling calls and try to foment action against Republicans by Big Tech and the DOJ is not fitting of leadership.
Well, that's exactly right.
I mean, you can represent Republican voters if you're personally annoyed with Trump.
Okay.
But you cannot represent Republican leaders if you're calling on big tech to censor voices who criticize you and if you're accusing people who criticize you of committing an illegal act of violence as Steve Scalise did.
Now, you saw Scalise today.
Did he apologize to you for that?
He said he was sorry if it caused many problems, but what I said to Steve Scalise is that if you accuse someone of potentially breaking the law, and by the way, he wasn't reacting to something.
He raised the prospect of the illegality of my statement that Liz Cheney was anti-Trump.
I know I really went out on a limb there, Tucker, but if you accuse someone of breaking the law, you have to say what law you think they broke, and you have to present what evidence you think you have.
And if there is no evidence, you need to acknowledge that.
And if not, then you're like maintaining this fiction for the sake of your own pride.
And that's not what leaders do.
But what you're doing is reading the other side's script.
I mean, listen to these guys talk and they sound like MSNBC contributors.
I'm so triggered.
He criticized me.
That's a crime.
We should boot him off.
We should censor him.
I mean, they're equating speech with violence, calling for censorship and describing disagreement as a criminal act.
How is that not?
How are these people not liberals?
That's what liberals say.
Like, what is this?
Well, you see, I will be the one criticized because people will say this is divisive.
We should be unified against the Democrats.
The problem is the Democrats win if Republicans take power and then think and talk and behave just like the Democrats.
So I'm presenting an alternative vision, and it would be nice if the leadership wasn't the lagging indicator on these things.
They were the last ones to realize that Liz Cheney should have been tossed out of leadership.
I was out there making the case, and ultimately they caught up, but leaders lead from the front.
They're not the lagging indicator.
For Speaker of the House in the...
Next, Congress?
I prefer Ohio's Jim Jordan.
And it is not always easy for a guy from the Deep South to be for someone from a Big Ten state.
But I am certain that Americans didn't hand Republicans this majority in the House just to watch the Speaker's gavel get handed from one member of the California delegation to another.
Jim Jordan is the hardest working, most ethical, most talented member of the House of Representatives.
He is the true leader of our caucus, no matter who has the fancy titles or big offices.
And so with such a slim majority, we shouldn't be starting the C team.
We need to put our star players in a position to shine brightest so that we can attract more people to our policies and ideas.
The policies Kevin McCarthy has pushed, they are as unhelpful as they are unserious.
His commitment to America is predicated on the notion of using federal tax dollars to go hire 200,000 more cops.
You know what?
In my community, we hire our own cops and pay for them out of our own tax funds.
And so if in Detroit they want to go defund the police, I don't think that Floridians should have to pay for it.
Apparently Kevin McCarthy does.
He also thinks we should have the Congress rate your local DA. Guess what?
In Florida, we don't need anyone in Congress rating our local DAs because when we have local DAs who don't follow the law, our Governor Ron DeSantis removes them, as he did recently with a Central Florida DA who just said he wasn't going to enforce the law out of wokeism.
So it doesn't matter to McCarthy that these ideas offend federalism and belie common sense.
They did well in a poll-tested survey, so they must now be doctrine, our commitment.
Weren't the pollsters wrong in this last election anyway?
I have spoken with many Republicans in Congress and many who will join our ranks soon.
None are actually inspired by Kevin McCarthy.
Though many feel financially beholden to him because he is the LeBron James of special interest fundraising.
In this last cycle, Kevin McCarthy, his team, they raised half a billion dollars in campaign money.
That buys a lot of friends.
Or at a minimum, rents them.
Like I said, we don't know how many people will be in this Republican majority, but I can assure you that as of this broadcast, Kevin McCarthy does not have the 218 votes to become Speaker of the House, and we should not give them to him.
Leverage is a critical feature to understand politics.
My guest tonight is Russ Vogt.
He led the Office of Management and Budget under President Trump.
He has not been a bean counter, but in fact a strategist.
Because when you lead the Office of Management and Budget, you have to constantly be deploying strategy in this swamp of Washington DC to accomplish the agenda, to get your priorities funded.
Russ did an amazing job working for President Trump in this role.
He understands strategy and leverage as well as anyone in Washington DC. He leads the Center for Renewing America and joins Firebrand exclusively.
So Russ, thanks for being here.
What is your argument about how House Republicans should approach the Speaker's race?
Thanks for having me.
They have an incredible opportunity.
Right now, after this last election, it was a failure from the standpoint of where the expectations were.
And that was largely because they never ran on anything.
And so this election did reward people that had fought on cultural issues, on America First's agenda.
And so for the members that are going to vote for the speaker, because it is such a small majority, they now have the numbers to be able to deny Kevin McCarthy on the floor.
What's important to know, this is not – there will be a cartel vote.
It's next week.
That's when everyone goes behind closed doors.
They'll have a – the cartel will vote for who they want.
But that's not the actual vote.
The actual vote is on the House of – the floor of the House of Representatives, where every member will go into, with all cameras on them, will have to say, I'm for Kevin McCarthy or I'm for Matt Gaetz or whoever it is.
And they're going to have to justify to their constituents where they were.
They're not going to be able to play the shell game where they say, I am with you, but I'm actually, you weren't behind closed doors.
And so because of that, and because of the unpopularity of leadership for decades now, where we've never really had someone That understood the conservative movement, the America First movement, what we're trying to accomplish.
To realize that the hour is late, we're losing our country.
We have a woke and weaponized government.
You have seen that firsthand.
And we need to go at them with everything we got, with every tool we have, the funding process, the oversight process.
Someone like Jim Jordan understands that.
And all we need is about 10, 15, potentially 20 members to go down there and say, Kevin McCarthy's not happening.
And because this is fundamentally a cartel-busting vote, I think there's all sorts of leverage.
Right now, I believe that he is in deep trouble, and based on the momentum for people like you and I over the next several weeks, I think he's not going to be the speaker.
There's probably not a single consequential decision made during your time in the White House that you didn't weigh in on or have a member of your team weigh in on in a very meaningful, meaningful way.
What do you think it says to Republican voters if their member of Congress votes for Kevin McCarthy?
I think it's business as usual.
I think it's a reflection that that member has decided to not put on their shoulders the reality of leadership.
You, as a member, have the ability, and you've taken this leadership and run with it.
You have a member to be a lion, to roar, and to be able to say, the country Can be saved or not saved on my watch.
And we need members to go out there and make public statements that say, I'm not voting for Kevin McCarthy.
They do that.
They'll be in a position so that the House of Representatives, with the power of the purse, with subpoena power, will be in the hands of someone like Jim Jordan and not Kevin McCarthy, who has taken these options off the table.
Do you think it's problematic that The fundraising apparatus in Washington, D.C. is very central to how people think about leadership races?
I think it's tragic, number one, because it means a member doesn't think about what's necessary to save the country.
So we have this situation with big tech firms that are not private companies.
They have government benefits that allow them to wield powers.
They're the arms of the regime.
And so instead of being able to approach that like you all do in the Judiciary Committee, here's the antitrust reforms that we need, here's the Section 230 repeal that we need, instead of doing that, you're trying to play all the angles and to be able to play it safe, and we're a part of our country right now where you can't play it safe anymore.
And so that's what's tragic, and it doesn't have to be that way, because the most...
Anti-establishment members have the ability to nationalize and be leaders, and people want to fund that.
And you know where that comes from?
It doesn't come from businesses with interest.
It comes from people with $50, $100 that's really hard to give, but they do it because they know, man, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz are going to be...
Fearless and frugal with their hard-earned dollars.
And we look at people like Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama almost as a model of certainly not good policy choices, but structurally liberating from the corrupt features of Washington that get people to serve the special interests instead of their constituents.
I can't tell you how liberating it is to have the perspective that the lobbyists and special interests don't own me and can't even think that they do because they don't even have the opportunity to rent me.
You talk about conflict in a string of tweets.
Folks can find it at RussVoteVought.
And you talk about how Republicans in the upcoming majority need to approach conflict.
You say it needs to be seized.
We need to go out and find the areas where people, where our government is being weaponized and attack that.
And you make the criticism of McCarthy that he will steer a Republican majority away from conflict.
Why do you believe McCarthy will steer people away from conflict?
And what do you think is the consequence of that?
Yeah, I used to be a staffer here in House of Representatives, so I've seen in leadership how they talk about their members, how they think about them.
They use a phrase called member management.
And I used to think that that was like, hey, Matt Gaetz wants to be on some CODEL or something.
It really has nothing to do with that.
It has to be about how they dangle certain fights for their members who care about defunding Planned Parenthood in a way to distract them away from a vote or a consequence that will be destabilizing to their cartel.
And so I call it a cartel because There is so much more policy gains on the table that they could achieve, we could achieve, if they were willing to have conflict and deal with risk.
Not massive, the roof caves in risk, but the risk that the country expects when they put Republicans in charge.
And those are things that are necessary when you use the funding process, when you use the opportunity of a debt limit increase.
Those are things that the Republican leadership teams that we have seen in recent memory Have just run away from.
And yeah, there's risk involved.
Execution will be something that you have to monitor if you're trying to save the country.
But you know what?
People deal with execution problems all over the time and they overcome them.
I love working for Donald Trump because he ate conflict and risk for breakfast.
And that was something that he woke up and said, we're going to save the country.
We're going to take the risk that's necessary to accomplish our policy objectives.
And as a result, he made substantial gains.
We need a speaker like that.
Some of the tools for member management that our viewers might not be aware of.
We've talked about fundraising, but also committee assignments.
Whoever the leadership team is of the Republican and Democrat caucus have A lot of say over whether or not you get to be on a committee of interest to you or whether you're sent out to pasture.
And many of my colleagues are concerned that if they don't vote for McCarthy, maybe they lose a committee assignment, maybe they don't get promoted to a committee of interest.
What would be your message to people concerned about that feature of their public service?
Two points.
Number one, when you fight, you become more powerful.
When you become more powerful, the interests, the establishment, the cartel cannot take action against you.
So if you're competent, if you do your job, if you're back home, you're explaining your vote, and you're fighting, and you're becoming a national lion on the national stage, they do not have the power to get away with it.
Number two, committees are not the end-all, be-all.
So I have long believed that committees was largely a waste of time.
I mean, there's the Judiciary Committee where you make the best bang for your buck, but it comes as a consequence because there are so many things happening on the national stage that require your leadership.
And you look at Marjorie Taylor Greene, She's become a national procedural leader because they kicked her off for a committee, so she goes to the floor, and next thing you know, she knows all the procedure, and that's a great story to tell.
And so it's not to say your committee, your armed service, that's not important.
It's just to say that you're going to land on your feet.
Leaders' lines, they land on their feet, and you're going to have the ability to serve the country either on that committee or in a different way.
We need a pack of lions.
And here would be my message to my colleagues.
No committee assignment is worth it.
The most important vote you take is the vote for speaker.
And really, it's number one through probably a hundred in terms of the most important votes you'll take in the Congress in a given term.
And so don't give that away for something that can be taken away.
For something that really doesn't define who you are as a fighter and as a lion as much as where you stand on the vision and direction and leadership of the conference.
But one feature of this town is that The swamp always finds out what you want and they dangle it in front of you.
For some people it's an appropriation they have to have, some poor spending.
For some people it's a title, a committee assignment.
For some people it's renaming a post office.
And just don't allow your public service to be ransomed.
Jim Jordan told me when I was here in my first term, if you wake up and you want to go to battle on behalf of your constituents, there are so many battles that are calling for you.
Maybe it's a constituent service matter where you can fundamentally change someone's life by getting the government to actually work for them, not against them.
The speech you give that inspires someone to embark upon their own journey in public service.
But the notion that filing some amendment and having a certain committee on your letterhead is so worthy of compromise, I think is disrespectful to the institution, certainly disrespectful to the patriots that have allowed us to be the greatest country on earth.
I was a bit unsettled to see a recent tweet from Kevin McCarthy saying that he was already naming transition teams.
To lead on various issues.
And I thought, gosh, given that we haven't had our leadership elections yet, for him to be setting up transition teams struck me as a bit premature.
I wonder aloud whether or not some members will feel as though that is already delegitimizing their vote even before he would presumably get the gavel.
Yeah, I think it's incredibly disrespectful to his members to be able to be that presumptuous when he knows he doesn't have the votes.
We know he doesn't have the votes.
We don't even know what his majority is.
And so, you know, my hope is that's something that should offend members of Congress who have a vote on this and want to have a conversation behind closed doors about the direction of the Republican Party and the House of Representatives.
And my view on this is A member of Congress should do everything they can, and honestly, citizens at the local level should do this.
Align your life so that your interests are about saving the country.
You align your life so that you're serving God and saving your country, you're not going to go wrong.
And don't make this about a committee assignment.
Don't make this about a chairmanship.
Make this about what's necessary to save the country.
And when you put that filter on, this is an easy decision, and your voters will reward you.
You'll be a national leader for it.
There is a movement among some in the House Freedom Caucus to request a delay in the leadership elections because we don't yet know who will be a Republican member of Congress.
I think out in Pennsylvania they'll be counting for a few weeks.
What a shame there in Arizona.
Subject of a whole other discussion.
The concept of holding leadership elections without firming up the precise size of the majority and the precise membership of the Republican conference seems to really be dispositive.
So I support the effort with the Freedom Caucus to delay leadership elections at least until we know I mean, you know, it's something for us to go complain about illegal votes diluting elections in states around the country to then allow people who might not even be elected to be casting votes in our leadership elections would presumably dilute The districts and constituencies that ultimately will be sending Republicans to be sworn in.
So I want it clear on the record that I support that effort from the Freedom Caucus.
You know, the vote on the floor, you make a point that publicly that's a watershed moment.
You know, the Democrats always seem to find a way, even with small majorities, to kind of rally together.
Do you worry that there'll be criticism from the right that, you know, if it takes us a little bit to work this out, that, oh, it means the Republicans are in disarray?
Or, you know, it seems to be your perspective and mine that a little bit of disarray here might be helpful at ultimately reaching the more consequential and meaningful decision in the end?
Yeah, I think that's an opportunity.
Confrontation is an opportunity for the media to report on what's going on.
When the media reports, you have an opportunity to get your message out that says, what would that story be?
Republicans are having a debate about the future of the country and whether they're going to have leadership that does what it says it does.
And so I don't think that's a negative in any way.
Well, Russ, I appreciate your perspective on this.
You know, it is my expectation that we will hear more voices contribute to this discussion.
Last night, Tucker Carlson's commentary was that all those who were involved in this disappointing election cycle for Republicans really needed to find something else to do, and that it wasn't a personal criticism of them from his perspective.
It was just if you don't succeed, you typically don't get promoted.
You'll be on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast tomorrow.
I really encourage everyone to watch Russ there and to get Steve Bannon's perspective on this matter.
And is it your expectation that there'll be other groups, other voices encouraging the boldness that you've encouraged tonight?
Yeah, I think we're going to see a movement arise from the grassroots movement.
We just met and talked with our national leaders, our call across the country, It occurs on Thursday night, and they are ready to go.
Take us in the room.
What's the sentiment?
What's the feeling?
What are the arguments people are making?
Again, this is not something where they need to be convinced.
This is something where their expectation is...
You were going to swallow Kevin McCarthy if you had a massive majority, maybe with some rule changes, but not after...
The majority is so slim when everything they said would occur did not occur.
We didn't have an opportunity to just rely on, hey, inflation is bad when you have no plan to actually deal with it.
And so the grassroots is going to demand this action.
That's going to build between now and January.
And that's what I'm trying to articulate when I say That leverage point doesn't go away even next week if, for some reason, someone hasn't arose to be the candidate against Speaker McCarthy.
The only vote that matters is the vote on the floor.
Exactly.
Look, the vote in conference is procedural.
That's the cartel vote, as you described it.
Behind closed doors, without your name attached to it, that is not the real vote.
The real action, the live rounds, that's on the floor of the House of Representatives, that's in January.
And so I would encourage our viewers, contact your Republican member of Congress.
Encourage them to make a decision not based on who raised them the most money or who can introduce them to the most lobbyists, but who can actually embrace the conflicts that we've been discussing that we absolutely must prevail on To save the country.
That is the message that you need to deliver to your Republican member of Congress.
And if you're willing to make a second phone call or send a second tweet, how about hit up my man Jim Jordan?
Get this athlete, get this champion, get this lion off the sidelines and into this race.
I believe Jim Jordan has been appointed for this.
I believe he is prepared and I know he would inspire the base of our movement and he would bring more people in.
Jim has a way To be encouraging and to be thoughtful and to be persuasive.
If you've seen Jim Jordan on television, if you've seen him in hearings, you know this.
We need to be a growing movement.
Look, that's the message I think we need to take from this midterm.
We cannot be stagnant.
We need more people to want to align with Republicans.
I don't think that's going to happen with Kevin McCarthy.
I don't think it's going to happen with Mitch McConnell.
I don't think it's going to happen with Ronna McDaniel.
I think we need a clean sweep And we need to get off of the McFailure strategy and get into the fighting spirit, embrace the conflict, and do not be afraid.
Our movement should not be a fearful movement, our leaders should not be fearful leaders, and they certainly shouldn't be the people who have sold the shares of themselves on K Street.
Russ, tell us about the Center for Renewing America, the mission, the purpose there, and how folks can follow your work.
There has never been an institution that has a cultural mission on the America First issue.
So when I left the White House, I wanted there to be a place that cared about the border, cared about restraint in foreign policy, cared about drugs in our communities, thought that critical race theory was something that you can actually get rid of as opposed to something you have to tolerate as free speech in our schools.
And so we are there to nationalize those issues, provide a solution Like, state governors declaring a border invasion.
Those are the things that we put forward to declare, get results, and to ensure fundamentally, and this is the takeaway, that Washington, D.C., in the aftermath of Donald Trump, cannot go back to business as usual around the issues that we know are flawed and that won't save the country,
We're going to keep the agenda setting process so fixed on the America First issues that we're going to be able to learn from the lessons the last 50 years where we did not know those.
Donald Trump changed that.
We're going to keep the issues on that agenda.
You know, the Floridians who embraced those fights were very much rewarded by their voters for doing so.
And I think that's a model on policy for the rest of the country and certainly a model that our Republican conference should certainly embrace.
Russ, thanks for the work that you did for our country serving alongside President Trump.
I'm thinking through all the times I went into the Oval and had meetings across the Resolute Desk, and I can't Remember one of them where you were not there, right at President Trump's right hand, and I know he got great benefit from your wise counsel.
Appreciate it.
And the work we're doing now, I think, is the continuation of that legacy and that movement, and most importantly, that agenda.
And that agenda is not going to happen without strong leadership, strong leadership I know we could get from my buddy Jim Jordan from Ohio.
Thanks for joining us on Firebrand.
Thanks to everyone for tuning in.
Make sure you're subscribed with notifications turned on.
We're going to be back next week.
A lot of session days.
There'll be a lot of Firebrand.
Thanks for joining us.
Roll the credits.
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