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Nov. 16, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
28:56
Episode 75 LIVE: Leadership Races – 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 the laws.
So we're going to keep running the stories to keep hurting him.
If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!
You are in the right place!
This is the movement for you!
You ever watch this guy on television?
It's like a machine.
Matt Gaetz.
I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.
Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.
They aren't really coming for me.
They're coming for you.
I'm just in the way.
Welcome back to Firebrand.
We are live broadcasting out of the Longworth office building on the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. And the best way to know when we're going live, have those notifications turned on.
That makes you the first person to get the news, to get the tea on what's going on in the Capitol.
In this episode, I'm going to be going over some agenda items that have been discussed among different members of the Republican Conference, from moderates, centrists, MAGA, America First, Libertarian, different things that we're all talking about that are 80-20 issues, that could unite different things that we're all talking about that are 80-20 issues, that could unite Republicans in a very But if you want to change the game, you've got to change the rules of the game.
And in the swamp of Washington, D.C., far too often those rules reward the corrupt and the sellouts.
And I've got some ideas how we can work across the aisle, across the ideological spectrum, work with our fellow Republicans in the majority to have rules that open up the legislative process and see what you think about them.
So make sure you hang in there for that.
But what everyone is talking about during this lame duck Congress, during this session after the election, but before the swearing in of new members, leadership races.
Most major news organizations have called the midterm elections in the House of Representatives for the Republicans.
And it looks like we may have a three, four seat majority that we will have to nurse through the legislative process.
And what that functionally means is that any five people Can veto a Republican Speaker of the House nominee.
Now, I'm not pretending that me and my four best friends in the America First movement have a veto that's any stronger than maybe three people that voted for impeachment and two centrist Republicans who are less inclined to support the Trump agenda or the America First agenda.
If we act as though the America First members can just force someone down the throat of the moderates, they can block us just like we can block them.
So we're kind of all in the same canoe right now, but certainly There is building momentum against those who are running things right now, really enterprise-wide in the Republican movement, whether it's Ronna McDaniel getting a challenge at the RNC, which she definitely should get that challenge, or Mitch McConnell in the Senate being challenged by Senator Scott, or the big vote yesterday in the House of Representatives, 36 House Republicans voting against Kevin McCarthy as the Speaker nominee.
We'll get to that, but first to the Senate.
Let me be very clear.
Mitch McConnell should be replaced.
And it's not just a consequence of outcomes in the election.
It's outcomes in the legislative process.
You got a bipartisan infrastructure, massive spending bill, because Mitch McConnell sold out.
That was the yellow brick road to the reconciliation legislation, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which was really just sort of a repackaged Build Back Better.
That happened because Mitch McConnell created the space fort in the United States Senate by doing the infrastructure deal.
It was principally the same coalition that got there on the legislation that they called the Inflation Reduction Act, but will actually increase inflation because it will massively increase the major driver of inflation right now, which is government spending alongside a green energy policy that doesn't do much for the environment, but which is government spending alongside a green energy policy that doesn't do much for the Senator Rick Scott of Florida has stepped up to challenge McConnell's, I see that Senator Braun is supporting Rick Scott.
I saw that Senator Hawley of Missouri said he was not voting for Mitch McConnell.
So, you know what they say, same people, same lot.
If I were a senator, I would be voting for Rick Scott.
And that brings us to the House of Representatives, where we had a big vote yesterday.
188 people voted for Kevin McCarthy and 36 people voted for someone else.
Now, that doesn't exactly add up to the size of the Republican majority, but there are people like Mr. Duarte in California who got to cast a vote in the Republican election, even though his race has not been called yet.
And we certainly hope that he wins that race.
But it is a feature now of the Republican system where Even members who have not won their races and are not members-elect presumptively have the ability to vote in these leadership elections.
So that's not anything other than how you should look at some of this math.
But I mean, Kevin McCarthy couldn't get 218 votes.
He couldn't get 200 votes.
He couldn't get 190 votes.
So to believe that Kevin McCarthy is going to be speaker, you have to believe that somehow he's going to get dozens of votes in the next six or seven weeks that he hasn't gotten in the last six years.
And I can tell you, I've had conversations with a lot of these people.
They are calcified in their view.
Bob Good, congressman from Virginia, he beat a Republican incumbent in a primary convention contest.
That Republican was Denver Riggleman.
The Curious Case of Denver Riggleman is definitely a segment we did in Firebrand that you'll want to check out.
He's a total clown.
It was possibly the greatest upgrade in the House of Representatives a cycle or so ago that we got...
Bob Good instead of Denver Riggleman.
And Bob Good has been out there saying that Kevin McCarthy spent money in primaries against Republicans.
His aligned groups did.
He endorsed against one of our fellow Republican members, Mary Miller.
And as a consequence, Bob Good says he's not voting for Kevin McCarthy.
You've heard me say on this program, I'm not voting for Kevin McCarthy.
And the breaking news literally was happening just as we were coming on the air Congressman Matt Rosendale of Montana has just announced that he too will not vote for Kevin McCarthy.
So remember the process of elimination paradigm.
Anyone who five people vote against can't get there by the math.
And so, Gates, Good, Rosendale, that's three and that number will climb.
Meanwhile, McCarthy's number, I think, His floor and his ceiling are pretty close to one another.
So it would be wise for Republicans to acknowledge that the votes are not there for Kevin McCarthy to be speaker, and let's resolve who can be.
We did resolve some other leadership elections yesterday, and we'll get back to the speaker's race in a moment, but I do want to make note that we elected Steve Scalise to be our majority leader.
I remember when I first came into Congress and I received the news early one morning that Steve Scalise had been shot at Republican baseball practice.
We later learned that it was One of these very dangerous and radicalized ideological liberals who thought that it was their duty to kill Republicans.
And he went there with a list of Republicans to kill at our baseball practice.
And fortunately, by the grace of God, no one was killed.
But Steve Scalise was shot.
And I watched him personally go through an excruciating recovery.
Painful.
And this man would push himself with drive.
And when his body was emaciated, when he couldn't stand without...
Crutches or a cane.
He was just so strident to get the most out of every single day.
And probably the best moment in the House of Representatives, the most uplifting, in a place that often drags you down, was Steve Scalise's return to the House of Representatives after his medical leave, after having been shot.
It's a great throwback clip.
Take a listen.
Look, we all know the United States is the leader of the free world.
It's something that we've frankly had the honor as a country to hold as a distinction for generations.
And yet, when you look at that title, what it really means is that there are people all around the world that want freedom, maybe that have freedom, but they know the United States being strong is critical to the rest of the world having the opportunity for freedom.
But that's why I'm so excited to be
back, because as we're fighting through the issues of the day, let's just keep in mind that we rise above the challenges of the day and understand that it's not just us and our constituents and the country.
the United States, that's counting on us being successful.
People all around the world that believe in freedom are counting on us as well.
And we will deliver for them.
That's why I am so honored to be back here in the House serving with you.
God bless each and every one of you.
you and God bless the United States of America.
Steve Scalise, your incoming House Majority Leader for January The comment stream on the live stream is fired up.
Debbie on Facebook noting, could Kevin look more bored in that video?
I don't know if that's fair.
I think maybe he was trying to look pensive.
And we also have a lot of folks saying it should be Jim Jordan as Speaker of the House.
And you know what?
I would vote for Jim Jordan.
I think he would do a terrific job.
The question is whether or not there are five more established people who would vote against him.
And I don't know that there are.
Maybe that's something Jim Jordan ought to think about.
I know he is widely respected around the conference for his hard work.
And you know what, Jim?
You can't help the people.
They want you.
Our base, they believe in you.
And our conference would certainly trust you.
We also elected the House Whip.
For the Republicans, this is the person that counts the votes, that provides feedback up to the leadership team, really viewed as a central figure in the leadership team.
Steve Scalise had been the whip prior to now this election as the majority leader elect.
And there was a race between Drew Ferguson of Georgia, Jim Banks of Indiana, and Tom Emmer of Minnesota.
And interestingly, in the first ballot, Jim Banks actually had the most votes, but he did not have 50% plus one.
And so that meant that all the votes that it Had been cast for Mr. Ferguson, he would be falling off the ballot for the next round.
We had a subsequent vote, and it looks like a lot of the votes from Drew Ferguson went to Tom Emmer.
And so Tom Emmer will be the whip of the House.
I can honestly say he spends time with and communicates with the moderates, the centrists, the Freedom Caucus, the Libertarians, and don't always see eye to eye on everything, but can honestly say that Tom Emmer is free to share his viewpoint and is someone who listens to the viewpoints of people that he doesn't always agree with.
And that is a key core competency for the whip.
Tom Emmer's had some of his own spicy moments on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Here is your incoming Republican whip.
I rise in opposition to the previous question so that we can immediately consider H.R. 5586. This bill will kill a Biden administration proposal that would allow IRS agents to comb through the bank accounts of any American who spends more than $10,000 a year.
To put that in perspective, $10,000 a year equates to just $28 a day, $850 a month, or half of the average Minnesota household mortgage payment.
In other words, the Biden administration wants the IRS to be able to spy on tens of millions of Americans.
So don't be mistaken.
This proposal does not just target the 1%, as the President sometimes likes to claim.
Instead, it is pointed directly at working American families.
Today, I led a letter with more than 200 of my colleagues urging Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to scrap this proposal to spy on American citizens.
This is not China.
We must protect Americans' right to privacy and stop this proposed intrusive, unnecessary Biden financial reporting requirements, and I yield back.
Thank you.
Give me more of that energy as whip, Tom Emmer.
It's absolutely right that elements of the Biden government have been weaponized against us.
That is eroding privacy rights, constitutional rights, political association rights, First Amendment rights.
And so if Tom Emmer is going to take the fight to these bureaucratic agencies, then he'll have a friend in me and I'll work right alongside him to get that job done.
And you know what?
We're not China, but increasingly these liberals and woketopians want all of us to have a social credit score.
Whether it's for the loan we want to get for our business, whether it's for the Facebook page or social media site we want to set up, or whether it's even the commerce we want to engage in, increasingly that is being strangled by woke leftism.
Tom Emmer seems to get the absolute We are in those remarks, and I look forward to working with him.
So those are resolved.
We've got our incoming whip, we've got our incoming majority leader, and yet the speaker's race, as we've been discussing, is unresolved.
Now, there was some breaking news in Politico that I want everyone to get a taste of, and I'm putting it up on the screen now.
For those listening, the Politico title is McCarthy allies press Kweular to switch parties.
And then in the lead it says, when Gates asked the GOP leader if he would solicit Democratic votes, McCarthy said no.
So already we are seeing Kevin McCarthy deviate from a promise he made.
He had to present himself at a leadership forum.
I asked what I thought was a reasonable question and a slim majority.
I said, Leader McCarthy...
Are you going to solicit or accept the votes of Democrats in pursuit of the speaker's gavel?
And he, unequivocally to his credit, said he never had, he never would.
And now, in Politico, the school newspaper, we see that McCarthy allies are reportedly out there trying to get Democrats to change parties.
So that they can change the result.
You know what?
If the result of all this is that we get an additional Republican in Henry Cuellar, that might be a good thing.
Cuellar is a pro-life Democrat.
He supports a wall on the border.
He supports border control.
He actually thinks people who are not here legally should be deported.
He understands that not every person who claims that they're in fear as they break our laws and enter into our country is a legitimate asylum seeker.
Who knows?
Henry Cuellar may make a great Republican, but Henry, if you come on board, vote with us, baby.
We're the ones that are pushing back against some of the excesses that you seem to be having concerns with on the left.
So I'm all here for the recruitment of Henry Cuellar.
I even won't hold it against Leader McCarthy if he's able to get him to come and join.
But if this is what he's doing now...
Think of what's going to happen on January 3rd.
Because the only time where we get a vote to elect a Speaker of the House is January 3rd.
It's not yesterday.
It's not next week.
January 3rd is the day.
And on that day, Kevin McCarthy is not going to have the votes to be Speaker.
But it's not just a question of what person is in the position.
It's also about the rules of Congress that are so fundamentally broken.
And by the way, a lot of members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, realize that this is a system perfectly created to empower the few at the expense of The representatives at large, who in turn are there to be a voice for the people of our country.
And so recently at a FreedomWorks forum hosted by Congressman Andy Biggs, I made the case for bipartisan reforms to our rules so that we had more open, honest, ethical government.
And what you'll notice is, right after that, President Trump, in his announcement speech last night, well, I'll let you listen to his remarks after hearing mine and wonder whether or not maybe we had a little influence on the content of that policy.
Take a listen.
I believe that no member of Congress, by House rule, should be allowed to accept a donation for their campaign from a federal lobbyist or a federal political action committee.
And I will ask for a permanent ban on taxpayer funding of campaigns.
The second thing I would suggest is that if someone is a member of Congress, they should be prohibited from lobbying for life.
Why is it so hard to say that you should choose one side or the other to be on?
You're either in the lawmaking game or you're in the influence peddling game.
A lifetime ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and cabinet members.
I will also introduce an amendment to have a ban on members of Congress trading individual stocks.
How can we say that that is not something that dilutes our trust in markets and in governance when people are essentially able to bet on the outcomes that they have an ability to somewhat control?
We want a ban on members of Congress getting rich by trading stocks with insider information.
And many of our great members agree with that.
They actually agree with that.
I love seeing that.
Good ideas going directly from a think tank where we're discussing them and honing them into ideas for public policy.
And that's really what those remarks were all about.
Policy changes.
That we need to affect the operations of the House of Representatives and the government of the United States for our people.
On the live stream, we've got a lot of recommendations for Speaker.
On Rumble, folks are wondering, how about Trump for Speaker?
I'm for that.
My problem is...
I think he just announced for a different job and said he was not interested in the nomination, but I very much tried to convince him otherwise.
Edward Snowden for speaker was a suggestion that I had not seen before today.
A lot of love for Lauren Boebert on the Rumble Rants.
And a few of you think that I might be a good speaker choice.
Let me say I have no interest in the speaker's gavel.
It was interesting...
The other day, Mark Levin criticized me for supporting Jim Jordan.
I said, look, the person that should be the Speaker of the House is Jim Jordan.
And Levin gets on Twitter to criticize me and say, first of all, he calls me Flash, which he thinks is an insult.
But if you knew how slow I was, like running in actual life, Flash is quite laudatory.
But he calls me Flash and then he said that I was being dishonest with people because Jim Jordan was backing Kevin McCarthy.
You know what?
Paul Ryan was backing Kevin McCarthy too before he became Speaker.
But there's sort of a moment in the progression of Kevin McCarthy Speaker campaigns where everyone realizes that he's not going to have the votes to get there.
And usually then someone emerges out of the McCarthy camp that is more broadly acceptable.
So why not Jim Jordan?
So you know what, Mark Levin, I'm allowed to be for Jim Jordan for Speaker, even if Jim Jordan is not yet for Jim Jordan for Speaker.
And if like the way you criticize me and say, oh, well, if Gates ran for Speaker, he wouldn't get any votes.
You know what?
I probably wouldn't get very many votes.
I don't have a lot of friends around here, but I'm OK with that because I'm on the team for Northwest Floridians who send me here.
And for my fellow Americans who feel like we actually need patriotic service that puts the people of our country first, not the lobbyists, not the special interests, not the leadership, and certainly not Mark Levin.
in.
To do these things, we also have to think about an agenda, and that's what I want to focus on for this next segment of our show today.
So look, just as we saw Joe Manchin function as a limiting factor on what Chuck Schumer could do, Any group of five in the House is going to be able to function as a limiting factor on just about anything.
So during this last week, I have worked very hard to reach out to more moderate and more centrist members of our caucus and ask them, like, what are your ideas?
What are the things that if there was no Freedom Caucus, if there was no Massey Gates libertarian wing, if there was no Marjorie Taylor Greene led America First wing of our conference, what would some of the moderates and centrists want to do?
And I've just pulled together kind of an amalgamation of those ideas.
Go ahead and put them up on the screen right now.
So just think about a Congress where these are the first 10 bills we pass in no particular order.
Codifying the Heller decision, giving a major, major win to gun owners.
Create term limits for Congress.
Pass the Born Alive Act.
Make Democrats vote against the Born Alive Act if they want to use abortion as a political cudgel.
Codify Title IX so that we don't have these men participating in women's sports.
Pass a national voter ID law.
Finish the wall.
Finish the Keystone Pipeline.
Open the Keystone Pipeline.
Ensure that we support free speech on college campuses, challenge big tech by eliminating their immunities, and then creating reasonable work requirements.
We hear from so many of our small businesses that getting people to work is increasingly difficult while the American government is paying able-bodied people to sit at home.
If these were the first 10 things we did, if we geared up for the big spending fights later, because we're totally going to get screwed during this lame duck Congress by Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, so we probably won't have a big spending fight for the first year on an appropriations package.
And so we could do these things.
This could be HR 1 through HR 10. And if we did that, we would actually move the ball forward for the American people.
We would conduct a parallel series of investigations around the origins of COVID, the weaponization of our government, the politicization of the DOJ and the FBI. But those are investigations.
Those take time.
That's not necessarily a vote on the House floor.
That is showcasing to the American people How the pain they are feeling is directly connected to the corrupt actions of the Biden government.
So we're going to have really a wide array of members joining me on the show.
I want to get some of these new members elect who are going to be in Congress on the show in the coming weeks because they've got a perspective that will be very important.
They're very close to the voters having just won their first races in many circumstances.
And when we do that, we're going to change the rules.
We're going to change the leadership.
We're going to conduct the investigations.
And we are going to endeavor on the public policies that will improve the lives of our fellow Americans and the prosperity and the productivity and the success.
Thank you all so much for joining us.
Make sure you're subscribed with notifications turned on.
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We're up over 4,000 ratings and looking forward to climbing even higher.
Let's roll the credits.
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