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Nov. 17, 2022 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
48:53
Episode 76 LIVE: Ban TikTok (feat. Gavin Wax) – 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 could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
So we're going to keep running.
We're going to keep running.
We're going to keep running.
He said, when is the FBI going to quit interfering with elections?
2016, they spied on President Trump's campaign.
2018, it was the Mueller investigation.
2020, they suppressed information about the Hunter Biden story.
2022, they raided the President's home 91 days before the election.
Maybe it'd be nice If the FBI and the Justice Department just stayed out of it and let we the people decide who we think should represent us, who we think should lead us, that's supposed to be how America works.
So this is the focus on the Judiciary Committee, the political nature of the Justice Department, and the linkage now to what was happening with the Hunter Biden story, again, just 15 days before we have a presidential election.
We are live here on the Firebrand Podcast, broadcasting from the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, D.C. in the Capitol Complex, and that was Jim Jordan talking about the hunted becoming the hunters.
That's right, we're going to go after a politicized Department of Justice and FBI, and the best evidence that they are infected by politics is how they treated the Hunter Biden matter.
This will not be an investigation merely of Hunter Biden.
It will be an investigation of Joe Biden, how Joe Biden was financially enriched, how Joe Biden used his role as an international power player to sell out America's interests for foreign interests, and how Joe Biden himself was actively involved in the cover-up of these matters and how Joe Biden himself was actively involved in the cover-up of these matters through his government and through some of the worst actors at the That's a preview of coming attractions.
I'm sure we'll have Jim Jordan on soon to discuss it.
We've got big news, though.
We've got one of the leading voices in the FCC talking about the need to ban TikTok.
The threat to our country from the Chinese Communist Party manifested through an app that is widely used in almost every American home that has the capability to get facial recognition, to get audio voice recognition.
And to compromise our youth.
Now joining us, I can't imagine a better person than New York's Gavin Wax.
Gavin Wax is the president of the New York Young Republican Club.
He is also in the technology field working at Getter, where we are simulcast streaming right now.
Gavin, thanks so much for joining Firebrand.
I want to get to TikTok.
I want to get to the Chinese Communist Party, how you see the big tech environment in the United States now.
But first, I have to ask you about the Empire State.
All over the country, you saw Republicans underperform, but yet in Florida and in New York, Republicans did better.
And I want to get a sense from you, was it the candidates?
Was it the issue matrix?
Wasn't the political environment somehow different?
What was so different about New York this last election cycle that resulted in your great state sending us a whole lot more Republicans to the Congress?
Well, thank you for having me on, Congressman.
It's great to be here.
And as far as New York is concerned, the Empire State, I think we can attribute a ton of our success politically and electorally here simply to the environment.
The environment for a Republican renaissance and resurgence in this state has never been better in decades, generations even.
When you look at issues like crime, quality of life, The list goes on.
Things have really hit rock bottom here, and I think it's presented a very fertile ground for a resurgent GOP to take advantage of that, to win a series of Congressional, State Senate, Assembly races, and of course come within five points statewide of the gubernatorial race.
Hopefully we can build off of this coalition, these trends, these realigning factors here in New York and turn that into a potentially governing majority in years to come.
It wasn't too long ago we had control of the state senate as recently as 2018. So we can certainly bring some two-party sensibilities, if we can use that word, back to the Empire State.
Because I think many New Yorkers of all stripes, moderates, liberals, lifelong Dems even, Are getting really sick of the monopoly Democrat rule up in Albany, and they're looking for some two-party consensus building on a range of issues, as mentioned earlier, from crime to cost of living, etc.
When you look at some of these new Republicans that will be joining us in the next Congress, people like Nick Langworthy, George Santos, Mr. Lawler, Is crime going to really be the take-home for them?
Is the eroding safety and security situation in New York what really drove a realignment in politics?
Because we saw really entire groups that had previously been reliable voting blocks for Democrats.
They were up for grabs, and Republicans got a lot of those votes.
So is it crime first, or how are some of these economic issues also hitting these New York districts where financial services issues, the flow of capital, inflation?
I mean, these are very much kitchen table issues still.
Absolutely.
I mean, look, all politics is local, as the old saying goes.
And there were certainly a litany of issues on the table here in New York that created new coalitions and certainly realigned many voting groups.
And yes, there was many ethnic realignments going on in New York, from Asian American voters to Hispanic Americans to Jewish Americans.
All of these different blocks of votes that were historically within the Democrat camp were shifting over to Republicans.
And the reasons varied.
You know, while many of these newly elected members of Congress that you cited are going to DC and going to represent their constituents on a variety of different issues that go well beyond crime, I do think what made New York unique and different in terms of its political environment for many other states where we did not see A red wave, a red tsunami, or even red at all, despite the fact that many of these states have been historically more competitive.
You're looking at Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc.
Places that, you know, were won statewide by Trump as recently as 2016. New York outperformed them in terms of our competitiveness and in terms of the success of our Republican candidates.
Again, because the on-the-ground situation, which is unique to New York in many ways, is very bad.
I think we have seen since the COVID crisis that the state of the city and state of the state have continued to decline.
The decline that we were witnessing prior to COVID was only exacerbated.
And this goes into economic issues, as you mentioned.
We're having tons of Financial sector jobs going down to your home state in Florida and Miami in particular.
So we're losing jobs.
We're losing people.
Criminals are running free and the situation only continues to get worse.
And I think that's why we almost saw a surprise win for Lee Zeldin.
Back on Tuesday, November 8th.
And hopefully we'll continue to see wins going into next cycle, 2024, here in New York.
And I do think with the delegation we are sending to D.C., they're going to do their state proud, and we're going to have a lot of great champions of the Empire State down in Washington to serve with you.
We love it when patriotic New Yorkers choose to make Florida their forever home, but I've got to tell you, America's a better place when the Big Apple is a dynamic, iconic city.
And I've traveled there a number of times, had the great privilege to speak to the members of your club, and it astonishes me to see how quickly New York could change.
I mean, you and I had to I don't even know if the statute of limitations has passed on this, but you and I had to go grab dinner somewhere during the pandemic, and it felt like we were doing a drug deal.
We had to go down into a basement and bring only cash and look nobody in the eye, and all we wanted was some good ravioli.
And then I did see a rebound after things started to open up.
There was a new energy there, but that criminal activity, the Feeling that you're not safe on the subway, walking down the street, standing at your bodega, it's really overwhelming.
And as much as I appreciate the migration of great people and great capital to the Sunshine State, I want the Empire State to be a leading icon of America.
I just think it's a great thing when New York is a great city and there's still a lot of great folks who live there.
Gavin, you're the president of the New York Young Republican Club.
And I want to get into some of the areas where we underperformed.
We overperformed with New Yorkers, but we underperformed with Gen Z. And I wanted to get your perspective on why Republicans are doing so bad with people under 30. Well, look, I think we're in an uphill fight.
All the institutions are working against us, particularly institutions that shape And mold young minds.
You know, you're talking about higher education.
You're talking about pop culture.
You're talking even about corporate America, where many young professionals get their first start in their careers.
All these institutions are working against conservatism and the Republican Party.
And it just makes the situation even worse for us.
And we've always had a disparity.
In terms of the age bracket, you know, division between the parties.
You know, typically, the older you get, the more Republican and conservative you are.
And the younger you are, the more liberal and Democratic.
But it's never been a worse situation than we're facing right now.
And I think, you know, this is an issue that's going to continue until Republicans can present a holistic vision to the next generation, to the younger generations about the future and how their prosperity, their well-being are being robbed from them by globalism, by a lot of the neoliberal institutions their well-being are being robbed from them by globalism, by a lot of the neoliberal institutions that dominate the Western world and how their quality of life, their standard of living, the wealth and prosperity that they are going to enjoy is going to be
For the first time in modern American history, for sure.
So unless we can begin to properly convey and articulate those problems and also obviously offer a whole range of solutions to them, you know, putting forward ideas and policy proposals that will enable young people to start businesses, to own their own homes, to start families, all of them.
All the things that say the boomers took for granted but which is now being denied Is there a malaise setting in from that, Gavin?
Because what I worry about is you have a Gen Z that is more willing to live with their parents well into their years of majority.
When I was a young person, I couldn't wait to go and Find the world on my own.
Be my own man.
Have my job.
Have my own source of income.
And increasingly, we do see in Gen Z, you know, maybe an acceptance that life's just gonna be worse and gonna be different.
I mean, we see the suicide rates.
We see the drug addiction rates.
How do you go from malaise to, like, patriotic activity on behalf of a country that Gen Z is gonna inherit?
Well, this is certainly beyond political.
It's spiritual.
It's cultural.
I mean, the left has certainly imported European-style living at home with your parents to your mid-30s to the United States.
They always wanted to be like Europe, and we've sure gotten it that way.
But you also bring up how this is impacted by the use of different antidepressants and our highly medicated society.
And it is certainly Inducing a societal malaise, particularly on young people who are the most disadvantaged, who have issues rising the corporate ladder because there's a lot of boomers who refuse to retire and are clinging on to their institutions.
I mean, look no further than, you know, the leadership of the Democrat Party, the Republican Party.
You know, it's dominated by the old, certainly not the young firebrands such as Matt Gaetz.
And I think this just plays society-wide.
And I do think this malaise is setting in.
And I think there's a sense of conformity that's going with it.
But I do think deep down people realize that they want more and they're looking for more.
And until the Republicans can give alternatives, we're going to continue to lose.
I mean, give credit to the Democrats where credit is due.
They're cynical, but they'll come out prior to the election and say, we're going to pay off your student debt.
I mean, it was an interesting, crazy proposal, but it certainly got people to the polls, and it got them to vote for them.
And of course, they pulled it right after.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that it successfully bought some votes, that they went and put that shiny lure out regarding Student debt, but the reality is that is just a burden shift to a lot of working people in our country, and frankly, we've got too many people going to college.
I know that's not always a popular view, but we have indebted an entire generation of people with philosophy degrees and psychology degrees, and probably part of the problem, political science degrees, the degree that I have.
Part of that malaise is facilitated by an addiction to big tech, and I really wanted you on the program today To talk about the threat of TikTok.
Big news, we're seeing voices out of the FCC talking about the danger of TikTok, its utilization by the Chinese Communist Party.
Now, I know you work in the technology field.
What's your assessment of the role that TikTok is currently playing in American life and American politics?
TikTok is a behemoth.
It is the biggest name in social media.
Facebook is, you know, struggling and declining.
Twitter obviously has all its issues.
Instagram is a close second.
Mostly because they are replicating TikTok with their version of Instagram Reels.
But TikTok is the new big dog on campus, and it just so happens to be a company completely beholden to the Chinese Communist Party out of Beijing.
And this obviously poses a major, major national security risk.
I mean, TikTok is unique.
In how addictive it is, in how personalized it is, how it caters to you based on, you know, all the data that it collects from your interests to what you're searching, to how you're liking, to how long you're watching.
I mean, the data that they are gathering from American citizens is massive.
And in the wrong hands, like in the hands of the CCP, it can be used for extremely effective intelligence gathering and other types of intelligence operations.
I mean, they can see what's pasted, what's saved in your clipboard.
They can gather your biometric data.
They could gather your location data, your facial recognition.
I mean, all this data is now in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party out of Beijing, and they can potentially have that data on elected officials, their staff, military personnel, you name it.
Now, look, we have a lot of issues in big tech, and many of it are from companies that are incorporated and founded and based in the United States.
So it's certainly Not an issue that stops at our national borders, but we can certainly step up to the plate here and reach a consensus where I think there may be some consensus to be formed across parties that TikTok is an issue from a national security standpoint.
I also agree it's an issue from a deeper cultural and psychological standpoint.
I definitely think it's perpetuating A lot of the societal rot that we're seeing among younger generations in the country as a whole.
It's addictive.
Probably the most addictive of the social media platforms.
And I say that with experience.
I've used it.
It's certainly very addictive.
Are you still on TikTok, Gavin Wax?
Are you a current TikToker?
I don't post TikToks.
I think I have an account still, but I'm trying to use Getter's Visions, which is a competitor, and of course, Instagram Reels.
But I could admit from my past use that I've taken a few hits of TikTok.
There you go.
A recovering TikToker.
You know, it's maybe easy for people to understand, okay, if you work at a national research laboratory or a university or in the United States Congress, that having TikTok could be a threat.
But if you're just a regular family, a fireman and a teacher in Branson, Missouri, and gosh, you know, the TikTok machine has your kids, you know, doing some harmless dances and looking at what their friends are up to.
Like, why should it worry just regular Americans, you think?
Well, I think twofold.
I think one, the amount of data that they're building up in mass, it's going to give them The information necessary to manipulate society.
I mean, we're in a new type of warfare.
It's certainly, you know, there's no guns or artillery being fired, but people are in the midst of psychological warfare and demoralization campaigns and how, you know, people are socially engineered in mass.
We saw it with COVID and the Chinese are becoming experts at it.
They're experts at it on their own population.
And the data they're getting from TikTok will enable them to become masters of social engineering, the American people, if we don't stop them.
So we should not cede ground in any possible way to them for them to advance their geopolitical interests against our own.
And they're doing this beyond just big tech.
I mean, they're buying property up across the entire country.
You know, they're taking over entire nation's telecom through their 5G networks and Huawei.
So, I mean, they are playing a multifaceted game here.
They're playing on a multi-front war in terms of their global dominance from the Silk Road to their investments in Africa, etc.
It's just one of those fronts and we certainly shouldn't see ground.
So that's the geopolitical front.
But again, you know, for the average American, I think this is this goes beyond politics.
And this is what goes back to winning over younger voters and younger people.
It's that we are in the midst of a spiritual and cultural war.
And I think social media is perpetuating the worst, you know, facets of leftism and this nihilism and all these other social and societal ills that are really Destroying the core fabric of our society.
And this is not an electoral issue, but this is something deeper.
And I think, you know, social media at large, it's a new development, obviously, in the human story.
You know, only, what, 20 years old, if that.
But it certainly led to a radical change in how people interact with each other, how people engage with society, how people feel about themselves and see others.
And it's leading to a litany of, you know, social and psychological ills that we're not fully able to grasp just yet, because the science is still out.
TikTok is part of that.
And if we have an opportunity to knock it off the market, getting a win against China and maybe also a win in the battles I just mentioned that are nonpolitical, then I say, why not do it?
You're so right about how fast this has developed.
I mean, I remember being in high school, and initially the only way you could communicate with someone digitally is you had to sit there and pound out a text message on a Nokia phone, and if you wanted the C, you had to hit A, B, C, on number two, and that would give you one letter, and then you'd go on, and it would take several minutes to construct a message of just a few words, and then the transformational revolution.
was when AOL Instant Messenger would allow you to open up multiple screens and talk to like three or four people at one time with a keyboard.
And it was just captivating.
You could have a few conversations going at once.
You could have friends all over the country and be sharing ideas or thoughts with them.
And to think about how exciting that was and groundbreaking it was, but how it was really nothing compared to turning...
Every American into a content producer, which is really what these social media platforms do.
And there can be a lot of good in that, and I want to talk about that later in our discussion.
But when you've got the Chinese Communist Party in charge of it, you need to know what the goal is.
The Chinese Communist Party did not set up TikTok to make money.
They want to control what you see and how you think so that they can control how you behave.
And throughout the history of great power competition, the idea was you want to influence the leaders, the civil society elite, the military elite.
But what China has done has been to convert technological expertise into totalitarian control.
We were all promised that the social media revolution would cause great threats to major power and it would embody the body politic to have exciting ideas and to organize together and to push back against totalitarianism.
But what we've seen from the Chinese Communist Party is that they have used technology to become more effective In totalitarian control.
And while in China that means a social credit score and drones flying around telling you when you're allowed to go outside, Here in America, it's more subtle, but it's just as pervasive to the core.
And I think TikTok is central to that.
We talked earlier in the discussion about how we change our thinking over time in politics.
Anybody who says that their political ideology doesn't evolve and doesn't deepen and doesn't have additional contours as they gain more experience on the planet Earth is not being honest.
And what I can tell you is, as a younger man, I was far more libertarian.
I just thought, well, you know what?
The government doesn't do very much right, and so if the government does less and people do more, that's kind of a good thing, and that's the construct to build a philosophy off of.
But as I got into Congress, I became perhaps a little less libertarian and a little more populist because I started to see that if government doesn't do anything for people and we just debate should government be smaller or larger, I've seen throughout my life that government has grown bigger, borrowed deeper against the future of our fellow Americans, And yet the right doesn't seem to try to get the government to do anything proactively, positively for our people to improve quality of life.
And one of the things we ought to do is ban TikTok and look more aggressively at some of these other social media platforms.
You know, Gavin, you have been a commentator on the impact of this meta concept and the revolution that Twitter is going through right now.
How would you assess the social media environment broadly in the United States domestically?
And then I want to get to some of the exciting new things that Getter's doing as well.
Well, domestically, it certainly hasn't been great.
Obviously, we've seen now over the last few years that big tech is largely an extension of the intelligence apparatus in this country, and that intelligence apparatus has been turned against the American people, in particular conservatives and Anyone who goes against the establishment that's been turned against them frequently.
So big tech domestically is not much better than big tech from China.
You know, we may have an easier time going after TikTok because of its foreign entanglements and its ties to the CCP, but we should certainly not rest on our laurels as it comes to the threats emerging out of Silicon Valley and the boardrooms of Meta and formerly Twitter, I suppose, and All the rest.
I mean, because there is a lot of insidious elements that have crept into big tech, along with all the other institutions that we've talked about earlier.
It's this sort of Fabian-style left-wing takeovers of the corporate boardrooms.
And they found out that big tech are the arbiters of the modern town square and how all information and media is disseminated across society.
And having that You know, power lever under your control, under your, you know, under your grasp is a massive, massive, you know, necessary tool for the sort of totalitarian societies that the elites in the West want to imitate from China.
I mean, we talked about, you talked about the high-tech totalitarianism we see in China.
That's exactly what, you know, the, you know, Western elites at Davos and And, you know, the Great Reset, that's all they're trying to build here.
Maybe they're trying to do it more subtly, as you mentioned, but they're certainly looking to Beijing for inspiration.
And that's why when given an opportunity to stop it through TikTok or even through domestic regulations on big tech, we should certainly do that.
And I fully agree with you.
I originally was a libertarian and I definitely have now embraced the sort of populism, nationalism, national conservative type of political ideology.
And I think if you have two different political parties, one Which is willing to use its power to effectuate its own ends and the other that it's only willing to step back and do nothing.
It's the party and the political ideology that's willing to use power to effectuate its own ends that's going to win.
That's bringing a gun to a knife fight and we're going to continue to lose until we know and realize that we must wield power when we have the opportunity because they will use it against us in a heartbeat.
And sometimes we have to put down some of these sort of Ideological roadblockers and understand that when it comes to governing, we need to be pragmatic, we need to be dynamic, and we need to understand That action is necessary and not just falling back on theorems and maxims and talking points.
But when we're in office, you know, we should use the power of that office to advance our agenda, our conservative America first agenda.
And I don't think there's anything anti-American about that.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
That's how society has always progressed.
That's how that's the history of human interaction and human power dynamics.
So it's only recently that Republicans found An excuse for some of their fecklessness and some of their weakness.
But I think that there's a paradigm shift going on in the way that many on the right think about power, think about government.
And I think they realize in order to preserve our way of life, our traditional American society, our freedoms, our liberties, we're going to have to roll up our sleeves a bit and wage some asymmetrical warfare that the left has been doing against us for decades.
Yeah, it would be symmetrical with the way a lot of us have been treated.
But you're right.
As a conservative, at your core, you have to want to conserve something, to keep something, to hold as precious American citizenship, American sovereignty, American culture, American language.
And you've seen far too many conservatives believe that, well, we're doing our job just so long as we deal those things away more slowly.
And the reality is we have to conserve, we have to protect, and then there are hills we've got to climb.
And there's power that we have to be willing to take when it is given to us by the voters in elections.
You know, part of the debate that we will have in the Republican Congress is about how to break up big tech.
There are some who say, well, you can eliminate some of the immunities that they enjoy, and there'll be a judicial process that then they'll have to go through.
That might bring a few of the bad actors down.
There are some who would simply say, reshape these companies by force of law.
Go in and reshape the companies, force...
Instagram to be sold from Facebook.
Force Google to separate search and email.
And that's really the Elizabeth Warren perspective.
And so I might be more in line with the Elizabeth Warren perspective to break up big tech Rather than maybe the Republican Kevin McCarthy perspective of eliminating some of the shields that big tech has been allowed to build in the law.
That'll be one of the very important debates coming up.
But Gavin, you made a critical point about the relationship between big tech and the intelligence apparatus, and it bears drawing a fine point on it and repeating it.
You said big tech is part of the intelligence apparatus and people need to understand that that has a human feature too.
There is a revolving door between the Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, NSA, and a lot of these big tech companies.
They go cash out working for big tech.
And you know what?
One reason why you haven't seen the Department of Justice actually enforce antitrust laws against big tech is because they ultimately want to sell the antidote.
These guys at DOJ that end up going to work at big tech...
Well, they want to be able to create the risk and the fear of antitrust action, but they don't really want to do it because then they want to go from being the prosecutor to being the defense counsel or the advisor or the board member or the security official or whatever at these big tech companies.
And so I don't think people really get how corrupt that is where DOJ will say, okay, we'll go initiate an action, but that's not sincerely to achieve the outcome.
It's just to create a marketplace for the talents of the people at DOJ when they want to go work at big tech.
And they are walking, springing leaks.
And I think one of the areas where that manifested in the most corrupt activity was around the Hunter Biden laptop.
Our good friend Vish Burrow, who's come on this program and talked about what it was like to break that case and to be a part of the chain of custody of that laptop to get that information before the American people.
And there you had big tech and our intelligence apparatus working hand-in-hand I'm here in Washington in my congressional office.
You're out there interacting with our activists and our fellow Americans.
Do people really think that we're going to do it?
Because when I go places, I hear folks say, yeah, yeah, Matt, we've heard before how Trey Gowdy was going to get Hillary Clinton and Benghazi, and then that didn't happen, and then we were going to hold people accountable for the Russia hugs, but because...
Jeff Sessions was such a weakling.
That didn't happen.
And I sense there might be some concern that this is all talk and bluster, but that the actual results of these investigations won't result in true criminal process.
Do you sense that that's a concern?
Oh, absolutely.
There is a palpable sense of apathy among the base, and I think that tied into our, you know, less than ideal election results for the midterms.
I think there's a lot of people that realize That many, particularly in our own party, particularly Republicans, will campaign on one thing and the second they get to D.C. it's business as usual and they fall into line with the dictates of the swamp.
And I think, you know, people are sick and tired of, you know, sort of the, you know, the trimmed videos from the House floor where they're speaking to no one and they're pounding their fists.
Or even in committee hearings where they talk a big game like former Congressman Gowdy and then there's little to no results.
I think people have become quite accustomed to that.
And I think it's set in this sort of apathy for any real change to actually happen.
And I think this is one of the biggest problems facing the Republican Party electorally because we play a lot of theatrics and we play footsies and we rarely do anything.
And I think that's why so many people loved President Donald Trump because he actually shook things up.
He got things done and he moved the needle forward.
The Overton window certainly shifted.
He certainly could have done a lot more with a cooperative party and D.C. bureaucracy.
But I think that's what people are looking for.
And I think the Republican establishment, the Republican leadership does not give many people, certainly in the grassroots, certainly myself, certainly people that I talk to, a lot of confidence that they're willing to do much.
I mean, you mentioned earlier, you know, the McCarthy style, you know, removing some of these protections and these shields.
From tech, which I think would be, you know, a good logical first step, but I even doubt he would be willing to do that, if anything.
I mean, you know, the Elizabeth Warren approach you mentioned, while drastic, is even further away.
I think nothing's on the table until we really begin to see some sizable paradigm shifts within the party structure of both parties, because the unique party controls everything and they're going to move at a snail's pace and they're only going to give crumbs when people demand cake.
And I think that's an issue at large with DC. You discussed the revolving door, the rent-seeking that goes on, how it's totally corrupted our institutions and it's created this sort of capital of an empire where nothing gets done unless you're willing to spend enough money to grease the wheels.
And obviously the American people don't have that largesse to do that, but certainly foreign actors do, certainly corporate interests do.
The American people only have their votes and their votes Are seemingly beginning to matter less and less, because even though they'll elect Republicans time again, those Republicans or Democrats even will do nothing.
So it's a systemic issue we're facing, and I think it's creating a political environment that is full of apathy, and it's not good for the future of our republic.
We need action.
Ban TikTok.
Break up big tech.
Create the space for startups and new technology companies to be able to service the needs of the American people.
And that's where I want to get together.
Because when we initially proposed some of these ideas, Folks said, you know what, if people don't like Facebook, if people don't like TikTok, let them sign off.
Let them deactivate their account.
Go start your own social network, conservatives and pro-America patriots, if you don't like our woke, leftist, foreign-infected options that we have available for you right now.
And really the first foray into that was Parler.
Conservatives set up a social media platform.
It had millions of users online.
But they weren't smart enough to be vertically integrated.
They got functionally canceled.
They lost all their momentum when Amazon Web Services pulled them.
Getter built in, I think, more resiliency on the front end to cancellation.
When Getter started, it was all abuzz.
Millions of people joined.
And now it's a great place for our office to get messages to constituents.
There's programming schedules you can check out on Getter.com.
So that you can get the content you want from some of the voices that you trust.
So maybe give folks who might be watching this on one of the other social platforms or streaming services a sense of what the experience is like on Getter, how that might differ from what they're seeing on other platforms.
Look, I think it's better on Getter, no pun intended, but you know, Now, the alt-tech space has certainly come a long, long way from the early days that you referenced where people said, well, go make your own social media platform.
We have, obviously, many of the failures that were associated with Parler, a lot of the censorship that happened with sites like Gab.
And I think now the alt-tech space with Rumble and Getter and even Truth is really beginning to come into its own.
They're beginning to see a critical mass of users and community formation.
The features of the tech are beginning to either be on par or even surpass, in some instances, that of big tech.
I mean, you look at Getter.
Getter had an edit button before Twitter did.
When Twitter was deprecating live streams and periscopes, Getter was bringing on live streams.
So there was certainly even a tech and features disparity growing between all tech I think that forced Twitter prior to Elon Musk taking over.
It forced Twitter to start integrating new features like Twitter Blue and undoing tweets and the edit button and all these other things that started to create the first sense of competition in this space.
And even if some of these alt tech companies Don't win, quote unquote, ultimately in this battle of companies.
They are certainly creating an environment and incentives for these companies to innovate, continue to innovate, and continue to have policies that are designed to encourage a larger user base.
And I think we're seeing massive upticks on Twitter's daily active users and activity engagement.
I know Elon is bragging about that constantly, and that's due to Just sort of to the notion that it's a little more free, that there's a little less censorship.
It doesn't even have to actually be a reality, but the mere notion that Twitter is going to censor less and ban less has led to a resurgence of activity on that platform without even seeing any substantive changes from the policy side yet from Elon.
So I think it's showing the market That there is a massive demand there for free speech, for alternative platforms.
And if you build it, they will come.
And maybe there will be some short-term downsides with advertisers and other things that I know Elon and the new Twitter board is experiencing with many of these left woke companies trying to pull their advertising dollars.
You know, he's looking to monetize other facets of the platform to move away from an advertising model.
You know, maybe the rollout of the blue check $8 verification system wasn't ideal, but it shows a willingness to test the waters and to move away From an environment where corporate woke entities can determine company policies because of their advertising spends.
And I think, you know, Getter and others are showing that you can build really reliable, self-sustaining platforms with growing communities without having to go woke.
And I think the more of this that happens, we'll begin to set precedent.
We'll see more people enter in to the all space marketplace into the all space, you know, sector.
And the more competition, the better.
And the more tech and the more features, the more innovation, the better.
Because I think we definitely had a period of malaise, to reuse a word from our earlier discussion, in the tech space for many years.
And I think it culminated with the banning of Donald J. Trump, President Donald J. Trump from Twitter.
And I think we're kind of emerging from that dark age now.
We're seeing a lot of possibilities, both Reforming big tech from inside, which I believe Elon is attempting to do, and of course building separate parallel platforms like Getter, like Rumble, like Truth, which are going to build their own spaces, but also force change in big tech through the process of market competition.
So it's an interesting time.
We're entering certainly a wild west, and I think it's only positive from here.
And any regulatory changes that come out of DC, come out of Washington, We talked about those protective shields.
We talked about maybe breaking up some entities.
Anything that comes out of Washington will only help this process and will weaken what I believe is the monopolistic control of big tech on several of their social media verticals, whether it's, you know, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
It is the Wild West.
It is a new frontier, and I am here for it.
Gavin Wax is the global marketing director for Getter.
He's the president of the New York Young Republican Club.
Gavin, how can folks follow your postings and commentary?
Well, thank you again for having me on, Congressman.
You can follow me at Gavin Wax.
That's Twitter, Getter, Instagram, Facebook, everything.
You can check out my website, gavinwax.com.
You can check out the New York Young Republican Club, which is the oldest and largest Republican club in the country, www.nyyrc.com, NYYRC, at NYYRC on social.
We have our upcoming gala December 10th.
It's going to be a blast.
You were obviously a past speaker when we got banned from the Garden State, so we're looking to make As big of a splash as that prior gala.
That's pretty much where you can find me.
I think we're still under criminal investigation in New Jersey.
I'm not sure, but the governor of New Jersey said that because we held a socially distanced dinner without masks that we were putting people's lives in danger.
Phil Murphy has put more people's lives in danger than you and I have for holding a...
Upscale political event.
Who would have thought?
Gavin, thanks so much for joining us on Firebrand.
Thanks for your great work.
I'm excited for the new frontiers we're going to conquer together, my friend.
Thank you, sir.
Thanks.
He's the best.
Follow Gavin and make sure you're following us on Getter because it's a great place for us to be able to stream this content.
If you weren't paying attention these last few days, you might have missed that we almost stumbled our way into a nuclear war with Russia over an accident that wasn't actually Russian.
Put up the headline that we get from Fox News.
Here was a Fox News headline, an actual headline.
For those of you who are listening to the pod, it says, Cross into NATO member Poland.
Kill two, senior U.S. intelligence official.
So this isn't true.
Those weren't Russian missiles.
They obviously were Ukrainian anti-assault measures.
And when you've got the shield, essentially, the defensive mechanism to stop missiles from landing into your territory, you shoot stuff at those missiles.
And so it was what Ukraine had deployed...
In their own defense, admittedly, but when Ukraine had deployed, it landed in Russia.
But how irresponsible for news organizations, for intelligence officials to just start by saying, we have to invoke NATO protocols that require us to all go and defend Poland to the death when the reality was there was no Russian attack on Poland.
Take a listen to some of the worst takes in this fog of war.
I have no doubt that this is not our missile, not our strike.
There is no sense for me to trust them.
I went through war with them and with you.
I don't, to put an end to it, but I have my opinion.
I believe this is a Russian missile based on our military reports.
When it comes to our security commitments and Article 5, we've been crystal clear that we will defend every inch of NATO territory.
Wars are not fought by armies.
They're fought by nations.
This war is fought by the Ukrainian people and is fought by the Russian people.
And this is a war that Russia's leadership has chosen to put Russia into.
We're still gathering information, but we have seen nothing that contradicts President Duda's preliminary assessment that this explosion was most likely the result of a Ukrainian air defense missile that unfortunately landed in Poland.
And whatever the final conclusions may be, the world knows that Russia bears ultimate responsibility for this incident.
That was the voice of your Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin.
Probably one of the worst people to wear the uniform in a while.
He's done a lot of harm.
These aren't guys who are going to win you any wars, but they might stumble you into some as a consequence of their ineptitude.
And before Lloyd Austin, it was the voice of Mark Milley who said, this war is fought by the Russian people.
And I've just got to ask, how stupid does one have to be to try to provoke the Russian people over Russia?
Ukraine having some of their materiel accidentally land in Poland.
Seems like a weird time to try to escalate and accelerate the fight with the Russian people.
This war was Putin's choice.
It was a bad choice.
It's a war I hope Putin loses.
But it's certainly not the Russian people that Americans have a beef with.
The Russian people are doing everything they can to run out of the country, escape, avoid being drafted into this war.
But with military leaders like Milley and Austin, the American people should have little confidence that we are being led by the A-Team.
We undeniably are not.
There's going to be a lot of questioning and investigation of their role in the botched Afghanistan withdrawal.
Their role in not being able to assess the will to fight, frankly, from Afghanistan to Ukraine, the materiel and cash that we have sent endlessly into the most corrupt country in Europe, Ukraine, the third most corrupt country in the world, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis.
We can do better than this.
We can do better than them.
And the next time there's a potential accident, maybe before we go and leap to blaming the Russian people and starting a nuclear war with Russia that would be devastating to the entire world, We ought to check the facts, do investigation, thorough review.
That's what the American people deserve, and it's too often not what they get from a Pentagon that is so reckless, they blame the Russians when it wasn't the Russians who even launched this materiel, and then they don't get it right when they're drone-striking families in Afghanistan.
It really is a parade of horribles, and it's one that we must correct in the coming Congress with aggressive and robust oversight.
And I will be right there on the House Armed Services Committee getting the job done.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
Thank you again to my good friend Gavin Wax for his leadership at the New York Young Republican Club and his work in the technology sector.
We appreciate you joining us.
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