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Feb. 2, 2023 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
30:43
Episode 87 LIVE: Hunter Biden Begs DOJ – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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Thank you.
Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
So we're going to keep running the stories to get 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 broadcasting live out of room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building here in the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much for joining.
We got folks from Florida, Illinois, all over the country, all over the world.
And it has been a week already in the House of Representatives.
Democrats proved that they worship faux political environmentalism more than they actually care for the animals on the planet.
And I have the floor action from the House to prove it.
And the vipers on The View attacked me today.
As usual, their arguments were so circular that they actually ended up proving my point while...
Bloviating about yours truly.
They should totally invite me back on The View instead of just talking about me so much.
But first, our lead story.
Hunter Biden wants the Department of Justice to prosecute his enemies.
So predictable.
So if you've seen the news lately, you might have heard that Hunter Biden has finally admitted that the laptop from hell is indeed his laptop.
Hunter's lawyers are now asking the Department of Justice to open a criminal inquiry.
But not a criminal inquiry into the Biden crime family, of course.
An inquiry into Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani and Giuliani's lawyer and the owner of a computer store where Hunter Biden left the laptop.
They might even want to investigate Bannon's former producer and a former member of our team, Vish Burrup.
Now, everyone knows that you have to play nice with the 50-year-old son of President Biden, or you could be the one that's targeted.
So, to refresh your memory, I want you to know how Firebrand has covered the laptop from hell.
This is a clip from one of our prior episodes where Vish and I are discussing its importance and how this information came to the public.
Take a listen.
Talk to me about how you and Bannon get a hold of this thing.
So we get a hold of it in conjunction with Rudy, and Steve hands me the laptop and says, I need you to go through this thing, make it your best friend, know where everything is.
I start going through it.
I find a bunch of things, and we're working with Steve and Rudy.
So you are essentially Bannon and Giuliani's Indian tech guy.
It's not essentially, it's literally that.
That's exactly, I was their IT guy.
So Vish was part of the chain of custody for the laptop, and now if you were involved in the laptop enterprise, remember first they said it was Russian disinformation, now it's real, and the people who brought that to the forefront, they want those people punished.
So, apparently, Hunter Biden didn't consent to having his private information shared with the public.
That's the legal theory that they're going on.
Now, I can assure you, the public did not consent to a ne'er-do-well brat-selling influence to foreign governments in exchange for access to Joe Biden.
The corruption in the Biden family doesn't get any more clear cut than that.
They were global influence peddlers and they were peddling access to the highest levels of our government.
Now imagine just the nerve or frankly the corrupt confidence that Hunter Biden must have to ask that the feds start investigating the whistleblowers and the people who exposed their families own corruption.
It seems like a good time to recall those 51 intelligence experts who signed a letter saying that the Hunter Biden laptop wasn't Hunter Biden's laptop, but that it was Russian disinformation.
Every one of them still has their security clearances.
They should not.
We should revoke them.
I wonder what they're going to say now.
I do not believe we'll be getting an apology.
But whether it's the Russia hoax, or the origins of the Wuhan virus, or Hunter Biden's laptop here, the pattern is similar.
We discover a searing truth.
Then, one, it's a conspiracy, it's a theory.
Then, two, it's foreign disinformation.
Then third, it's true and either it's no big deal or we deserved it.
And then fourth and finally, we should be vilified for finding it and exposing it.
That's the cycle of this and it's actually pretty predictable.
We owe Steve Bannon and Giuliani and Giuliani's attorney and the owner of the Wilmington computer store a huge thanks for risking everything to take on a powerful family and expose this corruption.
But it shows you.
It shows you that Hunter Biden is so brazen that despite the fact that he makes the admission that the laptop is real, they actually think that the people who are the do-gooders in this case should be punished.
Something.
Some folks who are not do-gooders are the hosts of The View.
Now, you'll recall from our last episode, I talked about my effort in the House Judiciary Committee to get the Pledge of Allegiance ensconced into the beginning of our hearings so that despite the issue of the day or what we're going to debate over or legislate over or conduct oversight directed at, we would have a unifying moment of the pledge of allegiance to our nation's flag.
Republicans and Democrats standing together.
But Whoopi Goldberg, at the view, is offended by this.
She says that it's unnecessary that because the House of Representatives says the Pledge of Allegiance every day in the morning when there's like four or five people there, that we shouldn't go to the great waste and the great time expense of saying the Pledge of Allegiance in the House Judiciary Committee.
Take a listen to Whoopi's argument.
I also want to point out that Congress has already been saying the Pledge of Allegiance at work every day since 1988. Ceciline's amendment was shot down because they didn't want to hear that, but Gates ended up passing his pass without opposition.
Again, it was something that already happens every day when folks walk in and they start their day.
That's what they do.
Does this still count as a win if you just vote on something that's already fair?
I don't know.
I don't know.
You know, and this is the Judiciary Committee, right?
So wouldn't it be better show of patriotism to be working on issues like police violence, mass shootings, prison reforms?
You know, this...
You know, people, I don't know what it's going to take for them to recognize that people don't, they're not fooling, we're not fooling around.
The people in the United States are not fooling around.
You wasted everybody's time suggesting your people do what they already do.
What is this waste of time?
Hey Whoopi, maybe one of the reasons why we want to say the pledge is so that we understand the values that brought this nation into fruition and we wouldn't do things like defund the police or pass gun control.
The Pledge of Allegiance didn't even used to be controversial, and her argument is essentially, we get so much of the Pledge of Allegiance by saying it once at the beginning of the day in Congress, we should not have to reassert it in the House Judiciary Committee.
But there is something august and special about the House Judiciary Committee.
It is literally the committee charged with protecting our constitutional rights, defending the freedoms that make the United States the envy of the world.
And so it is entirely appropriate, but What answers Whoopi is not just my articulation of my adoration for the Pledge of Allegiance.
It's Sunny Houston, one of the other hosts on The View, because her argument is, you know what, we shouldn't be saying the pledge at all.
We're not an exceptional country.
We should distance ourselves from the great aspiration of being a shining light.
Take a listen to Sunny.
The problem that I have is with this narrative of American exceptionalism that we've been taught since we were kids.
I mean, I set the Pledge of Allegiance, you know, all through my life in school.
And then when I got into college, I took an African American history course.
And I started realizing that the actual Pledge of Allegiance doesn't apply to a lot of our citizens.
Well, they weren't informing us.
Yeah, it hasn't met the dream of being exceptional.
It hasn't met this country.
It hasn't met this dream of being this beacon on a hill.
And so I think the Supreme Court has already ruled you can't force anyone to take the pledge.
But I think until we really meet the promise of what this country could truly be, then we shouldn't be touting us out as exceptionalists.
America shouldn't be touted as exceptional.
That is the view that you principally get on the show, The View.
And it's certainly not the view that we see throughout my district or throughout this great country.
We are exceptional.
We are different.
For all the flaws we have, for all the work that even our founders understood we must do to be a more perfect union, This is the greatest country that has ever existed in all of human history.
And for Sonny Houston to disparage us, to disparage our nation, our ancestors, on the set of The View, shows exactly why the Pledge of Allegiance is so necessary.
Because we have an obligation to inculcate pro-American values.
And the anti-American values, they get all the lift you could imagine.
From big tech and from some of the unpatriotic voices that you see programmed and platformed on the mainstream media.
Sorry Sonny, we're proud of this country and my amendment did pass and we will be saying the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of our lovely Judiciary Committee meetings.
So I wanted to talk about another matter and it's our environment.
I love America's beautiful environment and it's actually part of being a true Florida man.
I come from the Sunshine State, the prettiest state in the country.
Our land and oceans and streams and animals have always enchanted me.
And I feel more patriotic and connected to my country because I am connected to its wild spaces.
Recognizing and celebrating beauty is important because you look at these tyrannical societies, these socialist societies, and all of the architecture is hideous.
That's because tyrants don't want you to think that you deserve beauty.
They think that low of you.
What does that sound like?
So here's something a lot of people don't know about me.
I love birds.
I watch them over the bayous of Florida and I am transfixed by their majesty.
My wife, Ginger, even complains that when I drive, I endanger the roadways by looking for ospreys and herons and eagles.
So if you like birds too, you should be irritated that much of the Green New Deal calls for an expansion of wind-generated energy.
Tear down the trees.
Destroy the habitat.
And install wind farms.
It is happening everywhere.
And the Biden plan calls for massive expansion of wind.
And we should question that and review it.
Because he has basically embraced the Green New Deal through executive action.
And the Green New Deal was largely funded to the moon after this terrible omnibus bill.
That's what Marjorie Taylor Greene and I have been warning people that this omnibus bill really was the funding stream for the Green New Deal.
Why is that bad?
The American Bird Conservancy predicts that if the 20% national goal for wind to contribute to our electricity portfolio, if that actually happens, and that's Biden's goal, it would potentially kill at least 1 million birds a year by 2030. We already kill almost 700,000 birds a year with the current American wind portfolio right now with no expansion.
And the consequences to some of the species is devastating.
According to energymonitor.com, wind expansion in California could literally result in the extinction of the golden eagle, one of the most majestic birds to grace our skies.
And if I have to choose between wind energy or the golden eagle, give me the eagle!
I think that makes me more of an environmentalist than the people who embrace some of these wacky ideas.
According to Granger Hunt, who's a raptor specialist, quote,"...there is nothing in the evolution of eagles that would come near to describing a wind turbine.
There has never been an opportunity to adapt to that sort of threat." That sounds horrible.
Grizzly.
And the consequences are even deadlier over water.
That makes a lot of sense.
Migratory birds, bald eagles, seahawks, such as ospreys, are unaware that the blade tips can be moving at 180 miles an hour.
Many of these birds are focused on prey below.
That's what they're biologically driven to do.
These factors render wind turbines over water, quote, ecological death traps, according to many experts and reports.
The Atlantic did a specific report on the unique danger caused to migratory birds who could be wiped out in mass numbers.
Here's the policy problem.
Democrats are so hellbent to align with the Green New Deal politically that they ignore the real dangers that some of these policies actually have for the environment.
It's like some of our most splendid fauna get treated as sacrifices made on the altar of environmental wokeness.
And it's really offensive to sound environmental policy.
Large corporations, which often over-promise on their renewable energy deliverables, cozy up to the government and they get special treatment.
Treatment that other energy producers don't get.
Wind generators get bird kill quotas.
But the math is total garbage.
This is because wind developers are allowed to self-report violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
Imagine that, government letting you self-report.
Only for these folks, not for you.
And it's easy for them to under-report because, and I know this will come as a huge surprise, when a bird goes into a wind turbine, there usually isn't much evidence left.
Wind developers don't have such a great track record playing by the rules.
Now, Nextera Energy is the parent company that owns Florida Power& Light.
That is the power company that has a monopoly to provide energy to my entire congressional district and many others throughout the country.
One NextEra subsidiary pleaded guilty to criminal charges and was ordered to pay over $8 million in fines and restitution after at least 150 eagles were killed at its wind farms across eight states.
Federal prosecutors say the number of birds killed was likely far higher.
The danger of wind to birds is so serious and undeniable.
So...
It must be ignored by the woke left.
They're too bothered pushing Biden's offshore wind boondoggle to understand the impact on birds.
And nothing brings this into sharper focus than Democrat Congressman Frank Pallone's reaction to my question recently on the House floor.
We were debating my amendment to preserve the Florida coastline for military testing and not to allow offshore oil drilling.
Now, Congressman Pallone opposed my amendment not because he's opposed to my drilling ban, but because he's hell-bent on putting wind farms off the coast of Florida's shores.
And then when confronted by the potential impact on birds, he didn't care.
Take a listen.
There are a lot of great places where we can unlock the potential of our country to ensure that we have a sufficient strategic petroleum reserve, which is the essence of the bill.
And this amendment gives my colleagues in Florida a great comfort that none of the treatment of existing moratoriums would in any way harm coastal Florida, coastal Georgia, or coastal South Carolina.
I don't disagree with the gentleman from Florida in terms of prohibiting offshore drilling.
But I did not hear him mention, I may have been mistaken, but I did not hear him mention the fact that his bill also prohibits offshore wind and renewables off the coast of Florida.
And to have an amendment that says that offshore wind is not acceptable or should be prohibited flies in the face of what we should be doing to address the climate crisis.
And so for that reason, even though I may agree to the idea that we should prove...
Yes?
The impact of some of those wind farms on migratory bird populations.
Look, I take back my time.
There's a very easy way, in my opinion, to manage and regulate offshore wind.
The amendment is agreed to.
Country Girl 3 watching on Rumble with thousands of others says, Hunters and fishermen are more environmentalists than our government.
They do really believe in saving the environment.
I fully agree with that statement.
And Kyle on Facebook says, Wind farms are ugly.
Keep them in California where they belong.
I think we can all agree that representatives should not be so dismissive and should actually know better.
Off Florida's shores, we find a splendid array of bald eagles, osprey, painted bunting, brown pelicans, white pelicans, marbled godwit, and swallow-tailed kites.
More birds winter in Florida than I could possibly list.
Snowbirding to Florida is not just for humans, it's actually for the birds too.
And we shouldn't be so enamored with renewable energy that we discount or ignore the impact to our planet and the animals that we share her with.
Let's be pro-actual environmentalism, not pro-political environmentalism.
And you want to know why they prefer the political environmentalism to actual environmentalism?
It's about power.
It's about power over your life.
And it's power we should not surrender, not only for our own sake, but for the sake of these wonderful animals that we share the planet with.
Recently, I was on the floor of the House of Representatives debating about growing concerns over the ATF. I filed legislation to abolish the ATF. We've covered it on Firebrand quite a bit.
There was a special hour of debate reserved by my colleague, Representative Clyde of Georgia, over this ruling that we've just seen come out on pistol braces.
It is a ruling I totally oppose.
I want you to get my perspective direct from the floor.
Take a listen.
I thank the gentleman for his leadership and for yielding.
The ATF's new rule, criminalizing pistol braces, is a brazen and unlawful attempt to usurp congressional authority.
This pistol brace rule will fail for the same reason the bump stock rule failed.
The ATF does not have the authority to create federal law.
Nobody voted for the ATF, though I know a lot of people who would vote against them if they could.
This new rule will ban pistol braces on certain firearms, forcing users to jump through numerous hoops to comply with this new decree, or risk becoming a felon.
Disabled veterans and others have used these braces for years to help them fire pistols, and the ATF has unilaterally decided that this is no longer acceptable.
Now, otherwise, law-abiding Americans will either have to destroy their newly illegal firearms or figure out how to comply with an arbitrary and confusing regulatory scheme outlined in the National Firearms Act.
The ATF cannot be trusted to protect our rights to keep and bear arms.
There is no timeline in which the ATF, under any administration, would become an ally.
It needs to go.
We need to abolish the ATF before they abolish our Second Amendment rights.
Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms should be the name of a chain of convenience stores in Florida, not a federal agency.
I urge every red-blooded American and every conservative in this Congress to stand with Representative Clyde and his legislation and to stand with me and co-sponsor my bill, the Abolish the ATF Act of 2023. Let's get rid of this unlawful agency once and for all and let this special order be considered a shot across the bow.
I yield back to the gentleman from Georgia.
We will work to abolish the ATF, defund the ATF, target the bureaucrats at the ATF by zeroing out their salaries and using the power of the purse if necessary to ensure that we vindicate the God-given Final note before we go.
Just moments ago, the House of Representatives voted to strip Ilhan Omar from her committee assignment to the Foreign Affairs Committee.
I voted with the majority on that matter, but I can't say that...
It was the best feeling in the world to look at speech as some sort of threshold for someone's participation in the political process.
Frankly, if Ilhan Omar hadn't voted against Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, I might have viewed things differently.
But she voted against folks who had done nothing wrong and did not deserve to be removed from her committees.
And maybe the only way we get past this and stop this tit-for-tat is to once and for all end it.
So I voted with the Speaker.
I believe Speaker McCarthy deserved deference on this matter.
But know this, my viewers, my friends, my supporters, those of you who participate in our podcast project, if the way this works, by rhythm, Whenever the House of Representatives change hands, there's this implicit requirement that the new majority go and zap members of the other side because of their speech.
Well, I mean, I'm going to be the one they come for.
I'm going to say something edgy or not aligned with the dogma of the day in the Armed Services Committee or the Judiciary Committee, and they'll say, oh, Gates is promoting gun violence because he believes in the Second Amendment.
Oh, because Gates doesn't want wokeness in the military, he's advancing anti-trans tropes.
You know what?
You don't get to pick the lineup of the other team.
The Democrats made that mistake on the January 6th committee.
They made that mistake vis-a-vis Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar.
And my hope is that this is the end of it.
So while Ilhan Omar says things That I find detestable, that I totally disagree with.
I didn't vote against her because of her speech.
I voted against her because she engaged in this effort to deplatform my friends Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And this has to end.
And I thought this was the only way to make it end.
And actually, there have been some pretty productive behind-the-scenes discussions with Kevin McCarthy that I've had, conversations between Hakeem Jeffries and Kevin McCarthy, where we recognize that this Activity is stripping other sides from committees is really beneath the dignity of the institution, and we ought to be willing to confront bad ideas with our own speech and our own ideas, and that is what I endeavor to do for all of you and for my constituents each and every day.
Thank you all so much for joining me on Firebrand.
Make sure you're subscribed.
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We go live at different times, and we want you to be a part of the conversation.
See you soon.
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