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July 10, 2023 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
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Episode 110 LIVE: Don't Haiti My Florida – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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Thank you.
Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem for the Democratic Party.
He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
So we're going to keep running those stories to get hurt again.
If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!
You are in the right place!
This is the movement for you!
You ever watch this guy on television?
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.
Today, Victoria Cardenas sat down with Congressman Matt Gaetz to discuss the asylum and illegal immigration challenges Florida is facing.
In Washington, people are always talking about the U.S.-Mexico border.
But in a lot of ways, what we see here in Florida is the forgotten invasion.
Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz took to the skies with the U.S. Coast Guard Tuesday morning to get a better understanding of the migrant crisis in Florida's coastal waters.
We are weak in the Florida Straits.
We are weak with the Bimini passageways just by virtue of our geography.
Over the winter, when the seas are relatively calm, the Florida Keys were inundated with undocumented migrants.
Governor Ron DeSantis sent the National Guard to assist the Border Patrol and local law enforcement, while the Coast Guard patrolled offshore.
The Coast Guard is a small branch.
We're a small but mighty force, and that is why we have a Homeland Security Task Force where we work with our partner agencies.
In fiscal year 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 35,000 migrants trying to enter Florida illegally.
In 2023, that number is already over 135,000, up nearly 300 percent.
The answer to illegal immigration isn't just to open the floodgates to seemingly limitless legal immigration.
The answer is to have strong borders.
The Coast Guard has been upholding its mission and it has been U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not do an interview for the story, but in a statement, they are enforcing immigration laws and turning violators over to immigration authorities.
And while the Coast Guard reports they have seen a sharp decrease in migrant vessels as a storm season arrives, Congressman Gates says more needs to be done.
The problem is that we don't yet have Department of Defense assets to be able to really integrate not only the intelligence that we gather, but the deterrence.
And Congressman Gates, who represents the Florida panhandle, is committed to ensuring resources dedicated to stopping the influx of undocumented migrants into the U.S. are protecting Florida's coast, as well as the land that borders Texas and Arizona.
. . . .
Thank you.
But before we get into Haiti, I want to start by saying how much I appreciate the many Americans who chat with us, see me on the street, and talk about Firebrand, getting updates about the truth going on in Washington, D.C.
That is the core covenant of this podcast.
and it's something I'm very grateful to be able to share with all of you.
So whether you're folks that Gather around at the Pavilion Assisted Living Facility in Niceville, Florida, and I know you're there and watching, or whether you're even in the service of our government, like many people I've met recently who appreciate that actual facts are reaching the people undeterred and unmanipulated by mainstream corporate media.
So let's get to this issue in Haiti and the forgotten Haitian invasion of the state of Florida.
And it's important to have some background on Haiti.
Haiti is a miserable place.
And it's been that way for a really long time actually.
The key reason?
Their government is corrupt.
And the people live worse than animals in some cases.
I know.
I've been there.
I've seen it.
It was sad.
It was horrible.
It was a treacherous state of the human existence.
And of course, we wish that the corruption that has harmed the people of Haiti didn't exist.
That the lack of fidelity from leaders in this country didn't result in people being this desperate.
But it does.
So let's look at the history.
Think back to the days of Papa Doc de Valier.
He was the former president of Haiti starting in the 70s.
He was accused of embezzlement, money laundering, Horrible human rights abuses, killing people, suppressing dissent.
Now, he faced corruption charges after his presidency, but died in 2014 before his trial could be concluded.
Papadoc was a despot to the ages.
There was also John Bertrand Aristide.
Aristide was the president of Haiti twice, probably guilty of money laundering on far more than two occasions.
He built a system that isolated him from any formal charges, But the grift was pretty obvious with Aristide, who lived quite the lavish lifestyle.
Then there's Baby Doc Devalier.
This is the son of Papa Doc.
He succeeded his father as president of Haiti.
Baby Doc Was another one of these dictators who killed people, slaughtered people.
He was actually forced to live in exile in France until his return to Haiti in 2011. It was actually Baby Doc, not Papa Doc, who died before his trial.
Then there was Michael Martelli.
He was president of Haiti, and though he wasn't Personally implicated in corruption, so many of his high-ranking officials faced corruption allegations that he had built this ecosystem where nepotism, money laundering, theft occurred on a regular basis.
Then there was Laurent Lamothe, former Prime Minister of Haiti from 2012 to 2014. Lamothe resigned from this position amidst allegations of corruption and protests from the people demanding his removal.
There was even Jean-Max Belarive.
Belarive was president of Haiti from 2009 to 2011. And there, there were all kinds of problems with the mismanagement of funds related to the earthquake that occurred.
Following 2010, there was money flowing into Haiti.
But my goodness, it didn't really get to the people.
It was absorbed by the leadership.
When it comes to political leadership, We have established Haiti isn't sending their best.
Sometimes they aren't sending their best to Florida by the thousands on desperate floating rafts either.
According to a study conducted by the Cato Institute in 2021, illegal Haitian immigrants have an incarceration rate of 4.4%.
That is higher than any other group of illegal immigrants.
Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, and its citizens have long been seeking a better life.
In recent years, Florida has become the major destination for Haitian migrants.
And more than you would guess, certainly more than our own government actually knows.
They're coming across the southern border with Mexico.
They're also coming through the Florida Straits and through the Bahamian and Bimini passageways.
This is because you haven't seen the same attention to what's going on in Florida that you've seen on our southern border.
And now the influx of Haitian migrants has had a significant impact on Florida's school systems, jails, hospitals, social services.
In schools, Haitian students often face all kinds of barriers, language barriers, cultural barriers, and it makes it impossible for our teachers or other students to succeed in that type of an environment.
35% of all Haitian students won't graduate from high school.
We will see many of them again in the juvenile justice system or worse.
So that percentage is 150 times worse As far as not finishing dropping out, the non-Haitian immigrant counterparts.
Haitian immigrants are also overrepresented in Florida's jails.
A 2017 study by the Florida Department of Corrections found that Haitians make up 10% of the state's jail population, even though they account for only about 1% So they're batting at 10 times their population rate when it comes to the Department of Corrections.
That means billions of dollars in extra costs for Florida taxpayers to lock up Haiti's criminals.
Haitian migrants also have higher rates of chronic death conditions, such as HIV, AIDS, and tuberculosis.
This is due to a number of factors including poverty, lack of access to health care, exposure to violence and trauma in Haiti.
As a result, Haitian migrants place a significant burden on Florida's hospitals, social services, public health services, A 2018 study by the Florida Department of Health found that Haitians had a higher rate of HIV-AIDS than any other ethnic group in the state.
The impact of the Haitian migration on Florida's social services, very significant.
Haitian migrants are more likely to use food stamps, Medicaid, and other social services than their native-born peers.
A 2019 study by the Florida Department of Children and Families found that Haitian children were more likely to be living in poverty than any other ethnic group in our state.
Here's the problem.
The real invasion numbers have gotten significantly worse under Joe Biden.
In fiscal year 2022, over 4,000 Haitians were interdicted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard, an 800% increase since 2020.
And there are many, many more that aren't being interdicted and that are arriving at our shores interdicted.
And unlike those who cross illegally on the southern border who are dispersed throughout the country, these thousands and thousands of people are frequently congregating in specific areas in southeast Florida that are being overrun.
And it's not good for anyone, as you see from the data.
Now there's an obvious solution to this.
We surge resources, use the US Navy if necessary, and send every last person who tries to get here in these particular illegal ways back home to Haiti.
It's enforcement of our borders, it's pushing our borders out through the use of those military border patrol assets, working at every level of government, but it also means internal enforcement of our immigration laws.
The people who came here this way cannot stay illegally forever and we certainly cannot create some gaslit system of pathway to legal status or to citizenship when these are the challenges that our people are facing as a consequence of this migration.
I also want to give you an important update today regarding Ukraine.
Take a listen.
And later this week, we'll roll out our next presidential drawdown package of weapons, ammunition, and equipment for Ukraine.
More HIMARS munitions, precision-guided artillery ammunition, and tactical vehicles, and other urgently needed support.
Today, I'm announcing that the United States will be sending 31 Abram tanks to Ukraine, the equivalent of one Ukrainian battalion.
Secretary Austin has recommended this step Because it will enhance the Ukraine's capacity to defend its territory and achieve its strategic objectives.
Last week, President Biden announced that the United States will support a joint effort with our allies and partners to train Ukrainian pilots on fourth-generation aircraft, including F-16s.
Today, the Biden administration announcing it will provide a controversial new weapon to Ukraine, cluster munitions.
Ukraine has been asking the U.S. for the cluster bombs since last year.
President Biden today explaining why now.
The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition.
Specifically, artillery rounds.
Allies struggling to keep them supplied as they fight through a tough counteroffensive.
And so we want to make sure that the Ukrainians have sufficient artillery to keep them in the fight in the context of the current counteroffensive.
We are back live.
Katrina on Rumble says we have got to start covering the Biden family corruption.
And I think that's frankly pretty linked to Ukraine and all the things that we're doing there and all of the just excessive and expensive U.S. involvement that is certainly not warranted with a focus on our people and our interests.
But let's get back to the weapons.
What do Stinger missiles, HIMARS, Abrams tanks, F-16s, ATAKAMs, and Vietnam-era cluster bombs have in common?
Biden said he wouldn't send each of these things to Ukraine.
He said that they would be escalatory or inhumane in different ways.
And now, every one of these systems is going to be utilized by Ukraine.
And the U.S. is involved in one way or another.
If Joe Biden were to wake up tomorrow and say that we are not sending nuclear weapons to Ukraine, call your loved ones.
Because that would probably be the strongest evidence that that's the very next thing that we are going to do.
But it's not just Democrats who participate in this ruse and I think are deeply misguided on the substance of the policy of these matters.
Here's House Republican Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul with Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union yesterday.
Do you have any reservations about giving cluster bombs to Ukraine?
Well, you're right.
Geneva Convention, there are signatories to that convention who do not agree with these munitions.
We are not a signatory to the Geneva Convention on cluster munitions.
Neither is Ukraine.
And by the way, Russia is dropping with impunity cluster bombs in Ukraine, in the country of Ukraine right now.
All the Ukrainians and Zelensky are asking for Is to give them the same weapons the Russians have to use in their own country against Russians who are in their own country.
They do not want these to be used in Russia.
They want these as self-defense to use against Russians in their own country of Ukraine.
I don't see anything wrong with that because, quite honestly, Jake, as you look at the counteroffensive, it's been slowed tremendously because this administration has been so slow to get the weapons in.
These weapons would be a game changer.
They are highly effective, and particularly hitting flanks of troops inside of Ukraine, they would be a game changer in the counteroffensive.
And I'm really pleased the administration has finally agreed to do this.
We're back live.
Chairman McCall is right about one thing.
Sending cluster bombs to Ukraine is absolutely a game changer, but not for the reasons he thinks.
It is unnecessarily escalatory and deadly.
So let's break down the two arguments that McCall makes in that clip.
First, he says, well, I mean, we have to send cluster bombs to Ukraine because that's what Russia has.
Are you kidding me?
By that standard, what are we sending?
The nuclear weapons?
The tactical nukes next?
That is crazy talk.
The notion that the obligation of the United States of America in this conflict is to bring Ukraine into military parity with Russia is unreasonable.
It's a different kind of fight as a defensive fight, and cluster bombs are a terrible idea.
His next argument is, well, they're using them on their own country.
Really?
We've already seen Ukraine engage in attacks inside Russia, and we've seen the very same neoconservatives and Bidenites supporting that, saying that they have a right to attack supply chains in Russia.
So by what power lever are we going to control the utilization of these cluster bombs after they leave?
And what if they are used in Russia?
What will we do then?
Because we'll be in a position where we would be in direct conflict with a global power, a near-peer adversary, as all of the generals like to tell us in briefings.
Cluster bombs.
Think about that.
Right now, we are still cleaning up cluster bombs in Laos following the Vietnam War era.
Cluster bombs are indiscriminate.
They will kill innocents anywhere they are used, and also they have a high dud rate, which means that there are a number of these that will deploy out of an aircraft, hit the ground, and then explode later when found by some innocent person.
And that is a fact.
That is exactly what has happened.
Now, the fact that the Ukrainian leadership would even contemplate using cluster bombs in their own country It goes from irresponsible to downright depraved.
A Democrat ranking member of the Rules Committee, Jim McGovern, even filed legislation to functionally ban the export of cluster bombs from the United States for, like, any reason.
And so every Democrat needs to be counted now.
Do you really stand for this?
Are you for Biden sending cluster bombs to Ukraine?
Democrats used to call the use of cluster bombs a war crime.
And that war crime is now an American export.
Well, we've just learned that there are some Democrats who are working against the Biden administration, and here is the legislative skinny.
The National Defense Authorization Act that I've talked about on the podcast a great deal sets our military policy for the year.
And it just so happens it's going to be voted on on the floor of the House of Representatives this week.
Democrat Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs, who we've criticized a great deal on this show for some of her views.
She's probably criticized me a great deal for some of mine.
But she has introduced an amendment To the National Defense Authorization Act that reads, notwithstanding any other provision of law, no military assistance shall be furnished for cluster munitions.
No defense export license for cluster munitions may be issued and no cluster munitions or cluster munitions technology shall be sold or transferred.
And what I'm here to tell you is that I'm going to be the Republican co-sponsor of the Jacobs Amendment before the House Rules Committee.
We have an opportunity with bipartisanship to stand against the warmongering Bidens.
And these cluster bombs will not end the war in Ukraine.
Let's look at the countries where cluster bombs have been used.
Laos, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria.
Cluster bombs are features of the world's bloodiest and most inhumane wars.
Some of the longest.
It's hardly the cornerstone of a path to peace.
This will not build a more stable Ukraine.
Children will be left without limbs and without parents because of this decision by Joe Biden if we do not work together in a bipartisan fashion to stop it.
This bloody war would end any time the European democracies wanted it to.
Don't forget that when you see the gruesome images of the death and destruction.
It's the Europeans who fund this war through their purchase of Russian gas.
That's what they do.
And to ask the United States to bear the burden financially, economically, otherwise, is crazy.
Almost as crazy as sending these cluster bombs.
There's another developing story regarding the Bidens in China that I want to get into.
And the live stream is going and a lot of questions about why impeachment hasn't happened yet.
Joe Biden deserves impeachment.
I have been the co-sponsor of Marjorie Taylor Greene's impeachment resolution.
And we should vote on that.
And we should impeach Joe Biden.
But there is increased scrutiny now on the Biden-China relationship.
And this answer that Joe Biden gave Fareed Zakaria yesterday, I found particularly interesting.
Take a listen.
There's two things that I have tried to do in terms of our China policy.
And by the way, I admit, first in person, was Xi Jinping more than any other world leader.
68 hours alone he and I with an interpreter back when I was vice president all the way through because as you remember it was clear he was going to be president and there was uh it wasn't inappropriate for the president of the United States Barack Obama to be traveling the world with him but I traveled 17,000 miles with him and he was vice president in China and so we we understand each other I think fairly well.
Well isn't that interesting?
I would certainly agree with President Biden that if you spent 68 hours with someone and traveled 17,000 miles, that you would know a great deal about them.
And they would know a great deal about you too.
And you see, that is the follow-up that Fareed Zakaria was not courageous enough to ask, but it is certainly the operative question now for the country.
What did she learn about Biden?
Maybe all these payments to the Biden family from China were a consequence of Xi realizing that these were corrupt and compromisable people.
Maybe it was gallivanting around the globe with Joe Biden that had Xi realized that his weak spot was Hunter.
That if Hunter was bought off, paid, compromised, leveraged, turned against our country for money, that that would be a way to ensure the compromise of Joe Biden.
I think that the time that these two have spent together will be very telling about not only the relationship between the two men, but about the policy changes in our country that seem to have inured to the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party.
Just look at the China initiative at the Department of Justice.
President Trump set up a team of dedicated prosecutors to go after Chinese influence.
Joe Biden gets rid of it right away.
These people are compromised, they are corrupt, and it is hurting our country each and every day.
And patriots have to stand together to call it out and then to put guardrails up while we can and then to do everything we have to do to get the country back on track.
Thanks so much for joining us today on Firebrand.
We will have more episodes this week.
We've got a lot going on.
FBI Director Christopher Wray is coming before the House of Representatives, the Judiciary Committee upon which I serve.
I'm going to have a lot of questions for FBI Director Wray.
If you've got suggestions, things you want to know, go ahead and leave them in the comments.
Leave them in the reviews if you're listening to this show, and I'll definitely take a look.
And you never know, I've used letters and suggestions that folks have given me quite regularly, particularly this Congress, to be able to ask questions of some of these corrupt officials.
And again, as I mentioned before, we've got the National Defense Authorization Act.
We talked about the cluster bombs today, but we're going to have a lot more to report about de-wokifying This military that we love so much and ensuring that we've got the capabilities and the standards to ensure that America always holds the high ground.
Appreciate you so much.
Make sure you're subscribed with notifications turned on.
Tune in soon for more Firebrand.
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