All Episodes
Previous Next
July 18, 2023 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
35:18
Episode 113 LIVE: Trump Is The Target – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
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 those 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?
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.
Joe Biden and his many allies, from Chuck Schumer to Mitch McConnell to Paul Ryan, and every single news anchor on all of television, all of them believe that Ukraine, its borders, its future, its infrastructure, are all more important than the town that you live in.
They sincerely think that, and it's obvious.
Everyone in power thinks that, except for Donald Trump.
Whatever else you say about him, Trump is the one guy with an actual shot of becoming president who dissents from Washington's long-standing, pointless war agenda.
And for that, that one fact, they're trying to take Trump out before you can vote for him.
And that should upset you more than anything that's happened in American politics in your lifetime.
We are live.
That was, of course, Tucker Carlson on Twitter, really framing up the battle that rages on in Washington, D.C. against the neoconservatives and the globalists.
And our instrument to fight back against that certainly was President Trump during his time in office.
Could be President Trump again.
a statement indicating that he expects an arrest, an indictment in the January 6th matter.
I'm reading now from the statement from President Trump in part.
Horrifying news for our country was given to me by my attorneys.
Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden's DOJ, sent a letter again.
It was Sunday night stating that I am a target of the January 6th grand jury investigation and giving me a very short four days to report to the grand jury, which almost always means an arrest, an indictment.
President Trump continues, Fake dossier that was funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC impeached me twice.
I won.
They failed on the Mueller witch hunt.
No collusion.
They failed on the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, the 51 intelligence agents fraud, the FBI Twitter files, the DOJ Facebook censorship, and every other scam imaginable.
But on top of all that, they now effectively indicted me three times with a probable fourth coming from Atlanta.
Where the DOJ are in strict and possibly illegal coordination with the district attorney whose record on murder and other violent crime is abysmal.
This witch hunt is all about election interference and a complete and total political weaponization of law enforcement.
It is a very sad and dark period for our nation.
President Trump didn't even get to all of the conspiracies and hoaxes that were pushed by the left.
He even had the Russian bounties hoax.
Remember that, that somehow President Trump was aware that there were bounties on our troops from Russians in Afghanistan.
That turned out to be yet another op.
And indeed, what we see with this lawfare is an op.
What we see from the coordinated efforts by state, local, federal prosecutors to try to take President Trump off track so that he's not able to pursue a policy agenda to get the economy going again, to get America's standing in the world restored.
So instead, it is all about this lawfare.
Now, what does this target letter mean?
I want to go over that first.
It belies the evidence.
We recall on January 6th, President Trump calling on people to peacefully protest and have their voices heard.
We've also seen subsequently that there were actual permits given to entities to have stages set up outside the Capitol grounds and of course on Firebrand we have documented the video evidence of the criminal acuity increasing not as a consequence of people wanting to break the law But because barriers had been taken down.
Because there was mass confusion.
There was not any sort of planned effort on the part of President Trump to commit violence against anyone.
How is it that when Democrats call for all of these protests and all of this disruption and all of this violence, literally violence in some cases, that's seen as the frontiers of free speech.
But when President Trump calls on people to peacefully have their voices heard, All of a sudden that's the subject of a grand jury investigation.
So another important thing to note, when someone gets a target letter, like President Trump has now been given, that vests certain rights.
You have the ability to address the grand jury if you so choose.
That's oftentimes a perjury trap because you don't exactly know what's been going on in that room.
So a lot of targets do not avail themselves of that opportunity.
It's also pretty clear that this is a feature and a tool of retribution.
You would not see this continued pattern of indictment over indictment over indictment if they thought they had neutralized Trump.
Is there a single American who believes that Donald Trump would be getting indicted over these things if he were not running for president again and if he were not the leading contender for president again?
And while this isn't a political show, You all can search the polling and see how President Trump is doing in the Republican field and in the general election.
Again, not here to break that down.
It's relevant to us insofar as it informs the decision of a weaponized government to target him, which is exactly the allegation that President Trump makes in his statement.
Another important thing.
The House of Representatives needs to take action to defund this special counsel investigation immediately.
We do not need to wait for the appropriations process.
We don't have to wait for the Holman rule or some rider.
They are attacking our democracy and engaging in election interference right now.
And if the United States Congress does not have the capability to stop that election interference, well then what is all the flowery oratory about preserving the republic?
We have to operationalize that.
And so in the coming hours, the coming days, I will be introducing legislation under my name and the House of Representatives as a freestanding bill to defund the Jack Smith investigation.
And one reason why is the election interference feature.
Another reason why, the lack of transparency.
I have sent correspondence to the Attorney General.
I just want to know who's on the Jack Smith team.
You remember how...
The understanding of the composition of the Mueller team informed on how we saw a lot of that evidence and a lot of that legal analysis.
They had a team of vicious Democrats.
And if you look at Jack Smith and his team, you ought to be able to evaluate where they've made political donations, where they've been political appointees.
What their connections are to people who have skin in the game to preserve their power in Washington D.C. So because the Department of Justice has been non-responsive on my requests for reasonable information that a member of the Judiciary Committee is absolutely entitled to, Because this is election interference, because it is not predicated on what we all saw as a nation, President Trump said, we have to stop sending money to this.
The power of the purse is not some intermittent thing that we wield every year and a half or every fiscal cycle.
It's something that we have to wield day in and day out to achieve victory for our people and to stop this.
And by the way, I'm under no illusions about Joe Biden signing such a legislative device into law.
I know that Chuck Schumer would never bring such a thing up.
But you deserve to know where your members of Congress are counted.
Will they co-sponsor my legislation?
I certainly hope they will.
And when we get to the must-pass legislation, because look, even if Jack Smith indicts Trump 10 minutes from now, you're looking at legal process that has extended out a great deal.
We have to make sure that in this appropriations process, we do not continue to fund a government that has turned against the very nature of elections and free choice by the voters.
Because that's the world you're living in.
And by the way, President Trump lays out all the pieces of it.
It's not just the indictments in a vacuum that you have to look at.
You have to look at them through the lens of the Facebook efforts to try to move votes.
You have to look at them through the lens of the efforts that we've seen just to try to get candidates excluded from the ballot.
We saw that in Georgia.
Oh, well, we didn't like your rhetoric on January 6th, so you don't even have a right to run.
For the sake of democracy, We have to limit the choices of the voters.
You know what type of regimes say that?
Dictators.
The worst dictators in the world say that in order to protect their people from bad and disruptive choices, they just disqualify those people from participation.
What do you think this lawfare is?
It is the American incarnation of the worst impulses of totalitarianism.
And we have to stand against it and we have to do it now.
And I know where I'll be counted in the history books.
On behalf of giving the voters the ability to pick their own president.
And not saying that we're going to let Jack Smith Jack Smith, of all people, and who knows what Assembly of Associates and Assistants deprive us of that choice.
So we stand with the rule of law.
We stand against this degradation of democracy.
It's with no joy that we give you this report because President Trump is right.
It is indeed a dark, dark day.
There may be other dark days ahead when it comes to the utilization of A.I., And we have to have policymakers that are serious about artificial intelligence, that understand the contours of the distinct policy choices that we have to make.
And an affront to that seriousness is what you're about to see from the Vice President of the United States.
Play the clip.
And I think the first part of this issue that should be articulated is AI is kind of a fancy thing.
First of all, it's two letters.
It means artificial intelligence.
But ultimately what it is, is it's about machine learning.
And so the machine is taught.
And part of the issue here is what information is going into the machine that will then determine, and we can predict then if we think about what information is going in, what then will be produced in terms of decisions and opinions that may be made through that process.
AI doesn't make decisions yet.
That'd be general artificial intelligence.
And we are oftentimes at a state of wonder as to when that will occur.
Elon Musk said recently on Spaces with Mike Gallagher, who chairs the relevant subcommittee in the Armed Services over AI, And with Ro Khanna that he thought we might be five years away from that type of generalized artificial intelligence.
But artificial intelligence and machine learning aren't the same thing.
And we ought to have discussions with the public and with serious people about how various exquisite data sets play into the ability for AI models to be able to generate helpful, instructive, destructive work products.
In a variety of ways.
So just today, I've stepped out of a really important subcommittee hearing where we had some of the world leaders on artificial intelligence talking about the intersection of AI and our military policy.
And unlike the Vice President, we had a very serious discussion about this point.
And I'm telling you, if you aren't thinking about AI in every aspect of where the economy is moving, where foreign policy is moving, where Where kinetic conflict is moving, where soft power can be extended, then you're not getting the full picture.
This is not just the next technology.
It could indeed be the last technology.
We are going through these serious issues.
I want to bring you in the room to the Armed Services Committee just moments ago on artificial intelligence.
Play the clip.
Mr. Wang, thank you for bringing into sharp relief the extent to which we have to think about all of these weapons systems that we have in contested environments.
As data collections platforms, you know, almost primarily when it comes to integration with AI, and I took great interest in your call to the committee that, you know, we not waste that exquisite data that is being collected.
What advice would you have for the committee about shaping some sort of access or utilization regime for the data that we are currently wasting?
I think this is one of the most important things that we can do to set up America for decades and decades of leadership in military use of AI. Right now, a lot of this data goes onto hard drives, and what ends up happening are the hard drives are either overwritten with new information, so the old data gets deleted effectively and lost, or these hard drives go into sort of closets or places where they never see the light of day.
So first is instrumenting the data to sort of flow into one central Data repository.
The CDAO has a legislative mandate to do so and set up a central data repository for the DoD.
So I think that's of critical importance.
And then this is a whole of DoD issue.
Every service, every group, every program needs to be thinking about how can they, all of the data that their programs are collecting and that are being generated within their purview, how can they ensure that all these data flow through into one central data repository and then are prepared and tagged and labeled for AI-ready use down the line.
And it would seem as though under the normal construct of a mission set, someone might reasonably be stovepiped away from the broader utilization of some of that data.
So it almost seems like something that is an appendage to a mission set.
Very hard to weave it in because as you're collecting data in contested environments, it could be for all kind of reasons and all kind of help.
I wonder aloud, What will be commoditized first?
The processing capability on some of these platforms or the data itself?
Well, I think you're right that this is, you know, data is a new asset for this new regime of AI warfare.
Data truly is the ammunition that will power our future efforts in the military.
So, you know, it is a new paradigm to think about data as a key and central resource versus, as you mentioned, an appendage that sort of doesn't feel particularly critical to the future operation of our programs.
Yeah, you know, we do all kind of domestic policy, military policy around who can access rare earth minerals, who can access various forms of energy, and I wonder if in the future a nation-state's access to exquisite data sets that have been properly stored and collected are viewed just as precious.
I also wanted to reflect on the smartest hour I ever spent, and I was listening to Elon Musk, with our chair and ranking member, discussed some of these issues, and I would encourage anyone watching this who has an interest in the issue, a hard-to-find conversation on the Internet with a higher average IQ across the board than that one.
But what Mr. Musk presented as an argument was that China understands that AI control of governance is equally a threat to them and to the United States.
And so Mr. Musk's argument was, we really are ideal partners with China because we share a common goal to not have the AI robots ultimately take over our governance.
And our chairman offered, I think, a pretty strident critique of that perspective, saying that You know, while we view China as typically thinking long term and the short term, they're more team communistic genocide than they are team humanity.
So I was just wondering if, because you had so much in your written testimony about your time in China and how that shaped your perspective on the ethics of all this, do you think China sees an overlap of interests with the United States on this, or do they see us as explicitly an arm's length competitor?
I think it would be stretched to say we're on the same team on this issue.
I think that, you know, if you look at the last generation of AI, computer vision technology, the way that China approached it was utilizing it, building an industrial base that was government-funded to immediately build advanced facial recognition technology for the suppression of their population and the suppression of Uyghurs, ultimately sort of tightening the grip of their totalitarian regime.
I expect them to use modern AI technologies in the same way to the degree that they can, and that seems to be the immediate priority of the Chinese Communist Party when it comes to implementations of AI. We'll count you on Team Gallagher, not Team Elon, on that.
And just a question for the record, I would love to know everyone's perspective on what the most important alliances the United States is involved in when it comes to these AI regimes.
You know, is it AUKUS? Is it Five Eyes?
Alright, we are back live.
We had a lot of folks cheerleading for the Five Eyes Alliances, the AUKUS Alliances.
There was a case being made for the EU as a central node for AI development.
I tend to think that the EU and NATO are probably less nimble.
Than Five Eyes and AUKUS. But certainly, we want to make sure that we don't allow these tools to be exclusively in the hands of people who would seek to dominate us.
And right now, you've got China spending about 2% of their overall military budget on AI. We're spending about 0.1 to 0.2% of ours.
Now, Cindy on Facebook shared her perspective that we just need to stop AI. That was her...
And I wonder if it's that easy, because if we stop, does that necessarily mean that non-state actors, that other governments will as well?
Bill Clinton stopped U.S. work in space, hoping that our country taking a pause would result in other nations being less likely to weaponize space.
But in fact, that didn't happen because we took a pause.
Precisely because we made that policy choice, other nations, like Iran, Turkey, India, these emerging entities actually increase their investment in space.
I don't know if that's going to decrease the likelihood of militarized space.
Now, undeniably, with the Space Force, we see that as a contested domain.
AI is going to be a contested domain as well, because the data that goes into the AI that informs the outcomes will be sought after.
It will be commoditized to some degree, as I discussed with Mr. Wang.
America's, I think he was a billionaire at 25. Going through some of this stuff.
So very impressive young man.
Does a lot of work with our government.
But I don't know that Cindy's goal of merely stopping AI will be sufficient.
Other comments on the live stream.
Mike on Facebook says that accountability is the new witch hunt.
An interesting perspective.
And Mark on Getter says that talk never moved a stump.
And I wanted to draw attention to this point because it is not enough to use our words to condemn what we see going on.
We have to pull the money.
And I am not in a majority when it comes to that perspective in the Congress or maybe even the Republican Party.
And so that's where this audience and conservatives across the country have to demand an adherence to the rule of law.
and where there's a departure from that, there have to be actual monetary consequences, not just a series of press releases, tweets, and condemnations.
So very, I think, astute point, Mark.
Heather on Facebook says, Matt just needs to shut up.
Well, that is not going to happen.
And I can only imagine how sad someone would have to be to sit around on Facebook watching my podcast telling me to shut up.
Like, I guess if you don't want to be informed, then you can go elsewhere.
But we've got work to do.
We've got information to convey, and it's certainly an honor to be able to do that.
I had an honor to convey a lot of information this past weekend at the Turning Point USA conference where we talked about some of the policy decisions that we make here in Washington, some of the contours of the United States Congress, and The speech got a pretty favorable reception.
I'll play just a few moments of it for you.
These are my remarks this last weekend at Turning Point.
Enjoy and I'll be back live on the other side.
In recent years, I've traded far too many days in the swamps of my beloved Florida for the swamp of Washington, D.C. And if you haven't noticed, I've directed a little sunshine into some pretty dark spaces.
I don't think I'm going to be on Christopher Ray's Christmas card list.
Or John Durham's and maybe not Kevin McCarthy's either.
And you know what?
That's alright with me.
Earlier this year, we put the speaker and the world on notice.
No more cheerfully presiding over American decline on our watch.
No more messaging bills.
No more press releases devoid of action.
No more bluster and bullshit masquerading as bravado.
But I don't just sit around taking punches.
I've learned to dish a few out.
Recently, Chris Christie attacked me for asking tough questions of the FBI director who was Christie's personal lawyer during Bridgegate.
You know when I stopped being afraid of COVID? When Chris Christie beat COVID. Almost nobody's gonna get beat by Chris Christie in the upcoming...
Chris Christie's not gonna beat that many people in the upcoming election.
So if he beat COVID, there wasn't anything...
I was out karaoke bars the very next day.
Joe Biden just activated 3,000 reservists.
Sleepy Joe, who promised us that he was going to be like the national sedative, is now exporting cluster munitions to Ukraine.
We are still demining cluster munitions in Laos 50 years later.
It's a terrible thing.
A president who most days cannot find his pants should not be able to sleepwalk the United States of America into a war with a nuclear power.
There's this big online debate raging right now, and I just want to settle as one true north for the nature of truth itself.
Margot Robbie is not mid.
A 10 is a 10, even with Common Core math.
God's love does not halt for the limitations of man and God's reach does not stop at the schoolhouse gates.
in the coming days, I will introduce a national prayer in school law so that in every classroom in America, there will be time for students to pray if they choose.
And you know what?
This beautiful new Supreme Court that President Trump gave us just might uphold a constitutional law like that based on the values that this country was built on.
This is not the Lincoln-Douglas debating society or the neighborhood civility brunch.
This is a fight to save the greatest country that has ever existed.
And so here is my charge to all of you, to all of my colleagues in the Congress.
Join the ranks of the firebrands or get out of our way.
We are back live.
We're very excited about that national prayer in school legislation to allow a moment for reflection and prayer to any God or no God at all.
But I do think reserving that time would make people more empathetic.
And maybe before we go take people's Second Amendment rights away as a knee-jerk reaction to school shootings, we ought to focus on making the school not a place of just like...
So much trauma for this group of very disturbed and mentally unhealthy individuals.
And I gotta tell you, I'm betting on prayer to break through that more than any other government program or social-emotional learning exercise designed by bureaucrats.
Give me the social-emotional learning Designed by God and I think that can have a great impact on people and a positive impact and hopefully it can be a unifying thing and we did have jurisprudence out of this Supreme Court about prayer in school.
They did allow a coach to be able to go and pray at the 50 yard line followed by students at the end of a high school football game so we can trace some of the analysis there we've got out of the Trump court And unlock possibilities for us to be better humans and certainly better servants of God.
And we should all aspire to that.
A lot of feedback on the live stream.
Somebody's inviting me to New Jersey to run for Congress.
You may not know this, but I'm currently banned from New Jersey by your governor.
He said that I'm no longer welcome there.
So I think I'll stay a Florida man.
And on YouTube, there was an interesting comment that the only thing that they thought Chris Christie could beat would be a buffet.
Savage.
Absolutely savage.
It is certainly a day of a lot of reactions here on Capitol Hill.
I've talked to a number of my colleagues about this statement from President Trump that he expects yet another arrest and indictment in the Jack Smith matter.
I think this is among the most political, most ridiculous, because we have the evidence that President Trump was calling for a patriotic, peaceful protest.
Permitted, even, in some cases by some groups that wanted to host an audience outside the Capitol grounds.
Don't forget that whistleblower testimony that I brought forward indicating that one of the reasons why evidence couldn't even be shared within the FBI is because the FBI field office was acknowledging the involvement of federal government assets.
On January 6th, and we still don't have the answer to those questions.
We shouldn't have Americans who were not violent, who never intended to break a law in some state of potential prison or peril when it's our own federal government that hasn't been fulsome and forthcoming when we have asked important questions.
So we will stay on that, just like we will stay on the matter that seems to be destabilizing to the upcoming presidential election and the lawfare there appended to.
I wanted to end the show today on a more light-hearted note.
Yesterday, my wife Ginger and I went to an event at the UK Embassy where they had a Barbie party.
As you might imagine, it was Ginger's choice to go there, and we watched the Barbie movie, and my wife had the spiciest take on the Barbie movie.
So I'm going to give you the at Lucky Ginger, which is my wife's Twitter handle take on this matter.
She says, quote, I'd recommend sticking to getting outfit inspiration and skipping the theater.
here's why the barbie i grew up with was a representation of limitless possibilities embracing diverse characters and feminine empowerment the 2023 barbie movie unfortunately neglects to address any notion of faith or family and tries to normalize the idea that men and women cannot collaborate positively yuck ginger lists
the pros of the of the barbie movie are margot Robbie's performance, I would agree there, the stunning costume design and the amazing The cons include the unfortunate portrayal of big dreams causing anxiety instead of inspiration, disappointingly low tea from Ken, and the unfair treatment of pregnant Barbie Midge.
Ginger says, I really wanted to enjoy it, but I ended up feeling let down.
At American Girl, please don't take notes on this one.
A savage hot take from my wife, Ginger, and I will just say I agree with her on that point.
Make sure that you are subscribed to the podcast, whether it's through a viewing or a listening platform.
Give us a five-star rating.
Help share our content with more of the normies.
We got a country to save.
Let's go get them.
Roll the credits.
▲
Export Selection