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Oct. 10, 2023 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
33:27
Episode 118 LIVE: Israel at War – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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Thank you.
of the House of Representatives.
You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay?
Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero.
We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight.
I want to thank you, Matt Gaetz, for holding the line.
Matt Gaetz is a courageous man.
If we had hundreds of Matt Gaetz in D.C., the country turns around.
It's that simple.
He's so tough.
He's so strong.
He's smart and he loves this country.
Matt Gaetz.
It is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you.
We will save America!
It's choose your fighter time!
I'm sending the firebrands.
It began Saturday morning with a massive rocket barrage from Gaza striking across Israel.
While targets were hit, the likely intent here was to keep Israelis indoors, to distract from the invasion.
Others attacking border points and fence lines, all while thousands of rockets rained down.
Others using boats.
Meanwhile, on the ground, hundreds of Hamas fighters poured across breached border points.
Smashing Israel's defenses, heading to more than 20 communities in a house-to-house search, largely unopposed.
This happening across a wide area, in communities which were clearly part of a targeted plan.
Once there, the fighters killed indiscriminately, in the single deadliest day in Israel's existence.
Others managed to seize Israeli military equipment and open fire on passing vehicles.
Citizens of Israel, we are at war, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Welcome back to Firebrand.
We are live broadcasting out of room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building here at the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. Israel is at war.
For the first time since the Yom Kippur War in 1974, Israel is under siege and the Holy Land is being soaked in blood by terrorists, We have no positive vision for the future.
Every place where Hamas has gained control or influence, life for the people in those areas has gotten worse.
In Gaza right now, the conditions are horrendous.
They were even before this action, and as you just saw from that report, what you're dealing with is a coordinated attack.
There were explosives, gliders, there were rockets, and even These really, really vicious plans on raids of communities inside Israel where innocent people were slaughtered in the most grotesque and horrifying of ways.
This is a war that Israel will win.
It's my expectation that Israel will be larger, not smaller, at the end of this conflict.
It's also important to recognize right now That this is an asymmetric conflict.
In other wars that Israel's fought, they've largely had to deal with other countries as state actors unifying against the Jewish state.
While Israel's always prevailed in those endeavors, that's something very different than we're dealing with right now.
Hamas is largely a proxy.
For Iran and other entities that would spread their malign influence, not only to Israel, but frankly to other parts of the Arab world, where they don't like the fact that there seems to be some sort of a westward turn, a turn away from the barbarism that you see on display here.
In a lot of respects, this is a spasm of barbaric activity in response to What I think was very productive with the Abraham Accords under President Trump and other efforts, whether it's the work between Israel and Egypt on the Red to Dead project for water infrastructure for people who otherwise wouldn't have those life-sustaining assets,
or the recognition of Israel from some of the Gulf monarchies, including the United Arab Emirates.
Or the energy cooperation that you see between Israel and Qatar on liquefied natural gas or Israel and Saudi Arabia on other energy collaborations.
This is one of the worst manifestations of humanity, driven by Hamas, driven by political Islam, and it is something that the United States certainly observes as we recognize our obligation to stand with our ally Israel.
We're going to talk a little bit about what that looks like, ways in which this conflict could get worse, Even malign activity here inside the United States of America.
But I want now to go to the I-24 news report showing just how grave this has become for innocents.
Play the clip.
David, it's hard to even explain exactly just the mass casualties that happened right here.
In fact, the Israeli military says they still don't have a clear number, but I'm talking to some of the soldiers and they say what they've witnessed as they've been walking through these different houses, these different communities.
Babies, their heads cut off, that's what they said.
Gunned down, families completely gunned down in their beds.
You can see some of these soldiers right now comforting each other.
Many of them reserves who jumped into action, leaving their own families behind as well, not knowing the sheer horror that they were about to come to.
They say they've never experienced anything like this.
This is nothing that anyone could have even Imagined.
This is the reality and this is what all of these soldiers, you can see, none of them expecting this, but all of them being here ready for the fight nonetheless and proud to fight for their country is what I'm hearing as well.
And so that's why they wanna show the press.
They wanna show these very, very difficult images, David, but they want everyone out here because they wanna see and show exactly what is happening here on the ground.
That's I-24 news from today.
You saw how difficult that was for the reporter just to share that information and certainly it's difficult for all of us to see these images of innocents being slaughtered, but I think we have to see them and we have to acknowledge them.
You see, during the Holocaust, Hitler was able to do more harm and was able to afflict more death because they were trying to hide the number of people that they were killing.
And so I think that as gut-wrenching as these reports are, we have to force ourselves to acknowledge what people are up against and how depraved these Hamas objectives are.
And that's why it brings into such sharp focus the harm here within the United States of America That can emerge from groups that are championing Hamas and their efforts to harm people who really have done nothing to aggrieve anyone.
Little babies.
Black Lives Matter is a radical leftist organization here in the United States of America and their chapters are In unison, putting out their support for the violence that is being driven by Hamas.
Let's go ahead and put up that image.
Yeah, we've got it on the screen now for those who are watching our live stream.
Black Lives Matter, grassroots statement.
Solidarity with the Palestinian people.
And I just saw another one from BLM Chicago that actually had the image of someone paragliding from Gaza into Israel, presumably to carry out attacks.
was cheerleading, that type of terrorism.
And it shows how really the evils of some of these Globalist and international enterprises can show a very cold solidarity with one another, and I think it should allow all of us in the United States to look at Black Lives Matter as the terrorist organization that they are here in our country, showing solidarity and sympathy with another terrorist organization.
But that brings me back to the central point of this discussion.
Right now, you're not looking at freedom fighters.
You're not looking at people under the color of state action.
You're looking at terrorists.
Hamas terrorists.
And one of the reasons the Biden administration has said that they have now moved two carrier groups into the eastern Mediterranean is to deter other nations from getting involved.
Nations like Syria, Lebanon, Egypt.
Whoever would...
present any threat of violence against Israel.
And by the way, I think Egypt is low likelihood now, but given their prior involvement in some of these anti-Israel military campaigns, historically it's worth taking note of where they are now for no other reason than if they're sympathetic to some of the humanitarian goals to get people out of Gaza That that be recognized as a legitimate shift.
So, one of the countries that you're going to want to watch right now is Lebanon.
Gaza, shelling Israel from the south.
Lebanon...
It poses a real threat to Tel Aviv, to northern Israel because of the amount of Hezbollah control and activity and encampment and fortification and munitions and rockets that they maintain in southern Lebanon.
I've seen southern Lebanon with my own eyes from the Golan Heights and even I've seen some of the infrastructure that Hezbollah has there from a military standpoint.
We really are going to see now where the Lebanese military is because Hezbollah, undeniably, is going to start raiding communities in Israel in the north the way you've seen Hamas raid communities in the south.
That is going to happen and I wish it weren't and I'm grateful to see there's been a lot of build-up from the Israelis in the north to try to anticipate this and stop this and protect their people.
There's been the accusation and in fact evidence in the past that Hezbollah operates to some degree in concert with the Lebanese military.
Now you fund a ton of the Lebanese military with U.S. tax dollars.
And so my colleague, Florida Congressman Greg Stubbe, introduced an amendment recently on the House floor to strip out of our aid package any funding for the Lebanese military.
This could become very significant going forward, so I want to bring you back to that moment on the House floor.
Congressman Stubbe introducing his amendment.
Take a listen.
I encourage my colleagues to answer the question, how can we justify appropriating America's hard-earned taxpayer dollars to a foreign military that emboldens Hezbollah and their reign of terror and hate for America?
Hezbollah's influence runs rampant throughout the Lebanese government.
Even advocates of aid to the Lebanese military concede that Hezbollah's influence runs rampant throughout the Lebanese government.
What matters is not the addressee, it is the address.
Hezbollah's house.
Money is fungible and we are pumping cash and hard currency into a terror haven infested with terror finance and corruption.
Even those advance advocating to aid the Lebanese military say that this is an entity unwilling and unable to counter Hezbollah.
Then why are we wasting our money?
My amendment ensures that none of America's taxpayer dollars may be made available for the Lebanese Armed Forces.
Funding to the Lebanese Armed Forces is a policy that has been in place since 2006, essentially on autopilot.
Since then, the U.S. has provided more than $3 billion to the Lebanese military, supposedly to build up state institutions as a counterweight to Hezbollah, but with little to show in return.
In fact, Lebanon has come more under the sway of Hezbollah and Iran today than when the U.S. began funding Lebanon's military.
Hezbollah's chief Christian ally, the Free Patriot Movement, is the political party literally in control of Lebanon's defense ministry.
This is a policy on autopilot that gets renewed every year without Congress really having a chance to review this funding and ask whether this is a good place to spend taxpayer dollars and in our national interest.
We are funding an army who just yesterday shot smoke bombs at Israeli troops which it called enemy troops.
This should not be a partisan issue.
Anyone who takes a look at this issue objectively, I think, will have serious questions about why we continue to fund the Lebanese Armed Forces, one of the most corrupt and bloated armies in the world.
Most of Lebanon's military expenditures go to personnel salaries and benefits, a whopping 93% compared to 29% in the United States.
These benefits include health care, maternity leave, compensation in the event of death, as well as domestic workers and drivers for high-ranking officers.
For example, the Lebanese military, which consists of 80,000 soldiers, has 400 generals.
Which are extremely highly paid, while the US Army has a force of half a million, but just 295 generals.
This did not stop the Biden administration from notifying Congress last year that it was repurposing 67 million in aid to the Lebanese military in order to provide them with livelihood support, which just funds their salaries even more.
Rather than funding armed Mercedes and other luxury goods for Lebanese generals, we should be funding our southern border.
Lebanon's financial system is soaked in Hezbollah money laundering and financial crimes, and the terrorist group touches almost every facet of life in that country.
It is impossible that any administration could vet all the recipients of this taxpayer dollars and their families because there are no controls.
There is no way to know how these individuals use this money.
Some of it could flow through Hezbollah exchange houses or possibly be spent in Hezbollah-run businesses.
Mr. Speaker, by safeguarding the actions of Hezbollah and other terror groups, the Lebanese Armed Forces fuels Iran's mission to kill American troops and wipe Israel off the map.
I can't justify funding such horrific activity.
I encourage my colleagues to recognize the dangers of funding the Lebanese Armed Forces by voting for my amendment.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Okay, we're back live.
That was Florida Congressman Greg Stubbe introducing the amendment to stop funding Lebanese military through U.S. taxpayer dollars.
And oh my gosh, the live stream is with Congressman Stubbe on that.
Christine on Facebook says that we should not be funding these other countries.
Biotech Babe on Getter saying that Hamas and Hezbollah work together.
I think you heard that thread.
In the debate from Congressman Stubbe talking about Iran being the central point of resources that is distributed to these terrorist groups to put pressure on Israel.
And in a lot of ways, Iran's getting isolated right now.
More and more Arab countries are joining the Abraham Accords.
You're seeing this westward turn.
And so I think that Iran is doing everything they can to try to...
Really, really harm Israel for the sake of getting the Muslim world to do something that would not be in the interests of their own citizens, would not be certainly in the interests of peace and stability in the Middle East or globally.
So, very important argument from Congressman Stubbe.
But how did that amendment turn out?
I mean, all of you are saying it's America first.
We shouldn't be going into debt for this.
I think the argument Congressman Stubbe made about the corruption in the Lebanese military is worth listening to.
But go ahead and put up the vote screen.
So on the Stubbe Amendment, You had 128 people voting yes.
The rest of Congress 309 on this vote voting no.
You had over 90 Republicans voted against the Stubbe Amendment.
That's just remarkable to me.
Over 90 Republicans voting to take your money and send it to the Lebanese military, the very Lebanese military that was shooting smoke bombs at Israelis, and the very Lebanese military that Congressman Stubbe alleges is entirely interwoven with Hezbollah, which is interwoven with Hamas, which is interwoven with Iran.
Very important for you to watch that amendment.
The vote could be very ugly for some of the Republicans who were not with Congressman Steuby and myself.
And it should be worth noting, every single Democrat voted against the Steuby Amendment.
So that's Lebanon, but there are other countries that I think are going to play a key role here.
We've talked a little bit about Egypt.
Jack Posobiec is the host of Human Events Daily, one of my favorite shows.
Also a guy who knows a lot about the intelligence community and how these types of exfiltrations of innocence work.
Go ahead and put up Posobiec's tweet from earlier today.
It reads, the U.S. should be putting intense pressure on Egypt and everyone in the region to ensure there is a civilian corridor open for families out of Gaza the same way there was out of Bakhmut.
Biden won't, of course, but it needs to be said.
That is a very important diplomatic objective.
I think Posobiec makes an excellent point there.
Egypt has a role to play on the humanitarian side, and none of us want to see innocents killed.
I don't think Israel wants to see innocents killed.
I think Israel wants to defend itself.
And to the extent that there are civilian casualties, I do worry about that creating a new generation of terrorists, not just in Gaza, but throughout the Muslim world.
And so that's why I think Posobiec's tweet is right on the money, and it would be important post-haste for the State Department to heed that warning.
I also want to draw attention to an argument.
We've seen a little bit of this argument on the live stream.
Someone said that not having a speaker could potentially harm Israel.
If we don't have a speaker of the House, like, in the next 10 minutes, Israel might lose the war to Hamas.
Let's go up and put up the tweet from former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
He tweets, So you can read
that clearly.
From Senator Rubio, who would know, having chaired the Intelligence Committee, that aid to Israel for the military is functionally on multi-billion dollar auto pay.
And beyond that, the President has the authority to be able to meet any specific needs that arise as a consequence of the Very integrated attack plan that we saw from Hamas.
So take it from Senator Rubio, the fact that the House does not have a speaker in no way impairs our ability to help our ally Israel.
So an important point.
I also think when you zoom the lens out a little bit, You see incitement as a major contributing factor to this violence.
In Gaza today, half the people are under the age of 18. And so to win the future, to win any prospect of peace, you can't be plowing in to young people through pedagogy and education that their principal role in life is to kill Jews or kill people who aren't Muslims or to become a martyr.
That is not a positive vision for the future.
It is only a path to death and despair.
I introduced legislation years ago to strip out of any resources we provide the instructional materials that promote this martyrdom.
We should not be providing aid from this country that leads people to hate one another, and certainly we should not be providing any aid that in any way could manifest toward anti-Semitism.
I made those points on the House floor.
Take a listen.
One of the first amendments that I passed as a lawmaker on the House floor banned funding for entities that inculcate hate against Israel in the Arab world.
Mr. Speaker, it does not advance the interests of the United States to fund schools that incite terror and hate throughout the world.
Thirty-four of those such schools exist in Judea and Samaria, the area currently controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and this amendment would defund those 34 schools that are named after terrorists, killers, and Nazi collaborators.
Mr. Speaker, I care deeply for the education of our youth, but we have to demand that curriculums be reformed so that the schools that American taxpayers fund do not promote hate We're good to go.
So that brings us to the race for House Speaker.
And if the live stream is any indication, there's a lot of support for Donald Trump.
There are a lot of Jim Jordan supporters out there.
I want to bring you into the decision-making process within the House Republican Conference.
Obviously, we have the need to elect a speaker because I filed the motion to vacate on Kevin McCarthy.
I did that because Kevin McCarthy did not keep his promises from January to release the January 6th tapes, to have single-subject spending bills, to have a balanced budget amendment.
He drug his feet on term limits.
Time and again we saw Kevin McCarthy making multiple contradictory promises, and I think we did what had to be done.
But I don't want to look in the rear view, and I don't want to relitigate the past.
I want to look at these two men that we have that are putting themselves forward for Speaker of the House, and let's take a gander at their argument.
So Jim Jordan writes an October 4th letter to the House Republican Conference that states in part, We agreed at the beginning of Congress that there are three fundamental things the House must do.
Pass the bills that need to be passed, do the oversight, and rein in the spending.
Working with Chairman Green and our leadership, I helped to deliver the most significant legislative accomplishment this Congress.
The strongest immigration and border enforcement bill ever.
With other committee chairs and members of the Judiciary Committee, I'm doing the oversight and holding the administration accountable.
And I've been among the leaders in pushing for fiscal discipline my entire career.
We are at a critical crossroad in our nation's history.
Now is the time for our Republican Conference to come together to keep our promises to Americans.
The promises we face are challenging, but they are not insurmountable.
We can focus on the changes that improve the country and unite us in offering real solutions.
But no matter what we do, we must do it together as a conference.
I respectfully ask for your support for Speaker of the House of Representatives.
is the opening argument from Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio.
A similar letter on October 4th came out from the current Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Steve Scalise.
We'll get into Mr. Scalise's argument.
It reads, quote, You know my leadership style.
I've displayed it as your majority leader and whip.
I have a proven track record of bringing together the diverse array of viewpoints within our conference and building consensus where others thought it impossible.
When I ran to be your majority leader, I made a commitment to turn our conservative agenda into legislative action, facilitate a legislative process built on regular order and member input so all members and their constituents have a voice in the House of Representatives and to hold the Biden administration accountable.
We moved our top agenda items to the House, and based on those three commitments, we ran efficient, collaborative, and successful processes involving multiple members of committees of jurisdiction to pass HR1, the Lower Energy Costs Act, which would lower costs, lower inflation, and make America energy independent once again.
We ran into challenges on the border package.
We pressed pause on that committee process to bring in dozens of members, both on and off the committee, to iron out our differences on the border and immigration policy.
The result of that work was HR2, the Secure the Border Act, the most conservative border bill the House has ever passed.
And we delivered on our commitment to ensure that parents have a say in their child's education through the passage of HR5, the Parents' Bill of Rights.
While we've made tremendous progress so far this Congress and have demonstrated that we can unite against failing liberal policies, more work needs to be done.
We have an extremely talented conference and we need to come together and pull in the same direction to get our country back on track.
That was the letter from Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
So it is a two-man race right now.
I have heard some of these rumblings that McCarthy wants to re-enter the race.
Let me address those.
Kevin McCarthy does not have the requisite 217 votes to become Speaker of the House.
217 is the magic number now, not 218 because we do have a vacant seat in the Utah seat that was occupied by Republican Congressman Chris Stewart.
Kevin McCarthy didn't have 217 when he tried to use a procedural endeavor to table my resolution vacating the chair.
He didn't have 217 when that resolution was ultimately adopted, and he would not have 217 votes at any point going forward.
Therefore, if Kevin McCarthy persists to have his supporters vote for him in the absence of any prospect of him becoming Speaker of the House again, those tactics are nothing but dilatory and obstructionist.
And they're fundamentally unserious.
Folks can be critical of me.
They can disagree with my basis for removing McCarthy.
But people can't really be surprised.
I made a deal in January to have lower spending, to have single-subject spending bills, to get the January 6th tapes released.
And when Kevin McCarthy didn't meet major features of that, including a balanced budget amendment, The reason we put a one-person motion to vacate in the rules was to ensure that we did not continue to oversee American decline under the leadership of somebody who wasn't keeping their promises.
We were concerned that those promises might not be kept, and when it became evident that they wouldn't be, we did what had to be done.
But this is no time to uncork the champagne or pat ourselves on the back.
We have to finish the job.
We have to get an upgrade at the position of Speaker of the House.
And in moments when I leave you, we'll be going to some of the candidate forums and small group meetings to be able to hear Congressman Jordan and Congressman Scalise lay out their vision.
I'm confident that either will do a far better job for us than we saw out of the previous administration of the House of Representatives.
Thank you so much for joining me.
I would love to get your thoughts on the race for speaker.
Do you have a preference?
If so, leave it in the comments on Spotify, Apple, or anywhere you're listening to your podcasts.
Or, of course, you can chime in on the live stream.
I always love knowing what everybody's thinking about these matters of great consequence and great import for the future of our country.
Thanks so much for joining us.
We'll be back soon.
Roll the credits.
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