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Oct. 12, 2023 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
30:45
Episode 119 LIVE: Speaker for Hire – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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Thank you.
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.
and send in the firebrands.
It's important just for the world to show that our democracy is working, that it's thriving.
I think what Matt Gaetz and these seven nihilists did was a total disgrace.
Four percent of the conference overturned the will of 96 percent of the conference to fire a speaker for what?
Doing his job.
If Matt Gaetz had his way, we would be not only in a defunctional Congress right now, but we'd be in a government shutdown.
So I think it's disgraceful what these people did, but we have to move on.
We have to elect a new speaker.
We've got to show that we can walk and chew gum as a country at the same time, govern, and give our allies what they need in this very, very pressing time for them.
A nihilist.
I think he meant nihilist.
That was former failed House Speaker Paul Ryan quite up in arms over the fact that we are making changes to Washington, D.C. Sometimes you've got to break a few eggs to make an omelet.
And that's what we're doing right now.
I'm going to bring you inside the latest discussions about the candidates, the prospects, how this is all unfolding.
Thanks for joining me.
We are live broadcasting out of room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building here in the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. And I'm going to start our discussion just by totally disclaiming that what you have seen from me in vacating McCarthy and working to get the best conservative in position to win It's not a consequence of my own desire to have House leadership or to move up or to get a new title or the new corner office.
And while some online have been suggesting that maybe I should be the candidate for speaker, I can assure you that that is not the direction this is going.
Go ahead and put up the tweet.
Eric Spracklin says, I've said it before and I'll say it again, Matt Gaetz for House Speaker.
So there are a few problems with that.
First, By virtue of removing McCarthy, it does create some badwill among the people who were his allies and also his political benefactors.
The way McCarthy accumulated power was by raising hundreds of millions of dollars in special interest money and then redistributing that money to people in exchange for loyalty.
And while that doesn't create a durable political structure as we saw, it certainly can create resentment if you take away the goose that's laying the golden eggs for some of these folks, even if that money is ill-gotten from the standards that I hold that we shouldn't be raising money from.
Lobbyists and PACs and special interests who want to influence the decisions here in Washington so that the needs of the American people are subjugated.
And for holding that viewpoint, I have not gained a ton of friends in this town.
The LA Times observing Matt Gaetz is widely hated in Congress.
Doesn't bother me too much.
He was able to oust Kevin McCarthy anyway.
Both of those things may very well be true, so I think we can very likely dispense with the notion that I have a candidacy or a prospect to be Speaker of the House.
So sorry to Eric, who put out that very kind tweet.
But I think that also says something about the makeup of the Republican conference.
We need more America first congressmen.
We have far too many people here that are vestiges of a Republican party of yesteryear that does not reflect the dynamism and energy and realignment that a lot of our most enthusiastic activists and supporters reflect in how they approach politics, how they think about a lot of these things.
In a lot of ways, the Republican conference here in Washington, D.C., in the House of Representatives, is not a leading indicator of where the Republican Party is.
It's a lagging indicator.
The leading indicator is really the sentiment that we draw from folks, whether they're commenting right now on our live stream, engaging with us on the phone, in the mail, digitally.
And the American people want to see Washington change.
That is coming through.
Representatives are hearing that message as we engage in this contest for speaker, but for people who hold views like me, To have a greater say in Washington, D.C., it is not ambition that is the essential ingredient.
It is a constituency of the membership.
And on any given day, sometimes it's 4, 5, 8, 20, 25, 30. We've finally gotten a majority of the majority to oppose U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine, but that took some time.
Again, Congress has the lagging indicator, not the leading indicator.
And so mark this.
As a moment where we really dedicate ourselves to the concept of having more America-first principles and values and people here in the United States Congress, working on the stuff that's important to the American people.
There is a lot of enthusiasm for Donald Trump as a potential Speaker candidate.
So, as many of you will remember, I first nominated President Trump for Speaker of the House back in January.
I'll give you a listen to that clip.
What purpose does a gentleman from Florida rise?
To place a name and nomination for the position of Speaker of the House.
The gentleman is recognized.
My friends, when Donald Trump was president, taxes were cut, regulations were slashed, energy was abundant, wages were rising, capital was returning from overseas to fund the dreams and ambitions of our fellow Americans, and the economy was roaring.
And so I nominate President Trump because we must make our country great again, and he can start by making the House of Representatives great again.
So I gave that nominating speech and I can't say that the movement took off.
President Trump only got a very small handful of votes.
Well, it was mostly me that was voting for President Trump in those ballots and in those contests.
There have been a few other of my colleagues, Troy Nels notably, Greg Steube, who said that they are eager to vote for Donald Trump for Speaker of the House.
I was with President Trump last night in Palm Beach.
We talked about this.
I can tell you, straight from the horse's mouth, President Trump does not want the job.
He is laser-focused on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue because he believes if we do not hold the White House, No matter which party controls the Congress, no matter who is the presiding officer, we will not be able to take the country back.
We will not be able to make the changes at the border, in the economy, and really in just how our administrative agencies operate with Congress alone.
We have to have the executive so he is putting his time to best use toward that objective.
In which I think he ever considered it or would consider it if there was an extremely short interim basis where he could come in, put us on the right track, set a vision and an agenda.
I don't think that's the direction this is going, but I think that the president's focus is appropriately on the Article II powers reflected in the presidency.
President Trump also endorsed Congressman Jim Jordan for the position of Speaker of the House.
We showed you that in our last episode.
And we've got a comment from Hello America News on the live stream.
Devin Nunes for Speaker.
I would totally vote for Devin Nunes for Speaker.
But let's get to Jim Jordan.
Jim Jordan, a lot of enthusiasm for him in the base.
You will recall, back in January, this was another play that I attempted to run.
I tried to nominate Jim Jordan.
I believe in Jim Jordan.
Here was my speech in January, making the case for Jordan for Speaker.
Play the clip.
Well, sometimes we have to do jobs that we don't really want to do.
And sometimes we have to do jobs that we are called to do.
And so, my colleagues, I rise to nominate the most talented, hardest working member of the Republican Conference who just gave a speech with more vision than we have ever heard from the alternative.
I'm nominating Jim Jordan.
I gave that speech right after Jim Jordan had nominated Kevin McCarthy.
I was not successful at getting Jim Jordan to vote for himself, though I got a number of other members enthusiastic about his candidacy then, and I think there are people still pretty psyched about him to this day.
That said, yesterday...
We had a vote in the Republican conference between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan.
Jim Jordan lost that vote by seven votes.
Now, we've heard from a lot of people about the nature of that vote, that it was behind closed doors, that it was anonymous, people's names didn't necessarily have to append To the vote that they were casting.
A very different thing than you saw back in January on the floor with Kevin McCarthy and that you'll see again with whoever we elect for speaker.
So why is that happening?
A lot of people concerned about that methodology.
When I knew that the motion to vacate was going to be successful based on the roll call votes vis-a-vis Speaker McCarthy, it was my belief that immediately, right then and there, without taking a week off for everybody to go have a good cry, without retreating to our respective conferences, I thought right then and there we should have begun with nominating speeches and votes, and you know what?
It would have been messy, and it would have taken a while, but it probably would have been done by now.
Instead, They wanted to reschool the fish, reconstitute the caucuses, and what I have to tell you is that decision is not one that I got to make, not one even that the majority of the body got to make.
That decision rested with the pro tem and the pro tem alone.
Now, this is not an elected position, not even a position you can vacate.
It was a position that was appointed by the outgoing speaker.
This is a weird quirk of how the parliamentary process works.
The outgoing speaker has a list of who would serve in the event of their incapacity, in this case by vote, but there could be incapacity for all other reasons.
And the person designated was Patrick McHenry.
He made the decision to send everybody home for a week.
That was a bad decision.
And then the decision of the conference chair, Elise Stefanik, in coordination with Patrick McHenry, Is to engage the process that usually we do at the beginning of the year where people cast their votes.
Then when someone has received 50% plus one, they're officially the designated candidate of the party.
And we move to the floor as a consequence of that.
So Jordan loses.
And then the question is, is Jordan going to mount a campaign on the floor?
Similar to what we saw with McCarthy back in January.
Or is he going to back Scalise?
And we've got some reporting on that I want to share with you.
First, from Jake Sherman at Punchbowl.
Jake Sherman tweets, Jim Jordan just offered to nominate Scalise on the House floor.
Jordan getting behind Scalise.
That reporting confirmed by Olivia Beavers at Politico.
Olivia tweeting, Rep.
Jordan plans to vote for Scalise as Speaker on the floor.
And is encouraging his colleagues to do the same per source with direct knowledge.
One thing that I have experience in is being more for Jim Jordan than Jim Jordan was for Jim Jordan.
And one thing I've learned is that it is challenging at times to get Jim Jordan over the line if Jim is not for Jim.
I say that to you because I voted for Jim Jordan in that conference.
I did not vote for Steve Scalise.
Jim was my preferred candidate.
And while both Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise represent an upgrade over Kevin McCarthy, I do believe Jim would have been the better choice.
Now, Jordan is nominating Scalise and backing Scalise and working to whip votes for Scalise.
So that brings us to Scalise.
Let's talk about his candidacy and who can think about Steve Scalise without remembering the tragic moment where he was shot on a baseball field by a radicalized Bernie Sanders supporter.
Play that clip.
Washington correspondence that the president and the vice president have now been informed of what have happened.
And you can see here what looks like, that looks like a member of Congress that I recognize, but we'll wait for confirmation.
We do have it, Nora.
We've told that the congressman who was shot in the hip has been identified as Steve Scalise.
He is the Republican House majority whip.
And as you can see there, it appears that they are medevac-ing him.
The Alexandria Fire Department and first responders are medevac-ing him to get treatment.
And the shooting happened in the dugout of the baseball field.
And as of this time, we do not know, even though we assume he's in custody, the name of the shooter and his motive or intent.
We are back live.
Pat on Facebook giving me the comment that Jordan is not trusted because Jordan did not vote to vacate McCarthy.
Let me level with you politically.
Eight Republicans voted with me, including my own vote, to vacate McCarthy.
None of those people Have any chance of being elected Speaker of the House this term.
The bad blood with the other Republicans, not all of them, but a sufficient number of them, would preclude myself, Andy Biggs, Bob Good, Tim Burchett, Nancy Mace, Matt Rosendale, Eli Crane, from really being considered Speaker of the House.
Even though several people on that list would probably make a pretty good Speaker of the House, that is a political reality.
So that's why That would probably be a path that would not be productive for us to pursue.
I also want to talk about the bad blood between Scalise and McCarthy that seems to have impacted this race because while Steve Scalise won the original caucus vote by seven votes, He does not have 217 votes right now.
He may get there.
He may not.
He does not have 217 votes right now.
And that is the magic number.
It's not 218 because there's a vacancy because Chris Stewart of Utah retired and the special election hasn't filled that seat.
So that's the important math.
But there are a few areas that really contributed to the bad blood between McCarthy and Scalise that may be affecting Scalise's vote tally right now.
First is the debt limit.
When Kevin McCarthy went to negotiate the debt limit with the White House, typically that negotiating team would be led by or at least heavily informed by whoever the majority leader is, the number two in the House.
But instead of involving Steve Scalise in the debt limit deal, which I assume almost everybody watching this program and getting this report would be against.
I was viscerally against that deal.
Steve had no role in negotiating it.
He was cut out and really he was replaced by Louisiana Congressman Garrett Graves and North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry who's now the pro tem.
The second thing that contributed to this I think bad blood between McCarthy and Scalise was the way that McCarthy negotiated the continuing resolution.
Scalise was cut out of that.
And then finally we heard reports of a secret side deal between McCarthy and the White House On Ukraine.
And Scalise was cut out of that as well.
And so this may be creating a rub where some of the remnants of McCarthy world are simply unwilling to deliver their votes to Scalise because they know of the drama or tension that existed between McCarthy and Scalise during a lot of the time when they were both members of the leadership team.
Now on Ukraine specifically, I've gotten a lot of comments about this.
Because I do not support more funding for the war in Ukraine.
I was one of, I think, three, four members who from the beginning has opposed this.
And both Jordan and Scalise were asked their perspectives on Ukraine, and they gave the exact same answer, even though they have a very different voting record.
And I align with Jordan's votes, of course.
They both said that the White House hadn't produced a plan.
That a majority of Republicans were against continuing to fund this, and they were both pretty negative on it.
Now, circumstances change.
Got to evaluate people not just by what they say, but how they vote.
That's how all of us get evaluated.
But I wanted to bring you to that point because how people are thinking about Ukraine is informing a lot about how folks think about the direction of the House and how it should be led.
And there are equally strong You know, passions on both sides of that.
I mean, we have some members who will not vote for somebody that doesn't want to have an America last policy and send every last dollar to Ukraine.
And there are some of us who have a real hard time ever pulling the lever for someone who thinks that this is going to be America's new costly forever war with high risk of escalation accident and sleepwalking us into World War III. That's Ukraine.
So now we're in a circumstance, we just got out of a meeting with the Republican conference where Scalise asked those who opposed him to come forward, share their concerns.
He was talking through those concerns with them, and I didn't see a lot of votes move during that particular meeting.
And so then the question becomes, what happens if neither one of these guys can get the votes?
What happens if some of the Jordan people, even though Jordan apparently has said he's going to nominate Scalise, is whipping votes for Scalise, even though that's happening, there may be Jordan people that don't want to vote for Scalise, there may be Scalise people that don't want to vote for Jordan.
If that were to come to an impasse, and I would actually hope that it wouldn't come to an impasse, you could see a move by the current number three in the House, The whip, Tom Emmer of Minnesota.
And he's not a candidate yet, but if things were to dissolve with the two people that were running, with the one person that was designated, It would be my expectation that Tom Emmer would mount a campaign alongside perhaps Kevin Hearn, a congressman from Oklahoma, who currently leads the Republican Study Committee, which is the largest Republican caucus in the United States Conference.
So, Congress.
So, we've got the speaker's race.
Underneath that, if Scalise is ultimately elected speaker, he will vacate the position of majority leader.
Several people have expressed an interest in that, including my friend and Florida colleague, Byron Donalds.
And if Emmer were to run for that, it could even create a vacancy for WIP. So a lot of moving parts.
This is part of the politics that really drives Washington.
If you watch the television show, House of Cards, What I think they get right in that dramatization of all this is how much time and energy and effort and focus members of Congress put into these leadership elections.
It really is the Alpha and Omega for some of them, and as I told you at the top of the program, not for me.
Throughout all of these personalities and all these zero-sum machinations of power, the most important thing to me Is that we put downward pressure on spending and we constrain the Biden government from doing the grave harm that they are doing to the American people right now.
It's not about personalities.
It's about the plan.
We cannot continue to underwrite Joe Biden's debt, advance his spending that is crushing people through inflation, all alongside the Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell negotiated policies that I want to rip out.
of United States federal code and the only way to do that is single subject spending bills and I'm fighting real hard for that no matter who ends up in what leadership position but my commitment to you is I'll keep you informed I'll keep you up to date election you deserve to know not just what my perspective is again I went in and voted for Jordan some folks don't like that on the lines livestream some folks really do like that but what you deserve to know is how the case is being made and what it means for you And the power centers
here in Washington if certain coalitions advance or dissolve or are able to constitute a functioning majority in the United States House of Representatives.
Been a whole lot of whining about, oh, well, you know, McCarthy's gone.
Oh, the House is in chaos.
We don't have a functioning legislative branch of government.
Spare me the breathless pearl clutching.
We had been failing for nine months under Kevin McCarthy.
No budget.
No release of the January 6th tapes.
No subpoena to Hunter Biden.
We didn't have a functioning House of Representatives when we did have a speaker.
So it is worth it to rip off the band-aid, to get this right, and to put ourselves in a position where we have a leader who can inspire and who the Republicans in our conference can trust.
And I know that means we got Republicans from East Coast, West Coast, rural, urban, suburban, everything in between.
But I know that For us to be able to drive action, we have got to have more boldness in the speaker, and we've got to surround them with a team that is willing to go to battle against the Biden administration and the Chuck Schumer-led Senate.
I also want to update you on some important work that's going on at the committee level in the Congress just today.
And keep in mind, even though there is this leadership drama that overlays the beltway, There's also a lot of committee work going on to see that we're doing what the American people need on oversight, on legislation.
And one of the things that you should all be worried about is the level of crime in D.C., I used to love it when in 2017, 2018, I'd learn that Northwest Floridians would come to our nation's capital and I'd be so eager to set them up.
Oh, you got to go to the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial and got to go to the Spy Museum and park the car, walk around, use public transportation.
And in the years that have passed, Our subway system has become dangerous.
Our beautiful monuments have become camping grounds for the homeless.
And, you know, I'm not blaming the homeless, but you can't have a situation where our fellow Americans cannot enjoy our nation's monuments and our history and our national story because people are deciding to turn it into their residence.
That is not okay for the rest of us.
And most notably crime.
We are seeing crime levels just absolutely skyrocket in our nation's capital.
We had a hearing on it in the House Judiciary Committee, and this was some of the content that we reviewed.
Play the clip.
2023 has been one of the deadliest DC has seen in decades.
There have now been 200 homicides so far this year in the district.
The district is in a state of emergency due to the high crime rate.
So far in 2023, 12 children have been shot and killed.
The murder rate in the District of Columbia is skyrocketing.
Crime on DC public transit has jumped to horrific rate.
All crime up 25% murder.
24%.
Motor vehicle theft up.
107%.
A violent weekend unfolding in the district.
2023 is now the third year in a row where D.C. has reached 200 homicides.
Police are investigating a series of shootings.
That includes a mass shooting.
A 16-year-old shot and killed and then bullets went flying into two classrooms.
Eight people shot and killed in the district in just seven years.
A triple shooting in Shaw.
Two women are dead and a teenage girl is in the hospital.
Some neighborhoods have seen homicides increase 280%.
The vast majority of them are just fine.
We have to do better and there are federal equities and I want to make sure that when all of you come here to be with us, that you can be safe with your families and that you can be proud of your country and your capital and our great national story.
I've got to say one of the benefits of this episode, everyone is chiming in on the live stream with their favorite Dark Horse, off-the-wall candidates for speaker.
We heard Devin Nunes earlier.
Kash Patel.
A lot of love for Kash Patel on the Rumble thread.
Former New York congressman and New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin getting some love.
I saw on YouTube someone mentioned Trey Gowdy.
I would definitely be opposed to Trey Gowdy as speaker.
I thought that he was all hat, no cattle when it came to oversight and accountability.
And Wannimal.
says just put me in charge so I don't know maybe you think you can be speaker and you're on the live stream either way I'll keep you posted make sure you're subscribed do us a favor give us five stars if you're listening on Apple or on Spotify that gives us the best opportunity to be able to share this content keep people engaged and informed if there is any way My efforts to change this town will be successful is because people like you will share this content,
engage our fellow Americans, and then take action to demand better.
I'll keep you updated.
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Roll the credits.
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