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Nov. 8, 2023 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
30:47
Episode 129 LIVE: Gaza Disrupts Congress – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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Thank you.
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.
I'm sending the Firebrands. - Welcome back to Firebrand.
We are broadcasting live out of room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building here at the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. And votes are in just a few moments on yet another of our single subject appropriations bills and the amendments thereto.
I'll be introducing an amendment to defund The $300-plus million brand new FBI headquarters here in Washington, D.C., larger than the Pentagon.
We'll have more on that in a little bit.
But today in the House Judiciary Committee, we had a key hearing on free speech, college campuses, It erupted.
It was explosive.
Some of the best testimony we got was from Jasmine Jordan.
She is a third-year student at the University of Iowa, where she serves as chairwoman of the college's Young Americas for Freedom chapter.
The group's events have been protested repeatedly by Antifa.
Ms. Jordan has really been ostracized and threatened as a consequence of her conservative views.
She was also really harassed by some of the Black student union associations.
She was even called a white supremacist.
Powerful testimony in the House Judiciary Committee.
We take you there now.
In spring 2022, I joined Iowa Young Americans for Freedom when I discovered that this organization aligned with the Christian conservative values instilled in me by my church and family.
The more involved I became in the club, the more I discovered that the playing field for freedom of speech on college campuses was not equalized.
The first time I noticed this was when Iowa YAF hosted Kellyanne Conway as a speaker.
In response, I was doxxed in a group chat of over 800 students and was falsely labeled as a Nazi, a token, a white supremacist, and a bigot.
Some individuals even expressed that I made them uncomfortable and feared that I might commit a hate crime against them simply because I am black and hold conservative principles.
These students believe that if you are conservative, you are hateful, support oppression, and only want to benefit straight white men, even though such beliefs are untrue.
When we hosted Lieutenant Colonel Allen West to speak on campus last year, he spoke on the topic of debunking diversity, equity, and inclusion, and proved that America is not racist.
We used chalk advertisements to promote the lecture, which is something many colleges do, to effectively let students know about upcoming events.
Immediately, our chalk was altered, which is a violation of school policy.
New messages were put in place saying that Allen West is racist and that racism is prevalent in schools, thus critical race theory should be supported.
At Allen West's lecture, a protester stood in the back holding a sign that read, Stop the alt-right.
Punch your local Nazi today.
This is blatant irony.
Conservatives are slandered by students and faculty as harmful, yet here's an obvious example of someone openly delivering a violent threat.
And facing no repercussions.
The entitlement continues.
I find that when a conservative doesn't want to hear a speaker, they just don't attend the event.
But when a leftist doesn't want to hear a speaker, they do everything they can to shut the lecture down.
Our club recently hosted Matt Walsh.
Students and faculty were willing to do anything to cancel the event just because they found Walsh's speech to be offensive.
Some people were so dedicated to silencing our voices that literally as one of us was advertising with chalk, a leftist student was erasing each of those letters with a wipe.
We received death threats along with plenty of verbal harassment.
That night, before the speaking event, my hallmate, who happened to be the one erasing the chalk, stalked outside of my bedroom door by putting his ear on it to see if I was in my room because he was just so outraged by my involvement.
That was a terrifying experience, but what I find to be more appalling is when I talked to our hall coordinator about this, and she replied, people are allowed to think, feel, and react however they want to about this upcoming event.
At the event, someone threw 20,000 marbles on the floor to prevent people from entering the venue.
Attendees were spat on.
Outside, a popular pep band well known to our school played loud music to try and drown out the speaker's message.
I share these occurrences with you all to show that despite repeatedly meeting with the university administration, the rules are continually permitted to be broken by left-leaning students.
They are in fact coddled by our school.
We are back live.
That's Jasmine Jordan, third-year student at the University of Iowa and strong reactions on the live stream.
Rob on Facebook saying we need more Matt Gaetzes and MTGs in Washington.
I appreciate that.
I would certainly agree as it relates to MTG. And Bill says, is Matt for or against free speech since he became a Democrat?
It's hard to know.
Well, Bill, let me know how you think I've become a Democrat.
I think actually the Democrats here in Washington would have a very different perspective.
But there was a perspective that was shared in a pretty disruptive way at this hearing on free speech.
And you've got to appreciate the irony.
When you're having a free speech hearing and folks are not allowing the witnesses to give testimony, hear a great deal of angst over what's going on in Gaza.
And we actually got a little taste of maybe what some of these students who are getting harassed feel on college campuses.
Here is the raw footage from the House Judiciary Committee today.
The genocide of Palestinians and Israeli apartheid has existed longer than what has happened on October 7.
This has existed longer than that.
End the speech on Gaza now.
End the occupation.
You will not silence us.
We will not be silenced.
Cease fire now!
Cease fire now!
4,000 are gathered, children, and students are dead!
What is your right to preach if all of us are not free?
What does it mean if they can die until you can...
I want to say what this is saying.
Policy and liberation is not an anti-semit system.
Policy is their right to not be demonstrated.
I want to throw a punch directly.
Free nada!
Palestinians deserve to speak on the genocide of their families!
Palestinian students deserve to speak on the genocide of their families!
Stop silencing Palestinian students!
They're speaking of a genocide of their families!
Stop silencing the Palestinian students!
It is an honor to bring my experience to you.
Palestinian students should not be censored!
You want to talk about putting money where your mouth is?
There are 10,000, over 10,000 from Gotham dead.
And more, Gary, half of whom are under the age of 18. And you're going to say money is talking about this?
Where are you going to deny these Jews in this room?
Nowhere.
So you are not offering plurality of opinion.
You are offering partisanship.
And you are offering murder to more Gotham.
Break up!
We are back live.
Lynn on Rumble says these morons need to be arrested.
Joe on Facebook wonders whether or not it's an insurrection.
And Ms. Soto saying they are liberal rich kids with no clue.
It's quite something that we no longer embrace this notion that we can present our ideas to one another and have those criticized and reflected upon and subject to public debate.
Now, increasingly, You have a dynamic where if people don't like the speech of another entity, they just want to shut down that speech and limit it and not engage with it.
And clearly what you saw here were these students speaking out not in order to have a discussion, but to try to have a heckler's veto over the witnesses that we had brought forward.
They didn't want those witnesses like Jasmine Jordan to be able to share their story, and so they just heckle over them.
We've got to get past that.
Even some of the most liberal Democrats, Communist Socialists that are here in Washington, D.C. deserve to be able to present an argument in the halls of Congress.
Now, that argument ought to be subject to rebuke and the best in rhetorical opposition that we can bring to bear when it's not the right thing for our fellow countrymen.
But I do not like deplatforming as a strategy to win an argument.
I'd rather confront that argument dead on and have it, and not just say there's these verboten areas of speech.
And so there were witnesses today, like the next clip I'm going to show you, this woman, Dr. Nadell, she's there to really reflect on anti-Semitism as a concept.
And the inherent tension in this hearing is you've got these students, like Jasmine Jordan, saying, look, we want to speak, we want to be heard, we want to have our First Amendment rights.
Vindicated, not subject to this heckler's veto.
While at the same time you have some of these anti-Semitism experts saying, well we're here to tell you all the things that shouldn't be allowed to be talked about.
And one of those things, she said, is George Soros.
Anything that's a criticism of George Soros is inherently anti-Semitic.
And I pushed back on that.
Because whether it's pro-Israel, anti-Israel, pro-Gaza, anti-Gaza, pro-America, anti-America.
Let's have the debate.
Here's the discussion from House Judiciary.
Take a listen.
Is it possible to criticize George Soros without being anti-Semitic?
I don't know all the tropes that people use to associate with George Soros, but when they talk about...
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Not when they talk about something else.
Is criticism against George Soros ever not anti-Semitic?
That's the question.
Ms. Burdette has offered to answer that.
No, no, no, but you mentioned Mr. Soros.
I want you to answer this.
There's no phone a friend here in the Judiciary Committee.
What has happened in the United States is that we use different code words.
Right, no, I'm not, that's not the question.
Wait, I'm answering your question.
We use different code words to disguise anti-Semitism.
And so Soros has become the code word that replaced Rothschild, that replaced Shiloh.
But is it possible to criticize him without being anti-Semitic?
Yes or no?
I don't know the context.
I'm not going to talk without knowing context.
So there's no context.
That is just an astonishing thing.
And similarly you said any critique of globalism is anti-Semitic.
Now that really is an Austin Powers word.
No, what I said was that the word globalist, I didn't say any critique of globalism, what I said was the word globalist had become the new code word for the internationalist code word from the previous period.
But you ascribe that motive.
See, when I criticize globalism, I'm often criticizing the UN, which then in turn goes around and criticizes Israel.
So if critiquing a globalist entity that criticizes Israel is anti-Semitic...
So why use the word globalist instead of the UN? Well, because the UN's goals are to have a global order over things that deprive countries of their sovereignty, One of those countries is Israel.
That is the great hypocrisy of what I think is frankly a reverse trope that any criticism of Soros or any criticism of globalism is somehow anti-Semitic.
Sometimes they're just criticisms of Soros and of globalism.
But I see my time's expired and I yield back.
We're back live.
And yeah, doesn't that make obvious sense that we're able to separate the person or their identity from the goals of a political movement?
That's what is acceptable about criticizing globalists or globalism.
There are a lot of globalists who I have no idea what their faith or background or ethnicity is.
I see that what they're trying to do is deprive the American people and frankly other countries from their own sovereignty.
And I believe that sovereignty is one of the greatest drivers of self-determination ever created on planet Earth.
In the absence of it, we all just become cogs in a system, producers and consumers.
Not identified with a common sense of pride.
Something that allows us to break through some of these disagreements and concerns.
So, I think that going forward, we have to understand that Milk toast speech and broadly accepted speech doesn't need the protection of the First Amendment.
It is horrid speech, offensive speech, speech that we don't like, that we have to acknowledge has a right to permeate the marketplace of ideas, and the best way to confront that and defeat that is with more speech, better speech, and more thorough argument.
And that is what I try to bring to the House of Representatives.
Another person who brings that terrific argument is our good friend, Senator J.D. Vance.
So let me break down what's going on right now.
You've got Mitch McConnell in the Uniparty and Joe Biden and Hakeem Jeffries all trying to lash Israel aid to Ukraine.
And in the House, we passed an Israel aid bill that hollowed the money out of the IRS. So that we weren't deficit spending.
We weren't borrowing money from China so that we could provide aid to Israel.
We would actually prioritize what we were doing in a fiscally responsible way.
Well, in the Senate, they are doing everything they can to kill the House bill.
And one man doing work, leaning in, representing the America First perspective and putting a fly in the ointment for Mitch McConnell, just like I knew he would, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio.
We bring you now to the Senate floor.
Many of my colleagues may forget that a matter of weeks ago, a matter of months ago, there were people in this chamber, there were people in the United States of America demanding that the State of Israel give money and weapons to the Ukrainians.
Money and weapons that the Israelis are now using this very moment to defend themselves.
The idea that these policies are not in tension with one another, the idea that what happens in Russia and Ukraine is separate from what happens in Israel is not just obvious, it is common sense, and it has been borne out by the reality of the last couple of weeks.
Now, my colleagues would like to collapse these packages.
Too many of my colleagues would like to collapse these packages because they would like to use Israel as a political fig leaf for the president's Ukraine policy.
But the president's Ukraine policy, just like the Israeli policy, should be debated.
We should talk about it.
We should discuss it.
We should separate the costs and benefits and analyze them as distinct policies, because that is what the American people deserve of their legislature.
Now, there are many questions we could ask about the Ukraine policy, many issues that have gone completely unanswered.
Number one, what is our end goal in Ukraine?
You hear commonly that the goal is to throw the Russians out of every ounce of Ukrainian territory.
And yet, when you talk to the president's own administration in private, they admit that that is a strategic impossibility.
Let me repeat that.
No rational human being in the president's administration believes that it is possible to throw the Russians out of every So why is that the public justification offered by many advocates of indefinite, unlimited Ukrainian aid?
Because this debate is fundamentally dishonest.
We are not telling the American people the truth because we know that if we did tell them the truth, they would not support an indefinite flow of money to Ukraine.
What are we doing, ladies and gentlemen?
How long is this supposed to go on?
How much money are we expected to spend?
What is the strategic objective?
What are we trying to do?
Are we monitoring the fact that we have spent nearly $200 billion, if the supplemental passes, $200 billion to one of the most corrupt countries in the world?
Do we have proper assurances that all that money is being spent on the things that we tell ourselves that it's being spent on?
The answer, of course, is no, because we have not had a real debate in this chamber.
The American people, I think, should be ashamed of us for that fact.
Let me offer just one final observation here.
You have heard In this chamber, you've heard even today that the Ukraine policy was born of a spirit of bipartisan agreement.
That we had this moment where Democrats and Republicans recognized that it was very, very important to help the Ukrainians push back against the Russian attack.
And of course, we support and praise our Ukrainian friends.
They've done a lot more than many people gave them credit for.
But let's also be honest that for 30 years, Washington, D.C. has run on bipartisan foreign policy wisdom, and it has run this country to the ground with $1.7 trillion deficits, war after war after war, that has killed thousands of Americans, millions of other people, and has not led to the strategic strength of this country.
It was great bipartisan agreement after September the 11th that threw Saddam out of Iraq.
And of course, a lot of people celebrated it until we now realize that Iraq is a client state of Iran.
We empowered one of the worst regimes in the world with our bipartisan wisdom.
Maybe what we should have is some bipartisan wisdom that the foreign policy of consensus of this country for the last three decades has been a disaster.
It's been a disaster for this country.
It's been a disaster for our dead Marines, Army soldiers, Navy sailors, and Air Force airmen.
It has been a disaster for this country's finances, and it has been a disaster for the entire world.
Let's have a real debate.
We haven't had one in 30 years.
We are back live.
RebelNurse97 on Rumble says, I did reckless spending once.
Took me nearly a decade to recover.
And another comment, I love that J.D. Vance was elected.
He and Congressman Gates, modern day statesman.
It's a great thing to see.
We agree entirely with what J.D. Vance just said.
Make sure to share it far and wide.
But as he was speaking...
We got breaking news out of NBC. House subpoenas James and Hunter Biden in GOP-led probe of the president's family.
Finally, Hunter Biden got a damn subpoena.
When we had the California lottery winner instead of a constitutional lawyer in the Speaker's office, we weren't exactly seeing the subpoenas fly in a way that demonstrated sincerity and rigor to a real investigation.
But now, with Mike Johnson in the Speaker's office, we get the news.
House Republicans on Wednesday issued subpoenas to Hunter and James Biden, as well as Biden family associate Rob Walker.
Marking an escalation of the Republicans' impeachment inquiry into the president.
The piece continues.
Comber's office said he plans to send additional subpoenas and transcribed interview requests later this week.
The subpoenas and interview requests come after the special counsel overseeing the probe into Hunter Biden testified before the House Judiciary Committee behind closed doors earlier this week.
That was an interview that I was a part of.
And I can tell you this right now, David Weiss was not entirely forthcoming when it came to his communications with the Department of Justice, with other people who had jurisdictional claims to Hunter Biden matters scattered about the American Northeast and even on the West Coast.
It is about time.
We fully applaud this decision to send the subpoena to Hunter and James Biden.
I have been speaking with House Speaker Mike Johnson about the process and flow of subpoenas as recently as this week.
And so we're glad to see it.
And know this about litigation.
There are times when subpoenas are...
Altered in scope, where they are negotiated, where they are redrafted.
So this is a process that frankly Kevin McCarthy had blocked.
For quite some time.
And we're behind as a consequence of Kevin McCarthy's poor leadership.
But now we are doing what we need to do to get on track.
Breaking news.
James Biden and Hunter Biden getting subpoenas to testify.
We will be all over that to ensure that we get accountability over the Biden crime family.
But it wasn't just a subpoena to Hunter Biden that I have really been pressing to advance.
It's also been the release of the January 6th tapes and better oversight over the treatment of January 6th prisoners.
At this stage of the game, releasing the tapes alone is not going to get the job done.
We actually have to get answers regarding how people's civil rights are being abused, or we cannot keep sending money to a government that is making us look terrible on the world stage by using people as political pawns.
I have been so frustrated about the inability at times to meet with some of the January 6th prisoners and get evidence directly from them to bring into our congressional work.
The Bureau of Prisons has frustrated that effort.
So we had the head of that bureau before the House Judiciary Committee.
She gave me a commitment that I will get to go and meet with these folks, and it is something I look forward to doing very, very soon.
There are specific people who I think have been Really, really subject to some of the worst retaliation.
John Strand, who you know from the field hearing that we had on January 6th, and also Owen Schreyer.
So take a listen to that exchange.
Does the Bureau of Prisons retaliate against people based on constitutionally protected speech?
I have been very clear that retaliation will not be stood for on my watch.
And you're confident that that's being observed throughout the Bureau?
I'm confident that message has been delivered, and if anyone engages in retaliation, we will hold them accountable.
Are you familiar with the matter of John Strand?
People were posting on some of his social media platforms his concerns about the treatment he'd received at the Bureau.
And then I sent a letter to you concerned about that, because like you, I don't want anyone retaliated against for constitutionally protected speech.
And thereafter, I got a letter back from the aforementioned Office of Legislative Affairs in your office, and they say, In part, Mr. Strand was moved to a secure housing unit with increased supervision and frequent employee contact on September 26, 2023, pending completion of an investigation.
So, I guess my question is, when someone, is that like akin to what we would normally think about as solitary confinement?
Those words?
Secure housing unit with increased supervision and frequent employee contact?
We would use the word restrictive housing.
Okay.
So what's this then?
Because this guy was never violent toward anyone, so I'm just wondering why the assets that we fund for the highest acuity violent people would be used for this purpose.
Congressman, we use that special housing unit for individuals that engage in any sort of misconduct inside our institutions.
I don't know what he was found to be guilty of by our hearings administrative process that would warrant his Uh, need to go into restrictive housing, but I assure you we have administrative processes that people have to go through before those placements actually occur.
Yeah, I get that you can't know the conditions of every single prisoner throughout the Bureau.
This is one I've ripened and sent to you because I am worried that throughout Our Department of Justice and what we've endured, that there are some people who are sort of being used as pawns, and they're being mistreated in order to send a message to other people.
And I'm grateful that you've said here that is not your doctrine, you don't want to see that happen, but you also haven't been able to share with us an entire confidence that that isn't happening in some cases.
And I'm worried that it's happening here.
Have you heard of the matter of Owen Schrayer?
No, that name is not familiar to me.
Very similar fact pattern.
You know, somebody who had sort of spoken out, was prominent in the public, Was convicted as a consequence of activities on January 6th and now feels as though there's specific Bureau of Prison retaliation.
I don't think any group of people should be retaliated against, so I look forward to taking you up on the offer to perhaps go in and do some site visits and see how people are being treated and get that information directly.
So I hope I get prompt cooperation from OLA. We will seek that cooperation.
We will do those site visits and we will share with you directly what is going on behind bars.
If there are Our fellow patriots, our fellow Americans being mistreated as a consequence of politics and what the Department of Justice is trying to do to scare everyone into believing that if someone is MAGA or America First or supports gun rights or supports a strong border, that they are somehow dangerous.
That is what overlays these individual actions against individual people.
And Owen and John And the many others, many names I'm seeing on the live stream, they should not have to bear a disproportionate brunt for a weaponized government.
We should stand with them, and we should do more, and Congress should do more, and I should do more.
That's why, frankly, we told McCarthy, if he didn't get with the program on the January 6th tapes, that his speakership would face a motion to vacate that ultimately turned out being successful, and there will be these tapes on the way.
I expect them in tranches.
And I expect Mike Johnson to get right on it.
There's other breaking news on something we've talked about a great deal on Firebrand and that is Senator Tuberville's holds on military promotions as a consequence of the DOD unilaterally without a change in the law deciding that they're going to pay for travel and time off.
So that service members can have abortions.
This from Bloomberg government.
NDAA emerges as the way out of Tuberville's holds.
The piece says, Republicans haven't yet found a way out of Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama's blockade of more than 450 promotions of military officers, but the must-pass defense policy bill has emerged as an option.
GOP senators put their heads together in a meeting yesterday to find out a way forward.
Though they didn't reach an agreement, everyone walking out described it as constructive and positive, including Tuberville himself.
The defense authorization bill would be a solution, Tuberville told reporters after the meeting.
The House version carries a prohibition on the Pentagon's travel and leave policy, and Tuberville indicated he would accept that as a solution if that prohibition stayed in the final conference bill that would head to President Joe Biden for his signature.
Ladies and gentlemen, Tommy Tuberville has just given us all a lesson in leverage today.
So you had this House bill going to explicitly state in policy, in law, Actually voted on by our elected representatives that we were not going to allow this type of subsidizing of the abortion industry through the Department of Defense.
And Tommy Tuberville objected to the fact that in the absence of any change in law, any change in the Hyde Amendment that says no public money toward abortion, They were just doing it anyway.
And so if Tommy Tuberville didn't have the pressure of those 450 holds sitting over DOD right now, I can tell you exactly what would happen.
They would strip out the clarifying language from the House bill, And they would just keep doing everything the way they're doing it.
But because Tommy Tuberville put on those holds now this provision that I fought for, that my colleagues fought for in the House Armed Services Committee, it's got more of a chance than ever to become law.
The lives this will save, the value this will provide to the national defense, all of us owe Senator Tuberville a great deal of gratitude.
And I owe you gratitude, but right now we're heading for votes on the House floor.
I'll be meeting with some of our leadership in the coming hours to discuss the path forward on government spending.
As you know, I am for the single-subject spending bills.
I summarily reject this notion that we fund all of the government all at once for all the same time.
That's how the Uniparty wins, and that's how we end up $33 trillion in debt, so we'll be working on that later today.
Thank you so much for joining us.
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