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Jan. 29, 2024 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
44:03
Episode 144 LIVE: Are We At War With Iran? (feat. Rep. Cory Mills) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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Thank you.
you That gates the biggest firebrand inside of the House of Representatives is 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.
Send in the firebrands.
These troops were conducting a vital mission in the region aimed at helping us work with partners to counter ISIS.
And even as the Defense Department gathers more information about the attack, that mission must and will continue.
Third, the counter-ISIS mission is separate and distinct.
Indeed, it has been long standing and unrelated to our efforts to support Israel and to prevent a wider conflict in the region.
We do not seek another war.
We do not seek to escalate.
But we will absolutely do what is required to protect ourselves, to continue that mission, and to respond appropriately to these attacks.
Now, I know the first set of questions I'm going to get are, well, what does that look like?
What's appropriate?
And what response options is the president considering?
I hope you can understand why I'm not going to telegraph any punches here from the podium, nor will I get in front of the president or his decision-making.
He's met twice with the national security team yesterday and today.
He's weighing the options before him.
As he said yesterday, we will respond.
We'll do that on our schedule, in our time.
And we'll do it in the manner of the president's choosing as commander-in-chief.
We'll also do it fully cognizant of the fact that these groups, backed by Tehran, have just taken the lives of American troops.
And I think I'll leave it there.
Welcome back to Firebrand.
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We have got a big media episode about geopolitics, what's going on in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Also, we've got a report on our southern border.
We've got joining us the smartest guy in the United States Congress when it comes to what's going on in the Middle East in particular.
Corey Mills has served in our military.
He has served with a variety of agencies in the federal government that have had keen interest on the Middle East for a long time.
He's been one of the principal critics of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and he joins us now.
So, Representative Mills, what is going on right now in Jordan?
I want to give you the mic.
You know all the players in the region.
You know all of the push and pull factors.
To someone who is waking up to the news that three Americans are dead, dozens are injured, how would you describe what's going on?
I mean, first off, I think we have to go ahead and take a pause just to go ahead and acknowledge the new Gold Star families and the three heroes that just got lost.
We also have to acknowledge and hope for a speedy recovery when it comes to the now 34 people who've been injured.
So I think that's first and foremost, just to look at our armed services.
Looking forward, I mean, we have to go ahead and do the post-blast analysis on this.
We have to start looking at identifying exactly what took place, whether or not there was a jammer that somehow prevented us from being able to track this capability.
I don't buy off on the fact that they mistake this for being a friendly.
We track those things very closely.
So I know for a fact in a forward outpost like this, that's not going to be the case.
Why did it happen?
How would you answer that question?
Well, I think there's a culmination of things.
Obviously, we know that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are all geopolitically aligned.
They have for many years now.
That's why they continue to advance things, whether it be BRICS, you know, the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, which now KSA is involved in.
That's why they extend the Belt and Road Initiative to take over the Eastern European expansion, Oceania, as well as for Africa to cut off Western Hemisphere supply chain.
That's why they're building military bases and spy bases in Cuba, 90 miles off of our coast, but also using economic coercion around the Panama Canal to cut us off.
The point is that they're all doing this as an effort to try and pull us into a long and prolonged war that even President Trump and many have admitted was really stupid for us to be involved in.
Think about Iraq and Afghanistan, for example.
Trillions of dollars, thousands of lives.
What did we truly accomplish?
Nothing.
It increased Iran's capabilities and capacity by eliminating Saddam, who was actually keeping them at bay.
And so there's a lot of arguments to be had, but this is not merely about just Iran or the proxy militias in Iraq wanting to launch an attack.
There's a lot of things that are involved in this to try and bring us into it.
So you're pitching a theory that, in a way, this is a Venus flytrap.
Well, it's weakness and vice-aggression, and they know there's going to be absolutely nothing that's going to happen.
Look, you didn't see these types of attacks whenever President Trump was in office because he made it very clear that there would be an absolute decimation of those individuals who actually attack and kill American troops.
But before this actually occurred, this is the thing.
They have to have the economic means in order to be able to carry these attacks out.
They have not had that under President Trump, but under Biden...
They had the largest increase in oil exportation and oil revenue.
Iran, yes.
So all roads sort of lead back to Iran, and it does kind of ripen the principal question of this discussion.
Are we at war with Iran right now?
I think we've been at war for decades, but Americans haven't yet accustomed themselves to the thing that really has gone on.
Warfare is not about kinetics.
It's not just bomb-to-bomb, gun-to-gun, bullet-to-bullet as we think of the 1980s where we're stockpiling for the Cold War with munitions.
We have been in an economic resource, supply chain, and cyber warfare with China, Russia, Iran, North Korea for quite some time.
And we have been losing badly.
Even if you talk to those in the military, we know PSYOPs.
PSYOPs is a way to try and go ahead and utilize warfare without kinetics.
It's an influence operation.
That's what's going on right now.
Look what just happened with the UAE who is no longer going to use our currency to trade in energy.
Why do you think these things are occurring?
It's because China has continued to try and spread this notion that the dollar will have no valuation and even developing nations are running away.
And with Biden in the office, we're going to continue to weaken ourselves on the world stage and this is going to continue to be propagated.
So there's always the fog of war in these moments, and one of the misunderstandings that seems to have emerged is where this attack occurred.
And we've gotten conflicting reports out of the Jordanians.
Let's go ahead and put up this news report.
Three service members killed, 34 injured in drone attack on American forces in Jordan.
But then the Jordanian state television is quoting one of their government spokes saying that this happened in Syria.
It didn't happen in Jordan.
So my assessment here is that Jordan is a powder keg, that you've got a situation with a population there very distraught and upset over the conflict going on between Israel and Gaza, and you've got a European Educated King who often aligns with the West and collaborates with the West there.
And so they put out this statement.
We've seen him subsequently walk it back.
But, you know, we've seen some of the aerial images.
We're going to be briefed on the Armed Services Committee hopefully soon.
What do you make of that?
Well, I think you're exactly right.
I think that you saw the intensification of...
Those who are rioting, those who are having protests with regards to what was occurring in Gaza.
You have the Queen, Queen Rania, who is an amazing lady who is also a Palestinian ethnicity.
And so you have people who want to see a stronger, robust approach.
And many people think that King Hussein does not actually represent Jordan, that he was a Sandhurst, UK cavalry officer who doesn't really uphold the Hashemite ways.
And so you're right with saying it's a powder keg.
I think that this was originally a, this happened on Syria, not with us, therefore we can't be held accountable.
Because they don't want it to seem as if we're launching attacks out of Jordan against anyone who may they see as an ally by some extent.
But, you know, we define our work in Jordan under train and equip authorities.
That's right.
And so it would be somewhat awkward if we were doing a whole lot of strike as an aligned activity with train and equip.
Especially if we didn't actually inform the king or didn't inform the Jordanian, you know, intelligence or any of the military there.
I mean, that's an actual violation for what they probably want as regards to like a status of forces agreement to have us there.
So, yeah, but from my understanding, though, this outpost Tower 22, which is in Jordan, is not an actual combatant outpost.
We do have military bases, which are obviously in Syria.
You and I have argued ad nauseum and debated on the floor about the removal and repeal of AUMF 0102, 57 and 91.
And so my whole thing is, I don't think, though, what took place in Jordan, I go back to your original premise, which is that I think that they understand it's a powder keg.
They don't want to have a protest and a civil unrest that's occurring in Jordan.
And the king was trying to basically go ahead and shadow this out to being a Syrian issue.
As we are, you know, contemplating the different strategic choices we have to make to not be in a full-fledged kinetic war with Iran or their proxies as Americans are spilling blood.
We get the not-so-subtle commentary from Lindsey Graham and John Cornington.
two members of the Senate.
Lindsey Graham saying, Hit Iran now.
Hit them hard.
Senator John Cornyn, target Tehran.
Tucker Carlson had a take on that that was lunacy and shared it on social media.
What do you make of some of these neoconservatives in the Senate saying that the appropriate response to what we have encountered should be direct strikes in Iran from the United States?
Well, gosh, I'd love to see some of these actually come out and say, Shut the border down now.
Let's go ahead and hit the cartels hard.
But instead, they're so worried about building up a military-industrial base and flooding the attacks abroad.
Look, where were they under the 150-plus other attacks that occurred in Iraq?
The 39-plus that was occurring by the Houthis that disrupted 12% of global commerce.
Where are they under these others?
Now, all of a sudden, it's hit them hard, hit them hard.
Neoconservative, we're going to go into warfare.
You know, we should pass some law for Congress that when you pass an actual, like, You know, a war act, or you try and basically declare war, that you need to throw that uniform on yourself.
And let's see how many of these people continue to yell, war, war, war.
Because every single person that I hear that is so pro-war give more money to Ukraine.
This is the same Lindsey Graham, by the way, that was sitting here saying, it's so great every time we send money and kill Russians.
It's like, what exactly is your motive here?
Are you getting a little bit of a trade off of this?
Because it doesn't make sense that any of these warfares benefit the America First agenda.
How is spilling more blood in our treasures somewhere else benefiting America at home?
Our borders are number one priority.
Every American knows that.
Building up our economy is number one priority.
Everyone knows that.
And playing this tit for tat, where we're basically going ahead and saying, okay, we're going to allow our troops abroad to go ahead and play catch with missiles and drone attacks and And then we're going to do an equal and proportionate response.
Why don't we, instead of thinking kinetically, why aren't we going after them economically?
Why aren't we looking at China who's refining the majority of the oil and saying, you're in violation of a sanctioned nation.
We're going to do the same to you and start decoupling away.
Why are we not looking at things in a smarter way that isn't spilling treasures, but actually keeping them at home and helping to protect American lives?
Why are we keeping our troops in these areas to begin with?
What U.S. national interests?
And you assess that that would work.
You believe that there are levers and pressure points To kind of keep Iran and their proxies in a box that doesn't lead to full-fledged war.
Now, I would argue that when Trump took out Soleimani, that crippled this network of proxies for quite some time, and now they're starting to flex as a consequence of Biden giving $6 billion to Iran.
Well, I would argue that the elimination of Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis only resulted in the replacement of Ishmael Ghani and Abu Farrak al-Muhammadawi, which the only thing that slowed it down is that Ishmael Ghani, who came in to replace Soleimani, wasn't a linguist.
He couldn't speak Arabic.
So that's why.
What did we actually create?
We had the General Secretary of Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, who leads Hezbollah, We're good to go.
But we also have to acknowledge what is.
We have to reevaluate.
What is our role in the Middle East?
Why do we feel that we have to play a pertinent role in the Middle East?
Why can't we focus on the priorities of supporting allies, pushing things like President Trump did, which was brilliant, which is the Abram Accords, which, by the way, we know that the October 7th incident was also part of Iran's thing because they didn't want Saudi Arabia to sign the Abram Accords normalizing relationship with Israel.
Because of what that would have meant for the actual stabilization in the region.
Look, Iran is trying their best to their proxies and China is supporting it as well to make this a regional war.
They don't want it to just be between Hamas and Israel.
They don't want it to just be between our US Navy and the transit corridors with Houthis.
They want this to be a regional conflict and war to point the finger but to drag us in.
And that's where things start becoming very aggressive.
Well, and that type of a regional war then pits more of these domestic populations against the monarchies that rule them, and in some cases the dictators who rule them, right?
Because in a conflict that is Israel and Gaza without spillover, Iran doesn't achieve its objective of avoiding the isolation that the Abraham Accords had set up.
And China doesn't achieve their objective, which is continuing to drain down on economic and The U.S. in the event that they attack Taiwan.
Okay, so I want to go to another kind of claim that we've seen very recently.
Some reporting in the Wall Street Journal indicating this.
U.S. failed to stop attack in Jordan after mix-up over drone identity.
So the argument in this Wall Street Journal piece is that we thought that the nasty drone that came in was a friendly.
That we confused the nasty for the friendly.
I'm trying to get briefings soon, and I know you and I will be calling for one in the coming days, if not the coming hours, to really get a clear sense of what did we believe the friendly was that was coming back?
How would our systems have confused those?
But what's your reaction to this Wall Street Journal report?
Well, I absolutely don't buy it, and I'll tell you why.
When we send drones out from any base, we track those.
If we know that it's actually traveling at a certain speed and pace on a certain flight trajectory, Then we'll know where it's coming in and we'll actually have that highlighted red.
The question I have then is, okay, let's just say that it's not a jammer system that's actually blocking communications and that it went dark on us.
Then what?
Is it because we prioritized over the last few years DEI over meritocracy?
Now we're not having, you know, this is almost the airline pilot issue.
Do I want the one with the most hours and the most qualified or do I want one who fits into a certain diversity and equity and inclusion bracket?
That's what we're starting to have to look at.
So you think this was a...
And obviously we've got to get the brief.
We don't...
This is just speculation on what a multitude of different things could be.
Could it be there was a jammer and it was a blackout?
Could it be that there was a failure in our actual ability to do it?
To be clear, we're highlighting potential categories of activity.
We need to get that briefing.
I would suggest that the Armed Services Committee immediately needs to get a tactical level brief on what is going on.
What do you think should be the components of that brief?
Well, we definitely want to see post-blast analysis.
We want to see what was recovered on site.
Whether or not there was a jam or a communication block.
Why didn't we track this further out?
What was the pace and speed?
What was the actual explosive that was utilized?
And so I want to see a full detailed analysis because here's the whole thing.
When we talk about the Lindsey Graham's of the world, so the corners world, hit them, hit them, hit them.
The question that I ask is what have we done to prevent the retaliation from coming back to us?
We can't do this tit-for-tat if we haven't even increased the protection, security, and identified why this happened to begin with.
That's just going to enable it to happen again, and we're going to have more dead soldiers.
That's not the key here.
What we want to do is to prevent the loss of life, to prevent these types of kinetic activities.
And so having an immediate reaction, which is emotional, for a proportionate and equal response, that all sounds good, but we've got to get the facts to ensure that we actually can do this in a more methodical and more carried out way.
You know and I know that in the Middle East, alliances shift faster than square dancing partners in the American South, and the tribes and groups that can be aligned with a particular leader or political movement or campaign, in one instance, can really shift around like the sands.
And there was a report in The Hill that I took note of and want to ask you about, and they talk about the connection Between those who launched this attack that killed Americans and Iraq.
And when Americans think about Iraq, we think, well, we've got so much blood and treasure and time into that country.
We all want to believe that the government in Iraq is at least better than Saddam, or at least less of a threat to the United States with all that we've poured in there.
But in this report from The Hill, it reads, the Department of Defense is investigating how an Iraqi militia's suicide drone struck the U.S. military In a base in Jordan on Saturday night.
And I've talked to some folks also familiar with the region that say that this is the Islamic resistance in Iraq entity that falls within the umbrella of the popular mobilization forces in Iraq, which is supported by the government.
So you've got the government of Iraq that we still send money to, that we still are collaborating with at a military level, then functioning as an umbrella entity over this popular...
Mobilization force, and then the very people that align and associate there are involved in the attacks against Americans.
So are we funding and supporting the attacks against our own troops?
Well, we have to back it up.
In 2005, George W. Bush had this brilliant idea to put in Paul Bremer, who is the absolute worst at foreign policy possible.
He was the reason for the sectarian democracy breakdown during the debathification, but what we saw In 2005, under the Iraq Constitution, they had something called Article 76. This created a sectarianism that has only existed in pre-apartheid South Africa and Northern Ireland, where they said that the largest parliamentary bloc, knowing that would be Shia, is allowed to pick the president, which has to be Kurdish, and the Kurdish president...
He has to pick the Prime Minister, but only from the three people the Parliamentary Bloc tells him are approved.
So here's what happens.
You have Haidi Al-Amri, who runs Better Organization.
You have former Prime Minister Norial Maliki, who creates the Dawah.
You have Muqtadr al-Sadr, who creates the Sayyum Bloc.
Between the three of them, they control all of Parliament, which means that now you've got the Shia Iranian-backed militias.
And oh, by the way, Heidi Olamide is one that went over to Iran and fought against Saddam with the Iranians.
He's now one of the largest parliamentary blocs.
So it doesn't matter whether it was al-Kadimi.
It doesn't matter whether it's the current Prime Minister al-Soudani.
We set Iraq up for failure when we put this 2005 Iraq Constitution.
Right, I get all that, but my question is more, I guess, visceral.
Like, are we going to end up finding out that the people who killed Injured Americans have some link back to the Iraqi government.
You're going to find out that it's going to have some type of a political affiliation, whether it be Hadi al-Amri, who already runs proxy militias for Iran, Hashti al-Shabia, Sabi al-Bin Haq.
We know that Qais Qazali, who is one of his partners, runs Qatab, Hezbollah, and others who have attacked us.
It is not a mystery that over a decade plus now, that these large parliamentary blocs...
are actually responsible in supporting the very militias who are attacking our embassies, attacking us, and yet we're still funding them.
Just like we funded and trained the, what, eight coup leaders in Africa?
Look, we have to start getting our foreign policy right.
We have not done it for decades, and this is what's driving us to the point where we are.
I am incensed by this.
I am incensed that we are literally participating in really a whitewashing of what the Iraqi government is doing and allowing, and Americans are dead as a consequence, We're good to get that foreign policy right.
We do want to turn to the border, though, something Congressman Mills, my colleague from Florida, mentioned earlier.
And we've got a hot reaction from Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick regarding the ongoing standoff between state and federal officials.
Here's the Lieutenant Governor of Texas.
You know, the founders never dreamed we'd have a president like this when it would just open the door to everyone.
And they said, well, invasion if an army came.
Well, we're facing an army.
We're facing an army.
And they're well-armed.
They're well-coordinated.
They're making millions and millions of dollars off of Joe Biden.
Don't mess with Texas.
We're serious about securing our border.
And I'm glad the president stood down on Friday and did not confront us.
That would be the wrong thing to do.
We don't want a confrontation.
And they shouldn't want a confrontation.
Well, that's a good point.
We're just doing our job.
Let us do our job.
Because, I mean, what is this going to turn into a civil war?
I mean, you've got the Texas rights versus federal rights, both sides with guns.
And we believe, constitutionally, we are right.
We have a right to defend our citizens.
We have a right to defend this country.
And we're just doing the job.
This whole idea of Shelby Park, that they would come there, is just ludicrous.
Look, these young men and women who serve our National Guard and our DPS, these are the best of the best.
Why would he want to send anyone down to confront them?
I'm glad they stepped down, but they need to do the job.
And the only reason he's paying attention now is because of the election in November.
Those Texans are patriots.
They are doing a great job.
I've had a chance to visit with many of them, and all they want to do is secure this border.
We're here live with Congressman Corey Mills, and your reaction to the Lieutenant Governor saying, we don't want a conflict, but at the same time, Texas will not back down.
Well, my whole question is, when are we going to acknowledge the 10th Amendment rights for state and individual liberties?
Why are we not going to acknowledge Texas' sovereignty?
Why are we not going to look at the fact that, you know, these drug cartels, which by the way, Joe Biden is like employee of the month every month for these drug cartels.
In 2021, they went from what was $500 million in revenue in 2018 to $1,300.
You don't think that this is impacting the people of Texas.
You don't see the increase in criminality.
You don't hear in the Homeland Security Committee hearings the mothers who are crying over their children who are being murdered and fentanyl overdoses at 70 to 100,000.
Yes, Lieutenant Dan Patrick is absolutely correct.
Texas has a right to stand and fight for itself.
I stand with Texas in their right to their sovereignty.
So he makes the argument, Texas isn't backing down, but we get this fresh report this morning in Politico playbook where a Biden administration official is essentially saying that Biden is backing down.
Here's the background quote from a Biden admin official.
Quote, President Biden is finally admitting that he's given up on his campaign promise to enact more humane immigration policies than Trump.
He would rather adopt Trump's border rhetoric than continue the work he started as vice president to fix the border by addressing the root causes of migration.
So this is obviously some sort of woke admin official for Joe Biden.
And they're mad that Biden.
Biden gets that this has been a total failure and they have to take the L and maybe the best way to take that L is to acknowledge that Trump's policies were working.
But if you've got these folks in the admin who are like the lib resistance to Joe Biden, what does it even say about their ability to execute on a border strategy?
Well, look, you're exactly right when you talk about how he wants to now go back to the Trump policies.
Look, Remain in Mexico should have stayed there the entire time.
Title 42, maybe it's not directed around COVID, but the emergency health care issue...
It's all of those who are coming from South America where they don't have vaccinations for polio.
We're seeing polio vaccinations getting, you know, ramped up again here in the United States where we're seeing the fentanyl overdose.
We could have used Title 42 to remain in Mexico and all the other policies.
But look, we need to just enforce the laws on the books.
At no point in time do we need to continue to worry about passing new things when we know for a fact that the key issue is let's get all the justices down to the borders to process these supposed asylum claims, turn them back around and get them out of our country.
Why are we doing this catch and release?
Ten years from now, you can come to us and do your court case.
It's not happening.
And then we're incentivizing it.
Stop the incentivization.
If you say, if you try to come to the United States, if you try to apply, look, you just violated one law.
Why are we even going to consider you to be An American citizen when we are a rule of law and you've already shown that you can't follow the law.
I think that we go ahead and start making things where we get rid of the actual anchor baby situation where one or both parents has to be citizens in order for their child to qualify.
I think that we look at trying to make sure that we do the Remain in Mexico agreement.
We start looking at working with the South American countries the way Trump did to go ahead and hold them in place and not have them skip four or five.
There's a lot of things that we can do that are already existing on the books, but also you've got Executive Order 212 Section F. President Biden can secure the border right now just like this.
See, that is the fiction that the Open Borders crew and, frankly, the pro-Ukraine crew is pitching in Washington, D.C., that there has to be some bill to stop this.
So there has to be some grand bargain.
All he has to do is what Trump did.
And Trump didn't have some special bill.
He went and utilized the authorities that exist in Title 42 and elsewhere to ensure that we stop the flow of people.
And then that created a sufficient deterrent.
He was called a xenophobe, remember?
Sure.
When he was trying to prevent people from coming in, he was called a xenophobe.
And meanwhile, all he was doing is what we all should do is protect America.
That's what this admin official who's out backgrounding against the Biden administration is frustrated about, is that there's an acknowledgement that what Trump did worked.
Now, we've got this terrible amnesty bill that has emerged in the Senate that Senator Lankford has supported, that you've got the whole crew over there that always seems to want open borders behind.
And the reason that that bill is not going to become law is because we will kill it in the House of Representatives.
Full stop.
But that doesn't stop Gavin Newsom and the folks on MSNBC for blaming Trump.
Take a listen.
Mitch McConnell, I thought that was shameful, what was reported out.
That he's just completely rolling over and capitulating.
Don't even get me started with the weakness of the current Speaker of the House.
I mean, they don't want a deal.
Period.
Full stop.
They don't want a deal.
They don't want to make this a quote-unquote campaign win for Joe Biden.
It's just everything you need to know about the fraud that they're perpetuating on the issue of the border.
They want to make this a political issue.
Consistently, they have wanted to make it.
Ever since there were a few brave souls with that gang of eight.
If we all remember those black and white movie days.
Yeah, I'm old enough to remember that.
And ever since there, everyone, they just walk away.
They run away.
The first day he was in office.
Not the next day.
The same day, he gets sworn in.
He puts out a comprehensive immigration plan.
And yet, you didn't have a counter.
They had no strategy in terms of the Republican Party even combating that.
They just wanted to kill it.
They didn't want to debate it.
They didn't want to engage.
$14 billion proposal.
$14 billion.
That's his latest proposal to address They're a stated issue of border security.
2,300 new Border Patrol agents.
Another 1,000 in addition to that to deal with fentanyl.
Close to another billion dollars.
850-plus billion dollars just for new technology.
And then address some of the issues of backlog and asylum to address those that are here waiting for asylum claims.
They won't touch it.
They don't want to solve this problem.
They want to use it for political purposes.
And again, I say this as a border state governor.
No one has to introduce me to this issue.
We're the largest port in the Western Hemisphere in the state of California.
We live this.
And I think it is a disgrace what the Republican Party is doing, what Donald Trump is doing.
And this is hidden in plain sight.
He sent out a tweet or some truth, whatever, saying, kill it.
We're back live with Congressman Corey Mills.
You know what we want to kill?
Amnesty.
Because amnesty makes the problem worse.
Just moments before we came on the air, I spoke to President Trump about the Senate amnesty bill.
And he wants it killed, not because of politics, but because of policy.
The Senate amnesty bill will not, like, improve the border a little bit.
It will make it far worse.
If you tell...
The entire world, the first 5,000 people who show up at our border just get waved in, there will be a mass of humanity that will be built up on the other side that will cause tremendous humanitarian carnage, that will cause an overrun of the border.
And if you think that that 5,000 number will ever go down if it were in law, That is total.
That is illusory.
Okay?
That number will just continue to rise.
This is the authorized invasion.
And the Lankford bill is so bad that any Republican who supports that better never run another campaign ad About how they care about border security.
Because it is total surrender.
Total amnesty.
And you know what?
President Trump wants credit for killing the Senate amnesty bill.
Not because of politics, but because we want to shut this border down and protect our country.
Your reaction to the Langford bill.
Well, look, I'll tell you ahead of time, I would absolutely shoot this bill down.
I will not support amnesty, and you're saying 5,000 a day, which is polite, but let's put it in a real perspective.
It's 1.8 million people a year in our country.
And then, for Gavin Newsom to talk about disgrace, I'll tell you what's a disgrace.
He talks about being a border town.
You mean the fact that you're a border state who liked sanctuary, but now every one of your cities is completely riddled with crime?
The ones that have You know, again, as Governor DeSantis put it out, remember the poop map?
I mean, he literally brought it out where people are defecating and there's needles all down the sidewalk.
I mean, look, this is your state, and you're going to try and point fingers at the rest of the country?
And talking about playing politics, you and I just mentioned this.
If the president wants to shut and secure the border, he can do it right now under 212 Section F. He can re-implement the Trump policies Remain in Mexico.
He can ensure that our CBP and ICE are allowed to do their jobs and enforce the actual legislation and the laws on the books.
At no point in time, it's not like you and I are passing this grandiose law where it says violating our sovereignty is something new.
That's always been on the books.
And so, yes, President Trump is exactly right.
We need to kill the amnesty bill.
And I can tell you, I'll be right there to kill the rule on this to make sure that it never even gets to a vote.
Speaker Mike Johnson indicating that it will not come for a vote in the House because we're not for amnesty.
We want to force Joe Biden to do exactly what Congressman Mills and I have been saying.
Use his authorities to do what Trump did and stop that flow.
Also on the border, breaking news from the Homeland Security Committee.
Ali Mayorkas will face two articles of impeachment.
The first being the willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.
Secretary Mayorkas has violated his oath to defend the Constitution of the United States by willfully and systemically refusing to comply with federal immigration laws and acting in a manner subversive to the rule of law, despite clear evidence that this willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law has led to unprecedented levels of illegal immigration, the fentanyl crisis, cartel control at the southwest border, and debilitating human and financial costs.
Secretary Mayorkas has implemented a catch-and-release scheme violating the detention requirements and misusing parole authority.
That's Article 1. Article 2, breach of the public trust.
Secretary Mayorkas has breached the public trust by violating his oath to well and faithfully discharge the duties of his office and his statutory duty to control and guard the border of the United States.
Secretary Mayorkas willfully failed to replace the enforcement initiatives he had abandoned with viable alternatives that would establish I think
that is well laid out by the Homeland Security Committee.
The only critique as a lawyer, I believe that obstruction should have been its own count.
I've met with the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, and time and again when they are trying to do the oversight that would inform our policy choices and the changes they need to make at DHS, Mayorkas himself has been directing obstruction of oversight.
And so I know that's within the public trust count now, but I would have broken it out as a third count.
Impeachment's coming.
The real question, will we get all the Republicans to vote for it?
No Democrat will vote to impeach Mayorkas.
Do you think we'll have unified Republican support?
I don't see how any Republican can vote against the impeachment, seeing that this is a will for dereliction.
The same as you and I have pointed out that with Secretary Austin, we actually do have bipartisan support for his removal, but yet that's not even made it to the front yet.
Look, I want to go back to one thing that was talked about when they talk about politics.
The reason that Biden doesn't shut the border down, the reason that Lankford Schumer likes to do these types of amnesty deals is because they want to ultimately, they know they can shut the border down right now.
They know they can stop this insurgence that is just flowing across.
But the reality is that they don't want to so they can tether it to things like the Ukrainian funding bills.
And the other types of international aid that they know they can't get support for as a singular bill, they want to try and lump this in.
When it comes to, you know, kind of this whole thing about the impeachment, there is no question that Mayorkas has failed to uphold his duties.
What he swore his oath into office to do.
And so I think that we have to come together.
We need to impeach Mayorkas.
We need to go after Secretary Austin.
And then we continue to try and do our investigation of the Biden crime family with President Biden at the top of that.
The live stream is fired up with anger at Mayorkas and what's going on in the border.
Laura on X is two boss leaders here and we got feedback from JTutor58.
We do not want illegals coming across our border and a lot of criticism of Gavin Newsom.
Huh.
Imagine that.
All right, so you mentioned Ukraine.
A news piece I want to go over, we're getting this from the AP. Officials stole $40 million meant to buy arms for the war with Russia, Ukraine says.
So while we continue to hear folks on the Armed Services Committee and among the defense contractor base say, oh, just send more.
Just send more money, send more weapons to Ukraine.
Yet another report, $40 million missing.
What confidence do you have in With cash and materiel, that what we send there is getting into the fight?
I have no confidence.
That is why, even back in December of 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene put something on the floor, which is an HR inquiry, to do a 100% audit on Ukraine.
We said that that was our actual benchmark.
Before we talk about any further funding, I want 100% audit of this thing.
No one wanted to do it.
The reason why?
That $40 million, that's a lot of money, but I guarantee that is a thumbnail sketch of what it will actually be when we see the real audit here.
When you talk about how many people Zelensky has gotten rid of for corruption, when you start talking about the procurement arms that are civilian and private procurement arms like We have to acknowledge 100 plus billion dollars.
Imagine if it's a fraction of that went to our own border.
And that's why I am not going to tell the taxpayers if they try to lump these bills in.
That you have to spend your money.
You have to spend your money to secure another nation's border in order to secure your own.
I won't do it.
No more money to Ukraine.
No more money to these foreign wars.
Secure and put America first.
Invest in our industrial base.
Start decoupling away from China.
Recognize our adversaries.
And let's get Trump back in the White House.
To the members of the Ethics Committee that will be investigating me for that occurring on our official...
I'll tell you, put it on my tab.
So, you know, the Ukraine matter has been galvanizing to a lot of our base because they do see it in terms you just laid out.
Continuing to support for Ukraine is viewed by so many Americans as selling out our own country and our own interests for some unknowable gain.
And while I know there are many fair criticisms of Mike Johnson as House Speaker, for those looking at the scoreboard, under Kevin McCarthy, we authorized $115 billion to Ukraine.
And now you're starting to see that we did that without the adequate controls, without the adequate oversight, and with a willingness to accept blatant violations of our laws regarding how we're supposed to watch this stuff.
And under Mike Johnson...
Zero.
The House of Representatives has authorized zero dollars to Ukraine under House Speaker Mike Johnson.
And that I'm happy about.
Now that's a temporary status.
It may change.
But if Kevin McCarthy were still Speaker, we would be filling out the authorizations with no scrutiny, no review, none of the tough questions that Congressman Mills just laid out.
So while progress is sometimes slower than we think and will never turn the battleship all at once, I do think it means something that our current House leadership is at least asking the tough questions and not sending more money to Ukraine.
Final piece I want to cover.
The National Journal had a great review of Podcasts that were coming from members of Congress.
The piece is entitled The Sound Clips and the Fury Inside House Republicans Live Streamed Revolt.
And the premise of this piece is that the Firebrand podcast, the Firebrand audience, and the audiences of the podcasts from my friend Andy Biggs and others continue to allow us to make a case directly to you, the people.
Over 5 million streams.
over 25 million views on the clips that we have on social media.
And the piece rightly credited our executive producer, my comms director, the man who has powered Firebrand since day one, Joel Valdez, and our entire team, which includes Sasha Tomolchov, Jacob Bliss, John Wilson, also Jim Beely and Derek Miller, and Andrew Kloster from our Ledge team, who regularly contribute and Andrew Kloster from our Ledge team, who regularly contribute to the ideas that we want to be able to present So thank you to everyone.
Thank you to our team.
And we are going to continue to make Firebrand a great powerhouse in our politics and in the decisions that are made on the Hill.
Thank you to my good friend, fellow Firebrand, fellow Florida Congressman Corey Mills.
We'll be back soon.
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