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Feb. 7, 2024 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
34:28
Episode 149 LIVE: Bordering On Chaos (feat. Rep. Andy Biggs) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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Thank you.
Matt Gaetz, the biggest firebrand inside of the House of Representatives. the biggest firebrand inside of the House of Representatives.
You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay?
Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero.
We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight.
I want to thank you, Matt Gaetz, for holding the line.
Matt Gaetz is a courageous man.
If we had hundreds of Matt Gaetz in D.C., the country turns around.
It's that simple.
He's so tough, he's so strong, he's smart, and he loves this country.
Matt Gaetz.
Wow!
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.
Hey, it's Matt Gaetz.
Thanks so much for joining us.
We are here live in the Rumble studios.
I've got my colleague Andy Biggs going to join me.
We're going to break down some crazy stuff going on right now in South Africa.
First, we want to get to this big impeachment vote that we had.
The debate from Congressman Biggs was electric on the floor.
Take a listen.
You know, James Iredale One of the founders from North Carolina talking about this impeachment clause said, the power of impeachment is given by this constitution to bring great offenders to punishment.
It's calculated to bring them to punishment for crime which is not easy to describe, but which everyone must be convinced is a high crime misdemeanor against government.
For instance, corruption.
Let's sit here.
It's exercised.
The impeachment will arise from acts of great injury to the community, and the objects of it may be such as cannot be easily reached by an ordinary tribunal.
That's why you have impeachment.
And that's necessary here, because what you have is a secretary who came into judiciary.
He's given the language from the A secure, Safe and Secure Fence Act of 2006 and said, is the border under operational control?
He says, well, well, no, we've redefined it ourselves.
We're comfortable with the new definition that we've made.
That's a separation, violation of the separation of powers.
This is the same secretary who tells his ICE agents, you know what, you cannot...
The gentleman's time has expired.
Additional 30 seconds.
He tells his ICE agents, you cannot remove 1 million, 1.2 million people who have actually had due process through the courts and have active removal orders.
He's the same one who says we don't have to adhere to Title VIII. That has resulted in great injury to our communities.
And that is why he must be impeached.
Because he falls in the definitions that one of the founders, James Ardell, said.
And he's right on the money, and I urge everyone to support this movement to impeach.
He's the host of What's the Big's Idea?
Arizona's outstanding conservative congressman, and he joins us now.
Andy, after you offered that debate on the floor of the House, Republicans suffered the loss.
Mayorkas was not impeached.
Three of our colleagues, who we know quite well, Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado, and Congressman Tom McClintock of the border state of California, All did not believe that the threshold had been met for impeachment.
Andy Biggs was really the first congressman to come out and call Mayorkas what he was.
Someone who was highly competent, highly effective, and evil in the execution of these policies.
You have taken more members of Congress to the border than anyone else.
You've probably spent more time on the border than any other member of Congress.
Your reaction to the failed impeachment effort yesterday?
Well, first, thanks for having me, Matt.
And it's great to have you as a friend and a colleague.
My reaction is that I don't know that I expected it to go down.
I thought there was that possibility because I tried to work with some of those members who voted no to get them to come around and understand.
Because their issue is, what's the definition of high crime and misdemeanor?
They all say, oh, he's the worst cabinet secretary perhaps in the history of the country.
But when you cause the kind of damage that we have seen in this country, and I'm not just talking about the 100,000 people who have died of drug overdoses because of his policies.
I'm talking about a guy who puts out a memo Puts out a memo in 2021 on how he's gonna dismantle U.S. border security law.
That's where I say, well, you know, what do you think a high crime and misdemeanor is?
And you know, they tell me things like, well, we need to see the elements of a felony.
We've had the high crimes and misdemeanors in Anglo-American law since 1450. Not quite the Magna Carta, but we're in the neighborhood of the Magna Carta.
And I'll tell you what, This guy, Mayorkas, is a danger.
He's a danger to you, me, and everybody in this country.
The morning of the vote, Congressman Gallagher stood up before our House Republican team and said that he believed that if Mayorkas were impeached, there would be no limiting principle on impeachment.
That it would just be a result of every disagreement that occurred.
My sense is that a limiting principle is that when you are purposefully, flagrantly, and repeatedly violating the law with the outcome of great harm to the American people, and we can make that judgment, and it's a different judgment that somebody's just a knucklehead and it's a different judgment that somebody's just a knucklehead or a screwball.
The intentionality to do the harm and violate the law struck me as sufficiently limiting.
Do you sense that with any of these folks that, look, we serve with two of them on the Judiciary Committee, I serve with Gallagher on the Armed Services Committee, Are these three votes in cement?
Are they movable?
Is there conduct from Mayorkas that we think we can illuminate to showcase the degree of harm and high crimes and misdemeanors done?
I think that these three, I haven't talked to Mike, but I have talked to the other two and actually worked on the other two for a year and a half since I've been working on this a long time.
They are immovable in my opinion.
Okay, so that means that if impeachment is going to happen, it's not going to be an act of persuasion so much as an act of turnout.
Steve Scalise is recovering from cancer.
We pray for his speedy recovery.
But when he is able to make it back to the floor, do you expect that the impeachment will be called up again so that we can get it passed?
I've been told that that's the case.
Okay, so let me serve up this critique that's been made of Mike Johnson because I think it's an unfair critique and I want to deal with it.
They say, well, he should never have called this up for a vote if he wasn't certain it would pass.
We should have just not had the vote and we should have waited until we were assured or relatively assured victory.
I disagree with that assessment because I actually think there might have been three or four other no votes based on process or proclivity and that by having the vote we really flushed people out and forced them to go on the record and then you work from there.
Like the old system of Washington was the way to preserve like the legitimacy of your leadership.
Is to never call things for a vote that are likely to make you look bad.
But I think what makes us look bad is not having the votes.
So while other people are saying, oh, this is calamitous for Mike Johnson, I disagree.
I say, you know what?
We're going to win some, we're going to lose some.
Lately we've been losing a few of them on the budget and on FISA and a number of other things.
But do you fault Mike Johnson for holding the vote last night as he did?
No, I think more along the lines than you think.
For two reasons.
Number one, I think that when you get elected to Congress, you should come and vote so your constituents know what you're doing.
The Board of Truth is the Board of Truth.
That's that voting board that shows what you're doing.
The second thing is, and I told people this, you know, by my calculus, somebody was saying, well, what about Emmerer?
You know, he didn't count right.
I said, look, the Democrats, they had a guy who was out for surgery.
We judge typically an evening vote by who's voting in the afternoon.
He wasn't there.
We could have lost those three and won had he not shown up.
But some miraculous thing, he gets to surgery, he pops back in.
I don't blame our leadership.
And I do think that strategically it works out well for us because now you know Exactly what's going to happen when Steve Scalise comes in.
You could have had a circumstance where Scalise could have come back, and you could have had somebody else float away from the dock, but now those other votes are iced in.
So I actually think that taking the lost leader here might actually propel us up to victory on that impeachment.
Now, you and I know, and you really have taught me this, the border has a rhythm to it.
It has a flow to it.
It can pulse in certain areas.
It can diminish in others.
How states are reacting right like you and I went to the area where Mexico and Arizona and California all collide and we we got the the real tactical briefings about how that California jurisdiction becomes very appealing because there's no coordination with local law enforcement and you know Eagle Pass was really hot Abbott puts up those razor wire barriers turns out razor wire is a deterrent then we start to see Lukeville Arizona pop so with what you're seeing now with what you're hearing What
is next on the border with this impeachment having failed?
Mayorkas is out doing his celebratory victory lap at the Super Bowl.
Where are we going to see it pop?
So you're going to continue to see it pop in southern Arizona right now.
The reason is that in Texas, Eagle Pass was hot.
They brought Rio Grande and Valley under control.
You have Del Rio kind of slowed down as well.
It's forcing the cartels to move their product, which is human trafficking, further west.
You might see a little bit in El Paso because I think that they're kind of loose.
Their representation there really supports open borders.
I don't think it stays there, though.
I think it continues on.
I'll just tell you...
I've taken you down there.
You've been there to the Tohono O'odham Reservation.
Middle of nowhere, as you know.
And literally hundreds, groups of 700, 800 are being dropped off in the middle of nowhere.
So yeah, I think it's going to still be Lukeville.
I think it's going to be Tucson sector.
Would that be happening if you had a Republican governor that was willing to enforce the border?
Because, look, here's what I see.
I see Texas with a Republican governor saying enough is enough and actually creating a deterrent.
Is there a part of you that kind of knows when Texas flexes and does their job right now, man, that's going to push this thing more to Arizona?
Yeah, absolutely.
We know that.
It's like that balloon.
You squeeze the balloon over here, it pops up over here.
But that's exactly what's going on.
Imagine if Arizona had a governor that was doing what...
That's what Abbott's doing.
Our problem, of course, is we've got probably about 80 linear miles of reservation land.
We can't put National Guard on.
It's illegal for us to put National Guard troops in there.
Yeah, so if everyone is watching and wondering, well, why isn't Arizona doing exactly the stuff that Texas is doing, those jurisdictional issues around those border Indian reservations, Why did we leave an Indian reservation on the border between the United States?
It strikes me as a bad place to have a jurisdictional no-man's land.
That's a relic from the 1800s.
I thought we won those wars.
We won the wars but surrendered our border.
And don't forget, you also have federal wildlife preserves on the border in Arizona.
You've got Oregon Pipe National Monument, which has got miles of stretch bordering as well.
So you've got this national forest over here in the Czechos.
So we don't have the Goldwater Range.
Goldwater Range.
You've got private land in Texas.
So Texas is able to go in to private landowners and say, let us use this.
Arizona, not so much.
Even your big ranchers down there, they might own 14,000 acres, but they also might be leasing another 20,000 acres that is federally owned on the border.
The Senate put together what they called a border bill, but you and I would characterize as Really a way to ice in a lot of the Mayorkas priorities and goals.
Mike Lee, a terrific senator, someone who I know we seek guidance from and mentorship from frequently, he put out a list of really eight critiques of that legislation that even Mitch McConnell is now subsequently killed.
And I want to run through these because even though that bill is like temporarily dead, you're going to see elements of what McConnell and Langford tried and Biden tried to do reemerge.
So Mike Lee says first, That this legislation sends $5.6 billion that is dressed up as humanitarian aid but could be highly influenced by Hamas and Gaza.
So borrowing money from China to send money to Hamas seems like something we wouldn't want to do with $5 billion.
He critiques the fact that this prioritizes Ukraine over our border.
He talks about the amount of money that is spent paying the salaries of Ukrainian officials.
This from Mike Lee's letter.
Recent reports state that the CIA had to warn Zelensky face to face that Washington was aware of his personal corruption and unwillingness to dismiss any of the dozens of Ukrainian officials known to be deeply involved in diverting defense funds for personal accounts.
So let's pause there.
Like, have you seen anything In the oversight and monitoring of this stuff going to Ukraine that even gives you confidence that it's getting into some righteous fight.
No.
I sit on an oversight committee.
We do get some reports.
I'm not convinced that Ukraine, which was considered to be one of the most corrupt nations on the earth pre-Russian war, has cleaned up its act during the Russian war.
In fact, you'll find U.S. materiel in weird places like Central Africa, where there might be a coup, a revolution going on.
You'll find Dollars, people ferrying out U.S. dollars to buy themselves mansions.
They're putting in new swimming pools.
They're building mansions in places of Ukraine that aren't under attack.
And those are open source reporting, too.
That's not coming from classified sources.
That's open source reporting.
So no, I think it's a real disaster for U.S. dollars.
Lee continues that this lays the groundwork for more forever wars with kind of funding at first and asking questions later.
He talks about the failure to address the homeland security threats that arise out of what we're seeing on the terrorist watch list.
What can you share about What the terrorist watch list tells us about the type of people coming over the border.
So on this watch list that you have, we've had over 300 during the Biden administration, and normally you would see maybe five or six over a two-, three-year period.
So that gives you the magnitude.
These are people that have been placed on that watch list by perhaps European spy organizations, US spy organizations, any other, you know, whatever they call the eyes, the private eyes groups, you know, that look...
And they will put them on that list.
Some of these people don't even realize they're on that list when they come in.
And the reason that we catch these people, most of these people don't even realize they're on the list.
They're not even the worst of the worst.
The worst of the worst are coming in between the ports of entry that we don't even know that they're coming in.
So imagine that you're coming in and you don't know that you're going to get picked up for being a terrorist.
You and I have spent time with these angel parents who have lost loved ones as a consequence of illegal immigration.
So people are dying in America now as a result of this.
They're dying from fentanyl.
They're dying from other harms that illegal aliens are causing.
But it's almost hard for me to imagine that we're not within a five-year window of some sort of mass casualty event caused by someone who came across the border illegally.
The briefings I've had that are not classified They all agree it's not if, it's when.
Because there's cells of terrorists all over.
Don't forget Hamas is strong in...
Hezbollah is strong in Venezuela.
Oh, sure.
There's a huge Lebanese diaspora in South America.
I've always wondered why our foreign policy elites always care more about what's happening oceans away than here in our sphere of influence.
The whole Monroe Doctrine has been...
Dissolved.
And why?
That should be something that we take great national pride in.
I certainly don't take pride in the fact that the legislation McConnell was backing would send $60 billion to Ukraine.
And just for context, the entire United States Marine Corps is $53.8 billion.
So they want to send more money to Ukraine than funds the entire United States Marine Corps.
Moreover, this creates a gift of $300 million to the National Police of Ukraine.
So while the Democrats are trying to defund police in the United States, we are funding police in Ukraine.
Your reaction, Andy?
That's absolutely crazy.
It's ludicrous.
But don't forget, we're also funding the Ukraine government's A retirement system, right?
I mean, think about that.
And we're borrowing this from our children and grandchildren.
It's not money that we have in the bank because they don't want to do a pay-for for this.
They just want to Add it to the tab.
So McConnell fails because he's got this terrible border bill we've gone over, lashed to this listless flow of money into Europe and beyond.
But now I think they're regrouping.
I think what you're going to see the Senate do is pull off the bad border stuff.
And send us a bill that does the 60 billion for Ukraine, maybe another 17 billion for Israel, billions for Taiwan, restoring American stockpiles, and do all of it as deficit spending.
I think they want to send that to the House of Representatives.
And they know that there are a lot of sympathies for Israel in the House, sympathies that you and I share.
I think we would like to make sure that the Iron Dome doesn't run out as Israel is defending itself against perpetual onslaught.
But the notion of doing that while deficit spending seems to abandon a lot of the principles that you and I have been trying to instill into the Republican House.
Your reaction to that McConnell strategy?
Yeah, just a couple quick things.
Number one, I've introduced legislation, reintroduced legislation to actually provide a pay-for for Israel on a separate bill.
Number two, You, by giving money to Hamas, even if it's humanitarian, we should have learned this by giving $6 billion to Iran, right?
They said it was going to be humanitarian.
Money is fungible.
They're going to turn around and use it, so you'll be funding both sides of the war.
Jeez.
Which is absolutely asinine.
Well, unless you own defense stocks, right?
Unless you own defense stocks.
Which, actually, a number of our members of Congress do.
Isn't that something?
Make a little money that way, I guess.
I talked to the speaker today and I told him, look, I know he wants to do this Israel thing.
I know he wants to liberate this Israel stuff from the Ukraine stuff and the Taiwan stuff.
And you and I believe in the principle of single subject legislation.
So that tracks well.
But I don't know how you can not have any offset, any pay for.
And so I said to the speaker, look, at a minimum, Can we take the money out of the UN entities that were literally in concert with those attacking Israel?
Can we at least take that out of the Israel aid?
And he wanted to take that under advisement.
But do you think that we would lose a single Republican vote for Israel aid if we also defunded part of the UN in that strategy?
No.
Not one?
Not one.
I can't think of one.
All right, Mr. Speaker, you heard it, man.
You always think me and Biggs are on the no row, but we're real eager to see you take a bite out of the UN as part of the Israel bill.
And I don't think that will lend to the critique that Speaker Johnson is playing politics with Israel funding.
I think the people playing politics with our money are at the UN, and the politics they're playing is vicious and deadly and directed at Israel.
No, 100% right.
So you need to defund UNRWA. But as long as you're defunding, take the money from their Office of Migration, which is actively recruiting people who want to illegally migrate to Europe.
And they're saying, no, it's actually easier to get into America right now.
If we can't cut funding for the entities that are literally paying for the invasion of our country and the slaughter of Israelis, We will never be able to cut anything, right?
I mean, isn't that...
This is the easiest money to cut in the federal budget.
You would think.
You would think.
All right.
I got to get to another subject before I let you go.
FISA. I've talked on the program a great deal about these spying authorities that were weaponized against President Trump that are violated 38 times every hour, according to the Inspector General.
We've got some of our Republican colleagues that are on the House Intelligence Committee who are very critical of the legislation you have Yeah.
I think in a real mistake, we put an extension of those spying authorities onto our national defense legislation.
That is coming up in next month, I believe.
Yeah.
And so you have been appointed as one of the key people on the Judiciary Committee negotiating with the Intelligence Committee about what the guardrails ought to be on these spying authorities.
How do you describe how that's going?
Well, so I misspoke.
It's April 19th that it comes through.
I'm concerned because if we don't get something done soon, you might see something on a CR. But the guardrails we're trying to put down is just real simple.
If you want to surveil and have access to a U.S. person's Telecommunications data.
You need to be able to state a reasonable articulable suspicion or probable cause.
In other words, get a warrant before you look at my private data.
I mean, that's kind of like what the Fourth Amendment's all about.
Yeah, you would think and it's not just that our Republican colleagues on the Intelligence Committee oppose the warrant requirement that we are for.
They actually want to expand spying authorities to include like public Wi-Fi.
So if you're at a McDonald's Having a cheeseburger and get onto the Wi-Fi, all of a sudden, the constitutional protections that you'd be entitled to are diminished just by virtue of being on public Wi-Fi.
Does that concern you?
Oh, absolutely.
By the way, that popped up after seven months of negotiation.
It just popped up in the intel bill that we never even talked about.
I've told them in no uncertain terms that that provision cannot be in any base bill that we agree to.
And we'll see how it goes, because I do believe the speaker wants to get something done sooner rather than later, and I think he wants a base bill that, but that, I'm afraid that the base bill, the things that we agree to, but the intel refuses to budge.
I can't think of any situation where they would support a warrant.
Well, we then have to...
Look, people don't want to hear this, but then we have to work with Democrats.
If Republicans won't stand up for civil liberties and the Fourth Amendment and a warrant requirement, I have no problem working with liberal Democrats who hate my guts to try to get those things accomplished.
I mean, do you have any reticence to that?
None at all.
In fact, my bill was a bipartisan bill, bicameral bill.
One of my lead...
Co-sponsors was Jerry Nadler, for Pete's sakes.
A Biggs Nadler bill.
Hard to believe.
Probably a one-of-a-kinder.
I don't know if we're going to have too many of those.
Yeah, that was a unicorn, my friend.
All right.
Well, Andy Biggs truly is the smartest guy in Congress when it comes to The border and border policies.
He's also one of the great litigators we have.
If his prediction is correct that upon the return of Majority Leader Steve Scalise will be passing an impeachment, then you will be seeing Andy Biggs as one of our impeachment managers over in the Senate putting Mayorkas on trial.
And I really think that's going to ignite the American people of all states, Of all political persuasions to demand accountability and to demand a closed border.
Now we want to focus on something going on in South Africa that I think is going to really surprise you.
The chairman of the ascendant economic freedom fighters political party in South Africa is a guy named Julius Malena.
He's got some pretty genocidal thoughts about white people.
Take a listen.
We'll discuss on the other side.
We must never be scared to kill.
A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing because the killing is part of a revolutionary act.
I don't know what's going to happen in the future.
I'm saying to you, we've not called for the killing of white people, at least for now.
I can't guarantee the future.
Yeah, but I mean, you'd understand somebody watching that, especially as it gets shared on Twitter, they freak out.
It sounds like a genocidal call.
Cry babies.
Cry babies.
I'm not calling for the slaughter of white people, at least for now.
I can't give you a guarantee of the future.
Especially when things are going the way they are.
Subtext.
Especially if things are going the way they are, there will be a revolution in this country, I can tell you now.
We're back live in the Rumble studios for the first time here in Washington, D.C. Quite the setup.
That was the chairman of the Economic Freedom Fighters Party, Julius Malena, perhaps the next president of South Africa.
There's an election that'll be later in 2024. Joining me now to discuss this is my Legislative Counsel in our office here in Washington, D.C., John Wilson.
John has studied these things a good bit and gives us advice on matters of foreign and domestic policy.
So, John, what is going on in South Africa?
First of all, thanks for having me.
It's great to be on.
Love the show.
South Africa is an absolute mess.
I mean, their economy is in the gutter.
Crime is rampant.
It's the rape capital of the world.
And the solution for the economic freedom fighters and Julius Malema is to Genocide white farmers.
You know, get rid of the farmers that are providing food for you, which we know how that went in Zimbabwe, Rhodesia.
It ends with hyperinflation, economic collapse, and worse.
And when you look at the situation, you really got to realize what type of guy Julius Malema is.
This is a person who was head of the African National Congress Youth Federation and ended up leaving because he was too radical.
That's like leaving the Democratic Socialists of America because you think they're a little pink up.
I mean, this is a very dangerous guy, and if he ends up gaining seats in this next election, you know, South Africa, everybody over there is in trouble.
I'm not an expert on South African politics, but these rallies he's hosting are enormous and there seems to be some enthusiasm there.
Is it a likelihood you think that they could gain more seats sufficient to have him, you know, as part of a coalition government or God forbid, even the leader of the country?
It's hard to say if they can overtake the ANC, but I expect they will gain a lot of seats.
I mean, it's an attractive ideology to a lot of people.
I mean, it's just blunt force Marxism.
I mean, all Marxism really is anyway, as we know, is hate what is beautiful, hate what is good, and hate those that are better off than you.
I wonder how the globalist entities are going to respond to this, John, because they...
The critiques of South Africa, the movement of South Africa to become more of a continental hegemon, you know, the global communities reacted to that in different ways.
Like, is there going to be some renunciation of this?
Or is this critical race theory to the global scale?
Is this what global CRT looks like?
That if people are white and you feel aggrieved by them, you're justified in killing them?
Yeah, I wouldn't get my hopes up for any sort of globalist condemnation of what's going on with Malema in South Africa.
I mean, already he has the backing of a lot of globalist NGOs and institutions.
Just the other day, after one of his speeches where he called for the, you know, kill the boar, the ADL puts up a defense of him on their website and says that it's not a call for white genocide, that's conspiracy theory, you know, it's just decolonization.
Contrast with how the ADL views, you know, from the river to the sea, and you can tell these guys aren't acting in good faith.
And then you look at what recently has happened in Israel on October 7th.
We know exactly what they mean by decolonize, and we need to take them at their word.
They mean murder and displace, and that's what they're trying to do to the Boers and the farmers in South Africa, and I don't foresee any globalist institution condemning that.
Do you think it will result in white flight like you saw in Rhodesia?
I think it absolutely will.
It's already doing that.
I mean, the funny thing is Robert Mugabe, some years after the fact, begged the farmers to come back.
He said, please, come back, grow our crops.
Things went to hell in a handbasket over there, and that's possibly what could happen in South Africa if you were to gain power.
And it would be a great opportunity for the United States as well.
You know, you got a couple million Boer farmers over there.
You bring them here, you know, you drop them off in swing states, they will produce, they will reproduce, you know, they vote red.
And I mean, I can't imagine anything that's going to get the Democrats to the table in immigration faster than bringing a bunch of poor white South African farmers to the United States.
We found an asylum class that John Wilson supports, the South African farmers.
Well, thanks for that update and I want to make sure that people continue to stay informed on that.
Before we get out of here, we want to thank the good folks at Rumble for allowing us to come and take over their studios here for our live program and we'll probably be back in the coming weeks with updates about what's going on with the big border fight, the government funding fight, and hopefully Some upcoming accountability for the corrupt folks in the Biden administration and the Biden family.
Thank you for joining us.
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