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Feb. 13, 2024 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
26:25
Episode 151 LIVE: Dead Bill Walking – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
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Thank you.
You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay?
Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero.
We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight.
I want to thank you, Matt Gaetz, for holding the line.
Matt Gaetz is a courageous man.
If we had hundreds of Matt Gaetz in D.C., the country turns around.
It's that simple.
He's so tough, he's so strong, he's smart, and he loves this country.
Matt Gaetz.
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.
The vote we will soon take to provide military weapons for Ukraine is the most important vote we will ever take as United States senators.
Today, the future of the world I've just described is in question.
The endurance of an order in which American support is craved and American strength is feared is in doubt.
And we, the United States of America, have the most to lose.
Welcome back to Firebrand.
We are live.
That was Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney, two people we used to believe were Republicans, speaking on the Senate floor about their desire to spend $95 billion not for the benefit of the American people or our citizens, but for Ukraine and all sorts of ambitions all over the world.
They have no pay for.
There's not a single dollar that they sought to reduce.
American spending in some other way.
Maybe they wanted to reduce some other foreign aid.
No, they wanted to deficit spend every bit of it.
They wanted to go borrow money from China so that we could give it to other countries.
And they want to act as though that's the most important vote, that that is what America will do to save the world from peril.
Just to put the world's debt on our balance sheet.
If anyone thinks that the right answer for you to be good to them is for you to assume all of their debt, I think that you ought to have a good amount of suspicion.
And when we're just basically a debt brokerage firm masquerading as a country in the vision of these America Last politicians, that's what you get.
So we're going to dedicate a good amount of today to what the Senate's trying to do, what we're trying to do to stop it.
We are back broadcasting live in Room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building here in the Capitol Complex on Washington, D.C. We thank our terrific hosts at Rumble.
They've got their new studio in Washington, and you'll see us from that platform with a lot of innovative discussions.
I encourage you to Look at the chat we had with Kurt Mills just yesterday, editor-in-chief of the American Conservative.
And the best way to consume all this content is to download the Rumble app, turn the notifications on.
That way every time we go live, because we go live at different times, you will be notified.
You'll get the news immediately.
And here's the news right now.
House Speaker Mike Johnson doubling down on his commitment not to bring the America Last $95 billion deficit spending forever war bill to a vote in the House.
And it's a Democrat bill.
Here's the tell.
Every Democrat voted for it in the Senate, along with a little cobbling of Republicans that they were able to get together, led by McConnell and Romney and Senator Tom Tillis, who you'll hear from in just a moment.
So they've got that going on.
It's a Democrat bill principally supported by Democrats.
Democrats are making the major contribution to the vote share for the bill.
And we don't have a Republican House majority to hear Democrat bills and move Democrat bills.
And by the way, we shouldn't even be considering Ukraine and Taiwan and U.S. stockpiles in Israel on the same bill anyway.
They should be reviewed independently.
If you want to take a vote on those independently, let's go and proceed ensuring that we don't roll the majority of the majority with Democrats on substantive issues like foreign aid.
Now, one of the America last Republican senators...
Who advocated vociferously for this legislation was Tom Tillis of North Carolina, and his staff actually made this.
What you're going to hear is not a full clip of any speech that Senator Tillis made, but his staff on his social media platforms created a Tillis supercut of what they perceived were all of the best arguments in favor of this Ukraine aid.
And so you're going to hear from Senator Tillis of North Carolina.
Then I'm going to rebut those arguments.
On the other side, take a listen.
A lot of people, when they hear senators speak, they believe that it's the truth.
They've heard somebody say that if we pass this bill that we're all going to go ride to Kyiv with buckets full of money and let oligarchs buy yachts.
I wonder how the spouses of the estimated 25,000 soldiers in Ukraine who have died feel about that.
I mean, really guys?
Sending billions of dollars to Ukraine so Ukrainian oligarchs can buy yachts?
Is that the best you've got?
A lot of people say we're sending 70, 80 billion dollars to Ukraine.
Really?
Well, last time I checked, about half of it's going to the military industrial base here to replace the inventories that we've sent to them to replace and to aid our modernization of our arsenal.
Hell no, thank goodness this is not against the NATO ally because we would be desperate Trying to actually support an all-out war.
Putin is losing this war, folks.
This is not a stalemate.
This guy is on life support.
He will not survive if the 50 nations who have come together in the Rammstein process to support Ukraine stick together.
NATO allies and 25, some two dozen other countries have come together And made it very clear that Putin's desire to reestablish the Russian Empire is inconsistent with a democratic world order.
And we are the beacon of hope for democracy.
When we step away, who fills the void?
You'd be hard pressed to find any nation that has the scale and the ability to do it but the United States.
With all due respect to my friends, why am I so focused on this vote?
Because I don't want to be on the pages of history that we will regret if we walk away.
You will see the alliance that is supporting Ukraine crumble.
You will ultimately see China become emboldened.
And I am not going to be on that page of history.
But let's let this chamber be the chamber that stands with the free world.
We're back live, so let's deal with these arguments that Senator Tillis is making.
The first is, there will be no buckets of cash in Ukraine?
What is everyone talking about?
Yachts and cash?
It is an uncontroverted fact that the wife of a former senior defense official in Ukraine was literally caught with millions of dollars.
It was more than $10 million in U.S. cash at the border with Poland.
So literally buckets of cash are being found in the possession of the family members of the people connected to the Ukraine defense apparatus.
Mike Lee put out a report that the CIA had to directly confront Zelensky about his own personal corruption.
Does Senator Tillis have any response to that?
Does he think it didn't happen?
Is there any evidence to the contrary?
No.
When we find the cash, and when we see that people like Zelensky are able to convert materiel into cash, because in the world right now, far too much of this is fungible, then yeah, there's a real problem.
Second argument Tillis makes, Putin's losing the war.
That's his argument.
You know he's losing this war?
The people were dying in it.
Principally, that's Ukrainians.
And we want to see less war and less death.
But what does winning and losing this war even really mean to Senator Tillis and the rest of the neoconservatives?
Because I know what it means to the Ukrainians.
When Ukrainian officials come and brief members of Congress, you know what they say?
Every inch of our territory back.
The entire Russian-speaking portion of eastern Ukraine in the Donbass and Crimea?
Crimea has been in Russian hands for quite some time.
There's not a serious person who actually believes that this war is going to resolve with Crimea being returned to Ukraine.
Anyone who says that is lying to you.
And they're doing it in order to extend a war where the people who are actually losing it are the ones who are losing their lives and their families and their homes and their businesses and their prospect for any future whatsoever.
Putin's losing the war.
Maybe.
But what are we winning?
What are we even trying to win?
That's something that Tillis can't define.
Third, he says NATO is coming together.
The US has to fill this void.
This is this great moment.
And if we don't continue to serve as a blank check for all of it, then we will be the cause of its collapse.
Here's the truth.
This war in Ukraine can end whenever Europe wants it to.
Whenever they want to stop buying cheap Russian gas, whenever they want to enter into a serious European security agreement that would naturally have to contemplate Russia, hopefully it would include Russia on areas of agreement where we're fighting radical Islamic extremists.
Hopefully we could include Russia on non-proliferation, on nuclear weapons destruction.
There are certain things where cooperation between the United States and Russia make the world and everyone here safer.
And that's not to say that we're saying they're nice guys or inviting them over for Christmas dinner.
But they're a nuclear power.
And in Europe, I think there's an ability to negotiate and reach a conclusion that is considerably less bloody than the present that we currently face.
Fourth argument.
The face of history.
We can act, so we must act.
This is essentially Tillis' argument that because the United States is strong and powerful, then might makes right, and we are obligated to take action anywhere in the world where our values are in any way diminished by the rising hegemony of some other entity, or even the declining hegemony.
Just the hegemony period.
Here's what I don't think history will judge well.
If our tinkering around over with Russian tanks and European boundary disputes leads to some sort of catastrophic accident or escalation As I've said many times, I don't worry about broke-down Russian tanks in the Donbass so much as I worry about some crazy Russian general believing that they have the authority to execute some sort of launch that then we would have to retaliate against.
You would activate the entire nuclear triad.
We could melt the globes, put all of human existence asunder under a nuclear winter.
What?
What?
So that we can take the perspective that Crimea has to be returned to Russia?
Is that worth it?
History.
I hope history doesn't judge us for the mistakes that these neoconservatives would make.
Fifth and final argument that Tillis makes is that China will be emboldened.
Do you know who we're borrowing the $95 billion from?
China?
When we suffer inflation because this type of unpaid-for spending is inherently inflationary, you know who benefits?
China!
With Russia entangled in this battle, there is a leveraged buyout of the Russian farms in East Russia.
The Chinese are benefiting from that, and as Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, they are selling off assets in Cuba, where these broke-down Russian spy entities are being converted into high-end Chinese intelligence signals collection capabilities for our true adversary, an adversary that wants to dominate us, not one that wants to join NATO with us.
So I think that it is foolish to suggest that the way to be stronger toward China is to become deeper indebted to China.
And when we borrow money from China to give it to another country, we just look like fools.
We don't look like leaders.
Speaking of fools, we get a report from the Calvin Coolidge Project that Republican Senator and neoconservative Mark Wayne Mullen is meeting with folks to consider a discharge petition.
And here's the report.
Senator Mark Wayne Mullen has spoken to House lawmakers about a discharge petition.
A discharge petition would bring the $95 billion overseas aid bill to a vote in the House of Representatives if Speaker Mike Johnson doesn't introduce it.
So here is the real-time You've got Mike Johnson taking the right position that we're not going to consider this crazy bill on the terms that the Senate has sent it over.
And then you have Mark Wayne Mullen trying to encourage Republicans to go sign a discharge petition with Democrats.
To force this America last bill forward.
And Mark Wayne Mullen didn't even have the guts to vote for it.
That's what's crazy about this.
Mullen votes against the bill because he's afraid that his constituents in Oklahoma will know how he actually feels about these questions.
And then he goes and tries to get some Republicans in the House to do an end run around Mike Johnson.
I will fight against that.
I will stand with Speaker Johnson to stop This terrible, unpaid-for, $95 billion aid bill, and I'm glad the Speaker is staying strong on that.
Another little dispute we see going on on social media is between a terrific Attorney General in the state of Texas, Ken Paxton, and John Cornyn.
Let's get those tweets on the screen.
Attorney General Paxton takes a shot at Cornyn, says that he's willing to stay up all night to defend other countries' borders, but obviously there's a sensitivity to that in Texas because the Texas border is not being defended.
Cornyn replies with just an ad hominem attack.
Saying that, oh, Ken Paxton's under felony investigation and there's a grand jury looking at him.
And it is just such a weak play for Cornyn to ignore the substance of Paxton's argument that Cornyn seems to be more worried about borders oceans away and not those among the Texans who elected him and were hoping that they would serve.
There were some good arguments made in the Senate, notably by Missouri's Josh Hawley.
I thought he nailed it in debate.
Take a listen.
My goodness, we have enough money to make hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxpayer funds available to the private sector in Ukraine.
We are now literally funding their businesses, their banks.
Lord knows what!
We've got money without end.
We've got enough money to pay for bureaucrat salaries.
We've got enough money to pay for Ukrainian government officials' pensions.
We've got enough money for so-called humanitarian aid that gets funneled away from, siphoned off into any manner of corrupt uses.
We won't know because we don't have a Special Inspector General to oversee this money, but that's a different story.
Oh no, we've got plenty of money!
And I have listened carefully, carefully, to colleague after colleague of mine come to this floor and stand where I am now and say, it's so important that we spend this money On these overseas wars, we must spend the money.
If we don't spend this money now, why, it may cost us more money in the future.
No, it's imperative.
It's imperative that we spend this money.
Meanwhile, these same people turn to the citizens of Missouri and say, you're not worth a dime.
They say, you can't have a penny.
They turn to the residents of Kentucky and Tennessee and Alaska and New Mexico and Arizona and Utah and Texas and they say, we don't care that you are poisoned.
We don't have a dime for you.
We have unlimited money for Ukraine.
We're going to rebuild the borders of Ukraine.
That's in this bill, but we don't have anything for you.
Nailed it.
We, in fact, are paying for the pensions and salaries of Ukrainian officials that have nothing to do with the war.
And in a way, the impeachment trap that we talked about on the program yesterday seems to be an effort to really create a yellow brick road for more war and more funding of it, and actually all of it, when what we need is peace.
A point made quite well by our good friend from Kentucky, Senator Rand Paul.
Take a listen.
So I, for one, think that the American people are opposed to this bill.
I think they're opposed to the concept of Ukraine first and America last.
And I predict that this issue doesn't go away.
I predict that the House of Representatives is not going to take up this bill.
I predict that the vast majority of the Republicans in the House of Representatives are more conservative than the Republicans in this body.
And I predict that this fight is not over.
During this debate and the fact that we were able to delay and talk about this for five days, five and a half days, the Speaker of the House spoke out.
And I don't know that he would have been prompted to speak out, although he has spoken out previously against this.
But the Speaker of the House spoke out today and said he's not taking this bill up.
See, they've put together Border reform that actually would transform things.
Border reform that acknowledges that it's an emergency.
So I will be a no and continue to be a no on this bill because I think it puts Ukraine first and America last.
And with that, Madam President, I yield my time.
Senator Paul did a terrific job.
We also saw harrowing work by Senator Mike Lee of Utah.
And at the end of the day, the Senate did advance this legislation.
And the work we're doing right now is to ensure that Speaker Johnson continues to block the consideration of this disparate, omnibus, unpaid-for bad bill.
So good work on the Speaker.
Good work, Senator Paul and our Senate allies.
And you Senate Republicans like Mark Wayne Mullen trying to get a discharge petition or Senator Tillis trying to get another blank check for a corrupt country, it's disappointing and it's not something that your constituents would ever approve.
So there's a certain hubris to all of it.
We want to make sure we do focus on America's border in this program and I want to bring you up to date on legislation that I'm filing.
This exclusive comes from Henry Rogers at The Daily Caller.
Matt Gaetz introduces bill to protect states' right to defend the southern border.
Now, this speaks directly to the litigation that's ongoing between Texas and the federal government.
Texas has put up barricades.
I observed those barricades.
They were effective.
They were a deterrent.
People were moving around them to other places like Lukeville, Arizona, and to California because Texas actually started standing for its own sovereignty.
but then the Biden administration's Department of Justice tried to do everything possible to litigate against Texas to get injunctions against barricading their own border from the invasion that is coming over as high as 10,000 people a day.
So Senator Vance came up with this idea originally.
He filed it in the Senate to create within federal law a permission structure for exactly what Texas is doing.
We would hope other border states would then follow suit under that permission structure.
Vance has got it in the Senate.
I've got it in the House of Representatives, and I'm excited to work with Senator Vance on that important priority.
And really, we shouldn't be voting for government funding bills without it.
We shouldn't be voting for government funding bills without appropriate demands on the border.
And this is one way we could work together to create that sovereignty for our country and we could actually leverage the power and capability of our states that are indeed willing to help.
One power that's been abused, we've talked about it a lot, is the spying power of the federal government.
And where we've seen the most egregious abuses are in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Now, there's a reauthorization for that coming up.
We had punted it previously.
My conservative colleagues and I are actually working with some very liberal Democrats to try to get a warrant requirement, to try to get more oversight, and to not let the deep state just continue to target Americans in the absence of the constitutional protections that we all hold so dear.
Bob Good, Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, held a press conference on our intentions and our demands.
I spoke at that press conference moments ago.
Take a listen.
I can't imagine that when a prior Congress passed the Patriot Act that they expected that its provisions would be used against patriots or even BLM rioters for that matter.
That's what's so interesting about this issue.
We've seen these authorities abused against the right, the left, the middle, the rural, the urban, certainly people all over this country.
And don't take my word for it.
When the Inspector General for the Department of Justice, appointed by President Obama, did an analysis of the utilization of these FISA authorities, they found that our intelligence community had violated the law and the regulations 278,000 times.
They were breaking the law 38 times an hour for the period that was being reviewed.
I don't think it makes us unreasonable to suggest that if there's a law being violated 38 times every hour, that it should not just be expanded without some sort of curtailment or enforcement when those violations do occur.
And that's why we want a warrant, because it creates a process by which our constitutional norms can apply to something that has broken bad.
And it is helpful that we have a real U-shaped coalition here, where it's folks on the populist right aligned with those on the populist left, and we are fighting against the establishment of both parties who seem all too willing to do whatever the national security state wants of them.
So our plea to Speaker Johnson is not to just continue to punt on FISA. That's what we did previously, and it's unacceptable.
It's no fun watching a team whose best play is the punt.
That's what we did previously, and we shouldn't do that again.
And if we're going to make changes to FISA, rather than expanding the authorities, as Chairman Turner and some on the Intelligence Committee want to do, so that they can be weaponized against anybody with just access to Wi-Fi at a Starbucks or a McDonald's, they should be curtailed.
And if they are not curtailed, if there is not a willingness in the Senate to curtail these authorities, then we should allow them to expire.
Yeah.
As is contemplated originally in the Patriot Act.
We will still fight for those constitutional Fourth Amendment principles, but the fight is on and our adversaries are doing everything they can to maintain that power among a select group of people in Washington, D.C. to be able to do an end run around the Constitution.
The Fourth Amendment shouldn't be up for negotiation and it shouldn't be for sale.
Thank you so much for joining me today on Firebrand.
Make sure that you give us a five-star rating, especially if you're listening to the program on Apple.
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We appreciate your participation and your feedback.
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