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Feb. 14, 2024 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
31:21
Episode 152 LIVE: Spying, Spending & Security (feat. Rep. Lauren Boebert) – Firebrand with Matt G…
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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 Gates, for holding the line.
Matt Gates is a courageous man.
If we had hundreds of Matt Gates 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 Gates.
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.
In the last 24 hours, House Republicans blocked sending nearly $100 billion of your money to prolong foreign endless wars.
And just now, we impeached Secretary Mayorkas, who's endangered our country by deliberately handing over control of our southern border to the cartel.
Now that's delivering for the American people, and I'm proud to be a part of it.
...and risked some sort of terrible accident or conflict in Russia.
We We have so much to get to.
Breaking news about a national security threat all over cable.
Is it space aliens?
Is it some sort of new pandemic?
Here's the Fox News report.
So an update for you now on this new national security threat that the head of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Mike Turner, is urgently warning about.
He and the other members of the Gang of Eight have got a meeting with the National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, I believe it's tomorrow night.
But ahead of that meeting, Turner is saying that the White House needs to declassify information on this new threat so that everybody in Congress can have a look at it.
We're working our sources to try to find out what this is all about.
Jackie Heinrich has been doing that as well.
She's got some information for us.
What do you hear, Jackie?
Well, John, I've just been speaking with a Pentagon official and they confirmed to me that this has to do with a threat related to space.
We already have from our other sourcing that there has been reporting on the Hill That sources here have confirmed is in the ballpark, which is that it has to do with an emerging capability from Russia that would be of grave seriousness potentially, but that the threat is not immediate.
My sense in the briefing, it seemed like Jake Sullivan was there today to talk about other issues.
He was there to talk about the need to get the foreign aid Passed in Congress.
He was there to talk about the FISA bill that needs reauthorization.
And there is opposition really across both parties to certain pieces of that bill that they think would undermine national security if it were not to happen.
So he was making that case to the press as he's been making that case to members of Congress.
And I think this question kind of came out of nowhere.
And it was all prompted by this press release that Mike Turner sent out warning folks that The Biden administration needs to declassify urgently this information so that conversations can start.
That's the piece that I paid attention to in that release, was that we need to be able to have a conversation with our allies and partners about how we're going to deal with this threat.
And that tells me that they Haven't dealt with it just yet.
And so if you cast that against the reporting that we have from our source saying that this is an emerging military capability from Russia, reportedly, involving space, according to a Pentagon official, we're getting the building blocks of what this might be.
But the president and relevant agencies are going to have to address a lot of questions that we have about them now.
Guys.
We are back live and hear me now.
The game you are watching is not the game that is actually being played.
I think it was incredibly irresponsible for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner to go out and gaslight the country alleging this national security threat and of course there are real threats going on all the time that we want our committees and our congressmen focused on but Without being able to discuss the country or the matter, here's what I can say.
I read the intelligence today.
And while, of course, these types of things require us to keep an eye on them, it was not like markedly different than other similar types of intelligence analysis that we have received that I have been briefed on for several years now as a seven year member of the House Armed Services Committee.
And so then it really begs the question, Why?
Why were you gaslit?
Why was there this big overarching claim of the eminency of some harm to the American people?
And it's exactly what Congresswoman Lauren Boebert was briefing you on at the top of the show.
You see, in the House of Representatives, we are working to block a nearly $100 billion deficit spend.
And we're concerned that that deficit spend isn't going to make the world safer.
Giving money to Ukraine, any other kind of provocations around, it could actually make the world considerably less safe.
And so you had Boebert saying conservatives stuck together, killed this bad bill, and then right on the heels of that, You have Mike Turner out there saying, oh, this big national security threat.
And you watch.
They'll try to use the veneer of this threat to try to justify spying on you, spending your money, driving up prices, and being inflationary.
So we're joined now by Congresswoman Boebert.
Congresswoman, how would you encapsulate The victory of the House of Representatives against this bad, nearly $100 billion bill, because as you and I both know, Mitch McConnell wins a lot.
When he stitches together a deal, he often prevails, but we have the strength and the fortitude.
So how do you assess that?
Yes.
Well, first of all, I don't think that this is over.
Mitch McConnell certainly is not going to give up on his lifelong dream of funding Ukraine and endless foreign wars.
But this was a massive victory for conservatives, and we are proving that when we stick together, we can block bad legislation, bad deficit spending.
We're $34 trillion in debt, more than $2 trillion annual deficit.
And this proves that we can kill things in the Senate.
We don't have to be bullied by them.
We don't have to be pressured by them.
And we still have leverage in the House of Representatives to not bring it up, bring up bad legislation, and say that we won't.
The power of no.
And sometimes, like, there is such an anxiousness in this town to just be for something, be for some deal, pat yourself on the back and act as if that's something that is accomplished.
But oftentimes, having the ability to resist corrupt, bad, and dangerous things help us out a great deal more.
How would you apply that analysis to this government funding fight we're in?
Because you and I, I don't think are, we are not cheerleaders for shutdowns.
We would like to see the government actually work on behalf of the people.
We care about our troops, our veterans.
But at the same time, we are potentially faced with a really high spending bill, increases to a lot of the priorities that we don't care for.
A lot of the amendments that you offered to get accountability at the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Interior, those were rejected by Republicans.
How can we balance our goal of ensuring that the government does what we need to do while at the same time not just falling into the trap of acquiescence and surrender?
Yes, well, it seems here in Washington, D.C. that bipartisan is actually a very dangerous thing.
You know, we want to make anything bipartisan to show that there is support on both sides of the aisle, but that doesn't mean that it's good for the country.
You and I have been battling the spending, certainly since I've been here, but especially last January when we stood up to Kevin McCarthy and said we wanted rules changed, we want individual appropriations bills.
We want to go line by line with this programmatic spending and get our spending under control back to pre-COVID levels.
We're not in a pandemic.
We don't need to spend that much anymore.
And so this is a fight that you and I have been in.
And it's really frustrating when our own conference is okay With more debt because it's Republican debt.
Because we're in the majority and we're the ones who are actually spending it.
That doesn't make it better.
There are plenty of things that we can go through and still cut.
But then all of this, you're talking about the American people being gaslit.
Look, FISA is up for reauthorization.
And now that we have these national security supplemental aids that are coming up and they're being pushed into a place of fear to want to support these things.
Without offsets.
Without offsets.
You see, because I have no problem if people want to make the argument that they think we should give America's money away.
If they want to make that argument, I'll make a different argument and the best ideas can prevail.
But what really just gores me Is the continued suggestion that there's nothing we can cut in our budget.
Everything is just more, more, more.
And then the American people end up paying more prices.
Are you hearing from people in Colorado about the impact of these prices?
I'm sensing people are getting the connection between the deficits we run and the prices they pay.
Yes.
Well, of course, it's the reckless spending in Washington, D.C. that is impacting Coloradans, their inability to afford groceries the way they once did, pay their utility bills, afford gas to get to work, to run their kids around to different sporting events or to school or whatever it may be.
The cost of living is up.
And even back home, the answer is, well, can the federal government just give us more money to make housing affordable?
No, the answer is not to throw more money at a problem.
We actually need to take care of our deficits here in Washington, D.C. And B, we need to be good stewards of the tax dollars that come our way.
And of course, we need to ramp up our American energy We have got to start producing more here if we are going to make living affordable once again.
So with all of this deficit spending, just like you, I'm for actually paying for it.
We voted in favor of cutting the 87,000 IRS agents just by enough to fund Israel.
We passed that legislation, sent it over to the Senate.
The Senate looked at it, ignored it, said, to heck with you guys.
Yeah, because they only believe in foreign aid that has no other reduction in funding anywhere else.
And that is inflationary.
And it is hurting people.
And before, when you talked about inflation, people kind of looked at you like you should have green eye shades on or something.
But it's devouring people's family budgets.
And you make a really good point.
About one of the antidotes to that inflation being our strategy on energy.
And we passed HR1. You were one of the principal architects of that legislation on the Natural Resources Committee.
Do you think we need to leverage that more?
We passed it and we sent it over to the Senate and we talked about it.
And this is the big House bill on energy.
I want you to talk about some of the features.
But to me it almost seems like Everything that Joe Biden wants or the Senate wants, we should be putting our energy legislation on it and then making that argument about prices.
But if people don't know about HR1, tell them what's in it that actually unlocks this potential.
Yes.
Well, H.R. 1 is our most important bill in this Congress because it does unleash American energy production.
Coming from rural Colorado, from Western Colorado, I know all about energy development and the way it benefits all of us here at home.
Currently, we are funding both sides of this war with Russia and Ukraine.
We need to ban that energy from Russia and develop our own.
President Trump had us energy independent.
We had energy security and that's where we need to get back to.
And we need to pursue energy dominance so we can liberate our allies across the world, literally export freedom to them by producing our resources.
But now Biden has said we're not even going to export liquefied natural gas.
Right.
And our LNG is absolutely what needs to be.
Who does that hurt, like, geographically?
Where's the most LNG development where you think people will struggle as a consequence of that decision?
All of our allies certainly will be hurt by this.
And Americans.
I mean, right here at home.
Look, Joe Biden, he...
He deplenished our strategic petroleum reserves in the name of a midterm election, not in the name of an emergency, in the name of an election.
And that goes against everything that we stand for, everything that we've done to produce that and store that up for the American people.
But if the activists are going to win, if the leftist extremist argument on energy is going to win, well then we need to start exploring uranium.
And go nuclear on a lot of this stuff.
I just think that's corruption.
I think the reason we don't have modular nuclear in this country is because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn't want to approve it because then people wouldn't have to build $16 billion reactors.
You could have cheaper, smaller reactors and rural America could be powered by nuclear.
Well, something that I'm pushing in Craig, Colorado, small little town, coal mining town, the Democrats have certainly won this argument with their climate change agenda that is so extreme.
And they are shutting down this coal-fired energy power plant by 2028. And they want to demolish $3 billion in infrastructure.
And he said, well, wait a second, let's look and actually see if we can Develop and implement a small modular reactor there, rather than just loading up Craig, Colorado, this beautiful mountain town with solar panels.
Well, let's do something that's actually efficient and good for the environment.
It is heartbreaking when I was traveling in Montana recently and you see some of the beautiful landscapes of our nation carved up for all of these Green New Deal energy credits.
And it's a distortion of the energy market.
It's a destruction of so many beautiful natural spaces.
And a bunch of Wall Street guys are getting rich on it.
It's not even something that's really, in all cases, inuring to the benefit of the people in these communities.
So I wonder How much that Green New Deal is going to be stretched over these remaining years of the Biden administration where I think it was like $400 billion in credits and now Wall Street's planning for $2 trillion in credits.
That's right.
And this is another thing that we have fought really hard to repeal.
We said all of these Green New Deal tax credits- But wouldn't that be a good pay for?
Absolutely it would.
To me, these things are related.
We're talking about the pains of the American people.
You could use the Green New Deal tax credits and you could do that as the offset to support Israel or whatever else we wanted to do.
That is exactly what we should be doing because these Green New Deal subsidies are hurting the American people.
They are hurting our economy.
Sure, it may seem cheap, but it's not free.
This is American tax dollars that are funding this and these corporations are getting rich off of it.
We're joined by Congresswoman Boebert of the great state of Colorado.
We're talking about the big issues Congress is facing from our debt and our spending to get that process back on track.
Also this national security threat that I tend to think is more about influencing people in Congress to support what they otherwise wouldn't than it is about like warning the American people.
Jake Sullivan took questions on that.
I want to bring it to you.
Take a listen.
House Intelligence Chair speaking out about a imminent or he doesn't say imminent serious national security threat the lack of your ability to say anything has the potential to raise distress for some Americans in the simplest of terms can you tell Americans that there's nothing they have to We are back.
I think we had a little issue with that clip, but Sullivan essentially doesn't elaborate, but he says he, I think, undercuts the Turner argument on how immediate this threat is.
And so if you're watching the program, you don't have to go like hide under your bed tonight as a consequence of somebody trying to get us to vote for a bad FISA bill, which is what I think this is all about.
So you mentioned Congresswoman Boebert in our discussion about The need for reform on these spying authorities.
And very personally offensive to you and to me that these were the exact authorities used against President Trump illegally, without consequence.
Where do you see the FISA battle right now?
Well, you know, the bill is off the floor this week for a vote.
And it's really interesting that we have this new national security threat.
You know, there's an imminent danger The folks back home.
And I'm tired of politicians governing by fear, trying to make afraid the people that they are here to protect and represent.
Well, the argument is we have to surrender our constitutional rights.
We have to allow the government to be able to scoop up anything on a Starbucks Wi-Fi or without a warrant.
Do all that.
We have to do it because if not, another 9-11.
Right.
And that's the construct that you think has people take a suboptimal path?
Absolutely.
Well, I mean, look at the Patriot Act.
I mean, that ushered in so much of this.
And it's not temporary.
It's not just because we have this one threat that, oh, well, just for a little bit, we're going to spy on you and we need all of your information, all of your data, all of the phone calls and text messages that your phone carriers record and store.
And now the government needs to look into those.
Nothing in the federal government is temporary.
There's nothing more permanent, right, than a temporary government program.
And FISA is definitely one of those.
This is allowing statutory legal spying on Americans is completely unconstitutional.
And we have to have reforms.
There has to be warrants.
Federal government, if you want to spy on someone, you better go get a warrant.
You better have a darn good reason to do it.
But also we have these amendments that we're wanting to place in there that mimic one of the better FISA reform bills that you and I supported, the Jim Jordan and Andy Biggs FISA reform bill.
And we have these amendments, like Warren Davidson's, the Fourth Amendment is not for sale.
Yes, so that's a really important bill.
The features of the Fourth Amendment are not for sale act prohibit the government from doing an end run around the courts and your rights by just buying data from commercial data brokers.
So, data brokers are collecting data on all of you, on all of us, and they sell those to people who want you to like something or click something or purchase something.
Now, our government goes and buys data on you and they do so as really a substitute for actual legal analysis and law enforcement work.
And so, We want that included in any reauthorization of FISA. And frankly, Congresswoman, I have sensed a lot of resistance to that from some of our colleagues.
Which is absolutely baffling.
We know that they spied on President Trump and his campaign.
They spied on him while he was president.
And all of us, they are certainly looking into us just whenever they want and collecting and buying this data.
And how much are they spending to purchase this data on Americans?
Well, it's irrevocable.
Once they do it and they violate someone's rights, you're hosed.
It's a point that was made brilliantly by our colleague Eric Burleson at a press conference recently.
Take a listen.
I think the question before us is pretty simple.
Who do you stand with?
Who do you trust more?
The American people or the deep state?
And if you ask the American people, especially in my district, they do not trust this place.
They don't trust what the FBI has been doing.
They don't appreciate the actions towards their free speech or towards their religious liberty.
Whenever you hear examples of the FBI investigating the Catholic Church, the American people should start having questions.
You, the press, should have questions.
Which is why this FISA reauthorization went through the proper process.
It went through the Judiciary Committee.
It went through the amendment process in that committee, and it had all eyes on it, and it went through a vetting process.
The question is to those members on the intelligence community, what are you so afraid of in the reforms?
What are you so afraid of getting a warrant and justifying your actions before you, as was mentioned, continue to abuse the law every two seconds?
and violate someone's rights every two seconds.
Look, I wish that this town and that the resources in the town dedicated enough time and attention to fix the border as they do to reauthorize FISA or to take down a good FISA bill.
So we're here to make sure that the American people know exactly where we stand and we want the American people to pay attention And ask themselves, is my elected official, are they with the deep state or are they with me?
Stark terms from Congressman Eric Burleson.
You're with the deep state or you're with us.
I know Lauren Boebert's with us.
She's from Colorado.
So Lauren, give a prediction.
Where does this go?
Are we going to build a durable coalition to try to reform these authorities?
I'm pretty optimistic about it because actually the Democrats are with us.
You know, I think a lot of the Democrats don't want to see the Fourth Amendment trampled like this.
So this would be actually a rare instance of good bipartisanship, but we're not deficit spending the country.
But I'll give you the last word on FISA. Yes, so I certainly hope that we could get to a good place on FISA, and if anyone is wondering, you know, what is really going on here with FISA, it is about growing the federal government, and that's what we are here to stop.
If we can ever prevent bad things from happening in D.C. and protect you, then we are doing our job.
We don't need to pass new legislation necessarily to do that, but this needs to be reformed.
702 needs to be reformed.
We need to have These amendments that allow for warrants, we need to have the amendments that do not allow the federal government to purchase your constitutional rights and make you susceptible to forfeit those, certainly in the name of fear.
And J.D. Vance is on our side.
Yes, that's right.
And so J.D. Vance here, he wrote a fantastic memo.
The senator He outlined that the Democrats' initial grounds for impeachment was the Impound Control Act.
And they were saying because President Trump was withholding funds from Ukraine, that this was the grounds that they took immediately to impeach him.
And they said he withheld these funds from Ukraine.
And if these funds are still If we were to pass more funding for Ukraine this Congress, and President Trump assumes office in January 2025, which we know he will, then they would be ready to impeach him again because he would again pause funding for Ukraine because of the corruption that we know that we have seen.
He just wanted a simple answer about the prosecutor, Victor Stokin.
What is going on there?
Why was he fired when Joe Biden said- It was a bribe.
Yeah, it was a bribe.
People don't pay bribes to not get stuff.
Exactly.
And President Trump wanted this investigated and they said since he paused this funding to Ukraine that that is why they impeached him and that is ultimately what opened up all of this FISA for them to spy on President Trump.
It's all connected.
That's why we've got to fight it.
Kind of seeing the field in that particular way.
We do want to end the program with some bizarre news coming out of the Congressional Archives where some whacked out activists in like Tevas went and covered themselves in pink paint and attempted unsuccessfully to desecrate the beautiful Constitution of the United States.
This from the Archives today.
We are determined to foment a rebellion.
We will not be held upon two laws in which we have no voice or representation.
This country is founded on the conditions that all men are created equally and endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We're calling for all people to have all these rights, not just wealthy white men.
We all deserve clean air, water, food, and a livable climate.
If Firebrand's executive producer Joel Valdez were at the archives during this moment, there wouldn't have been just pink paint flying around a great deal more.
Lauren, I know we cherish and love our Constitution.
We believe all Americans ought to have access to our great archives and our great documents.
It's heartbreaking to see those two people, obviously, who've never had a girlfriend, just using what should be a celebratory place and a celebratory piece of American history for whatever that was.
Yes, this is absolutely shameful.
And had they been wearing MAGA hats, there would have been an immediate seizure and arrest.
Blow dart to the neck if they had a MAGA hat on.
Absolutely.
And deservedly so.
Anybody who's trying to tarnish the Constitution gets no more.
Well, you know, we were deeply offended when Nancy Pelosi ripped up President Trump's State of the Union address right there in the House chambers.
And, you know, all of these documents, you know, they have a sacred place, especially our Constitution, that we fight for each and every day to uphold and defend.
And to see someone attempting to desecrate it in that manner is absolutely shameful.
They were wearing Tevas, I believe, which might be punishment enough, but they deserve all the punishment they get.
I hope they were arrested.
We'll have to follow up on that.
Congressman Boebert, thank you for everything you do for Colorado.
Thanks for being one of the best fighters in Congress for the America First movement.
Our audience appreciates you so much.
Even when we don't have you on the show, we're often playing your work in committee and on the floor.
And I think if people are really trying to figure out the news of this week, Like you said, you've got a government trying to grow.
You've got a group of people trying to protect folks' liberties.
And at the end of the day, far too many in this town are worried about things going on oceans away that have little direct impact on American life.
And we just want the people here to be focused on what matters to the American people.
And it often is a challenge, but I'm glad I have you as a great partner in that endeavor.
Matt, it's an honor to serve with you, to fight next to you.
You know, it's often you and I back to back to the very end of the thing.
And, you know, when we hear things trying to make afraid the American people to say that there's a national security threat and gaslight the American people, we know the real threat is our wide open southern border.
There have been more red flags because of our wide open southern border and the folks that are on the terrorist watch list coming in.
And that needs to be our priority, securing that border And making sure that we are protecting our people, not creating endless wars and sending our money all over the world that's not paid for.
It's so true.
Like, every major election is about one big question, right?
I mean, you had Jimmy Carter and the inflation.
You had Reagan and economic growth was the operative question.
You got into the Bush years and this national security stuff because we'd gone through 9-11.
Then with Obama, every election seemed to be about Obamacare one way or the other.
And I think we've finally reached the election cycle in American history that really is about the border.
Yes.
Everything I've seen, just what I hear from people, the border is what's going to decide their vote.
That's exactly right, because it's all encompassing, from human trafficking to the invasion itself, nearly 8 million people.
Yes, the deaths that are taking place, the cartel having operational control of our southern border, all of this, the fentanyl is pouring.
And Colorado is number two in the nation for fentanyl poisoning.
And, you know, it's devastating to look a mom in the eye and hear the story of her losing her child to fentanyl.
And so this is impacting everyone.
Every state is now a border state.
But thankfully, it took a little long, but we did impeach Secretary Mayorkas last night.
He is impeached in the House of Representatives, and I'm proud to have been a part of that.
There has to be some accountability for what's going on at the border, and it is a priority.
A first deliverable on accountability.
May there be many more.
Thank you, Congresswoman, for joining me.
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