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June 4, 2024 - Firebrand - Matt Gaetz
37:35
Episode 166 LIVE: El Salvador Is Being Saved (feat. John Wilson & Gavin Wax) - Firebrand with Mat…
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Thank you.
Matt Gaetz, 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.
It is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you.
We will save America!
It's choose your fighter time!
I'm sending the Firebrands. - Welcome back to Firebrand.
I know it's been a minute and a lot has been going on here in Capitol Hill and really throughout the world.
We're going to talk about some of that, but if you've tuned in for the latest on the Trump trials, the lawfare, Attorney General Merritt Garland, you will be disappointed today because our focus is going to be exclusively external, global, things going on in the rest of the world as America struggles through this period of decline presided over by President Joe Biden.
So if you're interested In the questions we ask the Attorney General, strongly encourage you to check out our X timeline.
That's got our takes on those matters.
But we will focus today on a nation that is in the Western Hemisphere, in Latin America, in our sphere of influence, that is experiencing one of the, really one of the most miraculous turnarounds We've witnessed for any country in my lifetime, for sure.
And the president of that country is Nayib Bukele, who we have covered extensively here on Firebrand, and his bold vision is creating a security dynamic in El Salvador.
El Salvador, of all places, that could turn that small Pacific country into the Singapore, the Dubai, the Doha of the Western Hemisphere.
So, here to join me, I've got two great friends and colleagues, Gavin Wax, the president of the New York Young Republican Club, and my legislative counsel here in our congressional office, John Wilson.
John and Gavin were both with me in El Salvador, To experience the swearing in, the inauguration of President Bukele for his second term, his second mandate, and this is a time where he was addressing security issues, moving on to the next phase of that country,
and got a lot of thoughts on it, but I want to first start with you, Gavin, because you have traveled the world to places like Hungary, to places throughout Europe, where populism is trying to take hold and in some cases taking hold and here in El Salvador we seem to see a lot of those common sense populist policies increasing quality of life for people so give us your take on the Bukele inauguration and really where you think it sits within this broader move to embrace populism globally.
Well, thank you for having me on, Congressman.
And it certainly was a fantastic trip.
I was honored to share it with you.
And seeing what's happening on the ground in El Salvador is nothing short of a miracle.
For some of your listeners, if they're not aware, this is a country that was engulfed in a brutal, vicious, bloody gang war that spanned decades.
And even before that brutal gang war, they were also in the midst of a civil war that also spanned decades.
So this is a country that's seen nothing but bloodshed and conflict For the better half of the past century and is now coming out of that, rising from the ashes under the leadership of Nayib Bukele, who has, in a short period of time, turned this from one of the deadliest countries based on the homicide per capita rate.
In the world to, I believe, the safest country based on its homicide per capita rate in the Western Hemisphere, even safer, I believe, than the United States.
So it just goes to show that with strong leadership, visionary leadership, populist leadership, you can achieve massive results in a very short period of time.
And that's what Nayib Bukele was able to achieve in El Salvador, bringing about safety and security for his people, sort of the base needs of this, you know, hierarchy of needs of a nation, if you will.
And now he can begin to focus on the rebuilding, on these additional improvements to his country's infrastructure, to its economy, to its overall well-being, things that were impossible to even conceive of under the boot of a civil war.
And the gang war that have basically destroyed that country's future for the past several decades.
So what we're seeing on the ground is nothing short of a miracle.
It's a boom country.
You can see it in construction that's all over.
You can see it in just the aura and atmosphere and the vibes that people are giving off.
It's very hopeful for the first time.
They're excited to welcome in tourists.
They're excited to welcome in You know, foreigners to invest.
He's legalized Bitcoin as legal tender, the first in the world, a kind of a revolutionary move.
All of these things are being done towards one goal, and one goal only is the rebuilding of El Salvador, making El Salvador great again.
It's something that any American can appreciate.
It's something that any European can appreciate, as we've seen a lot of managed decline across the Western world.
It gives us hope for the future.
So John, you run the El Salvador desk in our office.
You've been studying President Bukele and the reforms that he's put in place to achieve what Gavin just described.
If you were talking to somebody who only thought about El Salvador in terms of like the invading migrant force in our country and only thought about El Salvador as like a bastion for MS-13 to wreak havoc on Really, the United States and other countries in Central and South America.
How would you describe to someone like that what the Bukele Doctrine is, what he encountered when he got there, and how he brought us to this moment that Gavin illuminated?
Well, President Bukele first and foremost mentioned this in his inaugural speech.
He said, first, you have a diseased body, you have to remove the cancer before you heal the rest of it.
So President Bukele declared a state of exception and he physically removed a parasitic, violent, criminal class of gangs from society.
And society began to flourish.
And by physical removal, all I mean really is that he took these people and put them in prison.
He wasn't tossing them off helicopters.
This was very humane, in fact.
And because he did this, it blows the left's ideas of restorative justice right out of the water and the idea that poverty...
Builds a culture of crime.
El Salvador is still a developing nation by our standards, but as you can attest, we went all over the country from the rural areas to the inner cities and we did not feel in danger at all.
These were good people that are now able to thrive, build and create and live their lives without worrying about being murdered or worse by these criminal gangs.
And because of that, he's inspired his country with a very service mentality, a very law-abiding mentality.
The roads were paved not only from the airport to the wealthy parts of town, but they were paved all the way out to the ocean and up into the mountains.
Better than the roads we deal with here in Virginia.
You know, it's completely inspiring.
It reminds me of one story that he told us about a school in a rural area.
It was an elementary school, and he said that every Halloween these kids would try to dress up as gangsters back in the old days, and the teachers would have to try and stop them, and sometimes they were successful, sometimes they weren't.
He said this past Halloween these kids dressed up like firemen, policemen, soldiers, and even one kid who wore a business suit maybe wanted to be president.
Who knows?
That type of inspiration is what Bukele has changed in El Salvador.
He's given his people something to be proud of and some leaders to look up to.
And you would think that with that type of success, there would be universal acclaim and celebration and undeniably in these images you're seeing from the inauguration.
There were 84 international delegations in El Salvador.
Something completely unheard of.
But he's not without his critics.
Neil Patel, one of the founders of The Daily Caller, put out some great commentary.
I want to put it on the screen and then have Gavin Wax from New York Young Republican Club react.
Here's what Patel says.
After just returning from Bukele's inaugural in El Salvador, it's glaring just how truly dishonest the American coverage is.
Here's the essential true story of what happened in El Salvador.
You will not find it in a single American corporate media outlet.
It's a huge reason why they are failing.
The U.S. helped screw up El Salvador and all of Central America by ousting dozens of governments when it suited our interests.
As a result of those and other forces, El Salvador was left in ruins and racked by a 12-year civil war between communists and the government, followed by more than a decade of dominance by rival gangs originally from the U.S., with roots in Satanism.
These gangs terrorized the small nation for more than a decade.
They used torture and disbursement and even human sacrifice as a matter, of course.
They brought El Salvador to the world's highest per capita murder rate.
They took huge extortion payments from virtually every business crippling the economy.
All this is our business because it resulted in a huge exodus of migrants to the United States.
Under new President Nayib Bukele, virtually every gang member has been put behind bars in a brand new prison he built in only seven months.
He has the highest adult prison rate per capita in the world right now.
The murder rate went from a peak of 103 per 100,000 down to 2.4 per 100,000.
This means El Salvador went from having the highest murder rate in the world to a lower murder rate than the United States.
Once the gangs were all locked up, the economy started to come back to life.
The streets are now vibrant and safe.
Most importantly for us, illegal immigration to the U.S. virtually stopped.
And in fact, many law-abiding Salvadorians who fled to America are now returning home.
The MS-13 Salvadorian gang members still prefer The U.S. They torture our citizens rather than return to face actual justice back home.
Salvadorians rewarded Bukele for saving their country with polls showing to be one of the world's most popular leaders with approval in the high 80s.
He won re-election with similar numbers and now has virtually all of the legislature as well.
His inaugural address celebrated the victory and continued to focus on rebuilding the economy that the multi-decade crime problem has impacted.
This is the only solution offered to date that could actually help fix the immigration system to the U.S. Other countries are flying in to learn what he did and replicate it.
So Gavin, in the face of that, what is the criticism from the left of Bukele as you understand it and how is that working out in the information space as a lot of countries are oscillating between productive populism and destructive socialism?
Well, it's the usual array of attacks against any effective leader globally who goes against, you know, the State Department's interests.
You know, what we're seeing is him under fire for supposed human rights violations.
They're calling him a dictator.
All the usual, you know, smears that they've used over the past, you know, several decades.
But they're no longer effective.
For one, calling him a dictator.
He has mass popular support, evidence not just by polling, but by recent election results, which Neil was alluding to in his tweets, where he secured, I believe, over 80-85% of the vote.
He has practically every seat in the legislature under his party, Nuevas ideas, except for four.
So there's four members of the opposition.
And if you look at the human rights abuses, this is a typical line of attack where they elevate the criminal Ahead of the victims.
You have tons of victims of these criminal gangs.
Now they're being locked up.
Now they're being jailed in a new modern facility.
You know, housing close to, I think, 70,000 of these gang members.
Crime has been virtually eradicated.
And instead of talking about the successes Of this, of these policies, which was all under the auspices of the Territorial Control Plan.
It was a seven-phase plan.
They're in phase six of it.
We don't know what phase seven is, actually.
Nayib Bukele has not told the world what phase seven is yet, but we are in phase six.
Despite all of these massive improvements to the lives of the law-abiding citizens of El Salvador, you know, the international, you know, collective liberal elite West And all their associated NGOs and government actors, etc., have nothing but, you know, criticism for Nayib Bukele because he threatens all of their narratives.
He threatens all of the propaganda that they've been pushing, that you can't have a strong man, you can't have any strong leadership, you can't have a country that's putting their national interest first, you can't actually solve crime in an effective way.
All of these are just the things we have to accept as part of living in modern society, yada, yada, yada, yada.
It's all this sort of weaponized nihilism that they push out on the airwaves here in the United States.
But he is showing firsthand that we don't have to live like this, that we don't have to accept crime as just a way of life.
We don't have to accept our country being taken over by corrupt interests.
A big part of his success was not just taking on the gangs, but was taking on the corrupt political class that ruled El Salvador for decades and in many cases was propped up by the United States and other foreign interests.
There's a lot of parallels there to what we're seeing in the United States and the broader Western world.
So with strong visionary leadership, And a national unity, a national consensus to solve these problems.
Anything is possible.
So if you could take the deadliest country on the face of the earth and make it the safest in a matter of years, months, there's no excuse for why we can't solve, you know, a litany of our problems here at home.
And we are hearing some of that criticism.
Chris McVeigh on Facebook says that our podcast here is amounting to MAGA worshipping authoritarianism.
No, Chris, we just like the order and safety.
Is it a bad thing to want people to be able to start a business without being extorted?
And the critique of Bukele that he's some sort of authoritarian belies some of the direct discussions we had with him.
So I want to let you guys into the room.
Sasha, I think we've got a clip where President Bukele within it is talking about his vision for innovation and how partnership can lead to free market systems that would be the best resilience against authoritarianism.
Play that clip.
It's such an honor to meet you.
This is my wife, Ginger.
Hi.
Wonderful to meet you.
Yeah, yeah.
I know who you are, of course.
Well, we're big fans.
Me too, me too, yeah.
And we have a lot of common friends.
We do, indeed.
Yeah, we do, indeed.
All the inventions, AI, for example, isn't it?
Everybody's copy because AI will become a commodity.
It's not like, you know, everybody will have AI on their phones and their watches, so AI will become a commodity.
It's not that.
But right now, it's still an invention.
And it's still in the U.S., basically.
Well, a lot of our...
I mean, all innovations are still in the US. But once you start going to Europe, like we're going to ban this and ban that and ban this and ban that, innovation is going to move.
If you lose the innovation advantage that you have right now, you lose more.
Yes.
So the United States has a lot going on for them, for you.
Well, we leave inspired now.
No doubt.
Thank you all.
Great to meet you.
Best of luck.
Thank you.
Great to meet you as well.
Thanks.
It's been wonderful.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
President Bukele was so kind to host us at, I guess, their version of Camp David, a chance to be able to get his perspective on, really, the technology agenda.
And that's what I want to talk with you about, John.
John Wilson had a cameo there as well as our executive producer, Joel Valdez.
But, John, he made a point with me where he said, Matt, if I go back to manufacturing and textiles, It'll take me a hundred years to catch up because the industrial revolution passed by El Salvador.
And so now Bukele's got this vision where the way to advance an economy is actually to leapfrog some of the kind of traditional things we push the global south to do.
And he's embracing fintech, Bitcoin, these various technology platforms.
Do you think there's a role for the Global South in those things, where they get away from the Western Union theory of the case on economic transfers, and we start to see a decentralized society occur in the Global South through some of these embraces of tech?
Yeah, it's a very, very aggressive policy.
The early United States had a similar problem on its hand.
Do we want to become a peripheral economy that exports raw goods and textiles and certain things to places like Great Britain?
Or do we want to rival them?
And I think Bukele sees that a small country like El Salvador can't rival us in industrial might, but it might be able to play a role like Taiwan or some other small nation in tech or things that are more niche.
So trying to To leapfrog his adversaries and competitors through financialization and foreign investment and getting ahead in the tech industry is a huge gamble, but it's also a huge challenge, and it could reward him greatly.
And if education in his country and foreign investment keeps up, then there's no telling what you could do under a man like his leadership.
Maria on X says that on All Hallows' Eve, the only appropriate outfit is saints.
It shouldn't be anything other than the saints.
Very base take from Maria on X. Gavin, you know, I wanted to ask you about the imagery and the symbolism of all this.
Sasha, go ahead and put up the outfit side by side here.
Here you can see on the screen what Bukele wears and a striking kind of homage to Simone Bolivar The great liberator of Latin America.
You're president of the New York Young Republican Club.
The event of the year every year on the political right is the New York Young Republican Club Gala.
You understand all the pomp and circumstance.
Should we take something from the Bukele outfit choice, the pageantry, the way you saw it all play out?
Oh, absolutely.
This is a man that understands aesthetics, the power of aesthetics, the visuals, the imagery.
All of these are very effective tools to convey your vision of the future, and he certainly has one.
I mean, there's a lot of history to that outlet.
There's a lot of history, you know, to Central American political dynamics.
I mean, this was a region that was once united in a very similar way to the United States.
They had the Federal Republic of Central America, these United Provinces of Central America.
They eventually fell apart.
They sort of modeled themselves on the United States.
And there's always been a large political contingent in Central America, in these various nations, to unite these different countries back into one once more under some sort of federal model.
And that's something that Bukele has discussed and promoted.
And it's something that's been coming up more in the discourse there because of his successful leadership in turning El Salvador around.
So I think between that history, the visuals, the outfit, I mean, everything, it's all pointing in one direction and one direction only.
This sort of returning to greatness, elevating the nation, elevating the people.
And again, you know, we saw this at the inauguration, this big, beautiful palace, I think, constructed in the early 1900s, the artillery firing, the flyovers, the beautiful, you know, decor and the uniforms.
Everything is showing that this is a country on the upswing.
And you can always Look to these sort of outward signs to show the health of a country and you look at our country and what we're producing and the symbols and the rhetoric and the visuals that the Biden administration is putting out and it's one of a decline and it's one of a nation moving rapidly towards sort of tyranny.
On the other hand, you have Bukele with this optimistic imagery, this optimistic discussion about fixing the country and moving forward, and now being able to focus on things like the economy and infrastructure and building.
And they are building, right?
In that plaza that we were in, they built a beautiful new library that I had the pleasure of visiting.
It's a modern facility, and it just goes to show where his administration's priorities are.
And every administration or regime, however you want to describe it, has their priorities.
And what are his?
Well, one of the first things he did was build a beautiful large library dedicated to improving literacy, dedicated to improving the education and well-being of the youth of El Salvador.
So they're not being drawn into gangs, they're being drawn into learning and studying.
And I visited this library and it was filled with young families and young people reading books, studying and enjoying the facilities.
That several years ago would have been completely unavailable to them.
Everything from the books to the computers to the air conditioning, I sure as hell needed it, and everything else about that facility.
So these are the types of things that he's focusing on, uplifting his people, uplifting his country, and building new and building better.
The concern that he has as we're experiencing this 18% increase and just the way construction is impacting the GDP, it's at 18% right now.
But the concern is that our State Department does not go into these interactions with what I think you and I would want, a reinvigorated Monroe Doctrine.
I get criticized all the time for being an isolationist because I don't want to go fight every single war in the Middle East and I don't believe we can turn every cave in Central Asia.
And to the next Jeffersonian democracy.
But when it comes to our neighborhood and a reinvigorated Monroe Doctrine, you have to have shining examples outside the United States that other countries could see their own future looking like.
And John, you see all the time here on Capitol Hill how much the staffs, how much the members, the committees are focused on Indopaycom and focused on Centcom and even to an extent focused on Africom.
But right here in Southcom, Oftentimes, there is neglect.
How do you think policymakers ought to be thinking about using the progress here in El Salvador to reinvigorate a regional Monroe Doctrine?
Well, what's going on right now with our federal government and our State Department, USAID, and these globalist NGOs is just absolute criminal malpractice.
You have a budding country like El Salvador that we could be incredible allies with.
And instead of reaching out to them and working with them, we're treating them standoffishly, criticizing how Bukele goes about The day-to-day governance that is very much up to him, in my opinion.
And, you know, an America First foreign policy is an isolation.
An America First foreign policy is interest-based rather than value-based.
So right now, you know, the Russians will come to your country and they will say, we'll give you security.
The Chinese will come to your country and they'll say, we'll give you money.
And then the United States will come to your country and say, we're going to give you drag queen story time in your public library unless you work with us.
And that's not attractive.
So people like President Bukele say, yeah, I don't know if I want to work with these guys.
We need to go to them and offer them economic security.
We need to have security assistance.
This could be a great ally in the war on cartels.
Now that...
The MS-13 style satanic gangs have moved out of country.
There is a vacuum potentially that needs to be filled by President Bukele and he's working hard to do it.
But the last thing you want is Sinaloa cartels and other cartels in Mexico filling the void down there.
And if we can stop them there, we don't have to worry about as much of the drugs, the violence, Take just a moment and educate people about really how MS-13 was not an El Salvadorian gang that invaded the United States so much as it was a feature of the U.S. prison system that then was visited in El Salvador where it then grew, it was nurtured, and then became a more capable and dangerous force.
Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
So MS-13 was actually founded in California's prison system by El Salvadorans who had immigrated here during the Revolution.
So we took these people and deported them, rightly so, but unfortunately that meant El Salvador got a hold of all these new gangsters who set up shop in their country.
And it took their country from You know, a normal developing country into a state of not only just anarcho-tyranny or decline, but frankly, in my opinion, a complete and total failed state.
And it stayed that way for some time.
And we played both sides in the region down there, and to no avail, gangs dominated El Salvador.
But they were still not as sophisticated.
And as we see with President Bukele and his military, you know, once he got the military up and operating, the gangs were no match for them.
Cartels are a totally different entity, and we have to take that very, very seriously.
I know President McKellie told us about when he got into office, he saw that his military had holes in their shoes and terrible uniforms.
They got paid less than minimum wage, and it was viewed in this country as if you joined the military, well, then you must have had something go wrong in your life.
So when he gets into power, he says, you know what?
We're going to fix the equipment.
We're going to give you good boots, good uniforms, good weapons.
You're going to be proud to serve.
We're going to get out the corruption.
And now these guys are walking around wanting to join the military.
They want to get the girls, right?
That's what he told us.
And the girls think they're awesome.
They are.
Because instead of being in some holy shoes and some rat-tat uniform, these guys are decked out.
They're looking sharp.
They created medals when there is merit, when they showed bravery, when they were successful.
It's just what Gavin was saying earlier.
Symbols are a feature of nationalism.
They do.
Bukele created a national band.
There's a national campaign to get people to not litter on their streets, but to take pride in the environment of their country.
When you love the country, then you create a permission structure to allow for beauty and joy.
And in so many places on Earth, and frankly, in the United States, we see regression off of that standard, I fear.
Yeah, beauty inspires hope.
And they have it in El Salvador right now, and they're better off for it.
So Gavin, I've got to tell you, I've got to bring you into one of the discussions we had because there was a New York Democrat, and I can't say it was like a criticism of Bukele, but the New York Democrat turns to Bukele and says, yeah, yeah, yeah, you've dealt with the gangs, but you really need to lay off them now.
You really need to move past this very strident security policy and move on to something else you can worry about.
And Bukele first described that anything built by man, a wall, a building, a dam, Requires maintenance and that the security system has really been created by this government.
It will always require maintenance and diligence.
And then he turned to this New York Democrat and said a quote.
I will not forget that he borrowed.
He said, he who spares the wolf forsakes the sheep.
You were out there in that crowd with those Salvadorians as they celebrated this man, as they took an oath alongside him to recommit themselves to the country.
Give the Firebrand viewers like a sense of what it was like being out in that crowd and how people were reacting to the inauguration and to this promise of a brighter future.
Oh, I mean, it was pandemonium out there.
I mean, they were loving it.
The cheers, you know, the support.
I mean, it was all around us.
And the crowd was massive.
I mean, you know, we talk a lot about crowd sizes in American politics.
You know, this is not a large country.
This is not exactly a large city.
But the crowd was as far as the eye could see.
People were coming out from all over.
I mean, again, this is a man who has achieved national unity.
This is a man who's brought about a national consensus, who's been able to unite All these different factions, left and right, under this sort of pragmatic, almost big tent, populist-style movement that's really just about results and is about delivering results for the Salvadoran people.
I believe I know the gentleman you're referring to, this New York Democrat, and it's very funny.
That he would say something like that.
You could say the same thing about how we dealt with crime here in New York City under Mayor Rudy Giuliani and later Bloomberg.
And again, it didn't take much for that to all those gains that we made in terms of public safety and turning the city around from its low point in the 70s and 80s.
It didn't take more than one term of Mayor de Blasio to turn that entire situation back on its head.
So the same thing can easily happen in El Salvador.
Civilization is very fragile at the end of the day.
And the situation that John was describing of it being a failed state, it could return to that status of being a failed state very quickly.
You just have to simply replace this strong visionary leadership with weak and corrupt leadership like it once had.
So all of this is a very thin line between barbarism and civilization.
And I think Bukele fully understands that and understands That this needs to be maintained, that this needs to be built up, not just over an election cycle like most Republicans think, but over generations, which is how the institutional left thinks.
They think in terms of generations.
So again, now he's able to focus on rebuilding the country, to fixing the roots, to fixing a lot of these other issues that have been neglected for decades.
And again, the hope is in the air.
The people appreciate it.
They love him.
They're rewarding him.
With electoral mandates that you fail to see in most countries across the world, winning by the percentages he won by, really shows that he had a tangible, immediate, and visceral impact for the better on the lives of the vast majority of Salvadoran people.
And listen, there are many people in the West, in these globalist elites, that don't like that this is happening.
Again, because it's showing that it can be replicated in other countries.
There were dignitaries there from across Latin America, other countries that are facing similar issues, including in places like Ecuador, for example, who are now adopting this sort of Bukeleism to fix the issues, similar issues involving gangs and cartels in their own countries.
The more these countries begin to stabilize and fix their problems at home, the less migration the United States is gonna see, the less drugs and other criminal enterprises we are gonna see crossing our border.
And of course, if you have an agenda to flood the border, not just with people, but also with illicit substances, and if you have an agenda to degrade the foundation of our society, then of course you want to see instability across Latin America because it's all going to pour northward, which is what's been happening for the last several years.
My wife, Ginger, has a Salvadorian friend who showed her dad the videos and the images that we had taken there of that very joy and that sense of a brighter future, and I was told that he started crying because he looked at that and said, that's what I was fighting for in the Civil War.
I was fighting for the chance that people could get past what had constrained better lives, investment, better futures, and certainly To see that explosion of emotion is no surprise, knowing what the people there have been through.
But John, final question I want to ask both of you.
What would be your message to the Salvadorians who are in the United States right now and who are observing this transformation from afar?
I'll say go home.
I mean, it's time.
You know, you've come here for economic reasons.
You still love your people.
You still love your country.
And now your country is amazing.
It's beautiful.
It's inspiring.
It's changed.
And they desperately need you.
They need the labor force.
They need the intellectual capital that you all have grown inside our country.
And now there has been no better time in your nation's history and your history in our country than right now to voluntarily go back to El Salvador And join your compatriots in building a better society.
Gavin, what's your message to the Salvadorian community after this experience?
Well, I certainly share John's sentiments.
And if they do not decide to repatriate, then I would encourage them to vote for President Trump.
If you support Bukele's policy platform in El Salvador, you should have no reason not to support the Trump America First agenda here.
It shares many parallels.
It shares Many of the same principles ideologically in terms of turning our country around.
We are facing an unprecedented crime wave in our country.
We're facing unprecedented levels of institutional corruption.
And if you want to prevent the country you immigrated to from turning into the country you left, then the only choice is to vote right, to vote for President Trump, and to vote for other America First candidates up and down the ballot.
But I certainly think now is the time to repatriate.
Certainly if a lot of tech bros and Bitcoin bros We're good to go.
Across the world, we need more visionary, populist, pragmatic leaders who are going to address the problems of this country, fight through the corruption, fight through the foreign influence, and fight through all of the societal ills that are plaguing us and fight for a better future.
It can happen in El Salvador.
It can happen anywhere.
Absolutely.
I will leave with this sentiment.
There are certain things that happen throughout the course of your life where you'll always remember where you were.
For me, 9-11.
I'll never forget standing in the student union at Florida State University getting that news or the death of Princess Diana and seeing the anguish on the face of my parents in South Walton County in Florida.
Gosh, the fall of the Soviet Union.
Conviction of President Trump was such a sad moment for me personally.
I've dedicated my whole life to the law, going to law school, learning the law, practicing law, writing the laws in my state and now my country.
And so to see the law Used in such a way to achieve politics.
It angered me, but even through the anger was such an emptiness and a sense of sadness.
And there I was.
No one thought this verdict was coming in.
Judge was about ready to send those folks home.
And there I was sitting in a beautiful Skyrise Hotel in El Salvador, of all places.
Watching my country arrest a political rival, watching my country descend into near third world chaos, and then I see this country in the third world believing in strong borders, an orderly society, a celebration of nation, disagreement politically without these corrupt uses, and then a real focus on rooting out real corruption.
Bukele, when he had his first cabinet meeting, he brings everybody in and says, that's the Attorney General, and he'll be investigating everyone in this room, including me.
And indeed, they found a rat in the woodpile.
Somebody that was going to be in the cabinet was compromised, and so they were able to excise that and deal with that.
And I think we need that level of focus on honest, fair government in the United States.
And guess what?
If it can happen in El Salvador, if turnaround can happen in El Salvador, it certainly can happen for the greatest country that has ever existed in all of humankind.
Special thanks to John Wilson and Gavin Wax for going with me to El Salvador, spending time there.
I think Gavin probably had the best Spanish of the group, but there were times we had to team up to get all the verbs conjugated correctly.
But thank you everyone for watching.
We'll have other important updates regarding the work in Congress, some of the spending bills we're dealing with.
And the way we need to use the power of the purse and the power of subpoena to right our nation again.
Thanks for joining.
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