Matt Gates is a former Democratic Senator from New York City. He served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1987-1993, when he became the first African-American to serve as a Senator. He is now the President of Turning Point USA, a powerful youth organization that is dedicated to fighting for freedom on campuses across the country. In this episode, Matt talks about his time in Congress and how he was able to defeat a 1,500-page Omnibus Spending Bill.
00:00:43.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:04.000Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
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00:01:55.000You had the pleasure of not being involved in this latest CR. You are now totally detached, so I just want to get your analysis and explain what happened this last week.
00:02:06.000Something that's never happened before.
00:02:09.000For eight years in Congress, I tried to break a system where there is rhythmically a December omnibus spending bill, usually thousands of pages, spending money we don't have, borrowing money from one country to go send it to another country as if somehow that makes us more powerful, and never Individually scrutinizing anything in the budget.
00:02:34.000And if your elected member of Congress has concern over the efficacy of a program or the level of spending in an agency or the constitutional authority of one, and so I would dutifully vote against these things.
00:02:47.000And time and again, I thought, what can we do to break that system?
00:02:50.000Do we have to extract promises from a Speaker of the House?
00:02:53.000Do we have to fire a Speaker of the House?
00:02:54.000And yet again, rhythmically, this would occur over and over again.
00:02:57.000And for the very first time, we beat them.
00:03:00.000And the reason we beat them is because the full power of the lobby corps in Washington DC is not as strong as the movement led by President Trump, animated by Turning Point, encouraged by Elon Musk, and motivated by millions of patriotic Americans on X and throughout the country.
00:03:24.000Now, Matt, before we celebrate too much, there was an attempt to do a 1,500-page boondoggle.
00:04:44.000Obviously marrying her was the best thing I ever did.
00:04:49.000For her, I'm not so sure, but for me, definitely the best.
00:04:53.000What was it about how Congress operates that was so disappointing for you and something that you want every American to internalize and know?
00:05:02.000The game you are watching is not even the game that is being played.
00:05:06.000Most of the members of Congress are merely actors that are reading scripts that are written, produced, and directed by others.
00:05:14.000And if you read the scripts that they give you, if you hand your vote card to the leadership and your calendar to the lobby corps, then life's pretty good.
00:05:23.000They're able to bring you data that says 97% of you get re-elected.
00:05:55.000And the real work is being done by powerful special interests who fund the campaigns.
00:06:01.000And when I was in Congress, I was the only Republican who refused every donation from the lobbyists and the political action committees, and more ought to take up that cause!
00:06:15.000You remember when we were at Mar-a-Lago and Charlie, I'll tell you that a lot of people know this, but Charlie did so much to help me communicate with senators who I really had no relationship with.
00:06:24.000A lot of the phone calls would be like, hello, Senator so-and-so.
00:06:30.000Oh no, that was a staff member, and he was fired the next day.
00:06:33.000But Charlie was working so hard for me, we were at Mar-a-Lago, we were around the pool, and this group of big tech lobbyists come up.
00:06:41.000Oh, well Matt, it's so nice to see you.
00:06:43.000And I could just see in their eyes when we met them that they were going to organize everything they could To oppose my confirmation.
00:06:48.000And so when it became clear that there were calcified votes against me serving as Attorney General, it was not hard to trace those back to the very interest groups that I have been pushing back against and who I would have fairly and justly pursued if given the opportunity to do so.
00:07:05.000So the big defense contractors didn't want me because I don't think we should spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build stuff that doesn't work while we haven't taken care of war fighters, 8,600 of them, that were unfairly driven out because of an unconstitutional vaccine mandate.
00:07:19.000And big tech didn't want to see me there because I actually believe...
00:07:32.000I think there are times where market power can be used against the American people, and there is nothing virtuous about embracing this neo-libertarian theory that you ought to let big business crush people and make the terms of service on some tech platform more important than the values that undergird the Constitution of the United States of America.
00:07:50.000There were big pharma lobbyists who were real concerned that we were going to take an aggressive approach at some of the things they've been doing to keep America unhealthy and sick.
00:08:00.000I am so encouraged that we finally have somebody to lead HHS that wants a healthcare policy to make America healthier.
00:08:13.000All we've been talking about is who's going to pay for how sick we become, and then keeping you sick creates an economic pipeline and an economic incentive system for interest groups to continue to get paid.
00:08:25.000So maybe their stock prices won't go up as much, but your life expectancy will go up, the life expectancy of your family members, and I think that is the role of government.
00:08:34.000We don't live in a place with no rules.
00:08:36.000There is order, there is national interest, and we are going to pursue that interest without apology.
00:08:44.000So Matt, before we open it up for questions, from Donald Trump saying, I want Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General, to going through that process, what did you learn?
00:08:57.000Well, I learned that there are a lot of Republicans in the United States Senate who may articulate tacit support for Trump.
00:09:06.000They may even take a photo in the red hat.
00:09:09.000But at the end of the day, they don't want Trump to succeed because they want to revert the Republican Party to the old ways where we were for endless immigration and forever wars And any trade deal, even if it hollowed out the middle class in this country, that's not this party anymore.
00:09:28.000Donald Trump has shown us how to win by being a multi-generational, multi-racial party who are unapologetically patriotic, who are faithful, and who believe that there is a responsible role for government and that currently government has far exceeded that constitutional architecture.
00:09:44.000And so there are folks who I think, you know, needled me or were challenging for me because they thought, if we let this guy in there, It really reinforces this whole Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Matt Gaetz, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk wing of the Republican Party.
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00:11:14.000So Matt, talk about the power of the grassroots.
00:11:17.000And there are some senators that are still giving Donald Trump's nominees a hard time.
00:11:21.000We have pledged at Turning Point Action and Turning Point PAC, if you get in the way of President Trump's agenda, we will primary you and remove you from office.
00:12:32.000And we send a message to a few more that that 97% is not something they should rely on, that they will be held to account, and you get a few of them in the right type of contest, and you defeat a few of them, I think it will have a very positive impact on the entire body.
00:12:52.000So Matt, learning from prior Congresses, what mistakes happened previously that Donald Trump has to try to avoid coming into this 2025 legislative session?
00:13:06.000I think that you have to start with what is your core mandate right now.
00:13:11.000And if you deviate too far off the core mandate early, we found it was hard to get back to it.
00:13:19.000You know, here the core mandate is to save this economy, to secure this border, and to create peace and prosperity in the world with strong leadership where we don't see all this conflict erupting everywhere.
00:13:31.000And if we do those basic things well, I think that will invite people in.
00:13:36.000I think that sometimes there are issues before us that function as a shiny lure, and I think that if we chase after every shiny lure and get off of that core mission of Of peace abroad, prosperity at home, security of the border, then we run a greater risk of the midterms going a different direction.
00:13:56.000Daisy, let's start to do some questions here.
00:14:36.000There is an important part of someone's life where you need to live under the laws that you have helped write.
00:14:41.000And if you do this for 20 years or 30 years in elective service, even someone who I think, you know, I do everything I can to stay connected to my voters and my bosses, but it's just not something you're supposed to do forever in life.
00:14:54.000You know, I got the itch to go and be a part of reforming the corrupt institution at the Department of Justice.
00:15:22.000My question is, there's a lot of races, especially in my home state, where it's a pretty close race, especially for House congressional seats.
00:15:31.000Is it worth it with these incumbent Republicans that have been in there for 20 years or so that are kind of more rhinos than conservative Republicans, getting them out of office and trying to put someone else in when it also comes with the possibility of losing the race?
00:16:15.000Ronnie Jackson's another good member and excited for him.
00:16:18.000Jody Arrington's the budget chairman and really actually believes we should have a budget, which is nice for the budget chairman to believe in.
00:16:25.000But I do think it's important and here's why.
00:16:28.000That 97% number doesn't fully account for the retirements that you get when it starts to look like someone's in jeopardy.
00:16:35.000You got a few of them in Texas where, I mean, if they haven't already seen the light, they can see it flickering, okay?
00:16:43.000And if you get energetic candidates with strong capabilities and a compelling message, some of those folks might find something else to do in their waning moments.
00:16:53.000I think I see a Gig'em shirt, so I'll say Gig'em.
00:17:25.000So the one question I have for you is that...
00:17:35.000So my friend Quinn, he's also been involved, and he wants to know if Trump will be inaugurated even when California has a state of emergency that is threatening to keep the current president to remain in office.
00:17:50.000So if there's going to be a chance to stop that and make sure that Trump gets in office.
00:17:55.000Sophia, if that's an issue, we're going to call you to resolve the entire matter.
00:18:00.000So I'm going to need to make yourself available.
00:18:03.000But no, the national emergency in that case is not going to stop the transfer of power.
00:18:30.000Hi, my name is Fred Theroux and I'm 73 years old and I voted for Reagan twice.
00:18:37.000But one of the things that I've noticed is we the people, why are we allowing non-people like corporations and unions and PACs to give money to influence the election when we the people are the ones that should be getting the votes and financing the Yeah, I would love if you replaced me in Congress.
00:19:00.000That's exactly my view of the subject.
00:19:03.000And a lot of groups have to do it because it is what is required by the federal campaign finance laws.
00:19:08.000But the core philosophy of that infrastructure is really just money laundering.
00:19:13.000It's getting money that otherwise wouldn't be appropriate for elections into the electioneering sphere.
00:19:18.000And everybody knows it, and both sides participate in it.
00:19:21.000And the question I want you to ask yourself is...
00:19:24.000Would you be willing to cross the aisle and work with Democrats who you might otherwise really, really have negative views of to accomplish those objectives?
00:19:35.000I've worked with AOC and Ro Khanna and Ilhan Omar because while they disagree with me on a wide scope of issues, they actually agree that you shouldn't have this money in politics.
00:19:49.000Now, they tend to hold that view because they think they can beat us at that game.
00:19:53.000But I think if this is truly a contest of ideas and who can ignite the actual people of this country to engage politically, we'll win every time.
00:20:03.000And so I'd rather join in concert To ultimately get rid of the entities that are often in control no matter which side wins elections.
00:20:13.000That's what's so frustrating to me when the power changes and it feels like the agenda doesn't even change because both sides are working for the same special interests.
00:20:22.000The only way we break that is to totally change our campaign finance system and I will work with anyone to do it.
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00:22:21.000I wonder when the people of California will kind of wake up to this.
00:22:26.000Because how do you go from the most temperate climate in the hemisphere, boundless natural resources, some of the most intelligent, creative class people in the world assembling there, And then you let it all become like a homeless encampment where you treat the homeless the way we treat a bald eagle's nest.
00:22:48.000Like in Florida, you can't get too close to the bald eagle's nest, can't make any loud noises around it, can't really disrupt it.
00:22:55.000But like if the hobos just set up on the street corner, we would turn on the irrigation until they left.
00:23:06.000There's not going to be the investment and the hope and the energy that you see in the rising places in our country and throughout the world if you have surrendered to the people that are urinating in the mailboxes.
00:23:46.000There was the one time that Charlie did not allow me to get my protein shake on the way to Mar-a-Lago because Charlie's like, We have to go because Elon is there.
00:24:41.000A Mother's Day resolution in the United States Senate now requires 60 votes.
00:24:46.000But there's a special provision of the budgeting rules that say if you're making budget policy and reconciling the budget, you only need the simple majority.
00:24:55.000So a lot of the things that we want to do, we're trying to shoehorn into the budget reconciliation process so that the threshold is 50 votes plus J.D. Vance not having to go convince a bunch of Democrats that the largest deportation and cutting $2 trillion out of the bureaucracy is a good idea.
00:25:13.000I don't know that they'll go along with that.
00:25:15.000And so that reconciliation process begins immediately in January.
00:25:20.000Folks have got to be on the ball, and if we get that successfully achieved, we'll get the tax cuts extended, we'll get some of our important immigration priorities funded, and we will really cut away at some of these agencies that do not have a constitutional basis.
00:25:35.000When people ask How are you going to cut the budget?
00:25:39.000You just have to use the Constitution and you gotta start cleaving away the things that are not in the Constitution have to go to the states.
00:25:45.000And sometimes the states will succeed and sometimes they'll fail.
00:25:49.000But that is the system in this country.
00:25:50.000And then we hope that people have enough sense to see what best practices are working and then to copy those through the decisions of the states and the people.
00:25:59.000That has been the path to prosperity, and it's only when we've surrendered to the behemoth bureaucracy and the omnibus spending bills and the continuing resolutions that we've seen our nation decline.
00:26:19.000I personally would love to get an opportunity to be on your podcast, Charlie, and talk about abortion and how we can actually defeat it Because it's destroying this country.
00:28:00.000How do we do that when you have leadership that's going against the Donald Trump...
00:28:07.000Well, the way the Republican conference works is the Speaker has a constituency of 222 members, and the Speaker is there to serve that constituency.
00:28:18.000And when there's a weak one in the herd, as Mr. Newhouse was politically for a time because of that impeachment vote, a bunch of the other ones that one day think they might be the weak one in the herd are only going to follow the one that's the strong one that protects the weakest in the herd.
00:28:36.000And so you may not like that, but that's the incentive structure where the way the speaker stays the speaker is to always make sure that the weakest in the herd are protected.
00:28:47.000We had Tony Gonzalez on the run in Texas.
00:28:49.000We had a great candidate, Brandon Herrera, running against him.
00:28:52.000Herrera raised a million dollars, which is pretty good to do against an incumbent, and Speaker Johnson and others raised over $10 million for Tony Gonzalez, and Mr. Herrera lost that race by under 400 votes.
00:29:04.000And so there are times when the resource advantage that the establishment has becomes their cudgel against us, and that's why stuff like Turning Point, getting interconnected, You know, having Elon involved in resourcing more efforts like this, that's what's going to build us into a more comparable fighting force.
00:29:22.000And maybe we'll never have them one to one on the dollar spent on some of these key campaigns.
00:29:27.000But I think on some, if we only get outspent maybe one and a half to one or two to one or two and a half to one, you're going to start to see those outcomes change.
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00:30:31.000balanceofnature.com promo code CHARLIE balanceofnature.com promo code CHARLIE Hey, Mr. Gates.
00:30:50.000Is big business what's hurting Americans or is it big government support of big business and the force of government allowing business to hurt Americans?
00:31:01.000I think that we have seen the greatest fusion of big business and government at any other time in our nation's history.
00:31:08.000And the way business is able to get government to wrap itself around a particular business model.
00:31:15.000We saw this in big tech where they built in all these immunities Right?
00:31:19.000That we're supposed to protect a free marketplace of ideas.
00:31:22.000And now that became the function of the censorship that so many of us have endured.
00:31:27.000And so I shared on Timcast last night, I think the biggest threat to your liberty is big government.
00:31:34.000The second biggest threat to your liberty is big business.
00:31:37.000And the third, homeowners associations.
00:31:59.000But, I mean, look, the idea is this, is that there's a lot of corporations that hate us and there's parts of government that hate us.
00:32:05.000I'll give you one example that has nothing to do with the government.
00:32:08.000BlackRock should not be allowed to buy single-family homes and make our young people have to compete against them.
00:32:16.000I'm not picking on you, I'm just saying the Austrian economics say, oh free market, I'm sorry that's insane, that our young people have to compete against a 10 trillion dollar company to be able to buy a home.
00:32:25.000Another idea is that the Chinese Communist Party should not be able to own farmland in this country.
00:33:15.000As a segue and follow-up to that, you mentioned in the other room that it's not a constitutional right to housing, and you should keep the private equity out of it.
00:33:26.000So then what would be your proposal to solve the millions of affordable housing shortage crisis that we have in America?
00:33:39.000First thing is that it's a supply and demand issue.
00:33:42.000When you have 12 million people come into the country, they need to live somewhere.
00:33:46.000And so maybe if we deport 12 million people, all of a sudden the demand for housing will go down.
00:33:50.000And when the demand for housing goes down, definitionally the supply.
00:33:55.000I mean, when you artificially allow 12 million people into the market, they have to live somewhere.
00:34:01.000And then we subsidized the housing for a lot of these illegals, which is insane.
00:34:05.000Then also, just everything has been more expensive because we decided to artificially create about $8 trillion of unnecessary federal spending post-COVID, and that money has to go somewhere, and that money has gone into hardware.
00:34:28.000We were able to create more opportunity in housing in Florida by decentralizing some of the authorities.
00:34:35.000where we had a state entity that had to approve every subdivision, and we abolished that state entity, and we were able to get more shovel-ready projects underway.
00:34:48.000At the end of the day, it can't cost as much as it does to build a house and to secure land, and if it does, that price will be unattainable for many Americans, particularly Gen Z.
00:35:03.000Matt, Charlie, Tim Miller from Chicago.
00:35:07.000First one for Matt, second one is really more Charlie, I think.
00:35:12.000What is it, these lobbyists, what are they doing on a daily basis, like a day in the life of a lobbyist specifically, you know, in a brief way?
00:35:20.000And then Charlie, can we replace them with the people?
00:35:25.000Like just get, let's just grow this thing to the point where we could just get the people over there in their faces all the time.
00:35:35.000What the lobbyists do, like a lobbyist would wake up and then go to a breakfast where they would hand members of Congress, you know, $1,000, $2,000, up to $5,000 for their campaign.
00:35:48.000And right as they're delivering the money, they make a specific ask.
00:35:51.000Congressman, we really need you to sign on to this amendment.
00:35:59.000For me, when I first got there, before I swore off the money, it was hilarious, because we'd be like, we are Lockheed Martin, and we'd like you to support this weapon system.
00:36:06.000And the next group would be like, we're the Cannabis Association of America.
00:36:10.000And I just brought together the weirdest of people.
00:36:15.000So that's what they'll do in the morning, and then they work the halls throughout the day with staff members who hope to one day become lobbyists, saying, you know, we were there for the breakfast fundraiser, and your member really said they'd sign on to this letter for us or institute this amendment, and then they would extract those demands.
00:36:32.000The other thing that lobbying firms have figured out is you don't even need to use the campaign finance system if you hire people's otherwise unemployable family members.
00:36:42.000The number of spouses and children of members of Congress who become lobbyists is astonishing.
00:36:49.000Senator Richard Burr, a former senator from North Carolina, his wife and son both became lobbyists.
00:36:56.000And he was the chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
00:36:58.000So how would you feel if your interests were adverse to the people who were paying the chairman of the Intelligence Committee's wife and kid?
00:37:09.000Do you think that they had special persuasion skills, or was it their familial relationship that they were monetizing?
00:37:15.000As far as how we replace it, that's where Turning Point comes in, hopefully long term, and we're getting there, where we need to demand that more members of Congress, and very few do, do what Matt did.
00:38:54.000I'm from McAllen, Texas, so right there on the border, literally seven miles away.
00:39:00.000And I would like to run for Congress in District 34 to take this seat away from Vicente Gonzalez, who, I don't know how many of you know, has actually been Nancy Pelosi's attorney for many years, and he has done nothing for our district.
00:39:16.000But I do not want to fall into the trap of lobbyists.
00:39:21.000How would you recommend, or is there any advice that you can give me, staying true to the party and accountable to my constituents, assuming that I win?
00:39:31.000Here's the advice I would give to anyone considering running for office.
00:39:37.000You have to see where are my skills going to be deployed with the right partnerships and the right team members to achieve victory.
00:39:45.000Because if candidates run and come in, Fifth out of seven, they've done less for our movement.
00:39:51.000It's better to find a place where you can run and win.
00:39:53.000I didn't start by running for Congress.
00:39:55.000I cut my teeth in the state legislature.
00:39:57.000I'm a better congressman because I had other experience before serving in that role.
00:40:03.000What I've also found is you have to show people you're willing to fight for them.
00:40:07.000I think at the end of the day, when people go into the voting booth, they're not voting for the one that's the most attractive.
00:40:12.000Sometimes they're not voting for the one that sent the most flyers.
00:40:15.000I think most people go in and say, if my tail's on the line, which one of these people will actually care about me and try to do something for me?
00:40:23.000And the best way to do that is to showcase it, and you don't have to be elected.
00:40:27.000Before I was elected to anything, my local county tried to institute a pet tax.
00:40:31.000And so I got together all the pet owners, very eclectic group of people, and we went in and we prevailed on the local leaders to repeal the pet tax.
00:40:42.000And then people were like, oh, well, when a position in the state house came up and people thought, well, that guy actually cared enough to stop me from paying the pet tax, maybe he'd be a good lawmaker for us.
00:40:52.000So find a fight where people need a champion and do what you can to lead and showcase those capabilities.