On this episode of Firebrand, we continue our series on the National Defense Authorization Act of 2018, which was passed on a party-line vote by the House Armed Services Committee. In this episode, we discuss the impact of the bill, the debate over diversity and equity in the military, and the defense department's response to the growing need for diversity in the ranks. We also hear from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GAetz) and Rep. Jim Banks (D-GA) who testified on behalf of the defense authorization bill, which would ban the use of critical race theory in the United States military, as well as a new position called Chief of Staff to the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), which would eliminate the role of a diversity officer at the Department of Defense (DOD). Firebrand is a production of the Firebrand Podcast. Copyright 2019 Firebrand Media. All rights reserved. This episode was produced and edited by Firebrand. The opinions stated here are our own, not those of our companies, unless otherwise specified. We do not own any of the rights to any music used in this episode. If you enjoyed this episode please leave us a rating and review in the comments section below. Thank you for any amount you can manage to afford our sound quality and support our efforts to make sure we can keep bringing quality episodes like this to you in the future. We strive to make every episode better than the best possible listening experience possible. Thank you, and we appreciate the support we can get. - thank you for listening and supporting us in the process! - Tom Bell, Matt, Jim Banks, and Jim Banks Matt, Jeff Perla, and James Banks - Thank you so much for your support and support, and all the work you do to make this podcast possible. Tom Bell and all your support is so much appreciated! - Matt Gates -- Thank you. -- Tom Bell is a very special thanks to the late, very much appreciated, and much more! and the rest of the crew out there in the world, Matt Gates and the crew at the War Room for making this podcast. and . , Matt Gates, for his support is . Thank you! ( ) & , and , of the podcast, thanks to , Jim Banks and (
00:04:43.000Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
00:04:50.000Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem for the Democratic Party.
00:04:53.000He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
00:04:56.000So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
00:05:00.000If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!
00:06:43.000So I'm going to give you an update as to where all of that stands in this episode as well.
00:06:47.000But first, I want to chat about the National Defense Authorization Act.
00:06:52.000If you're a regular viewer of Firebrand, You have gone on this journey with us, exposing the grifter generals and the woke military, the radical gender ideology, the divisive racial ideology.
00:07:10.000We understand that for America to be strong and free, our military has to reflect the values of the country and not the values of the CHAZ, which unfortunately we've seen from a small but unfortunately far too influential group of people at the Pentagon as part of the Biden administration.
00:07:28.000So to break that down, first, I thought I'd give you a context.
00:07:35.000Of just the broad scope of the cost of some of these DEI initiatives.
00:07:41.000It's called diversity, equity, and inclusion, but that's a misnomer like so many things that we observe in Washington and in corporate culture.
00:07:50.000In fact, DEI is the opposite of inclusion.
00:07:52.000It's very divisive, and they're pushing it in the military.
00:07:56.000My colleague, Jim Banks, Got into a little debate with Democrat lead on the committee, Adam Smith.
00:08:04.000It was pretty interesting to see the perspectives.
00:09:21.000We have definitely made mistakes as a country.
00:09:24.000And as I listen to the kinds of rhetoric I hear here and the amendments that I see today that we will be voting on, I am terrified for my children and more so I am saddened for our country that it looks very clearly we have not made any progress in learning from the mistakes of our past.
00:09:45.000So fortunately, that was not the prevailing thinking at the hearing.
00:09:48.000Matter of fact, there was an amendment by Congressman Waltz of Florida and myself to completely eliminate critical race theory in the military.
00:09:57.000And I am proud to report to you that the Waltz-Gates amendment to vanquish CRT and the DOD passed.
00:10:07.000That turned out to be a losing argument.
00:10:10.000That was just made by Representative Takuto.
00:10:12.000We also had discussion about this position, this chief diversity officer position.
00:10:17.000Now, of all the officers we need, of all the special operators we need, of all the special warfare and irregular warfare that we have to prepare for, the pilots, the maintainers, the PJs, the load masters, they're spending an insane amount of money on these DEI officers.
00:10:37.000Some of them make as much as $183,500 a year.
00:10:41.000That's more than a member of Congress makes.
00:10:43.000And so we passed amendments in this bill to completely eliminate the position of the DEI officer at DOD. And we capped the amount of salary that can be made for anyone that's working in this field At like around $50,000 so that it wouldn't be this place for people to go to make more money at the expense of some of the very important skills stacks and readiness capabilities that
00:11:15.000Salud Carbajal debated against, he's a congressman, a Democrat congressman from California, He debated against these amendments to get rid of the chief DEI official.
00:12:31.000Learning about systemic racism and cultural differences and bias, it's not only about cohesion within our military, it actually is about our military operations around the world.
00:12:44.000Our failures in Afghanistan, the Sahel, Vietnam, are due in part to our superficial understanding of history, society, culture.
00:13:19.000And unfortunately, it may come at the expense of America's hegemony or safety and security.
00:13:27.000We have to be able to hold the high ground, and this is not what's going to get it done.
00:13:31.000Now, there's another feature of this argument that played out in the hearing.
00:13:34.000Democrat Congressman Horsford says that, well, we have to have all these DEI officers at DOD because they exist in corporate America.
00:13:45.000They exist at the defense contractors.
00:13:47.000And amazingly, my Florida colleague, Carlos Jimenez, Republican, you're going to see him respond to Horsford by pointing out That a lot of these defense contractors only have the DEI obsession and the DEI officials because we require them to, by law.
00:14:39.000And much was made in the last discussion about the fact that major companies have DEI executives and the DOD requires DEI diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates of its contractors.
00:14:52.000In 2020, the DOD issued a memorandum that requires all contractors to implement DEI training programs for their employees.
00:14:58.000The memorandum states that the contractors must provide training on systemic racism, unconscious bias, and other cultural competencies to their employees who work on DOD contracts.
00:15:08.000The training must be provided within 60 days of the award of a contract and must be recurring.
00:15:13.000Additionally, the contractors must demonstrate that their compliance with DEI mandates through regular reporting.
00:15:19.000So to say that these, you know, are they wrong or are they right, it's mandated by DOD. Thank you and I yield back.
00:15:31.000A terrific job by Carlos Jimenez to point out that so often these bad emergences of policy that exist in the private sector can actually be lashed back to too much government.
00:15:44.000And the government making these demands of private entities in order to engage in government contracting.
00:15:57.000While the NDAA does great legislative work to ban CRT completely, to get rid of these chief diversity officers, to stop the drain of resources away from our service members into these diversity programs, we did not achieve what I think would have been the most meaningful amendment to push back against DEI, and that is to totally defund it.
00:16:23.000I had an amendment in committee To say, no more funding at all, period.
00:16:29.000Not one red cent for this DEI agenda that has been so misused and tortured and weaponized against people.
00:16:40.000And unfortunately, two of my Republican colleagues on the committee joined with Democrats and blocked that amendment's passage.
00:16:49.000Now, I have great respect for these colleagues of mine, Don Bacon of Nebraska and Mike Turner of of Ohio.
00:16:56.000They voted in favor of the DEI funding that would have been entirely precluded by my amendment.
00:17:03.000But I look forward to working with them to try to see if when this legislation gets to the floor, I can understand their concerns better because they didn't really offer a lot of criticism during the time allotted for debate.
00:17:15.000General Bacon has put out a statement that he didn't want any amendment to be misconstrued that you couldn't kick racists out of the military.
00:17:23.000And of course, if people show up and are virulently racist, they would be in violation of many other standards that have existed, gosh, some of which in practice or in writing since the days of the Revolutionary War.
00:17:36.000Certainly since World War I, those standards have evolved and been developed, and they don't have to lean into DEI to ensure that we have the right protection and the right environment to keep our service members safe and focused on the mission.
00:17:51.000And that ought to be our objective, not to try to tell people that they are somehow bad or oppressors or oppressed by virtue of their immutable traits, like the color of their skin.
00:18:04.000But that argument wasn't enough for some Republicans, and it was not enough for Congresswoman Strickland.
00:18:10.000Now, what she offered in debate was this theory that CRT just needs a rebrand because Republicans are weaponizing critical race theory.
00:18:53.000CRT has indeed been weaponized by the left, and that's one weapon.
00:18:58.000We're not going to continue to fund in this National Defense Authorization Act.
00:19:02.000I'm going to continue to update you regarding how the work we have exposed on firebrand and in committees will, I think, really give fuel to the NDAA this year and give a lot of Republicans a reason to vote for it, a reason to support our troops, and to support really give fuel to the NDAA this year and give a lot of Republicans a reason to vote for it, a reason to support our troops, and to support them not just with pay increases, which we
00:19:24.000do, not just with new weapon systems, which we do do and we should do, but also with the support they need so that they are not mistreated by some of this wokeism that they've complained to our office and many others about.
00:19:38.000But now I want to get to another important activity that occurred in the House of Representatives this past week, and that was the examination in person of John Durham, Special Counsel John Durham.
00:19:51.000So I'm going to lay out for you right now where I have a perspective that is different from that of some of my Republican colleagues.
00:19:59.000What Chairman Jordan and many of my Republican colleagues rightly, justly, virtuously want to do is use the Durham report as a basis to get rid of some of these illegal spying authorities and the illegal political activity that emerges out of the FBI and DOJ. And in Durham's report, indeed, he is critical of the FBI and DOJ. But I don't think that is the whole story.
00:20:26.000I think John Durham's part of the cover-up.
00:20:29.000I think that John Durham's report, his flimsy, lame, unsuccessful prosecutions, the purpose of all of that was not to expose the true bad actors in the deep state.
00:20:45.000It was to ensure that, yeah, you can make kind of broad, sweeping criticisms of the FBI and the bureaucracy, and yeah, it's this clunky thing and needs to change, and sometimes they don't follow all the rules they're supposed to follow.
00:21:02.000But we never found out who gave the order to run this op.
00:21:07.000And what we know is that the Russia hoax was not the manifestation of some incompetence or tomfoolery at the FBI. It was an explicit operation to try to take the presidency away from Donald Trump after the voters had elected him.
00:21:26.000I'm going to play for you in just a moment.
00:21:27.000The full exchange that I have with John Durham.
00:21:31.000And what I want you to ask yourself as you're watching, do you agree with my Republican colleagues that John Durham is a do-gooder who really did everything he could to get to the bottom of this?
00:21:42.000Or was he just another person containing the damage and playing the part?
00:23:25.000Mifsud told Papadopoulos, Papadopoulos tells the diplomat, the diplomat tells the FBI, the FBI opens the investigation July 31, 2016, and here we are three years later, July of 2019, the country's been put through this, and the central figure who launches it all, Lies to us, and you guys don't hunt him down and interview him again, and you don't charge him with a crime.
00:23:48.000Maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusation started.
00:23:53.000Maybe it's to go back and actually figure out why Joseph Nipset was lying to the FBI. And here's the good news.
00:24:33.000For years, you had years to find out the answer to what Mr. Jordan said was the seminal question and you don't have it.
00:24:39.000And it just begs the question whether or not you were really trying to find that out.
00:24:44.000Because it's one thing to criticize the FBI for their FISA violations, to write a report.
00:24:50.000They've been criticized in plenty of reports.
00:24:52.000Some have referred to your work as just a repackaging and regurgitation of what the Inspector General already told us.
00:24:59.000So if you weren't going to do what Mr. Jordan said you were going to do in that video and give us the basis for all of it, what's this all been about?
00:25:10.000Well, I'm not exactly sure the import of your question.
00:25:13.000If your question is, did we try to locate and interview Mr. Mifsud, the answer is yes.
00:25:19.000Why didn't you subpoena him to a grand jury?
00:25:35.000We were looking for information that might help us locate Mifsud.
00:25:39.000But you know who I think could probably locate him?
00:25:42.000The features of Western intelligence and possibly our own government that put him in play.
00:25:47.000Like, your report seems to be less an indictment of the FBI and more of an inoculation, lowercase i, of course.
00:25:55.000And like many inoculations, it may have worse consequences down the road.
00:25:59.000We'll have some time to discuss this matter further, but it's just hard to pretend as though this was a sincere effort when you don't get to the fundamental thing that started the whole deal.
00:26:21.000We're disappointed too, but the difference is when regular folks do things that are wrong and unlawful, there's typically greater effort to try to get those people before a grand jury to utilize criminal process where appropriate, not for other purposes.
00:26:36.000And it's just like, oh, well, Bill Priestep, the guy who might have set this whole op in motion, he just didn't want to talk to you about certain things, and you were real accommodating to that.
00:26:44.000And then Mifsud, the person who juices Papadopoulos to create this Predicate that you find improper.
00:26:52.000You guys, I mean, did you ever know who his lawyer was, Mifsud's lawyer?
00:27:11.000And then now you're sitting here in front of the judiciary saying you could find the guy's lawyer, but you couldn't effectuate the service of a subpoena because you couldn't find him?
00:27:18.000First of all, as you may or may not know, we wouldn't have the authority to serve a subpoena overseas.
00:27:24.000The lawyer didn't know where Mifsud was.
00:27:27.000He was in communication with him, but he claimed not to know where he was.
00:27:30.000And we were trying to arrange an opportunity to talk to Mifsud.
00:27:35.000Did you take possession of two Blackberry phones from Mifsud in any way?
00:27:40.000There were phones that were provided to us by the guy.
00:27:47.000Like you found the lawyer, you found the phones, but the actual dude who got ordered by Western intelligence to go start this thing you couldn't find?
00:28:27.000Who gave the order on the Mueller team to wipe the phones?
00:28:31.000Yeah, that was not something that we were That's not true, Mr. Durham.
00:28:37.000That is not true, because I'm holding the document that authorizes your activity, and it specifically says the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.
00:28:47.000Mr. Chairman, I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record the order that says that you're supposed to investigate these things.
00:28:53.000Whether it's the Mueller team, Mifsud, how about Azra Turk?
00:29:29.000But when you are part of the cover-up, Mr. Durham, then it makes our job harder.
00:29:36.000Yeah, well, if that's your thought, I mean, there's no way of dissuading you from that.
00:29:40.000I can tell you that it's offensive and that the people who worked on this investigation have spent their lives trying to protect people in this country and pursue within the law what it is that we are authorized to do.
00:29:52.000You tried two cases, lost both of them, and then the one plea, guilty plea you got, Kleinsmith?
00:30:00.000Kleinsmith is back to practicing law in Washington, D.C. today.
00:30:05.000Right, but the fact that you allowed that plea to occur, right, and then the punishment was insufficient, the fact that you didn't charge Andrew McCabe, you didn't convict the lying Democrats or the lying Russians, you didn't investigate Mifsud or the Mueller probe, even though, as we sit here today in black letter, that was your charge.
00:30:25.000Have you ever heard of the Washington Generals?
00:30:54.000And I'm kind of wondering, and it just seems so facially obvious, that it's not what's in your report that's telling, it's the omission, it's the lack of work you did.
00:31:03.000And for the people, like the chairman, who put trust in you, I think you let them down, I think you let the country down, and you are one of the barriers to the true accountability that we need.
00:31:12.000Do I get to respond to that or comment on that?
00:31:26.000The witness can respond and then we'll move on to our last...
00:31:28.000I don't know, sir, whether or not you've ever had occasion to try to investigate crimes under the rules and regulations and under the Constitution that we're bound by.
00:31:38.000We can gather evidence in particularly lawful ways.
00:31:41.000Can't charge people because we might think something we can charge people.
00:31:45.000You didn't investigate the Mueller team wiping their phones, and you won't tell us who gave the orders because you're protecting those people.
00:31:58.000So after watching that, what do you think?
00:32:02.000Do you really think that that guy took this multi-year project and millions of dollars And didn't ask those basic questions.
00:32:13.000Didn't find out who gave the order to get the entire Russia hoax going.
00:32:18.000Leo on Twitter says at one point he had confidence in Durham, but now not so much.
00:32:24.000And if you are watching this on Rumble, and we hope you are, we hope you're subscribed, or on YouTube, or on Twitter, one of the most interesting things is to watch my colleague Mike Johnson, who's sitting next to me during that nine-minute exchange, And I love Mike Johnson, great congressman from Louisiana.
00:32:40.000And you could tell he's just slowly being convinced along the way that this is bullshit, that the whole Durham thing was bullshit, that it was there to ensure that any flesh wounds the deep state had to take would never really result in the structural change or the personal accountability that was necessary.
00:33:01.000And as I listen to that again, I'm thinking about this Bill Barr John Durham trip to Italy.
00:33:08.000So we're supposed to believe that these two guys, what, are they walking around like Sherlock Holmes with their magnifying glass looking for clues to see if Mifsud's around?
00:33:22.000The reason they didn't find Mifsud is that they didn't want to.
00:33:26.000They didn't want to tell you Who put intelligence assets in play overseas to try to create a false predicate to use national security authorities for politics.
00:33:39.000To take political dirt and use it to try to ruin the Trump presidency.
00:33:57.000We cannot put our faith in people like Bill Barr and John Durham.
00:34:00.000I think we ought to haul Bill Barr before the Judiciary Committee and ask him these questions.
00:34:04.000If John Durham can't answer them, maybe Bill Barr should be able to answer why this investigation never produced any real storyline for what actually happened.
00:34:18.000I don't think that is a bug of the system.
00:34:32.000Before we get out of here, I want to give you an update on some spending matters that are very much being hotly debated and contested in the halls of Congress here.
00:34:43.000So on September 30th, the government funding bill that Pelosi and McConnell negotiated runs out.
00:34:50.000So we have to have the new structure to fund the government.
00:34:53.000I don't want to do continuing resolutions.
00:34:55.000I don't want to ice in forever, cast in cement, if you will, the spending levels of the Biden era and post-COVID. So we thought the most modest thing we could do is say you've got to have your budget at 2022 spending levels, not 2023, which is substantially higher.
00:36:52.000If you hit the little bell, then your notifications will be turned on.
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