In the wake of the Nashville shooting, Stephen Crowder releases a chilling manifesto written by the shooter, Aiden Aiden Rhodes, detailing the day to day life of the shooter and the events leading up to it. The mayor of Nashville, Tennessee, responds to the information, but does not address the possibility that the manifesto was written by a radicalized member of his own community. Firebrand is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. New Episodes drop weekly. Subscribe today using our podcast s RSS feed to stay up to date with our newest episodes and listen to the newest episodes of Firebrand wherever you get your feeds. Use the promo code: "UPLEVEL" to receive 20% off "Hunt a Killer" and receive $5 and contribute $5 more when you become a supporter of one of our sponsors. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and we'll feature it on the next episode of the Firebrand Podcast. Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your fellow Firebrand listeners! Timestamps: 0:00:00 - What would you do with $5, $10,000? 1:30 - How would you pay for a car? 2:15 - What kind of car would you drive in Nashville? 3:40 - What are you looking for? 5:00 6:00- What do you want? 7:30- What is your next purchase? 8:00s - What do I need? 9: What is the worst thing I mensuration? 11: How do you need to get out of the manifesto? 12:00? 15:00 | What would I would you like to see? 16:30s - How do I feel about it? 17:40s - I m going to be a good day? 18:15- What s your answer? 19:20s - Who would you want me to do? 21:00 + 16:00d 22:15s - Why I m looking forward to what I m worried about this? 23: What s my favorite part? 26:00e: what s your favorite part of the Manifesto? 27:00a) 25:00p - What s the most important part of this piece? 30s - Is it authentic?
00:05:30.000I'm sending the Firebrands. - Welcome back to Firebrand.
00:05:40.000We're live broadcasting out of room 2021 of the Capitol Complex Rayburn Building here in Washington, D.C. There is a lot going on.
00:05:47.000The money laundering of the Chinese Communist Party into America's political system to fund the Uniparty took a major blow today.
00:05:54.000I'll be explaining how new House Speaker Mike Johnson has been really delivering in that regard and cleaning house in the Speaker's office.
00:06:02.000Had an extermination there that was necessary and I'm glad things are going well.
00:06:07.000Also, there's money laundering going on in Gaza.
00:06:10.000A new report from the Inspector General out of USAID suggesting that the $100 million Joe Biden is sending there very well may fall into the hands of terrorists in Gaza.
00:06:20.000But the big news that we've been watching relates to the Nashville shooter and the release of this manifesto.
00:06:27.000It was immediately a source of great concern for many of us when we knew that this is someone who had been radicalized, had taken life, and had done so in the grisliest and most horrific of ways.
00:06:39.000And now we are starting to see some of the motivation That drove this person to these terrible acts.
00:06:48.000Steven Crowder on Louder with Crowder read part of the Nashville Shooters Manifesto.
00:08:02.000Kill those kids, three exclamation points, those crackers going to private fancy schools with those fancy khakis and sports backpacks with their M-dash-dash-daddies, Mustangs, and convertibles.
00:09:12.000You've got all of the internet wondering whether or not this is authentic.
00:09:16.000And rather than express concern over the hate-filled rhetoric that radicalized this person in Nashville to take innocent life, You saw the local government there more worried about the leaks.
00:09:30.000So in a statement, Mayor Freddie O'Connell essentially acknowledges the authenticity of what Stephen Crowder put out, but there was no rebuking.
00:09:42.000Of this false fiction of privilege that justifies violence.
00:09:48.000It wasn't a statement about how this radical ideology has to be confronted and rejected.
00:09:54.000No, they're worried about how Stephen Crowder got the information.
00:09:59.000That's what they're most worked up about.
00:10:01.000Mayor Freddie O'Connell of Nashville...
00:10:04.000I've directed Metro's law director to initiate an investigation into how these images could have been released.
00:10:11.000That investigation may involve state, local, and federal authorities.
00:10:19.000I'm deeply concerned with the safety, security, and well-being of the Covenant families and all Nashvilleians who are grieving.
00:10:25.000This incident naturally invokes additional emotional trauma, and families or individuals who need support should reach out to professionals.
00:10:34.000What they think evokes trauma is the transparency.
00:10:39.000I think what would evoke the most trauma is if you had a dead family member, a loved one, community member, someone you cared about, to have the content that is so dangerous just go unanswered by local leadership.
00:10:56.000So I think we should be more worried about racial violence directed at people who...
00:11:04.000Who really are innocent, and who are displaying the immutable characteristic of their skin color, and whether people are being targeted for being white, black, brown, otherwise, it's horrendous, and that's what we have to reject, summarily.
00:11:19.000We also have got big news on Capitol Hill.
00:11:22.000I want to go over House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan releasing a bombshell report on the censorship industrial complex.
00:11:29.000As you know, we have been following this intersection between academia, the government, and big tech to try to shape the nature of truth online.
00:11:37.000It's one of the reasons why we ask that you subscribe on Rumble, that you turn your notifications on, that you don't exclusively rely on some of the other platforms that we broadcast on because the censorship industrial complex is real.
00:11:51.000So let's get into what Jordan is putting out.
00:11:53.000He says, hundreds of secret reports show how the Department of Homeland Security, CISA, and the GEC, which is the State Department, Stanford, and others worked together to censor Americans before the 2020 election, including true information, jokes, and opinions.
00:12:11.000The federal government, disinformation experts at big universities, big tech, and others worked through the Election Integrity Partnership to monitor and censor Americans' speech.
00:12:24.000According to one EIP member, and again that's the Election Integrity Project, the Election Integrity Project was created, quote, at the request of CISA. The head of the EIP also said that the EIP was created after, quote, working on some monitoring ideas with CISA. Remember, if a private entity is stood up to suggest censorship, I guess that's okay.
00:12:49.000That can be the free speech they're engaging in.
00:12:51.000But when you've got the government coaxing it and urging it along, that's where you've got a problem.
00:13:23.000It's not just that stuff was presented to some of these agencies and then that specific post was removed.
00:13:33.000They found examples of sentiment that they didn't like, particularly about the vaccine, but also about elections, politics.
00:13:41.000And if they could highlight one reflection of a sentiment they didn't like, they used this fused reporting system to then just go try to wipe that sentiment off of platforms altogether.
00:13:57.000The Judiciary Committee and the Weaponization Subcommittee obtained these non-public documents and information from Stanford, Only after threat of contempt.
00:14:06.000And then there's a link to the reports.
00:15:12.000You can be a part of the research team.
00:15:14.000And the real question After all of this, is are we going to continue to fund it?
00:15:21.000Because it's one thing writing reports and threatening contempt and sending subpoenas, but if we're still going to send money to the Election Integrity Project through publicly funded universities, through collaborations with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State, then we're just paper tigers.
00:15:38.000We're not actually doing anything to root out the censorship.
00:16:01.000It cannot be the posture of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
00:16:05.000So we have to stop funding to these entities.
00:16:08.000That's why these single-subject appropriations bills I'm working on are so incredibly important.
00:16:15.000Now I want to get to another big story, and it has to do with Sequoia Capital.
00:16:19.000So if you think about the Uniparty that I've been highly critical of here in Washington, D.C., it requires a lot of money to run it.
00:16:26.000And so they go to some of the most exquisite and elaborate financial arrangements they can find.
00:16:33.000And at times, I am concerned that foreign money is working its way into U.S. elections and Through entities of venture capital where a lot of times there's not great transparency into those dollars, where they're coming from, how they're co-mingled with domestic entities, how that can be part of a corrupt political process.
00:16:54.000So before the 2022 elections, Republican staff on the House Intelligence Committee executed a major investigation into this entity Sequoia Capital.
00:17:05.000It's the largest American venture capital fund.
00:17:08.000It has incredibly detailed ties to China and to the whole FTX Sam Bankman-Fried fiasco.
00:17:18.000Sequoia is so deeply in bed with the CCP that you're able to draw connections not just from where they get their money from, but where it's going.
00:17:29.000Sequoia is a major Democratic donor, with its leadership funneling tens of million dollars annually to Democrat campaigns and causes.
00:17:37.000Shortly after the election, Sequoia juiced up its donations to none other than Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell by orders of magnitude.
00:17:48.000So just an example, there was a $750,000 donation to the Senate Leadership Fund, controlled by McConnell, and over a million dollars to the McCarthy Victory Fund, and another $500,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
00:18:03.000That was in 2022 and 2023. So despite internal promises by McCarthy after the election, the Republican staff that worked on the report They were frog-marched out of the building.
00:18:16.000And the investigation and report were deep-sixed.
00:18:22.000Immediately following McCarthy's ouster, but before Speaker Johnson was elected, Chairman Gallagher of the China Select Committee announced a long-delayed probe into Sequoia.
00:18:33.000Now, Speaker Johnson is going after some of the Republican staffers who may have...
00:18:41.000functioned as a go-between between McCarthy and some of the committee work or even Sequoia itself.
00:18:48.000This is a good housecleaning and it needed to happen so that the probe into Chinese influence into American elections and American politics can continue.
00:18:58.000Republicans have been too cheap a date.
00:19:01.000After being weak on Sequoia and China for far too long, they've accepted pennies on the dollar compared to what these folks were giving Democrats.
00:19:12.000We cannot be beholden to these foreign interests abroad and special interests here at home.
00:19:17.000And one thing I am really excited about is from Mike Johnson, we see action.
00:19:21.000The very staffers in the Speaker's office who certainly have been implicated in trying to shape, scuttle, inform on this really important report, they're not in a position to make decisions for the House of Representatives anymore.
00:19:40.000I want to give you an update, as we often do, what's going on in the Middle East right now.
00:19:45.000Unsurprisingly, Joe Biden is requesting an additional $100 million for aid to Gaza, but we pick up this report from the Washington Examiner.
00:19:55.000The headline, Israel War, High Risk, Hamas Could Steal Gaza Aid, Biden Administration Watchdog warns.
00:20:03.000So this comes from the Inspector General at USAID, They're saying that Hamas and other terrorist groups will likely attempt to steal humanitarian assistance that the Biden administration intends to send Palestinians.
00:20:17.000Biden's announcement calls for this $100 million, and what you hear the IG saying from USAID is that there's not really going to be a governance structure around how this money gets spent.
00:20:31.000Quoting directly from the IG, there are a number of formal or informal authorizations from armed groups so you'd be looking at the very armed groups in Gaza Either Hamas directly or functionally directed by Hamas to distribute aid.
00:20:54.000The United States has got to get out of funding both sides of every conflict in the Middle East.
00:21:00.000We've been doing it for most of my adult life.
00:21:02.000And here, even from the Biden administration, saying the 100 million to Gaza would very likely fall into the hands of Hamas.
00:21:11.000We've been critical of USAID in the past.
00:21:14.000I've gone to the floor to try to highlight this agency as one that could see reductions in funding in order to help us balance our budget and return to fiscal sanity.
00:21:23.000I think that we too often believe that spreading U.S. cash all around the world is going to buy us goodwill.
00:21:31.000The reality is, oftentimes people just think we're fools.
00:21:34.000I made that argument on the House floor.
00:21:39.000This amendment reduces the amount of funding allocated to USAID by $4.5 billion.
00:21:45.000As I've mentioned earlier, USAID is a vehicle through which the American taxpayer pays for economic development in other countries.
00:21:55.000I think, instead, we should spend more money on the economic development of our own country, and actually, if we spent less money overall, we probably would see less inflation, more prosperity, and the type of economic growth that we saw during President Trump's time in office.
00:22:11.000USAID may have started with laudable goals, but today they're promoting abortion globally with American tax dollars.
00:22:18.000They are pushing President Biden's national gender strategy.
00:22:23.000I never thought we needed a national gender strategy, but if we need a national gender strategy, can we at least not spend So much money promoting it abroad?
00:22:33.000The DEI programs that are embedded in the 1619 Project have been embraced by United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greyfield, and we see that continue to manifest through USAID. American taxpayers should focus their resources and their efforts on the American people and the American economy.
00:22:54.000It should be easily agreed to, and I reserve the balance of my time.
00:23:00.000We are back live and folks on our getter stream think that it should be the rich Middle Eastern countries that provide the humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
00:23:08.000There's good, I think, good logic behind that.
00:23:11.000And Keith on Facebook says, no continuing resolutions.
00:23:16.000Have you guys heard about the ladder concept?
00:23:18.000It's all the rage right now in the halls of Congress.
00:23:21.000And I'm going to maybe take issue with Keith's instant rejection of this.
00:23:28.000So here's how the appropriations process is broken.
00:23:32.000Since The mid-90s, our entire government is funded with one up or down vote all at once for every agency.
00:23:41.000And so one of the ways that you deconstruct that system is to say, look, even if you're extending government funding for, say, pay for our border patrol, pay for our troops, veterans benefits, care for the vulnerable, you don't have to do that.
00:23:55.000At the same time and for the same duration as every agency of government.
00:24:01.000So for example, you could create a laddered or a tiered system where we say, okay, pay for our troops, pay for Border Patrol.
00:24:09.000We're going to extend those things out until we can get our single subject appropriations bills negotiated with the United States Senate.
00:24:18.000But like the DOJ, the Department of Education, The EPA, we don't have to extend those out as long as you would extend out troop pay or border patrol pay.
00:24:29.000You can put them quite literally on a short ladder.
00:24:33.000But then the question becomes, will the House Republican Conference have sufficient courage if the Senate doesn't negotiate in that period of time to allow these mini shutdowns?
00:24:43.000One thing I could tell you, far too many of my Republican colleagues would literally do anything To avoid a shutdown.
00:24:51.000They would accept any spending amount.
00:24:54.000They would accept any compromise on policy.
00:24:57.000They would do anything to avoid a shutdown.
00:24:59.000And the Democrats know that, and so they play the minority card with greater leverage as a result.
00:25:10.000Maybe, if you didn't have to shut down the whole government all at once, we could help some of our Republican representatives to find a little backbone.
00:25:18.000Okay, you don't have the guts to shut down the whole government?
00:25:20.000Do you have the guts to shut down the Department of Education?
00:25:26.000Do you have the guts to shut down features of the DOJ that have been turned against the people?
00:25:31.000Do you have the guts to shut down the ATF? For a period of time to bring them into compliance with the law that they think they can make in the absence of Congress.
00:25:41.000So while Keith is negative on the ladder, I am quite open-minded about it.
00:25:46.000Now the ladders have to be the right length.
00:25:49.000They have to have the right consequences.
00:25:51.000But the way to break the fever in this town is to showcase to people that you don't have to vote for every agency for the same duration all at once at the same time.
00:26:00.000And once you start putting the cracks in that foundation, I think the entire structure of the Uniparty's reign is at risk of falling into some state of collapse.
00:26:14.000We want the ideas that lawmakers have, sincerely representing their constituents, to be offered due consideration, particularly when they reduce federal spending.
00:26:22.000Because if we don't do that, if we get everything else right, and we spend this country into oblivion, there won't be anything left.
00:26:28.000And so we have to fight with everything we have on that particular front.
00:26:32.000Also have an update for you regarding the natural world.
00:26:37.000Many of you may know I love birdwatching.
00:26:40.000It is one of my favorite Florida men things to do.
00:26:42.000Go out in a canoe, kayak, sometimes off a dock, see the osprey, the eagle.
00:26:47.000But we now are getting word, pursuant to the latest report from NPR, That the American Ornithological Society has vowed to change the English names of all bird species named after people.
00:27:03.000So there are about 70 to 80 bird species that have got some sort of connection to the name of the scientist who found them or some other human trait.
00:27:14.000And the American Ornithological Society believes that that might be offensive or derogatory We're not in line with wokeness.
00:27:23.000So wokeness has literally gone to the birds at this stage of the game.
00:27:28.000So Anna's Hummingbird, Gamble's Quail, Lewis's Woodpecker, Berwick's Wren, Bullock's Oriole, all could see their names changed and the whole goal is to not have them named after any human who might have had an opinion or a sensibility that doesn't stand up to today's standards.
00:27:49.000It is remarkable when even the names of birds are being changed.
00:27:56.000We see this alongside cities like Charlottesville taking down statues and it's always good to add to our understanding Not subtract.
00:28:09.000I always think that whether it is how we think about a fellow living being in the natural world or how we think about an event in history, we want to use the sharp side of the pencil, not the eraser.
00:28:30.000We've got a big project coming out of our office regarding how the speaker battle went down.
00:28:36.000And in the coming days, we will be releasing a film made by Sasha, who directs this very podcast.
00:28:42.000It is really, I think, illuminating as to the dynamics that unfolded in a really historical moment for the United States House of Representatives.