Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - November 13, 2023


Episode 131 LIVE: The Ladder CR – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Topics
laddered CR approach ladder CR debt downgrade
Hosted by
Matt Gaetz
Mentioned
Kevin McCarthy Mike Johnson Jason Smith Steve Scalise Aaron Schock Naomi Biden Jim Jordan Mark Roman Tom Emmer Vern Buchanan Manu Raju Sergeant Tanner W. Groen Matthew Kazmarek Stephen R. Dwyer Andrew Sutherford Winston Churchill Gabriel Chouster Jody Arrington Jonathan Link Nancy Pelosi and 10 more
Episode 130 LIVE: Congress Backs FBI – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz Episode 132 LIVE: McCarthy Sucker Punches Burchett – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Episode Stats


Length

33 minutes

Words per minute

131.06

Word count

4,338

Sentence count

278

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GA) and Rep. Steve Israel (D-NJ) join me in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. to discuss the continuing resolution, the border wall, and the farm bill. We also talk about the lack of progress on funding the government, and whether or not Speaker Mike Johnson should continue to lead the effort to get a bill through the House of Representatives, or if he should go with a clean CR (Continuing Resolution) or a short-term continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government funded through September 2019. We also discuss the impact of a continuing resolution on the border security situation, and why a CR should not be used as a substitute for a long-term solution to the border funding crisis. Tweet Me! with your thoughts and reactions to this episode! Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What should Speaker Johnson do next? 4:30 - Is a CR a good idea or a bad idea? 6:15 - How should the House approach a CR? 8:00- What should the Speaker do? 9:30- What would you do if a CR isn t passed? 11:40 - What s the best way to keep government funded? 13:00 14:00 -- What should be the Speaker's strategy? 15:00-- What should we do with a CR 16:20 - What are we looking for? 17:30 -- What's the best approach? 18:15 -- What is the best option? 19: What would the Speaker s strategy for getting a CR passed 21:30-- What would be the best solution? 22:15- What are you looking for from Speaker Johnson? 23:40 -- How would you vote on a CR ? 26:30 27:10 -- Is there a better way to get across the aisle? 25:10 - Is there any chance of getting a bill passed in the House? 26 - How would Speaker McCarthy willing to compromise on a single-subject bill? 29: Does Speaker McCarthy have a chance to get something done? 30:15-- Is Speaker McCarthy more likely to get the votes he needs to pass a CR or not? 31:40- What kind of CR that s going to happen? 32:10 -- Is Speaker Johnson willing to take the votes needed?

Transcript

Transcripts from "Firebrand - Matt Gaetz" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Thank you.
00:04:52.000 You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay?
00:04:55.000 Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero.
00:05:00.000 We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight. 1.00
00:05:05.000 I want to thank you, Matt Gates, for holding the line.
00:05:09.000 Matt Gates is a courageous man.
00:05:11.000 If we had hundreds of Matt Gates in D.C., the country turns around.
00:05:16.000 It's that simple.
00:05:17.000 He's so tough, he's so strong, he's smart, and he loves this country.
00:05:21.000 Matt Gates.
00:05:23.000 It is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you.
00:05:28.000 We will save America.
00:05:30.000 It's choose your fighter time.
00:05:32.000 I'm sending the Firebrands. - Welcome back to Firebrand. 0.99
00:05:41.000 We are broadcasting from a chilly...
00:05:44.000 Room 2021 in the Rayburn House office building here in our Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. It is not like my beloved Florida up here.
00:05:52.000 But we've got a lot to discuss.
00:05:54.000 Government funding.
00:05:54.000 There's been an injunction issued against the pistol brace rule.
00:05:58.000 And Washington, D.C. has gotten so crazy, even the Secret Service is having to endure the scourge of crime and carjackings because there are no consequences in Washington for criminal behavior.
00:06:11.000 But first, let's get to this concept of the latter CR. You may have heard House Speaker Mike Johnson talk about it, folks report on it.
00:06:18.000 What does it mean?
00:06:19.000 What's coming to the floor?
00:06:20.000 What are we like?
00:06:21.000 What are we not like?
00:06:22.000 So, for context, House Speaker Johnson has been on the job for a few weeks, and government funding runs out in a few days.
00:06:30.000 So right now, he's asking for support for a CR, or continuing resolution.
00:06:36.000 We oppose continuing resolutions.
00:06:39.000 Each agency of government should get itemized review.
00:06:43.000 Spending cannot be cut if we advance all of the government's various and sundry programs all at once for the same duration of time.
00:06:51.000 So, Speaker Johnson's latter CR fails to meet the mark in this respect.
00:06:57.000 It doesn't cut spending.
00:06:58.000 It doesn't set the Republican-controlled House up for a win or even to engage in a single policy fight.
00:07:06.000 It's more of Pelosi's policies and Biden's spending.
00:07:09.000 It also lashes the important but totally unrelated farm bill extender to the funding legislation for the rest of government.
00:07:21.000 And it does the farm bill extender through the end of September.
00:07:25.000 Now, I think we need a farm bill.
00:07:27.000 I think that farmers and food security create national security.
00:07:32.000 They give us the ability for national self-determination.
00:07:35.000 Economic nationalists should be for America's farmers.
00:07:39.000 But if there's money we're spending on the farm bill, it should be offset with spending reductions elsewhere.
00:07:47.000 Now, it's just not right to slap an extender for the farm bill onto this continuing resolution.
00:07:55.000 That's the bad in the latter CR. And it's dispositively bad.
00:08:00.000 But there is some creativity in the latter concept that I do support, as I explained to CNN here.
00:08:13.000 On the CR, I presume you support this laddered CR approach.
00:08:19.000 Is that right?
00:08:20.000 If the Speaker goes a different route, what would you do?
00:08:22.000 So, the concept that we discussed today with the Speaker is exciting because it breaks us from this theory that you have to take one vote on all of government To extend every agency for precisely the same duration of time.
00:08:37.000 I think we can be more specific in the timelines and in the approaches.
00:08:41.000 That's why I'm for single subject spending bills.
00:08:43.000 If we're able to get these bills we're working on this week passed, you're looking at around 80% of the federal budget that the House has approved funding for.
00:08:54.000 But the Senate wants to always take up everything all at once for the same duration of time.
00:08:59.000 The laddered approach that Speaker Johnson was socializing with members today, I think, gives us a lot of innovative opportunity to put downward pressure on spending.
00:09:08.000 If it goes with a clean CR, then what?
00:09:10.000 I'm not voting for a clean CR. Will it cost him the speakership if he does that?
00:09:15.000 Well, he never promised me he would, unlike the last guy.
00:09:18.000 And remember, there's a big difference, right?
00:09:19.000 Kevin McCarthy never wanted to get to single subject spending bills.
00:09:23.000 You know how your viewers can take great confidence in that?
00:09:26.000 He only passed one in the first seven months.
00:09:28.000 Mike Johnson passed one in the first 36 hours, and we've been rolling through them.
00:09:33.000 So I think there is a willingness to give a little more grace to Speaker Johnson than to Speaker McCarthy, because he was fiddling as Rome was burning.
00:09:42.000 I think Mike Johnson is trying to build us on a path to more fiscal sanity, and we want to support him in those efforts.
00:09:51.000 We are back live and the overwhelming sentiment from the comments on the live stream is that we should not have a government funding bill that does not secure the border.
00:10:01.000 It should be either secure the border or shut down the government according to the overwhelming sentiment that we are receiving.
00:10:08.000 But follow me here on the ladder concept.
00:10:11.000 So a ladder concept that is clean is a bad idea because it doesn't sufficiently do the border work that we've been talking about and it doesn't sufficiently cut spending.
00:10:20.000 But the ladder itself isn't bad.
00:10:24.000 You see, The concept that we are fighting against is this notion that all of government gets voted on all at once for one big up or down vote.
00:10:36.000 To extend every agency for the same duration of time.
00:10:40.000 With a ladder, the good news is that you're able to cleave the important stuff that we all agree on that's bipartisan.
00:10:47.000 Paying our troops, paying our border patrol...
00:10:50.000 Ensuring that people still get their IRS refunds and their Social Security checks.
00:10:54.000 You do that and then you set on shorter ladders different features of government that have to have itemized review.
00:11:01.000 I'm thinking notably the DOJ, a lot of the parts of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State.
00:11:07.000 You set those on shorter ladders and then you're able to really zero in on what those entities of government are doing.
00:11:15.000 So a ladder is good, a ladder without the spending cuts, without the border stuff, without defanging the weaponization of government, not sufficient at this time.
00:11:25.000 And certainly the addition of the farm bill extender puts us in, I think, a real bad stead when trying to get to single-subject spending bills.
00:11:36.000 One reason this is so important, we've just gotten fresh off of a report from House Budget Committee Chairman Jody Arrington, A ratings change from Moody's Investor Services.
00:11:49.000 This from New York on November 10th.
00:11:52.000 Moody's today has changed the outlook on the government of the United States of America's rating to negative from stable and affirmed the long-term issuer of senior unsecured ratings at AAA. The key driver of the outlook change to negative is Moody's assessment that the downside risks to the U.S. fiscal strength have increased significantly We're good
00:12:24.000 to go.
00:12:39.000 The sharp rise in U.S. Treasury bond yields this year has increased the pre-existing pressure on U.S. debt affordability.
00:12:45.000 In the absence of policy action, Moody's expects the U.S. debt affordability to decline further, steadily, and significantly to very weak levels compared to other highly rated sovereigns.
00:12:59.000 This is a major downgrade.
00:13:02.000 Moody has taken the United States of America from stable to negative.
00:13:06.000 And the reason is because we don't have our fiscal house in order.
00:13:09.000 Because our debt is going to become increasingly unaffordable.
00:13:14.000 We're going to be paying a trillion dollars in interest on the debt.
00:13:18.000 We're already over $900 billion.
00:13:20.000 We're under $900 billion for the whole Department of Defense budget.
00:13:27.000 These are devastating consequences at a time when, of this $33 trillion in debt, we're going to have to refinance that debt at higher and higher interest rates because of the government spending, because of the Biden inflation, because of the decisions from the Fed.
00:13:43.000 So this makes life unaffordable.
00:13:46.000 It makes borrowing money impossible.
00:13:49.000 When America as a whole is seeing this downgrade as a consequence of our inability to constrain spending, Mr. Speaker, we must cut spending.
00:13:58.000 It is not enough to slow the rate of growth.
00:14:00.000 We have to cut spending and we see that we will pass along a diminished America if we're unable to achieve that.
00:14:08.000 There's another story that I have to reflect on.
00:14:12.000 Over the weekend, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had a therapy session with CNN reporter Manu Raju that was videotaped and then published on CNN's Sunday program.
00:14:25.000 And like in many therapy sessions, the former speaker had a lot of things to say about people who he thought were mean to him.
00:14:33.000 Take a listen.
00:14:36.000 If you ever listen to Vern Buchanan, when Matt came into office, Vern is the Dean of Florida.
00:14:44.000 And he went around with each person, what would you like to achieve to help him?
00:14:46.000 And people would talk about things in their district of what they wanted to achieve.
00:14:50.000 Matt's goal was, his goal was to be the TV congressman.
00:14:53.000 And they came back and they kind of laughed and said, is that seriously what you want to be?
00:14:57.000 He said, yeah, the TV congressman.
00:14:58.000 That's what he wants to be known for.
00:15:00.000 I think Congress is too important and the issues are too big.
00:15:04.000 To focus on such small things that Matt tries to.
00:15:07.000 It's more a division, and it's focused on himself.
00:15:10.000 That was former Speaker McCarthy, who has done considerably more television interviews than I have.
00:15:19.000 Matter of fact, he was the TV speaker in the absence of substance.
00:15:22.000 And you will recall, on this program, time and again, I said that whether or not McCarthy faced removal was entirely within his hands.
00:15:29.000 All he had to do was comply with the agreement that he made with House conservatives in January.
00:15:34.000 He chose not to do that and now believes that his removal was a consequence of television, Or worse, take a listen to this alt-explanation from the removed former Speaker.
00:15:49.000 Those eight members who you referred to as the Crazy Eights and the like, after you, they elected Speaker Johnson, they were crowing about this.
00:15:59.000 What did you think about that?
00:16:01.000 Well, just from a From a serious point of understanding governing, look, I'm a conservative who loves to govern.
00:16:10.000 I don't believe them to be conservatives.
00:16:13.000 There's a different rationale.
00:16:14.000 It's driven by Gates, who it was all based upon an ethics complaint that happened in the last Congress.
00:16:20.000 He would throw his country away to try to protect himself from what would come out as the truth.
00:16:25.000 For those others to go along, I don't quite understand.
00:16:29.000 I think it's more personal.
00:16:30.000 If the ethics committee never does anything to Gates, then Gates was successful in stopping probably what rightfully should come to him.
00:16:37.000 But going through the three weeks and then taking down Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Tom Emmer, all people who are really prepared to do the job, that was frustrating for me.
00:16:52.000 We are back live and it is hard to ever present to you a clip that would have more projection than what we just showed from Speaker McCarthy.
00:17:01.000 Let's start with this assessment that it was the conference that took down Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan and Tom Emmer.
00:17:09.000 Steve Scalise knows that it was Kevin McCarthy who blocked him.
00:17:14.000 That's why Steve Scalise did so much, to ensure that we were able to elect Mike Johnson, even though Kevin McCarthy was attempting a comeback.
00:17:23.000 So, Emmer, Jordan, Scalise, you see, it didn't matter who it was, and it didn't matter what the ideology was, conservative, moderate, liberal, conservative.
00:17:33.000 McCarthy was just working to try to sabotage everyone, and he couldn't figure out a way to sabotage Mike Johnson.
00:17:40.000 And then he says this is all about some sort of ethics issue that I have.
00:17:45.000 I'm just an ethically challenged person.
00:17:46.000 It's not that Kevin couldn't keep his deal.
00:17:49.000 Well, what's the explanation for everyone else then?
00:17:52.000 Did the seven other people who voted with me also have ethics problems when we removed McCarthy?
00:17:58.000 Or how about in the final vote?
00:18:01.000 Before Mike Johnson was ultimately designated.
00:18:05.000 When Kevin McCarthy had done everything to summon his lieutenants and marshal the last bit of loyalty people might feel to him for all the special interest money he distributed to them.
00:18:17.000 And McCarthy got 43 votes.
00:18:21.000 So the 150 plus other members of the House Republican Conference in the final stead refused to back Kevin McCarthy.
00:18:29.000 I don't believe all of them had challenges with ethics.
00:18:34.000 I think it was McCarthy's Own ethical problems that led to his downfall because the guy couldn't tell the truth.
00:18:42.000 And he went and squawked on in this therapy session about how Nancy Pelosi had let him down and she promised him he would never do this.
00:18:50.000 Kevin McCarthy couldn't tell the truth.
00:18:51.000 And because of that, no one trusted him and a sufficient number of people were willing to remove him.
00:18:56.000 And now we must move forward.
00:18:59.000 So I know that in the stages of grief there's denial, anger, bargaining, depression, grief, you know.
00:19:09.000 I think we're in anger now.
00:19:14.000 We had to get past denial.
00:19:17.000 There's big news for gun owners that I want to report to you, and as you recall, we've been fighting against this unlawful, unconstitutional pistol-brace ban that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has put into place in the absence of any Law passed by the representatives and signed by the executive.
00:19:39.000 I pointed out how pistol braces were not in any way dangerous to regular folks in this recent hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.
00:19:49.000 Take a listen.
00:19:52.000 Another area is this issue of the arm braces.
00:19:56.000 Now in Mr. Wilcox's testimony, he says that an arm brace makes a weapon more powerful.
00:20:01.000 Mr. Bosco, you know a lot about arm braces, don't you?
00:20:04.000 I do.
00:20:05.000 Do arm braces make firearms more powerful?
00:20:08.000 They do not.
00:20:09.000 They do not.
00:20:10.000 Does it concern you that the witness that the Democrats brought would make such a claim that is obviously disproven by any utilization of those arm braces?
00:20:20.000 I hope that my testimony today can help everyone here understand that the brace does nothing to make the weapon any more dangerous than it already is.
00:20:31.000 And so, when you've got the ATF going beyond their authority, collecting 252 million records that they have to destroy, well, that can just be explained because they're doing their best.
00:20:42.000 But when Americans get inadvertently converted to felons because the ATF has exceeded their authority, there is no such grace for them as their miswear.
00:20:52.000 That would seem to be the case under the recent policy change to zero tolerance.
00:20:57.000 Zero tolerance for our fellow Americans when they're trying to exercise their rights and protect their liberties, but all the tolerance in the world for a corrupt bureaucracy that is violating the law, exceeding their authority, and collecting records that they have no business collecting.
00:21:14.000 We're back live.
00:21:15.000 So we had that hearing with some of these folks that talk about the pistol brace rule.
00:21:20.000 And we now get this report from Breitbart.
00:21:22.000 Federal judge blocks ATF's pistol brace rule, describes it as unlawful.
00:21:27.000 Judge Matthew J. Kaczmarek put a preliminary injunction in place against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
00:21:35.000 They deemed the rule unlawful.
00:21:37.000 One of the plaintiffs in the case is Gabriel Chouster, who deployed overseas in the War on Terror, was ambushed in Minneapolis and shot 15 times, then spent 85 days in the hospital.
00:21:50.000 He uses a stabilizer brace to help him shoot his gun.
00:21:53.000 Another plaintiff, Sean Kroll, is big into recreation and self-defense.
00:21:58.000 He uses a stabilizing brace because it makes his firearm safer.
00:22:03.000 This case is Brito, B-R-I-T-T-O, versus ATF.
00:22:08.000 It is currently in the Northern District of Texas.
00:22:11.000 The temporary injunction means that the plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.
00:22:18.000 It means that they will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of this injunction being issued, that there is no adequate remedy that they could ever get back in terms of money damages, and that it serves public policy interests.
00:22:30.000 Those are the elements to get temporary injunctive relief at this stage of the litigation.
00:22:34.000 They have achieved that.
00:22:35.000 I'm sure that will be on appeal, but the fact that we've got this Texas federal judge saying that this is an unlawful application of this pistol brace rule against these particular plaintiffs, great news, and hopefully that jurisprudence will persist as our oversight work persists on this very issue.
00:22:54.000 We also have an interesting story about our nation's capital.
00:22:58.000 We've been detailing to you the decaying conditions here, the rampant homelessness and crime and just debauchery that seems to be at the envelope of this great celebration of America that our capital ought to be.
00:23:15.000 But we now know that Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden's granddaughter had to open fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle here in Washington, D.C. So the Secret Service agents assigned to protect Naomi Biden were out with her in a Georgetown neighborhood Late on Sunday night.
00:23:38.000 And again, Georgetown is like the nicest part of Washington.
00:23:41.000 And one of the agents opened fire.
00:23:43.000 No one was struck by the gunfire.
00:23:46.000 But three suspects were seen fleeing a red car.
00:23:48.000 They were trying to break into it, presumably.
00:23:51.000 Now, Washington has seen a significant rise in the number of carjackings and car thefts just this year.
00:23:56.000 As of October 28th, D.C. police say there have been 821 carjackings reported in the district this year.
00:24:04.000 That's compared to 395 this time last year.
00:24:08.000 It is a 108% increase.
00:24:11.000 Car thefts in general are also up dramatically.
00:24:15.000 101% increase while violent crime has increased by 41% here in Washington, D.C. It's truly something that we've got to grapple with.
00:24:27.000 And Congress may have to step in.
00:24:28.000 We've got the ability to constrain the home rule of the city council here when they pass these soft on crime policies.
00:24:34.000 And so that Washington is safe for all of you when you come visit.
00:24:38.000 So it is a stunning representation of America's story as it should be.
00:24:46.000 We've got to get these things under control.
00:24:48.000 There's another...
00:24:51.000 I want to cover.
00:24:52.000 There's a lot of news right now about how some of these abortion referendums have been faring unfavorably.
00:25:00.000 I discussed that with Manu Raju, Sienna, and take a listen.
00:25:06.000 Ohio, this vote tonight, affirming abortion rights, the seventh state now to do that post-Roe. 0.63
00:25:13.000 Does that concern you about this issue and the saliency of this issue come 2024?
00:25:18.000 I think you're seeing voters react in the way a lot of legal scholars expected, by weighing in on the issue.
00:25:25.000 The fundamental problem with Roe, in addition to the science being wrong, is that this notion that you were going to have judges ultimately make that decision was...
00:25:34.000 It was not sustainable.
00:25:35.000 So, look, it's not the way I would have voted.
00:25:37.000 It's not the policy choice I would personally make, but I have no doubt that lawmakers in Ohio will respect the decision of the voters, just like in Kansas and in the other places where they've had these ballot provisions.
00:25:50.000 I guess politically, are you concerned about being on the wrong side of public opinion on this issue?
00:25:54.000 Well, I'm not concerned about it.
00:25:55.000 The voters I represent are pretty pro-life.
00:25:57.000 And I think that's true for a lot of Republican congressmen.
00:26:01.000 But I do think that we've got members in swing districts who are going to have to really refine their thinking on this.
00:26:09.000 And for some, that means federal floor.
00:26:14.000 And then flexibility for states to be able to react and for others it's entirely a state issue.
00:26:20.000 For me, I think it's pretty fundamental for the federal government to respect life in all forms and that's why I'm a pro-life congressman.
00:26:32.000 We're back live and indeed the people of northwest Florida are pro-life.
00:26:36.000 It says a lot about our nation, how we stand for the liberty interests of the unborn and I will continue to do that.
00:26:44.000 Whenever Firebrand is mentioned in the mainstream media, even the liberal media outlets that hate us, I like to sometimes give you a perspective on how they write about the show and think about the show as we give you direct updates regarding what's going on in Washington, D.C. and why it's happening.
00:27:02.000 So Raw Story is a left-wing website.
00:27:06.000 I would typically not trust them on any real fact.
00:27:13.000 Indeed, this piece that I'm going to share with you is an opinion piece of theirs, and it is styled, The GOP Civil War is Apparently Now Cleaning Out Closets.
00:27:24.000 I'm reading now from the piece.
00:27:26.000 But unlike most Republicans in the House, oh, I'm sorry, just for context, this is a piece that goes over the segment that we did about House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith when Congressman Smith was attacking me for lying.
00:27:42.000 And I pointed out that Jason Smith is the last person in the world who should be attacking anyone for lying.
00:27:48.000 So here's what the piece says.
00:27:50.000 Unlike most Republicans in the House, Smith is 44 and single.
00:27:55.000 And one of his closest friends in Congress for years, someone he traveled with on lavish trips, was none other than Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock.
00:28:04.000 The closeted gay House member who resigned in 2015 amid a scandal that focused on his outrageous misuse of government funds and eventually was indicted in 2016 for fraud and theft of government funds, among other charges.
00:28:19.000 Attention was brought to their relationship when the spotlight focused on the luxurious trips Shock was taking, often spending taxpayer dollars.
00:28:29.000 As reported by The Hill in 2018, Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri, joined his close friend Aaron Schock on campaign and government trips and exotic vacations in 2014 that were begun by being scrutinized by federal investigators looking into the alleged spending abuses by the former congressman who resigned.
00:28:52.000 Revelations that Smith accompanied Schock on the campaign trip Came as well.
00:28:59.000 The Hill reported that Smith has hired Shock's former chief of staff, Mark Roman, who managed the congressman's office at the time of the spending scandal.
00:29:08.000 There's no indication that federal prosecutors have questioned or sought records from Smith, but his participation on trips now under criminal investigation could drag one of Shock's closest friends in Congress into his legal mess and undermine Smith's political image as a humble, salt-of-the-earth fiscal conservative.
00:29:27.000 The news has also led to chatter on Capitol Hill, where Romans hiring by Smith surprised many.
00:29:35.000 The story also reported on a trip that Smith took with shock to Brazil, along with two other House members, most of which was paid for by the Brazilian government.
00:29:44.000 But after the official business, the Hill reports, shock, Smith, and several of their male aides headed to the Brazilian beach town of Canoa, Cabedara, a gay-friendly resort spot.
00:29:58.000 Smith and Schock also went to Argentina with their aides.
00:30:02.000 The Hill now reported on how unusual it was for members to take their aides on lavish vacations.
00:30:09.000 Later that December, Schock posted Instagram photos of himself, Smith, Roman, and Schock's photographer, Jonathan Link, hanging out at a vineyard in the famed Mendoza wine region of Argentina and whitewater rafting.
00:30:29.000 Some GOP aides said it was odd for lawmakers to be taking their staff on exotic vacations.
00:30:35.000 As one noted, one of the aides on both the Brazil trip and the Argentina trip was Roman, who as The Hill reports, many were surprised Smith hired as his chief of staff since he was managing shocks during the time of the spending scandal.
00:30:53.000 Roman has now moved up from being Smith's chief of staff to being the staff director of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which Smith chairs.
00:31:03.000 Quite something.
00:31:06.000 Raw story reporting on these two guys being buddies, shock having all these problems about how money was being spent, leaves They all went on vacation with their aides together to all these interesting places.
00:31:20.000 And then Smith hires the guy who oversaw the office that had the spending problems, makes him his chief of staff, same guy he was in all these pictures with on all these exotic vacations, and then makes him staff director of the House Ways and Means Committee.
00:31:36.000 Quite something.
00:31:38.000 We end our report to you today with sad news.
00:31:42.000 Five service members have been killed in a training crash.
00:31:45.000 The Department of Defense has identified the service members who passed away on November 10, 2023, in what the Pentagon has described as a helicopter refueling training exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean.
00:31:58.000 And we want everyone to know that our condolences go out to the families of Chief Warrant Officer Stephen R. Dwyer of Clarksville, Tennessee.
00:32:08.000 He was 38 years old.
00:32:10.000 Chief Warrant Officer Shane Barnes, 34, of Sacramento, California.
00:32:16.000 And Staff Sergeant Tanner W. Grone, 26, of New Hampshire.
00:32:21.000 Also, Andrew Sutherland of Apache Junction, Arizona.
00:32:26.000 Cade Wolf, 24, of Monotoco, Minnesota.
00:32:31.000 Certainly never in the field of human conflict was so much owed so many to so few.
00:32:39.000 That from Winston Churchill and certainly something on our minds as we think about those five patriots, those five heroes, their families, and all who cared about them and loved them.
00:32:49.000 Make sure you're subscribed to our program with your notifications turned on so that you get news coming out as we proceed on these government funding battles, on these battles against Washington corruption, and certainly battles for our service members and those who enjoy their Second Amendment rights.
00:33:04.000 Appreciate you being here.
00:33:05.000 Roll the credits.