On this episode of Firebrand, Rep. Matt Gaetz speaks on the loss of three U.S. servicemen and women in an attack carried out by Iran-backed forces in the Middle East. Rep. Corey Mills joins the show to talk about the impact of the attack on our troops in Jordan and the response to it. Also, we have a report on the situation in Ukraine and the situation on the southern border with our southern neighbor, the Republic of Korea. And we have an update on the latest in the Iran/Russia situation, including a new report from the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, or JIEDDO. Firebrand is a production of the Center for American-Islamic Studies at the University of St. Thomas More in Baltimore, MD. Our theme song is Come Alone by The Weakerthans, courtesy of Lotuspool Records, and our ad music is by Build Buildings Records, recorded live at WFMU in Baltimore. Thanks for listening and share Firebrand with your fellow Firebrand listeners! Tweet us if you like what you heard! and share it on your stories, we'll be looking out for you in next week's episode! Timestamps: 5:00 - What would you like to be featured on Firebrand? 6:30 - What do you think of the latest episode? 7:00 8:15 - What s your favorite part of the show? 9:40 - What's your favorite? 11: Should we do next? 12:00 | What s the most important thing? 15:00 + 17: What do we need to do next week? 16:40 17:20 - How do you want to hear from the President s response? 18:30 19:10 - What are you looking forward to the President's response to the latest update on Iran s response to this? 21:00 // 22:10 23:00 -- What would your thoughts on Iran? 25:30 -- How would you think about Iran s role in this situation? 26:30 + 27: What s going on in the other place? 27: How do we move forward? 29:40 -- Why did you think this case? 32:00 & 27:10 -- What's going to be the next step? 35:00 Thoughts and Thoughts? 36:00-- Is this a good day?
00:06:16.000And what response options is the president considering?
00:06:19.000I hope you can understand why I'm not going to telegraph any punches here from the podium, nor will I get in front of the president or his decision-making.
00:06:26.000He's met twice with the national security team yesterday and today.
00:07:00.000We are live broadcasting out of room 2021 in the Rayburn House office building at the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. Since I've been with you last, I've been all over the country, Iowa, New Hampshire, back down to Palm Beach, Florida, and then out to Montana.
00:07:12.000And what I can tell you is I've not entirely thought out yet.
00:07:15.000There are parts of my body that I think will always be cold after experiencing 30 Below.
00:07:19.000But thank you to all of our viewers and listeners around the country.
00:07:23.000I love nothing more than when folks come up and say that they get the real information about what's going on in the United States Congress right here on Firebrand.
00:08:07.000You know all the players in the region.
00:08:09.000You know all of the push and pull factors.
00:08:12.000To someone who is waking up to the news that three Americans are dead, dozens are injured, how would you describe what's going on?
00:08:18.000I mean, first off, I think we have to go ahead and take a pause just to go ahead and acknowledge the new Gold Star families and the three heroes that just got lost.
00:08:26.000We also have to acknowledge and hope for a speedy recovery when it comes to the now 34 people who've been injured.
00:08:31.000So I think that's first and foremost, just to look at our armed services.
00:08:36.000Looking forward, I mean, we have to go ahead and do the post-blast analysis on this.
00:08:40.000We have to start looking at identifying exactly what took place, whether or not there was a jammer that somehow prevented us from being able to track this capability.
00:08:47.000I don't buy off on the fact that they mistake this for being a friendly.
00:09:05.000That's why they continue to advance things, whether it be BRICS, you know, the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, which now KSA is involved in.
00:09:13.000That's why they extend the Belt and Road Initiative to take over the Eastern European expansion, Oceania, as well as for Africa to cut off Western Hemisphere supply chain.
00:09:21.000That's why they're building military bases and spy bases in Cuba, 90 miles off of our coast, but also using economic coercion around the Panama Canal to cut us off.
00:09:29.000The point is that they're all doing this as an effort to try and pull us into a long and prolonged war that even President Trump and many have admitted was really stupid for us to be involved in.
00:09:39.000Think about Iraq and Afghanistan, for example.
00:09:41.000Trillions of dollars, thousands of lives.
00:09:45.000It increased Iran's capabilities and capacity by eliminating Saddam, who was actually keeping them at bay.
00:09:50.000And so there's a lot of arguments to be had, but this is not merely about just Iran or the proxy militias in Iraq wanting to launch an attack.
00:09:58.000There's a lot of things that are involved in this to try and bring us into it.
00:10:02.000So you're pitching a theory that, in a way, this is a Venus flytrap.
00:10:07.000Well, it's weakness and vice-aggression, and they know there's going to be absolutely nothing that's going to happen.
00:10:12.000Look, you didn't see these types of attacks whenever President Trump was in office because he made it very clear that there would be an absolute decimation of those individuals who actually attack and kill American troops.
00:10:22.000But before this actually occurred, this is the thing.
00:10:25.000They have to have the economic means in order to be able to carry these attacks out.
00:10:28.000They have not had that under President Trump, but under Biden...
00:10:31.000They had the largest increase in oil exportation and oil revenue.
00:11:20.000Look what just happened with the UAE who is no longer going to use our currency to trade in energy.
00:11:26.000Why do you think these things are occurring?
00:11:27.000It's because China has continued to try and spread this notion that the dollar will have no valuation and even developing nations are running away.
00:11:35.000And with Biden in the office, we're going to continue to weaken ourselves on the world stage and this is going to continue to be propagated.
00:11:40.000So there's always the fog of war in these moments, and one of the misunderstandings that seems to have emerged is where this attack occurred.
00:11:49.000And we've gotten conflicting reports out of the Jordanians.
00:11:53.000Let's go ahead and put up this news report.
00:11:55.000Three service members killed, 34 injured in drone attack on American forces in Jordan.
00:12:00.000But then the Jordanian state television is quoting one of their government spokes saying that this happened in Syria.
00:12:11.000So my assessment here is that Jordan is a powder keg, that you've got a situation with a population there very distraught and upset over the conflict going on between Israel and Gaza, and you've got a European Educated King who often aligns with the West and collaborates with the West there.
00:12:46.000I think that you saw the intensification of...
00:12:50.000Those who are rioting, those who are having protests with regards to what was occurring in Gaza.
00:12:54.000You have the Queen, Queen Rania, who is an amazing lady who is also a Palestinian ethnicity.
00:13:01.000And so you have people who want to see a stronger, robust approach.
00:13:05.000And many people think that King Hussein does not actually represent Jordan, that he was a Sandhurst, UK cavalry officer who doesn't really uphold the Hashemite ways.
00:13:16.000And so you're right with saying it's a powder keg.
00:13:18.000I think that this was originally a, this happened on Syria, not with us, therefore we can't be held accountable.
00:13:24.000Because they don't want it to seem as if we're launching attacks out of Jordan against anyone who may they see as an ally by some extent.
00:13:32.000But, you know, we define our work in Jordan under train and equip authorities.
00:13:38.000And so it would be somewhat awkward if we were doing a whole lot of strike as an aligned activity with train and equip.
00:13:47.000Especially if we didn't actually inform the king or didn't inform the Jordanian, you know, intelligence or any of the military there.
00:13:54.000I mean, that's an actual violation for what they probably want as regards to like a status of forces agreement to have us there.
00:13:59.000So, yeah, but from my understanding, though, this outpost Tower 22, which is in Jordan, is not an actual combatant outpost.
00:14:07.000We do have military bases, which are obviously in Syria.
00:14:10.000You and I have argued ad nauseum and debated on the floor about the removal and repeal of AUMF 0102, 57 and 91.
00:14:17.000And so my whole thing is, I don't think, though, what took place in Jordan, I go back to your original premise, which is that I think that they understand it's a powder keg.
00:14:25.000They don't want to have a protest and a civil unrest that's occurring in Jordan.
00:14:29.000And the king was trying to basically go ahead and shadow this out to being a Syrian issue.
00:14:33.000As we are, you know, contemplating the different strategic choices we have to make to not be in a full-fledged kinetic war with Iran or their proxies as Americans are spilling blood.
00:14:46.000We get the not-so-subtle commentary from Lindsey Graham and John Cornington.
00:14:59.000Tucker Carlson had a take on that that was lunacy and shared it on social media.
00:15:05.000What do you make of some of these neoconservatives in the Senate saying that the appropriate response to what we have encountered should be direct strikes in Iran from the United States?
00:15:17.000Well, gosh, I'd love to see some of these actually come out and say, Shut the border down now.
00:15:21.000Let's go ahead and hit the cartels hard.
00:15:23.000But instead, they're so worried about building up a military-industrial base and flooding the attacks abroad.
00:15:28.000Look, where were they under the 150-plus other attacks that occurred in Iraq?
00:15:31.000The 39-plus that was occurring by the Houthis that disrupted 12% of global commerce.
00:15:37.000Now, all of a sudden, it's hit them hard, hit them hard.
00:15:40.000Neoconservative, we're going to go into warfare.
00:15:41.000You know, we should pass some law for Congress that when you pass an actual, like, You know, a war act, or you try and basically declare war, that you need to throw that uniform on yourself.
00:15:50.000And let's see how many of these people continue to yell, war, war, war.
00:15:53.000Because every single person that I hear that is so pro-war give more money to Ukraine.
00:15:58.000This is the same Lindsey Graham, by the way, that was sitting here saying, it's so great every time we send money and kill Russians.
00:16:03.000It's like, what exactly is your motive here?
00:16:06.000Are you getting a little bit of a trade off of this?
00:16:08.000Because it doesn't make sense that any of these warfares benefit the America First agenda.
00:16:12.000How is spilling more blood in our treasures somewhere else benefiting America at home?
00:16:23.000And playing this tit for tat, where we're basically going ahead and saying, okay, we're going to allow our troops abroad to go ahead and play catch with missiles and drone attacks and And then we're going to do an equal and proportionate response.
00:16:35.000Why don't we, instead of thinking kinetically, why aren't we going after them economically?
00:16:38.000Why aren't we looking at China who's refining the majority of the oil and saying, you're in violation of a sanctioned nation.
00:16:43.000We're going to do the same to you and start decoupling away.
00:16:46.000Why are we not looking at things in a smarter way that isn't spilling treasures, but actually keeping them at home and helping to protect American lives?
00:16:53.000Why are we keeping our troops in these areas to begin with?
00:16:58.000You believe that there are levers and pressure points To kind of keep Iran and their proxies in a box that doesn't lead to full-fledged war.
00:17:05.000Now, I would argue that when Trump took out Soleimani, that crippled this network of proxies for quite some time, and now they're starting to flex as a consequence of Biden giving $6 billion to Iran.
00:17:17.000Well, I would argue that the elimination of Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis only resulted in the replacement of Ishmael Ghani and Abu Farrak al-Muhammadawi, which the only thing that slowed it down is that Ishmael Ghani, who came in to replace Soleimani, wasn't a linguist.
00:18:06.000Why do we feel that we have to play a pertinent role in the Middle East?
00:18:09.000Why can't we focus on the priorities of supporting allies, pushing things like President Trump did, which was brilliant, which is the Abram Accords, which, by the way, we know that the October 7th incident was also part of Iran's thing because they didn't want Saudi Arabia to sign the Abram Accords normalizing relationship with Israel.
00:18:24.000Because of what that would have meant for the actual stabilization in the region.
00:18:27.000Look, Iran is trying their best to their proxies and China is supporting it as well to make this a regional war.
00:18:34.000They don't want it to just be between Hamas and Israel.
00:18:36.000They don't want it to just be between our US Navy and the transit corridors with Houthis.
00:18:41.000They want this to be a regional conflict and war to point the finger but to drag us in.
00:18:46.000And that's where things start becoming very aggressive.
00:18:48.000Well, and that type of a regional war then pits more of these domestic populations against the monarchies that rule them, and in some cases the dictators who rule them, right?
00:18:57.000Because in a conflict that is Israel and Gaza without spillover, Iran doesn't achieve its objective of avoiding the isolation that the Abraham Accords had set up.
00:19:10.000And China doesn't achieve their objective, which is continuing to drain down on economic and The U.S. in the event that they attack Taiwan.
00:19:18.000Okay, so I want to go to another kind of claim that we've seen very recently.
00:19:24.000Some reporting in the Wall Street Journal indicating this.
00:19:27.000U.S. failed to stop attack in Jordan after mix-up over drone identity.
00:19:32.000So the argument in this Wall Street Journal piece is that we thought that the nasty drone that came in was a friendly.
00:19:39.000That we confused the nasty for the friendly.
00:19:43.000I'm trying to get briefings soon, and I know you and I will be calling for one in the coming days, if not the coming hours, to really get a clear sense of what did we believe the friendly was that was coming back?
00:19:55.000How would our systems have confused those?
00:19:57.000But what's your reaction to this Wall Street Journal report?
00:20:00.000Well, I absolutely don't buy it, and I'll tell you why.
00:20:02.000When we send drones out from any base, we track those.
00:20:05.000If we know that it's actually traveling at a certain speed and pace on a certain flight trajectory, Then we'll know where it's coming in and we'll actually have that highlighted red.
00:20:13.000The question I have then is, okay, let's just say that it's not a jammer system that's actually blocking communications and that it went dark on us.
00:20:20.000Is it because we prioritized over the last few years DEI over meritocracy?
00:20:25.000Now we're not having, you know, this is almost the airline pilot issue.
00:20:27.000Do I want the one with the most hours and the most qualified or do I want one who fits into a certain diversity and equity and inclusion bracket?
00:20:34.000That's what we're starting to have to look at.
00:21:39.000What we want to do is to prevent the loss of life, to prevent these types of kinetic activities.
00:21:44.000And so having an immediate reaction, which is emotional, for a proportionate and equal response, that all sounds good, but we've got to get the facts to ensure that we actually can do this in a more methodical and more carried out way.
00:21:55.000You know and I know that in the Middle East, alliances shift faster than square dancing partners in the American South, and the tribes and groups that can be aligned with a particular leader or political movement or campaign, in one instance, can really shift around like the sands.
00:22:12.000And there was a report in The Hill that I took note of and want to ask you about, and they talk about the connection Between those who launched this attack that killed Americans and Iraq.
00:22:24.000And when Americans think about Iraq, we think, well, we've got so much blood and treasure and time into that country.
00:22:29.000We all want to believe that the government in Iraq is at least better than Saddam, or at least less of a threat to the United States with all that we've poured in there.
00:22:39.000But in this report from The Hill, it reads, the Department of Defense is investigating how an Iraqi militia's suicide drone struck the U.S. military In a base in Jordan on Saturday night.
00:22:50.000And I've talked to some folks also familiar with the region that say that this is the Islamic resistance in Iraq entity that falls within the umbrella of the popular mobilization forces in Iraq, which is supported by the government.
00:23:04.000So you've got the government of Iraq that we still send money to, that we still are collaborating with at a military level, then functioning as an umbrella entity over this popular...
00:23:17.000Mobilization force, and then the very people that align and associate there are involved in the attacks against Americans.
00:23:26.000So are we funding and supporting the attacks against our own troops?
00:23:32.000In 2005, George W. Bush had this brilliant idea to put in Paul Bremer, who is the absolute worst at foreign policy possible.
00:23:40.000He was the reason for the sectarian democracy breakdown during the debathification, but what we saw In 2005, under the Iraq Constitution, they had something called Article 76. This created a sectarianism that has only existed in pre-apartheid South Africa and Northern Ireland, where they said that the largest parliamentary bloc, knowing that would be Shia, is allowed to pick the president, which has to be Kurdish, and the Kurdish president...
00:24:03.000He has to pick the Prime Minister, but only from the three people the Parliamentary Bloc tells him are approved.
00:24:10.000You have Haidi Al-Amri, who runs Better Organization.
00:24:13.000You have former Prime Minister Norial Maliki, who creates the Dawah.
00:24:16.000You have Muqtadr al-Sadr, who creates the Sayyum Bloc.
00:24:19.000Between the three of them, they control all of Parliament, which means that now you've got the Shia Iranian-backed militias.
00:24:25.000And oh, by the way, Heidi Olamide is one that went over to Iran and fought against Saddam with the Iranians.
00:24:30.000He's now one of the largest parliamentary blocs.
00:24:32.000So it doesn't matter whether it was al-Kadimi.
00:24:34.000It doesn't matter whether it's the current Prime Minister al-Soudani.
00:24:37.000We set Iraq up for failure when we put this 2005 Iraq Constitution.
00:24:41.000Right, I get all that, but my question is more, I guess, visceral.
00:24:44.000Like, are we going to end up finding out that the people who killed Injured Americans have some link back to the Iraqi government.
00:24:53.000You're going to find out that it's going to have some type of a political affiliation, whether it be Hadi al-Amri, who already runs proxy militias for Iran, Hashti al-Shabia, Sabi al-Bin Haq.
00:25:01.000We know that Qais Qazali, who is one of his partners, runs Qatab, Hezbollah, and others who have attacked us.
00:25:06.000It is not a mystery that over a decade plus now, that these large parliamentary blocs...
00:25:13.000are actually responsible in supporting the very militias who are attacking our embassies, attacking us, and yet we're still funding them.
00:25:19.000Just like we funded and trained the, what, eight coup leaders in Africa?
00:25:23.000Look, we have to start getting our foreign policy right.
00:25:26.000We have not done it for decades, and this is what's driving us to the point where we are.
00:25:32.000I am incensed that we are literally participating in really a whitewashing of what the Iraqi government is doing and allowing, and Americans are dead as a consequence, We're good to get that foreign policy right.
00:25:44.000We do want to turn to the border, though, something Congressman Mills, my colleague from Florida, mentioned earlier.
00:25:49.000And we've got a hot reaction from Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick regarding the ongoing standoff between state and federal officials.
00:25:56.000Here's the Lieutenant Governor of Texas.
00:26:00.000You know, the founders never dreamed we'd have a president like this when it would just open the door to everyone.
00:26:04.000And they said, well, invasion if an army came.
00:27:10.000I've had a chance to visit with many of them, and all they want to do is secure this border.
00:27:14.000We're here live with Congressman Corey Mills, and your reaction to the Lieutenant Governor saying, we don't want a conflict, but at the same time, Texas will not back down.
00:27:23.000Well, my whole question is, when are we going to acknowledge the 10th Amendment rights for state and individual liberties?
00:27:27.000Why are we not going to acknowledge Texas' sovereignty?
00:27:30.000Why are we not going to look at the fact that, you know, these drug cartels, which by the way, Joe Biden is like employee of the month every month for these drug cartels.
00:27:37.000In 2021, they went from what was $500 million in revenue in 2018 to $1,300.
00:27:44.000You don't think that this is impacting the people of Texas.
00:27:46.000You don't see the increase in criminality.
00:27:48.000You don't hear in the Homeland Security Committee hearings the mothers who are crying over their children who are being murdered and fentanyl overdoses at 70 to 100,000.
00:27:57.000Yes, Lieutenant Dan Patrick is absolutely correct.
00:28:01.000Texas has a right to stand and fight for itself.
00:28:03.000I stand with Texas in their right to their sovereignty.
00:28:05.000So he makes the argument, Texas isn't backing down, but we get this fresh report this morning in Politico playbook where a Biden administration official is essentially saying that Biden is backing down.
00:28:17.000Here's the background quote from a Biden admin official.
00:28:20.000Quote, President Biden is finally admitting that he's given up on his campaign promise to enact more humane immigration policies than Trump.
00:28:28.000He would rather adopt Trump's border rhetoric than continue the work he started as vice president to fix the border by addressing the root causes of migration.
00:28:38.000So this is obviously some sort of woke admin official for Joe Biden.
00:28:46.000Biden gets that this has been a total failure and they have to take the L and maybe the best way to take that L is to acknowledge that Trump's policies were working.
00:28:57.000But if you've got these folks in the admin who are like the lib resistance to Joe Biden, what does it even say about their ability to execute on a border strategy?
00:29:07.000Well, look, you're exactly right when you talk about how he wants to now go back to the Trump policies.
00:29:12.000Look, Remain in Mexico should have stayed there the entire time.
00:29:15.000Title 42, maybe it's not directed around COVID, but the emergency health care issue...
00:29:21.000It's all of those who are coming from South America where they don't have vaccinations for polio.
00:29:25.000We're seeing polio vaccinations getting, you know, ramped up again here in the United States where we're seeing the fentanyl overdose.
00:29:30.000We could have used Title 42 to remain in Mexico and all the other policies.
00:29:33.000But look, we need to just enforce the laws on the books.
00:29:37.000At no point in time do we need to continue to worry about passing new things when we know for a fact that the key issue is let's get all the justices down to the borders to process these supposed asylum claims, turn them back around and get them out of our country.
00:29:49.000Why are we doing this catch and release?
00:29:50.000Ten years from now, you can come to us and do your court case.
00:29:58.000If you say, if you try to come to the United States, if you try to apply, look, you just violated one law.
00:30:03.000Why are we even going to consider you to be An American citizen when we are a rule of law and you've already shown that you can't follow the law.
00:30:11.000I think that we go ahead and start making things where we get rid of the actual anchor baby situation where one or both parents has to be citizens in order for their child to qualify.
00:30:19.000I think that we look at trying to make sure that we do the Remain in Mexico agreement.
00:30:22.000We start looking at working with the South American countries the way Trump did to go ahead and hold them in place and not have them skip four or five.
00:30:28.000There's a lot of things that we can do that are already existing on the books, but also you've got Executive Order 212 Section F. President Biden can secure the border right now just like this.
00:30:39.000See, that is the fiction that the Open Borders crew and, frankly, the pro-Ukraine crew is pitching in Washington, D.C., that there has to be some bill to stop this.
00:30:49.000So there has to be some grand bargain.
00:31:04.000When he was trying to prevent people from coming in, he was called a xenophobe.
00:31:08.000And meanwhile, all he was doing is what we all should do is protect America.
00:31:12.000That's what this admin official who's out backgrounding against the Biden administration is frustrated about, is that there's an acknowledgement that what Trump did worked.
00:31:22.000Now, we've got this terrible amnesty bill that has emerged in the Senate that Senator Lankford has supported, that you've got the whole crew over there that always seems to want open borders behind.
00:31:34.000And the reason that that bill is not going to become law is because we will kill it in the House of Representatives.
00:34:01.000The entire world, the first 5,000 people who show up at our border just get waved in, there will be a mass of humanity that will be built up on the other side that will cause tremendous humanitarian carnage, that will cause an overrun of the border.
00:34:20.000And if you think that that 5,000 number will ever go down if it were in law, That is total.
00:34:32.000And the Lankford bill is so bad that any Republican who supports that better never run another campaign ad About how they care about border security.
00:35:14.000You mean the fact that you're a border state who liked sanctuary, but now every one of your cities is completely riddled with crime?
00:35:19.000The ones that have You know, again, as Governor DeSantis put it out, remember the poop map?
00:35:24.000I mean, he literally brought it out where people are defecating and there's needles all down the sidewalk.
00:35:28.000I mean, look, this is your state, and you're going to try and point fingers at the rest of the country?
00:35:31.000And talking about playing politics, you and I just mentioned this.
00:35:34.000If the president wants to shut and secure the border, he can do it right now under 212 Section F. He can re-implement the Trump policies Remain in Mexico.
00:35:43.000He can ensure that our CBP and ICE are allowed to do their jobs and enforce the actual legislation and the laws on the books.
00:35:49.000At no point in time, it's not like you and I are passing this grandiose law where it says violating our sovereignty is something new.
00:36:02.000And I can tell you, I'll be right there to kill the rule on this to make sure that it never even gets to a vote.
00:36:07.000Speaker Mike Johnson indicating that it will not come for a vote in the House because we're not for amnesty.
00:36:12.000We want to force Joe Biden to do exactly what Congressman Mills and I have been saying.
00:36:16.000Use his authorities to do what Trump did and stop that flow.
00:36:19.000Also on the border, breaking news from the Homeland Security Committee.
00:36:24.000Ali Mayorkas will face two articles of impeachment.
00:36:27.000The first being the willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.
00:36:30.000Secretary Mayorkas has violated his oath to defend the Constitution of the United States by willfully and systemically refusing to comply with federal immigration laws and acting in a manner subversive to the rule of law, despite clear evidence that this willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law has led to unprecedented levels of illegal immigration, the fentanyl crisis, cartel control at the southwest border, and debilitating human and financial costs.
00:36:54.000Secretary Mayorkas has implemented a catch-and-release scheme violating the detention requirements and misusing parole authority.
00:37:01.000That's Article 1. Article 2, breach of the public trust.
00:37:04.000Secretary Mayorkas has breached the public trust by violating his oath to well and faithfully discharge the duties of his office and his statutory duty to control and guard the border of the United States.
00:37:16.000Secretary Mayorkas willfully failed to replace the enforcement initiatives he had abandoned with viable alternatives that would establish I think
00:37:46.000that is well laid out by the Homeland Security Committee.
00:37:48.000The only critique as a lawyer, I believe that obstruction should have been its own count.
00:37:53.000I've met with the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, and time and again when they are trying to do the oversight that would inform our policy choices and the changes they need to make at DHS, Mayorkas himself has been directing obstruction of oversight.
00:38:09.000And so I know that's within the public trust count now, but I would have broken it out as a third count.
00:38:15.000The real question, will we get all the Republicans to vote for it?
00:38:18.000No Democrat will vote to impeach Mayorkas.
00:38:21.000Do you think we'll have unified Republican support?
00:38:24.000I don't see how any Republican can vote against the impeachment, seeing that this is a will for dereliction.
00:38:29.000The same as you and I have pointed out that with Secretary Austin, we actually do have bipartisan support for his removal, but yet that's not even made it to the front yet.
00:38:37.000Look, I want to go back to one thing that was talked about when they talk about politics.
00:38:41.000The reason that Biden doesn't shut the border down, the reason that Lankford Schumer likes to do these types of amnesty deals is because they want to ultimately, they know they can shut the border down right now.
00:38:50.000They know they can stop this insurgence that is just flowing across.
00:38:54.000But the reality is that they don't want to so they can tether it to things like the Ukrainian funding bills.
00:38:59.000And the other types of international aid that they know they can't get support for as a singular bill, they want to try and lump this in.
00:39:05.000When it comes to, you know, kind of this whole thing about the impeachment, there is no question that Mayorkas has failed to uphold his duties.
00:39:13.000What he swore his oath into office to do.
00:39:17.000And so I think that we have to come together.
00:39:47.000A news piece I want to go over, we're getting this from the AP. Officials stole $40 million meant to buy arms for the war with Russia, Ukraine says.
00:39:56.000So while we continue to hear folks on the Armed Services Committee and among the defense contractor base say, oh, just send more.
00:40:03.000Just send more money, send more weapons to Ukraine.
00:40:06.000Yet another report, $40 million missing.
00:40:08.000What confidence do you have in With cash and materiel, that what we send there is getting into the fight?
00:40:17.000That is why, even back in December of 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene put something on the floor, which is an HR inquiry, to do a 100% audit on Ukraine.
00:40:28.000We said that that was our actual benchmark.
00:40:30.000Before we talk about any further funding, I want 100% audit of this thing.
00:40:36.000That $40 million, that's a lot of money, but I guarantee that is a thumbnail sketch of what it will actually be when we see the real audit here.
00:40:44.000When you talk about how many people Zelensky has gotten rid of for corruption, when you start talking about the procurement arms that are civilian and private procurement arms like We have to acknowledge 100 plus billion dollars.
00:41:02.000Imagine if it's a fraction of that went to our own border.
00:41:05.000And that's why I am not going to tell the taxpayers if they try to lump these bills in.
00:41:37.000So, you know, the Ukraine matter has been galvanizing to a lot of our base because they do see it in terms you just laid out.
00:41:45.000Continuing to support for Ukraine is viewed by so many Americans as selling out our own country and our own interests for some unknowable gain.
00:41:54.000And while I know there are many fair criticisms of Mike Johnson as House Speaker, for those looking at the scoreboard, under Kevin McCarthy, we authorized $115 billion to Ukraine.
00:42:06.000And now you're starting to see that we did that without the adequate controls, without the adequate oversight, and with a willingness to accept blatant violations of our laws regarding how we're supposed to watch this stuff.
00:42:31.000But if Kevin McCarthy were still Speaker, we would be filling out the authorizations with no scrutiny, no review, none of the tough questions that Congressman Mills just laid out.
00:42:41.000So while progress is sometimes slower than we think and will never turn the battleship all at once, I do think it means something that our current House leadership is at least asking the tough questions and not sending more money to Ukraine.
00:42:56.000The National Journal had a great review of Podcasts that were coming from members of Congress.
00:43:03.000The piece is entitled The Sound Clips and the Fury Inside House Republicans Live Streamed Revolt.
00:43:09.000And the premise of this piece is that the Firebrand podcast, the Firebrand audience, and the audiences of the podcasts from my friend Andy Biggs and others continue to allow us to make a case directly to you, the people.
00:43:25.000over 25 million views on the clips that we have on social media.
00:43:29.000And the piece rightly credited our executive producer, my comms director, the man who has powered Firebrand since day one, Joel Valdez, and our entire team, which includes Sasha Tomolchov, Jacob Bliss, John Wilson, also Jim Beely and Derek Miller, and Andrew Kloster from our Ledge team, who regularly contribute and Andrew Kloster from our Ledge team, who regularly contribute to the ideas that we want to be able to present So thank you to everyone.