In this episode, Rep. Bob Goode (R-VA) speaks at a press conference in support of Rep. Matt Gaetz's efforts to protect Americans' Fourth Amendment rights from deep state agencies like the FBI and the NSA. Rep. Goode is a member of the Freedom Caucus, a conservative group in the House of Representatives, and the leader of the Commonwealth of Virginia's conservative Freedom Caucus. He is also the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which is on the verge of reauthorizing one of the most abused surveillance programs that exists in the federal government, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Congressman Goode joins me to talk about the importance of the Fourth Amendment and the need for reform of the FISA Act. He also talks about the need to protect the privacy rights of American citizens, including the right to keep and bear arms, and why the Deep State should not be allowed to spy on American citizens without a warrant, no matter how much data they collect from their phones, computers, and Wi-Fi hotspots. Join us in the conversation by using the hashtag and on social media and other social media, and be sure to subscribe to our new podcast, to stay up to date with the latest episodes of the show! Subscribe, rate, and review the show wherever you get your favorite streaming service! Subscribe to our newest podcast, and remember that you get the best streaming service wherever you consume your favorite podcast! You get notified when new episodes are available. You can also become a supporter of our new episodes of The Best Damn Podcast wherever you listen to the show. Subscribe and review our newest episode of the podcast, The Bestest Podcasts Subscribe! Get notified when we post a review, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, subscribe on iTunes, wherever you re listening to the latest episode of The Good Morning America podcast? You re getting the best podcast in the podcast? Subscribe to my podcast, Best Podcasts? Subscribe on iTunes Connected by clicking here Learn more about your ad choices? Leave us a review and share the podcast with your thoughts on the podcast by becoming a fellow podcasting platform? I am listening to our podcast, rating and reviewing our podcasting greatsomewhere else? , and we re giving you a review on social listening to us Thanks for listening to The Best Podcasting v=AIM_ Subscribe_
00:02:40.000Thank you for being here today for this important press conference addressing a critical issue that's facing the House.
00:02:52.000We're privileged here in this country to live in a country where the Constitution, our founding document, our highest law of the land, places a limit on government, particularly the federal government, and protects our citizens.
00:03:08.000Our Constitution tells the government what it can and cannot do.
00:03:14.000Our Bill of Rights, those first ten amendments, were put in place to further protect the citizens of the United States, to protect the rights that are given to us by God, but thankfully enshrined to us in our Constitution.
00:03:27.000But every day in America, you'll often hear someone joke about the government spying on us.
00:03:39.000Current law allows the U.S. government to collect data on you.
00:03:43.000It's Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. But House Republicans, under the leadership of Speaker Johnson, are on the verge of reauthorizing FISA. This is the same law that the FBI used and abused, mind you, to spy on President Trump's campaign, providing the impetus for this shameless, false, ridiculous Russian collusion scandal.
00:04:07.000To prevent such a tragedy from happening to other Americans, conservatives have worked in good faith throughout the reauthorization process to protect Americans' Fourth Amendment rights from deep state agencies like the FBI and the NSA. Unfortunately, the House Intelligence Committee and the DC Swamp are working overtime to make sure that FISA is reauthorized in a secret way As secretly as possible and putting the constitutional rights of millions of Americans, instead of up front, on the back burner.
00:04:35.000During this debate today with my colleagues who are assembled here, you're going to hear, or not during this from my colleagues, but during the larger debate, you'll hear false narratives about this bill.
00:04:44.000Supposedly restricting law enforcement from doing their job and hampering our ability to keep the country safe.
00:04:52.000Simply put, anonymous bureaucrats have abused this tool that was intended for foreign surveillance of threats to spy on American citizens.
00:05:01.000But conservatives are fighting for strict reforms to this law.
00:05:05.000FISA was reauthorized in 2018. Since then, the world has changed from both a national security standpoint and a technologically advanced standpoint that has resulted in more of your data being in the hands of the tech companies.
00:05:18.000We need to find that balance between keeping the nation safe while protecting you from big government.
00:05:24.000And prominently has to be the rights of US citizens, the constitutional freedoms that are protected to us by this country.
00:05:31.000The judiciary bill was overwhelmingly approved on a bipartisan basis.
00:05:35.000It turns out Democrats don't want to be spied on by their government either.
00:05:39.000At the end of the day, we've got to make sure that our government can't keep spying on its citizens without a warrant, that we can't keep buying data that would otherwise require a warrant, that the federal government cannot expand the spying to cover local private Wi-Fi hotspots, And that we can't allow the government, this Congress, to allow more ways for the federal government to spy on us.
00:06:03.000That is Congressman Bob Goode of the Commonwealth of Virginia leading the conservatives in fighting for our constitutional principles and rights as folks in the deep state, the intelligence community, and the Intelligence Committee try to reauthorize one of the most abused programs that exists in the federal government.
00:06:19.000Congressman Goode is my guest today and we are live Simulcast streaming out of the Rumble studios in Washington, D.C. Remember that the best way to consume Firebrand, you want to download the Rumble app, make sure you've got notifications turned on that time.
00:06:33.000Every way we go live, you get the notice, you get brought into the conversation.
00:06:37.000So I'm joined now by Congressman Goode.
00:06:39.000Bob, you are the Leader of the Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives.
00:06:44.000A lot of people associate the Freedom Caucus as the more conservative grouping of members.
00:06:50.000But talk a little bit about the Freedom Caucus that you lead, the organizing principles of the group, and where you think the group impacts outcomes here in D.C. One thing I often say, Matt, thanks for having me.
00:07:02.000I often will say there's two reasons why members of the Republican Conference aren't in the Freedom Caucus.
00:07:07.000Either they're not really conservative, or they just don't have the courage.
00:07:11.000And I always have to correct myself and say Matt Gaetz is the glaring exception to that, because Matt is obviously a rock-solid conservative who loves the country.
00:07:19.000Well, we got a lot of sympathizers and admirers, Massey and some others, you know?
00:07:23.000And Matt has the courage that's unmatched in Congress.
00:07:26.000But the Freedom Caucus exists to be the conservative anchor, the conservative conscience, the tip of the spear on the issues and the policy, to try to hold the party accountable, to be who we say we are, to do what we say we will do, to validate the trust that's placed in us when the American people give us the majority to do the things that we campaign on.
00:07:43.000Secondly, the Freedom Caucus exists to hold leadership accountable.
00:07:46.000And to be willing to confront our own team when we're wrong, when we're off course, when we're not living up to the standards that we claim to hold as Republicans.
00:07:55.000And sadly and unfortunately, as you know, because you're right there alongside us, often leading the way, we spend most of our time battling those who are supposed to be our own team members who are fighting us on the issue that press conferences related.
00:08:10.000We're fighting Republicans on reforming FISA in a way that puts the constitutional freedoms of Americans first.
00:08:15.000I'm going to get to FIIs in a moment, but broadly, this Freedom Caucus brand has really proliferated around the country.
00:08:23.000We're starting to see Freedom Caucus groups set up in state legislatures.
00:08:28.000Talk a little bit about how the goals that the Freedom Caucus has are served by this vertical integration strategy where you're getting people in state government aligned with these principles.
00:08:39.000We've got 11 or 12 state legislatures where we've started Freedom Caucus chapters, if you will.
00:08:47.000And we want to do it in all 50 states, plan to do it in all 50 states.
00:08:49.000Obviously, some states are tougher than others, but you're looking, again, for courageous conservative warriors who will fight and take the risks.
00:08:56.000And once you get that target on your back, and the state legislatures, some places are worse than it is in Washington.
00:09:01.000Some of our chapters, those members have been kicked out of the Republican Party, stripped of their committee assignments, stripped of their parking privileges.
00:09:08.000There's already been retaliation against them, so they're showing real courage.
00:09:18.000Make the Republican Party be on the national level.
00:09:21.000And then also, we want to have sort of a farm team, if you will, that we could have those who are fighting the good fight on the state level that we could look to to support that, hey, if you're going to take all the risks on the state level, it's no different, then you'd be the kind of candidate that we'd want to support trying to bring to Washington.
00:09:35.000So it's not only the work they're doing now, but it's really building that farm system for leaders at even higher levels.
00:09:42.000What better indication of how they'll fight here than having them take the arrows, take the heat, and fight for the right things with all the risks that come with that.
00:09:51.000When I got here, people told me, don't join the Freedom Caucus because it will reduce the amount of special interest money that you can raise.
00:09:59.000That lobbyists and PACs that sometimes give to both Republicans and Democrats, they have no problem giving to Republicans and Democrats, but they have a problem when donating to someone in the Freedom Caucus who might stand up and fight on some of these things.
00:10:14.000Is that something that still exists today?
00:10:17.000I think there's absolute truth to that, and you would know it because it's really about, and again, while you're not officially a member of the Freedom Caucus yet, but the stances that you take and the courage that you show and the loyalty to the country, to the Constitution, to doing what's right irrespective of party and what's in it for you politically, that's the reason why it's tough to get special interest money, K Street support, Wall Street support, and so forth.
00:10:55.000And they don't measure, and you know this better than I do, but they don't measure what's an A committee or a B committee based on how important it is for the country.
00:11:01.000It's about how much money you tend to raise because you're on that committee.
00:11:04.000So, you know, financial services, energy and Commerce, ways and means, appropriations, those kind of things where the high-dollar donors want to influence what's happening.
00:11:14.000You tend not to be able to get on those committees very easily if you're in the Freedom Caucus.
00:11:17.000And it does seem like a fork in the road for a lot of people in how they behave here in Washington because there's the group of people that say, as long as I'm getting the money, I'm willing to take bad votes.
00:11:29.000I'll have the money to explain away anything where maybe my constituents are critical.
00:11:34.000And then there are people who say, I can't do that.
00:11:37.000I'll take the more righteous path from a policy standpoint and I'll just live with less on kind of the campaign side.
00:11:45.000I think it says a lot about people kind of which of those paths they take.
00:11:49.000But I do want to get to this FISA press conference that you led.
00:12:10.000What do you think the key flashpoints are?
00:12:13.000As you know, you had two competing bills.
00:12:16.000Judiciary has jurisdiction over this issue, and you had a bill come out of Judiciary, which was a good bill.
00:12:22.000You had a bill come out of the Intelligence Committee, which is not a good bill, and didn't sufficiently put the premium or the priority on protecting Americans' constitutional liberties.
00:12:31.000What they're putting the premium on is allowing the deep state to be able to do whatever they want to do in the name of keeping us safe.
00:12:37.000And so it ought to be the Judiciary Committee that has priority here, and it should be the Judiciary Bill.
00:12:44.000But instead, unfortunately, there was compromise made, and the Intelligence Committee bill is the main text bill.
00:12:49.000But then we're supposed to be having four good amendments from the Judiciary Committee to try to make that bill as good as it can be.
00:12:57.000And we're in a battle right now in the conference because we were supposed to be voting on that bill today with those amendments.
00:13:03.000But the bottom line is, the Intelligence Committee, led by the Speaker—I'm sorry, the Chairman Mike Turner, essentially told the Speaker, hey, we're not going to vote—we're going to kill the rule and not allow the bill to come to the floor if you have votes on these amendments, these good amendments that would require a warrant.
00:13:21.000So even though the base bill is what the people who are pro-spying want, there's the pro-spying bill and the anti-spying bill.
00:13:28.000So the pro-spying bill is the basis, but the group that you led in this press conference, I was proud to be a participant, we're saying at least give us good amendments on a warrant, on not expanding to searching anywhere in public Wi-Fi, to not allowing an end run around the Fourth Amendment by purchasing What websites you've gone to or what emails you've sent from a data broker, those types of things.
00:13:50.000And if those amendments were adopted, I would think I could vote for the base bill.
00:14:05.000They're afraid they'll pass and they'll restrict the ability of the deep state to continue to spy on Americans and expand that capacity, which is what their bill does.
00:14:12.000And then secondly, they don't want it to pass, but they also don't want to have to vote against it.
00:14:17.000Turns out when you want to do bad stuff in Congress, you don't want American people to know what you want to do or what you intend to do.
00:14:37.000But they want to hide who they are and what they're trying to do.
00:14:40.000And they were even trying to, as you know, to go into secret session where they wouldn't have to operate out in the open for the American people to see.
00:14:49.000And it speaks to sincerity because what I get a sense of is that people will forgive a disagreement on an issue if they think you sincerely hold that view and that's well reasoned and thoughtful and they'll move to areas where they might agree with you to define how they think about you as a representative.
00:15:09.000But when you're not taking the votes and you're just playing this game, then I think people get really sensitive to like, well, where does my person even stand and are they telling me something different than what's going on?
00:16:32.000Now, a year from now, we hope, Lord willing, to be here with President Trump, a majority in the Senate, an expanded majority in the House.
00:16:38.000And then if we're not doing things for the American people, shame on us.
00:16:41.000But when reporters will ask me that, hey, you guys haven't passed much legislation, you haven't gotten much done, I say, okay, what would you like me to get done or us to get done that Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden would agree to?
00:16:51.000So your definition of getting things done is doing what Democrats want, to show we can govern no matter how poorly we govern, to show we can get things done no matter how harmful to the American people.
00:17:00.000So while we don't have a lot of victories with one house of one branch that we can have, look what we accomplish in terms of putting points on the board, if we slowed things down and we did less harm and we stopped the Democrats from advancing the ball in the wrong direction, we've done better than most Congresses.
00:17:17.000And too often the Republicans are willing to advance Democrat priorities just for the sake of motion, if not progress.
00:17:23.000They confuse motion and progress because sometimes you're moving in the wrong direction.
00:17:28.000Let's join hands with the Democrats, show we can get things done, show we can govern, show we can compromise, and the American people lose.
00:17:35.000And by the way, we're not saying we're allergic to working with Democrats.
00:17:38.000Matter of fact, the very things that you were talking about, I think, were views that actually are held by some Democrats who don't want to see just warrantless searches occurring at people.
00:17:48.000So we're not against working with Democrats.
00:17:49.000We're against obfuscating liberal policy with the veneer of Republican support.
00:17:56.000So there is some breaking news from CNN Manu Raju reporting that there is a new skinny Ukraine measure being negotiated.
00:18:04.000Brian Fitzpatrick and Don Bacon, two Republicans who are definitely more on the other side of the conference than we are.
00:18:11.000And they believe that we could lash about $20 billion in Ukraine munitions to a remain in Mexico policy on the border.
00:18:20.000They think they can go middle out on that, getting some Democrats.
00:18:24.000$20 billion for Ukraine, we get remain in Mexico.
00:18:29.000My initial sense of that, having not reviewed the legislation because it hasn't been put out, is that that's probably a bad deal for our country.
00:18:36.000That if we're going to be in some escalatory environment with Russia, Just to be able to reinstitute a policy that Joe Biden could with the stroke of a pen is really concerning.
00:18:46.000I know you haven't seen the bill either because it doesn't yet exist, but just the concept of taking Remain in Mexico in exchange for tens of billions more for Ukraine, how do you think the Freedom Caucus is going to absorb that?
00:18:58.000Well, I'm sure this is the last $20 billion that Don Bacon and the others are going to ask for their campaign-donating defense contract.
00:19:07.000I'm sure this is the last $20 billion they'll ask for.
00:19:09.000No, I'm not for any supplemental that's not paid for.
00:19:12.000Okay, so any country, any place in the world, we have to find offsets to pay for it.
00:19:16.000Yes, when you've got $34 trillion national debt, a $200 billion monthly deficit, at some point that's got to matter.
00:19:21.000The days of spending without consequence are over with 40-year high inflation, 20-year high interest rates, our credit being downgraded, the American people suffering under the inflation and the interest rates.
00:19:32.000Those days where it was just an abstract concept for the economists with the green visors on and the banker's lamp.
00:19:39.000So, yeah, it's got to start somewhere.
00:19:41.000Even Israel's funding, and I think we both voted the same way on that, love Israel.
00:19:45.000They're, I think, our number one most important ally on the world stage.
00:19:48.000But we shouldn't be borrowing from the kids and the grandkids when we can cut climate funding, we can cut the UN, we can cut the IRS expansion.
00:19:54.000There's lots of low-hanging fruit of spending that's harmful to the country, not only just wasteful.
00:19:58.000So I'm for offsets because we've got to turn the page and stop doing unpaid supplementals.
00:20:04.000That said, I think I share your view that I don't support funding for Ukraine anyway, and I certainly wouldn't give money to this administration in the name of them pretending to do something they're not going to do.
00:20:15.000You know, I think you could make a case, I'll sound a little soft here, if we had a true border security bill, HR2, where we had enforcement mechanisms, where we meted out a little bit of money to essentially buy that border security for the country, and they didn't get the money until they performed, and it was paid for with offsets too.
00:20:35.000Not for Ukraine, but for our country, right?
00:20:43.000You could make an argument if you paid for it with offsets and it was performance-based on they had to actually execute the policy that ended the border invasion, you could make an argument for negotiating that.
00:20:55.000Yeah, I think only in Washington do we combine our border issue and Ukraine's border.
00:21:04.000I know you've got a lot of people that you serve as chairman of the Freedom Caucus from around the country, and I don't know if there's anywhere in America where people are sitting down, concerned about our border crisis, and then immediately think, well, if only there was a way to do this in Ukraine at the same time.
00:21:20.000Now, there are people who feel very passionately about Ukraine, But even I don't think they view it as linked to our border.
00:21:26.000And so it's this uniquely Washington concept.
00:21:29.000And I think it's largely driven by the fact that it's an open secret that Mitch McConnell views the Ukraine matter as central to his legacy, even more so than the court.
00:21:38.000And I do believe, as an evangelical Christian, Mike Johnson really wants to get the Israel aid done.
00:22:30.000It'd be nice if we could make other people vote the way we want to, but we can't do that.
00:22:34.000And so short of that, what you want is the opportunity to have the debate, to have the fight, to have the votes held, to get people on record.
00:22:41.000And it's a shame, because to your point, we had hundreds of amendment votes to cut specific spending, and almost all of those failed.
00:22:50.000It's really a shame that they did in a Republican conference.
00:22:53.000But at least we're exposing who the Republican Party is, who's with the American people, who's with cutting spending, who's with limiting government, who's for the Constitution.
00:23:03.000And I'd like to think that might help in some primaries this year.
00:23:06.000Yeah, and by the way, that's not a threat.
00:23:16.000As you lead the Freedom Caucus through these next several months and beyond, How are you going to gauge success?
00:23:25.000How are you going to look at the Freedom Caucus and say, we really achieved our objective here versus yet another kind of entity in Washington that flummoxes around this crazy place?
00:23:39.000Well, it's difficult for us looking at past history and looking at the lay land to predict, you know, significant, measurable success markers, if you will.
00:23:51.000We can predict lots of reasons why we think that failure and surrender is in our future because that's what has happened with our conference.
00:23:58.000But I look at last week where the Ukraine funding bill, combined with an amnesty bill, masquerading as a phony border security bill, was killed.
00:24:09.000And the Freedom Caucus and our conservative fighting allies like yourself were at the forefront of killing that, the messaging, making it too painful, too uncomfortable, just untenable for enough Republican senators to vote for it, and it fell apart.
00:24:24.000Conservative nation rose up, the American people rose up, our friends in the movement rose up.
00:24:30.000It's not time to stop and spike the football and celebrate because we knew the supplemental would come back, just minus pretending to have border security in it.
00:24:37.000Although, as we both know, that would have made it actually worse because it would have given political cover to those who are perpetrating the invasion and make it look like they were doing something to stop the invasion while not doing anything to stop it.
00:24:48.000Winning on FISA would be huge, because we will live with that for years to come, and it has a tremendous impact on the American people, especially under this administration.
00:24:58.000And God willing, we're only going to suffer another 10 months or so under this administration.
00:25:04.000But we're fighting an administration that we know is willing to do anything, not even pretending anymore.
00:25:08.000They're going for broke because they know their goose is cooked if President Trump wins and we have House and Senate majorities.
00:25:14.000So I think FISA would be one trying to battle, to try to get border security somehow in the equation.
00:25:23.000It was supposed to be part of the supplemental, is what the Speaker said.
00:25:52.000And Warren Davidson, our friend, likes to say, you got to fight the battle you're in, not the battle that you wish you in.
00:25:56.000And sometimes you have to recalibrate and say, okay, what could success, the best semblance of success look like now?
00:26:03.000And sometimes you just have to, again, recalibrate that and do what you think is most right strategically to try to effectuate the best outcome.
00:26:11.000The other thing I'd like us to do is to help, again, as members and what we're doing here, but to try to influence conservative wins in those primaries, to get more reinforcements, to expose, again, who the Republican Party is, who's with us, who's not with us, in terms of fighting for the things we tell the American people we will do if they give us the majority, so that we can have a better-looking conference ideologically, hopefully numerically.
00:26:32.000I want it to be larger, but I want it to be larger with the right number of people.
00:27:06.000We did have a—we're going to let Congressman Good go, but we'll leave you for a moment with a little snippet of a song from our friends at the Article III Project.
00:27:16.000Pulled into Atlanta Was feeling up my lady friend Just need a court Where Trump has to defend Say, Fanny, can you hire me?
00:27:44.000It won't be a kickback scheme I'll take my money, leave my wife And fought her for this meme Time the contract, Fannie Set the dollars free.
00:29:53.000You did have sexual relationships with someone other than your spouse during the course of the marriage and during the period of separation, which included up to May the 30th of 2023. Isn't that correct, sir?
00:30:07.000My answer to this interrogatory is none, is no.
00:30:12.000So you're saying that you did not have sexual relationships with anyone outside of your marriage and the period of separation is during the period and you're answering the question to this interrogatory, correct sir?
00:30:25.000I'm saying during the course of my marriage I did not have sexual relations to anyone and this answer is no.
00:31:11.000That was some of the most incredible testimony from Nathan Wade.
00:31:15.000In his divorce litigation, he said he had not had sexual relations with anyone other than his wife, and now he's admitting that during that time he was having sexual relations with Fonny Willis, and he is choosing in the questioning in live court to parse the distinction between those two as to his relationship with Fonny Willis.
00:31:34.000Like, well, were you having relations with anybody?
00:31:44.000And these folks thought they were going to get Trump.
00:31:47.000There they were going on their little romantic junkets, probably planning for the moment that they'd get some big job in the Biden administration or some job on CNN or MSNBC. Well, you're on TV now, taking the stand, answering the questions.
00:32:31.000The hubris to think that they could get away with it.
00:32:34.000We understand now Fannie Willis is exploding on the stand and I'm sure we'll have plenty to say about what that means for oversight.
00:32:43.000When it comes to the House Judiciary Committee and the grant programs and all the corruption and lies they got cooking up in Fulton County.
00:32:54.000We would only ask that you help share this episode and the work that we're doing so that more of our fellow Americans can be informed and engaged and on the front line of the fight.