Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - Episode 157 LIVE: Biden's State of Panic (feat. former Green Beret John Frankman) – Firebrand wit…

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:49.000 Pat Gates, the biggest firebrand inside of the House of Representatives.

00:01:53.000 You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay?

00:01:56.000 Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero.

00:02:01.000 We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight. 1.00

00:02:06.000 I want to thank you, Matt Gaetz, for holding the line.

00:02:10.000 Matt Gaetz is a courageous man.

00:02:12.000 If we had hundreds of Matt Gaetz in D.C., the country turns around.

00:02:17.000 It's that simple.

00:02:18.000 He's so tough.

00:02:19.000 He's so strong.

00:02:20.000 He's smart, and he loves this country.

00:02:22.000 Matt Gaetz.

00:02:23.000 Wow!

00:02:24.000 It is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you.

00:02:29.000 We will save America!

00:02:31.000 It's choose your fighter time!

00:02:33.000 I'm sending the firebrands. 1.00

00:02:35.000 I was so furious but not surprised when I saw the Bloomberg News report that the Biden administration is now considering draining 200 million dollars out of army reserves to send more money to Ukraine.

00:02:57.000 The move would target reserve funds that this House has authorized and appropriated for this particular purpose, a purpose that is worthy, certainly more worthy, than continuing involvement in the conflict in Ukraine that could lead to tragic escalatory accident.

00:03:13.000 I can't even believe this is a controversial view to take on this floor, but I believe that the U.S. Army reserves should actually be for the U.S. Army.

00:03:24.000 And by the way, it's not as if we don't have needs for our Army.

00:03:27.000 How about the families of our soldiers?

00:03:29.000 Right now, childcare is a real problem.

00:03:32.000 We've got Army soldiers that are driving an hour and a half or more each way just to drop off their kids at childcare.

00:03:40.000 We could invest that money in our military families.

00:03:43.000 I could take you to the Army town of Crestview, Florida in my district where the school counselors who are still helping Army families deal with the lingering effects of just deployment after deployment after deployment.

00:03:57.000 They could use more resources.

00:03:58.000 They tell me, Congressman, if we had more resources for these Army families, they could improve quality of life and improve mental health.

00:04:05.000 And not for nothing, But the army was taking a leading role in hypersonics for our country where we have fallen behind China.

00:04:14.000 If we've got an extra 200 million dollars laying around the army, how about we invest it in making sure that with hypersonic weapons we can hit a moving target?

00:04:21.000 I don't know, like China can. 1.00

00:04:24.000 But no, indeed, we see this attempt to drain resources away from Ukraine.

00:04:28.000 When Joe Biden talked about campaigning for the soul of the nation, I just assumed it was our nation, not Ukraine.

00:04:35.000 And Ukraine is no Garden of Eden for democracy.

00:04:40.000 Senator Lee pointed out in a report that the CIA had to directly confront Zelensky about his own personal corruption.

00:04:47.000 In Ukraine, they've canceled the presidential elections.

00:04:50.000 Call me old-fashioned, but I actually prefer democracies that hold elections rather than canceling elections.

00:04:57.000 And while there were many concerns about the death of Navalny appropriately, people forget the fact that Zelensky jailed a journalist, Gonzalo Lyra, and that journalist died in a Ukrainian prison.

00:05:09.000 So tonight you will hear President Biden coming to this house and the one thing that President Biden has in common with the American people is that both were far better off four years ago.

00:05:21.000 Joe Biden physically and the rest of us economically Now, as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I will call for an investigation of any efforts to drain U.S. reserves to go and fund this war in Ukraine, and I would invite my fellow members of the Armed Services Committee to join me.

00:05:40.000 And Democrats, you know what this reminded me of?

00:05:41.000 When all the Democrats were crying alligator tears about President Trump using DOD money to go fund the wall.

00:05:49.000 And you may accuse me of hypocrisy now, because I supported President Trump in that endeavor, but I don't like the Biden administration going beyond what we set forth with our Article 1 powers. 0.51

00:06:00.000 But at least if I'm being a hypocrite, I was doing so for the defense of America's borders.

00:06:06.000 And America's interests to stop an invasion that is killing hundreds of thousands of people through the introduction of fentanyl and an invasion that is diminishing the economic prospects of working people in this country. 0.97

00:06:17.000 When they're hypocrites, Mr. Speaker... 0.95

00:06:21.000 They serve as hypocrites so that they can go and fund the pensions of government workers in Ukraine. 0.88

00:06:27.000 And not for nothing, but it wasn't that long ago that we found a person connected to the defense industrial complex in Ukraine exiting the country with a million dollars in US cash in a shoebox.

00:06:40.000 The corruption is real, America's interests are illusory, and we should never drain 200 million dollars out of our army that should go to military families, that should go to soldiers, and that should go to America's capabilities.

00:06:55.000 It is America's capabilities that will define whether or not we hold the high ground, not which guy in a tracksuit is running Crimea.

00:07:02.000 I yield back.

00:07:05.000 Welcome back to Firebrand.

00:07:06.000 We are live.

00:07:07.000 I just stepped off the House floor moments ago to give that searing critique of the effort from the Biden administration to drain our army, to drain our reserves and our resources, to go and facilitate whatever fantasy they believe they're fighting for in the Donbass region and in Crimea adjacent to really what should be a European solution to this problem.

00:07:29.000 I want to thank everyone for tuning in.

00:07:31.000 It's State of the Union Day.

00:07:32.000 And do you think it's a coincidence that on State of the Union Day, when there's so much news and so much information, that they chose this band of time to announce this illegal violation of our Article 1 powers to reappropriate these funds to Ukraine?

00:07:48.000 It is not a coincidence.

00:07:50.000 They're trying to do this while you're not looking.

00:07:52.000 And folks on the live stream are fired up.

00:07:54.000 Judy on Facebook says, no more...

00:07:57.000 Money for foreign countries.

00:07:59.000 Kelly on Facebook says no more money for Ukraine.

00:08:01.000 Shut down the border or shut down the government.

00:08:03.000 William on YouTube with my favorite comments so far.

00:08:06.000 If politics were a Western...

00:08:08.000 Matt Gaetz would be Clint Eastwood.

00:08:10.000 Well, we've got a real live hero joining us on the program.

00:08:13.000 Captain John Frankman is from Florida's 1st Congressional District.

00:08:17.000 He served as a Green Beret and he's one of the thousands of Americans who have been negatively impacted by the vaccine mandate.

00:08:24.000 And he is my guest for the State of the Union tonight because in Northwest Florida, The issues around our military are kitchen table issues.

00:08:31.000 And when military families are harmed, it is my obligation as their congressman to see that their issues are pushed to the top of the list.

00:08:39.000 And I will not rest until this vaccine mandate is not only just repealed, but there's accountability for the people who did it.

00:08:48.000 And there's reparations, back pay, and restoration of rank for our patriots who did nothing wrong.

00:08:53.000 They did everything right.

00:08:54.000 Their leaders failed them.

00:08:56.000 Again, John Frankman served as a Green Beret.

00:08:58.000 He's become an activist on this issue now in private life.

00:09:02.000 And our great team here on Firebrand made a little video to introduce you to him.

00:09:05.000 Take a listen.

00:09:08.000 But now that you see how personal medical decisions are, will you call for the re-recruitment, restoration of full rank and back pay for the 8,600 service members who were VAX mandated out of the military?

00:09:27.000 No, I won't.

00:09:30.000 Yeah, it's just kind of appalling that total double standard from the SecDef.

00:09:36.000 I don't know a decision that Lloyd Austin has made that's helped strengthen the military, and Rep.

00:09:42.000 Gates is right to talk about the 8600 who were forced out.

00:09:48.000 So that was a Special Forces Green Beret who was assigned at 7 Special Forces Group in 2020. I joined the military because I wanted to use the gifts God gave me to glorify Him and to serve my country, and first and foremost, I'm a Catholic.

00:10:02.000 And I knew that these shots used aborted fetal cells in either the testing or production, so when that came out, I saw no No need for the shot whatsoever.

00:10:12.000 It went against my religious beliefs.

00:10:13.000 It's involved in the murder of the unborn child.

00:10:16.000 It's involved in the continued theft of his body part.

00:10:18.000 And the fact that we're still using this in order to create this shot, the fact that, I mean, another definition for sin is an act against reason.

00:10:26.000 And even if you take the abortive fetal self-peace out, there is no reason to take this thing.

00:10:31.000 If you have natural immunity, if you're young and healthy, if you've already had COVID, So it's very spiritual, especially when you're just going against reality as God had made it.

00:10:41.000 After I put my religious exemption in, I lost out on deployments, my team time got cut short, and I wasn't able to advance my career by going to grad school and teaching at West Point an assignment I was accepted to.

00:10:52.000 Decided to leave and got out July 1st of 2023, which is when my additional duty service obligation, the three-year commitment, was up for my Special Forces training.

00:11:01.000 No matter what happened, if I had stuck around even when the mandate was rescinded, I couldn't recover my career.

00:11:08.000 I was eruptively damaged by the mandate.

00:11:14.000 Congressman Gates and his office have been incredibly helpful in giving me a platform and in speaking on behalf of service members.

00:11:21.000 His office originally got my op-ed published in the Floridian, and I had made a relationship with him a couple years ago when he had visited Seven Special Forces Group, and I was able to tell him in person the kind of persecution that was happening to my team and to service members around the country who were refusing the shot or didn't want to get it.

00:11:39.000 And he's now speaking on behalf of service members by bringing it up into different congressional hearings.

00:11:44.000 And him choosing me as his guest, the State of the Union, it's not just me he's choosing.

00:11:48.000 He's also doing this on behalf of other unvaccinated service members, other service members who've been coerced into getting this shot and are now medically injured.

00:11:59.000 The state of this country is, everything is worse.

00:12:02.000 The military, the economy, and I expect to hear nothing but lies from Joe Biden.

00:12:07.000 You don't kick out 8,600 service members, 50,000 plus because of COVID shot mandate, while there's three wars going on, and it not being intentional.

00:12:17.000 And I would just ask him, like, what are you doing for this country?

00:12:20.000 Like, why are you basically destroying it?

00:12:23.000 Who owns you?

00:12:27.000 Our military leaders need to be held accountable.

00:12:29.000 They need to be held accountable to the oath that they take, to protecting those service members under them, to only carrying out orders that are legal and that support them to defend the Constitution.

00:12:39.000 And if we don't get the spiritual peace right, we're not going to win this.

00:12:43.000 We can't win this by just voting in the primary and in the general.

00:12:46.000 We need to really reform our lives, turn back to God, come back to the faith, come back to the sacraments.

00:12:52.000 But let's do this the right way.

00:13:11.000 We're back live and joined on the live stream by fellow veteran impacted by the negative VAX mandate, Jordan Carr, also from Florida's 1st Congressional District.

00:13:21.000 On our YouTube page, there appears to be a spirited debate breaking out about whether or not I should be vice president.

00:13:25.000 Mr. Rude Boy correctly points out that the presidential nominee and the vice presidential nominee cannot be from the same state.

00:13:32.000 So constitutionally ineligible, sorry, and I'm never leaving Florida.

00:13:36.000 I'm a Florida man for life.

00:13:37.000 We're joined now by John Frankman and John, it is such an honor to have you here on Firebrand and really to have you as a representative for so many of our service members who were negatively impacted by this VAX mandate.

00:13:49.000 I want to get into how all that impacted you, but just first to introduce yourself to the folks who keep up with these updates.

00:13:54.000 Tell me a little bit about where you grew up, what life was like for you, and what led to your decision to join the military.

00:14:00.000 Yeah, so thanks so much for having me.

00:14:02.000 I appreciate it.

00:14:02.000 And I was born in Los Angeles, grew up in the D.C. metro area, and then went into the military, so kind of just moved all over the place.

00:14:08.000 And a big impact for my life was my conversion to the Catholic faith.

00:14:12.000 I became Catholic when I was in high school, later on pursued the priesthood for about four years, but had also loved the military and wanted to use the gifts God gave me to glorify Him and serve Him.

00:14:21.000 And after I discerned that I was not called to the priesthood, I still owed the Army four years of active duty service from my ROTC scholarship.

00:14:28.000 Went into the infantry, so did infantry school, ranger school, airborne school, decided to try out for Special Forces, so went to the selection and got through Special Forces qualification course, military free fall, and ended up down at 7th Special Forces Group.

00:14:41.000 That is a rapid journey through an incredible military career, but I want to zero in also on that decision to go Special Forces, because you're talking about the tip of the spear, the best of the best.

00:14:53.000 I have a special place in my heart for the 7th Special Forces Group, bed down in In Crestview, Florida, as I made mention in my remarks on the floor, what was that test like, going through the rigors and the selection to become a Green Beret?

00:15:07.000 It was incredibly difficult, and Special Forces assessment and selection is kind of the big point where if you make it through there, you have a good chance of making it, and you have to try out before you even start the training.

00:15:18.000 There's a lot of fitness tests, IQ tests, personality tests.

00:15:22.000 What was the hardest for you?

00:15:23.000 What was the one thing when going Special Forces when you're like, man, I really got to study a little extra, work a little harder to...

00:15:28.000 Land navigation.

00:15:29.000 I was nervous about land navigation.

00:15:30.000 I tried to do orienteering in Colorado to get myself ready.

00:15:33.000 If I didn't get one more point, I probably wouldn't have gotten...

00:15:35.000 Was this like follow the North Star, you know, look which way the winds blow, sun rises in the east, that's in the west stuff?

00:15:40.000 All kinds of stuff.

00:15:41.000 So it's night into day.

00:15:43.000 You're supposed to find five points each day.

00:15:44.000 It's like 10-hour blocks.

00:15:46.000 You start at, what, one in the morning, so five hours of nighttime, five hours of daylight.

00:15:50.000 And you're just trekking, and you're carrying your rucksack, you're carrying your rifles.

00:15:54.000 So just a very grueling experience, and I was able to make it work.

00:15:59.000 So happy to have been selected and then end up at 7th Group.

00:16:02.000 And your colleagues at Seventh Group, these are folks from all over the country, every racial and ethnic background, different religious backgrounds.

00:16:11.000 Tell me a little bit about your teammates and what kind of life was like day in, day out as a team guy.

00:16:16.000 Yeah, I loved it.

00:16:17.000 So I got to seventh group June of 2020. So obviously COVID was a weird time, but I could always already tell the freedoms from Florida versus North Carolina were amazing.

00:16:25.000 But I had just an amazing team and I love the guys, still love the guys.

00:16:29.000 And day in and day out is tricky.

00:16:31.000 It's easier to go off of what does the year look like.

00:16:33.000 And it's from some individual training or language training to going out to the range and firing to getting to more complex kind of unconventional warfare, planning, training, things of that nature.

00:16:45.000 And so then bring us to the moment where you first get noticed or first start to believe that you're going to face a binary choice in your life.

00:16:55.000 You're going to take this experimental vaccine or what you've worked toward, what you've trained toward, what you've accomplished is going to be taken from you.

00:17:06.000 When in January of 2021 the shot was coming out and it was made available for special forces service members and all soldiers and we had a sign up a voluntary sign up before it was ever mandatory and I saw that I was the only officer in my company who didn't get it and there was a lot of downward pressure from the top saying that this is the important readiness issue if you don't do this you are a bad leader and group commander even telling that to different company commanders even before it was mandatory Then I saw that policies were changing in order to punish those who didn't get the shot even before the mandate

00:17:36.000 was out, such as having to quarantine for a longer extended period of time.

00:17:40.000 My team, we were easily the least vaccinated team in all of groups.

00:17:44.000 We were known as the tinfoil hat team, team sergeant getting harassed by that.

00:17:47.000 And ultimately it turned into First Special Forces Command, making it a policy where you have to be vaccinated in order to deploy.

00:17:53.000 This is before the mandate came out.

00:17:55.000 This was to a country that did not even require the COVID shot.

00:17:58.000 And when my team lost that deployment, it was just culminating into just bad experiences happening.

00:18:05.000 And this is even before the mandate.

00:18:07.000 And did you know right away this was something you weren't going to be able to do?

00:18:11.000 Or did you go through some sort of deliberative process?

00:18:14.000 Because I talked to a lot of people who would say, Congressman, I don't want to do this.

00:18:17.000 I don't want to ruin my military career, though.

00:18:19.000 And they would seek a health exemption.

00:18:21.000 They would seek a religious exemption.

00:18:23.000 Valid.

00:18:24.000 According to law, they would get form letters back.

00:18:26.000 They'd be enraged.

00:18:27.000 But, I mean, I do know people who were coerced into taking the shot, who never wanted to, but weren't willing to give up their military career.

00:18:34.000 How did you wrestle with that?

00:18:36.000 How much time did that take?

00:18:38.000 What did you do to arrive at the decision you did?

00:18:40.000 That's a great question.

00:18:41.000 And, you know, first and foremost, I'm a Catholic.

00:18:43.000 And when I found out that these shots used aborted fetal cells, I knew I couldn't just rush in and get them.

00:18:48.000 I had to at least wait until it was a mandatory thing in the military.

00:18:52.000 But as I continued to kind of form myself through moral theology, through studying, and understand kind of the horror of abortion, the horror of these shots that it's human embryo kidney 273, That implies that there were over 200 attempts to harvest these kidneys from these children, and there's machines to keep them alive while they are harvesting this part, that a disease that has over a 99.99% chance of survival does not merit me being involved in the sin of abortion.

00:19:18.000 So I knew by probably June of 2021, I was never going to get the shot no matter what.

00:19:23.000 They can throw me in jail, they can kill me, whatever.

00:19:25.000 I'm just not going to do it because I would view that as a mortal sin for myself.

00:19:29.000 I tried to seek a religious exemption.

00:19:31.000 My whole team, we were talking about medical exemptions because the military, in addition to violating our religious rights and issuing an unlawful order for a shot that was never FDA-approved available, they also violated their own medical policy.

00:19:45.000 Because typically, if you've already had something and you can show you're inoculated, that you already have the antibodies, you can do that test and you can just show that and get a medical exemption.

00:19:54.000 And my whole team was there in October after we all...

00:19:58.000 We're not vaccinated, 10 to 12, and we're saying, what's the deal?

00:20:01.000 We have this natural immunity.

00:20:03.000 And also, what's the deal?

00:20:05.000 You said that Comirnaty is FDA approved.

00:20:07.000 There is no Comirnaty.

00:20:08.000 There is only Pfizer.

00:20:10.000 SecDef cannot mandate us to take that shot.

00:20:13.000 So it was a deliberate process.

00:20:14.000 I tried to use whatever legal means were proper, whatever religious exemption, medical, and the decks were just stacked against people who didn't get the shot for whatever reasons.

00:20:25.000 What did the mandate do to cohesion and unity within these elite teams?

00:20:31.000 It absolutely destroyed it.

00:20:33.000 And you have leadership that's pressuring guys to get this.

00:20:36.000 And if you're a Special Forces Green Beret We do unconventional warfare.

00:20:41.000 We are taught to ask those critical questions and to think critically.

00:20:45.000 When we're asked to do something, oftentimes we ask, why?

00:20:49.000 Or should we?

00:20:50.000 Or is there another alternative?

00:20:52.000 And we were kind of told to turn off that critical thinking piece and to just go along because it was important for readiness.

00:20:58.000 And it did.

00:20:59.000 I love my unit and I love my leadership.

00:21:02.000 And I think I had it a lot better than many others.

00:21:04.000 But for other units, it was even worse where You'd have battalion sergeant majors in front of their entire unit saying, if you've had the shot, you have the day off.

00:21:12.000 If not, put a rucksack on.

00:21:13.000 We're going through a grueling ruck march, which is complete, absolute illegal coercion.

00:21:19.000 But yeah, it destroyed trust.

00:21:21.000 We don't trust leadership right now.

00:21:23.000 That's the basic thing.

00:21:24.000 They said it was the big thing.

00:21:25.000 Now the mandate's gone.

00:21:26.000 We saw the shots don't work.

00:21:28.000 We know people have been injured, and I've met so many VAX-injured people.

00:21:32.000 So yeah, trust is completely gone, and it erectly harmed the country.

00:21:36.000 I don't even know that all VAX injured people know that they're VAX injured.

00:21:40.000 I know people who took every shot, took every booster, would have gargled Johnson& Johnson if they were told to.

00:21:47.000 And I've seen negative health consequences emerge with some of those people.

00:21:53.000 It's just sad to see that they're able to suspend disbelief regarding the potential of vaccine injuries.

00:21:59.000 You've gone on to really build a community around the desire for accountability for this vaccine mandate.

00:22:05.000 And I want to talk about what inspired you to do that.

00:22:07.000 Was there, you know, you have another job, you're going to have a great life, but I know there are people who lost their marriages, whose families were negatively impacted, and who really didn't land on their feet after this, to be honest with you.

00:22:19.000 You know, are you...

00:22:20.000 Who are the...

00:22:22.000 I guess, what are the stories you think about that inspire you to continue the activism for accountability in terms of the harm caused?

00:22:28.000 I think about Carolina Stancic, who is a 23-year-old National Guards woman who got two Moderna shots and for that has had three heart attacks and multiple other health issues.

00:22:38.000 I think about Drew Outstanding, who he got the shots, he was doing Tough Mudders beforehand, and now he is paralyzed with Guillain-Barre syndrome.

00:22:46.000 I think about my soldiers who did not want to get it and were coerced into doing it and the kind of pressure that I saw that was pushed on them between their families with their own mental health.

00:22:55.000 Right now the military, it's going through, unfortunately, a huge suicide crisis.

00:22:59.000 And I don't know how...

00:23:02.000 How putting this kind of mandate, I think about Brianna Cespedes, who was an Air Force vet who's also involved in this activism, and she was put into quarantine for 140 days over the course of two years.

00:23:13.000 Essentially jailed.

00:23:14.000 I mean, you call it quarantine, but when someone confines you and you're not allowed to leave to a civilian, that sounds like a version of imprisonment.

00:23:22.000 Absolutely.

00:23:23.000 And then she's kicked out with a general discharge, fortunately just got upgraded, but kicked out with a general discharge, which means that she can't get her GI Bill to go to school, that it affects her future employment opportunities, and just from like a pride point of view, is put there with like sexual offenders and other people who don't get honorable discharges, which it's very hard not to.

00:23:43.000 So I think of all of these stories, I think about the great harm that's being done to our country And I love this country.

00:23:50.000 I love the military.

00:23:51.000 I miss the guys.

00:23:51.000 I ran into my old company commander on my flight up here.

00:23:53.000 It was great.

00:23:54.000 Still love them.

00:23:56.000 What was done to the military, and even them trying to protect me as much as they could, it couldn't outdo the harms and the policies that were put in place from the top.

00:24:05.000 And for that reason, we have the Declaration of Military Accountability.

00:24:08.000 Yeah, talk a little bit about that.

00:24:10.000 If you're a former service member, if you're someone who believes that we have to rally veterans around this cause, you guys have created a platform for that.

00:24:21.000 Folks can find it at militaryaccountability.com, right?

00:24:23.000 That is correct.

00:24:24.000 Okay, great.

00:24:24.000 So share a little bit about that project.

00:24:26.000 So the Declaration of Military Accountability was written by an active duty commander, Rob Green.

00:24:31.000 He also wrote the book, Defending the Constitution Behind Enemy Lines, which greatly outlines kind of the problems and struggles that we've gone through through this VAX mandate.

00:24:38.000 And what that letter outlines is that the military hasn't held themselves accountable.

00:24:43.000 Our civilian leadership in Congress, for the most part, has not held them accountable.

00:24:46.000 We are going to do everything that we can in order to hold leadership accountable.

00:24:50.000 We name names in the letter, and we basically promise that there are people who are running for Congress and running into those political positions.

00:24:58.000 If we get to that point, we are going to take your retirement pay away, and we're going to make sure you can't serve under senior executive service so that we can just stop this kind of filth.

00:25:06.000 And we're trying to work and let the next president, please God, President Trump know that he can appoint service secretaries that can bring these generals who broke the law off of retirement and put them onto active duty so that they can be court-martialed.

00:25:22.000 And we're not calling for violence.

00:25:23.000 We're calling for within legal process, legal process between the legal, everything proper, legally, morally, in order to hold the military accountable.

00:25:31.000 And I don't get the sense that it's vengeance that motivates this.

00:25:34.000 It's that if there's not accountability, this will happen again.

00:25:36.000 If you're able to issue illegal orders, if you're able to send back form letters to people when they are laying out sincerely their religious objections to an experimental vaccine, we will be right back in this position and we'll be destroying thousands of lives going forward.

00:25:54.000 And I hope that is the motivation for the signatories here.

00:25:57.000 100%.

00:25:57.000 And, you know, the military is just our line of effort.

00:26:00.000 That's just our piece of the pie.

00:26:01.000 But in reality, COVID-19 and the policies in order to prevent the spread was the biggest infringement upon our personal rights within our lifetime, upon our liberties.

00:26:12.000 And I know it's tough to go back to these dark places and these dark times and think about it, but if we don't go back and address the issues of what happened and learn from our mistakes, it will not be long until more and more of our freedoms are taken from us, until it's pushed for whatever globalist agenda and more federal power is given to them and taken from the people.

00:26:32.000 Lloyd Austin issued this order.

00:26:33.000 The Congress corrected that mistake.

00:26:36.000 Joe Biden signed a National Defense Authorization Act that literally reversed the decision of Lloyd Austin, but the pain from that decision is so real and so present.

00:26:45.000 If you had a message to share with the Secretary of Defense, what would it be?

00:26:50.000 I would say just repent and try to fix whatever situation you have.

00:26:54.000 Like as a Catholic, I believe in forgiveness, but there has to be atonement for it.

00:26:57.000 So it's not too late to come back to the right side to reinstitute all these service members to automatically raise their discharge statuses from general to honorable to institute back pay to a number of reservists.

00:27:11.000 They missed out on years of drill.

00:27:12.000 That means that they can't retire late as soon as they would have.

00:27:15.000 So there's a number of things that are within his purview that he can do to fix this.

00:27:20.000 And what he did, harm the military, make up for it, redeem yourself.

00:27:24.000 I don't know if he will, but that path is forward for him.

00:27:28.000 So it's not to be like, we win and you lose.

00:27:30.000 We want the country to win.

00:27:32.000 We want service members to win.

00:27:33.000 And there was real harm that was done, and there needs to be some real fixing for it in order for our military to be back and the strong fighting force that it once was.

00:27:43.000 What a gracious message.

00:27:45.000 Repent, resolve, remediate.

00:27:48.000 I oftentimes use a bit of a different message.

00:27:51.000 I don't always portray that grace because my blood boils.

00:27:55.000 When I see these people with the great lives that they get to lead and the millions of dollars that they're going to make and all of the adulation and That they undeservingly receive in these positions.

00:28:07.000 And I think about those folks, some of whom I know, who you mentioned, who have experienced this harm.

00:28:12.000 And on Morning Joe, they actually think, I'm too mean.

00:28:16.000 I'm too insistent.

00:28:18.000 I'm too cruel to the top officials at the Pentagon.

00:28:21.000 Take a listen.

00:28:24.000 How many times did you go to a military ceremony, especially in the armed services, and you saw these young men and women that have committed their lives and their families have gone along and committed their lives to protecting and defending this country, and yet Donald Trump trashes them.

00:28:40.000 You have that coach from Alabama that says they're weak and woke.

00:28:44.000 You have Ted Cruz saying he'd rather us have Russian troops than American troops.

00:28:48.000 All the insults from Republicans.

00:28:50.000 You have Matt Gaetz going out of his way to trash leaders in the United States military.

00:28:55.000 All of these people trashing our men and women in uniform. 0.98

00:29:01.000 It's disgusting.

00:29:05.000 Oh Joe, my predecessor, don't conflate those things.

00:29:09.000 Do not dare conflate criticism of the senior officials at the Pentagon who are selling out our service members with the men and women of the military who we celebrate and we honor.

00:29:21.000 And John, I am...

00:29:22.000 I did not serve in the military.

00:29:23.000 I have such respect and admiration for those who do.

00:29:28.000 And so when I get to ask questions of these senior leaders, I really try to take a moment and think, what would the service members in my district, not just them, but their families, what would a military spouse ask who's seen their loved one negatively impacted like this?

00:29:45.000 And I don't know, you think I'm being too mean?

00:29:47.000 You showed a lot more grace than I do.

00:29:49.000 So I did show grace, but that's the kind of, I don't know, what do you say, the cookie or that's trying to get the carrot and you're using the stick.

00:29:57.000 But the stick is necessary when they're not doing it.

00:29:59.000 That's the gracious message.

00:30:00.000 But if they're not willing to accept that, they absolutely need to be held accountable.

00:30:04.000 And I don't think that any line of questioning that you're giving them, you know, sticks and stones will break bones, but your words shouldn't hurt them to that extent.

00:30:11.000 And the It's totally deserved.

00:30:13.000 I can't think of a thing the SecDev's done to help the military.

00:30:17.000 In fact, it seems like there's some intentional destruction of the military with DEI and woke policies and kicking out service members.

00:30:24.000 So, you know, if Morning Joe wants to know what's harsh, what's harsh is putting my career on ice where I can't deploy, go to career-enhancing schools.

00:30:33.000 I can't, ironically...

00:30:35.000 Go teach ethics at West Point.

00:30:36.000 That's the job it was prevented from doing, was PCSing to go to grad school and teach ethics at West Point.

00:30:40.000 And that's just my story.

00:30:41.000 But for the vaccine-injured people, for those who've been kicked out with general discharges, who've had their marriages disrupted from the pressure, for the disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan without a single person getting fired, it's insane. 0.63

00:30:55.000 And leaving billions of dollars of equipment.

00:30:57.000 I'll tell you what, if you lose a small piece of equipment within any kind of battalion, you have a flipple.

00:31:02.000 You have an investigation.

00:31:03.000 And people are charged money for it, but I haven't seen that for the billions of dollars of equipment left out there.

00:31:08.000 So no, you are not being too harsh.

00:31:10.000 We need more people to be harsher on them because if it's a military that is under civilian control, we want our representatives to actually exert that civilian control to keep them in line.

00:31:20.000 And I feel the burden of that because frankly, some lieutenant or captain or sergeant There's a limited envelope as to what you can do to upward manage and to put pressure on those above you.

00:31:33.000 And so those folks are my bosses who are the junior officers, the enlisted folks, the majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels who oftentimes just get smacked down by insane policy that is ill-conceived out of the Pentagon and the social justice warriors that run around this town.

00:31:50.000 And so, you know, because so many of the service members we love are limited in what they can legally do to push back, I feel a deep obligation to be their representative, to be their voice, and to do those things.

00:32:02.000 And, you know, it's not just you who lose out.

00:32:04.000 Like, when you're unable to go teach that course at West Point, I think about all the people I nominate to West Point who get an appointment and then they don't get the benefit of that teaching.

00:32:13.000 Final question for you, John.

00:32:16.000 Is the vaccine mandate just part of a bigger purge?

00:32:19.000 Because I look at the DEI. I look at some of the wokeness. 1.00

00:32:24.000 I look at just the incentive structure for promotion in the military.

00:32:29.000 And I worry it's this bigger thing to try to get anybody who's independent thinking or traditional or conservative in their worldview to make a different choice than the military.

00:32:38.000 And then I wonder what we're left with.

00:32:40.000 I think that's absolutely the case within the military, but I think it goes beyond the military.

00:32:44.000 That right now, we're having in mainstream media and through the big search engines and things of that nature, just a kind of controlled speech, where to have conservative thought is not allowed anymore, and there really isn't freedom of speech.

00:32:57.000 So, yes, it's a purging of the military, but it's a fundamental shifting of what we believe as a country, and we're making up new things.

00:33:05.000 Communists like to divide based on certain lines of race and gender, and we're making up genders and other things to be divided about.

00:33:11.000 So, yeah, I think there's an absolute purging going on, not just within the military, but within the country of what is deemed as acceptable speech.

00:33:19.000 And it's a shame.

00:33:20.000 I don't want that.

00:33:21.000 I actually don't want to purge the left from the country.

00:33:23.000 I think we engage, we debate, we win, we showcase that our policies help people, make people more secure, more prosperous, and they seem to want to avoid that and they want to seem to I'm honored to have you here as my guest.

00:33:41.000 I'm honored that you got a chance to spend some of your time in service in Florida's 1st Congressional District.

00:33:45.000 Do all of us a favor in passing along our gratitude to the community that you represent and serve among those who've been negatively impacted.

00:33:54.000 Well, thank you so much for having me.

00:33:55.000 And in having me, I know it's not just for me.

00:33:57.000 This is for service members who've been impacted.

00:33:59.000 Where can folks follow you online and stay up to date?

00:34:02.000 I know you travel around the country.

00:34:04.000 You work to elevate a lot of the voices around these issues we're discussing.

00:34:08.000 And how can folks stay plugged in?

00:34:09.000 Sure.

00:34:09.000 I mean, well, before you follow me, I like to tell people, follow Jesus Christ.

00:34:12.000 But if you still want to follow me after that, you can find me at Johnny underscore Franks.

00:34:15.000 I'm on Twitter.

00:34:16.000 I'm on Instagram.

00:34:17.000 And you can go to the Declaration Military Accountability's website.

00:34:20.000 Sign the petition.

00:34:21.000 You don't have to be in the military to sign it.

00:34:22.000 That's at militaryaccountability.com.

00:34:24.000 Militaryaccountability.com.

00:34:25.000 We would ask that you go there and review the great work that these patriots are doing.

00:34:30.000 Again, it is State of the Union Day and we expect President Biden to tell a lot of lies about the border.

00:34:35.000 We were just debating border policy in the House Judiciary Committee this week when we were discussing a bill that would require the detention and then deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for robbery.

00:34:47.000 We figure if there are illegal aliens engaged in robbery... 0.86

00:34:51.000 They should not just be paroled back into the country under the fictitious legal status that Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas have created for them Take a listen to that debate The problem with my colleagues' debate is after these people are apprehended, they are paroled into the country.

00:35:08.000 And so, yes, indeed, it's 5,000 people that we would allow to be apprehended, paroled throughout the United States, and that's where you are seeing this wave of migrant crime. 0.98

00:35:18.000 That's where you are seeing jurisdictions like New York City think about their sanctuary status.

00:35:25.000 I mean, I recall vividly a few things.

00:35:27.000 I recall at the Presidential debate when the question was asked who would provide free health care to illegal aliens coming into the country, we all saw President Biden raise his hand.

00:35:39.000 He was a candidate then, but that is a pull factor.

00:35:43.000 When you tell desperate people that you're going to give them benefits and you're going to give them cash and you're going to give them shelter and you're going to give them food, I don't particularly blame The illegal aliens who are crossing the border to get those things.

00:35:57.000 I blame the choices we've made in government to allow it.

00:36:00.000 And the underlying legislation here at least says, I don't know if you're arrested for robbery, that there is detention and then there is deportation.

00:36:09.000 That we don't have to invite all of the third world's prisons across our border into our nation and then allow the people in this country to be victims of that crime that occurs. 1.00

00:36:21.000 I also vividly remember Secretary Mayorkas sitting right here in this committee room acknowledging that these people who are being paroled out into the country would indeed commit crimes.

00:36:32.000 And the victims of those crimes have to be the collateral damage so that the Biden administration can allow the border to go unchecked, to go uncontrolled.

00:36:42.000 And as we now try to create some It's interesting to hear my Democrat colleagues talk about just the need for more resources.

00:36:54.000 Oh, if we just gave the Biden administration and Mr. Mayorkas more money, that would solve this problem.

00:37:01.000 They are lawless in their use of the money they already have.

00:37:04.000 They are taking what has already been authorized and appropriated, and they've used it to disperse illegal aliens into these sanctuary jurisdictions all over the nation.

00:37:14.000 And so giving them more money is sort of like saying if you have a busted fire hydrant, you can solve the problem with buckets.

00:37:24.000 You indeed cannot.

00:37:24.000 You have to shut off the flow.

00:37:27.000 You have to shut off the flow of the people into this country, and this legislation has the very humble objective of ensuring that people who commit robbery do not stay here to do additional grave harm to our fellow Americans.

00:37:45.000 We're back live and we have breaking news reporting from Barak Ravid.

00:37:48.000 Breaking, Biden will announce at a State of the Union speech that he ordered the U.S. military to conduct an emergency mission to establish a temporary port in Gaza that would open up a maritime route for humanitarian assistance from Cyprus.

00:38:03.000 This reporting from Barak Ravid.

00:38:06.000 Well, Here's the next phase.

00:38:10.000 Now we're nation-building in Gaza.

00:38:12.000 We're building ports in Gaza.

00:38:14.000 As the United States has become less economically resilient, as we've become more reliant on foreign countries and their medicines and their medical equipment, now we're building ports in other countries.

00:38:29.000 This is how this flawed vision of nation building that frankly has been shared by a lot of these boomers from George Bush to Bill Clinton to Joe Biden.

00:38:41.000 They all believe America is at our best when we are languishing economically and we are building up the capabilities of other places.

00:38:51.000 This port that we're supposedly building, how are things going to go there?

00:38:55.000 Is that going to be the subject of terrorism?

00:38:59.000 Are we going to be inviting people into more grave harm?

00:39:03.000 These Middle Eastern monarchies have so much money and they have so much capability.

00:39:10.000 They are able to get humanitarian aid to Gaza.

00:39:14.000 This is their neighborhood.

00:39:15.000 By the way, we're ignoring a lot what's going on in Latin America in our sphere of influence.

00:39:20.000 We're ignoring a lot about what's going on in the Western Hemisphere more broadly.

00:39:24.000 But we've got...

00:39:26.000 Now this ambition to go build a port in Gaza.

00:39:29.000 This is not good.

00:39:31.000 This is not going to lead to better conditions there.

00:39:33.000 We also have an exclusive report on some of the work that we're doing to have some oversight and constraints on the power of Special Counsel Jack Smith and his election interference campaign.

00:39:45.000 This exclusive to the Daily Wire.

00:39:47.000 Matt Gaetz calls on DOJ Inspector General We're good to go.

00:40:11.000 And it is not appropriate for this to proceed as an election interference endeavor.

00:40:16.000 And undeniably what was going on in Colorado was painted that way.

00:40:21.000 There's not much more severe election interference than you can engage in than throwing someone off the ballot.

00:40:26.000 But Jack Smith's getting pretty close.

00:40:28.000 And it's clear from his filings that his intent is more driven by the upcoming presidential contest than it is the application of the facts or law endeavor.

00:40:40.000 A just criminal matter.

00:40:41.000 It's just not that.

00:40:42.000 And it's something that the Inspector General ought to look at, and we are indeed calling on them to do just that, and they should.

00:40:50.000 A final note, and I want to preface this as not a dunk, but as a learning opportunity.

00:40:59.000 And look, we all can benefit from those.

00:41:02.000 But I saw a press release that came out in support of this spending bill that we need to dive into.

00:41:09.000 So the spending bills are way over the amount that we ought to be allocating, way over the amount that even Nancy Pelosi put on the floor when she was Speaker of the House.

00:41:22.000 But if some members of Congress are able to get some pork barrel spending, some money from their district, if they're part of cooking up the deal that's a bad deal for the rest of the country, but good for them, then they take credit for it.

00:41:39.000 And they hope that the macroeconomic collapse that they're contributing to, that they're financing, that they're underwriting, they hope that people and voters will ignore that for the shiny object.

00:41:55.000 This press release from Congressman Jerry Carl of Alabama's 1st District.

00:41:59.000 He says, I'm proud to deliver results for South Alabama and bring our tax dollars back home to reinvest in our communities.

00:42:08.000 Wow, isn't that code for what's coming next?

00:42:11.000 And the release continues.

00:42:12.000 Today I secured $30 million in funding for Alabama's first district while saving American taxpayers more than $200 billion over the next 10 years.

00:42:23.000 So let's go with that savings window.

00:42:26.000 Whenever Congress tells you that they're saving something over a 10-year window, it is your obligation to assess how much of that is front-loaded.

00:42:35.000 Because here's what happens.

00:42:36.000 They'll write a 10-year budget, and it'll say, well, over this 10-year window, we're going to save $200 billion.

00:42:40.000 By the way, that's not saving $200 billion off of current spending.

00:42:43.000 That's saving $200 billion off of some anticipated increase.

00:42:47.000 So it's always still going up.

00:42:50.000 And here's how they do it.

00:42:52.000 They put all the pork, they put all the spending, They put all the nonsense on the front end of that 10-year window, and then all of the cuts, all the savings, well, you know, that starts in year 7, 8, 9, 10. It's a joke, and it's insulting.

00:43:09.000 And so, for someone to say, well, because I got $30 million for my district, that justifies selling out the country, paving the way to $50 trillion in debt during that very same budget window.

00:43:25.000 It's not something that I think voters will abide.

00:43:27.000 It's not something the country should abide.

00:43:30.000 And it's noteworthy that on Tuesday, despite having considerably more resources for campaigning, despite being geographically advantaged, Jerry Carl was defeated in the primary for Alabama's 1st Congressional District by fellow Congressman Blake Moore,

00:43:49.000 who had been redistricted into Alabama 1. And even on the heels of that defeat, to see Congressman Carl, a Republican from Alabama, touting the $30 million, being deceptive about the cuts over the course of some illusory tenure window,

00:44:09.000 It's exactly why candidates like this are losing, even when they have more money, even when they have more advantages, because the American people are able to distinguish the true fighters from the sellouts and the fakes and the phonies.

00:44:21.000 Thanks for being here with us to help decipher that for yourself.

00:44:25.000 Make sure that you are subscribed on whatever platform you're using to get these updates.

00:44:31.000 We suggest downloading the Rumble app.

00:44:34.000 Turning those notifications on.

00:44:35.000 That way, whenever we go live, whenever we've got great guests like Captain John Frankman, you are the first to get the information and the first to be most informed.

00:44:44.000 Thanks again.

00:44:46.000 Roll the credits.

Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - March 07, 2024

Episode 157 LIVE: Biden's State of Panic (feat. former Green Beret John Frankman) – Firebrand wit…

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