In this episode, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GAZ) talks about his recent trip to El Salvador and the country s incredible turnaround from one of the deadliest countries in the world to the safest country in the Western Hemisphere. Rep. Gaetz is joined by the President of the New York Young Republican Club, Gavin Wax, and legislative counsel, John Wilson, to discuss Nayib Bukele s recent swearing in as president of El Salvador, and his vision for the future of the country under his leadership. They also discuss the impact of the Trump trial, the indictments, and the Democratic response to them, and how the country is emerging from the rubble of a brutal gang war that spanned decades and left much of Latin America in ruins. They also talk about Nayib's vision for El Salvador's future, and why he should be commended for what he s done to turn the country around in the face of a country that has seen nothing but bloodshed and conflict for the better half of the past half a century and is now rising from the ashes under the leadership of a man who has turned it into a place of peace and security. President Nayib Biukele is a man of vision and vision, who has transformed El Salvador into a nation that is safer than the United States, safer than any other place in the western hemisphere, and a place where you can be proud to call home. than you can go to sleep at night without fear of the dark night of the night. Thank you, Congressman Gaetz, for standing up to the uniparty, and standing up for the fight for our fellow Americans! and for fighting for our country. Thank you also for standing for our values, and fighting for what matters. . . . Thank you for being a fighter. Firebrand. -Jon Wilson, Gavin, Jon Wilson, and Gavin, for joining us in El Paso, Texas, and for supporting us. And thank you for all your support, Jon, for being here, for listening, and supporting us, for all the support, for your service, for supporting our cause, for doing what matters, for our future, for the people, and our country, and so much more. Tweet us to let us know what you think of this podcast, and what you re listening to this podcast. Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What do you think about it? 3:30 - What are you looking forward to in the future? 4:15 - What's next?
00:02:35.000I'm sending the Firebrands. - Welcome back to Firebrand.
00:02:44.000I know it's been a minute and a lot has been going on here in Capitol Hill and really throughout the world.
00:02:49.000We're going to talk about some of that, but if you've tuned in for the latest on the Trump trials, the lawfare, Attorney General Merritt Garland, you will be disappointed today because our focus is going to be exclusively external, global, things going on in the rest of the world as America struggles through this period of decline presided over by President Joe Biden.
00:03:08.000So if you're interested In the questions we ask the Attorney General, strongly encourage you to check out our X timeline.
00:03:14.000That's got our takes on those matters.
00:03:17.000But we will focus today on a nation that is in the Western Hemisphere, in Latin America, in our sphere of influence, that is experiencing one of the, really one of the most miraculous turnarounds We've witnessed for any country in my lifetime, for sure.
00:03:34.000And the president of that country is Nayib Bukele, who we have covered extensively here on Firebrand, and his bold vision is creating a security dynamic in El Salvador.
00:03:45.000El Salvador, of all places, that could turn that small Pacific country into the Singapore, the Dubai, the Doha of the Western Hemisphere.
00:03:57.000So, here to join me, I've got two great friends and colleagues, Gavin Wax, the president of the New York Young Republican Club, and my legislative counsel here in our congressional office, John Wilson.
00:04:08.000John and Gavin were both with me in El Salvador, To experience the swearing in, the inauguration of President Bukele for his second term, his second mandate, and this is a time where he was addressing security issues, moving on to the next phase of that country,
00:04:23.000and got a lot of thoughts on it, but I want to first start with you, Gavin, because you have traveled the world to places like Hungary, to places throughout Europe, where populism is trying to take hold and in some cases taking hold and here in El Salvador we seem to see a lot of those common sense populist policies increasing quality of life for people so give us your take on the Bukele inauguration and really where you think it sits within this broader move to embrace populism globally.
00:04:54.000Well, thank you for having me on, Congressman.
00:04:56.000And it certainly was a fantastic trip.
00:04:59.000And seeing what's happening on the ground in El Salvador is nothing short of a miracle.
00:05:03.000For some of your listeners, if they're not aware, this is a country that was engulfed in a brutal, vicious, bloody gang war that spanned decades.
00:05:12.000And even before that brutal gang war, they were also in the midst of a civil war that also spanned decades.
00:05:18.000So this is a country that's seen nothing but bloodshed and conflict For the better half of the past century and is now coming out of that, rising from the ashes under the leadership of Nayib Bukele, who has, in a short period of time, turned this from one of the deadliest countries based on the homicide per capita rate.
00:05:39.000In the world to, I believe, the safest country based on its homicide per capita rate in the Western Hemisphere, even safer, I believe, than the United States.
00:05:48.000So it just goes to show that with strong leadership, visionary leadership, populist leadership, you can achieve massive results in a very short period of time.
00:05:57.000And that's what Nayib Bukele was able to achieve in El Salvador, bringing about safety and security for his people, sort of the base needs of this, you know, hierarchy of needs of a nation, if you will.
00:06:08.000And now he can begin to focus on the rebuilding, on these additional improvements to his country's infrastructure, to its economy, to its overall well-being, things that were impossible to even conceive of under the boot of a civil war.
00:06:24.000And the gang war that have basically destroyed that country's future for the past several decades.
00:06:31.000So what we're seeing on the ground is nothing short of a miracle.
00:07:15.000So John, you run the El Salvador desk in our office.
00:07:18.000You've been studying President Bukele and the reforms that he's put in place to achieve what Gavin just described.
00:07:23.000If you were talking to somebody who only thought about El Salvador in terms of like the invading migrant force in our country and only thought about El Salvador as like a bastion for MS-13 to wreak havoc on Really, the United States and other countries in Central and South America.
00:07:42.000How would you describe to someone like that what the Bukele Doctrine is, what he encountered when he got there, and how he brought us to this moment that Gavin illuminated?
00:07:51.000Well, President Bukele first and foremost mentioned this in his inaugural speech.
00:07:56.000He said, first, you have a diseased body, you have to remove the cancer before you heal the rest of it.
00:08:01.000So President Bukele declared a state of exception and he physically removed a parasitic, violent, criminal class of gangs from society.
00:08:32.000El Salvador is still a developing nation by our standards, but as you can attest, we went all over the country from the rural areas to the inner cities and we did not feel in danger at all.
00:08:41.000These were good people that are now able to thrive, build and create and live their lives without worrying about being murdered or worse by these criminal gangs.
00:08:51.000And because of that, he's inspired his country with a very service mentality, a very law-abiding mentality.
00:08:58.000The roads were paved not only from the airport to the wealthy parts of town, but they were paved all the way out to the ocean and up into the mountains.
00:09:05.000Better than the roads we deal with here in Virginia.
00:09:10.000It reminds me of one story that he told us about a school in a rural area.
00:09:14.000It was an elementary school, and he said that every Halloween these kids would try to dress up as gangsters back in the old days, and the teachers would have to try and stop them, and sometimes they were successful, sometimes they weren't.
00:09:25.000He said this past Halloween these kids dressed up like firemen, policemen, soldiers, and even one kid who wore a business suit maybe wanted to be president.
00:09:34.000That type of inspiration is what Bukele has changed in El Salvador.
00:09:38.000He's given his people something to be proud of and some leaders to look up to.
00:09:42.000And you would think that with that type of success, there would be universal acclaim and celebration and undeniably in these images you're seeing from the inauguration.
00:09:51.000There were 84 international delegations in El Salvador.
00:10:12.000After just returning from Bukele's inaugural in El Salvador, it's glaring just how truly dishonest the American coverage is.
00:10:20.000Here's the essential true story of what happened in El Salvador.
00:10:23.000You will not find it in a single American corporate media outlet.
00:10:26.000It's a huge reason why they are failing.
00:10:28.000The U.S. helped screw up El Salvador and all of Central America by ousting dozens of governments when it suited our interests.
00:10:35.000As a result of those and other forces, El Salvador was left in ruins and racked by a 12-year civil war between communists and the government, followed by more than a decade of dominance by rival gangs originally from the U.S., with roots in Satanism.
00:10:50.000These gangs terrorized the small nation for more than a decade.
00:10:52.000They used torture and disbursement and even human sacrifice as a matter, of course.
00:10:57.000They brought El Salvador to the world's highest per capita murder rate.
00:11:01.000They took huge extortion payments from virtually every business crippling the economy.
00:11:06.000All this is our business because it resulted in a huge exodus of migrants to the United States.
00:11:13.000Under new President Nayib Bukele, virtually every gang member has been put behind bars in a brand new prison he built in only seven months.
00:11:20.000He has the highest adult prison rate per capita in the world right now.
00:11:25.000The murder rate went from a peak of 103 per 100,000 down to 2.4 per 100,000.
00:11:33.000This means El Salvador went from having the highest murder rate in the world to a lower murder rate than the United States.
00:11:39.000Once the gangs were all locked up, the economy started to come back to life.
00:11:44.000Most importantly for us, illegal immigration to the U.S. virtually stopped.
00:11:47.000And in fact, many law-abiding Salvadorians who fled to America are now returning home.
00:11:52.000The MS-13 Salvadorian gang members still prefer The U.S. They torture our citizens rather than return to face actual justice back home.
00:12:01.000Salvadorians rewarded Bukele for saving their country with polls showing to be one of the world's most popular leaders with approval in the high 80s.
00:12:10.000He won re-election with similar numbers and now has virtually all of the legislature as well.
00:12:15.000His inaugural address celebrated the victory and continued to focus on rebuilding the economy that the multi-decade crime problem has impacted.
00:12:24.000This is the only solution offered to date that could actually help fix the immigration system to the U.S. Other countries are flying in to learn what he did and replicate it.
00:12:32.000So Gavin, in the face of that, what is the criticism from the left of Bukele as you understand it and how is that working out in the information space as a lot of countries are oscillating between productive populism and destructive socialism?
00:12:49.000Well, it's the usual array of attacks against any effective leader globally who goes against, you know, the State Department's interests.
00:12:57.000You know, what we're seeing is him under fire for supposed human rights violations.
00:13:11.000He has mass popular support, evidence not just by polling, but by recent election results, which Neil was alluding to in his tweets, where he secured, I believe, over 80-85% of the vote.
00:13:20.000He has practically every seat in the legislature under his party, Nuevas ideas, except for four.
00:13:27.000So there's four members of the opposition.
00:13:29.000And if you look at the human rights abuses, this is a typical line of attack where they elevate the criminal Ahead of the victims.
00:13:37.000You have tons of victims of these criminal gangs.
00:14:00.000We don't know what phase seven is, actually.
00:14:02.000Nayib Bukele has not told the world what phase seven is yet, but we are in phase six.
00:14:07.000Despite all of these massive improvements to the lives of the law-abiding citizens of El Salvador, you know, the international, you know, collective liberal elite West And all their associated NGOs and government actors, etc., have nothing but, you know, criticism for Nayib Bukele because he threatens all of their narratives.
00:14:26.000He threatens all of the propaganda that they've been pushing, that you can't have a strong man, you can't have any strong leadership, you can't have a country that's putting their national interest first, you can't actually solve crime in an effective way.
00:14:40.000All of these are just the things we have to accept as part of living in modern society, yada, yada, yada, yada.
00:14:45.000It's all this sort of weaponized nihilism that they push out on the airwaves here in the United States.
00:14:51.000But he is showing firsthand that we don't have to live like this, that we don't have to accept crime as just a way of life.
00:14:58.000We don't have to accept our country being taken over by corrupt interests.
00:15:02.000A big part of his success was not just taking on the gangs, but was taking on the corrupt political class that ruled El Salvador for decades and in many cases was propped up by the United States and other foreign interests.
00:15:15.000There's a lot of parallels there to what we're seeing in the United States and the broader Western world.
00:15:20.000So with strong visionary leadership, And a national unity, a national consensus to solve these problems.
00:15:27.000So if you could take the deadliest country on the face of the earth and make it the safest in a matter of years, months, there's no excuse for why we can't solve, you know, a litany of our problems here at home.
00:15:37.000And we are hearing some of that criticism.
00:15:39.000Chris McVeigh on Facebook says that our podcast here is amounting to MAGA worshipping authoritarianism.
00:15:46.000No, Chris, we just like the order and safety.
00:15:48.000Is it a bad thing to want people to be able to start a business without being extorted?
00:15:53.000And the critique of Bukele that he's some sort of authoritarian belies some of the direct discussions we had with him.
00:16:00.000So I want to let you guys into the room.
00:16:01.000Sasha, I think we've got a clip where President Bukele within it is talking about his vision for innovation and how partnership can lead to free market systems that would be the best resilience against authoritarianism.
00:16:52.000I mean, all innovations are still in the US. But once you start going to Europe, like we're going to ban this and ban that and ban this and ban that, innovation is going to move.
00:17:06.000If you lose the innovation advantage that you have right now, you lose more.
00:17:36.000President Bukele was so kind to host us at, I guess, their version of Camp David, a chance to be able to get his perspective on, really, the technology agenda.
00:17:45.000And that's what I want to talk with you about, John.
00:17:47.000John Wilson had a cameo there as well as our executive producer, Joel Valdez.
00:17:50.000But, John, he made a point with me where he said, Matt, if I go back to manufacturing and textiles, It'll take me a hundred years to catch up because the industrial revolution passed by El Salvador.
00:18:05.000And so now Bukele's got this vision where the way to advance an economy is actually to leapfrog some of the kind of traditional things we push the global south to do.
00:18:15.000And he's embracing fintech, Bitcoin, these various technology platforms.
00:18:22.000Do you think there's a role for the Global South in those things, where they get away from the Western Union theory of the case on economic transfers, and we start to see a decentralized society occur in the Global South through some of these embraces of tech?
00:18:39.000Yeah, it's a very, very aggressive policy.
00:18:42.000The early United States had a similar problem on its hand.
00:18:45.000Do we want to become a peripheral economy that exports raw goods and textiles and certain things to places like Great Britain?
00:18:53.000And I think Bukele sees that a small country like El Salvador can't rival us in industrial might, but it might be able to play a role like Taiwan or some other small nation in tech or things that are more niche.
00:19:07.000So trying to To leapfrog his adversaries and competitors through financialization and foreign investment and getting ahead in the tech industry is a huge gamble, but it's also a huge challenge, and it could reward him greatly.
00:19:22.000And if education in his country and foreign investment keeps up, then there's no telling what you could do under a man like his leadership.
00:19:30.000Maria on X says that on All Hallows' Eve, the only appropriate outfit is saints.
00:19:35.000It shouldn't be anything other than the saints.
00:19:37.000Very base take from Maria on X. Gavin, you know, I wanted to ask you about the imagery and the symbolism of all this.
00:19:46.000Sasha, go ahead and put up the outfit side by side here.
00:19:50.000Here you can see on the screen what Bukele wears and a striking kind of homage to Simone Bolivar The great liberator of Latin America.
00:20:02.000You're president of the New York Young Republican Club.
00:20:04.000The event of the year every year on the political right is the New York Young Republican Club Gala.
00:20:09.000You understand all the pomp and circumstance.
00:20:12.000Should we take something from the Bukele outfit choice, the pageantry, the way you saw it all play out?
00:20:47.000They sort of modeled themselves on the United States.
00:20:50.000And there's always been a large political contingent in Central America, in these various nations, to unite these different countries back into one once more under some sort of federal model.
00:21:00.000And that's something that Bukele has discussed and promoted.
00:21:03.000And it's something that's been coming up more in the discourse there because of his successful leadership in turning El Salvador around.
00:21:09.000So I think between that history, the visuals, the outfit, I mean, everything, it's all pointing in one direction and one direction only.
00:21:16.000This sort of returning to greatness, elevating the nation, elevating the people.
00:21:20.000And again, you know, we saw this at the inauguration, this big, beautiful palace, I think, constructed in the early 1900s, the artillery firing, the flyovers, the beautiful, you know, decor and the uniforms.
00:21:33.000Everything is showing that this is a country on the upswing.
00:21:36.000And you can always Look to these sort of outward signs to show the health of a country and you look at our country and what we're producing and the symbols and the rhetoric and the visuals that the Biden administration is putting out and it's one of a decline and it's one of a nation moving rapidly towards sort of tyranny.
00:21:54.000On the other hand, you have Bukele with this optimistic imagery, this optimistic discussion about fixing the country and moving forward, and now being able to focus on things like the economy and infrastructure and building.
00:22:24.000Well, one of the first things he did was build a beautiful large library dedicated to improving literacy, dedicated to improving the education and well-being of the youth of El Salvador.
00:22:35.000So they're not being drawn into gangs, they're being drawn into learning and studying.
00:22:38.000And I visited this library and it was filled with young families and young people reading books, studying and enjoying the facilities.
00:22:45.000That several years ago would have been completely unavailable to them.
00:22:49.000Everything from the books to the computers to the air conditioning, I sure as hell needed it, and everything else about that facility.
00:22:55.000So these are the types of things that he's focusing on, uplifting his people, uplifting his country, and building new and building better.
00:23:02.000The concern that he has as we're experiencing this 18% increase and just the way construction is impacting the GDP, it's at 18% right now.
00:23:13.000But the concern is that our State Department does not go into these interactions with what I think you and I would want, a reinvigorated Monroe Doctrine.
00:23:23.000I get criticized all the time for being an isolationist because I don't want to go fight every single war in the Middle East and I don't believe we can turn every cave in Central Asia.
00:23:32.000And to the next Jeffersonian democracy.
00:23:34.000But when it comes to our neighborhood and a reinvigorated Monroe Doctrine, you have to have shining examples outside the United States that other countries could see their own future looking like.
00:23:46.000And John, you see all the time here on Capitol Hill how much the staffs, how much the members, the committees are focused on Indopaycom and focused on Centcom and even to an extent focused on Africom.
00:23:59.000But right here in Southcom, Oftentimes, there is neglect.
00:24:04.000How do you think policymakers ought to be thinking about using the progress here in El Salvador to reinvigorate a regional Monroe Doctrine?
00:24:14.000Well, what's going on right now with our federal government and our State Department, USAID, and these globalist NGOs is just absolute criminal malpractice.
00:24:22.000You have a budding country like El Salvador that we could be incredible allies with.
00:24:27.000And instead of reaching out to them and working with them, we're treating them standoffishly, criticizing how Bukele goes about The day-to-day governance that is very much up to him, in my opinion.
00:24:39.000And, you know, an America First foreign policy is an isolation.
00:24:42.000An America First foreign policy is interest-based rather than value-based.
00:24:46.000So right now, you know, the Russians will come to your country and they will say, we'll give you security.
00:24:51.000The Chinese will come to your country and they'll say, we'll give you money.
00:24:55.000And then the United States will come to your country and say, we're going to give you drag queen story time in your public library unless you work with us.
00:25:17.000The MS-13 style satanic gangs have moved out of country.
00:25:22.000There is a vacuum potentially that needs to be filled by President Bukele and he's working hard to do it.
00:25:26.000But the last thing you want is Sinaloa cartels and other cartels in Mexico filling the void down there.
00:25:31.000And if we can stop them there, we don't have to worry about as much of the drugs, the violence, Take just a moment and educate people about really how MS-13 was not an El Salvadorian gang that invaded the United States so much as it was a feature of the U.S. prison system that then was visited in El Salvador where it then grew, it was nurtured, and then became a more capable and dangerous force.
00:25:59.000So MS-13 was actually founded in California's prison system by El Salvadorans who had immigrated here during the Revolution.
00:26:07.000So we took these people and deported them, rightly so, but unfortunately that meant El Salvador got a hold of all these new gangsters who set up shop in their country.
00:26:15.000And it took their country from You know, a normal developing country into a state of not only just anarcho-tyranny or decline, but frankly, in my opinion, a complete and total failed state.
00:26:26.000And we played both sides in the region down there, and to no avail, gangs dominated El Salvador.
00:26:32.000But they were still not as sophisticated.
00:26:34.000And as we see with President Bukele and his military, you know, once he got the military up and operating, the gangs were no match for them.
00:26:41.000Cartels are a totally different entity, and we have to take that very, very seriously.
00:26:46.000I know President McKellie told us about when he got into office, he saw that his military had holes in their shoes and terrible uniforms.
00:26:53.000They got paid less than minimum wage, and it was viewed in this country as if you joined the military, well, then you must have had something go wrong in your life.
00:27:01.000So when he gets into power, he says, you know what?
00:27:55.000And they have it in El Salvador right now, and they're better off for it.
00:27:58.000So Gavin, I've got to tell you, I've got to bring you into one of the discussions we had because there was a New York Democrat, and I can't say it was like a criticism of Bukele, but the New York Democrat turns to Bukele and says, yeah, yeah, yeah, you've dealt with the gangs, but you really need to lay off them now.
00:28:13.000You really need to move past this very strident security policy and move on to something else you can worry about.
00:28:20.000And Bukele first described that anything built by man, a wall, a building, a dam, Requires maintenance and that the security system has really been created by this government.
00:28:33.000It will always require maintenance and diligence.
00:28:36.000And then he turned to this New York Democrat and said a quote.
00:28:40.000He said, he who spares the wolf forsakes the sheep.
00:28:46.000You were out there in that crowd with those Salvadorians as they celebrated this man, as they took an oath alongside him to recommit themselves to the country.
00:28:57.000Give the Firebrand viewers like a sense of what it was like being out in that crowd and how people were reacting to the inauguration and to this promise of a brighter future.
00:29:09.000Oh, I mean, it was pandemonium out there.
00:29:28.000I mean, again, this is a man who has achieved national unity.
00:29:31.000This is a man who's brought about a national consensus, who's been able to unite All these different factions, left and right, under this sort of pragmatic, almost big tent, populist-style movement that's really just about results and is about delivering results for the Salvadoran people.
00:29:49.000I believe I know the gentleman you're referring to, this New York Democrat, and it's very funny.
00:29:53.000That he would say something like that.
00:29:55.000You could say the same thing about how we dealt with crime here in New York City under Mayor Rudy Giuliani and later Bloomberg.
00:30:01.000And again, it didn't take much for that to all those gains that we made in terms of public safety and turning the city around from its low point in the 70s and 80s.
00:30:10.000It didn't take more than one term of Mayor de Blasio to turn that entire situation back on its head.
00:30:17.000So the same thing can easily happen in El Salvador.
00:30:20.000Civilization is very fragile at the end of the day.
00:30:23.000And the situation that John was describing of it being a failed state, it could return to that status of being a failed state very quickly.
00:30:31.000You just have to simply replace this strong visionary leadership with weak and corrupt leadership like it once had.
00:30:38.000So all of this is a very thin line between barbarism and civilization.
00:30:44.000And I think Bukele fully understands that and understands That this needs to be maintained, that this needs to be built up, not just over an election cycle like most Republicans think, but over generations, which is how the institutional left thinks.
00:30:58.000So again, now he's able to focus on rebuilding the country, to fixing the roots, to fixing a lot of these other issues that have been neglected for decades.
00:31:10.000With electoral mandates that you fail to see in most countries across the world, winning by the percentages he won by, really shows that he had a tangible, immediate, and visceral impact for the better on the lives of the vast majority of Salvadoran people.
00:31:26.000And listen, there are many people in the West, in these globalist elites, that don't like that this is happening.
00:31:32.000Again, because it's showing that it can be replicated in other countries.
00:31:36.000There were dignitaries there from across Latin America, other countries that are facing similar issues, including in places like Ecuador, for example, who are now adopting this sort of Bukeleism to fix the issues, similar issues involving gangs and cartels in their own countries.
00:31:51.000The more these countries begin to stabilize and fix their problems at home, the less migration the United States is gonna see, the less drugs and other criminal enterprises we are gonna see crossing our border.
00:32:03.000And of course, if you have an agenda to flood the border, not just with people, but also with illicit substances, and if you have an agenda to degrade the foundation of our society, then of course you want to see instability across Latin America because it's all going to pour northward, which is what's been happening for the last several years.
00:32:20.000My wife, Ginger, has a Salvadorian friend who showed her dad the videos and the images that we had taken there of that very joy and that sense of a brighter future, and I was told that he started crying because he looked at that and said, that's what I was fighting for in the Civil War.
00:32:37.000I was fighting for the chance that people could get past what had constrained better lives, investment, better futures, and certainly To see that explosion of emotion is no surprise, knowing what the people there have been through.
00:32:51.000But John, final question I want to ask both of you.
00:32:53.000What would be your message to the Salvadorians who are in the United States right now and who are observing this transformation from afar?
00:33:17.000They need the intellectual capital that you all have grown inside our country.
00:33:21.000And now there has been no better time in your nation's history and your history in our country than right now to voluntarily go back to El Salvador And join your compatriots in building a better society.
00:33:32.000Gavin, what's your message to the Salvadorian community after this experience?
00:33:37.000Well, I certainly share John's sentiments.
00:33:39.000And if they do not decide to repatriate, then I would encourage them to vote for President Trump.
00:33:44.000If you support Bukele's policy platform in El Salvador, you should have no reason not to support the Trump America First agenda here.
00:33:53.000It shares Many of the same principles ideologically in terms of turning our country around.
00:33:58.000We are facing an unprecedented crime wave in our country.
00:34:00.000We're facing unprecedented levels of institutional corruption.
00:34:04.000And if you want to prevent the country you immigrated to from turning into the country you left, then the only choice is to vote right, to vote for President Trump, and to vote for other America First candidates up and down the ballot.
00:34:14.000But I certainly think now is the time to repatriate.
00:34:17.000Certainly if a lot of tech bros and Bitcoin bros We're good to go.
00:34:41.000Across the world, we need more visionary, populist, pragmatic leaders who are going to address the problems of this country, fight through the corruption, fight through the foreign influence, and fight through all of the societal ills that are plaguing us and fight for a better future.
00:35:06.000I'll never forget standing in the student union at Florida State University getting that news or the death of Princess Diana and seeing the anguish on the face of my parents in South Walton County in Florida.
00:35:24.000Conviction of President Trump was such a sad moment for me personally.
00:35:28.000I've dedicated my whole life to the law, going to law school, learning the law, practicing law, writing the laws in my state and now my country.
00:35:36.000And so to see the law Used in such a way to achieve politics.
00:35:42.000It angered me, but even through the anger was such an emptiness and a sense of sadness.
00:35:50.000No one thought this verdict was coming in.
00:35:53.000Judge was about ready to send those folks home.
00:35:55.000And there I was sitting in a beautiful Skyrise Hotel in El Salvador, of all places.
00:36:03.000Watching my country arrest a political rival, watching my country descend into near third world chaos, and then I see this country in the third world believing in strong borders, an orderly society, a celebration of nation, disagreement politically without these corrupt uses, and then a real focus on rooting out real corruption.
00:36:28.000Bukele, when he had his first cabinet meeting, he brings everybody in and says, that's the Attorney General, and he'll be investigating everyone in this room, including me.
00:36:37.000And indeed, they found a rat in the woodpile.
00:36:40.000Somebody that was going to be in the cabinet was compromised, and so they were able to excise that and deal with that.
00:36:46.000And I think we need that level of focus on honest, fair government in the United States.
00:36:52.000If it can happen in El Salvador, if turnaround can happen in El Salvador, it certainly can happen for the greatest country that has ever existed in all of humankind.
00:37:01.000Special thanks to John Wilson and Gavin Wax for going with me to El Salvador, spending time there.
00:37:07.000I think Gavin probably had the best Spanish of the group, but there were times we had to team up to get all the verbs conjugated correctly.