Learn English with Matt Gaetz. The Florida Republican Congressman has been targeted by the Deep State for his opposition to the controversial Defense Advanced Partnership with America Act, or NDAA, a bill that authorizes billions of dollars more in military spending on behalf of the war in Afghanistan. In this episode, Matt explains why he opposes the bill, and why he supports the withdrawal of all American troops from Afghanistan. He also explains why the Afghanistan withdrawal is a good thing and why President Obama should pull all of our troops out of the country. Matt also talks about why he thinks we should stand for the flag and kneel in prayer during the national anthem and why we should honor the fallen soldiers who died fighting for our country. Matt is a conservative firebrand who has been in Congress for over 20 years and is a voice against permanent Washington and the deep state. He is a hero to his constituents and a fighter for freedom and justice for all Americans. He has been a member of the Tea Party and has been on the right side of the political aisle for years and has stood up to the establishment in order to speak truth and stand up for our troops and our values. against the establishment and fight for what is right. America s best interests. Matt has been fighting for the troops and standing up to corporate greed and corruption in Washington and against the corrupt politicians and big business interests that keep getting rich and bought and paid for by the war industry. He s fighting for what they don t get to do the things they want in the name of their dreams and dreams in this episode of his new book, "America First: What's the Deal? and why you should stand up to big business and vote for your country, not big business, not the little guy in the big guy? and not the guy who gets it all the money they need to do it the most . and stand for what s good, not by the flag, the flag is not good enough, and that s not good, and put your money in the money that matters not the money you get to pay for it, not your country gets the most, and you get the most out of it, and it s not the most of it. and you don t have to pay the most in the most at home, not enough, not that you get any more, and they get it all, not more, not less, not better than you get it in the least, and so much more.
00:00:03.000Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
00:00:10.000Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
00:00:13.000He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws.
00:00:16.000So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
00:00:20.000Stand for the flag and kneel in prayer.
00:00:23.000If you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots.
00:00:53.000I think Americans are pretty sick of nation building, but the general public can't really distinguish between 200,000 troops nation building, which does seem like a waste of money to a lot of people and a lot of waste of resources.
00:01:06.000But they can't distinguish between that and keeping a security presence that prevents another 9-11.
00:01:12.000People ask all the time, what do we get in the last 20 years of war?
00:02:28.000Afghanistan withdrawal is a lot like ending a bad romantic relationship after investing way too much time, emotion, and energy just to make things work.
00:02:41.000The corrupt Afghan government and military leaders that we've backed, they will crumble and flee Afghanistan with whatever money they can steal.
00:02:51.000There's even legislation in Congress to let any person who benefited off of the US-funded corruption immigrate here, right to the front of the line, one final golden parachute.
00:03:02.000We have lost 2,442 of our fellow Americans according to the Cost of War project at Brown University.
00:03:11.000The United States federal government has spent over $2 trillion.
00:03:15.000Additionally, over 71,000 civilians, over 78,000 Afghan military and police, and over 84,000 opposition fighters have died.
00:03:24.000I mean, you're talking nearly a quarter of a million people off the planet Earth.
00:03:28.000And now, the Taliban is in better position than ever before.
00:03:52.000The American people were lied to for decades about Afghanistan by warmongers in both political parties.
00:04:00.000Some of the very same people who defied their oaths and needlessly sacrificed our service members for their corrupt objectives remain in vastly powerful positions in government and society today.
00:04:14.000People like Liz Cheney, General Milley, Bill Kristol, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
00:04:23.000There is a well-organized war cartel in America as I lay bare here.
00:04:30.000I oppose the NDAA not because I'm against our troops, but because I love them so much.
00:04:36.000America's fighting men and women are so precious that they should not have to die in some failed state, some faraway land that most Americans can't even point to on a map, so that defense contractors can Extend our involvement in these wars so that lobbyists can get rich and so that members of Congress can get re-elected.
00:04:58.000This good bill has been hijacked by the forever war lobby and their bought and paid for allies in the United States Congress.
00:05:05.000It puts barriers in the way of an administration that wants to bring our troops home and put America first.
00:05:12.000This legislation has become too swampy.
00:05:15.000It does good things to ensure that America can vanquish any foe on the battlefield, but we should only fight when that fight is just and proper.
00:05:24.000We have spent two decades trading the same villages back and forth in Afghanistan, and I believe that the administration that leads our country should work to bring Turns out, we didn't know much about Afghanistan when we invaded.
00:05:57.000So, just maybe, before invading a country, a quick Yelp check.
00:06:03.000Disorganized barbarians in caves who are constantly warring and totally ungovernable, quite a handful even before someone gave them Stinger missiles, signed Russia.
00:06:14.000A land of tough terrain where our women and children were kidnapped by warring tribes.
00:06:20.000Some of them were forced to marry their captors.
00:06:37.000Dreams of nation-building eroded faster than Joe Biden's mental acuity.
00:06:43.000You were lied to endlessly by generals acting like politicians and politicians parading around like tough generals.
00:06:51.000Real toughness is standing up to the military-industrial complex.
00:06:55.000Real patriotism doesn't require us to sacrifice the body parts and minds and marriages of our troops so that we can go pick winners and losers in tribal disputes in Central Asia.
00:07:07.000America is a great nation, but great societies have fallen before by foolishly engaging in costly adventurism, some even in Afghanistan.
00:07:17.000Adjusted for inflation, the United States spent more money on nation-building efforts in Afghanistan than it did with the Marshall Plan, which revived Europe after World War II. Would this have occurred if our leaders weren't such liars and crooks?
00:07:34.000The losers of this 20-year effort clearly the United States government and the Afghanistan democracy hypothesis.
00:07:42.000The Taliban and the United States military-industrial complex.
00:07:47.000Whether we're winning or losing, their stock goes up so long as we are fighting and bleeding and dying.
00:07:56.000The American era of regime change stupidity needs to be over.
00:08:00.000Are we done thinking we can build Jeffersonian democracies out of sand and blood and Arab militias?
00:08:07.000Certainly the powerful interests with a profit motive for war are still around.
00:08:12.000Let's study their tactics and endeavor to defeat them.
00:08:16.000A great nation does not ask the next generation to fight the last generation's wars or settle their scores.
00:08:23.000But we should learn from their mistakes, and we should never make them again.
00:08:28.000Fifteen of the 19 9-11 attackers were Saudi.
00:08:32.000Some had direct assistance from the Saudi government.
00:08:36.000We'd all know a lot more if the full 9-11 files were declassified, which should happen.
00:08:42.000Osama bin Laden is Saudi, the madrasas that teach his version of extreme Wahhabism spread from Saudi.
00:08:50.000We actually know a great deal about the kingdom, more than our government will ever choose to disclose or admit.
00:08:57.000Perhaps our arms deals, foreign aid, and military presence in Saudi Arabia prevent the establishment from addressing the realities that are staring us right in the face.
00:09:09.000George Bush told us that we were invading Afghanistan, where none of the attackers were from, but where a ragtag group of Islamist fighters that our CIA once funded now kind of presided over a failed state.
00:09:26.000Turns out, the Taliban got invaded for basically having the exact same Bin Laden policy as Pakistan, a nation we happily give guns and money to.
00:09:37.000Apparently, if you buy enough F-16s and weapons, you can get away with letting Bin Laden live right under your nose.
00:09:45.000The Bush administration, well, they didn't know a damn thing about Afghanistan.
00:09:50.000Ambassador Ryan Crocker was sent to the country on the heels of our invasion.
00:09:54.000Does this sound like a guy with an understanding of what to do or why?
00:10:00.000Well, at that point we didn't know what the task was, what the U.S. was there to do.
00:10:08.000In Washington as to whether we should embark on a long-term nation-building effort or whether we wanted to keep our role and our agenda very minimal.
00:10:21.000Displaying the rather pathetic inability to gain sufficient situational awareness to get out after a decade, some people started to wake up to a reality.
00:10:31.000Afghanistan is a resource baron, lawless, cultureless hellscape.
00:10:36.000What were we even trying to win there anyway?
00:11:16.000And none of it remotely relevant to the interests of the American people.
00:11:21.000Afghanistan is no asset to the United States.
00:11:23.000So what makes it an asset to any other nation?
00:11:26.000Hell, watching Russia and China get bogged down in nation building in Afghanistan might be good for American hegemony.
00:11:34.000In fact, worst case scenario, the United States leaves Afghanistan as we found it with the Taliban in control.
00:11:42.000After the U.S. had toiled in Afghanistan for a decade, UPenn anthropologist Brian Rose went, looking for a unifying nationalism to study and highlight and cherish.
00:11:55.000Instead, he found a corrupt nationless band of tribes that hate each other.
00:12:01.000National identity is something we take for granted as Americans.
00:13:01.000Our money that we sent over there wasn't worth it.
00:13:05.000The military gains were fleeting at best.
00:13:08.000What's permanent is the pain, the damage, that folks like this widowed mother felt when she was left to raise seven children without the hugs of their father.
00:13:20.000The corrupt government we propped up was definitely not worth it.
00:13:26.000I'm not even sure they'll still be in Kabul when you listen to this episode.
00:13:32.000The warlords who sided with the United States and Afghanistan weren't exactly the crowd you'd bring home to bomb.
00:13:38.000Google Bacha Bazi if you want to vomit.
00:13:41.000Dan Quinn, a former special forces captain, reported, the reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to the people.
00:13:50.000How they were taking away human rights.
00:13:53.000But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did.
00:13:59.000That was something village elders voiced to me.
00:14:02.000Dan Quinn was relieved of his special forces command after beating up an American-backed militia commander because he kept a boy chained to the commander's bed as a sex slave.
00:14:16.000Lance Corporal Gregory Buckley Jr.'s last phone call to his father included, at night we can hear the victims screaming, but they were not allowed to do anything about it.
00:14:26.000U.S. officers told Buckley to look the other way because it's just Afghanistan's culture.
00:14:34.000The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban.
00:14:43.000But the soldiers and marines have been increasingly troubled.
00:14:48.000So how surprised were we really when the savages who were raping children at the military encampments we built for them then turned on American troops?
00:14:59.000Afghan security forces have been firing upon American and allied forces so frequently that 152 coalition troops have died and 200 troops have been injured from these green-on-blue attacks, several of them my constituents.
00:15:17.000And it wasn't just frontline fighters who lacked value or virtue.
00:15:22.000While we redirected hundreds of billions of dollars out of the U.S. economy and while we sent America's moms and dads to die, the very thugs and criminals we were dying for turned out to be lawless thugs and criminals.
00:15:37.000Listen to the behavior of the Afghani Secretary of Defense that we had installed and who we were backing.
00:16:10.000Later, much later, it emerged, I don't know if it was ever verified or not, King Khan himself had the minister killed.
00:16:22.000But I certainly came out of those opening months with the feeling that even by Afghan standards, The media criticized President Biden for pulling troops from Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night without telling the Afghans.
00:16:44.000Well, what does it tell us about this war and all that we spent on it that even at the end, even after all of the blood and treasure, we couldn't even trust the Afghans to tell them that we were leaving?
00:16:58.000Informing these so-called allies of our movements would have put American lives in danger.
00:17:05.000It shows how bad they are and how pointless our mission of supporting them was.
00:17:16.000It was a solemn journey and the first of its kind for President Obama.
00:17:20.000Shortly after midnight, he landed at Dover Air Base aboard Marine One to meet an Air Force C-17 cargo plane carrying 18 fallen personnel back to U.S. soil.
00:17:31.000The latest casualties in the war in Afghanistan.
00:17:34.000Among them, seven soldiers and three DEA agents who died in a helicopter crash Monday And eight soldiers killed the next day.
00:17:43.000Before the somber salute and tribute, the president met privately with some of the relatives at a chapel on the base.
00:17:49.000But Mr. Obama's choice to meet the fallen at Dover is in contrast to his predecessor.
00:17:54.000George W. Bush chose not to travel there, saying the private meetings he held with hundreds of families were the most appropriate way to pay his respects.
00:18:02.000His father's administration also barred cameras from photographing the events at Dover 18 years ago during the first war in Iraq.
00:18:11.000President Obama lifted that ban in April, saying the human cost of war shouldn't be hidden from the public.
00:18:17.000And now, not hidden from the Commander-in-Chief.
00:19:40.000I will send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan and use this commitment to seek greater contributions with fewer restrictions from our NATO allies.
00:19:51.000I will focus on training Afghan security forces and supporting an Afghan judiciary, with more resources and incentives for American officers who perform these missions.
00:20:02.000And just as we succeeded in the Cold War by supporting allies who could sustain their own security, we must realize that the 21st century's front lines are not only on the field of battle.
00:20:14.000They are found in training exercises near Kabul, in the police station in Kandahar, and in the rule of law in Harat.
00:20:22.000Moreover, lasting security will only come if we heed General Marshall's lessons and help Afghans grow their economy from the bottom up.
00:20:31.000The fact is, we went there for one reason.
00:20:34.000To get those people who killed Americans.
00:20:58.000Bush wanted some revenge killings, I guess, but then he got bored and wandered off to Iraq, leaving Afghanistan as the forever war as a secondary plotline.
00:21:09.000Obama embraced an Afghanistan surge, followed by reckless, hopeless nation-building.
00:21:16.000Maybe the American president with the proper Afghanistan policy was actually Bill Clinton.
00:21:23.000There have been and will be times when law enforcement and diplomatic tools are simply not enough, when our very national security is challenged, and when we must take extraordinary steps to protect the safety of our citizens.
00:21:39.000With compelling evidence that the bin Laden network of terrorist groups was planning to mount further attacks against Americans and other freedom-loving people, I decided America must act.
00:21:52.000And so this morning, based on the unanimous recommendation of my national security team, I ordered our armed forces to take action to counter an immediate threat from the bin Laden network.
00:22:05.000Earlier today, the United States carried out simultaneous strikes against terrorist facilities and infrastructure in Afghanistan.
00:22:14.000Clinton's theory on Afghanistan is that we should mostly ignore them.
00:22:19.000And when they get naughty and allow terrorist bases to build up, we should bomb the smithereens out of them from a very high altitude and then fly home.
00:22:29.000After all, the Taliban isn't exactly an expeditionary force.
00:22:34.00080% of Taliban fighters have never been more than 20 miles from their own home.
00:22:40.000If bombing the bad guys without moving in with them for 20 years is wise, one of the key lessons we must take from the Afghanistan loss is that pouring US dollars into a vat of lawlessness does not a nation make.
00:22:55.000U.S. efforts at nation-building actually make things worse, not better.
00:23:01.000When Uncle Sam rounded up all the tribal Bedouins and tried to mold them into a provisional government, we always believed that more money would ultimately be the glue to create a stable democracy, national unity, and identity.
00:23:17.000But it turns out, when you give a bunch of corrupt people more money than they could ever imagine, it only makes them more corrupt, especially in the eyes of their own people.
00:23:29.000Regular Afghans didn't trust the provisional government.
00:23:32.000Like, when they had more American money and support, they were able to demonstrate that they had the trappings of corruption all around them.
00:23:42.000This did not endure to create support among the people.
00:23:46.000The endemic and deeply rooted nature of corruption, whether it's Kabul Bank or anything else, is now beyond the ability of even a determined Afghan president to correct.
00:24:02.000There's a lot of guys that should have been arrested.
00:24:25.000Furthermore, in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution, Congress is given the sole power to declare war.
00:24:33.000Over the years, this responsibility has been almost completely degraded and ceded to the executive branch.
00:24:40.000The executive branch has been acting unilaterally, with only passive approval from the Congress in the form of authorizations of force instead of declarations of war, as our founders intended.
00:24:53.000It is time that we repeal the authorization of military force from 2001 and bring our troops home.
00:25:01.000On Wednesday, July 21st, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley held an Afghanistan briefing.
00:25:10.000Both Austin and Milley confirmed President Biden's deadline to withdraw and they affirmed its efficacy.
00:25:17.000Secretary of Defense Austin laid out five objectives as part of this withdrawal.
00:25:22.000The President has made a decision that we're going to get it done and we're going to get it done right.
00:25:31.000We remain committed to protecting our diplomatic presence in Afghanistan and to providing funding to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces and to advising Afghan security ministries and to preventing the re-emergence of transnational terrorist organizations.
00:25:49.000And we've added a fifth urgent task, and that is working closely and urgently in support of the State Department as they relocate brave Afghans and their families who have provided such exceptional service during our long mission.
00:26:04.000So let's review what Lloyd Austin is saying here.
00:26:07.000His four ongoing key tasks are, one, to preserve America's diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.
00:26:14.000Who are exactly we preserving ties with?
00:26:17.000The corrupt regime we propped up and refused to prosecute when they stole our money and the people's money?
00:26:24.000Will we have real diplomatic relations in Afghanistan if there's no unified, centralized state with any semblance of federal authority?
00:26:33.000The second and third key tasks are, two, to provide funding to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, and three, advising Afghan security ministries.
00:26:42.000So, two trillion dollars in 20 years wasn't enough, but the next 12 billion the Biden government wants, that's the key to lock things up and to ensure the preservation of democracy and national unity in Afghanistan.
00:26:59.000It seems like we're clinging on to Afghanistan like a simp with separation anxiety clinging on to an X. It's furthered with the ongoing key task number four, preserving the re-emergence of transnational terrorist organizations.
00:27:15.000Look, I hate terrorists and I hate terrorism, but does it bother anyone else that preventing transnational terrorist organizations was the reason we went into Afghanistan?
00:27:25.000So it seems a little bizarre to say that we need to keep that going as we leave.
00:27:32.000It takes me back to the 2000s, the very same words President George W. Bush used to get into these forever wars.
00:27:44.000By destroying camps and disrupting communications, we will make it more difficult for the terror network to train new recruits and coordinate their evil plans.
00:27:53.000Initially, the terrorists may burrow deeper into caves and other entrenched hiding places.
00:27:59.000Our military action is also designed to clear the way for sustained, comprehensive, and relentless operations to drive them out.
00:28:09.000Furthermore, all the military operating bases outside of Kabul have been fully transferred to the Afghan Ministry of Defense and the Afghan Security Forces.
00:28:18.000A small contingent of predominantly military personnel, but some civilians and contractors along with Department of State remain in Afghanistan to provide security and bolster our diplomatic presence in Kabul.
00:28:33.000The forces here are key to achieving the five ongoing tasks that the Secretary laid out in his comments.
00:28:38.000A major component of sustaining a robust diplomatic presence in Kabul is to maintain a functioning and secure airport in Kabul.
00:28:49.000So we continue to dedicate our security resources to that, to secure the embassy, to secure the international zone, and to secure HKIA, the international airport in Kabul, for our diplomats, our personnel, and our continued support to the government of Afghanistan.
00:29:05.000The Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country, and we will continue to support the Afghan Security Forces where necessary, in accordance with the guidance from the President and the Secretary of Defense.
00:29:22.000The future of Afghanistan is squarely in the hands of the Afghan people.
00:29:26.000And there are a range of possible outcomes in Afghanistan.
00:29:30.000And I want to emphasize repeatedly, and I've said this before, a negative outcome, a Taliban automatic military takeover, is not a foregone conclusion.
00:29:39.000General Milley declares that the Afghanistan security forces, who we will now continue to fund, presumably forever, have the capacity to fight and defend their country.
00:29:53.000If their security forces have the capacity to defend themselves, why will we continue to support them and fund them?
00:30:00.000Is their capacity to defend themselves solely based on US taxpayer dollars continuing to flow to Afghanistan?
00:30:08.000Was the two trillion dollars not enough for this crazy experiment?
00:30:13.000I support President Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.
00:30:17.000But you have to realize that Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley's press conferences provide mixed messages.
00:30:23.000And there should be additional clarity that leaving Afghanistan is not going to bind us to additional resources and additional personnel down the road.
00:30:34.000And we must remain diligent in calling out these facts.
00:30:37.000Because the media increasingly sides with the neocons.
00:30:41.000And that powerful war cartel still exists in Washington today.
00:30:46.000Just take a look at the debate that I had against Democrat Jason Crow and Republican Liz Cheney when they were trying to keep the United States forever in Afghanistan.
00:30:58.000But here, many Republicans are going to support Mr. Crowe's amendment that in fact ties the administration's hands when it comes to leaving Afghanistan.
00:31:08.000You know, the gentleman said there's always a right way and a wrong way to leave.
00:31:12.000I would say that a great nation does not force the next generation to fight their wars.
00:31:19.000And that's what we've done in Afghanistan.
00:31:20.000I think the best day to have not had the war in Afghanistan was when we started it, and the next best day is tomorrow.
00:31:27.000I don't think there's ever a bad day to end the war in Afghanistan.
00:31:31.000Our generation is weary of this and tired of this, and what this amendment does is it puts additional barriers in front of the administration as they would try to leverage or withdraw and get the best conditions we can and And certainly, Afghanistan is a dangerous place.
00:31:47.000The gentleman from Colorado said, well, you know, we might be able to prevent an Afghan civil war.
00:31:52.000It is not my expectation that we are preventing a whole lot of violence there now.
00:31:56.000You see the extent to which the administrative districts that the Afghan government is controlling is declining, not raising as a consequence of our continued involvement.
00:32:07.000Even the military and governmental officials that were executing the war did not have a vision for victory and knew that we were entangled in a mire pile as it was going on.
00:32:20.000We know this is a consequence of the Afghan papers.
00:32:22.000Mr. Kahn and I have called on the committee to hold hearings on the Afghan papers so that we can ascertain the extent to which our government was negligent with the most precious resource our country has, and that's the blood of our bravest patriots.
00:32:36.000I know that there are desires to continue to have American taxpayers invest in the Afghani security forces to a greater and greater degree.
00:32:46.000I'm sure, ultimately, there'll be some defense contractors that do very well on those deals.
00:32:50.000But, like, pardon me if I just like to make our country great again before we make Kandahar great again.
00:32:57.000And I think that's, while on this committee that might not be a popular view, I think when we get to the broader Congress, if you've got the right-wing populists like myself and the left-wing populists that are members of the majority party working together, you know, it's going to be hard to stand against where a majority of the American people are, and that is against this war.
00:33:21.000Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.
00:33:23.000I want to begin by thanking my colleague, Mr. Crow, for his very diligent work on this.
00:33:31.000This is a very careful amendment, very careful piece of legislation that focuses on what's really critical about what we need to do to protect our security and what needs to be done in Afghanistan.
00:33:45.000We need to make sure that we're denying terrorist safe havens, We need to make sure that we are able to continue counterterrorism activity.
00:33:54.000You know, I listened to my colleague, Mr. Gates, say that, quote, we started it.
00:34:00.000And I would just urge everyone in this room, and I know all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle recognize how flawed that assessment is.
00:34:15.000And the reality of the situation is, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, a number of those same terrorist groups continue to operate in Afghanistan.
00:34:26.000In fact, we have reports that Ayman al-Zawahiri has been in Afghanistan recently, may be there now.
00:34:33.000So we have an obligation as we look at how we're going to be able to continue to protect this nation to do it in a way that is responsible.
00:34:44.000Increasingly, I hear the term sustainable force around the Afghanistan debate.
00:34:49.000Sustainable, after all, that's a good word.
00:34:53.000But sustainable force is merely the language that allows our national security apparatus to convert these policing operations into forever wars.
00:35:03.000The best thing to do with Afghanistan is to cut our losses, leave that hellscape wasteland, and endeavor to never make the mistakes that got us there in the first place.
00:35:16.000There was a lot of conversation from my colleagues about the need for us to be obligated to secure Saudi Arabia's southern border.
00:35:23.000I wish we had that much passion and interest in securing our own southern border.
00:35:27.000To me, that would seemingly be a more consistent application of our principles.
00:35:32.000And it seems odd to bang our chests about American leadership while referencing Afghanistan and Yemen.
00:35:38.000If what we get from American leadership is involvement in one of the most brutal, horrific civil wars in Yemen, and then a multi-decade war in Afghanistan, one asks the question if that leadership is being properly husbanded for the benefit of our country.
00:35:56.000There is an opportunity for the President under any circumstance To respond to terrorism, to threats against our forces, as my Republican colleagues have referenced, attacks against our interests and against our allies, we would still have the ability, under the language of the amendment, to fully respond to those things.
00:36:13.000But what we do not need is excessive entanglement from the United States in some civil war where we're trying to build some democracy out of sand and blood.
00:36:23.000And that is what we have done for far too long in the Middle East.
00:36:26.000We have done great work in this legislation to raise our gaze to combat the real threat that we face, which is China.
00:36:35.000Continuing to obsess about our Middle Eastern conquests just does not rise to the level of a great body or a great nation.
00:36:45.000We just got word that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered all members of the military vaccinated by September 15th.
00:36:53.000And what's so frustrating is that the lead Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Mike Rogers, endorsed and went along with his decision.
00:37:02.000He noted that 70% of the military is vaccinated now.
00:37:05.000And he thinks that number should be 100%.
00:37:09.000With the way they're hunting people over this faux sense of extremism in the military and now this, it's almost like they're trying to drive out anybody who's capable of independent thought.
00:37:20.000Similarly, we don't know the long-term impacts of this vaccine on readiness, on the human body.
00:37:26.000And the fact that we're forcing military families to take this vaccine before it goes through the normal process, That's deeply troubling to me, and I think Republicans should be fighting against this decision, not supporting it like Mike Rogers has.
00:37:42.000Make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast listening platform of choice, on Rumble, on YouTube, and watch our full episodes on Facebook.