Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GA) was one of the few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents. He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause, so we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him. If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up, and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots. You are in the right place. We'll dive into the opioid crisis, and ensure that we give you the best update regarding the oversight that has to happen for the House of Representatives to be worthy of the great people of this country again. Subscribe to Firebrand to get immediate access to all of our newest episodes, and stay up to date on our most popular shows wherever you get your news and listen to your favorite podcasts. Firebrand is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. New Episodes drop every Tuesday morning in the United States, right across the country. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and use coupon code: "FIREbrand" to receive 10% off your first purchase when you enter the offer ends on November 1st, 2019. Thank you for supporting our sponsor discount code: FEARless. at checkout! We're giving listeners the chance to save up to $10 off their first purchase of $50 or more than $50, and receive a FREE stock like Apple, Best Fiends and an additional $50 off of their choice of a Blackberry, when they sign up to receive an ad discount when they become a 5-piece promo code, they choose the deal of their first month, they shop with us get 20% off the offer, and we receive $5 or more, they also get $25 or more they choose a discount, they get the choice of the deal, and they get an ad-free version of the offer that lasts for 5-AVOIDED by clicking through the entire service, they receive the deal. . We also get access to our newest episode of Firebrand. , and we'll be giving you access to the entire month of the Firebrand app, Firebrand! and we also get a discount on the entire ad-only version of our new ad-verge, so they get all the discount code .
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 applause.
00:00:16.000So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
00:00:20.000If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!
00:00:55.000Upcoming in this episode, we've got an interview with Congressman Thomas Massey regarding natural immunity.
00:01:01.000We'll dive into the opioid crisis and ensure that we give you the best update regarding the oversight that has to happen for the House of Representatives to be worthy of the great people of this country again.
00:01:14.000There's no advertisement that you have to endure as a part of this podcast, but we really would appreciate it, especially if you're on a listening platform.
00:01:24.000It helps our content reach more folks.
00:01:27.000So first, recently in the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jim Jordan tried to bring up a resolution to address the deep concerns we have over the counterterrorism division at the FBI placing threat tags on people who are attending school board meetings.
00:02:46.000Are you familiar with Title V of the Code of Federal Regulations, which addresses the rules of impartiality for executive branch employees and officials?
00:02:56.000I am very familiar with it and I want to be clear once again that there's nothing in this memorandum which has any effect on the kinds of curriculums that are taught or the ability of parents to complain about the kinds of...
00:03:12.000I understand your position on the free speech of parents.
00:03:16.000The question is, the question is, The thing that is concerned many of those parents that are showing up at these school board meetings, the very basis of their objection and their vigorous debate, as you mentioned earlier, is the curricula, the very curricula that your son-in-law is selling.
00:03:32.000This memorandum is aimed at violence and threats of violence.
00:03:36.000I understand that, but did you, excuse me, did you seek ethics counsel before you issued a letter that directly relates to the financial interest of your family?
00:03:54.000Instead of dealing with this seriously troubling matter, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler brought up legislation by Representative Eric Swalwell to address cold cases.
00:04:07.000We chose cold case legislation over the very hot matter of political targeting and lies from the Department of Justice.
00:04:14.000I wasn't quite done making the point and had a little debate with Representative Scanlon of Pennsylvania.
00:04:43.000How many people who showed up to school board meetings, who sent an email, who made a phone call, who expressed their First Amendment rights, how many of those people right now are under any tag or designation or supervision.
00:04:56.000If you threaten their children, and we've seen all of those things happen, we've seen property damage at people's homes, unpaid positions by community volunteers, and they're being targeted and threatened, then somebody has got to look at that.
00:05:12.000If there's a threat to violence in communities, there's no attestation or evidence that law enforcement in local communities can't deal with that.
00:05:28.000The House Judiciary Committee should be investigating these things, and what we'll find in that investigation is when the FBI and the Department of Justice want to go after people, want to go after Trump, want to go after political opponents, want to go after organizing parents and communities, they seed a lie, and they get that lie retold, and then they use it to target people.
00:05:54.000They're terrified because they know it.
00:05:56.000I set the frame at a recent press conference with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
00:06:01.000This report must be a guidepost for ongoing Republican oversight effort in the Congress, because we are going to take power after this next election.
00:06:12.000And when we do, it's not going to be the days of Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy and no real oversight and no real subpoenas.
00:06:20.000It's going to be the days of Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Dr. Gosar and myself doing everything to get the answers to these questions.
00:06:30.000So what I have laid out is a new way of thinking about the role of Republicans in Congress.
00:06:35.000This was observed by Steve Bannon on The War Room Podcast.
00:06:40.000If Republicans need to know how to be led in an effort of rigorous, dogged, fair, but determined oversight, I'll show them how to do it.
00:06:50.000What we are not going to do is go back to the days of, you know, I would say kind of the George W. Bush era of Republicanism, where there was just this exasperated surrender to the frame that they set.
00:07:38.000It seems like almost every week in Congress we addressed opioid legislation.
00:07:43.000In fact, since 2013, members of Congress have introduced over 500 opioid research awareness or prevention bills.
00:07:51.000In recent years, opioid appropriations have spanned the bureaucracy, including HHS, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the DOJ, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, the Department of Labor.
00:08:03.000The Department of Health and Human Services alone has spent over $9 billion in recent years on these very issues.
00:08:11.000Through these useless bills and crazy appropriations, we've created task forces, we've mandated studies, we've sent countless tax dollars to continue pretending that lawmakers are actually looking for a solution to the problem.
00:08:26.000Maybe it's the lawmakers who are the problem.
00:09:09.000In 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Act regulated and taxed opiates, and that raised the cost of entry to the market and extraneously created the cartel-esque opioid manufacturers.
00:09:21.000This is essentially the turn-of-the-century precursors to the Sackler family.
00:09:26.000In 1970, the Controlled Substances Act clarified specific drugs into five categories.
00:09:32.000Notably, making marijuana and other psychedelics more illegal than hard drugs, such as the lethal opioid-based drug heroin.
00:09:40.000In 1986, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act established penalties for controlled substances, including mandatory minimums for opiates.
00:09:49.000This raised the black market value of heroin for prescription-starved pain relief patients.
00:09:56.000Through all this time, the federal government was authorizing and building a wall around opioid production.
00:10:02.000In this past decade, they've abruptly cut the supply with well-intentioned legislation that has caused a transitory opioid addiction crisis to fentanyl and heroin.
00:10:15.000Patients that have been over-prescribed and addicted to their pain relief prescriptions then became the targets of the heroin dealers of Mexico and others in the black market who have all become very rich during these changes in U.S. policy, by the way.
00:10:30.000If only the U.S. government weren't prohibited from researching the pain relief efficacy of marijuana for the last hundred years.
00:10:39.000So that brings us to like the mid-90s, the early 2000s regime, where encouraging and allowing patients unlimited access to opioids exploded this crisis.
00:10:50.000And Purdue Pharma, they were at the center of it.
00:10:52.000They owned and operated this system that really was the modern-day cartel of opioids.
00:11:28.000Most people, when they hear that, think, my God, you must just lay around in bed all day, really zoned out, you can't do anything, you can't function.
00:11:38.000Now, this medication does not turn you into a zombie.
00:11:41.000It has turned me into an active person again.
00:11:49.000I have found life again and it's worth living now and I'm so grateful.
00:11:54.000The fact remains that the main area that we can improve on and the approach that's available to every doctor with a prescription pad is just for us to do a better job of prescribing strong pain medications and I mean opioids.
00:12:12.000The politicians cashed the checks, and the regulators got pharma-funded golden parachutes.
00:12:19.000A knee-jerk reaction has now, of course, occurred, making things even worse.
00:12:24.000Government regulation, prohibition, and other top-down approaches to controlling human behavior have always failed to control human behavior.
00:12:32.000As of last year, the overall opioid prescribing rate had fallen 48% since 2012. You'd think that's good, right?
00:12:39.000But during the same period, opioid-related deaths more than tripled.
00:12:45.000Last year, about 83% of those deaths involved illicit fentanyl.
00:12:50.000So you can see people making the transition as a result of lower prescribing, but with no therapy to transition to, they're going to the black market and they're dying.
00:13:00.000Since the beginning of time, illicit markets always responded to consumer demands.
00:13:06.000In fact, roughly 80% of the people who use street heroin first misused prescription opioids.
00:13:15.000Increasing the FDA's presence in regulating doctors and scaring them from losing their licenses and ensuring that they don't give opioids to patients in need or don't present therapy alternatives, they're clearly not solving the problem.
00:13:30.000Additionally, increasing the DEA or the activist DOJ's war on drugs initiatives are not going to work.
00:13:38.000I made it clear to then-President Trump's acting head of the DEA in this hearing all the way back in 2018. Take a listen.
00:13:47.000Opioids are prescribed principally as a chronic pain solution, right?
00:14:03.000It says, there is conclusive or substantial evidence that cannabis or cannabinoids are effective for treatment of chronic pain in adults.
00:14:12.000Do you have any basis scientifically or from any evidentiary standpoint to disagree with that conclusion?
00:14:18.000Again, this is why I think we always talk about the research of the benefits of marijuana.
00:14:24.000So you support research into medical marijuana?
00:14:26.000We've said that all along, that we support the research of marijuana.
00:14:29.000And after you implemented a rule in August of 2016 pushing the Department of Justice to create more research-based cannabis, they haven't issued any more of those permits, have they?
00:14:41.000So they haven't been granted, but I think there's an important distinction that has to be understood.
00:14:46.000So when we put that rule out, it was in the efforts to help the research community.
00:14:53.000But if none of the research permits have been granted, how has it helped them?
00:14:56.000Because there is an issue with how we put that solicitation out or that rule out.
00:15:01.000So you're the acting administrator of the DEA. You cannot cite a single study that indicates that medical marijuana creates a greater challenge with opioids, and you're unaware of the studies, including studies from the National Academy of Sciences, that demonstrate that medical marijuana can be an acceptable alternative to opioids.
00:15:23.000You see, Democrats have this opportunity right now to pass responsible marijuana reform and liberate this as an opportunity to address pain at a lower acuity.
00:15:36.000Instead, 57 bills fixated on opioids have been introduced in the 117th Congress, but we can't move a marijuana bill successfully.
00:15:46.000While I don't call on the extinction of this opioid analgesic drug in hospitals for surgeries and relief from cancer-related pain, it is long past time to 1. Cut off the quality-of-life motivated prescriptions, And two, dedicate real resources to researching non-addictive alternatives.
00:16:07.000A Quinnipiac University national poll shows that nearly 90% of Americans support medical marijuana.
00:16:14.000A Pew poll finds that two-thirds of Americans support the full legalization of marijuana.
00:16:19.000Every Congress, there are countless bills introduced to end the federal prohibition on marijuana.
00:16:24.000Why is it still a Schedule I drug making it more illegal than opioids?
00:16:29.000The Democrats, particularly the Congressional Black Caucus.
00:16:33.000I think it's important that we support this bill by beginning to deschedule marijuana, working on these initiatives to make sure that the bill will add equity to minority communities and ensuring that they have a voice in the growing industry as well.
00:16:54.000What I have also seen is that we have a tale of two Americas.
00:16:58.000On the one hand, we have a wealthy white business America that dominates the medical cannabis, especially in Florida.
00:17:07.000But on the other hand, black and brown citizens of my community are suffering the consequences of these one-sided laws.
00:17:14.000But in Florida, since the gentlelady mentioned it, we actually thought we were so concerned that communities of color may have been locked out of access to large-scale agricultural operations to be able to meet the need that we required in the state of Florida that licenses at some point had to go to black farmers who were members of the Pigford class in a class-action lawsuit brought by sharecroppers.
00:17:39.000And so again, the charge That the state of Florida has only helped rich white people in the marijuana industry is unsupported by the evidence.
00:17:48.000It is belied by the fact that the very first license in Florida went to Costa Farms, a minority owned business.
00:17:55.000And it is further disproven by the fact that by taking an approach that has been signified by Representative Buck to go one step at a time, You actually can get to the restorative justice and minority access precisely as we've done in the state of Florida.
00:18:11.000I yield back to the gentleman from Colorado.
00:18:13.000Just recently, the House passed apologetic feel-good legislation regarding the government's role in solving the opioid crisis, the ID Verifications for Opioid Prescriptions Act, and the Opioid Abuse Awareness Campaign Act.
00:18:29.000The 90s called, and they want their drug policy back.
00:18:32.000These are okay-sounding bills, I guess, sent to assure the American people that everything will be okay because the government is A, stepping in to regulate prescription distribution even more, and B, the government will authorize the use of your tax dollars to lead a campaign to warn against the use of fentanyl, the drug that the U.S. government is responsible for protecting and distributing.
00:18:55.000Instead of continuing Congress's addiction to failure and new programs, we should acknowledge that the federal government has totally screwed up drug policy in America, and we should use the federalist system to save the lives of our people.
00:19:28.000I'm here with one of Congress's most brilliant members, Thomas Massey of Kentucky.
00:19:33.000Thomas, I know you don't like to talk about this too much, but where'd you go to school?
00:19:36.000A little trade school down the river from the art school in Massachusetts, MIT. Though we've been colleagues and worked together on a number of issues, I recently learned about your academic record there.
00:19:48.000How many B's did you get at MIT? I got two.
00:20:08.000So what was it like when you were there on the oversight committee questioning John Kerry and he, instead of responding to specific scientific data points, said you were not a serious person, said that you lacked sort of an understanding of science and data.
00:20:27.000Did that strike you as a bit condescending coming from You know, a politician who essentially married wealthy in order to get a claim that, like, otherwise would never append a person like John Kerry?
00:20:39.000I wasn't personally offended, but his opening statements, he said when President Trump decides to listen to educated adults, then he might understand.
00:20:48.000And so that's when I looked into John Kerry's credentials and found out that he was indeed a scientist.
00:21:18.000So I think it's somewhat appropriate that somebody with a pseudoscience degree is here pushing pseudoscience in front of our committee today.
00:21:26.000Well, Thomas, I bring it up because it seems that the body doesn't always quite know how to deal with you because you are a data first person.
00:21:33.000You are on the front end of a lot of scientific issues that arise in the country.
00:21:38.000You served on the science committee where you focused on a lot of that stuff.
00:21:42.000And when COVID really started to become central to American consciousness, I remember very early, you were one of the first to seek out an antibodies test because you wanted the data as to your own person and your own health.
00:21:56.000Do you mind sharing sort of how you made that decision and how you've lived as a consequence of that result?
00:22:04.000Well, first of all, I ask people who get the vaccine because they want to save grandma and, you know, stop the spread of the disease.
00:22:10.000Did you go get an antibody test after you got the vaccine?
00:22:13.000Like if you're relying on this to save people's lives, did you spend the other 50 bucks to see if it worked?
00:22:18.000And of course, almost nobody does that.
00:22:22.000But I had an antibody test 18 months ago that came back positive with high levels of antibodies.
00:22:29.000And so I've been interested personally as to whether the vaccine improves on that immunity and how durable and long-lasting is that immunity.
00:22:38.000And so when the vaccines were first approved by the FDA and then the CDC published a short little blurb, I noticed there was a typo in there.
00:22:52.000Of course, I characterized it as a typo.
00:25:24.000And the reason this question was important was who do we prioritize?
00:25:28.000In a period when the vaccines are limited, should we be giving them to 25-year-olds who've already had COVID and recovered who work in the accounting department at a big hospital, or should we be giving them to nursing home patients or 60-year-old retirees or whatever?
00:25:45.000Because in Kentucky, they were in short supply.
00:25:47.000And a month later, the vaccines came out and they had refused to change it on their website.
00:26:00.000Explain to viewers why the federal government would purposefully maintain false information on their website that you have pointed out to them and which they have admitted as false.
00:26:13.000In the beginning, I tried to impart the best motives possible to them.
00:26:18.000Maybe they thought that people would think they already had COVID and without getting a test.
00:26:25.000But why wouldn't they just fix something that's wrong on their website that they acknowledged was wrong and found by Eagle Eye Massey?
00:26:31.000Because their basic assumption is that Americans are stupid and that they are the science.
00:26:37.000And that there are such things as noble lies and they I mean, COVID, if it's anything, the government's response to COVID is a series of noble lies that have been reversed multiple times.
00:26:51.000Well, I think that's a very charitable characterization.
00:26:54.000I'm trying to be charitable, but my charity ran out.
00:26:57.000And they have caused people to die early on when there were limited numbers of vaccines available.
00:27:05.000And now because they refuse to recognize natural immunity, they're putting people at risk who don't need to be put at risk because any extra benefit that might come to somebody who's already been infected and recovered from the vaccine In most cases, I believe, does not outweigh the risk that that person faces.
00:27:29.000What is your best analysis just of the data when you look at the effect of natural infection immunity versus the immunities that append to a regimen of vaccine?
00:27:40.000Well, you can go back and look at the original Pfizer data and the Moderna data, which is published, and then the Cleveland Clinic study, which has 50,000.
00:27:48.000I'm like, wow, do they even have 50,000 employees?
00:27:52.000They have 50,000 employees in their network.
00:27:54.000And they showed that it was As durable or more durable.
00:27:59.000And then you've got the whole nation of Israel as a study, and they've shown that it's more durable in Israel.
00:28:08.000Is there a single study that you're aware of, that you've read and reviewed, that shows that vaccination provides longer lasting, stronger immunity than natural infection immunity?
00:28:30.000It's like six or eight pages long and it has 53 authors.
00:28:33.000Those are 53 people that want funding from the federal government who have volunteered the imprimatur of their degrees and their education and their background to put toward this another noble lie.
00:28:45.000Do you believe that Big Pharma has corrupted the way we think about vaccines versus natural immunity?
00:29:42.000You and I made a movie about corruption in this town and the way that Political donations and kind of member management gets people to behave and vote different ways than they otherwise would.
00:29:56.000And frankly, they promised their constituents and that's a bipartisan critique you and I have at the institution.
00:30:01.000It's called The Swamp on HBO. Everybody should check it out.
00:30:03.000You get a free trial, not even have to pay.
00:30:05.000But Thomas, I wonder if that dynamic Of money and swampy corruption doesn't just influence the elected leaders, but also influences a lot of these bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci, like people at NIH who want to leave government service and then go work for the pharmaceutical industry.
00:30:27.000And so now they're essentially carrying the water of Big Pharma.
00:30:30.000I don't want to put words in your mouth.
00:30:32.000That's my assessment of what's going on.
00:30:34.000But do you think that that's incorrect or too judgmental on my part?
00:30:39.000First of all, there's no national immunity lobby here in Washington.
00:31:08.000But they're the only one who have full FDA approval.
00:31:11.000By the way, that vaccine is not available in the United States according to CDC's website.
00:31:16.000But I think that really is the big grift here.
00:31:20.000We have so many influences from big pharma, and no one has figured out how to make money off of natural infection immunity.
00:31:28.000If natural infection immunity resulted in some windfall profit to some industry, wouldn't it be more part of the discussion here in Washington?
00:32:14.000I mean, you are not on the Armed Services Committee, but you were really putting pedal to the metal on legislation to help our service members.
00:32:23.000Walk me through your thought process on the military, natural immunity, and vaccine.
00:34:22.000Remember how compelling that legislation was to my constituents.
00:34:27.000And so during the National Defense Authorization markup, I took the framework of your legislation and I introduced it as an amendment to protect our military families.
00:34:36.000And I expected the Democrats to fight me.
00:34:40.000What I didn't expect is that the leading Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Congressman Mike Rogers of Alabama, would lead the debate against the amendment that you crafted that I introduced.
00:34:53.000How should we think about Republicans who are going along with the narrative from Dr. Fauci and the Biden regime and really big pharma that 100% vaccination ought to always be the goal and we ought to limit exemptions to the greatest degree possible?
00:35:10.000Well, you shouldn't really trust them with your life or your vote, in my opinion.
00:35:16.000We forced this vote in other committees.
00:35:19.000Well, the Judiciary Committee, we had a vote on this to defund vaccine mandates, and we had a vote in Transportation Committee to defund vaccine passports.
00:35:45.000How did Biden seek to promulgate and enforce?
00:35:49.000Who was his army going to be for the three vaccine mandates that have been ruled out by the courts?
00:35:54.000He was going to weaponize the OSHA, right?
00:35:59.000In other agencies within the government, the federal contracting process, he was going to weaponize that.
00:36:06.000He was going to weaponize CMS. And so anybody who thinks that we can pet the rattlesnake when we're in the majority and feed it, which are these agencies, that they will be kind to us if we feed them.
00:36:20.000OK, better remember that nobody at those agencies told Joe Biden, hey, you're asking us to do something that's unconstitutional and illegal on its face.
00:36:30.000They just complied, and they were gleefully and happily going to subjugate the American people and make them lose their jobs, and a lot of people already have.
00:36:38.000Well, and I'm concerned that that problem is actually getting worse because I know people who are liberty-minded, constitutionally oriented, who serve in these agencies, who are having to leave federal service as a consequence of not complying with a vaccine mandate.
00:36:53.000People who believe that as a consequence of their natural infection immunity, the vaccine presents only risk for them.
00:36:59.000And so I worry that the administrative state is becoming more monolithic, not less, and becoming more threatening to our liberties.
00:37:07.000And on that point, Thomas, there was a moment in your time in Congress that was behind closed doors, that was with our colleagues, that I remember...
00:37:18.000You stood up when a group of people in our party were trying to drive you out of Congress, were trying to support other candidates against you.
00:37:25.000And you said, there are a lot of Americans who wouldn't be Republicans if I wasn't a member of the Republican conference.
00:37:34.000And it's because you embody, I think, a traditional embrace of constitutional principles that people are attracted to, even if they aren't Republicans.
00:37:45.000Could you explain that sentiment, the notion that you bring something to the party that we wouldn't be able to sort of claim as our space in the absence of your contribution?
00:37:55.000I feel like what I bring is a mirror and I try to hold it up to everybody and say, okay, look at yourselves.
00:38:02.000What did you campaign on and what are you doing here?
00:38:05.000And if the American people could see what we're doing here behind closed doors, would they vote for your reelection?
00:38:12.000That's the question you need to ask yourself.
00:38:15.000I remember a moment on the floor of the House where one of our Republican colleagues came down and was just berating Marjorie Taylor Greene.
00:38:23.000For asking for a vote, for having the audacity to put things on record.
00:38:29.000And he said, I know you're trying to do the right thing, but you need to consider this.
00:38:35.000And I interrupted and I said, if your constituents could see what you're doing right here, they would be highly upset.
00:40:56.000I'm hungry just when you mentioned Canterbury.
00:40:58.000That made me want one of those chocolate eggs.
00:41:00.000But I think what a lot of people in my district saw through that is that firearms are not, in and of themselves, some deeply offensive thing to other people.
00:41:11.000A family that is well-versed on firearm safety and on the The basic practices that allow you to protect your property, protect your home, that those things are not viewed as confrontational in rural America, whereas I really think in some of these ivory towers of elitism, they thought that you meant some offense by that.
00:43:09.000I have been suspended for a couple tweets.
00:43:11.000This may be the episode that gets Firebrand pulled off of YouTube.
00:43:15.000We're principally a rumble and anchor system, but this could be the one.
00:43:19.000But I tell you what, it shouldn't be threatening or frightening to people to simply look at data regarding what the government is telling us to ensure that that matches with what they've told us previously.
00:43:30.000And I'm sure glad to fight alongside you for folks who simply want the science that informs natural immunity to be part of our public policy approach to combating this virus.
00:43:42.000Appreciate what you do, and I hope you're driving the Republican message and our ideology for quite some time.
00:43:55.000I recently joined my congressional colleagues Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, and Paul Gosar at a press conference to share a report regarding the condition of the January 6th detainees.
00:44:05.000It's titled Unusually Cruel, and you can find it on my congressional website.
00:44:09.000Unusually cruel walks through the conditions in the D.C. jail.
00:44:12.000These are the political prisoners of 6th January.
00:44:14.000The January 6th detainees have been subjected to a version of American justice that is different and worse and unfair.
00:44:28.000I defend the Constitution and our principles of justice.
00:44:31.000And when I see people unable to access medical care, which has happened, people unable to access counsel, which has happened, people unable to access evidence.
00:44:43.000And also spiritual guidance and the religious practices.
00:44:49.000Just basic things that you wouldn't want deprived of any American accused of a crime.
00:44:54.000We made clear that we were not acting as any one person's defender or lawyer and that we oppose political violence.
00:45:01.000Whether we agree, disagree, and I can tell you right now, I completely disagree and am very against the violence that happened on January 6th at the Capitol.
00:45:11.000We should all, all disagree with how these people are being treated.
00:45:15.000Look, I was known as a law and order judge and chief justice, and I believe in punishing people for their wrongdoing, and there was wrongdoing on that day.
00:45:25.000I've repeatedly called for all individuals arrested for illegal acts on January 6th to be treated fairly.
00:45:31.000They are deserving of equal justice under the law.
00:45:35.000What we do believe is that every American should be treated fairly under our Constitution and that there shouldn't be special punishment, confinement, or torture based on politics.
00:45:51.000They're denied time with their attorneys.
00:45:53.000They are denied the ability to even see their families and have their families visit there.
00:45:59.000When they're being force-fed gluten food and they have celiac disease, and so the food that they eat makes them sick every single day to the point where they will go without days.
00:46:11.000Go days, I'm sorry, days without eating in order to just feel better because they are not given better food.
00:46:18.000I think we can clearly see that there is serious abuse happening here.
00:46:22.000They are being denied the right to attend chapel in a religious service.
00:46:35.000And many share horrible stories of lacking adequate medical treatment.
00:46:40.000They're keeping this elderly gentleman in jail.
00:46:44.000You look at his hand, and it's obviously dark.
00:46:50.000Looks like it's going toward gray or black.
00:46:53.000You know, that's normally leading toward amputation when it gets that bad.
00:46:59.000But they haven't given him proper medical care.
00:47:03.000Another inmate had his finger going just sideways at the last joint.
00:47:08.000He said it was broken by one of the guards and they won't allow him to get medical care for that.
00:47:15.000There are just all kinds of things there.
00:47:17.000And to be clear, it's not just the inmates that have suffered.
00:47:23.000As Marjorie and I toured the DC jail, some of the conditions were so astounding, I asked more than one guard Have you ever worked in a facility that had these kind of problems?
00:47:39.000And quietly they would say, never, no.
00:47:43.000Leave it to the political activists masquerading as news anchors at CNN to miss this point in the most spectacularly stupid of ways.
00:47:53.000Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, among those who had a press conference, they wanted to defend the people charged in the insurrection, saying they were being treated unfairly.
00:48:04.000And at that event, Congressman Gaetz went on to say that he still likes the idea of Donald Trump as speaker, if the Republicans were the majority.
00:48:11.000So they poke their own leadership, and they just say things that, forgive me, are not American, not patriotic, about defending people who stormed the Capitol building.
00:48:19.000That was CNN's John King, and he is clearly an imbecile.
00:48:23.000I didn't even bring up Trump as Speaker.
00:48:26.000A reporter asked me about it, and I responded honestly.
00:48:29.000And frankly, Speaker Trump has a great ring to it.
00:48:32.000And you see that it just triggers them into these frantic false allegations.
00:48:42.000Pardon me, but I don't take lectures on patriotism from a network that peddled the Russia hoax for years, only to then hire some of the greatest affront to patriotism in our time, Andrew McCabe and James Clapper.
00:48:55.000Andrew McCabe repeatedly told lies about his media leaks and political activity when he was questioned by the Department of Justice's Inspector General.
00:49:06.000In fact, the greatest threats to our nation, liars like Clapper and McCabe, they benefit directly, financially, from the corrupt, unpatriotic revolving door between the deep state and CNN. CNN says we are unpatriotic for demanding the fair application of constitutional rights to all Americans, regardless of politics.
00:49:31.000Nothing could be more patriotic than that.