In this episode of Firebrand Live, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GA) takes a look at the impact the primary elections are having on the two major parties, and how they influence the policies they are willing to talk about. He also takes a deep dive into the abortion debate, and examines the role that abortion opponents are playing in shaping the conversation around Roe v. Wade and the impact it has on abortion access and access to abortion services. Finally, he talks about the impact that the primary election outcomes have on the policies that are voted on by voters, and what that means for the future of abortion access in the United States. Firebrand LIVE is a production of the Firebrand Leadership podcast, Firebrand Media, and is brought to you Live from Congressman Gaetz's office in Washington, D.C., where he is streaming the show live from his office on Capitol Hill. Subscribe to the show to stay up to date on all things Firebrand and keep up with the latest breaking news and breaking issues in politics, culture, entertainment, and everyday life in America. Tweet Me! with your thoughts, opinions, and thoughts on anything else going on in the and let us know what you thought of it in the comments section below! Timestamps: 0:00:00 - What's your favorite moment from the past week? 6:30 - What was your biggest takeaway from this week's episode? 9:15 - What do you think about Roe v Roe v Wade? 11:00 16: What is your favorite part of the Supreme Court case? 17: What s your favorite piece of legislation? 19:40: What are you looking forward to see in the future? 21:00 | What would you want to see next? 26:40 - What s the most important about abortion reform? 27:30 | What s going to happen in the next episode of the show? 29:30 32:40 | What's the biggest thing you're most excited about in 2020? 31: What's going to be the biggest challenge? 33:00 + 33: How would you vote on abortion? 36:00 & 36:10 - What are your thoughts on abortion, abortion, immigration? 35:40 37:10 38: Should we talk about it? 39:10 | How do you feel about abortion, pro-choice, immigration, and abortion?
00:04:58.000Matt 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.
00:05:05.000Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
00:05:08.000He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
00:05:11.000So we're going to keep running the stories to keep hurting him.
00:05:15.000If 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!
00:06:02.000I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz, and we are streaming live from my office on Capitol Hill.
00:06:06.000The best way to enjoy this report live, so that you're not listening to it later, watching it later, is to make sure that you are subscribed to your platform live.
00:06:18.000So we're going to talk about the overturning of Roe v.
00:06:21.000Wade, how politicians are reacting to it, I'm actually really intrigued by the messages that are being sent by what's not being talked about.
00:06:50.000Get out and vote regardless of your candidate of choice.
00:06:53.000regardless of your political persuasion.
00:06:54.000And one can't help but note how the outcomes in these primaries, particularly on the Republican side, influence the policies that we are willing to talk about.
00:07:05.000You see, that's where you make the connection.
00:07:07.000When a guy like a J.D. Vance wins a primary in Ohio, that helps those of us who want to elevate the issue of illegal immigration in the Congress.
00:07:16.000And when you get the more moderate establishment candidates that win, well, then you see a shift toward those policy issues.
00:07:23.000And that's what we cover in the show, policy.
00:07:25.000Can't help but notice President Trump going into today's Election Day, 55-0 in his endorsements and And again, what that informs on within the walls in Congress, the agenda, the schedule.
00:07:38.000What are the things we're going to talk about and what are the issues we're going to be willing to fight about in a world in which these are some of the primary outcomes?
00:08:23.000And so you've had people like Republican Governor of West Virginia Jim Justice, even Democrat U.S. Senator Joe Manchin supporting the infrastructure bill, saying it's good for West Virginia.
00:08:35.000You've had Congress members like Alex Mooney opposing that infrastructure bill.
00:08:39.000So if you see a Mooney win today, that's bad news for the Democrats, even though it's an outcome in a Republican primary, because it shows that this infrastructure bill that is not only the signature accomplishment of the Biden presidency, it is the only thing that they could possibly trumpet as an accomplishment. it is the only thing that they could possibly trumpet
00:08:57.000And if it's not driving votes, if it's not a voting issue, then I think you really see a narrative that's without any sort of cohesion or central focus or grounding in the challenges that are really very prevalent out in the country and challenges we're definitely going to talk about in the show.
00:09:16.000So that brings us to Congress this week.
00:09:20.000And we are getting news that a $40 billion package for Ukraine in arms, in aid, in cash, is being decoupled from a vote on COVID. Now, first of all, what is so freaking wrong with Congress that you would ever couple Ukrainian aid with coronavirus response?
00:09:41.000Regardless how you think of those things, they definitely don't belong together, but it tells you something about how your government behaves and responds that they would think about this not as a policy debate, but as a political fusion of these issues.
00:09:56.000Now, for me, it's not that difficult because, as I'll explain, I'm against both of them, but really nuts that they thought about joining COVID and Ukrainian aid.
00:10:06.000To most people, you would think your government would actually be sophisticated and mature enough to address those issues on their own merits independently.
00:10:14.000It does look like that's going to happen.
00:10:16.000I think the COVID obsession needs to come to an end.
00:10:19.000We cannot continue to print money to subsidize COVID fear porn policies.
00:10:26.000You want to know why we have inflation problems in this country today?
00:10:29.000It's not because of Vladimir Putin principally.
00:10:34.000It's because we print money and thus devalue the dollar as a fundamental economic institution in American life.
00:10:43.000So I'm not going to be voting for the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer COVID additional relief package because in Florida, frankly, we've seen how to respond to this.
00:10:55.000More freedom, more economic activity, more personal choice.
00:10:59.000And by the way, for those who want to stay locked up for their personal health reasons, who want to get vaccinated, that's entirely their right.
00:11:11.000Americans who want to go back to work, who want to open businesses, who want to interact with family members, ought to be able to do that as well.
00:11:18.000So in this COVID package, you've got, you know, the hospital industrial complex and the pharmaceutical industrial complex doing their thing.
00:11:28.000But the $40 billion for Ukraine, that is undeniably the military industrial complex.
00:11:34.000And after seeing what the big pharma lobby got and the big hospital lobby got, No doubt the war lobby wants to get right back at it.
00:11:44.000They certainly don't want to see the savings that the American people should realize is a peace dividend with hostilities in Afghanistan coming to an end, at least as far as Americans go.
00:11:54.000No, they don't want that peace dividend realized for our country.
00:11:57.000They want us to continue to spend money just littering weapons abroad for the use of others who sometimes don't share our values.
00:12:06.000Ukraine is the money laundering capital of Europe.
00:12:11.000And in a lot of ways, this $40 billion is a money laundering operation for the elites.
00:12:16.000And you saw how quick it went from $33 billion to $40 billion.
00:12:22.000By the way, Customs and Border Patrol are going to be requesting through the Biden administration about $17 billion.
00:12:28.000So it tells you a lot about your leaders and your government.
00:12:32.000That they are just lickety-split, going to send more than twice as much money to Ukraine to defend their borders than they are defending our border through Customs and Border Patrol.
00:13:35.000This issue has been compounded by supply chain issues, product recalls, and historic inflation.
00:13:42.000Unfortunately, given the unprecedented amount of volatility due to the category, we anticipate baby formula to continue to be one of the most affected products in the market.
00:13:55.000So just take a listen how bad this is by the numbers.
00:14:00.000Right now, 40% of the nation's formula is out of stock.
00:14:29.00067% of babies are fed partially through formula.
00:14:34.000And if that's not bad enough, we just got in some blisteringly bad crime statistics.
00:14:40.000Nine cities all have record-breaking murder numbers for 2021. Portland, Milwaukee, St. Paul, L.A., Albuquerque, New York, Chicago, Columbus, Ohio.
00:15:11.000And what's so sad is that these Democrat policies are failing the people most in the places where they've been most reliant on Democrats to look out for them and to provide some degree of safety and comfort.
00:15:24.000And it doesn't happen, and it's very bad, and it's particularly bad.
00:15:29.000Historic murder numbers in these nine Democrat-run cities.
00:15:38.000And this draft decision that we have now seen represents the overturn of Roe v.
00:15:46.000Wade and something that Republicans and conservatives and just pro-life people have been praying for and hoping for and working towards for so long.
00:16:27.000When you actually do the work to craft the bills, to create a culture of life, we can win.
00:16:34.000And I think so often in Washington, D.C., the Republicans are willing to oversee managed decline, to just surrender less and less ground to the left over time.
00:16:43.000But there was a movement that In the pro-life community that would not allow the politicians off the hook.
00:16:51.000We got the right judges, they were confirmed, and now Roe v.
00:16:57.000One of the principal goals of the pro-life movement.
00:17:00.000And it's quite something that The Democrats don't seem to be taking the issue head-on in every circumstance.
00:17:08.000I think Democrats know that running on an exclusively pro-abortion position is vastly out of touch with a lot of American people, and so they're trying to use this decision that overturns Roe that would allow states to have restrictions on abortions Well, they want to change the subject to almost anything else.
00:18:17.000That in no way rubs negative to the pro-life movement.
00:18:21.000So we can stop the murder of unborn babies with the overturning of Roe, by accepting a culture of life, by advancing pro-adoption policies, which, by the way, is a huge part of this.
00:18:35.000I am very proud of the work I did in the Florida legislature to work on policies, to cut the red tape for adoption, to create incentives for adoption, to do everything possible to create that positive pro-life culture.
00:18:49.000But here's what you're going to hear from Democrats.
00:18:51.000Oh, well, we could ban interracial marriage because of this decision.
00:19:00.000And in the decision itself, actually, Justice Alito...
00:19:04.000It takes a moment to express that there's something about this abortion issue and the flawed science and the flawed law that underpins Roe that makes the court's robust reasoning specific to this.
00:19:16.000So don't buy into the fear-mongering that this vastly changes the whole concept of reproduction in America.
00:19:31.000If you don't like what abortion law is, you have somebody to go vote for or vote against.
00:19:38.000And my suspicion is abortion law will be debated by elected officials.
00:19:44.000The problem with Roe is you had nobody to go vote against if you didn't like it.
00:19:47.000It was just a court seizing jurisdiction on unsound constitutional principles that relied on penumbras rather than actual text.
00:19:57.000The freak out on the left has gotten so broad and away from the specific focus of abortion that we had Senator Gillibrand of New York questioning whether or not women were even still citizens in America.
00:20:09.000And I hope every human being in this country understands that when you take away a woman's right to make her decisions about her health and well-being, she is no longer a full citizen.
00:20:26.000Look, reasonable people in America can disagree on the matter of abortion.
00:20:31.000And by the way, one of the reasons why we had to overturn Roe is because science regarding viability has changed since the 1970s.
00:20:42.000And as science changes and as our understanding of viability becomes more accurate, our laws ought to reflect that.
00:20:50.000the political discussion we have in this country, our campaigns ought to be responsive to those changes in science and to enhanced viability.
00:20:59.000So reasonable people can disagree about abortion, but that was not reasonable.
00:21:04.000And frankly, what we see from a lot of the people that are, you see them in these viral videos, you see them everywhere, protesting for a pro-abortion, pro-murder position, it's just wild.
00:21:17.000And I was observing, like, these people who are out there protesting because they, like, want their abortions or whatever.
00:21:24.000And I'm thinking to myself, for a lot of them, that probably wouldn't be an issue because they strike me as very lonely people.
00:21:31.000And not for everyone, but I think in some cases, like, people's personal loneliness has, like, manifested in their pro-abortion view.
00:21:44.000How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, underloved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats and no Bumble matches?
00:22:01.000But I want you to know what I was talking about.
00:22:04.000Again, I was asking the question, what percentage of this overall universe of people who are like so animated about this that they go out and protest are like deeply lonely people?
00:22:13.000And frankly, I think a lot of millennials of every gender got sold a bill of goods that like, oh, well, the best way you're going to meet the best partner is to drive toward the highest degree of education.
00:22:25.000And now people are wanting Joe Biden to go cancel their $50,000 in student debt that they got to get a master's degree in intersectional feminist studies.
00:22:33.000and they find themselves out at some crazy protest, probably looking and sounding a lot like this.
00:23:31.000What we believe is that people who reasonably disagree about the matter of abortion ought to be able to access our halls of Congress, our state legislators, to be able to discuss and present evidence and look at when a heartbeat really starts, when a soul has been created.
00:23:49.000Not to allow unelected judges to universally resolve this.
00:23:52.000We still have a lot of work to do in the pro-life movement to ensure that from The moment of conception all the way through life that we are being pro-life, that we enhance foster care, that we do everything possible to assist mothers who have unwanted pregnancies with options that don't include abortion.
00:24:11.000But that Was the sickness, the vile, just odious behavior of the people who would want to use intimidation and who would want to, I think, go to measures that were beyond normal politics to try to achieve the outcomes that they desire.
00:24:33.000Those are not the people that I think represent where a vast majority of Americans are on this issue.
00:24:39.000So we'll continue to cover Not only this decision and the ongoing jurisprudence from it, but the legislative action here in Congress and throughout the several states that I think is sure to follow.
00:24:52.000But to be pro-life, we have to support the things in America that drive life and sustain life.
00:25:00.000And if you've been paying attention, you see that American farmers are in a total state of crisis in this country.
00:25:08.000It's not an accident and it's not a mystery.
00:25:11.000It is a direct result of the policies of the Biden administration.
00:25:15.000Just take some of the headlines that we've been seeing.
00:26:14.000Fertilizer shortages are real now because Russia is a big exporter of fertilizer.
00:26:19.000And even though fertilizer is not sanctioned, less fertilizer is coming out of Russia.
00:26:24.000As a result, we're working with countries to think about natural solutions like manure and compost.
00:26:29.000And this may hasten transitions that would have been in the interest of farmers to make eventually anyway.
00:26:36.000Never let a crisis go to waste, but we really do need this financial support from the Congress to be able to meet emergency food needs so we don't see the cascading, deadly effects of Russia's war extend into Africa and beyond.
00:26:51.000I can't believe she said the quiet out loud.
00:26:54.000That actually was from the Obama administration and Rahm Emanuel and the crew there that was willing to accept pain for our fellow Americans so long as they were able to advance this kind of neoliberal agenda.
00:27:09.000We had votes in the Congress regarding Belarus and Russia and sanctions, and those votes impacted the price of fertilizer.
00:27:19.000I mean, that massive spike that I showed you on that line graph, that didn't come out of nowhere.
00:27:24.000Even Samantha Power acknowledged that what's going on in Russia and Ukraine and Belarus and our reaction to it has a direct impact on these markets.
00:28:03.000I wanted to get the perspective directly from a farmer in my district regarding how costs and how kind of radical woke environmentalism, how provocation with Russia is impacting his business in real time.
00:28:17.000This is Shannon Nixon, Nixon Farms, Northwest Florida.
00:29:27.000I love the way statisticians do inflation.
00:29:32.000When I see that there's 5% and 10% inflation, I kind of chuckle.
00:29:36.000Even our Baker math is better than that.
00:29:40.000I hear from so many people who In the, you know, urban areas of our country and the suburban areas say, I go to the grocery store and filling up my basket used to be a couple hundred dollars.
00:29:51.000Now it's, you know, four, five, six hundred dollars to fill up that basket sometimes.
00:29:56.000They don't see that that's the diesel price that they're paying.
00:29:59.000They don't see that that's the fertilizer price that they're paying.
00:31:04.000We kept thinking that it was getting better, but I think some things are just getting exponentially worse.
00:31:10.000There's a lot of political ramifications.
00:31:14.000We can all sit here and point fingers, but we know that elections have consequences.
00:31:21.000It's not so much the supply, it's the anticipation of the supply.
00:31:26.000So talk to me about how that affects the business plan of a place like this.
00:31:31.000When you've got fertilizer going from 255 a ton to 700 a ton, when you've got the Roundup going up by not just 5-10%, but by multiples, how do you absorb that?
00:31:47.000Is it going to mean that there are going to be fewer investments in irrigation, in more fields, or I can tell you most every farmer has cut back on fertilizer because the land is kind of like a savings account.
00:32:06.000You know, if we've been doing good fertility progress, we have some stored nutrients.
00:32:09.000But wait, by that measure, once you withdraw from the savings account, you're in real trouble.
00:32:15.000We're going to be bankrupt from a fertility standpoint.
00:32:21.000I think the problem is coming later on.
00:32:25.000I think we're setting ourselves up for next year.
00:32:28.000Are you saying that because of what we're doing to the land, not making that investment back in the land and fertilizer, that it's actually going to get worse before it gets better?
00:32:37.000Unless we come up with some alternatives for nutrients.
00:33:22.000A lot of people said, oh, that must mean you love Putin.
00:33:25.000Well, I don't love Putin, but I do worry about what we are looking at six months, 12 months, 18 months down the road if you're seeing two and three time increases on what it takes to operate a 700 acre farm.
00:33:39.000Well, this is an interesting side note, and maybe this is not politically correct, but We do have a Russian connection to farming, whether we like it or not, because there's a lot of technology in farming.
00:33:51.000All of these planters, all these tractors, they're running off the GPS. All of this equipment used to have mechanical road markers.
00:34:57.000I think that a lot of farmers feel very desperate because I talked to some of my colleagues and they say, you know, if a certain If a piece of equipment breaks down, you're not going to fix it this year.
00:35:26.000We have printed so much money over the last few years.
00:35:29.000We've taken a complex, sophisticated food supply system and we've just sort of run it awash.
00:35:38.000And we don't make enough of the stuff that we need here, which means that when we have global supply chain issues, you know, Xinjiang province gets a cold and we get pneumonia in this country.
00:35:50.000And my sense is the Obama years were depressing.
00:36:06.000We went from being the energy importer to being the world's greatest energy exporter on a lot of fronts.
00:36:11.000And it didn't take like passing 27 new laws and you know a whole bunch.
00:36:16.000It was almost like willing us to success and achievement and I think we can get it again.
00:36:22.000And if there's any benefit to the pain that so many Americans are feeling right now, I think they're actually starting to connect the dots more.
00:36:30.000That if you attack ag, you're going to feel that when you go to the grocery store.
00:36:35.000If you embrace the most radical forms of environmentalism, you're not going to be able to get around anymore and you're going to see that 599 gas or worse.
00:36:43.000You go and create conflict with other countries and you If you visit the pain of what's going on in Russia and Ukraine on Americans and on the global fertilizer market, you're not going to do that without consequence.
00:37:00.000And so part of what I try to do truly is just let people know what's going on.
00:37:04.000And I think the more people connect the dots, I think the more sophisticated we'll become in our decision making.
00:37:09.000There's a lot of things in place that I see that's not on anybody's radar.
00:37:14.000That could really work against us in this country.
00:37:19.000And I think you've got probably the hardest job that anybody's ever had because you're going to have to be the one that stands up there and takes the brunt.
00:37:28.000You're going to have to tell these people that, hey, we got a problem.
00:37:31.000Well, if you'll plant the peanuts, I'll go pull the weeds up in the swamp where I work.
00:37:45.000That's Shannon Nixon from Nixon Farms in Baker, Florida.
00:37:48.000Very much enjoyed doing that, and I think there's some real truths that we need to reflect on and that we need to certainly amplify here in Washington, D.C. Thanks so much for joining me.
00:37:57.000We're going to try to have a report available for you tomorrow regarding some of the work that's going on in the committees in the Congress.