In this episode of Firebrand, we're joined by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GA) and Firebrand's own Lauren Boebert (D-VA) to discuss gun control legislation that the Senate is poised to vote on. Plus, a new name for the deadly monkeypox virus, and an update on the spread of HIV/AIDS among gay and bisexual men worldwide. Firebrand is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Subscribe to Native Creative on Apple Podcasts and stay tuned for new episodes every Wednesday morning, Thursday evening, and Friday night, available as Video, Podcast, and blogposts wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to Pale Fire and Mossy Creek for sponsoring this episode. We'd like to learn a little more about you, the listeners. Please take a few minutes to fill out this brief survey. We'll post the results on our socials, and we'll read them out on the next episode of NextDoor. Thank you so much for all the support we've gotten so far. Sincerely, Firebrand. - Your Support is Rockin' Out! - Matt, Lauren, Lauren and Matt, Sarah, and the Crew at Native Creative and the rest of the Swamp Dweller Podcasts Crew at Swamp Dwelling on the Hill Podcasts Podcasts, Inc. Thank you for all your support, Sarah and the Swamp Thing Podcasts at Swamp Thing, and thank you for making this podcast possible. and keeping us on the road to freedom, thank you, Matt, for being a safe, safe, and free, beautiful, beautiful and beautiful! - Thank you. , Sarah, for all of your support and support, and for being loud and beautiful, we'll keep on keeping us safe, we love you, and keep on keep on coming back, we won't stop talking about it, and keeping on coming, and coming back and coming, Thank you, we appreciate you, you're amazing. Love y'all. - Sarah, Sarah & Matt, always grateful, bye, bye. . - Sarah and Sarah, Maureen, Caitlyn, Caitie, and Jonothan, - Sarah, Jonothans, Joe, Rachel, Emily, and Joe, and all of the Crews, Caitlyn and Danell, and Rachel, and her Crew at The Swamp Thing. -- Thank you
00:04:55.000Matt 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.
00:05:02.000Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
00:05:05.000He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
00:05:08.000So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
00:05:11.000If 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.
00:05:48.000We're broadcasting live out of my office on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., 1721 of the Longworth Building.
00:05:53.000And I've got one of Congress's very best firebrands with me today, Lauren Boebert.
00:05:59.000In just a moment, we're going to be breaking down the gun control legislation that the United States Senate is poised to adopt that we believe would be very harmful to most Americans.
00:06:11.000William Shakespeare reminds us it's all in a name.
00:06:14.000He'd be proud of the naming gymnastics recently endeavored by the World Health Organization.
00:06:19.000The WHO has taken a break from the hard work of fear mongering about COVID and playing defense for the Chinese Communist Party to bring something urgent to our attention.
00:06:31.000Time Magazine reports that the WHO is renaming monkeypox.
00:06:36.000After concerns that the term is discriminatory, of course, monkeys everywhere are relieved.
00:06:42.000But seriously, apparently 29 experts signed a letter calling for a speedy decision and the adoption of a new name.
00:06:50.000They said that the reference to the virus being African is inaccurate and, of course, discriminatory.
00:06:56.000They're referring to two types of monkeypox, the West African clade and the Congo Basin clade, aptly named because this is where the virus was found in populations of wild monkeys.
00:07:22.000I'll give you a guess as to where that might have come from.
00:07:24.000Losing the plot because there's a worry about stigmatizing Africa is woke nonsense, not health policy.
00:07:31.000Besides, it's good to remember where viruses come from.
00:07:34.000The triggered scientist stated, quote, There's an interesting narrative in the media among many scientists that they're trying to link the present global outbreak to Africa or West Africa or Nigeria, close quote.
00:07:47.000Just because a virus is named after the region in which it originates or is found naturally doesn't mean anyone is going to negatively discriminate against the inhabitants of that region.
00:07:55.000Now, under certain circumstances, we may want travel bans or quarantines, other public health endeavors to stop people from going to high-risk areas and pretending that certain regions or groups are not more at risk actually impairs our public health response.
00:08:10.000For instance, while most deaths have occurred in the Dominican Republic over monkeypox, I'm sorry, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, two very different things.
00:08:19.000Where the virus may have originated, the WHO has admitted that the spread of monkeypox around the globe has largely been amongst the LGBTQ community, at least in the initial cases.
00:08:29.000In May, Madrid's senior health official, Enrique Ruiz Esquerdo, said that authorities are investigating possible links between a recent gay pride event in the Canary Islands Which drew 80,000 people.
00:08:43.000And initial cases from a gay bathhouse in Madrid.
00:08:47.000AIDSMap.com is a site dedicated to helping homosexual men avoid contacting AIDS and other diseases prevalent in their community.
00:08:53.000And that website is reporting that monkeypox is spreading among gay men worldwide.
00:08:57.000Hans Kludge, who's the regional director of the WHO in Europe, has warned that transmission can be boosted by the fact that most of the initial cases among gay men who sought treatment are presenting in sexual health clinics, suggesting The transmission may have been going on for some time.
00:09:16.000The UK Health Security Agency chief's medical advisor, Susan Hopkins, said she's particularly been urging gay and bisexual men to look out for the symptoms of monkeypox, or whatever they're going to call it, noting that a notable proportion of the cases in the UK and Europe come from this group.
00:09:32.000The same can be said for other Western countries.
00:09:37.000When groups like the World Health Organization change names and lie about origins, when they pretend that certain groups aren't disproportionately affected, they undermine our ability to fight and eradicate viruses and diseases.
00:09:49.000They care more about a perceived offense than reality.
00:10:12.000Serious matters deserve serious attention, and the WHO sounds more like a board meeting of the local Young Democrats chapter instead of an international NGO dedicated to fight pathogens.
00:10:22.000Trump was right to leave the WHO, and when he's president again in 2024, I think we should leave it again.
00:10:29.000Trump's left people more than once, probably.
00:10:34.000On Wednesday, the White House released a statement that Joe Biden called President Vladimir Zelensky and vowed to provide an additional $1 billion in security assistance and another $225 million in humanitarian assistance.
00:10:46.000I guess the $40 billion wasn't enough.
00:10:49.000The time for a deal in this war to end it is definitely long past, and the United States should not be doing things that continue to further warfare.
00:11:00.000About $350 million worth of weapons will come from existing U.S. stockpiles.
00:11:06.000We left metric tons of our weapons in Afghanistan, and now we're giving weapons away to the corrupt regimes in Europe with no accountability.
00:11:18.000We will have the Ukraine papers eventually leak, exposing this grift.
00:11:22.000Billions of dollars unaccounted for, weapons missing, believed to be in the hands of corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs.
00:11:29.000We literally have reports already that U.S.-made Javelin rocket launchers are being auctioned off on the dark web by Ukrainian nationals.
00:11:38.000We continue to throw money and weapons into a war that was totally avoidable.
00:11:44.000I'm joined now by Colorado's favorite daughter, Lauren Boebert.
00:11:48.000Lauren, you have been a real stalwart against the U.S. becoming excessively entangled in this war in Ukraine.
00:11:54.000What do you think about the breaking news that the Biden administration just thinks another billion in weapons and 225 million in humanitarian aid is enough?
00:15:01.000President Trump had us energy independent.
00:15:02.000We should be energy dominant right now, exporting freedom to these other countries.
00:15:07.000And, you know, they're choosing to not build pipelines, to not build refineries, and to not produce America's energy.
00:15:15.000As the Biden regime is so willing to send billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine, they seem to be really enthusiastic about taking rights away from law-abiding gun owners in this country.
00:15:31.000Congresswoman Boebert is the co-chair of the Second Amendment Conference.
00:15:34.000She brought the heat on the floor of the House of Representatives recently on the issue of gun rights.
00:15:50.000This is a lawless administration that we are serving under, and I would implore the Senate To not compromise on the American citizens' rights.
00:16:01.000And I would like to just note that the 10 that we have heard of who are considering siding with these people who would limit the liberties and freedoms of American citizens are either not coming back to the Senate, they're retiring, or they're not up for re-election.
00:16:17.000And I think that that is very, very telling.
00:16:20.000And I will not give an inch of the Second Amendment, of the rights of the people to keep and bear arms, to protect themselves, especially when cries from this chamber are calling to defund law enforcement and our southern border is wide open, allowing the cartel to send whatever they want through those borders without any added security.
00:16:45.000Joe Biden wants to disarm you and then invite MS-13 to live next door.
00:16:50.000And Congresswoman Boebert, in that speech, you laid out the risk that Republican senators present to the Second Amendment.
00:16:58.000How are you assessing the framework that has now been endorsed by Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, many members of the Republican leadership?
00:17:06.000Even my senator, Marco Rubio, has endorsed the framework.
00:17:56.000We're hearing sheriffs in Canada saying, you know, the...
00:18:01.000The egregious things that they are passing there with handguns and limiting those and making them illegal, this is not going to stop crime because then the handguns are illegal and they're only in the hands of criminals.
00:18:10.000By definition, criminals do not obey the law.
00:18:12.000So by layering on another law, this does not solve any of the problems.
00:19:47.000You think that the very people that are now trying to pass new domestic extremism authorities, the very people that are trying to use anti-terrorism authorities against MAGA, might try to red flag their MAGA neighbor Over politics, not over danger.
00:20:02.000I mean, you know, I wouldn't put it past them.
00:20:06.000People in Florida are worried about that.
00:20:08.000We've seen it used 8,000 times in Florida.
00:20:10.000I don't think we stopped 8,000 school shooters.
00:20:12.000I think this became a part of marital disputes, neighbor disputes, business disputes, and your Second Amendment rights just shouldn't be up for negotiation over something like that.
00:20:22.000Right, especially when you do not have the right to due process, when you don't have the right to face your accuser, when it's a judge determining your mental stability rather than a mental health professional.
00:20:37.000If you are a danger to yourself or to others, you have mandatorily have to go into a center for 72 hours and have a mental health evaluation.
00:21:14.000It doesn't give us those rights, but it certainly protects them.
00:21:17.000Are you saying that if this bill were to become law, and right now it looks like it will become law, that we're actually going to have to rely on local sheriffs in some places saying, I'm not going to go enforce this.
00:21:28.000I'm not going to go take someone's guns away because my state government got bribed to do so by Washington.
00:21:33.000Yes, and that's what we should have been doing for a really long time now when it comes to the pandemic and the overreach that we saw from the federal government with this Fauci-funded Chinese virus.
00:21:46.000We should have been relying on our local sheriffs to take a stand and say, not on my watch, not in my county.
00:21:53.000This is where local control matters the most.
00:21:56.000We're talking to Lauren Boebert, the co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus here in Washington, D.C. We're breaking down the Senate legislation that we're both very concerned about.
00:22:06.000The development and resourcing of federal databases so that if something happens in one state, that information is accessible nationwide.
00:22:16.000And I was having a conversation with a judiciary Republican yesterday who said, well, gosh, I mean, isn't this what we would be for, using technology to allow law enforcement to communicate better?
00:22:25.000And I'm just a little skeptical of federal databases because I've seen how they've been used.
00:22:34.000I'm not in support of more federal databases.
00:22:36.000I mean, look at the ATF. The ATF, they weren't even supposed to be keeping record of the firearms sales, and there's more than a billion of them.
00:22:45.000Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms is just what we call a good Friday night in Florida's first congressional district.
00:22:50.000But you're right, they already are exceeding their existing authorities, and so granting them new authorities could really be a slippery slope.
00:22:58.000Yes, I do not trust the federal government.
00:23:00.000And I think that there are plenty of Americans who don't as well.
00:23:04.000So I do not want to grow the federal government.
00:23:07.000I do not want to give them more authority.
00:23:08.000And certainly I do not want to fund that growth and authority to take the rights away from American citizens.
00:23:18.000And that really is what's most important.
00:23:20.000That's what motivated me to get up here.
00:23:22.000Not because I want to be a part of government, but because I want to secure the people's rights.
00:23:28.000Sports Fan 22 on Getter says, shall not be infringed.
00:23:31.000I agree with Rep Boebert, and we're seeing that sentiment expressed across all of our comment platforms.
00:23:37.000You are the co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus, and you've done something very interesting in the minority.
00:23:41.000You haven't just played defense against some of these bad proposals.
00:23:45.000You've been out there highlighting some of the legislation to vindicate the Second Amendment.
00:23:51.000Talk about some of those bills and your leadership of the caucus to make sure that people know about them.
00:23:56.000Yeah, so Congressman Michael Cloud, he had a bill to come in and expose the ATF and to abolish this database that they had that's keeping a record of all firearm sales in the United States.
00:24:08.000And so we highlight these good pieces of legislation to put them forward.
00:24:12.000Congressman Thomas Massey is my co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus, and he has a bill that would end Our schools being gun-free zones.
00:24:32.000This is a gun-free city, but only the criminals have guns.
00:24:35.000Anytime you have a mass shooting, it is in a gun-free zone because there is not an armed citizen to neutralize the threat.
00:24:43.000Where there is a lawful citizen present that is armed, they are able to neutralize that threat, and the death count goes from an average of 13 down to 2. The first victim and the shooter himself.
00:24:55.000That is real data and it's data that saves lives.
00:24:59.000In Florida, we have a sentinel program that allows school districts, if they so choose, to have special training for former military, former law enforcement people, Who are experts at some of these matters.
00:25:11.000Would Colorado be a place that that could help as a school hardening tactic?
00:25:16.000Yes, so what we have, we have an organization called Faster Colorado, and they actually work with our school districts to train and certify and arm teachers.
00:25:29.000The school district can decide if they want to allow their teachers to carry in these schools.
00:25:35.000There's a wonderful little loophole in Colorado law that allows them to do that.
00:25:39.000So if the school district so chooses, they connect with Faster Colorado and the teachers are very well armed and certified and they begin to carry in those schools to protect our children, which is much more effective than hiding behind a desk.
00:25:53.000End gun-free zones, make schools a hard target, empower local sheriffs.
00:26:14.000First of all, call your representatives, call your senators, and make sure that they hear your voice because that matters.
00:26:20.000We get phone calls in my office every day, and we keep record of these phone calls, the types of calls, the people who are for something or oppose another thing.
00:26:29.000And so it really does matter to call them, because I'll tell you what, I'll tell you who is calling these senators right now.
00:26:36.000They are calling these senators, and they need to be hearing from you, the electric.
00:26:41.000They need to be hearing from the people who actually hired them and sent them, and they need to know exactly how the American people feel about these laws.
00:26:49.000With people so under siege, I think it will be demoralizing to America if now they have to face gun control while crime is increasing, while our borders become a turnstile.
00:27:00.000I think it could really affect the American psyche.
00:27:02.000And, you know, nobody in Washington wants to talk about the root cause of this stuff.
00:27:21.000You almost want to wake them up out of the lockdown mentality.
00:27:24.000I mean, are we going to look back 10 years from now and say, gosh, these lockdowns actually increased violence among young people, potentially even school shootings?
00:27:32.000I think you and I are saying that now.
00:27:34.000We don't have to wait 10 years to say, look at the impact that these lockdowns have.
00:28:09.000And I really think we did a lot of harm to this country.
00:28:12.000Where can people go to find out more about the legislation that you're highlighting and the Second Amendment Caucus?
00:28:18.000Yeah, so a lot of the legislation that I have is on my website, bober.house.gov.
00:28:23.000And we need to talk Congressman Thomas Massey into getting us a Twitter for the Second Amendment Caucus.
00:28:27.000Maybe I just need to take the reins on that one.
00:28:29.000If you and Massey ran a Second Amendment Twitter account, it would get banned in like the first 72 hours of it being open because it would be a fountainhead for freedom.
00:28:39.000Congresswoman Boebert also serves on the Natural Resources Committee, and Democrats passed a bill off the floor of the House this week that spent $12.7 billion during the budget window on land acquisitions.
00:28:51.000What should people know about that bill?
00:28:53.000Well, first of all, this bill, it allows states to tax hunting.
00:29:43.000That's a Washington term, but just so people understand what that means.
00:29:46.000That means whether the need's out there or not, and whether anybody approves it in the future or not, that money goes out the door every year.
00:29:53.000And it just seems like it removes logic and reason from conservation.
00:30:12.000We have six billion dead standing trees in the western United States.
00:30:15.000They're all creating this massive tinderbox.
00:30:17.000And in Colorado, we had three of the largest wildfires on record in 2020. And those were in my district in Colorado, in the third district.
00:30:26.000Now just one of those wildfires emits more carbon emissions than every vehicle running in the state of Colorado 24-7 for an entire year.
00:30:33.000But at the altar of climate change, so many of these leftists, these extremists, want to say, do not touch anything.
00:31:00.000We want our constituents to be able to enjoy the environment.
00:31:03.000But these leftist policies seem to constrain our enjoyment and seem to actually put our environment at risk, like you said, with the wildfires more than usual.
00:31:10.000So we hope that bill also does not pass in the Senate.
00:31:14.000Lauren, you're in your first term in Congress, and one of the reasons I knew you'd be very successful here and you're leading on energy, you're leading on firearms, is because you're very authentic.
00:31:23.000I think we get the same version of you in Washington that your constituents get, that your family gets.
00:31:28.000You know, just being in your first term, what is your perception of this place?
00:32:03.000I don't have those donor meetings when I'm here in Washington, D.C. I'm fine with actually legislating while we're in Washington, D.C. rather than bribing donors and making shady deals with donors.
00:32:15.000And so I think that's an important part to recognize as being a representative of the people, that you're not a representative of the lobbyists.
00:32:22.000It's the people back home that matter.
00:32:24.000And so I get out of here as quick as I can.
00:32:25.000I'll be on an airplane today to get back home, to get to my people.
00:32:28.000But you were talking about earlier, you know, rather than being on defense all the time, I go on offense.
00:32:33.000And that is what we need to be doing in the minority.
00:33:18.000And so, voted against that legislation here, was very loud about it, got on the offense about it, and telling the people what was in this so they could know And then had to go back and work with senators to actually get some of this stuff out before it came back to the House.
00:33:32.000But that's one example that we could have had real victories immediately.
00:33:37.000But then also, look at the Disinformation Governance Board and the Department of Homeland Security.
00:33:43.000We got really loud about this and got on the front lines, and now that Orwellian Ministry of Truth is paused.
00:33:55.000But wait, there are some Republicans who say when we take power, we can actually do deals with the Biden administration, we can work with them, we can moderate Joe Biden, that that ought to be the goal of being in the majority.
00:34:06.000I believe we ought to turn every committee into an oversight committee.
00:34:18.000Yes, we need to have that congressional oversight over the Department of Interior, over Secretary Haaland.
00:34:24.000You know, she was a one-term congresswoman and then was appointed to this, I mean, based on race, you know, not on qualifications.
00:34:32.000And I mean, this is something that's so frustrating to the American people.
00:34:35.000Our ethnicity, our background, this definitely should not be something that disqualifies anybody, but it should not be a quantifier to get to a position.
00:34:43.000Just because I'm a female doesn't make me eligible to serve any more than a male does.
00:34:49.000And so we need to have oversight on what's going on.
00:34:52.000The money that is being spent, we need to have oversight over the border, over what happened in Afghanistan.
00:35:09.000every single committee needs to have this oversight jurisdiction, this authority to subpoena people to bring them in and get real answers for the American people.
00:35:17.000We aren't going to be able to work with Joe Biden.
00:35:20.000Joe Biden can't even work with Joe Biden.
00:35:22.000He has to ask permission from his staff.
00:35:24.000He's not even allowed in the real Oval Office.
00:35:26.000He's in a fake White House set, for goodness sake.
00:35:32.000Thank you to Congresswoman Boebert, co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus, leading on energy, leading on natural resources, and certainly one of our very best firebrands.