Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - Episode 55 LIVE: National Malaise (feat. Rep. Anthony Sabatini) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:04:58.000 Matt 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.

00:05:05.000 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.

00:05:08.000 He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws.

00:05:11.000 So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.

00:05:15.000 If you want to 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!

00:05:23.000 You are in the right place!

00:05:25.000 This is the movement for you!

00:05:27.000 You ever watch this guy on television?

00:05:29.000 It's like a machine.

00:05:31.000 Matt Gaetz.

00:05:32.000 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.

00:05:35.000 Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.

00:05:40.000 They aren't really coming for me.

00:05:42.000 They're coming for you.

00:05:44.000 I'm just in the way.

00:05:45.000 Welcome to Firebrand Live.

00:05:52.000 Congressman Matt Gaetz here.

00:05:54.000 We've got State Representative Anthony Sabatini from Florida joining us in just a moment.

00:05:58.000 But we are in the moment of national malaise.

00:06:02.000 Of course, that being the famous remarks by President Jimmy Carter.

00:06:06.000 Take a listen.

00:06:09.000 So I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious.

00:06:14.000 than energy or inflation.

00:06:16.000 I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

00:06:26.000 I do not mean our political and civil liberties.

00:06:30.000 They will endure.

00:06:32.000 And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world with unmatched economic power and military might The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways.

00:06:52.000 It is a crisis of confidence.

00:06:57.000 It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.

00:07:03.000 We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

00:07:16.000 Loss of purpose, loss of success seems to be very similar to what we have going on right now.

00:07:22.000 Joe Biden gives a rare interview to the AP recently where he says, as for the overall American mindset, people are really, really down.

00:07:32.000 Their need for mental health in America has skyrocketed because people have seen everything upset, Biden said.

00:07:38.000 Everything they've counted on, upset.

00:07:42.000 But most of it is the consequence of what happened, what happened as the consequence of the COVID crisis.

00:07:49.000 This view that we have returned to the 1970s national malaise that Jimmy Carter presided over is one not only reflected by many independents, many Republicans on the Hill, even over at MSNBC, Chuck Todd and his guests are talking about how disastrous the Biden presidency has been.

00:08:10.000 Take a listen.

00:08:13.000 We've covered a lot of politics over the years.

00:08:15.000 Can you remember a more tumultuous period?

00:08:17.000 I mean, you have to go back to 68 when we had a summer where you feel as if everything, there's just a lot of instability, you know, and all this stuff's coming together in a way that Feels a little disconcerting.

00:08:31.000 And of course, 68, far enough away that neither of us covered that.

00:08:34.000 That was certainly a time of great tumult.

00:08:37.000 You know, some historians say you have to go back to the Civil War to find a time when Americans are so angry and so divided and democracy is in such peril.

00:08:48.000 That was the Washington Post's Susan Page joining Chuck Todd on Meet the Press Now.

00:08:54.000 And they say it's as bad as it's been since the Civil War.

00:08:58.000 Joining us now, Florida Man State Representative Anthony Sabatini.

00:09:02.000 Anthony, from your perspective in the Sunshine State, are they right?

00:09:05.000 Is this as bad as it's been since the Civil War?

00:09:10.000 Well, I gotta tell you, you know, they're gonna say a lot of things to make excuses for what's happening right now.

00:09:16.000 Biden obviously is He had the worst set of failures in his domestic and foreign policy agenda that we've ever seen.

00:09:22.000 I mean, Jimmy Carter finally gets the good of his grave saying he's not the worst president of the modern era.

00:09:27.000 He's the second worst.

00:09:28.000 And they're going to do everything they can to try to blame the American people.

00:09:33.000 Jimmy Carter started a trend, by the way.

00:09:35.000 He was one of the first presidents to really blame the American people for his own failures versus looking in the mirror and try to change course on his policies.

00:09:43.000 Biden is continuing that today and it's always, you know, whether it be COVID or whatever else, it's got to be some other extraneous event to explain the failure of their policy, never just what they're doing.

00:09:54.000 It's COVID's fault.

00:09:55.000 It's Ultra Maga's fault.

00:09:57.000 It's Vladimir Putin's fault.

00:09:58.000 It's everyone's fault except the party that has unified control over the American government right now, the Democrats.

00:10:05.000 And it's just, it's going to be very hard for, I think, Democrats to convince the American people that while they have had their hands on the levers of power, that somehow it's these external forces that are causing We're good to

00:10:38.000 go.

00:10:43.000 My dear mother used to have an expression. 0.94

00:10:45.000 If anything lousy, something good will happen if you look hard enough for it.

00:10:48.000 We have a chance here to make a fundamental turn toward renewable energy.

00:10:54.000 Electric vehicles.

00:10:55.000 And not just electric vehicles, but across the board.

00:10:58.000 And that's something we should be...

00:11:00.000 My team is going to be sitting down with the CEOs of the major oil companies this week.

00:11:06.000 And so I can give an explanation how they justify making $35 billion in the first quarter.

00:11:12.000 Are you planning to sit down with oil and gas CEOs, Mr. President?

00:11:15.000 No.

00:11:15.000 Why is that, sir?

00:11:16.000 Because my team's going to do that.

00:11:17.000 Okay.

00:11:18.000 But you did that with retailers and logistics companies and consumer companies.

00:11:22.000 Because I had it already done.

00:11:26.000 So, Representative Sabatini, in the great state of Florida, are people more concerned about gas prices, or are they more excited about Joe Biden's transition to renewable energy and electric cars?

00:11:39.000 Well, I gotta tell you, as somebody who talks to hundreds of people in my constituency every single day, it's almost unanimous.

00:11:47.000 You have about 99.9% of people talking about gasoline and inflation, very few talking about the things that the Biden administration wants to focus on and electric cars and all of this green new energy that they're trying to Rahm Emanuel into existence.

00:12:03.000 So that's where we're at right now, especially in Florida.

00:12:06.000 And I assume every state's the same way.

00:12:08.000 So the faster we can get these guys out of power and get Republicans in who are actually going to focus on fixing America's issues instead of just trying to confuse people about what's going on, I think the better for the country.

00:12:20.000 Joined by Florida State Representative Anthony Sabatini.

00:12:23.000 Representative Sabatini has been one of Governor DeSantis' strongest conservative allies in the State House of Representatives.

00:12:30.000 Also, there's rarely a tax you or I encounter, Anthony, that we wouldn't want to cut or suspend almost anything that starves the government of resources to be able to grow larger and dig deeper into people's lives.

00:12:43.000 Well, We would be for that constraining of government resources.

00:12:46.000 There's a lot of talk right now about the gas tax.

00:12:50.000 What's your perspective on the gas tax and whether or not some reductions might be helpful or even a moratorium or a suspension of the gas tax might be helpful for your constituents?

00:12:59.000 I think it's probably the single most important issue, both at the federal and state level.

00:13:03.000 We need to make sure we're giving immediate relief to make up for this mismanaged economy that Biden has created.

00:13:09.000 So suspension and moratorium on the gas tax, I mean, quite literally immediately is what we need to do here at the state of Florida.

00:13:15.000 The governor wanted a billion dollar tax cut.

00:13:17.000 Unfortunately, some of our legislators whittled it down to 200 million.

00:13:20.000 But still, the fact that we got something done is very important.

00:13:24.000 But I believe we need to go much further than that.

00:13:26.000 I'm calling for a total suspension on it, kicking into effect immediately.

00:13:30.000 So that way people make up for, you know, get back in their pockets what they've been robbed of.

00:13:36.000 You know, inflation is a hidden tax.

00:13:37.000 It's robbery.

00:13:38.000 And they're being basically robbed by these policies which are intentional.

00:13:43.000 It's not just incompetence.

00:13:44.000 There's a lot of incompetence in the Biden administration.

00:13:46.000 But in this case, they're actually doing this stuff intentionally.

00:13:49.000 They know that their fiscal policies result in this direct inflation, but they just don't care.

00:13:54.000 I think, and I could be corrected if I'm wrong, the last person to author a billion dollar tax cut in the Florida Legislature was me when I was chairman of the Finance and Tax Committee there, but I agree with you.

00:14:05.000 Suspension of the gas tax, reduction of the gas tax, that should be the action that we see from our government.

00:14:11.000 But the reason you have not seen the Biden administration take action on this is because they're worried that they might not get full credit for their infrastructure bill.

00:14:21.000 Take a listen to the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Grantholm, give up the entire game in this response in an interview she recently gave.

00:14:32.000 What's he waiting for on the gas tax?

00:14:34.000 Well, I mean, part of the challenge with the gas tax, of course, is that it funds the roads.

00:14:38.000 And we just did a big infrastructure bill to help fund the roads.

00:14:41.000 So if we do, if we remove the gas tax, that takes away the funding that was just passed by Congress to be able to do that.

00:14:50.000 So this is really interesting from a policy standpoint and a political standpoint, Anthony, because they know that this bipartisan infrastructure bill is a total zero with the voters.

00:15:01.000 This has given Biden and Democrats and even the Republicans who joined with them no bump among their constituents, no enhancement in approval ratings.

00:15:11.000 And yet now they won't give relief that is needed to the American people because they're worried that this might drain away all their slush fund resources for their infrastructure bill.

00:15:22.000 Is there any case to be made, Anthony, for taking more money right now out of people's pockets so that Joe Biden feels like he gets sufficient credit for something that the American people aren't really that enthusiastic about?

00:15:36.000 And there's no argument that can be made.

00:15:38.000 Obviously, they're searching for political capital and goodwill wherever they can find it.

00:15:43.000 And that means delaying common sense policies and smart decisions just to try to cover and stop and stop the bleeding, the political bleeding that the administration is feeling right now.

00:15:55.000 They're willing to do that.

00:15:56.000 It's really sad to see.

00:15:57.000 It also explains why they've focused on some of these extraneous items that the American people, quite frankly, don't care about.

00:16:04.000 They're looking for some political territory where they can try to achieve a win.

00:16:08.000 And so I'm sure we'll bring it up momentarily, but January 6th and items that are different from the ones that are on the front of the minds of the American people are what they're going to try to focus on.

00:16:18.000 Everything is filtered through the prism of politics for these people and their dwindling poll numbers, which are the worst poll numbers of any presidency at this point in time, really, in American history.

00:16:28.000 It's quite shocking.

00:16:29.000 So you've got MSNBC saying these are the worst times since the Civil War.

00:16:34.000 We've got inflation going through the roof.

00:16:36.000 We ask the Secretary of Energy, hey, are you going to advance these reductions in taxes to help people?

00:16:44.000 Answer no.

00:16:45.000 But don't worry, Representative Sabatini, because the left has the response to solve inflation And you guessed it, it's more amnesty for illegal aliens.

00:16:55.000 Take a listen to Governor Jared Polis make the case for amnesty to solve your inflation problems.

00:17:03.000 We need an aggressive policy response around saving people money.

00:17:06.000 We talked about some pieces of it.

00:17:08.000 Getting rid of the Trump tariffs.

00:17:10.000 We talked about a gas tax holiday.

00:17:12.000 I think there's other taxes that can be cut temporarily.

00:17:15.000 And I also think that we should move forward.

00:17:17.000 If we can't get an immigration reform through Congress, President Biden should move forward with DAPA, which is a sister to DACA. This is the 10th anniversary of the Dreamer program.

00:17:26.000 DACA, Deferred Action for Young People Who Grew Up Here.

00:17:29.000 There was a sister program that President Obama attempted to get through, but the clock ran out on DAPA. It's Deferred Action for the Parents of American Children.

00:17:37.000 It would address some of the workforce shortages we have today and contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to our economy and absolutely would reduce inflation if we can get that done.

00:17:48.000 That's what they say we need, Representative Sabatini, just more amnesty.

00:17:52.000 And you know, around the DACA issue, we recall all of the arguments that we had to be compassionate to these children that had been brought unwittingly by their parents into the country illegally.

00:18:04.000 And now you've got left-leaning politicians, the governor of Colorado no less, out there saying that what we have to do is we have to have a blanket amnesty, not through the Congress, not with a vote of the people's representatives, but by executive action to have all of these people just freely in our country, even though they came here without permission.

00:18:24.000 Is there any argument that amnesty is the solution to rising inflation?

00:18:30.000 Well, to borrow a phrase from American history, I would describe that as voodoo economics. 0.90

00:18:35.000 It actually makes literally no sense.

00:18:37.000 It's totally irrational.

00:18:38.000 And it's deeply disturbing.

00:18:40.000 You know, the Democrat Party for decades was always characterized as the pro-working class, pro-protectionist party.

00:18:48.000 And obviously that's totally changed.

00:18:49.000 The issue that characterized their party that they sort of had control over for a long time is now squarely within our wing of the Republican Party, which is stopping and slowing down immigration, doing an immigration reform to protect the working class.

00:19:02.000 You know, this is a party that punishes the working class with unrestrained Totally insane, irrational amounts of illegal and legal immigration. 1.00

00:19:13.000 It makes no sense whatsoever.

00:19:14.000 And, you know, Governor Polis, he's really sort of a perfect trajectory of where the Democrat Party was.

00:19:19.000 Years ago in the Congress, you know, people considered him Somewhat more sensible Democrat, more libertarian-esque.

00:19:25.000 And look, he's just completely drank the potion of full wokeism.

00:19:30.000 The guy is just totally irrational, advancing policies to hurt his own working class voters and doing it just for a political spin.

00:19:37.000 But then again, he's one of the many guys that knows that Biden's probably not running again.

00:19:41.000 And so he's trying to get it ahead of the pack so he can be the Democrat nominee in a few years.

00:19:44.000 And you're going to see these guys do this again and again and again.

00:19:47.000 Interesting.

00:19:47.000 You think there's a stalking horse feature where There's going to be the advancement of the most woke policies to try to carve out a lane in the far left and a potential 2024 run.

00:19:59.000 Did I hear you correctly, Representative Sabatini?

00:20:00.000 You called for a full moratorium on immigration, not just illegal, but legal as well?

00:20:07.000 100% legal immigration moratorium.

00:20:10.000 I believe that we should have actually done this years ago.

00:20:13.000 And maybe it could have been debated years ago.

00:20:15.000 Today, it's without a debate.

00:20:17.000 What we experienced with the rampant illegal immigration in the last five or ten years, I think no argument can be made that that's something against the fact that we need that immediately, as fast as we can possibly get it.

00:20:28.000 No immigration. 1.00

00:20:29.000 Study the issue.

00:20:30.000 And then maybe in a decade or so, once the working class has been alleviated from the pressure that we intentionally put on, the Democrat Party intentionally put on, That part of our economy and our American people, then we can take another look at it.

00:20:43.000 But since the 1960s with the Hard Seller Act, we've had a pretty schizophrenic and ridiculous immigration policy that's not focused on advancing American interests, but actually just the bottom line of giant, woke, globalist corporations.

00:20:56.000 And so we need to reprioritize that and focus on actually helping our own people again.

00:21:01.000 And immigration war times is the best way to do it. 1.00

00:21:03.000 And it is a crisis here totally created by policies embraced by the left, right?

00:21:09.000 They're saying, oh, you have these children who are American citizens.

00:21:11.000 I mean, obviously we can't deport their parents, but that is why the anchor baby concept is so dangerous to our country.

00:21:19.000 I do not believe that America should honor birthright citizenship by fraud, by illegal act.

00:21:27.000 I think we actually need to go the other way from amnesty and actually tighten up birthright citizenship so that, you know, the The cartel leaders in Mexico don't just ship their baby mamas across the border so that their prodigy then somehow has the same rights that you and I do as Americans.

00:21:45.000 It is not the same thing.

00:21:48.000 Do you believe that there is a constitutional way to potentially deal with birthright citizenship so that a fraud is not perpetrated on our country?

00:21:57.000 Well, I believe the whole thing's been a fraud since the beginning.

00:22:00.000 You know, you've been one of the strongest voices in the Congress in getting at the truth about birthright citizenship.

00:22:06.000 John Eastman, Michael Anton, and others have written about it for a few years now, about its duplicitous constitutional history.

00:22:14.000 It was essentially made up whole cloth.

00:22:16.000 And people just started coming in.

00:22:17.000 If you look back at the 14th Amendment, you look back at the actual language of the 14th Amendment about the rights granted to people who were under, pursuant to basically under existing American laws already.

00:22:31.000 It was never meant to be extended to people who were accidentally born on American soil, but who were not allegiant to the sovereign of the United States, the people of the United States, the government of the United States.

00:22:42.000 And so the whole thing has just been sort of a lie, advanced out of thin air and needs to be repealed and stopped immediately.

00:22:49.000 I don't even think we really need a constitutional amendment to do it.

00:22:51.000 We just need a statute.

00:22:52.000 We got to stop birthright citizenship. 0.53

00:22:54.000 It makes no sense and its history is fake.

00:22:57.000 And just once again, you know, Dressed in a moral cloth, like a lot of the policies pushed by the left, they'll cover it with moralism and it's the moral right thing to do.

00:23:06.000 But at the end of the day, it's about advancing the power and the interest of the Democrat Party and woke leftist elites and not about helping the vital interests of the American people.

00:23:15.000 I'm joined by Anthony Sabatini, state representative in the state of Florida, probably Governor DeSantis' strongest ally in the Florida House of Representatives, certainly one of the toughest fighters against lockdowns, against mandates, and against wokeism that we see permeating almost every element of corporate America and big media and government.

00:23:36.000 CBS went total critical race theory this last Sunday on their Flagship program, Face the Nation, or as President Trump calls it, Deface the Nation.

00:23:47.000 Margaret Brennan actually had Ibram Kendi on the show to talk about critical race theory and the impact of racism on the minds of three-year-olds.

00:23:58.000 Take a listen.

00:24:00.000 For so long, people were taught.

00:24:03.000 Be blind to color.

00:24:06.000 You're saying acknowledging this is important because if you ignore it, it allows racism to survive.

00:24:13.000 Is that right?

00:24:14.000 It does and unfortunately we as parents and teachers and caregivers of children and just you know adults I want to believe that, but unfortunately it's just not true.

00:24:25.000 I mean, studies show that as early as three years old, our kids have an adult-like concept of race.

00:24:30.000 They're not only seeing color, but they're attaching it to qualities like smartness, like honesty.

00:24:38.000 Are you buying it, Representative Sabatini?

00:24:44.000 Three-year-olds are actually born racist, where they look at someone's color and determine how smart or honest they are.

00:24:51.000 I didn't even know that three-year-olds were making analytical decisions about relative honesty and smartness.

00:24:58.000 How dangerous is this perspective?

00:25:01.000 You know, in the eternal war of Florida State University versus University of Florida, I think you get an extra point over us for not ever having Ibrahim Kendi as a tenured faculty member at your alma mater.

00:25:14.000 You know, Kendi taught at UF. We subsidized this guy for years.

00:25:18.000 It's one of the best arguments for restructuring our university so we're not throwing money at these anti-American, radical leftist people.

00:25:26.000 I mean, three-year-old kids, are you kidding me?

00:25:29.000 This guy is Being taken seriously by mainstream journalists and political thinkers and people in the nonprofit industry, etc.

00:25:38.000 It's crazy.

00:25:39.000 This guy's got, to be totally honest about it, a very hate-filled heart.

00:25:44.000 I mean, their idea of justice in society is structuring things in such a way That we're always thinking in race-based classifications.

00:25:53.000 Everything must be based on race and filtered through race.

00:25:56.000 And that's just wrong.

00:25:57.000 That's quite literally what the American civil rights movement in the 60s was trying to do the opposite of.

00:26:03.000 And this guy's actually very honest about that.

00:26:05.000 If you read his works, he'll say, I want to sort of reverse the civil rights movement and have a 100% focus on race and racial outcomes.

00:26:12.000 So he's wrong.

00:26:13.000 It's crazy.

00:26:14.000 I wish this guy never taught at UF. He's moved far beyond that.

00:26:18.000 I think Soros is funded at this point.

00:26:19.000 He's got some mega donor that's putting his poison everywhere, apparently now CBS. And the best thing we could do right now is get every Republican to understand critical race theory, understand the threat it is, and shut it down, especially in our institutions like we did in Florida.

00:26:33.000 We passed the strongest bill banning critical race theory, not just in government, but also in private enterprises.

00:26:38.000 If Walt Disney wants to try to use that stuff in their HR department and shove it into their employee manual, it's actually illegal under Florida law.

00:26:46.000 What was that debate like?

00:26:47.000 Was it a party-line debate?

00:26:50.000 Were you able to get through to any Democrats, maybe even in swing districts, that embracing a pedagogy that tells three-year-olds that they're racist is not really a productive one to society?

00:27:03.000 You know, it's interesting.

00:27:04.000 You would think if the argument was dealt with on its merits, that would have obviously happened.

00:27:09.000 There are always a few Democrats that are slightly more open-minded than the rest of the party, but it actually didn't happen in Tallahassee.

00:27:15.000 It did not happen in the political legislature because they mischaracterized their position in such a way that they just villainized anybody who could disagree with it.

00:27:24.000 They don't believe critical race theory is racism and is anti-American.

00:27:27.000 They just believe it's this new step in the eternal struggle for social justice and yada, yada, yada.

00:27:33.000 And they barely ever, you know, in sort of bad faith way, they would never explicitly deal with the language of these critical race theorists and what they're advocating for.

00:27:43.000 Because if you read it, every American can read it and tell this is just fundamentally wrong on American, but they just don't go to that level of politics.

00:27:51.000 They just ignore it and deal with two-dimensional ideas of what critical race theory is.

00:27:56.000 George on Facebook on the live stream says, when I was three, all I had on my mind was where my next cookie was coming from.

00:28:02.000 It's probably more similar to my experience as well.

00:28:05.000 The left tries to tell us that critical race theory is the next evolution of the civil rights movement, a way to get more progress for people of color.

00:28:14.000 But I think you laid it out correctly, and I think a lot of people need to understand this.

00:28:18.000 Critical race theory is a critique, a rejection of the civil rights movement.

00:28:24.000 The civil rights movement had as its principal goal colorblindness, right?

00:28:28.000 That was Dr. King's famous speech about the content of people's character rather than the color of their skin.

00:28:35.000 Black and white children holding hands together.

00:28:38.000 And Kendi seems to say, no, no, no, no.

00:28:40.000 We don't want to judge people just by the content of their character.

00:28:43.000 We have to recognize that everyone is in this packaging of race, and you have to evaluate that packaging more than what someone has achieved.

00:28:53.000 And I think that is a very, very dangerous thing for the country.

00:28:56.000 I'm glad that Florida led the way, not just in our schools, but from the classroom to the boardroom, to get rid of this toxic poison.

00:29:05.000 And it just is interesting that at a time where you have MSNBC saying it's the worst it's ever been since the Civil War, you've got a president with historically low approval ratings.

00:29:16.000 They won't cut the gas tax.

00:29:18.000 Joe Biden says get an electric car.

00:29:21.000 And then their answer for you is wokeism and amnesty.

00:29:24.000 I mean, that pretty much breaks down where we are in the country.

00:29:28.000 And do you think, Representative Sabatini, that our states are going to have to muscle up and use more of their 10th Amendment rights?

00:29:37.000 Or do you think that if we're able to get the right composition in the Congress, that we'll actually make life a little easier on the states by creating conditions that allow people everywhere to be more prosperous?

00:29:50.000 I think we're going to need both, but I definitely think there's more opportunity on the states.

00:29:55.000 You know, I always say red states use a tenth of the power that they actually have. 0.50

00:29:58.000 What DeSantis' greatest accomplishment was for me, you know, looking at it objectively, was that he basically just kind of showed the country how much all the other Republican governors really just sucked and weren't really doing anything.

00:30:10.000 And so he exposed them.

00:30:12.000 And so now they're saying, you know, you see Abbott and these guys say, well, geez, I got to catch up to DeSantis.

00:30:17.000 I need to use more power.

00:30:18.000 That's power they've always had, power they've always had under the Tenth Amendment, of course, just of their own volition.

00:30:24.000 And they just refuse to use it.

00:30:26.000 He's exposing them, making them do it.

00:30:27.000 So they need to do that.

00:30:28.000 Red states need to really Everything they can to advance freedom in the America First agenda at the state level. 0.86

00:30:35.000 But at the same time, we need to grow our sort of informal America First caucus in the Congress.

00:30:41.000 You and Marjorie and Biggs and Massey and Gosar and all the good guys.

00:30:45.000 We've got to expand that and hold the Republican leadership accountable and instill courage in them.

00:30:49.000 Because if they had the courage, they can do what's necessary to be done.

00:30:52.000 But right now, it doesn't seem like they have the courage.

00:30:56.000 They're sort of running an anti-Democrat They're not advancing positive policies of what America needs to look like and what we need to do.

00:31:08.000 And I think that's one of the best things we could be doing right now, alongside red states using their powers, getting a Congress that pushes leadership to advance positive America first policy, especially when it comes to energy. 0.96

00:31:18.000 You're so right.

00:31:19.000 And this was my critique of Republicans during the Obama years.

00:31:22.000 When Obama was president, Republicans were just against anything he was for.

00:31:26.000 And then that gave Obama the ability to essentially craft not only his own agenda, but ours as well.

00:31:34.000 We cannot just be an opposition.

00:31:36.000 We actually have to show people how better choices in government will lead to higher wages, better jobs, more investment in our companies and in our country.

00:31:46.000 And I really think that was the benefit of the Trump presidency.

00:31:50.000 It showed us how good we, in fact, can be.

00:31:55.000 Take not my word for it, but MSNBCs were literally in the doldrums of our country.

00:32:00.000 You mentioned Governor DeSantis, Representative Sabatini, and I want to get to another Florida man story.

00:32:05.000 Big headline in Fox News, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says, White House lying about COVID vaccine policy.

00:32:11.000 I've had a number of calls to my congressional office.

00:32:14.000 about this issue where Florida is the only state that will not use its state infrastructure to distribute COVID vaccine to children five years old and younger.

00:32:25.000 Give us the update as to the rationale for this decision and your standpoint on it.

00:32:29.000 Well, first of all, the media coverage, this is sort of becoming a typical, almost stereotype occurrence.

00:32:35.000 DeSantis says something, they lie about it, he says something else, they say that he retracted or corrected himself.

00:32:40.000 And all of it's a lie.

00:32:41.000 DeSantis did something that the Republican governor should have absolutely done.

00:32:44.000 And they should have said this.

00:32:46.000 When the federal government was pushing these new emergency approved vaccines for children less than five years old, they said, you know, no, thanks.

00:32:54.000 We're not going to we're not going to jump into that.

00:32:56.000 It's under an emergency authorization.

00:32:59.000 We're no longer in an emergency.

00:33:00.000 We don't need it.

00:33:02.000 These small children have a 99.99% survival rate from COVID. So what are we doing here?

00:33:09.000 Other Republican governors didn't join it, but he bullied the right thing.

00:33:12.000 Now, once they approved it, he said this statement right before the emergency authorization went through.

00:33:16.000 Once it went through, he said, you know, at the end of the day, if some people want to order this thing, we're not going to stand in the way.

00:33:21.000 We're just not going to go out of the way at the state level to start pushing this thing.

00:33:25.000 And they try to mischaracterize his statements.

00:33:27.000 You know, he's a bold and courageous guy, and he often has to stand alone to do what he has to do.

00:33:31.000 And so the media just jumps on that and tries to mischaracterize his stuff.

00:33:35.000 And we have the best state health surgeon in the country.

00:33:38.000 His name is Joe Lopido.

00:33:39.000 He's a well-respected doctor, and he is actually looking at all the evidence, not just narratives, not just woke medicine narratives that are coming out about vaccine.

00:33:47.000 Remember, these are the people that were wrong on everything related to COVID, okay?

00:33:51.000 You know, at one point they were advocating wearing two or three masks.

00:33:54.000 They were wrong about everything.

00:33:56.000 We were right.

00:33:56.000 And we need to look at all sources.

00:33:58.000 And this is just about disciplining Republicans that want to think differently about public health.

00:34:04.000 And so that's why they always are attacking him.

00:34:07.000 DeSantis and the public health infrastructure in Florida has been a hallmark of consistency.

00:34:13.000 Meanwhile, with the CDC and Dr. Fauci, it sort of feels like public health magic eight ball, where you shake the ball and then a different response comes up every time about vaccines, masking, transmissibility, survivability.

00:34:28.000 Is Florida, you know, when we look at all this, do you think Florida's gonna shake out well on the health statistics as well as on kind of the freedom metric that's so important to our people?

00:34:40.000 Absolutely, on both counts.

00:34:42.000 So, you know, at the end of, like, sort of the height of COVID, we found that Florida ended up having the best response.

00:34:48.000 It was mostly, it was the most rooted in freedom of all 50 states.

00:34:52.000 It had the best response on spread, death, illness, injury, all of that.

00:34:57.000 And then alongside that, when you look at the economic metrics, we had the lowest unemployment, the most small businesses, the most net migration into our state, et cetera, et cetera, during COVID. So we won on both counts.

00:35:09.000 And of course, one of the worst states was California, which Governor Newsom over there is always doing everything he can to stay in toe-to-toe with DeSantis and call him out on everything.

00:35:17.000 Yet he has the worst metrics along with Cuomo before he got canceled.

00:35:21.000 So we won on both counts.

00:35:23.000 This next step, I think we're going to win again.

00:35:25.000 We're going to show that we can protect kids, protect society, keep the economy open, but at the same time, not shove vaccines down the throats of kids when they're understudied.

00:35:33.000 You know, all Dr. Lopido asked for was, hey, before we start pushing this thing, why don't we study this COVID vaccine just a few more years before we mass prescribe it?

00:35:42.000 Of course, they said no, because the economics and Woke medicine disciplines were pushing it as hard as they possibly could for political purposes.

00:35:52.000 We have not studied it.

00:35:53.000 We don't know if there's going to be a health effect on these small children and on adults either.

00:35:59.000 And so instead of taking his advice, they did the emergency authorization, and we're already seeing what looks like circumstantial health effects.

00:36:10.000 Which is something we should have really slowed down on.

00:36:12.000 And I'm glad Florida stood up for rationality and freedom when it came to this decision.

00:36:16.000 And if you're a parent and you want your four year old or three year old to get the vaccine, there's nothing in Florida that blocks that or renders that illegal or unable to occur.

00:36:28.000 We're just not going to use the apparatus of the state to do distribution on the vaccine.

00:36:33.000 I think that's where the national media has been lying about Governor DeSantis and the policy choices in Florida.

00:36:39.000 They've been saying, oh, you know, now all these people won't have the freedom to Make this decision, and in fact, if that's what you choose based on your circumstances, I believe that that's between doctors, families, but I support Governor DeSantis' decision, and it sounds like you do as well.

00:36:55.000 Shifting gears to our final topic, Representative Sabatini, the January 6th committee is unconstitutional Unfair.

00:37:04.000 And I would suggest fundamentally uninteresting.

00:37:07.000 A lot of this information was known.

00:37:09.000 A lot of it is baked in.

00:37:11.000 I think a lot of people are still rightly concerned about election integrity as an issue.

00:37:15.000 As a state leader, a state lawmaker, as a political leader in your community, what's your perspective on the ongoing January 6th committee hearings?

00:37:23.000 Well, the two most predominant feelings I have is, one, I agree with President Trump when he says this is an unselect committee of political hacks and political thugs.

00:37:34.000 And the other part of me says, well, this is just also extremely boring.

00:37:37.000 You know, they're doing something that's At one point, very vicious and unheard of, which is weaponizing a congressional committee to try to destroy the lives of their domestic political opponents.

00:37:50.000 But at the exact same time, it's a massive distraction versus the most immediate threats against liberty and prosperity in this country.

00:37:58.000 Our border, gasoline, the failed foreign policy in Afghanistan and around the world, Everything that's happening, the breakdown of the rule of law, got Supreme Court justice death threats happening now on a weekly basis.

00:38:09.000 So all of these really immediate threats are looming on the American people.

00:38:14.000 And so at the same time, it's just crazy distraction.

00:38:18.000 But on the one hand, it's a blueprint they're using.

00:38:21.000 What they're trying to do is very similar to what I read in an article the other day, set something up like the Soviet show trials, where They don't allow anything that goes against their narrative.

00:38:30.000 They're not looking at evidence to deflate their points.

00:38:33.000 It's just one party controlling the apparatus of Congress and then just trying to label anybody, not just the protesters, by the way, not just the protesters on the Capitol lawn that day, but anybody that has been involved in advancing what we know to be strong claims about fraud in the 2020 election.

00:38:53.000 They want to label them and us all domestic terrorists.

00:38:57.000 And so at one point, it's very heinous and disgusting.

00:39:00.000 But at the other hand, it's this sort of political shroud that they're trying to advance to distract us from these other domestic and foreign policy failures, which have characterized the Biden regime.

00:39:14.000 We could really rename the January 6th committee hearings the betrayal of Liz Cheney, the ongoing betrayal of Liz Cheney, because she's all about betrayal. 0.99

00:39:23.000 She betrayed the state of Wyoming when she voted for an impeachment that those folks were absolutely against. 0.92

00:39:28.000 She betrayed the Republican conference when serving as conference chair, choosing to engage in her own revenge tour against Donald Trump. 0.97

00:39:37.000 She even betrayed her own sister when she wanted a United States Senate seat and it was politically expedient to throw her own family member under the bus. 1.00

00:39:44.000 And in these hearings, she is betraying our country.

00:39:47.000 She is betraying America by engaging in this just total political theater when we ought to be focused on the issues that are concerning Thank you, Carson Gates.

00:40:11.000 It's at Anthony Sabatini on every social media platform with Truth and Facebook, Twitter, everything.

00:40:19.000 And of course, they could always just reach out to me directly.

00:40:22.000 Through my email, which is afsabatini at gmail.com.

00:40:26.000 We'd love to hear your thoughts and stay in touch.

00:40:28.000 Representative Anthony Sabatini, one of Florida's very best state representatives, a top ally of Governor DeSantis, a top ally of the America First agenda.

00:40:37.000 Thanks for joining us.

00:40:39.000 Thanks, everyone, for tuning in.

00:40:40.000 Roll the credits.

Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - June 27, 2022

Episode 55 LIVE: National Malaise (feat. Rep. Anthony Sabatini) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript