In this episode of Firebrand Live, host Alex Blumberg is joined by Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R-Florida) and Florida Governor Gavin Newsom (D-California) to discuss the current state of the Democratic Party and why Florida should vote for him in the upcoming primary election. They also discuss why California should elect a Democratic Governor in 2022, and why it s better than Florida in terms of jobs, education, infrastructure, and other important statistics regarding the state s economic and political infrastructure. They also talk about why Florida is a better place to live than California and why you should join the Firebrand movement in Florida to fight for the freedom of speech and freedom from hate in California. And they talk about how California is not only the most expensive place in the country, but also the second most expensive state in the US, and the second highest exporter of its citizens to Florida, and how that could be a good thing for the country. Firebrand LIVE is a production of The Firebrand Project, a conservative political podcast produced in Los Angeles, California, and produced by Firebrand's own Adam Gertler and Firebrand Media. Please consider subscribing to our newest podcast, Firebrand Radio, wherever you get your favorite streaming service. Thank you for listening and supporting our work. We appreciate your support and your support. Thank you so much for your continued support! - Matt, Matt, and Alex, Alex, and Anthony, and our continued support of this podcast. - Thank you, Alex and Alex! - Tom, and thanks for listening to this podcast, and for supporting this podcast and spreading the word out to the country and the world. , and we hope you all around the world! and everywhere else, we love you're listening to it. -- Thank you. . - Alex, Thank you - Your support is so much, and we appreciate you! -- Matt, Sarah, and all of your support is appreciated, and thank you for your support, and support, and all the love and support and support you're being heard and all your support everywhere else in the world, thank you, and Thank you back to you, bye bye, bye. Matt, bye - Sarah, bye, Amy, and bye, and see ya. and see you soon. - Tom and Paxx, - PJ and Joe, Kristy, and Cheers, Sarah
00:04:37.000Matt 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.
00:04:44.000Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
00:04:47.000He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
00:04:50.000So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
00:04:53.000If 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.
00:06:11.000It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast a ballot is consistently higher than the percentage of the men who do so.
00:06:22.000And she was forced to have to travel out of the state to Indiana to seek to terminate the presidency and maybe save her life.
00:06:45.000Firebrand Live is back broadcasting from our office in the Longworth Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
00:06:52.000We've got a great Florida man, State Representative Anthony Sabatini, joining us in just a moment to answer the question, like, who are you?
00:07:50.000Through misguided government lockdowns and ridiculous tax rates and unhinged immigration, government bankruptcy, and crime run amok, native Californians have found themselves wanting to move to greener pastures.
00:08:05.000Places with just as much sunshine, zero income tax, more coastline, and better state governance.
00:09:00.000It's Independence Day, so let's talk about what's going on in America.
00:09:04.000Freedom is under attack in your state.
00:09:06.000Republican leaders, they're banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors.
00:09:14.000I urge all of you living in Florida to join the fight, or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate, and the freedom to love.
00:09:28.000Paid for by Newsom for California Governor 2022. The freedom to be crushed by taxes, the freedom to have illegal immigrants running over your state, the freedom to pay for health care for those illegals.
00:10:09.000Because Democrats would rather be lied to by Gavin than just shuttled in to sleep with Joe Biden.
00:10:18.000Perhaps Gavin has a tighter grip on the Democratic Party's policy agenda than our own president.
00:10:24.000Sad for America, but give Gavin Newsom credit for seizing the moment.
00:10:29.000Joining me now, one of the greatest America First fighters to have ever served in the Florida legislature, someone central to creating the Florida boom, one of the best allies of Governor Ron DeSantis in the Sunshine State, Anthony Sabatini.
00:10:44.000Representative Sabatini, what is your reaction to Gavin Newsom welcoming Floridians to California?
00:10:51.000Well, Congressman, I think even George Orwell would be proud by his misuse of language.
00:10:55.000Like you mentioned in your monologue, he has literally turned words upside down.
00:10:59.000You know, I don't think there's a lot of freedom in California these days, but one freedom they still have that is being exercised quite rapidly Is the freedom to leave.
00:11:08.000A lot of people are trying to get out of California and for now, at least, they're free to leave.
00:11:13.000So, you know, going through that ad, I tell you first, the first thing I would note is, like you mentioned, up until this time, California's biggest export were people.
00:11:21.000People getting out and coming to the state of Florida.
00:11:23.000Now it seems the biggest export is going to be these new TV ads where they send them into different states trying to beg people to come back.
00:11:30.000But of course, people are wiser than that.
00:11:33.000Because there is no freedom in California.
00:11:36.000You don't have the freedom to defend yourself if you're attacked by somebody, you don't have the Second Amendment rights, and your prosecutor isn't even able to prosecute some of these criminals.
00:11:45.000You don't have the freedom to own a home.
00:11:47.000Taxes and regulations have made it that home ownership is just out of reach for the average Californian.
00:11:53.000And they talk about in the ad, he talks about the freedom to love.
00:11:56.000How are you supposed to love somebody when you're forced to wear three masks in every public space that you go to?
00:12:03.000Love through a mask, the California story, right?
00:12:06.000You've never seen love prevail like when it has to prevail through three masks.
00:12:11.000So, Representative Sabatini, what would you say is central to Florida's success?
00:12:17.000I mean, as you and I have traveled around the country, we've heard from so many policy leaders on the right saying, gosh, you know, what do we have to do to become more like Florida?
00:12:33.000People come here and they do what they want.
00:12:35.000I always tell people you got the American dream, Well, the Florida dream is like the American dream in the American dream.
00:12:40.000You know, my family came down from New York.
00:12:42.000People come from all over looking for opportunity and looking for a place where they can create something great, whatever it is that means to them, you know, being free.
00:12:52.000So DeSantis knows that, our governor knows that, our legislature knows that, and you know that.
00:12:56.000And so that's why our utmost goal is to reinforce and create a sense of freedom when it comes to taxes, regulation, And just letting people do what they want and be what they want.
00:13:42.000We're seeing towns be revitalized and quiet places outside of Orlando, like I represent, are now becoming bustling centers because people are coming in, they're bringing their money, they're bringing their energy and ideas.
00:13:54.000And it's led to a sort of rebirth of the economy in places where it didn't exist before then, mostly because of these other states running themselves into the ground.
00:14:06.000While I know many conservatives are worried about big tech censorship and certainly illegal immigration and election integrity, all issues, I certainly want to talk about the number one issue that I've been hearing about, the rising price of goods, the rising price of fuel,
00:14:23.000the shrinkflation at the grocery store where the package of peppers that you used to buy, well, if it's the same price, it's a lot smaller in terms of what you're actually getting for your family as a part of the consumer experience.
00:14:37.000And Gavin Newsom in California has responded to inflation by handing money out to people to combat inflation.
00:14:46.000Like, it strikes me as the dumbest thing to possibly do.
00:14:51.000It actually will create more inflation.
00:14:53.000And I just wonder, like, the discipline that you've shown in the Florida legislature, that really generations of Florida legislators have shown with fiscal policy, by building up state reserves, by not having these government programs that just spit money at people, has that created an economic resilience for Florida?
00:15:14.000And what's your reaction to policies that actually exacerbate inflation in the name of curbing inflation?
00:15:24.000Just like we learned in the response to the Great Depression, a lot of the policies that get thrown to combat these terrible atrocities in the economy actually exacerbate and make things worse.
00:15:35.000And so that scarcity that results from subsidizing things is something we've always tried to push back against.
00:15:42.000One of the first things they're trying to push, I'm talking about the Democrats in the legislature, And those on the left, one of the first things they're trying to push this year and going forward are rent control devices, different types of laws to dictate the prices of rent.
00:15:57.000And what that does is it drives up the scarcity and ends up having the opposite result what they want, which is that people who are trying to get the few properties for rent have less of a chance of doing so because everybody else is locked out of the market.
00:16:12.000The goal needs to be to bring down prices.
00:16:44.000Homeownership is higher and cheaper in Florida.
00:16:47.000And as much as we're dealing with the Biden economy and the Bidenflation, we know that embracing free market reforms is what's going to keep prices down and get us back to where we were in the Trump years.
00:17:00.000You have been one of the national fighters against Biden.
00:17:04.000These state policies that seem to encourage illegal immigration.
00:17:08.000And in California, there are barriers to state law enforcement even working with our Customs and Border Patrol with ICE to ensure that we have protection at the border and also internal enforcement of our immigration laws.
00:17:34.000And what the law enforcement say is they'll literally run away from Arizona and into California because they know the state and local law enforcement there Those very people then get health care benefits and other benefits that rely on drawdowns from the federal government.
00:17:52.000So that means that your constituents, Representative Sabatini, and my constituents are seeing their federal tax dollars used to incentivize illegal immigrants into the state of California.
00:18:29.000Now it's time for the federal government to shut down sanctuary states.
00:18:32.000That means cutting off funding, tightening regulations, utilizing and using federal power to punish these states, both with civil and criminal remedies for when they exacerbate law breaking and bring in illegal immigrants.
00:18:46.000On top of that, there's a lot that the federal government can do to incentivize and even mandate the use of E-Verify and other measures that make it that states have to use a legally compliant workforce within their own borders.
00:18:59.000And I think that's something we really need to be engaged in very quickly because the 13 million, out of minimum, illegal immigrants that we have in this country is having a major effect both on crime, but also on the scarcity of housing.
00:19:13.000Going back to the economy, we know that housing is going to go up as long as you have an open border.
00:19:18.000We can't provide enough housing for our own people, much less the world's people.
00:19:22.000And so the federal government needs to use civil and criminal remedies to put forth And I plan on joining you in legislation to make sure that we can actually drop the hammer on these states when we get the White House and control Congress in the next couple of years.
00:19:37.000A serious nation cannot allow appendages of the nation to be sanctuary against our laws when it comes to who's allowed to be in our nation.
00:19:52.000And then it was a purple state and now it's a reliably blue state.
00:19:55.000And the reason is because they've allowed a lot of these illegal immigrants to vote.
00:19:59.000There was a recent Wall Street Journal piece, go ahead and put it up guys, showing this mass migration of people out of California into Florida.
00:20:07.000Not just Florida, but you see the SEC states are pretty much gaining population.
00:20:14.000And people are abandoning as refugees, Illinois, California, and places where certainly the policies are more reflective of what I hear from the left here in Washington, D.C. But if they get the illegal immigrants in to replace the citizens that are leaving that they've already abandoned, Then their goal is to get those illegal immigrants voting.
00:20:38.000Now in Florida, Representative Anthony Sabatini, you have led efforts on election integrity to push for strong chain of custody over ballots, strong verification of people's ID. How should Americans think about this grand plan on the left to lash their immigration policies with an erosion of the election integrity measures that ensure that lawful votes are Well,
00:21:06.000the first key is to do exactly what you just did is identify it.
00:21:10.000You know, a lot of people are asleep and they don't realize that the left, whether it be in a centralized or decentralized way, is pushing a lot of policies in conjunction to fundamentally reshape the country.
00:21:20.000One of them is bringing folks in who don't really quite understand the nature of a republic and the idea of self-sacrifice and what it is we're voting for every time we go into the ballot box.
00:21:32.000And at the same time, making it extremely, extremely lax voting laws, easy to vote, and therefore easy to cheat.
00:21:38.000You know, what we've done in Florida is we've identified this trend in what the Biden regime is trying to do, and we've made it more secure in our voting stations and our voting systems.
00:21:48.000One of those things is securing ballot boxes, making it that you can't just have these random ballot boxes sitting out on the side of the street.
00:21:55.000Another one is making it that people actually have to verbally And in written form requests before they vote by mail.
00:22:00.000Of course, I ultimately want to reduce the amount of vote by mail, which means reducing the amount of vote by mail fraud.
00:22:08.000But making it that they have to use a social security number, a driver's license, voter ID when they request those ballots is really key.
00:22:16.000And of course, most famously, we ban Zuckerbucks.
00:22:20.000Billionaire third parties should not be playing a role And how our elections are conducted in free states.
00:22:24.000Those are a few of the measures that we got signed into law by Governor DeSantis over the last few years.
00:22:30.000And I think we need to continue moving in that direction until we have 100% security and confidence in our elections.
00:22:36.000It is a perfect road map for other states.
00:22:38.000And so if you live in Michigan or Georgia or Pennsylvania or Arizona, you don't have to live this way.
00:22:45.000Florida has shown how to go from a laughing stock on election management and reporting and transparency to the model for the country and a big reason why great fighters like State Representative Anthony Sabatini leading on election integrity, leading against illegal immigration, ensuring that our education system is worthy of the values Of our great country.
00:23:06.000And most importantly, Anthony Sabatini is leading on the issue of freedom, both as a state legislator and I think as a private attorney, sued almost every government entity in Florida that was trying to impose mandates on our great people.
00:23:20.000Representative Sabatini, how can folks follow you and keep up with your great work?
00:23:52.000We are going to stay on the subject of elections and election integrity.
00:23:58.000And there is a hot story going on in Arizona that requires a great deal more attention.
00:24:04.000Right now, your federal tax dollars are being used to bully the state of Arizona against their desire to have an actual verification of citizenship at the time of voting.
00:24:19.000As Representative Sabatini just discussed, we actually should be improving ways to verify ID, citizenship, chain of custody on ballots in every state of the country.
00:24:30.000And then when Arizona actually stepped forward and said, you know what?
00:24:34.000We want to verify citizenship for the voting process.
00:24:39.000The United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division went after them.
00:24:45.000This is a shocking affront to civil rights.
00:24:48.000Now, Arizona recently passed a law that requires proof of citizenship in presidential elections.
00:24:54.000So when registering to vote for the first time, a voter would have to write down their address when filling out a ballot and bubble in a box stating that that voter is, in fact, an American citizen.
00:25:56.000But this activist Department of Justice isn't reasonable on the issue of voting.
00:26:03.000The DOJ Civil Rights Division is chocked full of far-left activists.
00:26:10.000I mean, these are people on the far fringes of left-wing politics.
00:26:14.000In fact, you might remember Dr. Pamela Carlin, who is now the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division.
00:26:25.000But she gave testimony before the House Judiciary Committee during the Trump-Ukraine impeachment, where she even stooped so low as to insult the president's son, Barron.
00:26:37.000Take a look at this clip to jock your memory.
00:26:40.000The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility.
00:26:43.000So while the president can name his son Barron, he can't make him a Baron.
00:26:49.000I just have to say, when you talk about how liberals want to be around each other in cluster and conservatives don't want to be around each other and so they have to spread out, it makes people, you may not see this from, you know, like the ivory towers of your law school, but it makes actual people in this country feel like, excuse me, you don't get to interrupt me on this time.
00:27:06.000Now, let me also suggest that when you invoke the president's son's name here, when you try to make a little joke out of referencing Barron Trump, that does not lend credibility to your argument.
00:27:18.000It makes you look like you're attacking someone's family, the minor child of the president of the United States.
00:27:26.000When Dr. Pamela Carlin is empowered to go and bully the state of Arizona away from proof of citizenship to vote, They're not acting in good faith.
00:27:37.000These are not well-meaning lawyers fighting to protect your civil rights.
00:27:41.000These are partisan activists working to steal the next presidential election.
00:27:48.000There is no justification for the Department of Justice trying to strike down proof of citizenship other than they want to make it easier for non-citizens to vote.
00:28:08.000As we've covered extensively, the border crisis is not an accident.
00:28:12.000They want to flood this country with foreigners who are not given permission to be here and then enable them to vote in presidential elections in swing states like Arizona.
00:28:23.000That's why they settled these aliens in a lot of swing states, actually, releasing them into the interior of our country.
00:29:11.000We have to fight like we've never fought before on this critical question, and I would say this critical intersection of election integrity and immigration.
00:29:22.000We have to be very strong on both, a lot stronger than Republicans have been, but good for those folks in the state of Arizona.
00:29:29.000We will help you fight back against this activist, political, partisan Department of Justice.
00:29:37.000We are seeing a reversal of some matters on the global stage right now, particularly as it relates to the way the elites talk about sanctions.
00:29:47.000Now, Fareed Zakaria is a CNN contributor, he is an opinion contributor for the Washington Post, and he's basically the mouthpiece for the global elite.
00:29:57.000This was his perspective on sanctions previously.
00:30:03.000The Biden administration deserves huge credit for the economic measures it's been able to take against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
00:30:09.000As an essay by Gary Huffbauer and Megan Hogan note, they are the most comprehensive imposed against a major power since the Second World War.
00:30:18.000On a punishment scale, they rank them as at least an 8 out of 10. I support the sanctions against Russia.
00:30:28.000Eight out of ten, I support the sanctions.
00:30:32.000I mean, you could not have had a bigger cheerleader for these sanctions.
00:30:36.000And frankly, there's a whole lot of folks.
00:30:39.000But I was the lonely voice in the wilderness at times, warning people that the effects of these sanctions might not be as the architects intended.
00:30:48.000Take a listen to my remarks at that time.
00:30:52.000I don't really know that the sanctions would play out the way the architects would hope.
00:30:58.000Right now we see more and more Chinese investment funds buying up distressed Russian assets.
00:31:04.000I think there are huge geopolitical consequences to driving Asia's largest producer of energy into the arms of Asia's largest consumer of energy.
00:31:14.000That could create a Sino-Russian alliance that would pose a far greater threat to America than even the terrible carnage that we hope ends in Ukraine.
00:31:26.000My critics always say, oh, well, if you're not for the Russia sanctions, you're Putin's advocate, Putin's lawyer, the Putin wing of the Republican Party.
00:31:34.000No, I am the America first wing of the Republican Party.
00:31:39.000And by the way, I make no apology for it.
00:31:41.000So I made those comments about the misguided nature of some of these sanctions against Russia in March.
00:31:48.000Fareed did the bear hug of the sanctions, talking about how glorious they were in May.
00:31:53.000And even Business Insider took note that it was basically Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massey, and myself as the three Republicans who were skeptical of some of these economic actions that the Democrats and the Republicans and the neoconservatives and heck, even the squad were all on board for.
00:32:27.000It is now clear that the economic war against Russia is not working nearly as well as people thought it would Vladimir Putin cares less about what these sanctions do to the Russian people than he does about what they do to the Russian state.
00:32:44.000And thanks to rising energy prices, Bloomberg projects that the Russian government will make considerably more revenue from oil and gas than it did before the war, around 285 billion in 2022 compared to 236 billion in 2021. Revenues from oil and gas alone make up almost half the government's budget.
00:33:06.000And unfortunately, the solution would not be for the West to stop buying Russian energy altogether, because with less supply on the world's market, it would only drive prices even higher.
00:33:17.000Having developed a dangerous dependence on Russian energy over the last two decades, Europe cannot quickly change that without plunging into a deep and protracted recession.
00:33:30.000There was never a plan with these sanctions regimes for the pain to be fully borne by Vladimir Putin and his crony thugs rather than the American people.
00:33:44.000You saw all of the desire of Fareed and the global elites to embrace these sanctions.
00:33:50.000Warnings from myself, Massey, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
00:33:54.000Incredible pain for the American people at the gas pump with agricultural products, with consumer products.
00:34:02.000And now, now you see the total boomerang from Fareed Zakaria saying, oh, well, you know, this economic war just hadn't worked.
00:34:10.000And by the way, Russia's making more money.
00:34:12.000Like, how come the media isn't talking more about that?
00:34:15.000That this sanction regime that we've put out there has actually allowed Vladimir Putin to see a dramatic increase in the price of oil and gas.
00:34:23.000He's got all the customer base he needs still in Europe.
00:34:42.000And we could have had a more rational approach to what we were capable of doing and not capable of doing before our own constituents, our fellow Americans, saw their lives changed for the worse.
00:34:56.000Shame on the global elites and the politicians and the Biden administration for embracing these sanctions without fully appreciating their consequences.
00:35:06.000Now we see those consequences and they will likely result in Democrats being out of power, at least in some places, on Capitol Hill.
00:35:15.000Now, I haven't heard a whole lot of my colleagues going out into the country saying that they really just need to be more committed to the war in Ukraine, right?
00:35:25.000I mean, most people are trying to present an economic plan or an immigration plan or You know, on the left, people are trying to create all kind of histrionics over January 6th.
00:35:34.000But there aren't that many saying, vote Democrat so that we can print more of your money to send to Ukraine.
00:35:42.000Vote Democrat so that we can borrow money from one country and give it to another.
00:35:47.000And an exception to this rule is Ruben Gallego, Arizona congressman, serves with me on the Armed Services Committee.
00:36:13.000From your lips to God's ears, if Republicans take control, I will work with Marjorie Taylor Greene and others to ensure that That we do not borrow money from one country to send it to another.
00:36:25.000That we do not print money, thereby devaluing the work and the savings of our fellow Americans so that we can engage in neoconservative misadventurism in Europe.
00:36:38.000I do not hope that Russia prevails in this conflict.
00:36:41.000Matter of fact, I enthusiastically am rooting for Ukraine.
00:36:46.000But the funding, the resources, the logistics ought to matter more to Europe than to the United States of America.
00:36:54.000And the fact that we've sent nearly $60 billion into this battle, while we have a porous border with Mexico, while we have needs for our people, while the printing of money is creating escalating costs and challenges for our families, it's entirely irresponsible.
00:37:29.000You knew it was coming if you were watching Firebrand in January.
00:37:34.000My good friend Rahim Kassam, who is the publisher of The National Pulse, that's thenationalpulse.com, he was our guest to discuss geopolitics, British politics, and he made this amazing prediction in January.
00:37:51.000In a post-Brexit world, you had the Conservative Party, which is by no means Conservative, it's just a moniker nowadays, re-establish itself as the electoral force in the United Kingdom.
00:38:09.000Boris Johnson got a whopping 80-seat majority in the House of Commons.
00:38:14.000It meant that He could basically rule as he wanted to, introduce whatever legislation that he or his wife, which I'll get into in a second, wanted him to.
00:38:24.000And it hasn't worked out very well, because as the Conservative Party always does, it kind of reverts to this establishment disconnected with the public type of governing philosophy.
00:38:37.000And now there are all sorts of scandals swirling around 10 Downing Street, which is the executive branch, of the British government, not least to do with Boris Johnson's new wife.
00:38:48.000We don't have a constitutional role for kind of a first lady in the United Kingdom.
00:38:53.000So people are starting to ask questions because this lady Carrie, Carrie Simmons, Carrie Johnson, appears to be at the heart of so many decisions that are being made at the heart of the British government.
00:39:04.000A lot of the climate change policy stuff.
00:39:06.000She was very well entrenched with the Clinton initiative, for instance, used to work for one of their offshoots.
00:39:12.000People are starting to ask, well, where exactly is Boris Johnson getting his left-leaning credentials from?
00:39:21.000And there are scandal upon scandal upon scandals which are building in the United Kingdom right now.
00:39:26.000If I were a betting man, I would say that Boris Johnson doesn't look like he could...
00:39:33.000Desperately hold on to power for much of this year.
00:39:36.000It does depend if there's a challenger from within the Conservative Party, but it looks to be a tumultuous year in British politics in the very same way it looks to be a tumultuous year in US politics.
00:39:49.000So, Kassam predicts that Boris Johnson will lose power, and he predicts that the reason he'll lose power is an accumulating list of scandals and a departure from the policies and practices that were promised to the people of Great Britain.
00:40:05.000Gosh, really, really prescient stuff from Raheem Kassam, and it shows.
00:40:10.000You can see the future If you watch Firebrand and if you listen to us.
00:40:16.000I want to make sure that you're subscribed with notifications turned on.
00:40:20.000That way you are right there at the beginning for our discussions as we go live from Washington, D.C. to really pull the layers of the onion back and show you what's going on in your government.
00:40:31.000Certainly you deserve a government that is doing more, that is winning your battles, and that's what we fight for every day.