Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - Episode 59 LIVE: The Will To Fight – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Learn English with Matt Gaetz. Rep. Gaetz was one of the few in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents. He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws, so we're going to keep running the stories to keep hurting him. If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots, you are in the right place. You are brave, and you are willing to fight for your country. Matt is a hero in many ways, but he's also a problem in the Democratic Party, and we're gonna keep hitting him with stories to hurt him. In this episode, we'll cover: 1. What does it take to be a hero? 2. What should you do after a mass shooting? 3. How should we respond to mass shootings? 4. What can we do to prevent mass shootings in the future? 5. How can we prevent them in the first place? 6. What are we to do about them? 7. How do we know they won't happen again? 8. What do we need to do? 9. What is the difference between good and bad laws? 10. Should we have more guns in schools? 11. What s the role of law enforcement? 12. What would you do in the wake of mass shootings like Parkland, Texas? 13. What kind of gun control? 14. 15. How many guns should we have in our schools be more secure? 16. What type of guns are we should have in schools 17. Is there a gun control in schools safer? 18. What makes a school safer than a safe school 19. How much money should we pay for our children s education 21. What we should we be allowed to own a gun? 22. What sort of guns we should be trained in schools in a school? or a gun that s a gun in a safe place and so much more? And so we don t have a gun policy? Is it possible to be safe in schools better than a gun background check 23. What's the worst thing we can we learn from a school shooter in the United States? 25. What will you do to stop a school shooting in America?

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:04:47.000 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.

00:04:54.000 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.

00:04:57.000 He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws.

00:05:00.000 So we're going to keep running the stories to keep hurting him.

00:05:04.000 If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!

00:05:13.000 You are in the right place!

00:05:14.000 This is the movement for you!

00:05:17.000 You ever watch this guy on television?

00:05:19.000 It's like a machine.

00:05:20.000 Matt Gaetz.

00:05:21.000 I'm a cancelled man in some corners of the internet.

00:05:25.000 Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.

00:05:29.000 They aren't really coming for me.

00:05:31.000 They're coming for you.

00:05:33.000 I'm just in the way.

00:05:35.000 You guys are spasming into this reflexive response and you call it an emergency hearing, right?

00:05:47.000 And the basis for the emergency is what happened in Evaldi.

00:05:51.000 And we all agree it was awful and tragic, but you are not providing the thoughtful solutions that would actually reduce the likelihood of that.

00:05:58.000 When you make an argument in the Judiciary Committee, For a change in the law, there are two components.

00:06:03.000 You have to demonstrate a need for the change, and that what you're bringing forward will actually affect that in a positive way.

00:06:09.000 And it's the second part of the argument where the bills you've presented today undeniably fail.

00:06:15.000 And in Florida, I would suggest we had a process that's a little bit better than what we've observed here.

00:06:21.000 In Florida, following Parkland, every Floridian Wanted to reduce the likelihood that that could ever occur again, for precisely the reasons that animate your passions today.

00:06:32.000 But instead of rushing to town, stumbling bills together, we got our very best sheriffs, our very best police chiefs, former members of law enforcement, people with tactical experience, even parents of slain children.

00:06:45.000 And we put them on a board to review the school shooting as if it were an airline crash, dispassionately, And then, as a consequence, what we saw was actually a failure in law enforcement, that the sheriff in Broward County was so recalcitrant in not doing the training, that the on-the-ground law enforcement were so derelict in their duties that children died that didn't need to.

00:07:09.000 And so, Governor DeSantis rightly fired that sheriff, replaced them, put better training in, more money to harden our schools and our synagogues, our houses of worship across the state of Florida, and we're safer as a consequence.

00:07:23.000 So it's not that we're particularly here to talk about abortion or the border.

00:07:27.000 We understand we have to make these things less likely, but whether it's...

00:07:31.000 Are you holding an emergency hearing to respond to a leaked draft opinion that's not even final?

00:07:36.000 Or now when Congressman Roy from Texas says, gosh, before you have the emergency Uvalde hearing, maybe we ought to figure out what happened in Uvalde so that we can make that frequency less likely to occur.

00:07:52.000 We are alive now in the Longworth House office building in Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. And I gave those remarks in the House Judiciary Committee as Democrats brought expansive gun control to the body following the Uvalde shooting.

00:08:07.000 And I thought to myself, gosh, you know, there seems like there may be more to the story here.

00:08:12.000 We have a saying, tough cases make bad laws.

00:08:15.000 And that's because sometimes in people's passion to be responsive and to look alert, they lurch into policy options that end up being really bad for our people.

00:08:26.000 And oftentimes, those emotion-laden legislative reactions take people's liberty away.

00:08:34.000 We saw that tremendously during the pandemic, and we certainly see it now.

00:08:39.000 So I made that argument.

00:08:40.000 I said, gosh, you know, before we go and deprive law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment during a national crime wave, let's get the evidence.

00:08:49.000 Oh, no, they didn't want that.

00:08:51.000 And now, as a result of some records requests made by the Dallas Morning News, we see what happened.

00:08:58.000 Go ahead and play this surveillance video.

00:09:00.000 You've probably...

00:09:02.000 At 11.33 a.m., the shooter's seen in the school dressed in black, his long gun in hand, making the chilling walk down the hall.

00:09:10.000 Three minutes after the shooter walked into the school, first responding officers run into the building.

00:09:14.000 A total of seven officers initially inside.

00:09:17.000 Three of them run towards the classroom and hold just outside of it.

00:09:21.000 A minute later, the gunman shoots at police, and the officers retreat towards the other end of the hallway.

00:09:26.000 One looks as if a bullet had almost grazed his head.

00:09:29.000 No one would approach the classroom for the next 45 minutes.

00:09:32.000 This time lapse from 11.38 to 12.23 shows you the number of officers from multiple agencies that poured into the school, armed with long guns and plenty of shields.

00:09:42.000 At 1221, gunshots heard coming from the classroom again, and we see law enforcement move closer down the hall, but they stall there for another 30 minutes.

00:09:51.000 This time-lapse shows you the activity in that hallway from 1221 until 1250. No apparent attempt to breach the class.

00:09:58.000 Until 1252, when gunshots ring out.

00:10:03.000 And law enforcement finally moves in to kill the shooter, 77 minutes after the first officers arrived on scene.

00:10:13.000 77 minutes.

00:10:15.000 A more effective law enforcement response would have saved lives.

00:10:20.000 And oftentimes we have states that are willing and able to craft the more effective law enforcement responses.

00:10:27.000 I mean, the good here is not going to come out of Washington, D.C. Communities and states can undeniably become more resilient against school violence, and in Florida we've done that.

00:10:40.000 But here, You could have taken away guns of a whole lot of law-abiding Americans and still not have narrowly tailored a solution to what resulted in just a tremendous amount of senseless and horrific death in the great state of Texas.

00:10:58.000 Go ahead and play the hand sanitizer video here.

00:11:02.000 I mean, if there's an enduring image burned in, it's the children being slaughtered, these students in the classroom calling 911, And here you've got this law enforcement response that is shameful and dangerous and horrific.

00:11:21.000 And we deserve better than this.

00:11:23.000 And frankly, all Americans deserve better than a government that would, as I said in committee, spasm into a reaction without actually knowing what's going on.

00:11:33.000 That brings us to today.

00:11:35.000 Hot action on the floor of the House of Representatives.

00:11:38.000 Democrats are pushing what they call an active shooter alert bill.

00:11:44.000 Every time there is a shooting, presumably within any proximity of where you are, within any grouping of people, the left, the Democrats in Congress, want to bombard your cell phone with active shooter messages.

00:11:58.000 It is insane.

00:12:00.000 I gave this response just now on the floor.

00:12:06.000 Maybe someone should have sent an active shooter alert to the police in Uvalde.

00:12:09.000 Oh wait!

00:12:10.000 They had the alert.

00:12:12.000 They were in a school building with an active shooter and didn't take action.

00:12:17.000 You know, America is at her best when she encourages her citizens to have safe, responsible gun ownership.

00:12:25.000 But under Democrats, instead, we have a government that instead wants to stigmatize and scare people about guns.

00:12:35.000 Imagine you're at a concert with 5,000 people and everyone gets an alert on their phone, active shooter, because six blocks away there was a gunfire that went off, maybe an accident, maybe a tragedy.

00:12:48.000 Would that make the circumstance safer?

00:12:49.000 Of course not!

00:12:51.000 It would lead to stampede, tragedy, hysteria, mistake, perhaps even more death.

00:12:57.000 This bill is like yelling fire in a movie theater, except the fire is in another movie theater across the street.

00:13:05.000 The bill makes no mention of distance requirements.

00:13:07.000 Will it be notified of any active shootings within a mile, five miles, ten miles?

00:13:11.000 What is an active shooter?

00:13:13.000 A drive-by in an inner city?

00:13:15.000 A spousal murderer in the suburbs?

00:13:17.000 If you live in or near Democrat-run cities, it sounds like your phone will likely be buzzing off the hook.

00:13:24.000 Some of our cities have shootings every day where multiple people are injured and often this happens in the jurisdictions with the most intense and liberty-depriving gun control.

00:13:34.000 The bill states that an active shooter is defined as an individual, quote, determined to pose an active imminent threat to the people in a populated area.

00:13:42.000 That sounds like a sizable amount of the people walking around the south side of Chicago every day.

00:13:47.000 Who's making this determination?

00:13:48.000 Is it in a millisecond?

00:13:50.000 By the time the alerts go out, it may be far too late to do any good. 1.00

00:13:54.000 This bill is useless and foolish. 0.88

00:13:57.000 Working on police response times is of course a worthy goal, a worthy goal for the states where the Constitution resides, the police power. 0.98

00:14:05.000 But alerting thousands of people to what may or may not have happened 30 minutes ago or 30 blocks away is in fact dangerous.

00:14:14.000 And so one has to ask, what is the true purpose of this bill?

00:14:17.000 Why do the Democrats want to use the power of government to bombard your cell phone with active shooter alerts 24 hours a day, seven days a week?

00:14:26.000 It's because they want you to be afraid of the Second Amendment.

00:14:31.000 It's because they want you to be afraid of responsible gun ownership and they hope That if they program you and bombard you long enough, that you'll hate your own Second Amendment rights or that you may tattle on your neighbor who is lawfully and rightfully exercising theirs.

00:14:46.000 The American people should not fall for this.

00:14:49.000 I yield back.

00:14:53.000 The American people shouldn't fall for it.

00:14:55.000 And the American people deserve a government that will actually stand up for the virtue of safe, responsible gun ownership.

00:15:03.000 But all you get from these Democrats in Congress today is anti-Second Amendment fear porn.

00:15:10.000 And they want to plow it into your phone each and every hour of each and every day.

00:15:15.000 I'm going to vote against this active shooter bill, and I would encourage everyone watching, reach out to your House members, reach out to your senators, let them know that you don't need the government in your cell phone, just...

00:15:27.000 Evoking fear and trying to create an anti-gun society out of the United States of America.

00:15:34.000 Certainly the will to fight was not something that we saw in these police responding in Uvalde, a will to even engage in responsible law enforcement.

00:15:43.000 But the will to fight is actually something that we also have to frequently assess around the world, not just in our own country.

00:15:50.000 And we've actually been really, really bad at it.

00:15:54.000 You see, the neoconservatives and the interventionist Democrats, they want you to believe that America can be replicated in faraway lands.

00:16:04.000 That there's nothing really special about our land or our people or our culture.

00:16:10.000 That we could just go to some cave in Central Asia or some grouping of sand dunes in Arabia and build Jeffersonian democracies out of sand and blood and oil.

00:16:21.000 Well, that's not how it works.

00:16:23.000 And oftentimes, we spend your tax dollars, we spend the treasure of our nation, we deploy the credibility of our society, and we spill the blood of our bravest patriots in conquests that we should not be involved in.

00:16:39.000 In coups that we should not be supporting, and in the affairs of other nations best handled by them.

00:16:46.000 It was an interesting point, and we got an interesting admission from truly one of the most despicable deep staters, the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper.

00:16:58.000 Listen to former DNI Clapper in these remarks.

00:17:04.000 And I would observe first that we have never been able to accurately gauge will to fight, and that's what this really boils down to.

00:17:15.000 If you go back to my war, Southeast Asia, I did a couple tours there, and we consistently overestimated the will to fight of our client, the South Vietnamese, and profoundly underestimated the will to fight of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.

00:17:34.000 Fast forward to Afghanistan. 0.89

00:17:35.000 Similarly, we underestimated the will to fight of the Taliban and overestimated the will to fight of the Afghan military and the viability of its government.

00:17:48.000 And that's been a consistent pattern.

00:17:50.000 And we did it again with Ukraine and Russia.

00:17:56.000 It's an astonishing admission.

00:17:58.000 And if we're unable as a country to assess the will of others to fight, maybe we shouldn't try to do it so much.

00:18:05.000 I had an exchange in the House Armed Services Committee with the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on just this subject and how indescribably bad he is at this.

00:18:18.000 Take a listen.

00:18:20.000 Secretary Austin, are you capable of assessing whether another has the will to fight?

00:18:30.000 No, we're not.

00:18:32.000 And that's the point that the chairman made earlier.

00:18:34.000 That's just like an incredibly disappointing thing for the Secretary of Defense to simply say, I can't assess whether someone has the will to fight.

00:18:42.000 But it is consistent with your record.

00:18:44.000 I mean, during the Obama administration, I think they gave you about $48 million to go train up Some folks in Syria to go take on the Assad government, and I think your testimony was that only four or five survived first contact with the enemy.

00:18:56.000 So what confidence should this committee have in you or should the country have in you when you've now confessed to us, and whether it's the swing and a miss in Afghanistan that General Milley talked to the Senate about yesterday, total failure, or whether it was your failures in Syria, you don't seem capable to look at a fighting force and determine whether or not they have the will.

00:19:18.000 So Clapper knows they can't do it.

00:19:20.000 Lloyd Austin knows they can't do it.

00:19:22.000 And so maybe we should like learn how to do it.

00:19:24.000 I don't know.

00:19:25.000 We spend a tremendous amount of public money to try to get the best minds, the best theories, the best war fighting strategies, opportunities to win the future before folks who will one day take command in our military or occupy some senior position in our defense infrastructure.

00:19:44.000 And are we now having recognized that we can't assess this will to fight learning new ways and techniques to do that?

00:19:51.000 Or are we learning other things that are quite different?

00:19:57.000 Take a listen.

00:19:59.000 How should the Department of Defense think about critical race theory?

00:20:04.000 On the issue of critical race theory, etc., I'll obviously have to get much smarter on whatever the theory is.

00:20:12.000 But I do think it's important, actually, for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read.

00:20:20.000 And the United States Military Academy is a university.

00:20:23.000 And it is important that we train and we understand.

00:20:27.000 And I want to understand white rage.

00:20:29.000 And I'm white.

00:20:30.000 And I want to understand it.

00:20:31.000 Early on in my tenure, I asked the force to conduct a brief stand-down to discuss the issue of extremism in our ranks.

00:20:45.000 Admiral Gilday, I was glad to hear Congressman Lamborn ask you about your decision to include Ibram X. Kendi's How to be an Anti-Racist in your recommended reading list.

00:20:56.000 Do you expect that after sailors read this book that says that the United States Navy is racist, That we will increase or decrease morale, cohesion, and recruiting race into the United States Navy.

00:21:07.000 I think we'll be a better Navy from having open, honest conversations about racism.

00:21:14.000 When I was six years old, one of my moms had an accident that left her paralyzed.

00:21:18.000 Doctors said she might never walk again.

00:21:21.000 But she tapped into my family's pride to get back on her feet, eventually standing at the altar to marry my other mom. 1.00

00:21:30.000 And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an ad for the United States military.

00:21:34.000 You get that?

00:21:35.000 Two minutes talking about this woman's two moms and five seconds of her actually being in the military. 0.63

00:21:41.000 I wonder why Putin isn't taking us seriously.

00:21:44.000 Here's a training video from Joe Biden's Pentagon.

00:21:46.000 This was released by the U.S. Navy, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

00:21:51.000 Hi, my name is Johnny, and I use he, him pronouns.

00:21:54.000 Hi, and I'm Conchi, and I use she, her pronouns.

00:21:56.000 And we're here to talk about pronouns.

00:21:59.000 What is a pronoun?

00:22:00.000 A pronoun is how we identify ourselves apart from our name, and it's also how people refer to us in conversations.

00:22:07.000 Using the right pronouns is a really simple way to affirm someone's identity.

00:22:11.000 It is a signal of acceptance and respect.

00:22:14.000 A really good way to do that is to use inclusive language.

00:22:18.000 Instead of saying something like, hey guys, you can say, hey everyone, or hey team.

00:22:24.000 So that's the US Navy under Joe Biden.

00:22:27.000 Why not just make it really clear?

00:22:29.000 Get right to the point.

00:22:30.000 We surrender.

00:22:35.000 Let me use some inclusive language. 1.00

00:22:37.000 I include everyone who accepts this woke pedagogy in the general category of idiots and fools. 0.99

00:22:44.000 How's that for inclusive? 1.00

00:22:46.000 There is something that we absolutely have to be able to do.

00:22:49.000 When we spend gazillions of dollars, when we deploy our military members to try to train and equip other entities, we have to know whether or not that is going to be used for good, for defense, for America's interests.

00:23:06.000 And if we don't know how to do that, we shouldn't spend another freaking day on pronouns or critical race theory or what it's like in, you know...

00:23:16.000 Various forms of non-traditional family environments.

00:23:19.000 That's not the job of the military.

00:23:21.000 Do that on your own time.

00:23:23.000 I'm fine with people reading whatever the heck they want to read, but it should not be part of the precious moments that we have for our military to become more capable.

00:23:34.000 This is a great country, and it deserves better than men in dresses at the Pentagon trying to convince you that you need to get more in touch with your white rage or your woke-ism.

00:23:45.000 Thanks everyone for joining us.

00:23:46.000 We're simulcast streaming right now.

00:23:48.000 I am catching some criticism on our Facebook stream.

00:23:51.000 Someone just said that I was a dovish weakling and a double-dealing sellout.

00:23:57.000 And you know what?

00:23:58.000 This is a criticism I get quite frequently from the neoconservatives.

00:24:02.000 Oh, Gates is just a dove. 0.98

00:24:03.000 He's just a weakling. 0.96

00:24:04.000 You know what? 0.98

00:24:05.000 Real strength Is not sending America's best to go and die for some of the world's worst.

00:24:12.000 Real strength is having the ability to stand up to the military-industrial complex, to be able to face down the woke generals, and to be able to demand a military That is worthy of the greatest nation and the greatest society that has ever existed.

00:24:27.000 So having a realistic view of foreign policy and America's capabilities does not make one weak.

00:24:33.000 We don't need the cowboy attitude of trying to go around swashbuckling, saying that we can take on everyone and everyone.

00:24:40.000 That is exhausting for our country.

00:24:42.000 That is draining.

00:24:43.000 That is how empires fall.

00:24:46.000 So I think that we can demonstrate a lot of strength in our military by learning more about our friends, about our enemies, about our fighting forces, about our allies and what they're capable of doing.

00:24:58.000 And this terrible rot of woke-ism that Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin have nurtured in the Pentagon must go.

00:25:10.000 There was an interesting moment yesterday on CNN with Jake Tapper and John Bolton.

00:25:15.000 I don't think it was the moment that Jake Tapper was quite expecting.

00:25:18.000 So the January 6th committee concludes and there's this expectation that John Bolton with his long list of government offices held and his regal mustache and his stern voice will go on with Jake Tapper as a Republican and Smear anyone associated with MAGA or President Trump or the America First political movement.

00:25:39.000 And instead what happens is John Bolton functionally confesses to being involved in coups around the globe.

00:25:46.000 Take a listen.

00:25:49.000 It's also a mistake, as some people have said, including on the committee, the commentators, that somehow this was a carefully planned coup d'etat aimed at the Constitution.

00:25:59.000 That's not the way Donald Trump does things.

00:26:01.000 It's rambling from one half-vast idea to another, one plan that falls through and another comes up.

00:26:08.000 That's what he was doing.

00:26:10.000 As I say, none of it defensible.

00:26:12.000 But you have to understand the nature of What the problem of Donald Trump is.

00:26:17.000 He's, to use a Star Wars metaphor, a disturbance in the force.

00:26:20.000 And it's not an attack on our democracy.

00:26:24.000 It's Donald Trump looking out for Donald Trump.

00:26:27.000 It's a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.

00:26:29.000 I don't know that I agree with you.

00:26:30.000 To be fair, with all due respect, one doesn't have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.

00:26:37.000 I disagree with that.

00:26:39.000 As somebody who has helped plan coup d'etat, Not here, but other places.

00:26:44.000 It takes a lot of work, and that's not what he did.

00:26:46.000 You cited your expertise having planned coups.

00:26:49.000 I'm not going to get into the specifics, but...

00:26:51.000 Successful coups?

00:26:53.000 Well, I wrote about Venezuela in the book, and it turned out not to be successful.

00:26:58.000 Not that we had all that much to do with it, but I saw what it took for an opposition to try and overturn an illegally elected president, and they failed.

00:27:06.000 The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition, is laughable.

00:27:12.000 But I think there's another...

00:27:13.000 I feel like this other stuff you're not telling me, though.

00:27:15.000 I think I'm sure there is.

00:27:20.000 Well, that went off the rails. 0.81

00:27:22.000 Lex on Facebook says Bolton is a leech.

00:27:26.000 I would agree with that assessment. 0.55

00:27:27.000 Alan on Instagram says keep fighting no one else is.

00:27:31.000 Remember, we simulcast streamed this show on, gosh, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Getter, Rumble, YouTube, and our podcast is always available anywhere you listen to podcasts.

00:27:43.000 Make sure if you're listening, give us that five-star rating, especially if you're listening on Apple.

00:27:47.000 I'm so close to 4,000 ratings, and you guys could really help me get there.

00:27:51.000 Jake Tapper was trying to help John Bolton get there on the description of the various and sundry coups that he's been involved in.

00:27:58.000 And I left that conversation really astonished, but also of the view that John Bolton is categorically against any coups That he himself was not a part of planning.

00:28:10.000 So take comfort in that, America.

00:28:12.000 Take comfort in that world.

00:28:14.000 I remember talking with President Trump about John Bolton, and he always kind of viewed Bolton as a mascot when he was in the White House, less a thinker and less an architect of America First foreign policy.

00:28:28.000 Bolton was a guy that Trump liked to just bring around the Iranians because he knew it drove the Iranians crazy.

00:28:34.000 And Bolton eventually kind of liked the fact that he was back at the table and People were listening to him because that hadn't happened in quite some time in his career.

00:28:42.000 But then he got the joke.

00:28:44.000 Bolton fundamentally understood that Donald Trump didn't really listen to him, didn't really respect his views, but instead just brought him there to troll other people.

00:28:52.000 And upon realizing that, Bolton left and wrote a book that probably had a bunch of stuff in it that wasn't true because that's what John Bolton does.

00:28:58.000 He writes books about people who he used to work for.

00:29:01.000 Maybe that's a lesson for anybody else that might want to hire John Bolton.

00:29:06.000 Moving on to another issue that's a little closer to home in the state of Florida.

00:29:10.000 All Americans know that the Dobbs decision has overturned Roe v.

00:29:14.000 Wade and Planned Parenthood v.

00:29:15.000 Casey.

00:29:16.000 We now are a pro-life nation and that's going to give our states the opportunity to embrace life and advance life and create greater ease for adoptions and the creation of families.

00:29:27.000 And that is something that enhances the humanity of all of us.

00:29:32.000 A pro-life culture.

00:29:35.000 It's something very different than we've seen on the radical left with threats of intimidating justices and engaging in nights of rage and violence.

00:29:43.000 And we've even seen folks go to like the crazy extremes of suggesting novel, new, and innovative ways to kill unborn life.

00:29:56.000 Take a listen to this report from CBS News.

00:30:01.000 This is all about bodily autonomy and choice and so you know people have a right to Be pregnant and have a pregnancy, but also not have a pregnancy. 0.91

00:30:14.000 Dr Meg Autry, a UCSF OBGYN, said she's had the idea for a vessel that would provide surgical abortions and reproductive health care services for a very long time.

00:30:25.000 But it was the recent Supreme Court decision that helped inspire her to kick it into gear.

00:30:31.000 She's now spearheading the Prowess, which stands for Protecting Reproductive Rights of Women Endangered by State Statutes.

00:30:39.000 The vessel would be located in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, near states where abortions are banned.

00:30:45.000 She wants to offer the services at low or no cost.

00:30:49.000 People that care deeply about access to reproductive rights know that we have to be innovative and creative in order for patients to We know internationally that when access is limited or abortion is illegal, patients die.

00:31:11.000 The cost?

00:31:12.000 At least $20 million.

00:31:14.000 Dr. Autry said the prowess is looking for donations and ideally a donated boat.

00:31:23.000 Is a donated floating abortion barge really a place that anyone ought to be getting health care or getting any type of care?

00:31:31.000 It certainly shouldn't be a place that abortions are being performed. 1.00

00:31:34.000 I mean, I love the kicker at the end where they're like, so we've got this idea.

00:31:38.000 We're going to go do offshore abortions. 1.00

00:31:40.000 All we need is the boat.

00:31:42.000 Craziness.

00:31:43.000 But there is a necessary legislative response here and the Florida legislature ought to look at it because we do not want to be in a world where people are going 3.1 miles offshore to kill unborn life.

00:31:58.000 There is instructive precedent here with casino gambling boats that used to leave Florida.

00:32:04.000 So it's actually quite interesting.

00:32:05.000 It ties back to the Jack Abramoff scandal.

00:32:08.000 Jack Abramoff was one of the owner investors in an entity called Sun Cruise.

00:32:13.000 And they would take these old decommissioned cruise vessels and they would float them offshore and they would turn on all the gambling machines and people would do their gambling and then the boat would return.

00:32:24.000 And ultimately, the Florida legislature gets wise to this and realizes that if there is refueling or docking at ports, you actually have some jurisdiction over those vessels.

00:32:36.000 And so the Florida legislature, upon learning that there is a desire for floating abortions off our shore, should pass laws making it illegal to Leave a Florida port for the sake of breaking our abortion laws.

00:32:53.000 And we should not allow vessels to have docking privileges or have any other opportunities to utilize Florida assets.

00:33:02.000 A lot of our ports are in fact state funded, state supported, state subsidized.

00:33:07.000 We don't want them to have access to any of those things to have a loophole to break our laws.

00:33:13.000 As weird as it is to think about donated floating abortion barges, I do think it's something that necessitates a legislative preemptive response on, and the Florida legislature could do just that, following the playbook that we got from the Sun Cruise casino boats.

00:33:30.000 Make sure you are subscribed to our podcast.

00:33:33.000 Make sure that you have your notifications turned on.

00:33:36.000 We go live at different portions of the day because sometimes I'm just popping out a committee following a vote or just stepping off the floor after debate as we did today.

00:33:45.000 We hope to have more updates for you soon.

00:33:47.000 Thanks for joining us.

00:33:49.000 Thanks for being a part of the Firebrand Nation.

00:33:51.000 Roll the credits.

Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - July 13, 2022

Episode 59 LIVE: The Will To Fight – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript