Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - Episode 66 LIVE: Agents of Chaos (feat. Dr. Darren J. Beattie) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:04:43.000 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.

00:04:50.000 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.

00:04:53.000 He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.

00:04:56.000 So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.

00:05:00.000 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!

00:05:09.000 You are in the right place!

00:05:10.000 This is the movement for you!

00:05:12.000 You ever watch this guy on television?

00:05:14.000 It's like a machine.

00:05:16.000 Matt Gaetz.

00:05:17.000 I'm a cancelled man in some corners of the internet.

00:05:20.000 Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.

00:05:25.000 They aren't really coming for me.

00:05:27.000 They're coming for you.

00:05:29.000 I'm just in the way.

00:05:35.000 Congressman Matt Gaetz joins us by phone.

00:05:38.000 Congressman Gaetz, give us your assessment of what went down yesterday and where did we stand this morning, sir?

00:05:44.000 Well, they couldn't beat Trump at the ballot box in 2016, so they tried with impeachment and the witness box.

00:05:51.000 That failed, so then they ran to the mailbox in the 2020 election, and now they've literally shown up at President Trump's home to take his boxes.

00:06:02.000 This was not law enforcement activity, Steve.

00:06:05.000 This was a performance.

00:06:06.000 It was a political performance.

00:06:09.000 Over 30 FBI agents, heavily armed, The circle around President Trump's beautiful American flag at Mar-a-Lago filled up with black SUVs.

00:06:20.000 They rented a rider truck so that people with guns could jump out of the back of it.

00:06:25.000 There was even a standoff at the beginning of this raid because there were folks at the Secret Service who were wondering what The hat was my interview with Steve Bannon.

00:06:36.000 I gotta get Bannon some better photos of me.

00:06:38.000 I was like 30 pounds heavier then.

00:06:40.000 Welcome to Firebrand.

00:06:42.000 We're live in the Longworth House office building here in our nation's capital and chaos is the word of the day.

00:06:48.000 Democrats are Inflicting chaos on our economy with this terrible spending bill.

00:06:53.000 My legislative director, Mike Robertson, has been going through it.

00:06:56.000 We're going to have all the updates on that in just a moment.

00:06:59.000 Chaos at the IRS, where they are gearing up for something.

00:07:04.000 Like, is the IRS gearing up for war in our country?

00:07:07.000 Is Nancy Pelosi trying to start a nuclear war in Asia now? 1.00

00:07:11.000 Is there an effort by the national security state to stoke violence in a civil war here at home?

00:07:17.000 We certainly hope not, but here to break it down with us, once again, one of the very favorites on Firebrand, Dr. Darren Beattie, the publisher of Revolver.News.

00:07:26.000 Dr. Beattie, I think our last episode has over a million and a half of views on Rumble, so certainly...

00:07:31.000 Folks enjoy the conversations we're able to have.

00:07:34.000 You have a recently published piece in Newsweek.

00:07:38.000 The national security apparatus is now the enemy.

00:07:42.000 Walk through that piece for us.

00:07:45.000 Well, it's simply my reaction to the pretty outrageous escalatory episode we saw with the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

00:07:58.000 And it explores the implications of that.

00:08:01.000 You know, in a nutshell, it says, yeah, we can be outraged.

00:08:04.000 We can point to the hypocrisies, but we shouldn't be cheap dates about it.

00:08:09.000 They overstepped their bounds.

00:08:12.000 They know it.

00:08:13.000 They overplayed the hand.

00:08:15.000 That's why they're engaged in frenetic finger pointing.

00:08:19.000 So the ball's in our court.

00:08:21.000 The ball's in the court of conservatives, Republicans, GOP in particular.

00:08:25.000 And really, the only thing to do is to come up with A real plan and implement it.

00:08:32.000 And I explore some ideas for how to do that in the piece.

00:08:36.000 You specifically talk about a comparison with Hillary Clinton and some of the records retention and records management laws that may be impacted by this investigation.

00:08:48.000 How should people think about what's happening to President Trump through the lens of what we saw play out with Hillary Clinton?

00:08:54.000 Well it really is bizarre and actually quite ironic because you know one of the major sort of themes of the 2016 campaign was Hillary Clinton's criminality and one dimension of that criminality was the Improper storage of classified material.

00:09:14.000 In fact, it wasn't simply that she had a private email.

00:09:17.000 She had a private server where she was storing classified stuff, and there are a lot of really disturbing questions as to what was actually going on there.

00:09:26.000 It was taken seriously enough that, of course, James Comey famously reopened or reconsidered the email question shortly before the election, and everyone went apoplectic about that.

00:09:39.000 Of course, they weren't searching Hillary Clinton's house in New York or anything remotely like that.

00:09:45.000 Simply the idea that they were looking into it was considered scandalous enough.

00:09:50.000 And then on Trump's side, as we all know, the wonderful chant, lock her up, lock her up, lock her up, that became a staple of the rallies, galvanizing the base, that never materialized.

00:10:05.000 That is ultimately sort of rhetorical bluster.

00:10:10.000 And nonetheless, the reaction to it was, Oh, the idea of locking her up is that's a step out of bounds.

00:10:18.000 That's not who we are.

00:10:19.000 That's not what democracies do.

00:10:21.000 That's something that dictators do. 1.00

00:10:22.000 And they threw out a number of comparisons with people like Mugabe and Myanmar and things like that.

00:10:32.000 But it's one of those things.

00:10:34.000 For better or worse, Trump never went through with it.

00:10:39.000 It was all sort of Well, I blame Jeff Sessions for that.

00:10:42.000 I actually think that with an attorney general focused on the facts and the law, Hillary Clinton should have faced punishment. 0.99

00:10:50.000 But there are three key distinctions.

00:10:51.000 One, Hillary Clinton was never president.

00:10:54.000 She might have thought she was, but she was never president. 1.00

00:10:56.000 So this is an unprecedented step to utilize criminal process to try to stop somebody who has literally been the leader of our country That has unique implications globally, like you referenced.

00:11:10.000 Second, Hillary Clinton was actually transmitting and receiving classified information improperly, which creates a unique vector of vulnerability.

00:11:20.000 What, a few boxes that might have been inadvertently taken to Mar-a-Lago down in a basement in Florida?

00:11:26.000 Florida, not the same thing as moving this type of information on and off of your smartphone where there are tools like Pegasus, like other intelligence collection tools that could actually put Americans in danger.

00:11:40.000 No American was in danger for any moldy box in the basement in Mar-a-Lago.

00:11:45.000 So very different thing with Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:11:48.000 And I also think the intent was there.

00:11:49.000 You see the bleach bit efforts on her part. 1.00

00:11:52.000 This holistic effort by Clinton world to try to absolve her of that responsibility.

00:11:57.000 Here you had Trump and his team doing everything they could to work with the government and comply with reasonable requests.

00:12:04.000 And so I think that that is a really important thing to evaluate when looking at the Hillary Clinton example.

00:12:11.000 This notion that technical noncompliance with the Archives Act is the basis for this is so laughable it does not pass the straight face test.

00:12:21.000 What do you think they're really after, Darren?

00:12:24.000 Well, I mean, I think they're really after taking Trump off the table.

00:12:28.000 They want to completely neutralize Trump and the broader Trump phenomenon as a political force.

00:12:35.000 And they tried everything.

00:12:37.000 They're trying everything in their arsenal to do that.

00:12:39.000 And this is just another vector, just like the January 6 nonsense is a vector, just like the tax nonsense is a vector, just like the Russiagate nonsense is a vector.

00:12:51.000 They're using a multi-pronged approach, but the objective is the same, and the objective is to completely silence, suppress, crush, and neutralize And if that's the goal,

00:13:16.000 my hypothesis is no indictment, no charge, no trial even has to occur for them to largely achieve features of that goal.

00:13:28.000 They're trying to use criminal process in politics to try to cloud the prospects of a candidate, in this case Donald Trump, who they're afraid of.

00:13:39.000 And you don't even have to indict him to do that.

00:13:41.000 You could just try to make people concerned that all the other shoes gonna drop at any moment.

00:13:46.000 And in a way, Darren, the national security state is going for the hat trick when it comes to election interference.

00:13:54.000 I mean, in the 2016 presidential contest, the national security state interfered with the Steele dossier.

00:14:01.000 You point that out in your piece, saying that, oh, well, you know, Trump's a Russian agent, and there are these tapes, and he's going to be totally compromised by Putin.

00:14:10.000 By the way, Trump, only president in recent history to serve and not have Putin invade another country anymore.

00:14:17.000 In our last few decades.

00:14:19.000 Then you have in 2020 them also interfere in the presidential election by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop, showing clear compromise of the Biden family, clear financial ties and interests with the Chinese Communist Party.

00:14:36.000 And the national security state played a role in suppressing that.

00:14:39.000 That was not just big tech and big media.

00:14:42.000 That was big government.

00:14:44.000 And the FBI is now seeing a cascade of whistleblowers come forward to say that any time anything came in about the Bidens that was derogatory, they just labeled it foreign interference and downgraded it.

00:14:57.000 And now you literally have the third presidential contest in a row where the national security state is trying to pick the winners and losers by trying to now disqualify Trump and use criminal process against him before he's able to announce his candidacy.

00:15:11.000 So, I mean, they did it in 2016.

00:15:14.000 They did it in 2020.

00:15:15.000 We're watching it unfold right now in 2024.

00:15:19.000 Dr. Bidi, have we seen the last election where the FBI and the national security state isn't actively a participant in the electioneering process?

00:15:28.000 Dr. Bidi, have we seen the last election where the FBI and the national security state isn't actively a participant in the electioneering process?

00:15:29.000 Well, I think that's a great question, and I think it remains to be seen, but it really invokes a question that I've been asking really since 2016, which is, you know, The national security state is doing everything in its power to make sure that the American people will never meddle in their own elections again.

00:15:53.000 And I think everything that you've described is consistent with that.

00:15:58.000 It is consistent again with what I've said that politics as we generally understand it will really exist only at a superficial and performative level unless the National security state's role is brought into its proper relation to the will of the people.

00:16:22.000 And that's something that everyone who is an elected official who wants to run for office, everyone who wants to do something real has to understand.

00:16:31.000 It raises the stakes because if you want to actually do something real in politics, you can no longer subsist in the safe playpen of partisan politics.

00:16:43.000 Finger pointing.

00:16:44.000 It can't just be, oh, look at the outrageous thing that AOC did, or look what the socialists did, look at this or that.

00:16:52.000 If you want to play the real game, you have to ruffle the feathers of the national security state because they're the premier and chief bottleneck to anything meaningful happening politically.

00:17:04.000 And if you do that, as you well know, you're playing a very different game with very different stakes, and very few people understandably are willing to get into that.

00:17:13.000 But that's just the reality, and if we don't address that problem, We just don't have a country anymore.

00:17:20.000 We don't have a meaningful party anymore.

00:17:24.000 And we're only going to get more of the same, but actually much, much worse if present trends continue.

00:17:32.000 Someone you and I both know well who is involved with some of these alphabet soup three-letter agencies told me recently, you never can be a truly viable contender for the presidency in the United States.

00:17:47.000 If you don't have at least one element of the national security apparatus in your corner.

00:17:53.000 You know, I mean, maybe it's not the FBI, but then you gotta have the CIA. And if you don't have them, you gotta have the NSA. And if you don't have them, well, you gotta have Homeland Security.

00:18:02.000 And if you don't have them, you have to have DOD intelligence.

00:18:05.000 I mean, are we now at a point where the principal stakeholders in our politics Are less the traditional interest groups, you know, big sugar, big insurance, big healthcare, and it's actually big intelligence that's driving the train.

00:18:19.000 Well, I think all of those stakeholders still exert considerable influence, but absolutely, we're seeing more and more the intelligence apparatus, which used to subsist at a kind of very quiet subterranean level, make its presence felt.

00:18:37.000 And I think It's not that this is a new phenomenon.

00:18:42.000 It's not like this influence is new.

00:18:45.000 It's simply that Trump was the first president in a very long time to pose a meaningful challenge to the authority of the intelligence apparatus.

00:18:57.000 And that's why we're seeing the response that we're seeing.

00:19:00.000 And that's why politics is very different from what it ordinarily has been.

00:19:06.000 And you're seeing such kind of dramatic and otherwise really unimaginable things happening, like the FBI raiding the private home of a former president over some nothing trivial, kind of de minimis record storage violation.

00:19:23.000 You've made the argument in a number of your writings and in your reporting that folks can check out at revolver.news that America is a joke nation. And I bristle at that because I don't want to believe it. I think perhaps I'm a bit more optimistic than you are. But there is a Quote from your piece in Newsweek.

00:19:44.000 Unless and until a radical change occurs, conservatives must treat the FBI and the rest of the national security apparatus as the hostile and partially illegitimate institutions that they are and not run back into the arms of their national security tormentor whenever the uniparty regime saber-rattles about the threat from some hostile entity overseas. 0.53

00:20:10.000 It's almost like you're describing battered spouse syndrome, Dr. Beattie, that you have these political actors, as you've described them in Washington, who get abused by the national security apparatus, but at the first opportunity to run back and say, no, no, no, I'll love you more this time, they do so.

00:20:28.000 How do we break that cycle?

00:20:30.000 That's a great formulation, and that's exactly what's going on, is that on the one hand, you have All of these national security organizations from the CIA to the FBI to Department of Homeland Security, you name it, that are not only not on the side of American patriots, but are actively hostile to American patriots and not simply incidentally hostile.

00:20:58.000 You have the DHS, which even under Trump proclaimed effectively White supremacist domestic terror is the number one national security threat.

00:21:09.000 And I think by now, we all know that that's code language for Trump supporters.

00:21:15.000 And that's how it's played out.

00:21:17.000 And you see that in the Michigan entrapment operation and everything else.

00:21:21.000 And so you have the national security apparatus, which is at war against Trump supporters.

00:21:28.000 And Trump supporters more or less are beginning to understand this.

00:21:33.000 I point out in the piece that There's something about the conservative political psychology that somewhat resists this because it's so disposed to venerate just and well-functioning institutions of authority, whereas people on the left To put it charitably, want to challenge unjust institutions of authority.

00:21:55.000 People on the right want to venerate just institutions of authority.

00:21:58.000 But all of these institutions are now hostile.

00:22:01.000 And many people are coming to understand this, except the second you hear the same national security apparatus that hates your guts start to say, well, wait a minute, we need your help.

00:22:15.000 You know, We need your help with this Russia nonsense.

00:22:25.000 We need your help with this largely manufactured threat overseas.

00:22:30.000 We need you to come in line.

00:22:33.000 Largely conservatives that are doing most of the sacrifices on a military level too.

00:22:39.000 And I think at a certain point, we need to kind of reevaluate this relationship because the contract seems to have been broken in some decisive degree.

00:22:49.000 And I think it's reasonable for patriotic Americans to say, look, national security state, look, stakeholders of the globalist American empire.

00:22:59.000 If you expect sacrifices from us, can we at the very least ask you not to use your considerable resources to destroy us domestically? 0.87

00:23:11.000 And I think they're still kind of catching up to this new reality, but it is frustrating to see.

00:23:17.000 It's like the second any kind of alleged foreign threat is mentioned by any of these hostile institutions, you see a lot of well-meaning conservatives just, you know, completely forget about the last beating and say, okay, sign me up.

00:23:35.000 I want to help.

00:23:36.000 I want to fight for your interests.

00:23:37.000 Well, who are you really fighting for?

00:23:41.000 I think as things progress, this will become more and more of a pronounced problem.

00:23:47.000 And it's a problem that the stakeholders in the national security state will have to take seriously.

00:23:53.000 So I think it's time to get rid of this beaten spouse syndrome.

00:23:58.000 It's time to stop being cheap dates.

00:24:00.000 And it's time to start demanding some level of reciprocity and respect from these Well, and Darren, the reason that's so important is because their actions are becoming like...

00:24:15.000 More acute with each move on the board, right?

00:24:19.000 Like, let's go back to 2016. They thought that obtaining some secret warrant for secret surveillance that nobody would know about through illegitimate means would be okay.

00:24:30.000 They thought that using the authorized leak structure that the DOJ absolutely has in place to try to get information out so that their hands are clean but so that others are smeared And then in 2020, they didn't use those clandestine tools.

00:24:47.000 They actively suppressed the Hunter Biden information.

00:24:52.000 They used the strongest possible hand that they could to say, no, we are going to jettison this, to degrade this.

00:24:59.000 And as if that wasn't acute enough, now we get to the run-up to 2024, and they're literally now raiding houses of political opponents.

00:25:09.000 We're in a country right now where...

00:25:12.000 We got grandmothers being attacked on the streets in broad daylight.

00:25:16.000 We got people being carjacked in our cities.

00:25:18.000 And we have political opponents being raided by the regime in power.

00:25:22.000 That sounds more like Venezuela than it does the United States of America.

00:25:26.000 I want to bring us to the moment in January 2023 when Republicans take control of the Congress.

00:25:33.000 I believe that you have to have a three-vector attack on the national security state's worst elements.

00:25:40.000 First, power of the purse, funding.

00:25:43.000 We cannot continue to fund the institutions that get turned against our people.

00:25:48.000 Not one more damn penny if we find out that this is what it certainly appears to be from our initial inspection.

00:25:56.000 Second, structural changes, authorities. 0.93

00:25:59.000 That's stuff like FISA repeal. 0.53

00:26:02.000 My colleague Dan Bishop of North Carolina suggested that we just break, quite literally, break up the institutions of the FBI and DOJ, get them out of the beltway of Washington, D.C., and make them go live out in real America so that you don't have this vortex of politics infecting them.

00:26:21.000 I think a well-detailed in your piece in Newsweek that people should check out is the counter-investigation strategy, running out the whistleblowers, making sure that when people have the courage to come forward and say that they've seen something wrong, that we're able to follow up on that.

00:26:39.000 So starve them of the money, restructure the enterprise, and then follow to ground every investigation whistleblower fact pattern that we can.

00:26:49.000 Do you think that's a worthy strategy, and is there anything in that that I'm missing?

00:26:55.000 I think that's an excellent strategy to start with, and the question is really in the implementation, because you're one of the stalwarts, you're one of the firebrands, but there aren't very many like you, and I wonder if there's a critical mass to really implement something with teeth.

00:27:16.000 I hope there is.

00:27:17.000 I think we're close, but I think for these things, it's all about who's going to have the focus, the determination, and the courage to actually follow through with this when there's so many opportunities to kind of have a way that you can look like you're doing something to the public when you're actually not really doing something.

00:27:40.000 A whistleblower issue.

00:27:42.000 I think that's very important.

00:27:44.000 It's something to explore.

00:27:45.000 It's something that doesn't even, at the present moment, doesn't even require Republican control of Congress.

00:27:52.000 The GOP is sitting on a ton of money.

00:27:55.000 We all see those emails of solicitation.

00:27:58.000 They're sitting on a lot of money.

00:28:00.000 I think They could do a lot worse than to dedicate some of that money, a considerable sum, to a fund that would defend and support potential whistleblowers within this national security apparatus we're talking about.

00:28:17.000 So, Darren, there is a tool that we're going to have that we don't now.

00:28:21.000 Subpoena power, the ability to bring people in for depots.

00:28:24.000 So like right now, I get a whistleblower case.

00:28:26.000 I can run it to ground with open source.

00:28:29.000 Our staff can conduct interviews.

00:28:31.000 We can expose certain things.

00:28:33.000 But man, when I'm able to take these whistleblower investigations that we are currently running, I mean, these are active investigations that we do work on every day that involve current people who are employees at the Bureau.

00:28:44.000 When we can do the document requests, when we can compare those documents to travel logs, expenditures, it really opens the door to the type of investigative work we can do.

00:28:54.000 Absolutely.

00:28:55.000 I think in conjunction with control of the house, it can be a very powerful tool.

00:29:01.000 I don't think it needs to wait for that.

00:29:04.000 I think it's something that could be done now is to start thinking about what the process would be to set up such a fund because if we've seen just in recent months how powerful it is when whistleblowers are willing to step forward and I think there would be a lot more of that or at least there could be if there were a more There's a favorable incentive structure in place for such potential whistleblowers.

00:29:29.000 And of course, this is predicated on the assumption that there's still You know, a meaningful number of patriots within these organizations.

00:29:38.000 But I think there are.

00:29:39.000 I think there are a lot of good people who are still there.

00:29:43.000 And, you know, they probably joined these institutions because they wanted to do the right thing for the country and they wanted to be brave.

00:29:53.000 And actually now they have an opportunity, probably not what they thought it was, but now they have the opportunity to actually Do something brave and right for the country, which is the original reason they joined these institutions in the first place.

00:30:06.000 And you give a special deal at Revolver.News to employees of the FBI, right?

00:30:11.000 Yes, we give them free ad-free subscriptions.

00:30:14.000 No leaks required.

00:30:17.000 This is just out of the generosity of our souls at Revolver because we know we have so many fans within the Bureau.

00:30:25.000 We just wanted to give back.

00:30:27.000 Dr. Darren Beattie, the publisher of Revolver.News, has a hot piece out in Newsweek about what the Republican Party needs to do to fight back.

00:30:36.000 We need backup.

00:30:37.000 You know, Darren, you covered that race out in Washington's 3rd Congressional District.

00:30:41.000 Joe Kent prevailing over Jamie Herrera Butler toward the general election out there.

00:30:48.000 Some races feel like they mean a little more than the other ones.

00:30:53.000 I get the sense that Joe Kent's presence in the Republican conference will really do what you described in getting us to the point where we're not engaging in just performative lobs back and forth of rhetoric, but we're actually running these investigations to ground.

00:31:09.000 Am I right that that one might mean a little more than some of the rest?

00:31:12.000 Absolutely.

00:31:13.000 I think...

00:31:15.000 Mr. Kent is a very courageous individual.

00:31:18.000 He has the right background.

00:31:20.000 And that's something that's needed.

00:31:22.000 You need the courage, you need the brains, and you need the background, the kind of institutional knowledge.

00:31:27.000 And I think he combines all of those things.

00:31:29.000 And so I'm very encouraged by the fact that in every expectation, he will be joining the team, The elite few within Congress that actually has the courage and the discernment to take on the national security apparatus.

00:31:50.000 The inward turning of the national security state against our people is the greatest domestic threat to our country. 0.64

00:31:58.000 There's not even a close second from my standpoint, and Dr. Beattie lays it out each and every day at revolver.news.

00:32:05.000 Check it out.

00:32:06.000 Darren, thanks for joining us on FireBrain.

00:32:08.000 Thank you, and just one quick thing.

00:32:10.000 I would like to plug a piece at Revolver News that provides definitive proof that the FBI is withholding critical footage of the alleged January 6th pipe bomber.

00:32:22.000 So if any viewers haven't seen that, it's really a must-read, a must-look.

00:32:27.000 It's proof, and we should start demanding that footage.

00:32:31.000 Why would they hide it from us?

00:32:34.000 I'll leave it to the audience to speculate, but they are hiding it, so everyone should check that out.

00:32:40.000 Thanks, Darren.

00:32:41.000 We'll push people there, and we'll definitely send out the link.

00:32:44.000 Thank you.

00:32:45.000 So it's not just the national security state at the FBI and the Department of Justice creating problems in our country.

00:32:51.000 We also see a weaponizing of a lot of the bureaucratic entities that we normally would have viewed as more benign or at least less heavily armed.

00:33:03.000 It seems more and more that the IRS is gearing up for some sort of war.

00:33:08.000 I hope they're not.

00:33:10.000 We already reported on the millions of rounds of ammunition ordered by the IRS, and I introduced a bill to stop it.

00:33:19.000 Now we see that the IRS, through the legislation that Nancy Pelosi has on the floor of the House right now, is receiving billions more in funding And looking to hire over 87,000 new IRS agents.

00:33:34.000 Now, I've been in this job for three terms now, and I have never had an American say, you know what, we need Congressman Gates.

00:33:41.000 I'm worried that we just don't have enough authority and manpower and ammunition at the IRS. I'm actually pretty sure that there's not a single member of our elected government that has ever heard that from a single American.

00:33:56.000 But now, they're going to need new people at the IRS to engage in this new grant of authority that they have.

00:34:04.000 So check out this job description posted by the IRS that was quickly deleted.

00:34:11.000 In the description of the job, it says that, The requirements are, quote, maintaining a level of fitness required to respond to life-threatening situations on the job, carrying a firearm, and being willing to use deadly force if necessary, and being willing to participate in arrests, execution of surge warrants, and other dangerous assignments.

00:34:34.000 Is the IRS, like, building up an army physically fit enough to engage in deadly force?

00:34:40.000 That's crazy.

00:34:42.000 Now, the IRS has a bad history of targeting conservatives.

00:34:46.000 Think about Obama and Lois Lerner.

00:34:49.000 No one has ever been held accountable for their targeting of conservatives, by the way.

00:34:54.000 But the IRS did all of that in a day's work.

00:34:58.000 The question now is, what does Biden's IRS intend to do with its newly weaponized and expanded powers?

00:35:06.000 Why are they hiring these people that they say have to be willing to use deadly force against Americans at the IRS? Who's going to need the massive stores of ammunition?

00:35:17.000 When Great Britain was preparing to wage war on the colonies, Patrick Henry gave his famous liberty or death speech, and he famously argued, Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation?

00:35:34.000 Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love?

00:35:43.000 Let us not deceive ourselves.

00:35:46.000 These are the implements of war and subjugation, the last argument to which kings resort.

00:35:53.000 I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission?

00:36:01.000 Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it?

00:36:05.000 No, sir, they are meant for us.

00:36:08.000 They can be meant for no other.

00:36:11.000 That was Patrick Henry in his time.

00:36:14.000 But is the massive expansion of the IRS the work of a government that really wants to reconcile us?

00:36:20.000 Do they need five million rounds of ammunition for their reconciliation?

00:36:23.000 Does deadly force some element of national unity?

00:36:28.000 Wasn't Joe Biden the guy that ran for president because he promised he was going to make everything normal again?

00:36:32.000 There's nothing normal about IRS agents armed to the gills punishing regular Americans.

00:36:38.000 And by the way, that's exactly what they intend to do.

00:36:41.000 Force regular folks into submission.

00:36:44.000 The weaponization and expansion of the IRS is meant for you.

00:36:49.000 No other motive can be assigned, Patrick Henry might say.

00:36:54.000 They aren't going after the elites and their offshore holdings.

00:36:57.000 No, those folks will have plenty of high priced accountants and lawyers to make sure that they still get out of paying taxes. 1.00

00:37:04.000 This move by Joe Biden is not to go after the poor because they don't owe any taxes.

00:37:10.000 They're going after working class and middle class people. 0.99

00:37:13.000 They will squeeze every dollar out of you that they can to fund their reckless spending, their payment for interest on a debt that they created, And to keep up with the inflation that they have caused.

00:37:26.000 Times are tough, but we need to stay strong.

00:37:29.000 We cannot let the IRS further take advantage of law-abiding Americans.

00:37:34.000 We've seen it before.

00:37:35.000 We do not need to see it again.

00:37:37.000 We're going to keep fighting to rein in the administrative state.

00:37:40.000 And when we take back the Congress in 2022, we are going to hold these bad actors accountable once again.

00:37:47.000 With this in mind, I have introduced HR 8268, the Disarm the IRS Act, to ensure that the IRS will stop acquiring ammunition upon its enactment.

00:37:59.000 Well, that's the trouble that we see from the IRS, but there is much more in this crazy spending bill that Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer have agreed on.

00:38:08.000 And here to break it down with me is my legislative director, back on Firebrand, Mike Robertson.

00:38:14.000 And Mike, just like, for folks watching at home that...

00:38:18.000 I want to understand the complexities of this.

00:38:21.000 Hold up the bill.

00:38:22.000 Just what you've been going through.

00:38:24.000 Everyone on Firebread can see my colleague Mike.

00:38:27.000 Whoa.

00:38:28.000 Hit the mic there.

00:38:28.000 There you go.

00:38:29.000 Sorry to everyone listening on podcast.

00:38:30.000 It's quite a heavy load.

00:38:31.000 How many pages is that?

00:38:32.000 730 pages.

00:38:34.000 Bring that mic a little closer so folks can hear you.

00:38:36.000 So, 730 some odd pages.

00:38:38.000 730. Wow.

00:38:40.000 And you've read them.

00:38:41.000 So one of the elements of this bill is this 15% minimum tax.

00:38:47.000 Why is that a bad idea for Americans?

00:38:49.000 Bring that mic a little closer to you.

00:38:51.000 Right now we're coming off of 9%.

00:38:53.000 Here, if you twist this one right here.

00:38:55.000 Alright, there we go.

00:38:57.000 That bill wore me out a little bit.

00:38:58.000 I hear you.

00:38:59.000 Alright, 15% minimum tax.

00:39:01.000 Yeah, coming off of 9% year-over-year inflation, I just do not understand whether there is some incompetence in understanding basic economics or some deception here.

00:39:12.000 Because taxing businesses, double-taxing business for making capital investments because they are already being taxed on their book income, is not what's going to lead us to inflation reduction.

00:39:24.000 You know, in fact, A little side note, I just saw on CNN this morning, the headlines everywhere inside the Beltway, House set to pass sweeping healthcare and climate change bill.

00:39:35.000 And you know what I'm missing when I see that lower third is inflation soon to be reduced immediately.

00:39:42.000 Well, isn't the most recent analysis we got from Wharton that this will actually increase inflation in the short term?

00:39:47.000 To me, hearing that we're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars with the hopes that that will lower inflation is sort of like me saying I'm going to eat my way to weight loss.

00:39:58.000 Exactly.

00:39:59.000 And that's why I have to doubt the authenticity and honesty on behalf of the Democrats.

00:40:05.000 Maybe there's a little combination of not understanding what's really at play here.

00:40:10.000 We are trying to grasp onto a fertile labor market.

00:40:14.000 We want to make sure people can get jobs in this country.

00:40:16.000 And by making sure, as you mentioned with the IRS, we're going to—six times the budget is what the $80 billion is for the IRS. So let's make sure hardworking Americans are poorer.

00:40:27.000 No agency in Washington, D.C. should ever grow sixfold.

00:40:31.000 Exactly.

00:40:32.000 And they're never going away either.

00:40:33.000 And speaking of going away, the Democrats, the people voting for this legislation aren't thinking, hey, we want to get rid of inflation.

00:40:43.000 We're going to get rid of programs.

00:40:44.000 They probably forgot that some of these programs have been existent forever.

00:40:48.000 And so we want to make sure we're collecting more of your money as an American.

00:40:52.000 We want to make sure if you have a successful business and you're looking to hire people, you're going to have to fork over more of your income.

00:40:58.000 So you're going to have less of it.

00:41:00.000 To give people bonuses to hire.

00:41:02.000 So that's just one part.

00:41:03.000 That's only one part.

00:41:04.000 Well, let's keep drilling down on this 15% tax because I could see the argument among some people saying, well, gee, Congressman, these big corporations that don't pay a lot of taxes, I pay taxes, shouldn't they pay taxes on their gross?

00:41:17.000 But if you drill down into all 700 and some odd pages as we have...

00:41:22.000 What we see is also a complex system of tax credits that are intended for really social engineering more than anything.

00:41:31.000 And so there's the 15% tax, which is going to drive capital offshore, which is going to ensure that we don't have investment in our country, which is going to enrich all the accountants and lawyers, but actually hurt regular folks.

00:41:43.000 But then they're going to create this system of ESG tax credits.

00:41:47.000 Explain to people what ESG tax credits are.

00:41:50.000 So this is targeted for a category of self-proclaimed corporations that you may have heard are going to reduce emissions, are going to make sure that their focus is not on profits to hire more folks, but to make sure that they're equitable and that they're,

00:42:06.000 you know, We're good to go.

00:42:24.000 Those receipts and reappropriate them via tax credit to companies that claim they're just more ethical than you or than a large business.

00:42:33.000 So it's very much a favoritism bill.

00:42:35.000 And by the way, what does this have to do with inflation reduction?

00:42:38.000 Nothing.

00:42:39.000 Yeah, nothing at all.

00:42:40.000 It does also, the bill does create some Obamacare extenders.

00:42:45.000 I know when you're thinking about inflation, you're thinking...

00:42:47.000 I know.

00:42:48.000 What I really need to solve my inflation issues is more of an Obamacare extender.

00:42:52.000 Explain to folks what the bill does in that regard.

00:42:54.000 Yeah, so they want to renew subsidies, credits for enrollees in Obamacare making up to 400 times above the poverty line.

00:43:04.000 And my calculations are showing...

00:43:07.000 $300,000 could be your household income to make sure that you get that tax credit that you deserve.

00:43:13.000 Meanwhile, the middle class, the downtrodden that may not be opted into Obamacare because they don't need it, are still paying for all the other taxes that the IRS will come.

00:43:24.000 We've got 50% minimum tax.

00:43:28.000 There's a 1% punitive excise tax on buying back stocks.

00:43:32.000 And we've got the IRS. And that's just the first portion of this bill.

00:43:36.000 We can move on to healthcare negotiation and price controls.

00:43:41.000 But it doesn't end there.

00:43:42.000 I mean, again, we've...

00:43:43.000 We're probably only 200 in at this point. 0.91

00:43:45.000 Well, when you have a bill of this size and complexity, there's always going to be some real crap in it.

00:43:50.000 And you've highlighted some of it for us.

00:43:52.000 Now, there's a $10 million appropriation to, quote, address racial equity issues within the Department of Agriculture.

00:44:03.000 I've got it here.

00:44:04.000 Now, I just thought that was how crops grow.

00:44:06.000 Does...

00:44:08.000 White supremacy invariably affect the growing of the food weed? 0.57

00:44:14.000 Not at all.

00:44:15.000 It's unrelated.

00:44:16.000 And I mean, my take, first of all, if there is such a racist government entity that requires $10 million to pay to investigate, to hell with the agency.

00:44:28.000 Let's get rid of it.

00:44:29.000 I mean, it's a little bit of a double speak here where there may or may not be a lack of equity and diversity in the agency.

00:44:35.000 And instead of putting your foot on the table and saying this is ridiculous, this is against American values, we're just going to throw more of the taxpayer dollars and we'll find out.

00:44:45.000 So, I mean, in this country, we've seen a broken supply chain over baby formula.

00:44:49.000 We've seen fuel costs rise so fast we can afford to get places.

00:44:52.000 We've seen those compounding fuel prices affect us at the grocery store every time we want to get stuff for our family to eat.

00:44:59.000 But if you're worried about the cost of food or groceries, fuel, any of that stuff, don't The Democrats have $10 million to make sure that the USDA isn't so racist.

00:45:11.000 I can't get enough of this, but it's not just the USDA. It's the Department of Transportation, too.

00:45:16.000 Now we're talking about $3 billion to stop all of those racist roads and bridges that Pete Buttigieg has been telling us about.

00:45:24.000 What is that going to do for Americans?

00:45:26.000 Nothing at all.

00:45:27.000 It's really code for preferential grants to certain areas that are probably not where you live.

00:45:33.000 And we just want to make sure that you as a taxpayer, everybody watching, your money absorbed by the now six times larger IRS is going to be distributed somewhere where you're not going to see any ROI on it.

00:45:44.000 That's the Buttigieg code.

00:45:45.000 $87 billion for the Civilian Climate Corps.

00:45:50.000 Yeah.

00:45:51.000 What is the Civilian Climate Corps?

00:45:52.000 Good question.

00:45:53.000 We're still trying to discover what they're up to over there.

00:45:55.000 But we just have all these fancy terms.

00:45:58.000 We're running out of acronyms and syllogisms, I think.

00:46:01.000 And so now we just have new team names.

00:46:03.000 Is this like just a bunch of angry Karens, like waving their fist at the sky, telling the earth not to warm? 1.00

00:46:08.000 Yeah, and maybe your wallet.

00:46:10.000 Well, and there are regulatory powers that are new and that are going to really increase costs for business.

00:46:17.000 It's hard to think of any industry that will not have higher regulatory costs after this bill goes into effect.

00:46:26.000 And when business has higher regulatory compliance costs, they pass that on to the consumer, which results in higher prices, which contributes to inflation.

00:46:35.000 Absolutely.

00:46:35.000 What are the industries you think are going to be hardest hit?

00:46:39.000 Energy?

00:46:40.000 Energy, definitely.

00:46:42.000 We haven't gotten there yet, but there are some punitive taxes on the cost of inputs.

00:46:48.000 We're talking about how we want, I mean, I get the left doesn't like fossil fuels, but we can't just cut it off immediately.

00:46:54.000 For example, in the energy industry, we've got An increase from 9.7 cents to 16.4 cents on the cost and excise tax of importing petrol and crude oil.

00:47:09.000 We want to have a strong energy industry in the United States, but this is the cart before the horse.

00:47:14.000 We're trying to get over what's now an impending recession or a current recession, if you will, but the Biden solution, within a bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, I'll keep reminding everybody, It's to increase the cost of fuel, even if it's coming from abroad, before we're deciding to unleash our energy capabilities here.

00:47:31.000 So if you're following me, we're trying to switch, or they, excuse me, are trying to switch the paradigm of all use of fossil fuel oil, and we know that's the Al Gore motive and the end goal, but what's really a tragedy is they want to do this all in one piece of legislation during a recession.

00:47:49.000 We need cheap gas prices.

00:47:51.000 Why is it the idea of the Democrats to increase excise taxes on them right now?

00:47:55.000 Well the pain is the point.

00:47:58.000 I mean, you see that in the public comments of the people in the Biden administration who just don't understand why every American doesn't go buy a $60,000 electric car.

00:48:08.000 They want you to feel so much pain that you comply with their worldview.

00:48:14.000 When the history is sort of written on this legislation, I think we'll clearly see that it did not favorably impact inflation.

00:48:22.000 But that it did centralize a lot more power in Washington, D.C. I mean, all these themes, a militarized, vastly six-toubled IRS, a new climate corps, these sweeping new authorities for the Department of Transportation to think about roads and bridges, not in terms of connecting people and goods, but in terms of whatever the sophistry of racial equity is that they feel at the moment.

00:48:47.000 And the choices that businesses make, that states make from a regulatory standpoint, Those seem to really be stolen from the people in this bill.

00:48:56.000 And speaking of who this bill really benefits, back to if you have more money, you can afford an electric vehicle, don't worry, there's a tax credit in there.

00:49:03.000 So once again...

00:49:05.000 So when we tried to simplify the tax code, make it easier on people, double the standard exemption, make it where you can fill out your taxes on a postcard, now this is a way to re-complicate things.

00:49:17.000 And regular folks don't need a more complicated tax code.

00:49:22.000 The ESG corporate credits here, you're not getting.

00:49:26.000 You're just getting the higher prices and the inflation.

00:49:29.000 But then somebody in some boardroom is going to be able to say, oh, well, don't worry.

00:49:33.000 We were able to find some clever way to obtain some credit or avoid some tax liability.

00:49:39.000 And if they don't, then they'll just push their cash, their intellectual property, their manufacturing offshore.

00:49:46.000 For all of the investment we saw come back to our country during the Trump economy, How much of that should we expect is going to be reversed with legislation like this?

00:49:57.000 I would say billions.

00:49:59.000 Billions.

00:49:59.000 I mean, we have $433 billion, I think, is the total top line on the spending.

00:50:04.000 Now, when you search on the internet, that'll be scrubbed because they're counting all...

00:50:10.000 They're counting all of these offsets in spending and why it's reducing inflation to projected tax revenues.

00:50:18.000 So they're claiming that this is reducing spending because the spending is coming from you to pay for the bill.

00:50:24.000 So billions is my answer.

00:50:26.000 Unbelievable.

00:50:26.000 You know, I get asked the question all the time when Republicans are able to get sufficient, you know, control over levers of power in our government, will we be able to undo this?

00:50:37.000 And frankly, we don't have a great track record of that.

00:50:40.000 I mean, we went and promised people were going to repeal Obamacare and then didn't.

00:50:43.000 I don't know that the Republicans are going to fire these 87,000 IRS agents, though we should.

00:50:49.000 And the last thing the Republicans do when we take power is constrain spending the way we promised.

00:50:55.000 You and I have discussed this a lot.

00:50:57.000 This is not an impossible problem to solve with inflation.

00:51:00.000 This is not Vladimir Putin visiting it on you.

00:51:04.000 This is not some global, inescapable economic condition.

00:51:09.000 Joe Biden's policies and the policies of this Democratic Congress did this to you.

00:51:14.000 They caused this harm.

00:51:15.000 They hurt your business, they hurt your pocketbook, and they hurt your family.

00:51:20.000 And I believe that when Republicans get in control, we have to start dismantling this brick by brick, stone by stone.

00:51:27.000 My friend Senator Rand Paul says when Democrats are in charge, Republicans are the conservative party.

00:51:33.000 And when Republicans are in charge, there is no conservative party.

00:51:37.000 Well, you know what?

00:51:37.000 We have to defy that history to save our country.

00:51:40.000 I'm going to be voting against this terrible spending bill.

00:51:43.000 I'm going to be doing everything I can to encourage my Republican colleagues to actually exercise some fiscal discipline.

00:51:52.000 And you know what?

00:51:52.000 know what, if we have to shut this government down in order to bring it to its appropriate level in American life, then you know what, we may have to get ready for some shutdowns.

00:52:02.000 Mike, thank you for going through this legislation.

00:52:04.000 Thanks for breaking out some of the most troubling points of it for our audience.

00:52:09.000 And we look forward to being back with you soon with another episode of Firebrand.

00:52:14.000 Roll the credits.

Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - August 12, 2022

Episode 66 LIVE: Agents of Chaos (feat. Dr. Darren J. Beattie) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript