On today's show, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GA) and Rep. Steve Israel (D-NJ) join me to discuss the continuing resolution, the immigration crisis on Martha's Vineyard, and the potential for a government shutdown. We also talk about how to deal with the growing problem of illegal immigration, and why you should not be paying taxes on illegal immigrants. We wrap up the show with a segment called "This Week in Congress: This Week in Firebrand" where we look at what's starting to take shape in Congress, starting with the lame duck Congress, and what it means for the future of the country and the country's future in the face of the ongoing immigration crisis. Thank you for listening and tweet us if you liked the show! Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What's going on with the government shutdown? 4:30 - Is the government going to be funded in the short term or longer term? 7:00 - What should the country be doing in the meantime? 8:15 - Who's going to pay for the government? 9:30 - Is there a solution? 11:40 - What s going to happen with immigration? 12:20 - What are we going to do about it? 13:15 14:40 15:10 - What is going on in Congress? 16:20 17:10 - Who is going to win in the election? 18: What's next? 19:00 | What do we need to do? 21: What s the best way to get things done? 22: What can we do about immigration reform? 23: What should we do to fix the immigration system? 26:30 | What s our country do to stop the immigration problem? 27:10 | How do we win in 2020? 29:00 +30 - What will we do in the future? 31:00 // 32: What do you think of this? 32:00 -- What's the best thing we can do about this week? 35: What are you waiting for us to do in Washington? 36:30 -- Is this a good thing? 37:30 // 33:40 -- Can we have a government that's not going to get any better? 39:40 | Can we stop the government funded? 40:00 Is this country better than that?
00:04:56.000Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
00:05:03.000Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem for the Democratic Party.
00:05:06.000He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.
00:05:09.000So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
00:05:12.000If 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!
00:06:07.000We're in a housing crisis as we are on this island.
00:06:11.000We can't house everyone here that lives here and works here.
00:06:15.000We don't have housing for 50 more people.
00:06:20.000Didn't you learn, America, there's a housing crisis on Martha's Vineyard?
00:06:24.000While you were dealing with the struggles of inflation and rising gas prices, I hope you said your prayers for those folks on Martha's Vineyard who are going through this crisis ever the more exacerbated by 50 people.
00:06:40.000Let alone the thousands who are showing up on our border every day in each of our border states, actually.
00:06:47.000And they don't want to function as a turnstile for our country.
00:06:50.000And so I stand with Governor Ron DeSantis in his desire to visit the impacts of illegal immigration on those who seem so willing to champion it when it is not directly impacting their communities.
00:07:03.000What a great way to start a Friday with the Martha's Vineyard Karen saying, well, we don't have the services.
00:07:14.000They should move back to their home country, and we should have a government willing to protect our people from invasion as the Constitution requires.
00:07:24.000Now, this Friday also brings us failure not only on the immigration front, but also very much so when it comes to the funding of our government.
00:07:33.000Democrats unable to To bring a continuing resolution vote to the floor of the Congress today.
00:07:39.000Matter of fact, canceling votes today.
00:07:41.000We thought that today would be a day where maybe they would have worked out their continuing resolution Here's what the continuing resolution is that the Democrats want.
00:07:50.000They want to set up a short-term funding bill that expires during the lame-duck Congress so that we would have to negotiate with Democrats to extend into the period of time when Republicans should be running at least the House of Representatives and maybe the Senate.
00:08:08.000You see, we believe, of course, that the upcoming election will give us advantage and more leverage to get wins for the people of the country.
00:08:18.000They know that, and so they're trying to create as short-term a government funding bill as possible so that it will expire during the lame duck Congress.
00:08:27.000By the way, with the name of the lame duck Congress, like...
00:08:30.000It probably shouldn't be doing something as significant as funding the government because the lame duck Congress is still operated by people who lost elections.
00:08:39.000Not the ones that the voters actually chose.
00:08:41.000People like Liz Cheney will even be in the lame duck Congress.
00:08:45.000Matter of fact, she'll be bringing the lame to the lame duck Congress.
00:08:48.000And so I am working now with Republican colleagues, with conservatives, to implore Mitch McConnell, Leader McCarthy, don't give any Republican votes to pass any continuing resolution that would expire before the swearing-in of the 118th Congress, the Congress I very much intend to be a part of.
00:09:09.000And that Congress will give the Republicans far more necessary leverage.
00:09:14.000There may be shutdowns coming in divided government.
00:09:18.000You need to be ready for that because we should not continue to fund a government that is excessively weaponized against our people.
00:09:25.000From the Department of Justice, to the IRS, to the Department of Education, to the post office, we see the weaponization of this government, and we should not be so readily willing to fund it.
00:09:36.000So there'll be more on that, but the big news for today, they don't have the votes.
00:09:41.000They're kicking it down the road to a following week, and we'll certainly have a lot to talk about there.
00:09:48.000But as we look at Congress, there are certain things starting to take shape.
00:09:52.000And we bring you this segment we love on Firebrand called This Week in Congress.
00:10:20.000This is the oldest government in history.
00:10:23.000The report by Insider, not usually a source that we trust, but the graph, the data, is pretty interesting.
00:10:30.000The age of Congress continued to rise until...
00:10:33.000You know, just before the late, mid-1970s, 1980s, and then the age of Congress actually went down substantially.
00:10:41.000But since the 1980s, the percentage of members of Congress who are over the age of 70 has skyrocketed.
00:10:51.000Like, there is a greater percentage of people in Congress over the age of 70 now than...
00:10:57.000At any other time in our nation's history by like multiples by like a factor of three according to this graph and you know what that leads to moments like I'm about to show you where some of these boomers get up and say things that like sometimes you wonder if they know that they're actually saying them out loud to the country if or if they just think it's their inner monologue so take a listen To not just anyone,
00:11:24.000Democrat Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and his admissions about the Deep State.
00:11:32.000They want to eliminate what they call the Deep State.
00:11:36.000The Deep State is a cadre of professionals dedicated to honoring the Constitution, the laws of this country, and carrying out the policies of the Congress and the President.
00:11:52.000Didn't you know, after years of the Democrats saying that the deep state was a conspiracy, the deep state was just right-wing fear-mongering, here you have Steny Hoyer, not sure he knows if he's talking out loud here, but saying, yes, we have a deep state and you should be grateful that there is a deep state so willing to deep state over you, to centralize decision-making in Washington, D.C., rather than allowing the people of our country to live free and prosperous lives.
00:12:23.000When you've been in Congress for decades like Steny Hoyer has, when you're one of the people that contribute to the statistic that there are more people over the age of 70 in Congress than ever before in our nation's history, well, you get moments like this.
00:12:38.000Perhaps a moment of truth, a moment of clarity.
00:12:41.000It certainly should clarify things for the people in this country who do not want to surrender their rights, their freedom, and their way of life to a deep state.
00:13:11.000One of the tools also used by the intelligence community is FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
00:13:19.000And some authorities there allow our spies, our government officials, to gather data, to listen in on calls, to intercept signal intelligence if they're looking into someone who's a foreigner on foreign soil.
00:13:34.000But the Americans that get caught up in that They're seeing their civil liberties, their constitutional rights deprived.
00:13:41.000Now there have been a number of reviews regarding how the FBI and the Department of Justice are using FISA. And it turns out they're breaking a lot of their own rules.
00:13:51.000The most recent Inspector General report showed that every file that was looked at had problems with it.
00:13:57.000In some cases, the backup materials that are required under the Woods procedures were entirely missing.
00:14:02.000And in four cases, The errors were so egregious that it was easy to see how the judge evaluating whether or not to grant the surveillance request could have made a different decision.
00:14:18.000Justice denied to our fellow Americans.
00:14:23.000Our Constitution disrespected by the people that you would think would value our fellow Americans most.
00:14:30.000We know what, Steny Hoyer, we are not grateful for the deep state.
00:14:34.000We never will be, and when Republicans take control, there's going to be accountability over the deep state.
00:14:41.000Now we've seen the way Democrats have tried to have this performance of the January 6th committee and while the representatives of the January 6th committee are busy grandstanding and like mourning our democracy's supposed near-death experience, their own districts are suffering from economic crisis, crime, epidemics, neglect.
00:15:06.000And perhaps there is no one Who bears more responsibility for the state of his district than the chairman of the January 6th committee himself, Benny Thompson.
00:15:18.000Now you may have heard of the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi.
00:15:22.000Simply put, Jackson has plenty of water.
00:15:24.000It's not like the desert in Jackson, Mississippi.
00:15:27.000But you can't drink it because it's not safe.
00:15:31.000This isn't the result of a natural disaster or freak accident.
00:15:34.000It isn't the work of some nefarious terrorist organization.
00:15:37.000They haven't blamed Russia yet for this.
00:16:26.000Is that the leadership in that city failed.
00:16:28.000It is the responsibility of the city government to care for its people, to bond when necessary, to see beyond the next kickback or the next political opportunity for a friend or ally.
00:16:41.000Now this Chotewe Lumumba, the mayor, and his bureaucracy have proven themselves totally incapable of self-governance.
00:16:50.000So I guess they'll have to rely on the state government, the Army Corps of Engineers, which has taken action.
00:16:56.000But not so fast for Benny Thompson, actually.
00:16:59.000Benny has been a supporter of Choway Lumumba and the Lumumba family for decades politically in Jackson.
00:17:09.000He endorsed Choway Lumumba in his 2017 race for mayor and then stood by him in a showy press conference as they protested President Trump's visit to Jackson.
00:17:20.000Look at this picture from their press conference.
00:17:28.000In 2013, Benny Thompson was the master of ceremony at Chotwe Lumumba Senior's mayoral inauguration.
00:17:36.000So, Benny Thompson is two generations deep into political patronage with the very people who resulted in their own city being unable to drink water.
00:17:52.000And he did it from the very beginning, knowing full well who the Lumumbas were.
00:17:58.000Radical, socialist, ethno-nationalists, and black separatists.
00:18:04.000Choway Lumumba Sr. was famously elected the second vice president of the Republic of New Africa, a black separatist group dedicated to creating a black ethno-state out of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, parts of East Texas and North Florida.
00:18:24.000But Choteway moved with his separatist group to Hines County, Mississippi in 1971 to set up the provisional capital of this black ethnostate.
00:18:34.000And what's crazy is that, I guess while they failed to convert every SEC state to this black ethnostate, did they kind of convert Jackson, Mississippi in an awful, failed kind of way?
00:18:49.000They had a laughably ridiculous and anti-American plan.
00:18:54.000Thankfully, it didn't get any farther than Jackson, Mississippi.
00:18:57.000That's still no comfort to the people there who can't drink the water.
00:19:03.000LaMumba Sr. was elected to the Jackson City Council in 2009 and mayor in 2013. Benny Thompson was there and supportive.
00:19:11.000Betty Thompson stated, quote, What an endorsement.
00:19:27.000I mean, remember, this was the guy who, like, literally believed that white people should be driven out of the American Southeast.
00:19:34.000In 2017, Chokwe's son, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, took over the reins for the Lumumba political operation for the dynasty.
00:19:43.000When he was elected mayor, also rather conveniently with Benny Thompson's support and endorsement, this Bernie Sanders acolyte, this younger Lumumba, described himself as a progressive socialist and a political revolutionary.
00:19:58.000He promised to make Jackson, quote, the most radical city on the planet.
00:20:05.000Chotewe Lumumba Jr.'s plans for Jackson may stop short of his father's ultimate vision of New Africa, but their every bit is dangerous, especially to the people around them who are under their rule.
00:20:18.000They want to transform a city and create a new civilization, but they can't even keep the water running?
00:20:25.000Benny Thompson and others have hinted that Jackson is being treated differently, presumably because it is majority black.
00:20:31.000Never mind that Jackson has plenty of funds available and hasn't had a non-black mayor in seven mayoral terms since 1997. They want to play the victim card, the race card?
00:20:48.000For decades, Benny Thompson and others stood by and supported racial radicals, socialists, ethno-nationalists, instead of supporting the competent public servants.
00:21:17.000Go back to 1970. But back in those days, Benny Thompson was known as an alderman in a small city outside of Jackson, Mississippi.
00:21:25.000And he was sort of on the radical side of politics at that point.
00:21:29.000He was a supporter of this group, Real New Africa.
00:21:33.000And he went to their defense, even though this group had on multiple occasions engaged with police.
00:21:39.000They were accused of killing at least two officers that we know of and a third that they were suspected of.
00:21:45.000And he was defending them, saying that the police were the problem, that they deserved to be killed because they were picking on this poor group.
00:21:55.000Now let's tell you who this group was.
00:21:56.000This group wanted to secede from the United States.
00:22:00.000They wanted to take Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and turned it into its own republic called the New Republic of Africa.
00:22:10.000And they wanted to do so by force if the government wouldn't do it willingly.
00:22:15.000And they were engaged in a lot of criminal activity.
00:22:20.000The FBI considered them a terrorism group at the time.
00:22:23.000And this was a group that Benny Thompson, as a young alderman before he joined Congress, was trying to defend, blame the police for picking on.
00:22:32.000In the case of the Republic of New Africa, they are charged with obstructing justice.
00:22:39.000This, I believe, is an attempt on part of law enforcement officials to stop the Republic from building its community.
00:22:48.000My position is that people are entitled to live as they choose so long as they are law-abiding and peaceful.
00:22:59.000It's really amazing, isn't it, that you had this group of people in the Midwest who then choose this tiny little town in Mississippi to go establish the capital of their American Southeast ethnostate.
00:23:14.000And the first guy to pop up and support them is Benny Thompson.
00:23:21.000That's a clip from episode 18, one of our favorites, insurrectionist Benny Thompson.
00:23:27.000Benny Thompson actually has been on all sides of insurrection, as it turns out, in his political career.
00:23:32.000But what's nuts is that these crazy insurrectionists that he brought to his community, two generations later, end up really screwing the people over.
00:23:42.000And like instead of serving their people, they have now committed themselves to racial politics.
00:23:49.000They themselves have made race the issue.
00:23:52.000And the people of Jackson, Mississippi, are worse off because they'd rather race blame than actually clean the water.
00:24:00.000Like, Benny Thompson has been a super powerful guy here in Congress.
00:24:02.000He's been part of the Democrat apparatus.
00:24:08.000You're telling me over this guy's, like...
00:24:11.000Numbers of terms in the United States Congress.
00:24:13.000He couldn't have gotten appropriations to go and help his own community clean the water, but now he wants to go on a snipe hunt for MAGA grandmothers, and he couldn't make sure that the water was clean in his own community?
00:24:24.000What kind of representative for the people is that?
00:24:35.000He is the kingmaker, and his kingdom is crumbling.
00:24:42.000All the while, he's out trying to harass people over January 6th.
00:24:47.000These types want to bash you over the head with the billy club of democracy while they forsake their own duties that they've been elected to represent.
00:24:57.000And it's past time we moved on from the J6 witch hunt.
00:25:01.000It's past time the country moved on from racial politics.
00:25:06.000Make sure people can actually take a shower.
00:25:10.000We need to abolish the January 6th committee and tell Benny Thompson that he doesn't come back to Washington, D.C. until he serves his suffering constituents and stops backing So-called leaders who end up putting their own interests and woke politics over the basic needs of our fellow Americans.
00:25:33.000I care about the folks in Jackson, and they deserve better than they've gotten.
00:25:37.000And frankly, so do the great people of this country, and that's why we're here, to keep up the fight.
00:25:46.000You've got to have notifications turned on.
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