Episode 114 LIVE： Lost And Broken (feat. Rep. Adam Smith) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
Summary
In this episode of Firebrand, Rep. Adam Smith (D-CA) joins us to talk about his new book, Lost and Broken, and how he s dealing with the daily pressures of being a member of Congress. We also hear from IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler, who lays out the details of a case against former Vice President Joe Biden for tax evasion and conspiracy to commit tax evasion.
Transcript
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Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand
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up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
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Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem for the Democratic Party.
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And he can cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws.
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So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
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If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn
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her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots.
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I'm a canceled man in some corners of the Internet.
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Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.
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We are live broadcasting out of the Rayburn House Office Building Room 2021, the Capitol
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We've got folks from Nevada, Oklahoma, Michigan, Arizona, Hawaii, Arkansas, Florida, and Washington
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If you're the Washington State viewers, you're going to want to stick around because at the
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end of this episode, I've got a terrific interview with a Democrat member of Congress
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I have sparred with frequently, but it's an interview that I think will give you great
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insights into the pressures of this job and governing and frankly just existing in this
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He's got a new book out called Lost and Broken.
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And it seems that a great deal is lost and broken these days.
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Also going to give you an inside look at the debate we just had on Syria on the floor,
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a hearing with our military personnel subcommittee.
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It was one of the most uncomfortable moments for a general in front of the Armed Services
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But first, the big news on Capitol Hill today, the IRS whistleblowers.
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This whistleblower X, we now know as Joseph Ziegler, they are laying out the case that in
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similar circumstances, anyone other than Hunter Biden would have seen a felony charge and that
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people were directly involved in suppressing the investigatory work with very large sums of
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And you remember what they did to the FBI whistleblowers, right?
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They made them all out to be white supremacists, dangerous conservatives.
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You know, those people that President Obama complained about clinging to guns and Bibles.
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Well, you're not going to be able to make that case against the IRS whistleblowers.
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You're not going to be able to smear them just because, I don't know, they're unvaccinated
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or conservative or they're evangelical Christians.
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You're dealing with people who might otherwise be regularly counted among the Biden supporters,
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but they saw the injustice and they stepped forward.
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Let's go right to Joseph Ziegler in the House Oversight Committee giving whistleblower testimony.
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I've recently discovered that people are saying that I must be more credible because I'm a
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I'm no more credible than this man sitting next to me due to my sexual orientation or my
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The truth is, my credibility comes today from my job experience with the IRS and my intimate
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knowledge of the agency's standard and procedures.
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In early August of 2022, federal prosecutors from the Department of Justice Tax Division
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In so, they were recommending for approval felony and misdemeanor charges for the 2017, 18, and
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That did not happen here, and I am not sure why.
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It's because there's a protection racket that exists for the benefit of the Bidens at the expense of the rest of us.
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And really, when you're talking about Hunter Biden's tax evasion, it's the least of the Biden family's worries because,
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increasingly, the money laundering is coming forward.
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The connections to the Chinese, some shady businessmen in Eastern Europe, was plowing cash in exchange for favors from the Bidens.
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Unfortunately, we have a Department of Justice far more interested in going after conservatives, targeting them, sending the FBI to big tech companies to censor our speech,
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than to actually follow up on these true crimes.
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I want to also give you an important update regarding work that occurred in the House Armed Services Committee today.
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As I've said many times, the greatest perk of being a member of Congress, above all else,
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the opportunity to nominate our young patriots for military academies.
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West Point, the Naval Academy, Air Force Academy, Merchant Marines, you typically get to see the best of the best.
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And on days when even you're a little down about the country or the state of affairs,
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when you see these brave young patriots step up to express their love of country through service in our military academies,
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Well, increasingly, we have learned that at these military academies, there's been an invasion of wokeness.
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You'll recall some of the slides that were being presented to students.
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Guess I don't much mind y'all coming from where I come from.
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But nonetheless, the lack of oversight, the lack of institutional respect for the norms and values of the country,
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So we had all of the service academy superintendents of their various areas before the Congress.
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Now, you're about to see me question General Clark.
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General Clark is the leader of the Air Force Academy.
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And at the Air Force Academy, it seems as though some of this stuff has gone most sideways.
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And so I'm asking him about a scholarship program that they allow to advertise and solicit on their base.
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And he can't even define the basic terms of eligibility drawn from radical gender ideology.
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A diverse and inclusive force is a war fighting imperative.
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General Clark, do you agree with that statement?
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Well, sir, I'm not really as versed on Mongol war fighting as I am on U.S. war fighting.
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Again, sir, I'm looking at our country, the most diverse country in the world.
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Are the Ukrainians fighting the Russians a diverse force?
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Sir, once again, my concern is the people that I'm charged to build into leaders.
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Right, but you would acknowledge that throughout history, including present history, that statement hasn't borne true in every example, right?
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Sir, what I would say is that those countries have to rely on the full force of their population to build a war fighting force, to win our wars.
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And that's why it's important for us to be diverse.
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Sure, so let's look at the population that actually makes up the fighting force frequently.
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And of the men we have, most of them are not transgender men.
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But yet, at our academies, we push something called the Brooke Owens Fellowship.
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And in that fellowship, it specifically says, if you are a cisgender man, this program isn't for you.
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So, you just said that your answer on why we do such this full hug of these diversity concepts is because it's all about the fighting force that we draw from.
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But you're literally pushing a program in the academies that says, if you're a cisgender woman, a transgender woman, a non-binary, agender, bigender, two-spirit, demigender, what's demigender?
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Sir, that's a term of the people that are eligible for that particular scholarship that is available to, it's a person who looks at their gender in a different way than I do, sir.
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So, here we are pushing a fellowship, calling for people that you don't even know what the words mean, and the number one group of people, the cisgender men, are excluded.
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Now, in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion, should we be pushing programs that we can't define that exclude the largest group of service members?
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Well, sir, first, that program is not an Air Force Academy program.
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But you guys advocate for it within the academy.
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Why are you allowing your cadets to apply for a program when you cannot define the basic terms of eligibility?
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Because it's an opportunity for us to develop them as warfighters, and we look for every opportunity that we can.
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How can you use this as a way to develop the warfighters if you don't know what it means?
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Well, some of those terms may not be applicable to us at the Air Force Academy, but some are.
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But, well, if you don't know what they mean, it's hard to tell if they're applicable or not.
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So I think one of the reasons why some of this stuff has gotten into the academies is because we don't have the same oversight from the Board of Visitors.
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And, Mr. Chairman, I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record an article from the Washington Examiner entitled,
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To Push Wokey Ideology, Biden Illegally Gutted Military Academy Oversight Boards.
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And so in this piece, it goes through a timeline where on September 8, 2021, all of President Trump's appointees were fired.
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On September 17, Secretary Austin created Board of Visitors subcommittees, and then he populated those subcommittees with people who weren't on the Board of Visitors.
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Sir, our Board of Visitors is populated and supports us in great fashion.
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Are there people on the Board of Visitors subcommittees who are not on the Board of Visitors?
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I mean, here, let me ask the question this way.
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You don't have any basis to disagree with the reporting here in the Washington Examiner that literally we have people who are not on the Board of Visitors who are serving on these subcommittees.
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You have no basis to disagree with that, do you?
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Sir, I'm not exactly sure of the question you're asking, so I'll have to take that for record so I can understand exactly what you're asking.
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Selena on YouTube says it's crazy that I even have to ask these questions, and I'll be straight with you.
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I still don't know what demigender means, and I don't know what agender means,
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and I'm not entirely sure we need to know these things to grow warfighters, right?
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Like, the point I was making in that hearing that I continue to make is that our military should be focused on lethality, capability, survivability,
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and having to worry about whether or not we've got the right number of demigender people in a scholarship fellowship program is a distraction from that mission,
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and oftentimes it's divisive and harmful to the very sense of unity that we're trying to create in the military.
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So I know I play you a lot of these clips of me asking tough questions of these generals,
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and it is weird, Selena, that I have to keep doing it, but we have to shine a light on this,
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and that's a point that many of you have made as well.
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But it's not just here in our country where our military is engaged in far-flung misadventures.
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I've consistently made the argument that the United States should not be entangled in major power competition in Syria.
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But one of the statutory things that allows the Syrian conflict to go on with continued U.S. entanglement
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is the power we have vested in the executive to declare a national emergency.
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So in 2004, nearly 20 years ago, we declared a national emergency in Syria.
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And the Congress is supposed to vote on those national emergencies, their propriety, every six months.
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It allows for massive slush funds, endless wars, and a real risk of accident or escalation.
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So I filed legislation to end the national emergency in Syria,
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believing sincerely that the United States of America is more likely to be the cause of a national emergency in Syria
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Only, I think it was like 25 or 26 people out of the 435 in Congress voted with me.
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But I think we won the debate, and I want you to see it.
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I brought a war powers resolution to the floor of this Congress to get U.S. troops out of Syria,
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arguing that the United States being excessively entangled in great power competition in Syria
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it wasn't playing out to our benefit in the sphere of great power competition,
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and that it left U.S. service members and contractors as sitting ducks.
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And following that vote, which I lost overwhelmingly on a bipartisan fashion,
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because we have now become the neighborhood crime watch of certain areas in Syria where there are oil rigs.
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So I now come to the floor with this resolution to repeal a 2004 emergency vis-a-vis Syria.
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Now, it's supposed to be voted on by Congress every six months thereafter,
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but we have been derelict in our duty in doing so.
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And so I'm glad that today we're bringing forward a number of these emergency resolutions
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spending untold sums of money with no transparency as to how much is going into the Syrian emergency.
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But how about this rule for how about the House thinks about emergencies?
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Nothing's allowed to be an emergency for 20 years.
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there probably would have been some cataclysmic event of biblical proportion before the 20 years.
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it's a chronic condition and the United States cannot be the world's policeman and we cannot be the world's piggy bank.
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Now, if the principal argument against my resolution is that my resolution is soft on Assad,
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well, the logic that undergirds that is that somehow the 2004 resolution was this great anti-Assad tool
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that we must have, that we must maintain to beat Assad.
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So if this 2004 resolution was Assad kryptonite,
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it's been the worst Assad kryptonite you could ever imagine.
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We have sought transparency to see how much money has been going pursuant to it.
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And to the extent that there are sanctions that we still want to maintain,
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whether there are the other national emergencies that exist targeted at terrorism generally,
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at Russia, at Iran, the Magnitsky Act, there are all kinds of other authorities for the president,
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the secretary of the treasury, secretary of the Department of Commerce,
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even the DOD weighs in, state regarding sanctions regimes.
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So this is not a vote to lift sanctions and then just hope for the best with some pretty gnarly Syrians.
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In fact, it's us standing up to do our job, and that's what we should do in repealing this 2004 resolution.
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I can't think of a more effective way to insult the president of Israel
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when he stands on that podium and addresses us tomorrow.
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Well, I would observe, Mr. Speaker, to the gentleman,
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that if he is looking for a more effective way to insult the president of Israel,
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he need look no further than the remarks of some of his own colleagues in the recent days,
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which I would deem far more insulting than this policy debate about how to have an effective sanctions regime.
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No one here is arguing for sanctions relief vis-Ã -vis these individuals.
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What we're saying is that the National Emergencies Act is a very ineffective,
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inefficient way to administer a sanctions regime.
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We do have specific authorities with the Magnitsky Act,
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with the national emergencies vis-Ã -vis counterterrorism.
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And most importantly, Congress has the authority to impose sanctions.
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If you believe that there are people who should be the subject of sanctions by the United States government,
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we are the board of directors of the most powerful country on the planet Earth.
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We can introduce those bills, we can vote for them, and we can fulfill our constitutional authority.
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What I'm asking the Congress to do is to repeal a 2004 emergency vis-Ã -vis Syria,
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when Syria doesn't look anything like it even did in 2004.
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And to my Republican colleagues, if you vote to allow this national emergency to continue,
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what you're doing is you're gaslighting unaccountable spending by the Biden administration
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because they never have to make requisite report regarding the outlays on these matters.
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And we are all strong supporters of Israel on this side of the aisle, certainly.
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And I would observe that U.S. policy in Syria has not particularly helped Israel.
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Matter of fact, when you had terrorist groups setting up camps in Syria directed at Israel,
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and it did not involve the United States of America becoming the bloc captain of Syria
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And if we want to do that, it should be through a war powers resolution
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When the law contemplates a requisite obligation for us to vote to reauthorize these things,
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and we don't see a safer Israel, a safer Middle East, or a safer Syria.
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So if this is the great tool we had against Assad,
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because it hasn't exactly worked out as the proponents of this national emergency
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If I don't mind saying so myself, I think we won that debate overwhelmingly.
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Burrell on Facebook agrees, says he wants to see a vote every six months,
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Marla says that it is super bad that I only got 25, 26 of my colleagues to vote with me.
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We have to show who's voting with the people of this country
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and who is voting to be the Syria block captain.
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And we also have Alan observe that the GOP is a little top-heavy with rhinos.
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Moving now from the GOP to an interview I'm very excited about.
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Congressman Adam Smith wrote a book called Lost and Broken.
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This may be one of the least political policy interviews that we've done on Firebrand,
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but we have human beings who serve in this Congress,
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who are policymakers, who have the frailties and foibles and follies of regular folks.
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And when those are confronted in the crucible of this place,
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it oftentimes can lead to lessons that maybe our Firebrand viewers would enjoy
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So please enjoy my extended interview with Democrat Congressman Adam Smith.
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Get ready for a very different kind of interview.
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Firebrand viewers will be familiar with Congressman Adam Smith.
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He hails from the state of Washington, a beautiful part of our country.
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He's the former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee,
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and he is currently the lead Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
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Now, we've had many spirited debates about military policy
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And we usually play those debates right here on Firebrand and discuss them.
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And you can clearly see that Representative Adam Smith is very sharp,
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very quick rhetorically, and if I don't mind saying so,
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a very worthy debating adversary when we disagree.
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And I think it's a good thing for the country to see lawmakers disagree on substance
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There have certainly been times in my seven years here
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when Congressman Smith has convinced me to change my view on matters.
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Specifically, he's often effectively pointed out
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when we're making expensive military systems that are not useful to the warfighter.
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I don't know if I've ever convinced Congressman Smith to hold my point of view on something,
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and I certainly won't force him to make an admission of that here today.
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But here's some advice to every viewer of this program.
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At least a few times a year, read a book from an author
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that you might fervently disagree with on something.
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It's how I came to read the essential text of critical race theory,
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So Congressman Smith has recently written a book
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that I highly recommend fitting within this portfolio
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of observing and understanding and flushing the issues out on.
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And that's true even if you don't agree with Adam on a variety of other things.
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Now, it's not particularly a book about Congress or policy or politics,
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though there are juicy insights on all of those things.
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The book, Lost and Broken, is about pain, anxiety,
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Representative Smith has endured an incredible personal journey.
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And I've been reading books by members of Congress for more than a decade,
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and I can honestly tell you I have never seen a book
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about crippling challenges with focus and strength
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and a number of matters that we're going to discuss.
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And Adam, maybe start with just letting people know the journey you've been on.
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Sure. And first of all, thank you for having me on.
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I completely agree with everything you just said.
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And you have at least convinced me on the medical marijuana issue
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and on the need for allowing service members to test
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whether or not drugs can help them with their PTSD issues.
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Now, the issue is I had a severe anxiety and chronic pain problem.
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And my book actually starts in 2016 after my third hip surgery,
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By 2016, I thought I was never going to solve the problem, bottom line.
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I had tried all kinds of doctors and psychiatrists
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and all kinds of different things, and I was in worse shape than ever.
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I eventually did find people who could help me.
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So what the book does is it talks about how I got there
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because pain and anxiety rarely just sort of pop up.
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I really had to go back into my full history as a person.
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And if I have one big message on this, you can get better.
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There are treatments for both mental health and chronic pain,
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we say anxiety and chronic pain almost as one continuum.
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But talk about how those two conditions inform on one another.
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Yeah, no, it's really interesting, and we don't fully understand, to tell you the truth.
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But it is absolutely true that mental health conditions like anxiety or depression
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Now, in my case, I had two separate sets of problems, all right?
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The pain certainly contributed to the anxiety and vice versa,
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My body, after 30 years, eventually broke down.
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And mental health-wise, I had a problematic childhood.
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There was all kinds of issues involved there that I never truly dealt with,
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But they can definitely feed off of each other.
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What do you think that people get wrong most about the challenge of confronting anxiety
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A lot of answers occur to me, but I'll go with two.
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one of my challenges when the anxiety hit me was,
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Okay, I mean, what is a doctor going to say to me?
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okay, maybe I need surgery, maybe I need physical therapy,
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How am I going to change the way I think to stop having anxiety come?
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You can, in fact, change the way that you think.
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You can teach your brain to better deal with the stresses and strains that you face in life.
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The second thing I really didn't understand was this concept that's going to sound a little loopy,
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but the basic idea, you have to have a sense of your own self-worth.
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And if you don't, you are going to have a lot of problems.
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And it's a lot harder to have than you think it is.
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That basic, well, the Buddhists would refer to it as the concept that we are all worthy of love.
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If you don't understand that about yourself, you're in a bad place.
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It doesn't seem like an easy place to arrive if that is a challenge that presents.
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And it couldn't have been an easy decision to write this book
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because in politics, we always want to present the toughest, most impenetrable version of ourselves
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Did you have to go through a process to be so fulsome in describing the experiences you've had?
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Well, yeah, but I think the process I went through was those six years.
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I can't remember what it was, but I was getting some surgery or something.
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And, you know, you're in an embarrassing position and everything.
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And the nurses and the doctors are like, now, are you okay with this?
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I mean, I've been through, you know, three surgeries, psychiatrists, everything.
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I had just been, I had felt already so exposed to the broader world
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that I guess I felt more comfortable sharing it more broadly.
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And also, second big lesson after the self-worth thing is,
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if you're going to get to a proper place in terms of mental health,
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Because a lot of what drives us to anxiety is that you are suppressing things.
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Maybe you're angry about something that you're hiding.
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You know, you're in a relationship or in a job that you know you have to keep
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so you kid yourself about whether or not you really like it.
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Or things from your childhood that you're either angry about or feel guilty about.
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So good mental health, being honest with yourself.
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You may have to to get through the day, but you have to be honest with yourself.
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And I felt this was one of the best ways, A, for me to do that,
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and B, to show people that this is one of the paths to getting better.
00:29:03.180
You know, others, I know you're a big go-on-walks guy.
00:29:06.560
If you stand in one place in Washington, D.C. long enough,
00:29:10.280
you'll see Adam Smith walk by at one point or another
00:29:18.320
and they don't know that they have access to exquisite tools,
00:29:29.140
because, well, I used to joke that I'm really stressed out
00:29:41.560
oh, I thought of something, you know, so I've failed.
00:30:02.200
I'm not going to try to solve any problems right now, all right?
00:30:17.760
But it's like you have to give yourself some space
00:30:40.240
Okay, me staying up for an extra two or three hours,
00:30:53.580
And I'm like, you're not going to solve every problem.
00:30:55.620
They'll be there in the morning when you get up.
00:31:03.240
there are times when you're a little more healthy
00:31:22.240
that you always knew you could go in tough times
00:31:25.580
to ensure that you were able to reset the course?
00:31:32.580
that are good to be around and good to talk to.
00:32:09.560
You know, it's interesting you mentioned sports
00:32:22.260
on something that isn't the highest acuity pressure point.
00:32:26.520
And we have to find, I think, more of those places to go.
00:32:33.620
it mattered a lot more about who you could be friends with
00:32:36.320
than whether you were a Republican or a Democrat.
00:32:38.700
And I wonder if there are assemblies of people,
00:32:52.400
I think it's going to be different for different people,
00:33:00.880
You know, and I think you and I are very similar
00:33:09.920
You can really get yourself on a treadmill there
00:33:27.800
you're a leader in the national security entities.
00:33:59.140
The other way is a number of members have come up to me
00:34:00.720
and said, hey, I had no idea you were going through that.
00:34:07.400
You can't know everything that's going on around you,
00:34:10.500
And number two, I will tell you that professionally,
00:34:13.440
like Mac Thornberry, former chair of the committee,
00:34:22.000
and all members, Republican and Democrat alike,
00:34:24.840
in fact, I quote Michael Turner in the book at one point,
00:34:27.640
were incredibly supportive to me throughout this process.
00:34:39.560
you'll stand up, take a few walks around the room
00:34:42.260
And I wonder sometimes whether that's physically
00:34:47.400
or whether or not there's actually a mental health component
00:34:51.780
And I found walking around a little bit more frequently
00:35:05.360
Gosh, there were times when I had to like lay down
00:35:18.740
But now it's just, it's just a thing that I do.
00:35:28.440
We're really entering an era where there's a lot more,
00:35:52.460
You know, I worry at times about the overindulgence of that,
00:36:00.300
that people confront their challenges and deal with them
00:36:07.000
What's the most encouraging thing you could say
00:36:08.960
to someone who's aware that they are going through
00:36:13.340
and they want to know that there's a better way ahead?
00:36:17.580
Well, as with most things in life, it's about balance.
00:36:20.180
And I would say generationally, you're absolutely right.
00:36:22.560
One of the big positives is newer, younger generations
00:36:31.500
don't engage in it, but that has to be headed somewhere.
00:36:40.640
I don't want a solid excuse for why my life's miserable.
00:36:47.800
not just, you know, as you said, an overindulgence,
00:36:52.220
How can I get better so that I can lead a healthier
00:36:55.200
and more productive life and be a more responsible person?
00:37:14.960
How do you find those treatments that can help you?
00:37:19.520
are able to access that critically important step
00:37:23.240
to a more constructive way to think about these things.
00:37:32.280
And I feel smarter having conducted this interview,