The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - Episode 12 - Working on Legislation Revising Section 230, Trump Deprives Pelosi of FISA Votes, America First Foreign Policy

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Hot Takes. This is Congressman Matt Gaetz. Let's talk about the news. And the

00:00:21.760 big news is that President Trump has killed FISA reform with a tweet. He writes,

00:00:27.500 I hope all Republican House members vote no on FISA until such time as our country is able to

00:00:33.660 determine how and why the greatest political, criminal, and subversive scandal in U.S. history

00:00:39.040 took place. So President Trump depriving Nancy Pelosi of the Republican votes she would need 1.00

00:00:45.120 to pass these reforms. And I'm glad, you know, if you listened to yesterday's podcast, I really go

00:00:51.120 back and describe the basket of reforms that was initially discussed with the White House when

00:00:55.940 Mick Mulvaney was chief of staff. Mark Meadows has been a champion for reforming this process

00:01:00.960 as a congressman and now as chief of staff, I think is only in a better perch to man that fight. And

00:01:07.760 I would like to see far more extensive reforms than what was passed out of the Senate. But it was it

00:01:13.820 was just Richard Burr and Rand Paul voting no out of the Senate. I think every other Republican voted

00:01:18.640 for it. You know, Burr wanted fewer reforms. Paul wanted more reforms. I said I wasn't voting for

00:01:24.320 it because I was of the Rand Paul view that a lot more needed to be done. Hours later,

00:01:28.760 the president kills FISA reform. It remains important to hold people accountable who are

00:01:35.060 involved in Obama-Biden gate and the Russia hoax that distracted our country. And here's the

00:01:41.200 president from Rose Garden maintaining his vigor and his just absolute determination to find out

00:01:47.400 the truth. Greatest hoax in the history of our country. And it was an illegal hoax and a very

00:01:53.080 dangerous hoax. And a lot of bad things have been found out about Mueller and the gang.

00:01:58.360 So I would like to hear that conversation. Yeah, I would like to hear it personally. So

00:02:01.980 whatever they want me to do, I'll do. I think Rick Grinnell has done an incredible job.

00:02:07.520 And things are happening now that I always knew this was the answer. This was a an attempted coup

00:02:15.800 by a bunch of dirty cops and others. These are dirty cops, dishonest slime bags. 1.00

00:02:21.840 Let's do better and make sure that we build a system worthy of either political party being 0.98

00:02:27.180 in power and not tempted to use the intelligence process that is supposed to protect all of us

00:02:34.180 to try to gain political advantage one way or the other. I broke it down on yesterday's podcast,

00:02:39.040 go take a listen. But President Trump apparently agreeing with the analysis,

00:02:43.280 Rand Paul leading the way, we'll do better, protect individual liberties,

00:02:47.340 and ensure that no president has to go through what President Trump did.

00:02:51.840 We talked a lot about foreign policy on yesterday's episode. And then we saw

00:02:55.740 John Roberts asked the president a question about the timetable for a return home from Afghanistan.

00:03:01.860 Here's John Roberts and the president's fantastic answer.

00:03:05.580 Mr. President, is it your intention to bring American forces home from Afghanistan by Thanksgiving

00:03:11.060 Day? And is the Pentagon drawing up plans to that effect?

00:03:14.840 Well, I think everyone knows we're down to less than 8,000 troops. We're with leadership in many

00:03:23.720 different fields and in many different parts of of that country. We're with we're dealing with the

00:03:30.180 Taliban. We're dealing with the president. The president now has gotten themselves straightened

00:03:35.620 out with the two presidents. But we're dealing with because they had, as you know, they had competing

00:03:40.180 factors and factions. Yeah, I think we want to get within 19 years. We're really not acting as soldiers.

00:03:47.660 We're acting as police. And we're not sent over there to be policemen. But within 19 years.

00:03:54.700 And yeah, I think that's enough. And they understand that we're having very positive talks. We want to

00:04:00.960 bring our soldiers back home. We want to bring them back home. And we're not only talking about there,

00:04:06.440 we're talking about other countries also. We bring our soldiers back home. We can always go back if

00:04:11.700 we have to. If we have to go back, we'll go back and we'll go back raging. And then we'll go back as

00:04:16.120 warriors, fighters. But right now we're policing. And we're not meant to be a police force. We're meant

00:04:21.780 to be a fighting force. So again, you can hear my response back and forth to both sides of the argument

00:04:27.500 on yesterday's episode. But I thought the president laid it out perfectly. You heard the president

00:04:32.540 mentioned Syria, and I am so glad he did. In Syria, you remember, John, on the border,

00:04:37.300 when I took the soldiers out of the border, everyone said, oh, that's so terrible. Well,

00:04:41.240 I spoke to President Erdogan yesterday of Turkey. The border's been fined without us.

00:04:46.220 They've been policing their border for 2,000 years. All of a sudden, we had thousands of soldiers

00:04:50.880 there doing their work. For what? Guarding Syria and Turkey on a border, a very long border?

00:04:58.000 No, we want our troops back home. We took them out. That was a year ago. I was criticized. Nothing

00:05:04.660 happened, except they're watching their own borders now. We kept the oil. But at some point,

00:05:11.840 we'll take care of the Kurds with respect to the oil and get out. I was disappointed, though, 1.00

00:05:16.520 in many of my Republican colleagues, a majority, in fact, who joined with Democrats in a resolution

00:05:22.420 condemning the president's action to remove our country functionally from the Syrian civil war to

00:05:29.240 get us off this border where armies of tens of thousands have been fighting each other for like

00:05:34.980 100 years. And I was the only Republican in Congress who took to the floor to defend the president's

00:05:42.960 actions. In fact, the Republican that was managing the time, Chairman McCaul, for our side,

00:05:49.820 he was actually arguing with the Democrats. He was one of the sponsors of the resolution

00:05:53.980 condemning the president. But here was my argument back when the president took the action in Syria

00:05:58.940 that he just referenced in the Rose Guard.

00:06:00.900 If Turkey is not acting like a NATO ally, perhaps the sensible solution is to remove Turkey from NATO

00:06:07.380 rather than keeping the United States inserted in Syria, presumably forever. This is why I oppose 0.69

00:06:13.780 this resolution. I've heard my colleagues say we should not leave Syria without a strategy. Perhaps it

00:06:19.100 is equally logical that we should not stay in Syria without a strategy, because in Syria, we have

00:06:24.540 tens of Americans stuck between armies of tens of thousands who have been fighting each other for

00:06:30.460 hundreds of years and who will likely be fighting each other hundreds of years from now. Our mission to

00:06:35.860 deprive ISIS of caliphate land has largely been accomplished with the help of the Kurds and with over

00:06:41.340 $9 billion being paid to the Kurds. The Kurds have been fighting bravely where they live, but they have been

00:06:47.180 trained, funded, and equipped by the United States. And we cannot accept the proposition that if we

00:06:53.020 support a group of people because our interests align in one case, that this somehow morally binds our

00:06:59.420 country to every conflict that they have past, present, or future. To do this would constrain the

00:07:05.340 utility of America's future alliances, not strengthen them. The blood of America's patriots is among our

00:07:11.340 nation's most sacred currency, and it must be spent only when absolutely vital to protect American

00:07:17.420 interests. We are not the world's police force. We are not the world's piggy bank. I support an America

00:07:22.620 first policy on a foreign policy, and I oppose this resolution. I yield back. We have spilled so much

00:07:27.420 blood, so much treasure, and it is nice to see a president wanting to have our best people here in our

00:07:35.020 country contributing to their families and their communities and our resources committed to the

00:07:40.300 successes of all Americans. We do not have an America first objective in some of these countries

00:07:46.620 where we have extensive troop presence, and it's great to see the president share that view that

00:07:52.060 foreign policy restraint can do a great deal more to advance the interests of our country.

00:07:56.540 Twitter yet again is choosing to enter the political fray as a fact checker now, indicating that on

00:08:05.660 President Trump's tweets they are going to provide their analysis of whether or not they believe the

00:08:10.140 content of those tweets to be true, and it really is quite something. I agree with Donald Trump Jr.'s

00:08:16.460 analysis. How about Twitter go and review all those blue checkmark folks who were saying that there was

00:08:22.700 collusion with Russia, you know, that the president was going to be indicted, that his son was going to

00:08:27.900 jail. You know, all that turned out to be nonsense, and none of that was fact checked. But now that we're

00:08:33.020 coming up on the election, now that coronavirus has impacted the way that we can gather, and obviously the

00:08:39.740 Trump campaign can assemble and gather an energy that we didn't really see in the Biden campaign, and so

00:08:46.460 digitally we see the stakes higher than they've ever been. More and more I think that the way

00:08:53.260 communication is going to occur will involve an enhanced digital element. And President Trump has

00:08:59.740 a number of people across America onboarded onto his digital platforms, whether it's Twitter, Facebook,

00:09:06.380 his web platform, people who get his emails. And so it is an important question not of politics,

00:09:13.420 but of policy. Are we going to continue to treat entities like Twitter, like Facebook, like Google,

00:09:21.340 as unbiased platforms? Or are they going to take on more the role of a news organization,

00:09:28.140 an aggregator, someone who is creating, enhancing, limiting various content? And the initial play from

00:09:35.980 Twitter seems to be that they're not merely going to provide a place for people to share their ideas.

00:09:43.340 They're going to add their analysis to those ideas, whether you like them or not.

00:09:48.220 And we're perhaps left to wonder whether or not that's going to impact who sees them, and when they

00:09:53.420 see them, and how frequently they see them. If you go and Google my name, Matt Gaetz, and Twitter and

00:09:59.020 Vice News, we'll throw it up on our social media after the podcast posts, you'll see that four members of

00:10:06.220 Congress during the heat of battle in the Russia hoax were shadow banned by Twitter. Devin Nunes,

00:10:13.820 Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, and Matt Gaetz. When Vice News first reported this, I initially had to

00:10:19.820 actually go and explain to Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows what shadow banning was. It was not something

00:10:25.260 they were familiar with. They believed if they put out content, it would be treated equally to other

00:10:29.420 content. And so Twitter puts out this statement that says, oh, well, it was a bug. It was a glitch

00:10:33.980 in our system. So I mean, does anyone really believe that? I mean, does anyone believe that

00:10:38.620 during the Russia hoax, the only four members of Congress that happened to receive this particular

00:10:44.460 bug or this particular treatment were myself, Meadows, Jordan, and Nunes? I mean, come on.

00:10:49.260 And so I guess when whoever Twitter decided to do that, I guess they didn't count on Mark Meadows

00:10:56.140 becoming the chief of staff at the White House one day. And I suspect that now Mark is far more

00:11:00.940 educated on the subject, having himself been a victim than had he not been. And I think he's got

00:11:05.340 a unique perspective that will help advise the president. We see reporting coming out that the

00:11:11.420 administration and the president are considering assembling thought leaders to go over what actions

00:11:16.860 could be helpful in dealing with these online platforms. And I want to get into that policy

00:11:23.100 analysis now. A lot of people don't know that Facebook and Twitter, you know, these entities,

00:11:30.380 like you see Twitter, disadvantaging the president, they enjoy liability protections that are not enjoyed

00:11:37.580 by your local newspaper or your local TV station or Fox News or CNN or MSNBC. They have special benefits

00:11:45.660 under Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act as digital platforms. You see,

00:11:51.340 because they're not creating content for which they should be liable. They're not making decisions

00:11:55.740 about content. They're simply saying, come one, come all with your content. And as a consequence of

00:12:01.500 that, they're getting a bunch of protections. Well, now it really begs the question with what Twitter's

00:12:07.660 doing. Do they deserve that? Do they deserve it? And I would suggest that they don't. I mean,

00:12:13.740 let's look first at what the Trump campaign said. This statement comes from the Trump campaign,

00:12:20.780 Brad Parscale. We always knew that Silicon Valley would pull out all the stops to obstruct and

00:12:25.340 interfere with President Trump getting his message through voters. Partnering with these biased fake

00:12:29.900 news media fact checkers is only a smokescreen Twitter is using to try to lend their obvious

00:12:34.940 political tactics some false credibility. There are many reasons the Trump campaign pulled all of our

00:12:39.820 advertising from Twitter months ago, and their clear political bias is one of them. Again,

00:12:45.020 that's a statement from Brad Parscale. Now, I don't think this is good for our country,

00:12:48.460 for our politics, regardless of how you feel about a particular campaign. That is newsworthy in that it

00:12:54.220 is an allegation that this is not legally a platform. And so I am currently working with my Republican

00:13:01.580 colleagues on the Judiciary Committee to draft legislation to say that if you are going to

00:13:07.580 opine as to the truth or falsity of that which is put on your platform for the sake of its viewers,

00:13:14.220 you do not get the protections of Section 230. You are not a platform. You are doing something else.

00:13:19.900 You are editorializing. And thus, if Twitter is going to, you know, fact check President Trump,

00:13:26.940 well, you know, that really begs the question who those fact checkers are. And if there are groups

00:13:31.660 of people that have shown bias against the president, if they're the same folks who told us

00:13:35.660 that the president was a Russian agent, then I think that, you know, the American people are being

00:13:40.540 deprived of the opportunity to hear directly from their president. And so I'm not favoring a special

00:13:48.380 attack on Twitter as a consequence of their action. But I do think that what they're doing ripens

00:13:54.620 this real question in the law. And that is, should a digital platform that advances or, you know,

00:14:03.420 has some discriminatory effect on content that is posted, you know, should they get liability

00:14:10.300 protections that are not provided others that are making those types of editorial-based decisions?

00:14:16.540 I say no special carve-out in our law for big tech. I am currently working with House Judiciary

00:14:22.220 members to revise Section 230 so that we do not have this type of election interference from companies

00:14:28.460 like Twitter going forward. Are U.S. big tech companies going China first and selling out to

00:14:36.060 America's biggest competitor? CNBC's Arun Karpal has a good write-up on this comprehensive report

00:14:43.020 by Top10VPN. And it really ripens this question that I want to talk about on the podcast.

00:14:48.140 U.S. technology companies, are they really going to be able to do business here and also do business

00:14:56.940 for the Chinese Communist Party? I mean, are we okay with an open relationship with U.S. technology

00:15:03.820 companies, with our government, our country, our market, and the Chinese Communist Party? Or would we

00:15:10.780 prefer monogamy with the way things are going, with critical infrastructure and technology and

00:15:16.300 communication being so central to who is going to win the 21st century? Are we cool with those U.S. tech

00:15:24.620 companies engaging in this type of work for China that I'm going to talk about? And whether we decide

00:15:29.900 we want the monogamy or the open relationship, I think we at least need to have the talk. And so here

00:15:35.820 in this Top10VPN report, we learn that in the Xinjiang province, we have a hotbed of some of the most

00:15:43.580 egregious human rights abuses. Uyghurs, other ethnic minorities. I mean, they've got 1.5 million people 1.00

00:15:52.860 in concentration camps. They call them re-education camps, but they're essentially

00:15:57.340 concentration camps. And how are they able to keep 1.5 million people locked up, rounded up and locked

00:16:04.620 up? I can't even keep my boomer parents from going to the grocery store during the coronavirus,

00:16:11.020 even though I'm like half an hour away and have told them I will go whenever they want me to.

00:16:16.620 China's able to get the job done because they have a high-intensity surveillance regime.

00:16:22.380 Facial recognition, identity checks, retinal scans. I mean, China is one of the leading investors in

00:16:29.580 the world in the technology that's even going to surveil our genetics. I mean, why do you think

00:16:35.340 that Chinese companies like TikTok and Zoom deploy here to be able to gather information? We talked

00:16:41.900 about the dual-use technology with Chinese drones on a prior episode. Matter of fact, episode 10,

00:16:47.580 we talked about how China buys off US politicians. Now we're seeing potentially how they buy off US

00:16:53.660 tech companies. And so they've got these intense surveillance systems and the CCP has developed a

00:17:02.540 regime and a protocol around using technology as a tool of repression. And that's really something

00:17:08.860 important for Americans to think about and orient to because I think for a lot of us, technology,

00:17:14.220 we don't view that as like our government repressing us. In a lot of ways, technology liberates us. It

00:17:18.860 liberates us to have a car come pick us up wherever we are or have something delivered to us that we no

00:17:23.980 longer have to go get or communicate with someone in an easier and more efficient way than we had before.

00:17:29.980 So we view technology almost as a tool of liberation, but that is very much not the case in

00:17:36.380 joyless China. In China, you've got technology fused with the government in a way to hurt people

00:17:43.580 and keep them confined and keep them from speaking out. And so with technology playing that role,

00:17:50.620 you know, you really have to ask yourself, are we okay with the results of this top 10 VPN report

00:17:57.100 that tell us that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Norton, Twitter, Facebook, I mean, these US companies

00:18:05.100 that you know, providing websites, email, content, authentication, different companies doing

00:18:11.900 different things sort of within that that collage of services. And, you know, would we would we have

00:18:18.460 been okay with, you know, US companies engaging in, you know, the back end build out for communist Russia,

00:18:27.020 for the Soviet Union? Probably not. But with these tech companies, you know, that the argument was,

00:18:34.940 well, if we engage China with US companies, and they get used to the flow of US capital,

00:18:42.300 of US investment structures, of Western marketplaces, that that will draw China into the modern world. 0.74

00:18:48.780 But if the reality has not been that, if anything, China is more, I think, in a period of reversion to

00:18:58.700 their their most dangerous nationalism. But instead of technology having this this effect that we were

00:19:05.660 told that would it would have by all the free trade pro China crowd, the technologies that we have

00:19:11.900 developed in our country are being used to create more efficient systems in China for them to repress 1.00

00:19:18.860 their people. And I mean, look at how they're treating their own their own people, these Uyghurs and 1.00

00:19:24.460 other minorities in their country. I mean, heck, those are their neighbors. Those are the people

00:19:28.620 they live with. You know, if China took control, how do you think they'd treat people from a far away

00:19:34.140 land? You know, how do you think they'd treat us if they had total control over us? I hope we never

00:19:39.180 have to get to that, that world. And that's one reason why I think that we've really got to have an

00:19:46.540 honest discussion in this country about what constitutes critical technology and critical

00:19:54.220 knowledge that we don't want to export. I mean, there are certain elements of our defense supply

00:19:58.860 chain that we do not allow to be sold to foreign entities. And frankly, China, China's already trying

00:20:04.540 to violate that enough. But should we view tech companies the same way? And are we cool with the

00:20:10.940 open relationship? Because that's what we have now. And I think there are a lot of Americans that would

00:20:15.660 have more monogamy with our own company in these circumstances. And it's really rich that like

00:20:21.980 Democrats spent years and tens of millions of dollars, and they got all of America in this

00:20:28.460 big uproar over Russia interfering in our election supposedly to hurt people. But then their big tech

00:20:35.180 donors are interfering to help an oppressive regime like China overseas. And there doesn't seem to be

00:20:43.580 as much a pushback against China from the left. And so I hope that with President Trump really

00:20:49.580 understanding China in, I think, the most complete way of any American president during my lifetime,

00:20:56.780 that we'll certainly see the role that US technologies can play in assuring that we reassert ourselves

00:21:02.780 and meet China with with the clarity and with the sense of purpose that the challenge requires.

00:21:11.260 If you're enjoying Hot Takes with Matt Gaetz, make sure to subscribe,

00:21:14.620 leave us a five-star rating and review, and tune in tomorrow for more Hot Takes.

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - May 27, 2020

Episode 12 - Working on Legislation Revising Section 230, Trump Deprives Pelosi of FISA Votes, America First Foreign Policy

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