The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - November 09, 2023


Episode 130 LIVE： Congress Backs FBI – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Topics
Carlos Jimenez
Hosted by
Matt Gaetz
Mentioned
Carlos Jimenez Kevin McCarthy Lindsey Graham Mike Johnson Speaker Steve Womack Donald Trump Hunter Biden George Hill Don Bacon Schumer Maria Salazar J. Edgar Hoover Derek Van Orden Jennifer Gonzalez-Cologne Anthony D'Esposito Nicole Malliotakis Mario Diaz-Balart Brian Fitzpatrick Richard McCormick and 73 more
Episode 129 LIVE： Gaza Disrupts Congress – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz Episode 131 LIVE： The Ladder CR – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Episode Stats


Length

28 minutes

Words per minute

154.72

Word count

4,386

Sentence count

301

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GAZETTE) takes aim at the FBI and his amendment that prevents them from getting a massive new headquarters in Washington, D.C. Rep. Gaetz is joined by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. Cory Booker (D -NJ) to speak against the FBI.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Matt Gaetz, the biggest firebrand inside of the House of Representatives.
00:00:07.520 You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay?
00:00:09.920 Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero.
00:00:14.660 We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight. 1.00
00:00:20.220 I want to thank you, Matt Gaetz, for holding the line.
00:00:24.340 Matt Gaetz is a courageous man.
00:00:26.360 If we had hundreds of Matt Gaetz in D.C., the country turns around. It's that simple.
00:00:31.940 He's so tough. He's so strong. He's smart, and he loves this country. Matt Gaetz.
00:00:38.040 It is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you.
00:00:43.240 We will save America. It's choose your fighter time. Send in the firebrands. 1.00
00:00:48.640 Welcome back to Firebrand Live.
00:00:57.100 We're broadcasting out of Room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building here at the Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C.
00:01:02.460 And a big dispute over the willingness of Republicans to continue to back a corrupt FBI with all of their whims and demands has just brought down a major government funding bill.
00:01:15.240 We've been talking about these single-subject spending bills.
00:01:17.920 The single-subject spending bill that deals with general government appropriations, buildings, facilities, was not brought up today as planned because of a big fight over the FBI.
00:01:27.640 You've heard me go over their abuses, their problems. We're going to revisit some of that now.
00:01:34.040 But wherever you're watching from in the live streams, thank you for tuning in from North Carolina, Wyoming, Florida, Arizona.
00:01:41.920 When I was in Arizona last, I was with Congressman Eli Crane.
00:01:45.020 And in the many stops we made, people consistently were focused on why money and resources continue to flow to DOJ, FBI, ATF.
00:01:56.860 And folks said, use the power of the purse. Stop it. 1.00
00:02:00.240 And what Eli Crane and I had to tell those folks at Stop After Stop in Arizona is that when we bring up the amendment just to stop giving the FBI a new headquarters larger than the Pentagon, Republicans will betray us.
00:02:19.520 They will vote against that amendment and they will stand with the FBI.
00:02:24.180 Won't matter how many illegal searches, won't matter how many unjustifiable queries, won't matter what inspector general reports say, won't even matter what whistleblowers say.
00:02:36.480 Republicans will bail on us and they will vote with the FBI.
00:02:40.200 And that is exactly what happened.
00:02:42.140 I bring you now to the floor of the House of Representatives for my amendment to stop the FBI from being able to have a new building, a new headquarters, a new Washington field office.
00:02:52.960 Take a listen to what happens.
00:02:56.440 Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
00:02:57.660 The FBI wants a massive new complex for their Washington, D.C. area-based activities.
00:03:05.280 They want to spend more than $300 million on that complex.
00:03:08.860 Though the FBI has an employee base that's about 2.3% of the United States military.
00:03:16.020 Mr. Speaker, they're literally asking for something that is larger than the Pentagon for the FBI.
00:03:21.180 And so my amendment would disallow any planning, spending, distribution of funds for that purpose.
00:03:27.500 I don't believe that the FBI deserves a massive new headquarters or Washington field office.
00:03:33.220 The activities inside of Washington, the greater Washington metro area, have really driven a lot of the investigative work we have done.
00:03:41.200 It's not bad folks from the FBI out at some field office in middle America or elsewhere in the country.
00:03:47.720 It is the Washington, D.C.-based activities that have pressured other field offices for no good law enforcement reason.
00:03:55.180 It's the D.C.-based entities that have suppressed credible investigative leads into criminal conduct over the objections of other bureaus and offices.
00:04:04.460 And they've initiated investigations into American citizens merely for engaging in constitutionally protected speech.
00:04:10.320 They've attempted to entrap members of the United States Senate by holding false classified briefings.
00:04:15.600 That's testimony we got from Senators Grassley and Senator Johnson.
00:04:19.020 They've also worked hard to censor factual information harmful to their preferred political candidates.
00:04:25.820 Notably, the Hunter Biden laptop story that the FBI, based in the D.C. metro area, were involved in cajoling censorship of.
00:04:34.240 Building a new headquarters would condone, reinforce, and enable the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's nefarious behavior.
00:04:42.900 We shouldn't do it, and we should adopt this amendment to ensure that's the case.
00:04:45.940 I reserve.
00:04:46.740 Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and my thanks to the minority side for giving me an opportunity to speak.
00:04:53.460 I rise in opposition to the gentleman from Florida's amendment.
00:04:56.380 We're not always going to hate the FBI, but what I do know is that when I toured the FBI headquarters,
00:05:05.760 I saw it in a state of disrepair that is going to need the attention of the owners of that property, and that's us.
00:05:13.500 The fact is, the building is crumbling, and there's going to be a need to do something.
00:05:18.720 What that something is, I'm not an expert on, but I think it would be wrong for us to be taking this action today,
00:05:27.340 pursuant to this amendment, without having at least a hearing and an opportunity for the people responsible for the facilities,
00:05:35.360 FBI, GSA, any other stakeholder, to be able to help us understand what the situation is today and what the needs are of tomorrow.
00:05:44.840 Gentlemen from Wisconsin Reserve, gentlemen from Florida is recognized.
00:05:47.660 Mr. Speaker, it is not my grave concern that the FBI's building is crumbling.
00:05:52.580 It is my grave concern that the civil liberties of Americans are crumbling,
00:05:56.680 and I wish we were more worried about that and less worried about whether or not we got new carpet and wallpaper at the FBI building.
00:06:02.880 My colleague from Arkansas says that the FBI headquarters is in a state of disrepair.
00:06:08.220 Mr. Speaker, it is the FBI itself that is in a state of disrepair.
00:06:12.000 And so while my colleague from Arkansas may be right that we may not always hate the FBI,
00:06:17.020 how about while we are most concerned about the things they are doing, we not go build them a new $300 million building?
00:06:24.120 My colleague says there needs to be a hearing.
00:06:25.940 Well, let me tell you about the hearing that mattered to me, and frankly, many of my Democrat colleagues who are also worried about civil liberties.
00:06:32.340 The hearing where we learned that the FBI has conducted over 278,000 illegal queries on the FISA system.
00:06:40.720 Or the hearing that said that the inspector general found that 38 times an hour these people were violating FISA.
00:06:48.220 The notion that we would stand here and defend them, frankly, is deeply disappointing,
00:06:53.120 and I think those folks deserve to sit in the rat-infested J. Edgar Hoover building
00:06:58.160 until they get their act straight with America's civil liberties, our reserve.
00:07:03.900 We are back live, and the person you heard debating against me wasn't a liberal Democrat.
00:07:10.320 It wasn't a Democrat at all.
00:07:12.180 That was Arkansas Republican Steve Womack.
00:07:16.100 So a Republican was leading the debate against my amendment
00:07:20.560 to not allow these hundreds of millions of dollars to go out the door for a new FBI headquarters.
00:07:26.180 Now, Lisa on Facebook says it's time to dismantle the FBI and start over.
00:07:31.600 I agree.
00:07:32.720 I think if we started with a blank sheet of paper, even with the concept of federal law enforcement,
00:07:37.180 it would look so different than the FBI today,
00:07:39.740 and we would build in, I think, a lot more of the capabilities at the state and local level
00:07:45.460 to be able to solve crimes, and we wouldn't have this intelligence-gathering,
00:07:49.860 political, predictive apparatus at the FBI that's been corrupted.
00:07:53.780 A DEMA on Facebook says they need to move out of Washington, D.C.
00:07:57.800 There actually was a proposal to move them out of the D.C. metro area to Huntsville, Alabama.
00:08:04.880 I don't know how I feel about that.
00:08:07.040 I wonder how my fellow Florida men and women feel about that.
00:08:10.020 I think we should have all of the SEC states as like a buffer.
00:08:14.140 They shouldn't be in any SECs.
00:08:15.340 That's too close to our beloved Florida.
00:08:17.140 I hear Nome, Alaska is lovely, never been myself.
00:08:21.740 Maybe the Mariana Islands or Guam, that'd be a better place for the FBI.
00:08:27.320 And Minnie on Rumble says she wants, Minnie wants names. 1.00
00:08:30.900 Who were the 70, 70 Republicans who voted with Steve Womack and against my amendment?
00:08:40.780 These were the 70.
00:08:41.620 I'm going to read you their names right now.
00:08:43.520 Don Bacon, and again, these are all Republicans who voted with the FBI.
00:08:49.700 Don Bacon, Andy Barr, Cliff Bentz, Stephanie Bice, Mike Bost, Vern Buchanan, Ken Buck, Ken Calvert,
00:09:00.520 Mike Carey, John Carter, Lori Chavez de Reamer, Tom Cole, Anthony D'Esposito, Mario Diaz-Balart,
00:09:10.000 John Duarte, Chuck Edwards, Jake Elze, Randy Feenstra, Drew Ferguson, Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Flood,
00:09:17.000 Andrew Garbarino, Tony Gonzalez, Jennifer Gonzalez-Cologne, Kay Granger, Sam Graves,
00:09:22.500 Brett Guthrie, Ashley Hinson, David Joyce, Tom Keen, Mike Kelly, Kevin Kiley, Young Kim,
00:09:28.340 David Kustoff, Darren LaHood, Nick LaLoda, Doug Landborn, Mike Lawler, Laurel Lee, Julia Letlow,
00:09:34.880 Frank Lucas, Blaine, Luca Meyer, Nicole Malliotakis, Richard McCormick, Patrick McHenry,
00:09:41.100 Daniel Muser, Max Miller, Blake Moore, James Moylan, Greg Murphy, Dan Newhouse,
00:09:46.760 Zach Nunn, Jay Obernolte, Mike Rogers, Hal Rogers, Maria Elvira Salazar, Austin Scott,
00:09:53.100 Pete Sessions, Mike Simpson, Jason Smith, Chris Smith, Lloyd Smucker, Dale Strong,
00:09:59.680 Glenn Thompson, Michael Turner, David Valadeo, Derek Van Orten, Ann Wagner, Brad Wenstrup,
00:10:06.200 and of course, Steve Womack.
00:10:08.280 Those are the people who have not yet been sufficiently convinced that there is corruption
00:10:13.480 in Washington, D.C. that would warrant not giving the FBI hundreds of millions of dollars
00:10:19.440 and additional resources to have a massive headquarters here. Now, is this an indictment
00:10:23.920 of every single person who works for the FBI? No. But what we learned in our investigations
00:10:29.480 is that good people who worked at the FBI and other places, Wichita, Boston, they were getting
00:10:37.120 misinformation, disinformation, bad information, bad instruction, and bad intentions that was all
00:10:44.400 coming out of the rot of the swamp of Washington, D.C., where people here in the FBI actually think
00:10:50.940 that their job is to function as some sort of political enforcement wing, not a law enforcement
00:10:57.480 wing. And you don't have to believe me, as we've showed you before, but it is worth visiting again
00:11:01.840 on the heels of that vote. Here is George Hill, an FBI whistleblower, talking about how the badness
00:11:09.120 comes out of Washington. Take a listen.
00:11:13.780 The SSA in Boston said they were going to a political rally, which is First Amendment
00:11:19.340 protected activity. No, we're not uploading. We're not starting cases on these people.
00:11:24.140 To which they said, well, we're going to call your SAC. And the SSA said, go right ahead. Because
00:11:30.540 when you're pushing back, you know, you want to make sure that you have your six covered. So
00:11:37.800 the SAC and the ASAC were intimately aware of these kinds of exchanges that were going on.
00:11:45.700 And again, to his credit, Joe Bonavallanta said, no, we're not opening up cases on people who went
00:11:51.560 to a rally. And I forgot a key part. The SSA for CT2 said, happy to do it. Show us where they were
00:12:02.280 inside the Capitol. And we'll look into it. To which WFO said, we can't show you those videos
00:12:08.540 unless you can tell us the exact time and place those individuals were inside the Capitol. To
00:12:14.600 which the SSA responded back. And I was privy to these conversations firsthand. Why can't you show us,
00:12:21.920 why can't you just send us, give us access to the 11,000 hours of video that's available?
00:12:27.220 Because there may be, may be UC's undercover officers or CHS's confidential human for confidential
00:12:37.600 human sources on those videos, whose identity we need to protect.
00:12:42.520 Don't you see? We need more George Hills in the FBI. People who just want to get the facts. But you
00:12:52.360 had all kinds of gamesmanship and politics and even seeding the January 6th riot with confidential
00:12:59.240 human sources, perhaps undercover agents. Not perhaps, it's been functionally acknowledged.
00:13:06.140 The problems arise when more of the decision-making in the FBI is made within the beltway, within the
00:13:16.000 influence of DC, not when good patriotic Americans sign up to be part of a premier law enforcement
00:13:20.980 agency and are just trying to do good. We saw that from so many whistleblowers. We also saw systemically
00:13:27.380 how the FBI has just blown through our civil liberties. Used to be Democrats cared about civil
00:13:33.560 liberties. But when I think about the abuses of the FBI, I cannot get past their illegal queries of
00:13:39.980 the FISA system. And again, you don't have to believe me. Listen to the Obama-appointed Inspector
00:13:48.140 General Michael Horowitz talking about how abusive the FBI is to the Constitution and our civil liberties
00:13:55.040 and our laws. Take a listen. I want to get into the 3.4 million backdoor searches that the ranking
00:14:04.940 member pointed out in his opening statement. Mr. Inspector General, how should the public think
00:14:10.600 about those? Well, I think what we've seen in the various public reports, and I'm limited in what I can
00:14:17.840 say about what's public, which I think is one of the issues, by the way, that's worth talking about is
00:14:21.520 transparency here. It's obviously very concerning that there's that volume of searches and particularly
00:14:29.920 concerning the error rate that was reported on in the last two years in the public reporting.
00:14:36.880 And that error rate was what? I believe it was around 30 percent. I think, fellow members, I think it's
00:14:45.220 around 30 percent. Well, 30 percent. I'm a lawyer, not a mathematician, but 3.4 million, about 30
00:14:51.260 percent. You're talking about seven figures of error in terms of these searches. I'm wondering,
00:14:57.020 how many people can perform these backdoor queries? I'm going to defer to board members because you have
00:15:05.580 the review ongoing. I'm afraid I don't have those figures at my fingertips in terms of the number of
00:15:11.180 people that can conduct those types of searches. But I share the concern expressed in the question
00:15:19.580 that we need to have greater safeguards, and I urge Congress to incorporate a requirement for FISA
00:15:26.060 court review of these kinds of searches to protect Americans' Fourth Amendment rights.
00:15:29.980 Yeah, 3.4 million backdoor searches, more than a million of them in error. If I represent to you that
00:15:37.820 we believe there may be north of 10,000 people in the federal government that can perform those queries,
00:15:43.820 would anyone here have a basis to disagree with that assessment? No.
00:15:51.100 10,000 people violating the law 38 times an hour for the period they were reviewed to get your
00:15:57.980 information without a warrant. Sometimes they were searching their neighbors, other families that went
00:16:04.140 went to school with their kids, their exes. It's just devious stuff. So when we had
00:16:12.620 that amendment fail by 70 votes, and you all seem quite worked up about it.
00:16:17.260 Preg Mima on Getter says, Lord, protect George Hill. And I agree with that. But when our amendment went
00:16:23.020 down, we got the conservatives together and said, well, then guess what? We're not going to pass a bill
00:16:29.100 to continue this type of funding. So the entire general government bill did not get voted on today.
00:16:36.220 Not exclusively, but in large part because of the way these guys were treating our conservative
00:16:42.860 amendments. People on this list of 70 continuously vote against the amendments to reduce spending and
00:16:50.220 provide accountability offered by Republicans. And so we're not going to vote for government spending
00:16:55.500 bills that continue the status quo and the problems and that don't showcase that the accountability and
00:17:01.900 oversight work we do has to be lashed to money consequences to these different fiefdoms within
00:17:09.420 our government. That's how it has to happen. So the bill that was planned to be passed off the floor
00:17:15.100 today did not get a vote because it did not have the votes because too many so-called Republicans
00:17:21.580 keep voting against actual Republican conservative amendments. Speaking of so-called Republicans,
00:17:27.980 we're now going to address the curious case of Carlos Jimenez. Carlos Jimenez had quite an interesting
00:17:33.820 reaction from a from a crowd last evening in Miami-Dade County when President Trump mentioned his name. But
00:17:39.740 before we get to that, we have to get to we have to get to the backup. During the speaker contest,
00:17:47.580 there were some people who disliked me so much for whatever reason, they wouldn't vote for Jim
00:17:53.980 Jordan. They wouldn't vote for some other conservative options that we'd put together.
00:17:58.940 And just so that you see how personal this was, take a listen to Carlos Jimenez as we were ousting
00:18:06.380 McCarthy and replacing him.
00:18:10.540 I think it's despicable. I think that Matt Gaetz is looking for clicks. A lot of the things that he said
00:18:15.660 that were wrong were actually going right. Look, I don't think it would, it has to do with Kevin
00:18:19.580 McCarthy. I think it has to do with anybody who was there. This would have happened because Matt
00:18:24.140 Gaetz wants attention. And so Matt Gaetz is Joe Biden's favorite Republican, without a doubt.
00:18:31.420 What this has caused, this is causing damage to the Republican Party.
00:18:35.340 People are telling, are calling me, not calling me, but there's, there are tweets about me that somehow
00:18:40.300 I'm going to vote for Jeffries for, uh, for Speaker of the house. I was one of the guys that voted to
00:18:45.740 keep Kevin McCarthy. All right. The only way that Jeffries can become Speaker of the house is because
00:18:50.380 of the chaos that was caused by Matt Gaetz. And so no, look, I've been very consistent.
00:18:54.700 Uh, Congressman Gaetz tweeted this out. He said that picking up on something that Congressman
00:18:59.260 Ro Khanna put out that they'd raised the, the, the motion to vacate threshold up if they,
00:19:04.220 if there were certain compromises, like a ban on congressional stock trading term limits to 12
00:19:09.420 years ban on political donations from lobbyists, would that be a framework that you would be
00:19:13.420 interested in and raising the threshold to vacate? No, I'm not going to be held hostage to eight
00:19:18.860 people. Sorry. And it's going to happen. So no negotiation in your mind. No, no, no outcome.
00:19:23.180 We can negotiate maybe, but no, this is like, again, a gun being held here and had,
00:19:29.580 Hey, we can create chaos anytime we want. We want these things. Well, let's, let's debate those
00:19:35.100 things inside the conference. Does the conference wants those things just because eight people,
00:19:39.900 four people, five people want that. That is not the American way that's hostage taking 0.51
00:19:46.220 and you don't negotiate with us. We're back live. Did you not see Carlos Jimenez? They're
00:19:54.380 shilling to block a ban on congressional stock trading, shilling to block a vote on term limits,
00:20:03.180 shilling to block a vote on a balanced budget amendment. These are substantive policy issues,
00:20:07.900 but you just see in his tone and in his reaction, he's just so personally worked up over his dislike
00:20:13.700 for me that he's unwilling to engage in good faith negotiations to try to change Washington and fix the
00:20:20.200 House of Representatives. So he went on. It's quite something when someone criticizes me for
00:20:25.340 attention seeking and then goes and seeks every opportunity to launch that criticism. But you know
00:20:29.800 what? I think it's okay. I think the marketplace of ideas requires us to put our vision and our
00:20:35.480 viewpoint before the public. And then guess what? We have elections and we have opportunities to see
00:20:41.680 how the public will react to the positions that we take. And we got to see last night how a crowd in
00:20:49.900 my, a Republican MAGA crowd in Miami-Dade County reacted to even the mention of Carlos Jimenez. Take a listen.
00:20:58.380 And your Congressman Carlos Jimenez. Do you know him? Carlos Jimenez. Some people say Carlos Jimenez. Oh,
00:21:11.980 you don't like him? What's going on? Carlos. Come on, Carlos. We got to get that straightened out.
00:21:20.820 Carlos Jimenez. Carlos Jimenez. Really? Wow.
00:21:26.520 Carlos. I don't think President Trump really appreciated how negative that reaction would be
00:21:39.880 with just the mention of Carlos Jimenez. If Carlos Jimenez had been on that stage in Miami-Dade County,
00:21:45.860 he would have been booed off of it. And maybe it's the fact that in 2016, he said that he was voting
00:21:52.440 for Hillary Clinton. And maybe in 2018, it was that he voted for Andrew Gillum. But maybe it was his
00:21:59.380 most recent attacks against our efforts to try to improve the House of Representatives that were met
00:22:05.200 with a righteous ire in lovely Hialeah in Miami-Dade County. Stay strong to Miami-Dade and to our great
00:22:14.060 MAGA friends, and we will continue our work up here to change Washington. One person who seems to have
00:22:20.400 changed his view on Ukraine. This next clip, I don't even know how to introduce it to you because
00:22:25.660 when I first saw it, I thought it might've been an AI deepfake. This is Senator Lindsey Graham
00:22:33.120 talking about his perspective on Ukraine. And this is a real video. Take a listen.
00:22:39.480 This is the same administration that is having more illegal immigrants cross our border illegally
00:22:48.460 than all presidents combined. They don't know what they're doing on the border. They don't know
00:22:54.040 what they're doing when it comes to bad guys. If you had Donald Trump as president, we would secure
00:22:59.000 the border tomorrow. People would listen to him in Mexico and other places because they're afraid of
00:23:05.000 him. If he were president of the United States, this stuff with Iran would end. The only thing 1.00
00:23:10.040 that works with bad guys is to be strong. Our border is broken. Our policies don't work. It's a
00:23:15.800 matter of time that a bunch of Americans get killed. I will not vote for one dime for any country, 0.98
00:23:21.160 including Israel, until we first secure our own border.
00:23:27.320 We're back live. I never thought I'd hear those words from Lindsey Graham. The prioritization over our
00:23:32.040 border or Ukraine's or Israel's or any other country. It's welcome news. And guess what? 1.00
00:23:37.720 This shows that the feedback that people are giving right now to their elected representatives
00:23:43.080 and to their senators is getting through. We are moving the Overton window on all of this unpaid
00:23:49.080 for foreign aid that subjugates our priorities to some sort of secondary status. The people will not
00:23:56.840 take that anymore and we'll see if the things that Senator Graham says on Hannity are actually
00:24:03.880 reflected in how he votes and acts in the Senate. I hope they are and I hope that we're able to get
00:24:09.800 that border legislation up and we should pressure Schumer on it because they're getting hammered in New
00:24:15.000 York. Turns out when you invite all of the third world's problems to New York City, it's no sanctuary. 1.00
00:24:21.640 It's a hell hole and the people are living in that hell hole and they should be contacting Senator
00:24:27.160 Schumer and maybe he'll make a pivot or a move like we saw from Senator Graham. One person who's had
00:24:33.960 to make a move is Kevin McCarthy, former speaker. And honestly, I hadn't thought about him in a while,
00:24:39.160 but it seems I'm on his mind. We're just getting this report from CNN. They asked McCarthy if I ought to be
00:24:46.680 thrown out of the Republican conference. And he said that the GOP would be better off tremendously
00:24:55.800 if I were no longer in the party. McCarthy, directly being quoted here, says, quote,
00:25:02.200 he doesn't have a conservative bent in his philosophy, just the nature of what he focuses on.
00:25:07.640 Matt's goal was his goal to be the TV congressman. I think if you go and line up the number of TV
00:25:16.280 interviews I've had with the number that McCarthy's had, he was sort of the TV speaker in the absence
00:25:22.200 of substance. See, this is what they do. When I want to talk about budgets that balance, term limits,
00:25:29.160 releasing the January 6th tapes, real accountability over the deep state, over the Biden family,
00:25:34.040 they want to just say, oh, it's all personal. It's all personal, but they can't address the substance
00:25:40.040 because they would be greeted a lot the way Carlos Jimenez's mention was greeted in Miami-Dade
00:25:48.200 County. And hear McCarthy again on whether or not he thinks the GOP should expel Gates. Here's McCarthy.
00:25:55.640 That's up to the conference. But I mean, I don't believe the conference will ever heal if there's no
00:26:02.200 consequence for the action. Mr. Former Speaker, thoughts and prayers as you're going through all of
00:26:09.320 your stages of grief here. I know that you mocked and made fun of Tim Burchett for praying about his
00:26:15.960 decision to vote to remove you, but you're still in our prayers. And maybe if you didn't mock prayer and
00:26:23.000 engaged in some, you would have better peace and comfort. And at the end of the day, we all expect Kevin
00:26:30.120 McCarthy to go back and return to the people who he's always represented in Congress, on K Street, of
00:26:36.440 course, not in Bakersfield. I don't think you'll be seeing him walking the streets of Bakersfield anytime soon.
00:26:42.360 But the notion that the Republican conference is going to kick me out for doing something that was
00:26:49.800 exceedingly popular seems unlikely.
00:26:55.480 The decision to fire McCarthy and replace him with Mike Johnson has been popular. Popular with
00:27:02.440 Democrats, popular with Republicans, popular with independents. It may be one of the most popular
00:27:07.480 things House Republicans have done. Now, the potential with Mike Johnson is admittedly unfulfilled. I think
00:27:13.480 we've got to give this guy the opportunity to lead. We've got to work with him. Where we disagree, we've got to
00:27:19.240 present our ideas. We've got to demand that we be heard. We've got to seek not just process, but outcomes that
00:27:25.960 advance the American people. And I know that's what Mike Johnson wants. But if what Kevin McCarthy wants is to make a
00:27:34.600 motion to throw me out of the Republican conference, I guess all I can really say is bring the effing motion.
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00:28:04.600 We'll see you next week.