In this episode, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GAZETTE) talks about being sucker punched in the hallway by Rep. Kevin McCarthy and how he handled the situation. Rep. Gaetz is a freshman congressman from Georgia who has been a member of the House of Representatives for less than a year.
00:03:11.020You know, you just don't expect a guy who was at one time three steps away from the White House to sucker, hit you with a sucker punch in the hallway.
00:03:19.660And did he raise his voice back to you?
00:03:21.500Yeah, just that high-pitched kind of thing, I believe, and that was about it.
00:04:09.260You know, he's going to be gone either after Christmas or next year.
00:04:12.580And like I said, you know, he's got the $17 million, and he's going to keep, you know, he'll be, he's already messing in everybody's races, and we all know that.
00:05:34.520But something is up, and we're going to go over that in addition to some of the key findings of the Homeland Security Committee's report on the costs of illegal immigration.
00:05:46.020We've got testimony from USAID about how your money is being spent in Ukraine.
00:05:50.560Big things also exploding in the House Oversight Committee today.
00:05:54.200But when the former speaker is pushing people in the back that they don't like, it's definitely top of mind with a lot of folks.
00:06:05.980I'm just stirring the pot, and I need to do my job.
00:06:08.880Well, we're going to be getting to all of it, Karen.
00:06:11.900But first, you heard Burchett there go over this altercation.
00:06:18.560And the key fact that doesn't make this a he said, she said, is that an NPR reporter, Claudia Grisalas, actually was interviewing Burchett during the whole deal.
00:06:31.420She put up a tweet thread detailing her firsthand evidentiary account of this altercation between McCarthy and Burchett.
00:06:42.620So I'm now reading from the report from Claudia Grisalas of NPR, I have never seen this on Capitol Hill.
00:06:50.940While talking to Tim Burchett after the GOP conference meeting, former Speaker McCarthy walked by with his detail, and McCarthy shoved Burchett.
00:09:31.080We have submitted to the House Ethics Committee the information regarding these reports, this evidence, these firsthand accounts.
00:09:40.120And McCarthy has sought to weaponize the ethics committee.
00:09:44.360He sought to signal to them that the thing that they ought to do to try to cover for his failings as speaker was to attack me.
00:09:51.840You heard in a lot of the Manu Raju, Kevin McCarthy therapy session, him reference that I'm just an ethically challenged person.
00:10:02.200First of all, it seems as though the therapy session that McCarthy had with Manu Raju didn't take and didn't work.
00:10:10.400There's other video you're going to see today where Kevin McCarthy is responding directly to these accounts from this reporter and from Burchett.
00:10:19.220And when someone's lying, their register goes up in their voice, and he is squealing like a stuck pig when answering these questions.
00:10:28.760Kevin McCarthy is a frequent liar, but that does not mean that he's a good liar.
00:10:34.100You could tell when he's lying, and it's just absolutely laid bare before everyone to see.
00:10:40.880And I think the ethics committee should take a look at that conduct because we shouldn't be in a body where we don't use our words, right?
00:10:49.300Like when we came at McCarthy, it was based on the substance of an agreement we made in January and his inability to comport with that agreement.
00:11:22.760There was also weirdness today in the United States Senate.
00:11:26.980Mark Wayne Mullen, I've never really seen this guy get worked up about like the fentanyl crisis, the national debt, but he got all kinds of exercised against a union witness today in the United States Senate.
00:11:47.600Sir, I wish he was in the truck with me when I was building my plumbing company myself and my wife was running the office because I sure remember working pretty hard in long hours.
00:12:59.320I have frequently used the statements of witnesses in the past to impeach them, but I tried to use, like, my brain and my words and logic and reason, tying that to some consequence, maybe defunding things that aren't working.
00:13:13.640I mean, like, Mark Wayne Mullen beating some guy's ass who doesn't like him in a Senate committee room isn't going to help his constituents.
00:13:21.660It's not going to ensure that we're in any better position.
00:13:24.000You know what, Mark Wayne Mullen, if you want to fight, let's actually get into the fights that matter on our budget, on our border, where you've been kind of noticeably absent.
00:13:32.980So, with Mark Wayne Mullen, it's a lot of tough talk.
00:13:38.100And maybe the hero of that entire exchange was Bernie Sanders, who knows, kind of the get-off-my-lawn old-grandfather type telling him to sit down.
00:13:46.940There were also fireworks today in the House Oversight Committee hearing.
00:13:51.720And to set the backdrop here, you know, Chairman Comer has laid out how the Biden family has really engaged in widespread corruption, international influence peddling.
00:14:02.540And the common refrain from Democrats defending Joe Biden is that, well, they might have been involved in that influence peddling, but Joe never got the benefit.
00:14:13.600Well, now we've got the bank records and the actual check to Joe Biden, where the gains were ill-gotten and then sent from a different family member to Joe Biden.
00:14:23.280Again, Jared Moskowitz is a Democrat from Florida.
00:14:28.380He then found out that the Comer family has an inter-family loan as well.
00:14:34.620And Moskowitz is making the claim against Chairman Comer that there's some sort of hypocrisy.
00:14:39.920But that is absurd when you consider the fact that in the Comer family, there is no allegation that the gain is ill-gotten.
00:14:46.460That is why it is relevant and important as to Joe Biden, but it's just family as it relates to people who aren't engaged in the foreign corrupt influence peddling.
00:14:57.360I think that could have been easily explained.
00:16:26.000I see a lot of you on the live stream right now are asking questions about impeachment.
00:16:30.260You're angry that the impeachment of Mayorkas was tabled when eight Republicans joined with Democrats to table it.
00:16:37.200I, too, share your frustration about that.
00:16:39.340We've talked a lot about how Mayorkas deserves impeachment.
00:16:42.660Matter of fact, we've got a big report in moments we're going to go over from the Homeland Security Committee.
00:16:47.420But when Marjorie Taylor Greene brings these votes to the floor, whether it's impeaching Mayorkas or Ray, Garland, Biden, Harris, here's what she's showing you.
00:17:00.060And you're not going to like hearing this, but it's the truth.
00:17:02.980We don't have the votes to impeach anyone right now.
00:17:06.860We've got a lot of Republicans who do not believe that the impeachment tool should be used against these folks.
00:17:13.740And I'm left wondering, what accountability tool are you waiting for?
00:17:18.780We allow a lot of these folks to evade subpoenas.
00:17:23.380We haven't brought contempt to the floor when we've been jerked around.
00:17:27.700We always allow them to show up at the last second.
00:17:31.000No real accountability, no real punishment.
00:17:33.200And then on the budget, you're going to see Democrats and Republicans today voting together to just continue the budgetary priorities of Joe Biden and the policies of Nancy Pelosi.
00:17:49.800So for all of the discussion about how much these folks deserve impeachment, and many of them do, it's not going to happen with this team of House Republicans.
00:18:04.140There are facts that have been suppressed on another matter I want to discuss, and that is the vaccine.
00:18:09.760So yesterday, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene really stepped forward with great leadership and led a committee hearing on vaccine injuries.
00:18:18.300And I worry about even sharing with you the things that are actually going on in Congress about this subject,
00:18:24.320because you never know, on the platforms where you are consuming this podcast, the censorship has gotten so bad.
00:18:30.840We're even pointing out what medical professionals and congressional witnesses are saying.
00:18:35.360Even citing senators can somehow get you tagged or labeled or ticketed, shadow banned, censored.
00:18:43.920But you need to know what is happening.
00:18:46.880I think Dr. Robert Malone has done some of the most extensive research on vaccine injuries.
00:25:13.140Dr. Malone, one of my grave concerns is that all of the vaccine injured may not know that they are in the class of the vaccine injured
00:25:21.740because people get blood clots and pulmonary embolisms probably because of the vaccine,
00:25:28.060but also probably for other reasons as well.
00:25:31.040Dr. Abyss, when we look at these tragic consequences of pregnancy, they can at times occur in the absence of a vaccine.
00:25:40.860So what advice would you give us as policymakers to try to really disaggregate the symptoms of vaccine injury
00:25:50.700and those consequences from those that may have occurred otherwise?
00:25:54.620Thank you, Mr. Gates, for your informed question.
00:26:02.480You are correct in saying that it is an enormous challenge.
00:26:07.180Just as the virus disease itself largely overlaps with what's called the common cold now in terms of symptoms,
00:26:15.360and it's very difficult to distinguish.
00:26:17.200Likewise, these clusters of symptoms are very difficult to distinguish from background noise in some cases.
00:26:27.720That's the job of the CDC, by the way, is to provide that type of analysis objectively in a nonpartisan fashion.
00:26:37.140And as even the New York Times has acknowledged, the CDC has become a partisan political operation.
00:26:44.760So we are left in the absence of reliable data by a federal agency tasked to provide that data to allow the discernment of your question.
00:26:56.560And the way that this would normally be done is to look for clusters of symptoms that correlate with a known disease or toxicity
00:27:04.520and then identify patients who have those clusters.
00:27:08.740Practicing physicians currently, even those that aren't subject to the many professional and financial disincentives to be open and transparent about these things that you're mentioning,
00:27:24.680I'm choosing my words, are subjected to an enormous amount of not only propaganda or psyops, as has the entire public been subjected to it,
00:27:37.600but also enormous numbers of disincentives to disclose adverse events and disclose what might appear to be vaccine-related problems.
00:27:48.700I hate to interrupt you, but that should be illegal.
00:27:51.020It should be illegal if someone is engaged in the practice of medicine or in the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry for people to try to disincentivize access to the information.
00:28:02.880And it's easy for us to blame the CDC, but frankly, they, in a way, work for us because we're the ones that authorize the funds for the things that they do and don't do.
00:28:12.240And so, you know, I think that one of the things we've got to work on probably is legislation that directs them to those data, to those clusters,
00:28:19.920and that then disallows the corrupt activities that you seem to be highlighting.
00:28:25.500We're back live. That shows how high the hill is to climb indeed, and we will stay on that work.
00:28:33.540Again, thank you to Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for setting up that field hearing to get us that evidence
00:28:38.840and begin what is going to be a long road ahead for a lot of people.
00:28:43.020We also have news regarding the continuing resolution that the House is going to be voting on very soon to have a stopgap funding measure.
00:28:51.120Yesterday's episode went into the detail of what that includes and doesn't include and really detailed out my critique of that continuing resolution.
00:29:01.500And on the heels of it, we have a statement that we want to share with you, released today from the House Freedom Caucus,
00:29:07.280titled, No More Rolling Over Today to Fight Tomorrow.
00:29:11.380Today, the House Freedom Caucus released the following official position.
00:29:14.120The House Freedom Caucus opposes the proposed clean continuing resolution as it contains no spending reductions,
00:29:21.760no border security, and not a single meaningful win for the American people.
00:29:26.640Republicans must stop negotiating against ourselves over fears of what the Senate may do with the promise to roll over today,
00:34:54.280The federal government, state governments, local governments.
00:34:58.220No one's getting off here without paying part of the tab.
00:35:01.480In New York City alone, Democrat Mayor Eric Adams has stated that the cost of illegal aliens could hit $12 billion in the next three years.
00:35:10.100And that's just with the current flow.
00:36:06.900So they open up the border, bring these people in.
00:36:09.780You bear these high costs, and then you don't even get access to the services that you're paying for at rates of multiples.
00:36:16.840The report shows that the cost of education for around 3.8 million illegal immigrants that aren't proficient in English totaled over $59 billion.
00:36:26.660In the era of the Democrats' commitment to defunding our police, the stress of illegal immigration is costing $19 billion to our law enforcement budgets and our police budgets.
00:36:38.520Given the state of violent crime in our country and the dangerous reality on our streets,
00:36:43.040I mean, the Secret Service was involved in a shooting over a carjacking within the last 48 hours in our nation's capital.
00:36:48.940I wouldn't say that our police have the time and money and resources to spare for this kind of crap.
00:36:55.900Biden and the Democrats, and even some weak Republicans, they wake up every morning, they see the dangerous reality in our city streets,
00:37:04.880and they choose not to put a stop to it.
00:37:06.400Instead, they choose to enable this illegal immigration, and it stresses our police departments, and it terrorizes our citizens.
00:37:14.280As I said earlier, this report is very frustrating.
00:37:17.060Every American should read it and be similarly concerned.
00:37:23.260We have to close the loopholes and allow the Department of Homeland Security to do its job, activate ICE, and do the deportations that are necessary.
00:37:59.080We also want to cover a story from the state of New York where state government is engaging in activity that is not a necessity and, indeed, quite dangerous.
00:38:09.160Listen to New York Governor Kathy Hochul talk about the new surveillance state they're creating in the Granite State.
00:38:19.140Also, we're very focused on the data we're collecting from surveillance efforts.
00:38:24.440What's being said on social media platforms?
00:38:27.760And we have launched an effort to be able to counter some of the negativity and reach out to people when we see hate speech being spoken about on online platforms.
00:38:41.160Our media analysis, our social media analysis unit, has ramped up its monitoring of sites to catch incitement to violence, direct threats to others.
00:38:53.640And all this is in response to our desire, our strong commitment to ensure that not only do New Yorkers be safe, but they also feel safe.
00:39:05.400Okay, so there is a troubling continuum here.
00:39:10.300First, our national security apparatus, CIA, NSA.
00:39:14.140They developed all of these surveillance tools and they sought all of these authorities to be able to gather signals intelligence, process it, analyze it, categorize conduct in various ways.
00:39:25.600And they told us that they needed these capabilities, technologies, and authorities to direct that activity overseas to some terrorist in some Central Asian cave that might be planning an attack on the United States.
00:39:38.520And so Congress came together, passes the Patriot Act, they go off and do that.
00:39:43.580But then they bring a lot of those capabilities home.
00:39:48.180And we woke up one day and a larger and larger portion of our federal government was trying to convince us that the MAGA grandmother next door was a terrorist or the parent at the school board meeting or the traditional Catholic in worship.
00:40:01.100And so then you saw, you know, the federal government, whether it was in response to January 6th, really abuse those authorities and reorient those anti-terrorism teams in a concerning way.
00:40:16.400What you just heard from New York Governor Kathy Hochul is the really troubling next iteration of that, where left-wing states are going to try to hire those folks out of NSA or CIA or FBI and get them involved in state-level surveillance and analysis of people's speech and their political views and their associations.
00:40:42.080And it's not enough to just fight against it at the federal level.
00:40:44.820We need people in state government standing up against what you just heard from Kathy Hochul, standing up for the privacy rights of our citizens.
00:40:55.040Now, there are some times when those privacy rights of our citizens end up being twisted and turned and cavorted in ways we never would have imagined and in ways that actually are harmful to the most fundamental institution in American life, and that is the family.
00:41:11.620Finally, I've introduced legislation called the Parents' Right to Know Act because under a federal law that had been misinterpreted called the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, we were getting more and more school districts
00:41:27.400telling parents telling parents that the parents that the parents didn't have a right to know about the counseling services being accessed by students.
00:41:36.620I'm sorry, if you send your kid off to public school, you have a right to know what is going on there.
00:41:42.880You have a right to know what their grades are, what classes they're taking, what their behavior looks like, what extracurriculars they're involved in, what field trips they go on.
00:41:52.100And so sure as hell you have a right to know if some school counselor is engaging in a particular type of effort.
00:42:01.800This came to my attention through a story I heard from a young student who attended one of my recent events in Northwest Florida.
00:42:39.140And you know what, the best defense with some counselor or teacher trying to say weird things or do things with your kids is to know what they're saying and doing.
00:42:50.060And so my legislation would clarify that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act does not in any way impair the right of a parent to know the counseling that their student is getting.
00:43:01.440And particularly in times like this, where more and more people that are in public education and in counseling are veering bizarrely left, I think that this type of clarification to federal law so it is not overused and weaponized against parents is absolutely necessary.
00:43:21.380Thanks to everyone for joining us today.
00:43:24.220You can always help share our content by sending it out to your contact lists, to your friends, to folks on social media.
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00:43:39.520Our team loves to go through that, gives us ideas for other elements of Congress to bring forward and give you an honest, clear, and fair report on.