The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - Episode 134 – Republican Fireworks in Wayne County, MI. Florida Democrats in A Post-Election Meltdown! Harvard University Petition to Ban Trump Officials on Campus.

00:00:00.000 You ever watch this guy on television, you all were not telling the truth and you should

00:00:05.900 not be trusted. Congressman Matt Gaetz, thank you for what you did for your country today.

00:00:09.300 Be offended with the Democratic whip, not House Republicans. Like a machine, Matt Gaetz.

00:00:16.020 Welcome to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz. There are so many more of you listening

00:00:21.400 to the podcast based on the social listening services that we're subscribing to and each

00:00:26.800 and every day. Americans ask me, what can I do to help the America First agenda, to help

00:00:33.220 the president and his supporters like you? And just one small thing folks can do is make

00:00:38.460 sure that they give us a five star rating or review on their podcast platform of choice

00:00:42.720 that gives us the opportunity to spread our message with the most proficiency. And we need

00:00:49.260 folks to hear the truth, to hear through the fake news. So let's talk about the news. Harvard

00:00:55.600 University is now seeing a petition shared around the campus to limit the ability of members

00:01:01.880 of the Trump administration to ever serve as lecturers or teachers or frankly, to ever be

00:01:08.260 allowed on their campus again. Here's my hot take. What's the point of institutions like

00:01:14.400 Harvard that are supposed to train our best minds if they're unable to confront ideas that

00:01:21.160 they may not agree with? I think universities ought to be cathedrals of learning. But for

00:01:26.880 that to take place, you have to have diversity of ideas. I think that liberals and conservatives

00:01:33.160 and free market capitalists and even socialists ought to have the opportunity to speak on our

00:01:39.100 college campuses. And then in that great conflict of intellect and curiosity and brainstorming,

00:01:47.440 the best ideas will emerge. And I'm confident that the ideas advanced by this president and

00:01:52.940 many of those who've worked with this president are the ideas that can win the future, ensuring

00:01:58.460 that we have trade deals that support the workers of our country, that we have immigration policy that

00:02:04.240 supports the values of our country, and that we have a foreign policy that is focused to put our

00:02:10.220 country and our people first. You see, President Trump, his ideas and his administration

00:02:15.920 will add value to our nation well beyond their time in office. We've always known that because

00:02:22.060 we are in a time of political realignment in America. The Republicans are becoming the party of

00:02:27.980 the working class. And while that may be threatening and challenging for some of these great tenured 0.74

00:02:34.400 minds at Harvard, it doesn't mean that we ever limit the ability of young people and all people

00:02:41.860 to be able to assess the arguments and ideas and information that exist in our world and to be

00:02:48.580 able to make decisions on their own. You see, for all the elite has done for America, really their

00:02:55.120 desire is to try to control and constrain that which is consumed by regular Americans so that they 1.00

00:03:03.000 can maintain their power. Harvard is a very powerful place. And I think if they truly have confidence

00:03:10.980 in the minds they're developing, they'll be willing to let people with a vast array of concepts and

00:03:17.940 ideologies contribute to a discussion that should enhance quality of life and existence and being

00:03:25.620 and pedagogy and learning for all of us. Wayne County, Michigan has become a wild political scene.

00:03:36.760 We pick up the story from John Solomon's Just the News. In dramatic reversal, Wayne County Election

00:03:43.220 Board Republicans rescind votes certifying election results. In affidavits, GOP canvassing board members

00:03:50.840 claim they were bullied and say there are too many irregularities in Detroit to justify accepting the

00:03:57.560 election results. And it's just a remarkable turnaround that you've got these two Republican members of

00:04:03.960 the canvassing group in Wayne County, Monica Palmer and William Hartman filling out affidavits

00:04:10.420 to rescind their votes from a day earlier that brought into question how Michigan was counting

00:04:16.920 the votes in the presidential election. And really what's at issue in these irregularities is the lack

00:04:21.880 of matching the number of votes to the number of voters, which would seemingly be one of the first

00:04:28.160 things that you would want to do in an audit. And in these affidavits, the bullying, the threats,

00:04:33.000 the misleading information that they received from staff, all informs on their desire to undo

00:04:39.720 this certification in Wayne County. Something's rotten in Denmark over there in Wayne County, 0.97

00:04:45.220 Michigan. I hope we get to the bottom of it.

00:04:49.900 One of our favorite congressmen, Thomas Massey of Kentucky, had a hot take regarding some of the

00:04:56.280 recent coronavirus restrictions being implemented in that state. Quote, our governor just announced

00:05:03.060 he's indefinitely banning all dine in restaurant service, but establishments can apply for $10,000

00:05:10.860 to compensate for their losses. Does he realize that won't cover one night's receipts for some of

00:05:17.600 these establishments? He will bankrupt many of them. And what I don't think the governor of Kentucky

00:05:22.920 fully realizes is that there is a cascading economic effect that we see when in-person

00:05:29.880 dining is limited. It's not just the restaurants that are impacted. It's not just their employees

00:05:34.880 impacted, but it's the landlord. It's the shopping center. It's the inflow and outflow of people that

00:05:41.800 can contribute to other tenants in a particular area that can all see a negative impact from these

00:05:47.740 lockdowns. Dining has become one of the real areas of discussion and conflict and disagreement.

00:05:56.380 And here's my hot take. If you've got good spacing, if you've got good sanitation, if you have good

00:06:03.140 protocols in the kitchen, if you have frequent testing, if you have tools like temp checks, people

00:06:09.240 ought to be able to engage in the in-person inside dining experience. There's no evidence that in

00:06:17.120 circumstances where protocols are followed, where procedures are adhered to, where spacing is

00:06:22.700 accommodated, that in-person dining is some like unique super spreader risk. And so I hope that the

00:06:31.320 governor of Kentucky will reconsider. And as usual, I find myself on the same side as the gentleman from

00:06:39.100 Kentucky in the United States Congress, the great Thomas Massey.

00:06:45.940 Robotic canines will be patrolling Tyndall Air Force Base. We pick up the story from WEAR-3 in

00:06:54.380 Northwest Florida. And it appears that the robot dogs known as Ghost Robotics Q-UGVs will be used for

00:07:04.700 security and patrol. And the quote from the Department of Defense says, using onboard computers,

00:07:11.660 cameras and other detection devices, the electronic canines can scout for threats before human exposure

00:07:18.540 to potential dangers, or allow human defenders to take care of more pressing matters. And you should

00:07:25.720 take a look at these things. They're like four legged, and they kind of look like a hunched over kangaroo.

00:07:31.800 But it is always a benefit to the men and women who serve in our military, when we're able to

00:07:38.840 automate more of the functions and tasks that could put people at risk. And so I'm all for it. If the

00:07:47.140 robot canines can keep our best and our bravest safe as they're preparing and training for their

00:07:53.400 missions, all the better. A compelling and true peace in the Financial Times, the kids aren't all

00:08:03.960 right, how Generation COVID is losing out. A global Financial Times survey shows resentment is brewing

00:08:11.840 among the under 30s as unemployment and restrictions bite. And the peace chronicles circumstances where

00:08:19.760 young people are unable to fulfill their dreams, unable to engage in normal recreation. And, you know,

00:08:27.760 the the tolerance for this is really diminishing. When you look at the lockdowns and the restrictions,

00:08:33.980 and then the subsequent impacts that that has on the economy, young people are just sick of it.

00:08:40.340 They want to get to the lives that they've seen their parents and grandparents lead. And as

00:08:46.260 these, you know, days of enhanced restriction continue to persist, people start to lose hope

00:08:53.380 that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm old enough to remember when we were told this

00:08:57.440 was going to be 14 days to slow the spread. And now we're looking at months upon months. And

00:09:02.420 increasingly, corporations are coming out and telling us that the impacts of Coronavirus and the

00:09:08.320 changes in policy will extend not just to the beginning of 2021, but potentially to the end of it.

00:09:14.900 My hope is that the great work of the Trump administration through Operation Warp Speed to

00:09:20.060 develop not one but two vaccines will certainly ease the negative impact on young people that

00:09:26.420 we see in this Financial Times story. And I'm grateful that we've been able to beat expectations

00:09:33.180 regarding those vaccines. Dr. Fauci and pharmaceutical executives told us that it would be 18 months at a

00:09:40.280 minimum. And here we found the virus in January, we were only able to get it sequenced from the Chinese 1.00

00:09:47.320 in some period of time after that. And in less than a year, we have not one but two vaccines ready to

00:09:54.940 share with the country ready to share with the world. And my hope is that the opportunity brought by

00:10:03.220 these vaccines will allow the young people in this country who've seen such a devastating impact on their

00:10:09.560 development, be able to rebound and adapt and adhere to the circumstances that we find in the world,

00:10:16.680 in a way that allows them to embrace prosperity and more opportunity, because certainly that's been

00:10:22.680 lacking these last few months, we need to do better.

00:10:28.840 In many places in America, Democrats are celebrating the result of the 2020 election, but

00:10:34.300 not in the Sunshine State, not in Florida. Politico's Matt Dixon and Gary Fineout have the story of

00:10:41.100 a meltdown in the Florida Democratic Party, with some of its figures like State Representative

00:10:46.280 Eskamani saying that the party needs to become more progressive, more reliant on small dollar and

00:10:53.000 non-institutional donors, that they need to embrace the woke-topia to a greater extent.

00:10:58.020 And then you've got centrists like Florida Congresswoman, I should say former Florida 0.97

00:11:03.000 Congresswoman Gwen Graham, saying Florida is essentially a center-right state, and the moves

00:11:09.260 that Democrats made towards socialism were particularly damaging with the Hispanic community, which is

00:11:15.320 a substantial amount of vote in the state of Florida. And I think this tells us a story about

00:11:20.120 the country more broadly, and the state of the political movement on the left. Do they believe that

00:11:25.320 this election was an endorsement of some of the most far-left-reaching policy goals that

00:11:32.220 socialists have had for quite some time? Or was this election maybe something different? Was it

00:11:38.880 something that ought to cause Democrats to move to a more moderate position? What I can tell you in

00:11:43.860 Washington is that there is not a whole lot of moderation up here. You've got the squad and their

00:11:50.020 followers in both the Congress and the media, hoping that in the upcoming congressional term,

00:11:56.340 there'll be a push for greater redistribution of wealth. And I do believe that those moves,

00:12:01.980 whether they're made at the national level or the state level, will harm the Hispanic outreach that

00:12:08.020 the Democratic Party has attempted. We saw just a tremendous amount of Hispanic enthusiasm for the

00:12:13.880 president in Florida. We saw a lot of the areas in Texas where Democrats have been hoping to make gains

00:12:19.740 not fulfill their expectations because of that Hispanic support for Republicans and that 0.74

00:12:26.120 rejection of socialism. I mean, Michael Bloomberg spent $130 million just in Texas and Florida with

00:12:32.020 this great effort to try to flip state legislatures in those two states. And in fact, and in Texas and

00:12:38.180 Florida, Republicans gained seats in the House of Representatives. So we'll see which direction

00:12:43.280 they go and we'll be ready for it. A shout out to Delta Airlines. Their slogan is we love to fly and it

00:12:52.820 shows. And if you're flying with Delta, it looks like you're not going to be sitting directly next to

00:12:57.720 somebody. They are suspending the middle seat bookings throughout 2021 as a result of coronavirus.

00:13:05.380 Now, this gives us an opportunity for a little bit of a hot takes flashback.

00:13:10.020 We discussed the medical implications, the transmission implications of the middle seat or not the

00:13:16.680 middle seat. And American Airlines, you know, they just put out a statement that said, look,

00:13:20.800 they can't make money if they don't book the middle seat. And so they're going to. We talked about it on

00:13:27.100 episode 63 of the podcast. Take a listen to the flashback. And there's an opinion by Faye Flom in

00:13:34.340 Bloomberg opinion entitled, The Odds of Catching COVID on a Flight are Slim. And it chronicles an MIT study

00:13:42.280 that goes into the types of air filters that are on planes, the sanitation that's being used. And the

00:13:50.840 analysis suggests that you've got about a one in 4,300 chance of getting COVID on a full two-hour flight.

00:14:00.140 And if an airline leaves the middle seat unoccupied, that actually drops to about one in 7,700.

00:14:08.940 So thank you to those airlines who are actually leaving the middle seat empty. It has a huge impact

00:14:15.200 on transmission rates. So it's great to see Delta Airlines following the data, keeping their flyers and

00:14:21.960 customers safe. And we look forward to even more innovations in the airline industry and elsewhere

00:14:27.900 to ensure that we're all safe to move about the country.

00:14:34.860 Last night, Jim Jordan and I joined Sean Hannity to discuss our fight for election integrity. Take a listen.

00:14:42.300 The fundamental question, Sean, on your latter point is why? Why don't Democrats want to get to the bottom of all

00:14:46.620 the irregularities, all the problems we saw in the 2020 election? I mean, for goodness sake, Georgia just found

00:14:51.800 three counties where they hadn't even counted thousands of votes. And it's 16 days after the

00:14:56.180 election. So ranking member Comer and I today, first call for an investigation. We sent a letter

00:15:01.520 to Mr. Natter and Chairwoman Maloney. Why don't you guys investigate? The committees aren't even meeting

00:15:06.200 this week. Why not? Why not look into this? So that to me is the fundamental question.

00:15:10.820 These same Democrats who told us that the rioters and the looters all summer long were peaceful

00:15:16.080 protesters are now the same ones telling us we can trust the vote. When everything shows all the

00:15:20.760 problems, Kayleigh just went through them all. Let's look at all that information. And when it comes

00:15:24.900 to Tony Bobulinski and the Hunter Biden story, Bill Barsha, name a special counsel. It's that simple.

00:15:29.260 Name a special counsel to look into that situation. Yeah, I would suggest that the president isn't fighting

00:15:34.520 for his own political fortunes in these legal battles. He's fighting for the rest of us. We all deserve

00:15:39.680 elections where we don't have people voting in more than one state. We don't have people voting after

00:15:44.660 they've changed their address. And the scale is now reaching some significance. In Georgia,

00:15:49.960 these mistakes aren't in the tens or hundreds of votes. They're in the thousands of votes. Maybe

00:15:54.380 we ought to put the people who ran Operation Warp Speed in charge of counting the ballots in Georgia,

00:15:59.380 and they'd be able to get us a result by now. But here's the thing, Sean, if we can flip Georgia by

00:16:04.680 showing that there was not accurate counting there, then I think it pulls back the whole veneer that

00:16:10.240 the media and others have tried to put on these on these mail-in ballots.

00:16:16.900 One of the issues Congress regularly deals with is gambling, the legality and permissibility of

00:16:24.360 interstate commerce that deals with the wagering on sports and other endeavors. And of course,

00:16:30.180 the Internet has allowed gambling to be scaled to the moon. And so it's always interesting to see

00:16:36.240 what important corporations are either betting for or against gambling. For example, in my home state

00:16:43.420 of Florida, Walt Disney World typically opposes the expansion of gambling in our state because they

00:16:48.880 know that with more gambling comes reduced hotel room rates. And they don't want to see that because

00:16:55.080 they, of course, want folks to pay that premium to spend that hotel room night with the mouse,

00:17:02.020 Mickey Mouse. But there is one major communications corporation that is making a bet on gaming.

00:17:08.660 That would be Sinclair Media. They are going to rebrand their entire sports networking,

00:17:16.660 Bally's Sports. And of course, Bally's is one of the longstanding gaming establishments in Las

00:17:23.540 Vegas, Nevada. Bally's making the deal with Sinclair to allow a number of major professional sports

00:17:31.240 leagues, local programming shows and games to be broadcast under their banner. And we'll see if

00:17:37.580 this is the new normal. We've seen the major professional sports leagues in some ways tilt

00:17:42.840 away from gaming. But the trajectory on that has been, I think, a little bit different in recent

00:17:48.880 years. I mean, you see the NFL expanding to Las Vegas. That would have been unheard of a decade ago.

00:17:55.440 And now Sinclair Media working with Bally's Casino. And I am guessing that if you're seeing these hockey

00:18:04.540 and Major League Baseball games played under that banner, there will be plenty of co-advertising

00:18:10.660 for wagering. I'm all for the freedom. I think that if Americans want to choose to spend their

00:18:17.080 disposable income on a game or a wager, that's not up to the government to dictate. It's up for people to

00:18:23.840 make their own choices. And that appears to be the current modus operandi, the current trajectory.

00:18:30.720 We'll keep up with the story.

00:18:35.240 Does America have zombie companies? Bloomberg writes a piece about how some of America's

00:18:42.180 greatest brands and names are now in quite a precarious financial situation. They were once

00:18:48.000 corporate titans, beloved household names, case studies and success. But now they're increasingly

00:18:53.600 looking like something else. Zombies. And their numbers are swelling. From Boeing to Carnival to

00:19:00.780 Exxon and Macy's, many of our nation's most iconic companies are really having to cover their

00:19:07.960 expenses during this coronavirus time. And experts are now calling it zombie status, given the just

00:19:15.480 enormous amount of debt that a lot of these companies have racked up. 1.4 trillion, according to

00:19:21.060 the Bloomberg analysis. Almost 200 corporations have joined the ranks of so-called zombie firms

00:19:27.420 since the onset of the pandemic. And that's going toward like 3,000 of the country's largest publicly

00:19:36.200 traded companies kind of in that danger zone of becoming zombies themselves. In fact, zombies now

00:19:43.020 account for nearly 20% of those firms. Even more stark, they've added a trillion dollars in debt to

00:19:49.520 their balance sheets during this time span, bringing total obligations to 1.36 trillion.

00:19:55.260 That's more than double the roughly 500 billion zombie companies owed at the peak of the financial

00:20:01.600 crisis. We'll continue to follow it. But here's my hot take. Sure, the pandemic is going to be

00:20:07.480 devastating for a lot of businesses, even large businesses. But it will also create opportunities.

00:20:13.760 When you look at the innovations and adjustments and changes that we've needed for financial success,

00:20:20.820 for interaction, for connectivity, I think that the American innovator will be resilient and

00:20:25.800 responsive. And we have to understand that, of course, these major companies are big-time job

00:20:31.160 creators. And if there's a way for us to help bridge the gap as a country, we need to do that. But we

00:20:36.960 also shouldn't be so gloomy as to throw in the towel on the notion of continued progress and evolution

00:20:43.340 and change for the better. Thanks for listening to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz. Make sure to

00:20:50.300 subscribe, leave us a five-star rating if you listen on iTunes, and join us tomorrow for more Hot Takes.

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - November 19, 2020

Episode 134 – Republican Fireworks in Wayne County, MI. Florida Democrats in A Post-Election Meltdown! Harvard University Petition to Ban Trump Officials on Campus.

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