The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - Episode 141 – The Disappointing DOJ. How to Challenge the Electoral College in Congress. Trump's Strongest Move Yet Against Big Tech.

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz. Let's talk about the news. A lot of

00:00:21.260 news coming out of the United States Department of Justice. Let's start with Durham. You'll

00:00:26.740 remember some 18 months ago Bill Barr announced that John Durham would be taking the lead in an

00:00:33.680 investigation to review the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. The potential criminal

00:00:40.340 activity associated with trying to frame a president, alter evidence before a secret court,

00:00:47.920 continue to renew an application to spy on Americans despite having the knowledge at the

00:00:53.800 Department of Justice that the basis, that the underlying reason for that spying was flawed.

00:01:00.520 That it was based on the work of Christopher Steele who the FBI knew to be a known liar and

00:01:07.580 analysis of Carter Page who was freely working with the FBI, giving them information regarding

00:01:15.180 his meetings with Russians. It was all so fake. It was all just an effort to try to frame the

00:01:21.520 president, undermine the presidency, and empower the deep state. I think people should go to jail

00:01:28.220 for that crime against our country. But despite the many months of investigation, we haven't seen

00:01:35.580 anything from John Durham in the nature of indictments or even his scope of work. You'll remember when

00:01:42.500 Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel, subpoenas were flying out. Roger Stone was getting

00:01:48.040 arrested by an amphibious assault SWAT team. You had Paul Manafort getting drugged before courts because

00:01:55.600 of tax crimes that he'd allegedly committed back in the 1980s. And here you have the Durham investigation,

00:02:04.140 not resulting here at the conclusion of the president's first term with indictments or even a

00:02:10.960 description of what he's been doing, but just a memo from Bill Barr converting him from an investigator

00:02:17.880 to a special counsel on this matter. It's a little disappointing for me. I mean, it kind of feels like

00:02:24.660 we're ending where they started. I mean, they began the Trump presidency by appointing a special counsel

00:02:31.460 to go after Trump, his family, his campaign team, his supporters. And yet here we are, you know,

00:02:39.400 potentially at the conclusion of the Trump presidency. And only now we're getting to the point where they

00:02:46.160 started. If we couldn't get results and accountability during the Trump presidency regarding the framing of

00:02:53.720 Donald Trump, we're very unlikely to get results after the Trump presidency regarding the framing of

00:03:00.400 Donald Trump. That's why I'm disappointed in the decision. I would have liked to have seen more. And

00:03:05.440 it's shocking really that we find ourselves in this moment where the United States Department of

00:03:11.280 Justice spent more time investigating Donald Trump for fake allegations against him than they spent

00:03:19.620 investigating the real allegations of voter fraud in this election. And that brings us to the next big

00:03:27.000 piece of news out of the Department of Justice, Attorney General Bill Barr saying that he's got no

00:03:32.900 evidence of widespread voter fraud that could have impacted the outcome of the 2020 election.

00:03:39.660 Here's my hot take. If your house gets robbed because the alarm system malfunctioned, maybe you

00:03:46.700 shouldn't exclusively trust the alarm company to catch the thief. That's kind of what happened here.

00:03:53.520 And that's not a full indictment of all people associated with the DOJ. There are actually some

00:03:58.180 good folks in U.S. attorney offices around the country. There are some good ones here in Florida

00:04:03.100 who were really focused on ensuring that in the registration process on the front end, in the ballot

00:04:10.500 request process on the front end, in the mail out of ballots, in the management of the retrieval of those

00:04:17.580 ballots, that there were not crimes being committed. Because after the fact, it's very hard to put

00:04:23.480 humpty dumpty back together again and figure out who committed what crimes, what polluted ballots

00:04:29.760 are commingled with legitimate ballots. And so you can show all of the affidavits and all of the claims,

00:04:37.900 but it's very difficult to obtain the relief that the Trump campaign is requesting after the fact.

00:04:43.960 That's why this was such a failure on the Department of Justice, on the front end,

00:04:49.920 not everywhere. You know, we forget in most places in this country, we ran clean elections.

00:04:56.140 It was basically in four cities, Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. And in those four places,

00:05:03.700 there was mechanized ballot fraud, and there was not sufficient attention from the Department of

00:05:09.940 Justice on the impact of that fraud, of that ballot laundering. And so lo and behold, after the fact,

00:05:16.800 they're unable to reconstruct the elements of this criminal activity and make a finding, I do not

00:05:23.780 believe that that is some blessing upon the 2020 election. I do not believe that absolves the fact

00:05:31.880 that you had people voting in more than one state, you had dead people voting, you had people voting who

00:05:37.260 had already filled out a change of address form. Matt Brainerd is one of the leading minds at the

00:05:44.580 Voter Integrity Project. He was on the Lou Dobbs program, and I think laid out the specificity of

00:05:52.100 the fraud, the specific voters involved. Take a listen to the interview with Matt Brainerd and Lou Dobbs.

00:05:59.060 Tell us what you gave them that you think may be most helpful to them to assure integrity in this election.

00:06:06.800 What we're giving them is we're giving to every of our target state's attorney generals,

00:06:12.260 the legislatures, governors, and secretaries of state is hard evidence of potentially illegal

00:06:17.360 ballots cast in those states. And I'm not sending them charts or line graphs or speculation about

00:06:23.280 what may or might not have happened. I send them the names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth,

00:06:28.560 and voter record numbers of people who either had ballots cast in their name and said they didn't

00:06:34.460 or who did cast ballots they shouldn't have because they didn't meet residency requirements

00:06:38.320 or cast ballots in multiple states. And what we found is in several key states,

00:06:43.280 specifically Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona, the number of these ballots, individual voters

00:06:49.280 we've identified who cast early and absentee ballots in these states surpassed the margin of victory,

00:06:54.600 which means that we can, nobody can honestly say for certain that Joe Biden actually won the election

00:07:01.480 just on the basis of our data alone. Now, other people have done other analyses, which I think has

00:07:06.040 some validity, and others have taken our data and projected it to like a larger universe to come up

00:07:11.260 with even more substantial numbers. But just on the people we've identified ourselves, we believe that

00:07:16.880 that surpasses the margin of victory in enough states to have denied Joe Biden a win in the electoral

00:07:21.920 college. Without those three states, this election would have gone to the U.S. House of Representatives

00:07:26.720 and President Trump would have been reelected. So we cannot say with confidence that Joe Biden's

00:07:31.720 the deserved winner of the election based solely on the data that we've uncovered.

00:07:38.200 President Trump has just taken his strongest stance yet against censorship on the Internet.

00:07:45.800 We've covered extensively how Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act gives large digital

00:07:52.960 platforms the ability to avoid the liabilities that would append to this podcast, that would append to

00:08:00.300 cable news station or your local newspaper or local network, a news show. President Trump tweeting,

00:08:08.840 Section 230, which is a liability shield gift from the U.S. to big tech, only the companies in America

00:08:16.860 that have it, corporate welfare, is a serious threat to our national security and election integrity.

00:08:23.580 Our country can never be safe and secure if we allow it to stand. Therefore, if the very dangerous

00:08:30.400 and unfair Section 230 is not completely terminated as part of the National Defense Authorization Act,

00:08:36.760 I will be forced to unequivocally veto the bill when sent to the very beautiful Resolute Desk.

00:08:44.340 Take back America now. Thank you. Here's my hot take. I support the President and his desire to

00:08:51.880 repeal Section 230. I think it would be excellent to include that repeal in the National Defense

00:08:58.140 Authorization Act that we are sending the President. There's a lot in that National Defense

00:09:03.180 Authorization Act that I like. Pay increases for troops, benefits for surviving spouses,

00:09:10.460 ensuring that we've got the weapons to vanquish our enemies downrange whenever we need to.

00:09:16.440 There's also a lot I don't like. There's a piece in The Intercept that Glenn Greenwald just tweeted out

00:09:22.920 about the work that I did with some progressives to try to advance the America First foreign policy

00:09:30.200 agenda supported by President Trump. And we faced a lot of resistance from the defense contractor-funded

00:09:37.480 Democrats and, of course, Liz Cheney and the Warhawk Republicans. And so the Defense Authorization Act 0.71

00:09:44.300 now has got good and bad in it. It would definitely be an improved piece of legislation if the President

00:09:50.760 gets his way and we can get a repeal of Section 230 in that bill. And that is exactly what I'll be fighting

00:09:57.740 for in the Congress. Former President Barack Obama says that liberals lose a substantial portion of

00:10:08.100 the country with snappy slogans like defund the police. In an interview with Axios, the former

00:10:15.040 president said that progressives should try to accomplish their policy goals without these types

00:10:20.540 of slogans that turn off a great deal of the country. Here's my hot take. It's not the slogan,

00:10:27.740 defund the police that bothers me. It is the objective to defund the police that bothers me.

00:10:34.360 And by the way, with what we see from Democrats, particularly in the House of Representatives,

00:10:39.300 that's exactly what they're trying to do. When they strip police of their immunities, when they

00:10:44.940 make it harder for police to acquire body protection, personal protection for the incredibly

00:10:51.460 difficult jobs they have, they're doing everything they can to keep that police officer in the car

00:10:56.920 rather than encouraging proactive policing. So whether it's the slogan or the objective or the policies

00:11:04.200 and bills, whether it's the appropriations made or the signals sent, it is very clear to the country

00:11:10.800 the Democrats are against the police. The Republicans are for the police. It seems like the only

00:11:16.760 law enforcement that the Democrats are for are some of the highly politicized folks who've cycled in and

00:11:23.760 out of the FBI and the Department of Justice, who've been criticized roundly by Inspector General's

00:11:28.900 reports and who still should face consequences.

00:11:34.580 When the Electoral College results are sent to the United States Congress for review by

00:11:40.780 a joint session of the Congress, we have the opportunity to object to any state's slate of

00:11:47.320 electors. That objection must be in writing. It must be submitted by at least one member of the House

00:11:53.960 of Representatives and at least one member of the Senate. And it would result in a two-hour debate

00:11:59.500 in each chamber regarding the legitimacy of those electors sent by a particular state. So this doesn't

00:12:06.620 mean challenging the entire national election. It doesn't mean challenging every state or every

00:12:12.580 circumstance. It means isolating some of those places where we remain concerned about voter

00:12:18.860 registration irregularities, the accounting of the ballots cast to the particular number of people

00:12:25.580 in a precinct. I had an opportunity to discuss this phenomenon and the potential for an objection in the

00:12:32.120 electoral college and the certification process before the Congress on Newsmax last evening with

00:12:38.080 Spicer and Co. Take a listen.

00:12:40.660 Newsmax has still not called this race. We're waiting for the president to exhaust his challenges

00:12:45.100 in the states. But I just want to be clear that, I mean, if you look at it objectively, you can say

00:12:49.200 that the number of states that have certified their electors favors Joe Biden getting 270. But you have

00:12:57.420 been quoted in this story that I saw that I think was fascinating in Politico that says how Trump's Hill

00:13:03.380 allies could take one last shot to overturn the election. Nothing is off the table, said Congressman

00:13:08.360 Matt Gaetz. I think this is fascinating. Walk me through what you're thinking, what the strategy is, and

00:13:15.860 and how real this is.

00:13:18.580 Just today, I've talked to Republicans in the House of Representatives, and I've also talked to Republicans in

00:13:24.360 the United States Senate. And there is an interest in looking into these irregularities and presenting

00:13:31.080 them to force a debate in the Congress about whether or not to certify these or accept, I should say,

00:13:37.620 these states' electors. Every state's electors are individually subject to objection, as you correctly

00:13:44.440 pointed out to top off the show. And if we don't see, I think, some explanation for why in places

00:13:50.560 there is not a match with the number of people who voted and the people who are on the voter rolls,

00:13:55.720 if we see these voter registration anomalies continue, I think it would be worthy of a debate.

00:14:01.540 So if it were to be the case that members of the House and a member of the Senate were to

00:14:06.260 offer that objection, it would require a two-hour debate about that state's process and about the

00:14:12.680 validity of the electors that they have sent. And I think the nation would survive that, Sean.

00:14:17.680 I think somehow the union would hold if we took the opportunity to isolate the irregularities

00:14:23.460 in Georgia, in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in particular, and to lay that bare before the

00:14:29.440 nation so that at a minimum, we ensure that this type of erosion of election integrity never happens

00:14:35.160 again. In Los Angeles County, California, now they even want to ban outdoor dining, gutter dining,

00:14:45.060 as I call it. You see, in the state of Florida, we believe that human beings ought to have the choice

00:14:51.400 to go inside and enjoy a meal if they exercise that choice. In LA County, first they threw everybody out

00:14:59.860 next to the gutters. Now they even want to close that outdoor dining, but they are facing some

00:15:05.840 resistance. The Beverly Hills City Council unanimously votes to oppose the LA County dining ban. I guess the

00:15:14.760 Woketopians in Beverly Hills have had enough. They want to be able to have their meals. They want to

00:15:19.800 be able to have them at restaurants. I just think this is all so crazy. I mean, I look at a lot of

00:15:25.240 these outdoor dining setups, and basically you've got a nice, cozy, wonderful restaurant, and then outside

00:15:31.220 they'll go set up a tent, put heaters inside of it, stick everybody in the tent, and then convince

00:15:38.060 themselves and try to convince you that somehow everything is safer as a consequence. People need

00:15:44.520 to eat. They need to have the choice to do it inside. I stand with the City Council of Beverly Hills,

00:15:51.460 California, and against the LA County mandate to stop dining of any kind, indoor, outdoor, or otherwise.

00:15:59.300 And again, I cannot stress this enough. These lockdowns hurt blue-collar people the most. They

00:16:07.200 hurt people that live month to month, paycheck to paycheck, and the worst impacts of this coronavirus

00:16:14.280 will undoubtedly come from the government decisions to lock down, to limit choice, and to harm our

00:16:22.800 country. There is no lockdown strong enough to hold back the American spirit. That spirit must

00:16:29.680 prevail, and it must be enduring. Let us go to eat. Let us do it inside or outside at our choosing.

00:16:40.460 This week, marijuana reform is on the agenda in the House of Representatives. The Moore Act will pass

00:16:46.820 the House on Friday. It will not even get a hearing in the Senate, so it won't become law. It will largely

00:16:53.600 be a messaging bill, a measuring stick for where the marijuana reform movement currently stands,

00:17:01.040 particularly in the House of Representatives. If you want to check out the specifics of the Moore Act,

00:17:06.660 I've noted that episode 80 of the podcast goes through the substantive provisions of the bill,

00:17:12.660 the pros and cons, and some of the committee debate. But if you want further reading on where the

00:17:19.780 marijuana reform movement stands, there is a piece in a Bloomberg opinion, can marijuana help Biden

00:17:27.400 heal a divided nation? And of course, the piece starts with the premise that Biden is going to be

00:17:32.820 the president. It reads, after more states have legalized pot, support at the federal level is what

00:17:38.740 is needed to make cannabis investors cheer again. And now it's possible. Now, the piece talks about

00:17:44.660 the five states in this last election that approved ballot measures for marijuana reform. They include

00:17:51.680 Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota. So pretty much a cross-section. You get a

00:17:58.520 purple state in Arizona, some pretty red states in Mississippi, South Dakota, Montana, and then

00:18:04.220 even a blue state in there, New Jersey, modernizing their cannabis programs. And it appears, based on

00:18:11.800 the results from the people, that when marijuana initiatives are on the ballot in this country,

00:18:17.360 they typically pass. And so whether or not marijuana is that which could help Biden heal a divided nation,

00:18:24.280 I think is an outstanding question. But check it out in the Bloomberg opinion piece we will be posting.

00:18:30.800 Thanks for listening to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz. This podcast is written, produced,

00:18:37.960 and directed by a team that includes myself and Luke Ball and Joel Valdez from our communications team.

00:18:44.140 Make sure to subscribe, to like, to review on your podcast listening platform of choice,

00:18:50.920 and join us tomorrow for more Hot Takes.

00:19:00.800 Thank you.

00:19:01.800 Thank you.

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - December 02, 2020

Episode 141 – The Disappointing DOJ. How to Challenge the Electoral College in Congress. Trump's Strongest Move Yet Against Big Tech.

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