The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - December 14, 2020


Episode 149 – Snowden： To Pardon or Not to Pardon？ The Cleveland Indians Get Canceled. Hackers Hit US Government. Bill Gates Wants Longer Lockdowns.

Topics
cancel culture strikes again
Hosted by
Matt Gaetz
Mentioned
Edward Snowden Liz Cheney Bill Pascrell Trump Jim Clyburn Bill Gates Ron Paul COVID-19 Pfizer Martha McCallum Glenn Greenwald Robert Redfield Bernie Sanders Michael Waltz Thomas Massey Joel Valdez Susan Rice Luke T. Ball Spiders Brennan and 3 more
Episode 148 – Nancy Pelosi's Knowledge of the Swalwell Spy. Is Andrew Yang Running for NYC Mayor？ Morocco Normalizes Relations With Israel. Nobel Peace Prize Snubs Peace Makers. Episode 150 – AG Bill Barr to Resign. Dominion Voting Systems FLIPS Votes, Report Says. CCP Members Infiltrate Multiple Consulates. The Rising Exodus From Democrat States.

Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

147.92

Word count

2,511

Sentence count

140

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Bill Pasquerel has called for a prosecution of President Trump, and the House of Representatives should refuse to seat him. A major hack of the U.S. government has been reported, and Google, Gmail, and other major tech platforms have been hit by a massive outage.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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 You ever watch this guy on television?
00:00:03.820 You all were not telling the truth and you should not be trusted.
00:00:06.560 Congressman Matt Gaetz, thank you for what you did for your country tonight.
00:00:09.300 Be offended with the Democratic whip, not House of Republicans.
00:00:12.260 Like a machine, Matt Gaetz.
00:00:16.060 Welcome to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz.
00:00:18.840 Let's talk about the news.
00:00:20.740 More anti-democratic impulses coming from Democrat members of the House of Representatives.
00:00:26.700 Bill Pasquerel, the latest.
00:00:28.680 Now, this is the same Bill Pasquerel who previously said that President Trump ought to be prosecuted.
00:00:35.960 That his allies ought to be imprisoned for advancing the America First agenda,
00:00:41.120 for animating the Trump policies with action and results for our country.
00:00:46.080 It was just too much for him.
00:00:47.840 So Pasquerel has called for a prosecution of the president, but he's not done there.
00:00:51.980 Just this last week, Bill Pasquerel says the 100-plus members of the House of Representatives,
00:00:59.260 all Republicans, who signed on to the Supreme Court's brief asking for review of these election
00:01:07.040 laws that polluted the vote, that we all are traitors.
00:01:11.320 That we've engaged in sedition, insurrection against the country.
00:01:15.880 And that the House of Representatives, despite our election in 2020, should refuse to seat us.
00:01:22.980 Now, constitutionally, it is correct that the House of Representatives defines the terms
00:01:27.280 of its own membership and, I guess, could refuse to seat anyone for any reason upon the vote
00:01:32.820 of the members of the House of Representatives.
00:01:34.600 But it's really quite something when Democrats tell us that the way to save democracy is to
00:01:41.380 refuse a seat in the People's House of Representatives who won elections, who got the most votes.
00:01:49.160 You see, to these Democrats, it's not about democracy or representative government.
00:01:55.240 It's about power.
00:01:57.040 And they want more of it.
00:01:58.300 And the greatest threat to Democrat power that would be dangerous to our country lies in the
00:02:04.840 patriots who stand and fight in the House of Representatives, in the Senate, all over our
00:02:10.400 country for freedom and liberty and advancement of American ideals, which we should not have
00:02:16.600 to apologize for or be sorry for in any way.
00:02:20.780 So we're showing up in January to get seated in the House of Representatives.
00:02:24.840 And the Democrats better not stand in our way.
00:02:31.160 There has been a major hack of our federal government.
00:02:36.380 CISA has just issued a rare emergency directive instructing federal civilian agencies to review
00:02:43.560 their networks immediately and power down SolarWinds products, saying the hack, quote,
00:02:49.700 poses unacceptable risk to the security of federal networks.
00:02:54.780 Now, this is very significant because SolarWinds is a network management system that services
00:03:00.360 government customers across the executive branch, the military and intelligence services.
00:03:06.900 That includes the Treasury, the Commerce Department.
00:03:10.500 We don't know precisely who engaged in this hack yet.
00:03:14.180 There are some initial reports that sources of the National Security Council believe that Russia may be
00:03:20.340 involved, but we'll check back on that again.
00:03:23.100 No confirmation there.
00:03:25.220 And an unrelated but worthy note, Gmail, YouTube, Google Docs and other Google services have been hit by a
00:03:31.700 massive outage.
00:03:32.460 So a number of challenges on tech platforms now.
00:03:35.740 We'll continue to follow the breaking news from CISA regarding this hack.
00:03:40.240 And it underscores the importance of resilience here at home.
00:03:45.000 Here's my hot take.
00:03:46.460 We spend trillions of dollars in wherever a stand, building buildings, blowing up buildings, giving money to
00:03:54.180 contractors, having security contracts.
00:03:56.380 And at the end of the day, we can do more to protect America, to ensure that we are resilient
00:04:03.380 against attacks by investing here in our country, in our systems, in our networks, because the
00:04:11.260 battlefield tomorrow won't be one that is won or lost as the consequence of some tank.
00:04:18.620 It's going to be won or lost based on the security of networks and communications and operations
00:04:24.960 and infrastructure and energy and water and data.
00:04:29.320 So for America to ensure that we win the 21st century against our near peer adversaries, we need
00:04:35.700 intense focus on security in our country and less time staring at the mirage of democracies that we
00:04:44.240 believe we can build in the Middle East by sheer will, despite the lack of an aptitude for that type of 1.00
00:04:51.080 living in that part of the world.
00:04:54.960 Cancel culture strikes again.
00:04:58.780 The Cleveland Indians will no longer be the Cleveland Indians.
00:05:03.140 They've decided to drop the name of the Indians, saying it is insensitive to indigenous peoples,
00:05:08.460 according to the report that we pick up from CBS Sports.
00:05:12.320 This comes after the Washington Redskins changed their name to the Washington football team.
00:05:18.340 It's unclear what the name of the Cleveland baseball team will be for the upcoming year.
00:05:22.620 Maybe it will be the Cleveland baseball team.
00:05:25.620 Some other names that have been floated include the Spiders and the Cows.
00:05:31.360 Would you show up to watch the Cleveland Cows?
00:05:34.120 The Cleveland Indians had distanced themselves from the Chief Wahoo logo some years ago,
00:05:39.940 but now the entire name of the franchise, the name of the franchise that has been in existence for over 100 years, falls victim to cancel culture.
00:05:50.320 We'll see what the Cleveland baseball team goes by in the coming years.
00:05:54.420 Very disappointing news from the United States Supreme Court.
00:06:01.520 They have refused to exercise their jurisdiction to hear the conflict among the states that was brought by Texas and really 20 states
00:06:10.660 against those who changed their balloting process, who allowed the laundering of ballots,
00:06:17.020 and who toxified democracy by allowing officials to quite literally change the rules of our election just before the balloting was to occur
00:06:26.220 in the absence of legislative approval in some cases.
00:06:30.380 So Texas leads the way.
00:06:32.160 They bring the action.
00:06:33.080 The United States Supreme Court has original jurisdiction over conflicts among the states,
00:06:39.060 but they declined to exercise that jurisdiction,
00:06:41.720 instead presumably contemplating that the issues of state law predominate over any federal question.
00:06:49.620 I had the opportunity to discuss this issue on Martha McCallum's show with Congressman Michael Waltz.
00:06:55.080 Take a listen.
00:06:55.620 The true casualty of the court's decision is an erosion of the power of state legislators to make election law.
00:07:02.300 The principal challenge offered by Texas was that there were changes that were made not by the state legislators
00:07:08.500 that instead were made by other officials that might not have been vested in that power.
00:07:14.720 So that's deeply disappointing to us.
00:07:16.880 And, you know, the context here is that if the state of Georgia, for example, were polluting a river that was flowing into Florida,
00:07:23.640 the Supreme Court would have original jurisdiction.
00:07:25.640 And our argument is that if Georgia is polluting ballots, if they are polluting our election process with bad procedures,
00:07:32.580 then the court similarly ought to take that up.
00:07:35.340 Now all eyes are on January 6th.
00:07:37.540 I suspect there will be a little bit of debate and discourse in the Congress as we go through the process of certifying electors.
00:07:44.520 And we still think that there is evidence that needs to be considered.
00:07:47.920 Remember, this is not a case of the Trump campaign failing to produce evidence.
00:07:52.580 It's a failure of any court to exercise jurisdiction sufficiently to allow us to produce evidence.
00:07:59.060 Oftentimes these motions to dismiss have been granted on the sufficiency of the pleadings,
00:08:03.940 not on the sufficiency of the evidence.
00:08:06.400 And the People's House may be the last forum available for us to make those arguments.
00:08:10.920 To pardon or not to pardon, Edward Snowden.
00:08:18.260 That is the question that has got a lot of folks talking on social media, certainly over the weekend.
00:08:23.860 Commentator Glenn Greenwald tweeting,
00:08:26.180 If Trump follows through on a pardon of Snowden, it'd be a huge victory against CIA, FBI, NSA abuses.
00:08:35.580 Everyone from Rand Paul, Matt Gaetz, and Tulsi Gabbard to the ACLU, Bernie Sanders, and the New York Times have advocated this.
00:08:44.440 The only ones angry would be Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and Susan Rice.
00:08:49.820 Congressman Thomas Massey also tweeting out,
00:08:53.020 Now is the time to hashtag pardon Snowden.
00:08:56.560 I added my voice to this discussion saying,
00:08:59.020 President Trump is listening to the many of us who are urging him to pardon Snowden.
00:09:04.320 It is the right thing to do.
00:09:06.360 But you know this barrage of advocacy would not be unchallenged by those in the establishment.
00:09:14.100 Congresswoman Liz Cheney tweeting, 0.82
00:09:16.380 Edward Snowden is a traitor.
00:09:18.020 He is responsible for the largest and most dangerous release of classified info in U.S. history. 0.91
00:09:23.960 He handed over U.S. secrets to Russian and Chinese intelligence,
00:09:27.980 putting our troops and our nation at risk.
00:09:30.880 Pardoning him would be unconscionable.
00:09:34.000 Here's my hot take.
00:09:35.700 Edward Snowden exposed the deep state before we really even knew that it existed at wide scale in our country.
00:09:43.120 He showed that Jim Clapper lied to the Congress when he said there wasn't bulk collection of our data.
00:09:50.360 And I think we're a better country because we know what Edward Snowden exposed to us.
00:09:55.400 So I just couldn't help myself.
00:09:57.280 I had to reply to Liz Cheney, someone who truly has an ideology that is not aligned with mine.
00:10:03.300 But I replied, the Cheney ideology supporting forever wars puts more troops at risk than Snowden ever did.
00:10:11.380 And that's certainly the case.
00:10:13.180 Liz Cheney, in her opposition to a Snowden pardon, is standing up for the national security apparatus that failed in Iraq,
00:10:21.460 that failed in Afghanistan, that wants to keep us at war in Yemen and in Somalia and really every place on the planet Earth 0.91
00:10:31.300 where they think they can make a buck off of U.S. military engagement.
00:10:36.140 So I believe the president would be well served to pardon Edward Snowden, Rand Paul, so many others agree.
00:10:43.560 And when you look at who's on the other side, the Liz Cheney's, the Clapper's, the Brennan's, the Comey's,
00:10:49.240 I think it makes it an easy decision for the president.
00:10:55.320 More great news on the vaccine front in our country.
00:10:59.880 The CDC director and FDA have given final approval of the Pfizer and biotech COVID-19 vaccine here in the United States.
00:11:09.180 This coming directly from Robert Redfield.
00:11:11.500 Last night, I was proud to sign the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendation
00:11:16.960 to use the Pfizer COVID vaccine in people 16 and under.
00:11:21.740 The official CDC recommendation follows Friday's FDA decision to authorize the emergency use of Pfizer's vaccine.
00:11:29.900 As COVID-19 cases continue to surge throughout the U.S., the CDC's recommendation comes at a critical time.
00:11:36.080 Initial COVID-19 vaccines are set to start as early as today.
00:11:40.640 And this is just a tremendous step in our effort to protect Americans, reduce the impact of COVID-19,
00:11:46.740 and help restore some normalcy to lives in our community.
00:11:51.300 Close quote.
00:11:52.220 A COVID-19 vaccine will bring hope to tens of millions of Americans who just want the opportunity to be able to live their lives,
00:12:03.120 have their jobs, contribute to the economy, and contribute to the great American story.
00:12:07.860 Already, we have young people that are returning to work, and as folks get infected with the virus,
00:12:14.820 are able to utilize the great therapeutics in our country to treat the virus,
00:12:19.720 and then develop antibodies and T-memory cells to be able to create more antibodies,
00:12:25.000 we are becoming more resilient as a society and to be able to give those frontline medical workers and seniors and medically frail Americans the vaccine
00:12:34.940 to ensure that we have a higher survivability rate, a lower death rate, a lower infection rate.
00:12:40.480 They all ensure that America will beat this virus, and we will beat this virus as a consequence of the Herculean work
00:12:48.740 from the Trump administration and Operation Warp Speed.
00:12:55.440 Take a listen to a hot take from Bill Gates on Jake Tapper's television program,
00:13:02.440 saying that we should be prepared to live in this sluggish, diminished existence through the year 2022.
00:13:10.740 Take a listen.
00:13:11.500 There are a lot of governors who oppose bringing back these lockdown orders
00:13:16.200 and forcing businesses to close.
00:13:19.240 What do you think?
00:13:20.180 Do you think more states need to consider taking that kind of drastic action
00:13:23.960 and the kind of drastic action we saw when the pandemic first began,
00:13:27.400 or can there be a more nuanced approach?
00:13:31.380 Well, certainly mask wearing has essentially no downside.
00:13:36.560 They're not expensive.
00:13:38.240 Bars and restaurants in most of the country will be closed as we go into this wave,
00:13:43.000 and I think, sadly, that's appropriate.
00:13:45.300 Depending on how severe it is, the decision about schools is much more complicated
00:13:50.200 because the benefits are pretty high.
00:13:53.760 The amount of transmission is not the same as in restaurants and bars.
00:13:57.980 So tradeoffs will have to be made.
00:14:01.240 But the next four to six months really call on us to do our best
00:14:07.900 because we can see that this will end,
00:14:10.360 and you don't want, you know, somebody you love to be the last to die of coronavirus.
00:14:15.260 When do you think life will fully return to what we thought of as normal back in January?
00:14:22.160 No masks, no social distancing, no other protective measures necessary.
00:14:28.500 Certainly by the summer, we'll be way closer to normal than we are now.
00:14:35.560 But even through early 2022, unless we help other countries get rid of this disease
00:14:42.080 and we get high vaccination rates in our country,
00:14:45.700 the risk of reintroduction will be there.
00:14:48.960 And of course, the global economy will be slowed down,
00:14:52.920 which hurts America economically in a pretty dramatic way.
00:14:57.320 Here's my hot take.
00:14:58.960 There is a disconnect between America's elite and the working people of this country.
00:15:05.340 And Bill Gates' interview, I think, demonstrates that in Technicolor.
00:15:10.540 We cannot live in a world where people who make a living at restaurants
00:15:15.860 and at watering holes and pubs see their jobs rendered illegal.
00:15:21.700 One of my closest friends in the world is a bartender in Nevada.
00:15:26.360 And when she contacted me recently, it was with disdain and anger for politicians and elites
00:15:34.640 who can do their white-collar jobs through Zoom,
00:15:38.420 but that then utilize the power that they have in society to shut down, lock down,
00:15:45.920 and limit the necessary economic opportunities for people who do have jobs
00:15:52.800 that you simply can't Zoom in for.
00:15:54.820 I stand in solidarity with the Americans who see the dignity in work,
00:16:01.160 who want to go to work, who want to contribute, who want to be productive,
00:16:05.560 and who oppose these devastating lockdowns that obviously are reactionary,
00:16:12.220 that often are not science-based,
00:16:14.840 and that almost always are destructive to our fellow Americans.
00:16:19.240 There is no lockdown strong enough to constrain the American spirit.
00:16:25.340 Let's help our fellow Americans get back to work,
00:16:28.880 return to productivity, and enhance their lives.
00:16:31.600 Thanks for listening to Hot Takes.
00:16:36.040 I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz.
00:16:37.960 This podcast is written, directed, and produced by a team that includes myself,
00:16:42.620 Luke Ball, and Joel Valdez.
00:16:45.360 Give us a hand, subscribe, perhaps give us that five-star rating on iTunes,
00:16:50.840 or however you rate your podcasts on your listening platform of choice,
00:16:54.920 and join us tomorrow for more Hot Takes.
00:16:58.380 We'll see you next time.