Episode 149 – Snowden： To Pardon or Not to Pardon？ The Cleveland Indians Get Canceled. Hackers Hit US Government. Bill Gates Wants Longer Lockdowns.
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Summary
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
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You all were not telling the truth and you should not be trusted.
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Congressman Matt Gaetz, thank you for what you did for your country tonight.
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Be offended with the Democratic whip, not House of Republicans.
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Welcome to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz.
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More anti-democratic impulses coming from Democrat members of the House of Representatives.
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Now, this is the same Bill Pasquerel who previously said that President Trump ought to be prosecuted.
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That his allies ought to be imprisoned for advancing the America First agenda,
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for animating the Trump policies with action and results for our country.
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So Pasquerel has called for a prosecution of the president, but he's not done there.
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Just this last week, Bill Pasquerel says the 100-plus members of the House of Representatives,
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all Republicans, who signed on to the Supreme Court's brief asking for review of these election
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laws that polluted the vote, that we all are traitors.
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That we've engaged in sedition, insurrection against the country.
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And that the House of Representatives, despite our election in 2020, should refuse to seat us.
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Now, constitutionally, it is correct that the House of Representatives defines the terms
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of its own membership and, I guess, could refuse to seat anyone for any reason upon the vote
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of the members of the House of Representatives.
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But it's really quite something when Democrats tell us that the way to save democracy is to
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refuse a seat in the People's House of Representatives who won elections, who got the most votes.
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You see, to these Democrats, it's not about democracy or representative government.
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And the greatest threat to Democrat power that would be dangerous to our country lies in the
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patriots who stand and fight in the House of Representatives, in the Senate, all over our
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country for freedom and liberty and advancement of American ideals, which we should not have
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So we're showing up in January to get seated in the House of Representatives.
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There has been a major hack of our federal government.
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CISA has just issued a rare emergency directive instructing federal civilian agencies to review
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their networks immediately and power down SolarWinds products, saying the hack, quote,
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poses unacceptable risk to the security of federal networks.
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Now, this is very significant because SolarWinds is a network management system that services
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government customers across the executive branch, the military and intelligence services.
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That includes the Treasury, the Commerce Department.
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We don't know precisely who engaged in this hack yet.
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There are some initial reports that sources of the National Security Council believe that Russia may be
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And an unrelated but worthy note, Gmail, YouTube, Google Docs and other Google services have been hit by a
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So a number of challenges on tech platforms now.
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We'll continue to follow the breaking news from CISA regarding this hack.
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And it underscores the importance of resilience here at home.
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We spend trillions of dollars in wherever a stand, building buildings, blowing up buildings, giving money to
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And at the end of the day, we can do more to protect America, to ensure that we are resilient
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against attacks by investing here in our country, in our systems, in our networks, because the
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battlefield tomorrow won't be one that is won or lost as the consequence of some tank.
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It's going to be won or lost based on the security of networks and communications and operations
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and infrastructure and energy and water and data.
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So for America to ensure that we win the 21st century against our near peer adversaries, we need
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intense focus on security in our country and less time staring at the mirage of democracies that we
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believe we can build in the Middle East by sheer will, despite the lack of an aptitude for that type of
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The Cleveland Indians will no longer be the Cleveland Indians.
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They've decided to drop the name of the Indians, saying it is insensitive to indigenous peoples,
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according to the report that we pick up from CBS Sports.
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This comes after the Washington Redskins changed their name to the Washington football team.
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It's unclear what the name of the Cleveland baseball team will be for the upcoming year.
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Some other names that have been floated include the Spiders and the Cows.
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The Cleveland Indians had distanced themselves from the Chief Wahoo logo some years ago,
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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.
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We'll see what the Cleveland baseball team goes by in the coming years.
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Very disappointing news from the United States Supreme Court.
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They have refused to exercise their jurisdiction to hear the conflict among the states that was brought by Texas and really 20 states
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against those who changed their balloting process, who allowed the laundering of ballots,
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and who toxified democracy by allowing officials to quite literally change the rules of our election just before the balloting was to occur
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in the absence of legislative approval in some cases.
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The United States Supreme Court has original jurisdiction over conflicts among the states,
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but they declined to exercise that jurisdiction,
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instead presumably contemplating that the issues of state law predominate over any federal question.
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I had the opportunity to discuss this issue on Martha McCallum's show with Congressman Michael Waltz.
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The true casualty of the court's decision is an erosion of the power of state legislators to make election law.
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The principal challenge offered by Texas was that there were changes that were made not by the state legislators
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that instead were made by other officials that might not have been vested in that power.
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And, you know, the context here is that if the state of Georgia, for example, were polluting a river that was flowing into Florida,
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the Supreme Court would have original jurisdiction.
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And our argument is that if Georgia is polluting ballots, if they are polluting our election process with bad procedures,
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then the court similarly ought to take that up.
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I suspect there will be a little bit of debate and discourse in the Congress as we go through the process of certifying electors.
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And we still think that there is evidence that needs to be considered.
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Remember, this is not a case of the Trump campaign failing to produce evidence.
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It's a failure of any court to exercise jurisdiction sufficiently to allow us to produce evidence.
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Oftentimes these motions to dismiss have been granted on the sufficiency of the pleadings,
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And the People's House may be the last forum available for us to make those arguments.
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That is the question that has got a lot of folks talking on social media, certainly over the weekend.
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If Trump follows through on a pardon of Snowden, it'd be a huge victory against CIA, FBI, NSA abuses.
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Everyone from Rand Paul, Matt Gaetz, and Tulsi Gabbard to the ACLU, Bernie Sanders, and the New York Times have advocated this.
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The only ones angry would be Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and Susan Rice.
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President Trump is listening to the many of us who are urging him to pardon Snowden.
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But you know this barrage of advocacy would not be unchallenged by those in the establishment.
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He is responsible for the largest and most dangerous release of classified info in U.S. history.
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He handed over U.S. secrets to Russian and Chinese intelligence,
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Edward Snowden exposed the deep state before we really even knew that it existed at wide scale in our country.
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He showed that Jim Clapper lied to the Congress when he said there wasn't bulk collection of our data.
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And I think we're a better country because we know what Edward Snowden exposed to us.
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I had to reply to Liz Cheney, someone who truly has an ideology that is not aligned with mine.
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But I replied, the Cheney ideology supporting forever wars puts more troops at risk than Snowden ever did.
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Liz Cheney, in her opposition to a Snowden pardon, is standing up for the national security apparatus that failed in Iraq,
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that failed in Afghanistan, that wants to keep us at war in Yemen and in Somalia and really every place on the planet Earth
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where they think they can make a buck off of U.S. military engagement.
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So I believe the president would be well served to pardon Edward Snowden, Rand Paul, so many others agree.
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And when you look at who's on the other side, the Liz Cheney's, the Clapper's, the Brennan's, the Comey's,
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I think it makes it an easy decision for the president.
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More great news on the vaccine front in our country.
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The CDC director and FDA have given final approval of the Pfizer and biotech COVID-19 vaccine here in the United States.
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Last night, I was proud to sign the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendation
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to use the Pfizer COVID vaccine in people 16 and under.
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The official CDC recommendation follows Friday's FDA decision to authorize the emergency use of Pfizer's vaccine.
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As COVID-19 cases continue to surge throughout the U.S., the CDC's recommendation comes at a critical time.
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Initial COVID-19 vaccines are set to start as early as today.
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And this is just a tremendous step in our effort to protect Americans, reduce the impact of COVID-19,
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and help restore some normalcy to lives in our community.
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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,
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have their jobs, contribute to the economy, and contribute to the great American story.
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Already, we have young people that are returning to work, and as folks get infected with the virus,
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are able to utilize the great therapeutics in our country to treat the virus,
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and then develop antibodies and T-memory cells to be able to create more antibodies,
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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
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to ensure that we have a higher survivability rate, a lower death rate, a lower infection rate.
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They all ensure that America will beat this virus, and we will beat this virus as a consequence of the Herculean work
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from the Trump administration and Operation Warp Speed.
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Take a listen to a hot take from Bill Gates on Jake Tapper's television program,
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saying that we should be prepared to live in this sluggish, diminished existence through the year 2022.
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There are a lot of governors who oppose bringing back these lockdown orders
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Do you think more states need to consider taking that kind of drastic action
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and the kind of drastic action we saw when the pandemic first began,
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Well, certainly mask wearing has essentially no downside.
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Bars and restaurants in most of the country will be closed as we go into this wave,
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Depending on how severe it is, the decision about schools is much more complicated
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The amount of transmission is not the same as in restaurants and bars.
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But the next four to six months really call on us to do our best
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and you don't want, you know, somebody you love to be the last to die of coronavirus.
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When do you think life will fully return to what we thought of as normal back in January?
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No masks, no social distancing, no other protective measures necessary.
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Certainly by the summer, we'll be way closer to normal than we are now.
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But even through early 2022, unless we help other countries get rid of this disease
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and we get high vaccination rates in our country,
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And of course, the global economy will be slowed down,
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which hurts America economically in a pretty dramatic way.
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There is a disconnect between America's elite and the working people of this country.
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And Bill Gates' interview, I think, demonstrates that in Technicolor.
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We cannot live in a world where people who make a living at restaurants
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and at watering holes and pubs see their jobs rendered illegal.
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One of my closest friends in the world is a bartender in Nevada.
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And when she contacted me recently, it was with disdain and anger for politicians and elites
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who can do their white-collar jobs through Zoom,
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but that then utilize the power that they have in society to shut down, lock down,
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and limit the necessary economic opportunities for people who do have jobs
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I stand in solidarity with the Americans who see the dignity in work,
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who want to go to work, who want to contribute, who want to be productive,
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and who oppose these devastating lockdowns that obviously are reactionary,
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and that almost always are destructive to our fellow Americans.
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There is no lockdown strong enough to constrain the American spirit.
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Let's help our fellow Americans get back to work,
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return to productivity, and enhance their lives.
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This podcast is written, directed, and produced by a team that includes myself,
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