Episode 151 LIVE： Dead Bill Walking – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
162.00388
Summary
In this episode of Firebrand, we are back broadcasting live from Room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building in the Capitol complex in Washington, D.C., where we are broadcasting live in Room 2021. On the floor of the House of Representatives, we hear from Sen. Tom Tillis of North Carolina and his staff on the Senate floor about their opposition to the $95 billion deficit spending forever war bill.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
matt gates the biggest firebrand inside of the house of representatives you're not taking matt
00:00:08.540
gates off the board okay because matt gates is an american patriot and matt gates is an american
00:00:13.860
hero we will not continue to allow the uniparty to run this town without a fight i want to thank
00:00:21.020
you matt gates for holding the line matt gates is a courageous man if we had hundreds of matt gates
00:00:28.460
in dc the country turns around it's that simple he's so tough he's so strong he's smart and he
00:00:35.220
loves this country matt gates it is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you
00:00:43.020
we will save america it's choose your fighter time send in the firebrands
00:00:48.960
the vote we will soon take to provide military weapons for ukraine is the most important vote
00:01:01.760
we will ever take as united states senators today the future of the world i've just described
00:01:08.840
is in question the endurance of an order in which american support is craved and american strength
00:01:17.220
is feared is in doubt and we the united states of america have the most to lose
00:01:27.040
welcome back to firebrand we are live that was mitch mcconnell and mitt romney two people we used
00:01:35.340
to believe were republicans speaking on the senate floor about their desire to spend 95 billion
00:01:40.340
dollars not for the benefit of the american people or our citizens but for ukraine and all sorts of
00:01:45.800
ambitions all over the world they have no pay for there's not a single dollar that they sought to reduce
00:01:51.180
american spending in some other way maybe they wanted to reduce some other foreign aid no
00:01:55.780
they wanted to deficit spend every bit of it they wanted to go borrow money from china
00:02:00.580
so that we could give it to other countries and they want to act as though that's the most important
00:02:06.080
vote that that is what america will do to save the world from peril just to put the world's debt on our
00:02:12.520
balance sheet if anyone thinks that the right answer for you to be good to them is for you to assume all
00:02:17.920
of their debt i think that you ought to have a good amount of suspicion and when we're just basically a
00:02:23.160
debt brokerage firm masquerading as a country in the vision of these america last politicians
00:02:28.900
that's what you get so we're going to dedicate a good amount of today to what the senate's trying
00:02:35.120
to do what we're trying to do to stop it we are back broadcasting live in room 2021 of the rayburn
00:02:40.240
house office building here in the capitol complex on washington dc we thank our terrific hosts at rumble
00:02:46.360
they've got their new studio in washington and you'll see us from that platform with a lot of
00:02:51.440
innovative discussions i encourage you to look at the chat we had with kurt mills just yesterday
00:02:56.200
editor-in-chief of the american conservative and the best way to consume all this content is to
00:03:01.340
download the rumble app turn the notifications on that way every time we go live because we go live
00:03:06.580
at different times you will be notified you'll get the news immediately and here's the news right now
00:03:11.880
house speaker mike johnson doubling down on his commitment not to bring the america last 95 billion
00:03:18.760
deficit spending forever war bill to a vote in the house and it's a democrat bill here's the tell every
00:03:25.840
democrat voted for it in the senate along with a little cobbling of republicans that they were able
00:03:31.820
to get together led by mcconnell and romney and senator tom tillis you'll hear from in just a moment
00:03:38.120
so they've got that going on it's a democrat bill principally supported by democrats democrats are
00:03:44.100
making the major contribution to the vote share for the bill and we don't have a republican house
00:03:50.480
majority to hear democrat bills and move democrat bills and by the way we shouldn't even be considering
00:03:56.880
ukraine and taiwan and u.s stockpiles in israel on the same bill anyway they should be reviewed
00:04:02.580
independently if you want to take a vote on those independently let's go and and proceed ensuring
00:04:09.020
that we don't roll the majority of the majority with democrats on substantive issues like foreign
00:04:15.160
aid now one of the america last republican senators who advocated vociferously for this legislation was
00:04:24.420
tom tillis of north carolina and his staff actually made this what you're going to hear is not uh a a full
00:04:32.600
clip of any speech that senator tillis made but his staff on his social media platforms
00:04:37.800
created a tillis supercut of what they perceived were all of the best arguments in favor of of this
00:04:46.680
ukraine aid and so you're going to hear from senator tillis of north carolina then i'm going to rebut
00:04:51.980
those arguments on the other side take a listen a lot of people when they hear senator speak they
00:04:58.720
believe that it's the truth they've heard somebody say that if we pass this bill that we're all going to
00:05:04.680
go ride to kiev with buckets full of money and let oligarchs buy yachts i wonder how the spouses of
00:05:11.880
the estimated 25 000 soldiers in ukraine who have died feel about that i mean really guys
00:05:19.680
sending billions of dollars to ukraine so right our ukrainian oligarchs can buy yachts is that the best
00:05:28.080
you've got a lot of people say we're sending 70 80 billion dollars to ukraine really well last time
00:05:35.820
i checked about half of it's going to the military industrial base here to replace the inventories
00:05:40.860
that we've sent to them to replace and and to aid our modernization of our arsenal no thank goodness
00:05:49.240
this is not against the nato ally because we would be desperate trying to actually support it all out
00:05:56.780
war putin is losing this war folks this is not a stalemate this guy is on life support he will not
00:06:06.480
survive if the 50 nations who have come together in the ramstein process to support ukraine stick
00:06:13.360
together nato allies in 25 some two dozen other countries have come together and made it very
00:06:20.220
clear that putin's desire to reestablish the russian empire is inconsistent with a democratic world order
00:06:27.940
and we are the beacon of hope for democracy when we step away who fills the void
00:06:37.660
you'd be hard-pressed to find any nation that has the scale and the ability to do it but the united
00:06:44.560
states with all due respect to my friends why am i so focused on this vote because i don't want to
00:06:50.920
be on the pages of history that we will regret if we walk away you will see the alliance that is
00:06:59.140
supporting ukraine crumble you will ultimately see china become emboldened
00:07:07.120
and i am not going to be on that page of history but let's let this chamber
00:07:18.240
we're back live so let's deal with these arguments that senator tillis is making the first is there will
00:07:26.020
be no buckets of cash in ukraine what is everyone talking about yachts and cash it is an uncontroverted
00:07:34.300
fact that the wife of a former senior defense official in ukraine was literally caught with
00:07:41.760
with millions of dollars was more than 10 million dollars in u.s cash at the at the border with
00:07:48.600
poland so literally buckets of cash are being found in the possession of the family members of the people
00:07:55.600
connected to the ukraine defense apparatus mike lee put out a report that the cia had to directly confront
00:08:03.520
zelinski about his own personal corruption does senator tell us have any response to that does he think
00:08:10.880
it didn't happen is there any evidence to the contrary no when we find the cash and when we see that
00:08:17.900
people like zelinski are able to convert materiel into cash because in the world right now far too much of
00:08:24.500
this is fungible then yeah there's a real problem second argument tell us makes putin's losing the war
00:08:31.340
that's his argument you know he's losing this war the people were dying in it principally that's
00:08:37.440
ukrainians and we want to see less war and less death but what does winning and losing this war even
00:08:43.260
really mean to senator tillis and the rest of the neoconservatives because i know what it means to
00:08:48.400
the ukrainians when ukrainian officials come and brief members of congress you know what they say
00:08:53.280
every inch of our territory back the entire russian speaking portion of eastern ukraine in the donbass
00:09:00.440
and crimea it crimea has been in russian hands for quite some time there's not a serious person
00:09:06.720
who actually believes that this war is going to resolve with crimea being returned to ukraine anyone
00:09:12.800
who says that is lying to you and they're doing it in order to extend a war where the people who are
00:09:19.620
actually losing it are the ones who are losing their lives and their families and their homes and
00:09:23.360
their businesses and their prospect for any future whatsoever putin's losing the war maybe but what
00:09:31.020
are we winning what are we even trying to win that's something that tillis can't define third he says
00:09:37.140
nato is coming together the u.s has to fill this void this is this great moment and if we don't continue
00:09:43.540
to serve as a blank check for all of it then we will be the cause of its collapse here's the truth
00:09:49.860
this war in ukraine can end whenever europe wants it to whenever they want to stop buying cheap russian
00:09:55.780
gas whenever they want to enter into a serious european security agreement that would naturally have
00:10:02.620
to contemplate russia hopefully it would include russia on areas of agreement where we're fighting
00:10:08.020
radical islamic extremists hopefully we could include russia on non-proliferation on nuclear
00:10:14.440
weapons destruction there are certain things where cooperation between the united states and russia
00:10:18.920
make the world and everyone here safer and that's not to say that we're saying they're nice guys or
00:10:24.880
inviting them over for christmas dinner but they're a nuclear power and in europe i think there's an ability
00:10:33.300
to negotiate and reach a conclusion that is considerably less bloody than the present that
00:10:39.240
we currently face fourth argument the face of history right we can act so we must act this is
00:10:48.580
essentially tillis's argument that because the united states is strong and powerful then might makes
00:10:54.000
right and we are obligated to take action anywhere in the world where our values are in any way
00:11:01.240
diminished by the rising hegemony of some other entity or even the declining hegemony right just the
00:11:08.420
hegemony period here's what i don't think history will judge well if our tinkering around over with
00:11:16.560
russian tanks and european boundary disputes leads to some sort of catastrophic accident or escalation
00:11:23.900
as i've said many times i don't worry about broke down russian tanks in the donbass so much as i worry
00:11:29.020
about some crazy russian general believing that they have the authority to execute some sort of
00:11:34.080
launch that then we would have to retaliate against you would activate the entire nuclear triad we could
00:11:38.840
melt the globes put all of human existence asunder under a nuclear winter what what so that we can
00:11:46.180
take the perspective that crimea has to be returned to russia is that worth it
00:11:50.480
history i hope history doesn't judge us for the mistakes that these neoconservatives would make
00:11:58.480
fifth and final argument that tillis makes is that china will be emboldened
00:12:03.060
china do you know who we're borrowing the 95 billion dollars from china when we suffer inflation
00:12:10.360
because this type of unpaid for spending is inherently inflationary you know who benefits
00:12:15.300
china with russia entangled in this battle there is a leveraged buyout of the russian farms
00:12:23.520
in east russia the chinese are benefiting from that and as russia is bogged down in ukraine they are
00:12:29.640
selling off assets in cuba where these broke down russian spy entities are being converted into high-end
00:12:37.160
chinese intelligence signals collection capabilities for our true adversary an adversary that wants to
00:12:44.300
dominate us not one that wants to join nato with us so i think that it is foolish to suggest that the
00:12:53.420
way to be stronger toward china is to become deeper indebted to china and when we borrow money from china
00:13:01.080
to give it to another country we just look like fools we don't look like leaders speaking of fools
00:13:07.140
we get a report from the calvin coolidge project that republican senator and neoconservative mark wayne
00:13:13.780
mullen is meeting with folks to consider a discharge petition and here's the report senator mark wayne
00:13:19.660
mullen has spoken to house lawmakers about a discharge petition a discharge petition would bring the 95
00:13:25.300
billion dollar overseas aid bill to a vote in the house of representatives if speaker mike johnson
00:13:31.300
doesn't introduce it so here is here is the real-time fisticuffs of this you've got mike johnson
00:13:38.020
taking the right position that we're not going to consider this crazy bill on the terms that the
00:13:45.180
senate has sent it over and then you have mark wayne mullen trying to encourage republicans to go sign a
00:13:51.880
discharge petition with democrats to force this america last bill forward and mark wayne mullen didn't
00:13:58.540
even have the guts to vote for it that's what's crazy about this mullen votes against the bill because
00:14:03.140
he's afraid that his constituents in oklahoma will know how he actually feels about these questions
00:14:07.740
and then he goes and tries to get some republicans in the house to do an end run around mike johnson
00:14:13.060
i will fight against that i will stand with speaker johnson to stop this terrible unpaid for 95 billion
00:14:20.300
dollar aid bill and i'm glad the speaker is staying strong on that another little dispute we see going on
00:14:25.600
on social media is between a terrific attorney general in the state of texas ken paxton and john cornyn let's
00:14:32.080
get those tweets on the screen so attorney general paxton takes a shot at cornyn says that he's willing
00:14:38.660
to stay up all night to defend other countries borders but obviously there's a sensitivity to
00:14:43.980
that in texas because the texas border is not being defended cornyn replies with just an ad hominem
00:14:50.320
attack saying that oh ken paxton's under felony investigation and there's a grand jury looking at him
00:14:56.880
and it is just such a weak play for cornyn to ignore the substance of paxton's argument that
00:15:03.460
cornyn seems to be more worried about borders oceans away and not those uh among the texans who
00:15:09.820
elected him and were hoping that they would serve there were some good arguments made in the senate
00:15:14.320
notably by missouri's josh holly i thought he nailed it in debate take a listen
00:15:18.880
my goodness we have enough money to make hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxpayer funds available
00:15:28.600
to the private sector in ukraine we are now literally funding their businesses their banks
00:15:35.800
lord knows what we've got money without end we've got enough money to pay for bureaucrat salaries we've got
00:15:45.280
enough money to pay for ukrainian government officials pensions we've got enough money for so-called
00:15:51.360
humanitarian aid that gets funneled away from siphoned off into any manner of corrupt uses we won't know
00:15:59.580
because we don't have a special inspector general to oversee this money but that's a different story
00:16:03.420
oh no we've got plenty of money and i have listened carefully carefully to colleague after colleague
00:16:11.500
of mine come to this floor and stand where i am now and say it's so important that we spend this money
00:16:18.720
on these overseas wars we must spend the money if we don't spend this money now why it may cost us
00:16:26.020
more money in the future no we it's it's imperative it's imperative that we spend this money meanwhile
00:16:33.700
these same people turn to the citizens of missouri and say you're not worth a dime
00:16:40.240
they say you can't have a penny they turn to the residents of kentucky and tennessee and alaska
00:16:48.400
and new mexico and arizona and utah and texas and they say we don't care that you are poisoned
00:16:55.780
we don't have a dime for you we have unlimited money for ukraine we're going to rebuild the borders
00:17:01.380
of ukraine that's in this bill but we don't have anything for you
00:17:03.960
nailed it we in fact are paying for the pensions and salaries of ukrainian officials that have
00:17:11.340
nothing to do with the war and in a way the uh the impeachment trap that we talked about on the
00:17:17.940
program yesterday seems to be an effort to try to in to it really create a yellow brick road for more
00:17:25.400
war and more funding of it and actually all of it when what we need is peace a point made quite well
00:17:31.780
by our good friend from kentucky senator ran paul take a listen
00:17:34.600
so i for one think that the american people are opposed to this bill i think they're opposed to
00:17:44.040
the concept of ukraine first and america last and i predict that this issue doesn't go away
00:17:51.020
i predict that the house of representatives is not going to take up this bill i predict that the vast
00:17:57.060
majority of the republicans in the house of representative are more conservative than
00:18:01.040
the republicans in this in this body and i predict that this fight is not over during this debate
00:18:07.500
and the fact that we were able to delay and talk about this for five days five and a half days
00:18:14.100
the speaker of the house spoke out and i don't know that he would have been prompted to speak out
00:18:19.460
although he has spoken out previously against this but the speaker of the house spoke out today
00:18:23.980
and said he's not taking this bill up see they've put together border reform that actually would
00:18:30.640
transform things border reform that acknowledges that it's an emergency so i will be a no and continue
00:18:36.860
to be a no on this bill because i think it puts a ukraine first and america last and with that madam
00:18:44.760
senator paul did a terrific job we also saw harrowing work by senator mike lee of utah and at the end of
00:18:54.620
the day the senate did advance this legislation and the work we're doing right now is to ensure
00:18:58.940
that speaker johnson continues to block the consideration of this disparate omnibus unpaid for
00:19:07.340
a bad bill so good work on the speaker good work senator paul and our senate allies and you senate
00:19:12.880
republicans like mark wayne mullen trying to get a discharge petition or senator tillis trying to get
00:19:18.280
another blank check for a corrupt country it's it's disappointing and it's not something that
00:19:23.880
your constituents would ever approve so there's a certain hubris to all of it um we want to make
00:19:28.800
sure we do focus on america's border in this program and i want to bring up to date on legislation
00:19:33.180
that i'm filing this exclusive comes from henry rogers at the daily caller matt gates introduces
00:19:38.540
bill to protect states right to defend the southern border now this speaks directly to the litigation
00:19:43.840
that's ongoing between texas and the federal government texas has put up barricades i observed
00:19:49.640
those barricades they were effective they were a deterrent people were moving around them to other
00:19:54.480
places like lukeville arizona and to california because texas actually started standing for its own
00:19:59.400
sovereignty but then the biden administration's department of justice tried to do
00:20:03.040
everything possible to litigate against texas to get injunctions against barricading their own
00:20:10.140
border from the invasion that is coming over as high as 10 000 people a day so senator vance came
00:20:16.520
up with this idea originally he filed it in the senate to create within federal law a permission
00:20:21.260
structure for exactly what texas is doing we would hope other border states would then follow suit under
00:20:26.400
that permission structure vance has got it in the house or in the senate i've got it in the house of
00:20:31.000
representatives and i'm excited to work with senator vance on that important priority and really we
00:20:36.900
shouldn't be voting for government funding bills without it we shouldn't be voting for government
00:20:40.580
funding bills without appropriate demands on the border and this is one way we could work together
00:20:46.320
to create that sovereignty for our country and we could actually leverage the power and capability of
00:20:52.360
our states that are indeed willing to help one power that's been abused we've talked about it a lot
00:20:58.100
is the spying power of the federal government and where we've seen the most egregious abuses are in
00:21:03.820
the foreign intelligence surveillance act now there's a reauthorization for that coming up we had punted it
00:21:09.720
previously my conservative colleagues and i are actually working with some very liberal democrats to try to get
00:21:16.420
a warrant requirement to try to get more oversight and to not let the deep state just continue to target
00:21:22.660
americans in the absence of the constitutional protections that we all hold so dear bob good
00:21:28.020
chairman of the house freedom caucus held a press conference on our intentions and our demands
00:21:32.080
i spoke at that press conference moments ago take a listen
00:21:34.540
i can't imagine that when a prior congress passed the patriot act that they expected that its provisions
00:21:42.760
would be used against patriots or even blm riders for that matter that's what's
00:21:48.420
so interesting about this issue we've seen these authorities abused against the right the left the
00:21:55.100
middle the rural the urban certainly people all over this country and don't take my word for it when
00:22:02.000
the inspector general for the department of justice appointed by president obama did an analysis of the
00:22:08.840
utilization of these fiza authorities they found that our intelligence community had violated the law and the
00:22:15.940
regulations 278 000 times they were breaking the law 38 times an hour for the period that was being reviewed
00:22:25.400
i don't think it makes us unreasonable to suggest that if there's a law being violated 38 times every
00:22:31.240
hour that it should not just be expanded without some sort of curtailment or enforcement when those
00:22:37.880
violations do occur and that's why we want a warrant because it creates a process by which our
00:22:43.160
constitutional norms can apply to something that has broken bad and it is helpful that we have a a
00:22:50.640
a real u-shaped coalition here where it's folks on the populist right aligned with those on the
00:22:56.940
populist left and we are fighting against the establishment of both parties who seem all too willing
00:23:02.700
to do whatever the national security state wants of them so our plea to speaker johnson is not to
00:23:09.500
just continue to punt on fiza that's what we did previously and it's unacceptable it's no fun
00:23:15.140
watching a team whose best play is the punt that's what we that's what we did previously and we shouldn't
00:23:19.720
do that again and if we're going to make changes to fiza rather than expanding the authorities as
00:23:26.420
chairman turner and some on the intelligence committee want to do so that they can be weaponized
00:23:31.720
against anybody with just you know access to wi-fi at a starbucks or a mcdonald's they should
00:23:38.240
be curtailed and if they are not curtailed if there's not an if there's not a willingness in
00:23:42.740
the senate to curtail these authorities then we should allow them to expire as is contemplated
00:23:48.580
originally in the patriot act we will still fight for those constitutional fourth amendment principles
00:23:56.240
but the fight is on and our adversaries are doing everything they can to maintain that power among a
00:24:02.960
select group of people in washington dc to be able to do an end run around the constitution
00:24:06.860
the fourth amendment shouldn't be up for negotiation and it shouldn't be for sale thank you so much for
00:24:12.320
joining me today on firebrand make sure that you give us a five-star rating especially if you're
00:24:16.660
listening to the program on apple and we would love it if you shared the show with someone who
00:24:21.060
needs to know more about what's going on in washington we appreciate your participation