The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - June 04, 2024


Episode 166 LIVE： El Salvador Is Being Saved (feat. John Wilson & Gavin Wax) - Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Topics
Nayib Bukele El Salvador inauguration Bukele Doctrine El Salvador Monroe Doctrine repatriation and immigration to El Salvador
Hosted by
Matt Gaetz
Mentioned
Nayib Bukele Gavin Wax John Wilson The MS-13 Salvadorian Monroe Doctrine Neil Patel Bitcoin Trump Chris McVeigh Joe Biden Ginger Sasha Merrick Garland Simon Bolivar Rudy Giuliani Nuevas Ideas Joel Valdez X. Gavin Southcom Diana
Episode 165 LIVE： America Last Foreign Aid (feat. Reps. Andy Ogles & Anna Paulina Luna) - Firebrand with Matt Gaetz Episode 167 LIVE： Disorder at the Border – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Episode Stats


Length

36 minutes

Words per minute

185.96

Word count

6,749

Sentence count

413

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

20

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GAZ) talks about his recent trip to El Salvador, the country that has gone from one of the deadliest countries in the world to the safest in the Western Hemisphere.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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 Matt Gaetz, the biggest firebrand inside of the House of Representatives.
00:00:07.500 You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay?
00:00:09.900 Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero.
00:00:14.620 We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight. 1.00
00:00:19.820 I want to thank you, Matt Gaetz, for holding the line.
00:00:24.340 Matt Gaetz is a courageous man.
00:00:26.340 If we had hundreds of Matt Gaetz in D.C., the country turns around. It's that simple.
00:00:31.900 He's so tough, he's so strong, he's smart, and he loves this country. Matt Gaetz.
00:00:38.000 It is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you.
00:00:43.240 We will save America. It's choose your fighter time. Send in the firebrands. 1.00
00:00:48.600 Welcome back to Firebrand. I know it's been a minute and a lot has been going on here in Capitol Hill
00:00:59.480 and really throughout the world. We're going to talk about some of that.
00:01:02.540 But if you've tuned in for the latest on the Trump trials, the lawfare, Attorney General Merritt Garland,
00:01:07.420 you will be disappointed today because our focus is going to be exclusively external, global.
00:01:12.820 Things going on in the rest of the world as America struggles through this period of decline,
00:01:17.920 presided over by President Joe Biden.
00:01:20.220 So if you're interested in the questions we ask the Attorney General,
00:01:23.640 strongly encourage you to check out our X timeline.
00:01:26.840 That's got our takes on those matters.
00:01:29.080 But we will focus today on a nation that is in the Western Hemisphere, in Latin America,
00:01:34.840 in our sphere of influence, that is experiencing one of the,
00:01:38.740 really one of the most miraculous turnarounds we've witnessed for any country in my lifetime, for sure.
00:01:46.000 And the president of that country is Naib Bukele, who we have covered extensively here on Firebrand.
00:01:51.840 And his bold vision is creating a security dynamic in El Salvador, El Salvador of all places,
00:01:59.320 that could turn that small Pacific country into the Singapore, the Dubai, the Doha of the Western Hemisphere.
00:02:08.740 So here to join me, I've got two great friends and colleagues,
00:02:12.820 Gavin Wax, the president of the New York Young Republican Club,
00:02:16.060 and my legislative counsel here in our congressional office, John Wilson.
00:02:20.000 John and Gavin were both with me in El Salvador to experience the swearing in,
00:02:25.380 the inauguration of President Bukele for his second term, his second mandate.
00:02:29.420 And this is a time where he was addressing security issues,
00:02:32.540 moving on to the next phase of that country,
00:02:34.940 and got a lot of thoughts on it.
00:02:37.540 But I want to first start with you, Gavin,
00:02:39.140 because you have traveled the world to places like Hungary,
00:02:42.880 to places throughout Europe, where populism is trying to take hold.
00:02:47.320 And in some cases, taking hold.
00:02:49.700 And here in El Salvador, we seem to see a lot of those common sense,
00:02:54.140 populist policies increasing quality of life for people.
00:02:56.860 So give us your take on the Bukele inauguration,
00:02:59.700 and really where you think it sits within this broader move to embrace populism globally.
00:03:06.080 Well, thank you for having me on, Congressman.
00:03:07.980 And it certainly was a fantastic trip.
00:03:09.680 I was honored to share it with you.
00:03:11.320 And seeing what's happening on the ground in El Salvador is nothing short of a miracle.
00:03:15.260 For some of your listeners, if they're not aware,
00:03:17.460 this is a country that was engulfed in a brutal, vicious, bloody gang war that spanned decades.
00:03:23.500 And even before that brutal gang war, they were also in the midst of a civil war that also spanned decades.
00:03:30.520 So this is a country that's seen nothing but bloodshed and conflict for the better half of the past century,
00:03:37.600 and is now coming out of that, rising from the ashes under the leadership of Nayib Bukele,
00:03:43.480 who has, in a short period of time, turned this from one of the deadliest countries
00:03:48.420 based on the homicide per capita rate in the world to, I believe, the safest country
00:03:54.320 based on its homicide per capita rate in the Western Hemisphere, even safer, I believe, than the United States.
00:04:00.100 So it just goes to show that with strong leadership, visionary leadership, populist leadership,
00:04:05.300 you can achieve massive results in a very short period of time.
00:04:09.240 And that's what Nayib Bukele was able to achieve in El Salvador,
00:04:12.740 bringing about safety and security for his people,
00:04:15.380 sort of the base needs of this, you know, hierarchy of needs of a nation, if you will.
00:04:20.600 And now he can begin to focus on the rebuilding, on these additional, you know,
00:04:25.600 improvements to his country's infrastructure, to its economy, to its overall well-being,
00:04:30.400 things that were impossible to even conceive of under the boot of, you know, a civil war
00:04:35.980 and a gang war that have basically destroyed that country's future for the past several decades.
00:04:42.580 So what we're seeing on the ground is nothing short of a miracle.
00:04:45.920 It's a boom country.
00:04:47.160 You can see it in construction that's all over.
00:04:50.300 You can see it in just the aura and atmosphere and the vibes that people are giving off.
00:04:55.040 It's very hopeful for the first time.
00:04:57.200 They're excited to welcome in tourists.
00:04:58.860 They're excited to welcome in, you know, foreigners to invest.
00:05:02.600 He's legalized Bitcoin as legal tender, the first in the world, a kind of a revolutionary move.
00:05:08.340 All of these things are being done towards one goal and one goal only is the rebuilding of El Salvador, making El Salvador great again.
00:05:17.080 It's something that any American can appreciate.
00:05:19.220 It's something that any European can appreciate as we've seen a lot of managed decline across the Western world.
00:05:24.520 It gives us hope for the future.
00:05:26.520 So, John, you run the El Salvador desk in our office.
00:05:29.720 You've been studying President Bukele and the reforms that he's put in place to achieve what Gavin just described.
00:05:35.100 If you were talking to somebody who only thought about El Salvador in terms of, like, the invading migrant force in our country and only thought about El Salvador as, like, a bastion for MS-13 to wreak havoc on, really, the United States and other countries in Central and South America,
00:05:54.180 how would you describe to someone like that what the Bukele Doctrine is, what he encountered when he got there, and how he brought us to this moment that Gavin illuminated?
00:06:03.160 Well, President Bukele, first and foremost, mentioned this in his inaugural speech. 0.58
00:06:08.100 He said, first, you have a diseased body.
00:06:10.280 You have to remove the cancer before you heal the rest of it.
00:06:13.080 So, President Bukele declared a state of exception, and he physically removed a parasitic, violent, criminal class of gangs from society, and society began to flourish.
00:06:25.660 And by physical removal, all I mean, really, is that he took these people and put them in prison.
00:06:29.980 He wasn't tossing them off helicopters.
00:06:31.420 This was very humane, in fact.
00:06:33.700 And because he did this, it blows the left's ideas of restorative justice right out of the water and the idea that poverty builds a culture of crime.
00:06:44.400 El Salvador is still a developing nation by our standards.
00:06:47.100 But as you can attest, we went all over the country, from the rural areas to the inner cities, and we did not feel in danger at all.
00:06:53.220 These were good people that are now able to thrive, build, and create, and live their lives without worrying about being murdered or worse by these criminal gangs.
00:07:02.740 And because of that, he's inspired his country with a, you know, a very service mentality, a very law-abiding mentality.
00:07:10.820 The roads were paved not only from the airport to the wealthy parts of town, but they were paved all the way out to the ocean and up into the mountains, better than the roads we deal with here in Virginia.
00:07:19.660 You know, it's completely inspiring.
00:07:21.820 It reminds me of one story that he told us about a school in a rural area.
00:07:26.440 It was an elementary school, and he said that every Halloween, these kids would try to dress up as gangsters back in the old days,
00:07:32.920 and the teachers would have to try and stop them, and sometimes they were successful, sometimes they weren't.
00:07:37.080 He said this past Halloween, these kids dressed up like firemen, policemen, soldiers, and even one kid who wore a business suit,
00:07:43.740 maybe wanted to be president, who knows.
00:07:45.260 That type of inspiration is what Bukele has changed in El Salvador. 0.99
00:07:50.160 He's given his people something to be proud of and some leaders to look up to.
00:07:54.360 And you would think that with that type of success, there would be universal acclaim and celebration,
00:08:00.520 and undeniably in these images you're seeing from the inauguration,
00:08:03.540 that there were 84 international delegations in El Salvador, something completely unheard of.
00:08:09.160 But he's not without his critics.
00:08:12.860 And I want to go, Neil Patel, one of the founders of The Daily Caller, put out some great commentary.
00:08:17.840 I want to put it on the screen and then have Gavin Wax from New York Young Republican Club react.
00:08:22.260 Here's what Patel says.
00:08:23.560 After just returning from Bukele's inaugural in El Salvador, it's glaring just how truly dishonest the American coverage is.
00:08:31.800 Here's the essential true story of what happened in El Salvador.
00:08:34.520 You will not find it in a single American corporate media outlet.
00:08:38.240 It's a huge reason why they are failing.
00:08:40.820 The U.S. helped screw up El Salvador and all of Central America by ousting dozens of governments when it suited our interests.
00:08:47.540 As a result of those and other forces, El Salvador was left in ruins and racked by a 12-year civil war between communists and the government,
00:08:55.340 followed by more than a decade of dominance by rival gangs originally from the U.S., with roots in Satanism.
00:09:01.280 These gangs terrorized the small nation for more than a decade.
00:09:04.500 They used torture and disbursement and even human sacrifice as a matter, of course.
00:09:09.000 They brought El Salvador to the world's highest per capita murder rate. 0.95
00:09:12.960 They took huge extortion payments from virtually every business crippling the economy.
00:09:18.480 All this is our business because it resulted in a huge exodus of migrants to the United States.
00:09:25.340 Under new President Nayib Bukele, virtually every gang member has been put behind bars.
00:09:29.080 In a brand new prison he built in only seven months.
00:09:32.560 He has the highest adult prison rate per capita in the world right now.
00:09:36.920 The murder rate went from a peak of 103 per 100,000 down to 2.4 per 100,000.
00:09:44.680 This means El Salvador went from having the highest murder rate in the world to a lower murder rate than the United States.
00:09:51.360 Once the gangs were all locked up, the economy started to come back to life.
00:09:54.020 The streets are now vibrant and safe.
00:09:56.180 Most importantly for us, illegal immigration to the U.S. virtually stopped.
00:09:59.440 And in fact, many law-abiding Salvadorians who fled to America are now returning home.
00:10:04.380 The MS-13 Salvadorian gang members still prefer the U.S.
00:10:09.080 They torture our citizens rather than return to face actual justice back home.
00:10:13.620 Salvadorians rewarded Bukele for saving their country with polls showing to be one of the world's most popular leaders with approval in the high 80s.
00:10:21.960 He won re-election with similar numbers and now has virtually all of the legislature as well.
00:10:27.180 His inaugural address celebrated the victory and continued to focus on rebuilding the economy that the multi-decade crime problem has impacted.
00:10:35.740 This is the only solution offered to date that could actually help fix the immigration system to the U.S.
00:10:40.240 Other countries are flying in to learn what he did and replicate it.
00:10:43.980 So, Gavin, in the face of that, what is the criticism from the left of Bukele as you understand it?
00:10:51.620 And how is that working out in the information space as a lot of countries are oscillating between productive populism and destructive socialism?
00:10:59.200 Well, it's the usual array of attacks against any effective leader globally who goes against, you know, the State Department's interests.
00:11:08.760 You know, what we're seeing is him under fire for supposed human rights violations.
00:11:12.460 They're calling him a dictator.
00:11:14.080 All the usual, you know, smears that they've used over the past, you know, several decades.
00:11:19.140 But they're no longer effective, for one, calling him a dictator.
00:11:22.760 He has mass popular support, evidence not just by polling, but by recent election results, which Neil was alluding to in his tweets, where he secured, I believe, over 80, 85 percent of the vote.
00:11:32.500 He has practically every seat in the legislature under his party, Nuevas Ideas, except for four.
00:11:38.800 So there's four members of the opposition.
00:11:41.220 And if you look at the human rights abuses, this is a typical line of attack where they elevate the criminal ahead of the victim.
00:11:48.600 So you have tons of victims of these these these criminal gangs.
00:11:52.240 Now they're being locked up.
00:11:53.300 Now they're being jailed in a new modern facility, you know, housing close to, I think, 70,000 of these gang members.
00:11:59.620 Crime has been virtually eradicated.
00:12:01.360 And instead of talking about the successes of this, of these policies, which was all under the auspices of the territorial control plan, it was a seven phase plan.
00:12:10.700 They're in phase six of it.
00:12:12.300 We don't know what phase seven is actually.
00:12:14.520 Nayib Bukele has not told the world what phase seven is yet. 0.83
00:12:17.240 But we are in phase six, despite all of these massive improvements to the law by to the lives of the law abiding citizens of El Salvador.
00:12:24.840 You know, the international, you know, collective liberal elite West and all their associated NGOs and government actors, et cetera, have nothing but, you know, criticism for Nayib Bukele because he threatens all of their narratives. 0.53
00:12:38.400 He threatens all of the propaganda that they've been pushing, that you can't have a strong man.
00:12:44.440 You can't have any strong leadership.
00:12:46.120 You can't have a country that's putting their national interest first.
00:12:49.040 You can't actually solve crime in an effective way.
00:12:52.280 All of these are just the things we have to accept as part of living in modern society, yada, yada, yada, yada.
00:12:57.580 It's all the sort of, you know, weaponized nihilism that they push out on the airwaves here in the United States.
00:13:02.920 But he is showing firsthand that we don't have to live like this, that we don't have to accept crime as just a way of life.
00:13:09.800 We don't have to accept our country being taken over by corrupt interests.
00:13:13.740 And a big part of his success was not just taking on the gangs, but was taking on the corrupt political class that ruled El Salvador for decades and in many cases was propped up by the United States and other, you know, foreign interests.
00:13:27.560 There's a lot of parallels there to what we're seeing in the United States and the broader Western world.
00:13:31.680 So with strong visionary leadership and a national unity, a national consensus to solve these problems, anything is possible.
00:13:38.480 So if you could take the deadliest country on the face of the earth and make it the safest in a matter of years, months, there's no excuse for why we can't solve, you know, a litany of our problems.
00:13:48.880 And we are hearing some of that criticism.
00:13:51.380 Chris McVeigh on Facebook says that our podcast here is amounting to MAGA worshiping authoritarianism.
00:13:57.980 No, Chris, we just like the order and safety.
00:14:00.380 Is it a bad thing to want people to be able to start a business without being extorted?
00:14:04.860 And the critique of Bukele that he's some sort of authoritarian belies some of the direct discussions we had with him.
00:14:11.820 So I want to let you guys into the room.
00:14:13.320 Sasha, I think we've got a clip where President Bukele within it is talking about his vision for innovation and how partnership can lead to free market systems that would that would be the best resilience against authoritarianism.
00:14:26.060 Play that clip.
00:14:29.760 It's such an honor to meet you.
00:14:31.060 This is my wife, Ginger.
00:14:32.220 Hi.
00:14:32.600 Wonderful to meet you.
00:14:33.580 Yeah, yeah.
00:14:34.200 I know who you are, of course.
00:14:35.760 Well, we're big fans.
00:14:37.040 Me too, me too.
00:14:37.820 Yes, I am.
00:14:38.380 And you have a lot of, we have a lot of common friends.
00:14:41.840 We do, indeed.
00:14:42.480 We do, indeed.
00:14:43.460 All the inventions, AI, for example, isn't it?
00:14:46.260 Everybody's copied because AI will become a commodity.
00:14:50.280 It's not like, you know, everybody will have AI on their phones and their watches.
00:14:53.880 AI will become a commodity.
00:14:55.200 It's not that.
00:14:55.920 But right now, it's still an invention.
00:14:58.160 And it's still in the U.S., basically.
00:15:00.340 Well, what about Bitcoin, for example?
00:15:02.460 I mean, I'm not trying to pitch anything, but I mean, all the innovations are still in
00:15:07.800 the U.S., but once you start going to Europe, like people are going to ban this and ban that
00:15:14.680 and ban this and ban that, innovation is going to move.
00:15:17.140 So, if you lose the innovation advantage that you have right now, you lose some more.
00:15:25.680 Yes.
00:15:26.360 So, the United States has a lot going on for them, for you.
00:15:31.360 Well, we leave inspired there.
00:15:33.780 No doubt.
00:15:34.240 Thank you.
00:15:34.700 Thank you all.
00:15:35.260 Great to meet you.
00:15:36.620 Best of luck.
00:15:37.640 Thank you.
00:15:38.780 Great to meet you as well.
00:15:39.920 Thanks.
00:15:40.260 It's been wonderful.
00:15:44.020 Thank you.
00:15:44.480 Thank you so much.
00:15:45.180 President Bukele was so kind to host us at, I guess, their version of Camp David, a chance
00:15:52.980 to be able to get his perspective on, really, the technology agenda.
00:15:56.720 And that's what I want to talk with you about.
00:15:58.440 John Wilson had a cameo there, as well as our executive producer, Joel Valdez.
00:16:02.520 But, John, he made a point with me where he said, Matt, if I go back to manufacturing and
00:16:09.900 textiles, it'll take me 100 years to catch up, because the industrial revolution passed
00:16:15.640 by El Salvador.
00:16:17.060 And so, now, Bukele's got this vision where the way to advance an economy is actually to
00:16:22.420 leapfrog some of the kind of traditional things we push the global south to do.
00:16:27.040 And he's embracing fintech, Bitcoin, these various technology platforms.
00:16:34.180 Do you think there's a role for the global south in those things, you know, where they
00:16:38.480 get away from, like, the Western Union theory of the case on economic transfers, and we start
00:16:44.440 to see a decentralized society occur in the global south through some of these embraces
00:16:50.200 of tech?
00:16:51.320 Yeah, it's a very, very aggressive policy.
00:16:53.780 You know, the early United States had a similar problem on its hand.
00:16:57.560 You know, do we want to become a peripheral economy that exports raw goods and textiles
00:17:01.480 and certain things to places like Great Britain?
00:17:03.680 Or do we want to rival them?
00:17:05.720 And I think Bukele sees that, you know, we can't, a small country like El Salvador can't 1.00
00:17:09.780 rival us in industrial might, but it might be able to play a role like Taiwan or some other
00:17:14.820 small nation, you know, in tech or things that are more niche.
00:17:19.040 So trying to leapfrog his adversaries and competitors through, you know, financialization
00:17:25.740 and foreign investment and getting ahead in the tech industry is a huge gamble, but it's
00:17:31.160 also a huge challenge, and it will, it could reward him greatly.
00:17:34.480 And if education in his country and foreign investment keeps up, then there's no telling
00:17:39.380 what you could do under a man like his leadership.
00:17:42.360 Maria on X says that on All Hallows' Eve, the only appropriate outfit is Saints.
00:17:46.580 It shouldn't be anything other than the Saints.
00:17:49.000 Very base take from Maria on X.
00:17:52.180 Gavin, you know, I wanted to ask you about the imagery and the symbolism of all this.
00:17:58.320 Sasha, go ahead and put up the outfit side by side here.
00:18:01.920 Here you can see on the screen what Bukele wears and a striking kind of homage to Simone
00:18:10.000 Bolivar, the great liberator of Latin America.
00:18:13.340 You know, you're president of the New York Young Republican Club.
00:18:15.840 The event of the year every year on the political right is the New York Young Republican Club
00:18:20.880 gala.
00:18:21.380 You understand all the pomp and circumstance.
00:18:23.760 Should we take something from the Bukele outfit choice, the pageantry, the way you saw 0.99
00:18:29.160 it all play out?
00:18:31.220 Oh, absolutely.
00:18:32.180 This is a man that understands aesthetics, the power of aesthetics, the visuals, the imagery.
00:18:36.340 All of these are very effective tools to convey your vision of the future.
00:18:41.380 And he certainly has one.
00:18:42.540 I mean, there's a lot of history to that outfit.
00:18:44.940 There's a lot of history, you know, to Central American political dynamics.
00:18:49.060 I mean, this was a region that was once united in a very similar way to the United States.
00:18:52.940 They had the Federal Republic of Central America, these united provinces of Central America.
00:18:57.680 They eventually fell apart.
00:18:59.380 They sort of modeled themselves on the United States.
00:19:02.140 And there's always been a large political contingent in Central America, in these various
00:19:06.300 nations to unite this, these different countries back into one once more under some sort of
00:19:11.780 federal model.
00:19:12.700 And that's something that Bukele has discussed and promoted.
00:19:15.780 And it's something that's been coming up more in the discourse there because of his successful
00:19:19.000 leadership in turning El Salvador around.
00:19:21.220 So I think between that history, the visuals, the outfit, I mean, everything, it's all pointing
00:19:25.920 in one direction and one direction only, this sort of returning to greatness, elevating
00:19:30.100 the nation, elevating the people.
00:19:32.140 And again, you know, we saw this at the inauguration, this big, beautiful palace, I think, constructed
00:19:36.600 in the early 1900s, the artillery firing, the flyovers, the beautiful, you know, decor and
00:19:44.500 the uniforms.
00:19:45.540 Everything is showing that this is a country on the upswing.
00:19:48.180 And you can always look to these sort of outward signs to show the health of a country.
00:19:52.720 And you look at our country and what we're producing and and the symbols and the and
00:19:57.460 the rhetoric and the visuals that the Biden administration is putting out.
00:20:01.120 And it's one of decline.
00:20:01.940 And it's one of a nation moving rapidly towards sort of tyranny.
00:20:06.380 On the other hand, you have Bukele with this optimistic imagery, these optimistic discussion
00:20:11.260 about fixing the country and moving forward and now being able to focus on things like the
00:20:15.320 economy and infrastructure and building.
00:20:17.760 And they are building right in that plaza that we were in.
00:20:20.140 And they built a beautiful new library that I had the pleasure of visiting.
00:20:25.140 It's a modern facility.
00:20:26.960 And it just goes to show where his administration's priorities are.
00:20:31.140 And every administration or regime, however you want to describe it, has their priorities.
00:20:35.580 And what are his?
00:20:36.300 Well, one of the first things he did was build a beautiful, large library dedicated to improving
00:20:41.420 literacy, dedicated to improving the education and well-being of the youth of El Salvador.
00:20:46.880 So they're not being drawn into gangs.
00:20:48.340 They're being drawn into learning and studying.
00:20:50.160 And I visited this library and it was filled with young families and young people reading
00:20:54.880 books, studying and enjoying the facilities that several years ago would have been completely
00:20:59.600 unavailable to them.
00:21:00.600 Everything from the books to the computers to the air conditioning.
00:21:03.820 I'm sure as hell needed it and everything else about that facility.
00:21:07.060 So these are the types of things that he's focusing on, uplifting his people, uplifting
00:21:10.860 his country and building new and building better.
00:21:13.660 The concern that he has as we're experiencing this 18% increase and just the way construction
00:21:21.760 is impacting the GDP, it's at 18% right now.
00:21:25.200 But the concern is that our State Department does not go into these interactions with what
00:21:32.040 I think you and I would want, a reinvigorated Monroe Doctrine. 0.70
00:21:35.480 I get criticized all the time for being an isolationist because I don't want to go fight every single
00:21:39.520 war in the Middle East and I don't believe we could turn every cave in Central Asia into
00:21:44.220 the next Jeffersonian democracy.
00:21:46.180 But when it comes to our neighborhood and a reinvigorated Monroe Doctrine, you have to
00:21:50.540 have shining examples outside the United States that other countries could see their own future
00:21:56.160 looking like.
00:21:57.780 And John, you see all the time here on Capitol Hill how much the staffs, how much the members,
00:22:03.300 the committees, are focused on Indo-Paycom and focused on CENTcom and even to an extent
00:22:09.820 focused on AFRICOM.
00:22:11.100 But right here in Southcom, oftentimes there is neglect.
00:22:15.820 And how do you think policymakers ought to be thinking about using the progress here in
00:22:22.840 El Salvador to reinvigorate a regional Monroe Doctrine?
00:22:26.140 Well, what's going on right now with our federal government and our State Department, USAID,
00:22:30.620 and these globalist NGOs is just absolute criminal malpractice.
00:22:34.000 You have a budding country like El Salvador that we could be incredible allies with.
00:22:39.880 And instead of reaching out to them and working with them, we're treating them, you know, standoffishly,
00:22:44.240 criticizing how Bukele goes about the day-to-day governance that is very much up to him, in
00:22:49.500 my opinion.
00:22:50.660 And, you know, an America-first foreign policy is an isolation.
00:22:54.520 An America-first foreign policy is interest-based rather than value-based.
00:22:58.360 So right now, you know, the Russians will come to your country and they will say, we'll 0.98
00:23:02.360 give you security.
00:23:03.300 The Chinese will come to your country and they'll say, we'll give you money. 1.00
00:23:07.440 And then the United States will come to your country and say, we're going to give you drag
00:23:11.360 queen story time in your public library unless you work with us.
00:23:14.060 And that's not attractive.
00:23:15.780 So people like President Bukele say, yeah, you know, I don't know if I want to work with
00:23:18.680 these guys.
00:23:19.440 We need to go to them and offer them economic security.
00:23:22.840 We need to have security assistance.
00:23:24.600 This could be a great ally in the war on cartels.
00:23:28.000 Now that the MS-13 style satanic gangs have moved out of country, there is a vacuum potentially
00:23:35.240 that needs to be filled by President Bukele and he's working hard to do it.
00:23:38.020 But the last thing you want is Sinaloa cartels and other cartels in Mexico filling the void
00:23:42.320 down there.
00:23:43.160 And if we can stop them there, we don't have to worry about as much of the drugs, the
00:23:46.800 violence getting exported to the United States.
00:23:49.120 Take just a moment and educate people about really how MS-13 was not an El Salvadorian 0.53
00:23:55.340 gang that invaded the United States so much it was as a feature of the U.S. prison system
00:24:01.660 that then was visited in El Salvador where it then grew, it was nurtured, and then became
00:24:07.880 a more capable and dangerous force.
00:24:09.700 Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
00:24:10.980 So MS-13 was actually founded in California's prison system by El Salvadorans who had immigrated
00:24:16.460 here during the revolution.
00:24:19.120 So we took these people and deported them, rightly so, but unfortunately that meant El 1.00
00:24:23.440 Salvador got a hold of all these new gangsters who set up shop in their country.
00:24:27.460 And it took their country from, you know, a normal developing country into a state of not 0.99
00:24:31.620 only just anarcho-tyranny or decline, but frankly, in my opinion, a complete and total
00:24:35.780 failed state.
00:24:36.680 And it stayed that way for some time.
00:24:38.600 And we played both sides in the region down there, and to no avail, gangs dominated El Salvador.
00:24:43.920 But they were still not as sophisticated.
00:24:46.680 And as we see with President Bukele and his military, you know, once he got the military
00:24:50.620 up and operating, the gangs were no match for them.
00:24:53.600 Cartels are a totally different entity, and we have to take that very, very seriously.
00:24:58.140 I know President Bukele told us about when he got into office, he saw that his military
00:25:02.500 had holes in their shoes and terrible uniforms.
00:25:05.620 They got paid less than minimum wage.
00:25:07.560 And it was viewed in this country as if you joined the military, well, then you must have
00:25:11.100 had something go wrong in your life.
00:25:12.320 So when he gets into power, he says, you know what, we're going to fix the equipment.
00:25:16.300 We're going to give you good boots, good uniforms, good weapons.
00:25:18.980 You're going to be proud to serve.
00:25:20.180 We're going to get out the corruption.
00:25:21.660 And now these guys are walking around wanting to join the military.
00:25:24.080 They want to get the girls, right? 0.93
00:25:25.200 That's what he told us.
00:25:26.560 So it's been very successful.
00:25:27.400 And the girls think they're awesome. 1.00
00:25:28.140 They are.
00:25:28.420 Because instead of being in some holy shoes and some rat tat uniform, these guys are decked
00:25:34.060 out.
00:25:34.300 They're looking sharp.
00:25:35.100 They created medals when there is merit, when they showed bravery, when they were successful.
00:25:39.360 And it was just what Gavin was saying earlier.
00:25:41.980 Symbols are a feature of nationalism.
00:25:44.120 They do.
00:25:44.460 Bukele created a national band.
00:25:46.680 There's a national campaign to get people to not litter on their streets, but to take
00:25:50.320 pride in the environment of their country.
00:25:52.220 Like when you love the country, then you create a permission structure to allow for beauty and
00:25:58.120 joy.
00:25:59.020 And in so many places on earth and frankly, in the United States, we see regression off of
00:26:04.440 that standard.
00:26:05.160 I fear.
00:26:05.760 Yeah, beauty inspires hope. 0.96
00:26:07.480 And they have it in El Salvador right now and they're better off for it. 1.00
00:26:09.860 So Gavin, I got to tell you, I got to bring you into one of the discussions we had because
00:26:12.940 there was a New York Democrat.
00:26:14.980 And I can't say it was like a criticism of Bukele, but the New York Democrat turns to
00:26:19.820 Bukele and says, yeah, yeah, yeah, you've dealt with the gangs, but you really need to
00:26:23.860 lay off them now.
00:26:24.840 You really need to move past this, you know, very, very strident security policy and move
00:26:30.100 on to something else you can worry about.
00:26:31.700 And Bukele first described that anything built by man, a wall, a building, a dam, requires
00:26:40.180 maintenance.
00:26:41.100 And that the security system has really been created by this government.
00:26:44.720 It will always require maintenance and diligence.
00:26:48.140 And then he turned to this New York Democrat and said a quote, I will not forget that he
00:26:52.000 borrowed.
00:26:52.340 He said, he who spares the wolf forsakes the sheep.
00:26:56.180 And you were out there in that crowd with those Salvadorians as they celebrated this
00:27:03.560 man, as they took an oath alongside him to recommit themselves to the country.
00:27:08.820 Give the Firebrand viewers like a sense of what it was like being out in that crowd and
00:27:14.160 how people were reacting to the inauguration and to this promise of a brighter future.
00:27:19.340 Oh, I mean, it was it was pandemonium out there.
00:27:23.420 I mean, they were loving it.
00:27:24.320 The cheers, you know, the support.
00:27:27.260 I mean, it was it was all around us and the crowd was massive.
00:27:30.420 I mean, you know, we talk a lot about crowd sizes in American politics.
00:27:33.520 You know, this is not a large country.
00:27:34.960 This is not exactly a large city.
00:27:36.260 But the crowd was as far as the eye could see.
00:27:38.540 People were coming out from all over.
00:27:39.880 I mean, again, this is a man who has achieved national unity.
00:27:43.260 This is a man who's brought about a national consensus, who's been able to unite all these
00:27:47.980 different factions left and right under this sort of pragmatic, almost big tent populist
00:27:54.840 style movement that's really just about results and is about delivering results for the Salvadoran
00:28:00.560 people.
00:28:00.980 And I believe I know the gentleman you're referring to, this New York Democrat, and it's
00:28:04.600 very funny that he would say something like that.
00:28:06.900 You could say the same thing about how we dealt with crime here in New York City under
00:28:10.820 Mayor Rudy Giuliani and later Bloomberg.
00:28:12.700 And again, it was it didn't take much for that to all those gains that we made in terms
00:28:17.760 of public safety and turning the city around from its low point in the 70s and 80s.
00:28:22.240 It didn't take more than one term of Mayor de Blasio to turn that entire situation back
00:28:28.840 on its head.
00:28:29.420 So the same thing can easily happen in El Salvador.
00:28:32.600 Civilization is very fragile at the end of the day.
00:28:35.320 And the situation that John was describing of it being a failed state, it could return to
00:28:39.940 that status of being a failed state very quickly.
00:28:43.300 You just have to simply replace this strong visionary leadership with weak and corrupt
00:28:48.680 leadership like it once had.
00:28:50.480 So all of this is is a very thin line between barbarism and civilization.
00:28:55.780 And I think Bukele fully understands that and understands that this needs to be maintained,
00:29:00.080 that this needs to be built up, not just over an election cycle like most Republicans think,
00:29:04.820 but over generations, which is how the institutional left thinks they think in terms of generations.
00:29:09.420 So, again, now he's able to focus on rebuilding the country, to fixing the roots, to fixing a
00:29:15.340 lot of these other issues that have been neglected for decades.
00:29:17.560 And again, the hope is in the air.
00:29:19.760 The people appreciate it.
00:29:21.020 They love him.
00:29:21.600 They're rewarding him with electoral mandates that you fail to see in most countries across
00:29:26.720 the world winning by the percentages he won by really shows that he had a tangible, immediate
00:29:32.820 and visceral impact for the better on the lives of the vast majority of Salvadoran people.
00:29:38.200 And listen, there are many people in the West, in these globalist elites that don't like that
00:29:43.620 this is happening again, because it's showing that it can be replicated in other countries.
00:29:47.840 There were dignitaries there from across Latin America, other countries that are facing similar
00:29:51.980 issues, including in places like Ecuador, for example, who are now adopting this sort
00:29:56.540 of Bukele-ism to fix the issues, similar issues involving gangs and cartels in their own countries.
00:30:02.400 The more these countries begin to stabilize and fix their problems at home, the less migration
00:30:08.040 the United States is going to see, the less drugs and other criminal enterprises we are going
00:30:13.980 to see crossing our border.
00:30:15.580 And of course, if you have an agenda to flood the border, not just with people, but also with
00:30:19.700 illicit substances. And if you have an agenda to degrade the foundation of our society, then of
00:30:24.820 course, you want to see instability across Latin America, because it's all going to pour 1.00
00:30:28.660 northward, which is what's been happening for the last several years.
00:30:32.180 My wife, Ginger, has a Salvadorian friend who showed her dad the videos and the images that we
00:30:38.080 had taken there of that very joy and that sense of a brighter future. And I was told that he started
00:30:43.660 crying because he looked at that and said, that's what I was fighting for in the civil war. I was
00:30:49.140 fighting for the chance that people could get past what had constrained better lives, investment,
00:30:56.100 better futures. And certainly to see that explosion of emotion is no surprise knowing what the people
00:31:02.420 there have been through. But John, final question I want to ask both of you. What would be your
00:31:05.860 message to the Salvadorians who are in the United States right now and who are observing this
00:31:11.620 transformation from afar?
00:31:13.040 I'd say go home. I mean, it's time. You know, you've come here for economic reasons. You still
00:31:19.240 love your people. You still love your country. And now your country is amazing. It's beautiful. It's
00:31:24.960 inspiring. It's changed. And they desperately need you. They need the labor force. They need the
00:31:29.400 intellectual capital that you all have grown inside our country. And now there has been no better time
00:31:35.480 in your nation's history and your history in our country than right now to voluntarily go back to
00:31:39.840 El Salvador and join your compatriots and building a better society. Gavin, what's your message to the
00:31:45.720 Salvadorian community after this experience?
00:31:48.720 Well, I certainly share John's sentiments. And if they do not decide to repatriate, then I would
00:31:53.780 encourage them to vote for President Trump. If you support Bukele's policy platform in El Salvador,
00:31:59.260 you should have no reason not to support the Trump America First agenda here. It shares many parallels.
00:32:04.620 It shares many of the same principles ideologically in terms of turning our country around. We are facing
00:32:10.240 an unprecedented crime wave in our country. We're facing unprecedented levels of institutional
00:32:15.260 corruption. And if you want to prevent the country you immigrated to from turning into the country you
00:32:19.780 left, then the only choice is to vote right, to vote for President Trump and to vote for other
00:32:24.220 America First candidates up and down the ballot. But I certainly think now is the time to repatriate. 1.00
00:32:28.820 Certainly, if a lot of tech bros and Bitcoin bros from Virginia and the United States and elsewhere
00:32:34.940 are flooding into El Salvador, it just goes to show you, you can take advantage of the boom times down
00:32:39.300 there, especially if you know the language, know the culture, and can get in on the good times while
00:32:44.500 they are still pretty cheap and affordable. I know we were looking at some real estate down there.
00:32:49.860 But the future is bright for El Salvador. We need more Bukele's across the world. We need more 1.00
00:32:54.600 visionary, populist, pragmatic leaders who are going to address the problems of this country.
00:32:58.440 Fight through the corruption, fight through the foreign influence, and fight through all of the 0.99
00:33:03.120 societal ills that are plaguing us and fight for a better future. It can happen in El Salvador. It
00:33:07.780 can happen anywhere. Absolutely. I will leave with this sentiment. There are certain things that
00:33:12.520 happen throughout the course of your life where you'll always remember where you were. For me, 9-11.
00:33:18.140 I'll never forget standing in the student union at Florida State University, getting that news, or
00:33:22.640 the death of Princess Diana, and seeing the anguish on the face of my parents in South Walton County in
00:33:30.320 Florida, the fall of the Soviet Union. The conviction of President Trump was such a sad moment for me
00:33:39.400 personally. I've dedicated my whole life to the law, going to law school, learning the law, practicing law,
00:33:45.060 writing the laws in my state and now my country. And so to see the law used in such a way to achieve
00:33:53.180 politics, it angered me. But even through the anger was such an emptiness and a sense of sadness. And
00:34:00.760 there I was. No one thought this verdict was coming in. Judge was about ready to send those folks home.
00:34:06.900 And there I was sitting in a beautiful Skyrise Hotel in El Salvador, of all places, watching my country
00:34:16.560 arrest a political rival, watching my country descend into near third world chaos. And then I see this
00:34:23.920 country in the third world, believing in strong borders, an orderly society, a celebration of nation,
00:34:31.260 disagreement politically, without these corrupt uses, and then a real focus on rooting out real
00:34:38.140 corruption. Bukele, when he had his first cabinet meeting, he brings everybody in and says, that's
00:34:43.960 the Attorney General. And he'll be investigating everyone in this room, including me. And indeed,
00:34:50.060 they found a rat in the woodpile. Somebody that was going to be in the cabinet was compromised. And so
00:34:55.100 they were able to excise that and deal with that. And I think we need that level of focus on honest
00:35:01.100 fair government in the United States. And guess what? If it can happen in El Salvador, if turnaround
00:35:06.680 can happen in El Salvador, it certainly can happen for the greatest country that has ever existed
00:35:11.540 in all of humankind. A special thanks to John Wilson and Gavin Wax for going with me to El Salvador,
00:35:18.060 spending time there. I think Gavin probably had the best Spanish of the group, but there were times
00:35:23.300 we had to team up to get all the verbs conjugated correctly. But thank you everyone for watching.
00:35:29.120 We'll have other important updates regarding the work in Congress, some of the spending bills we're
00:35:34.300 dealing with, and the way we need to use the power of the purse and the power of subpoena to right our
00:35:38.800 nation again. Thanks for joining. Make sure to give us a five-star rating on a listening platform and
00:35:43.340 subscribe so that you're always up to date as to the next firebrand. Roll the credits.
00:35:47.620 We'll see you next time.
00:35:49.620 We'll see you next time.