Episode 166 LIVEļ¼ El Salvador Is Being Saved (feat. John Wilson & Gavin Wax) - Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
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Summary
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
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Matt Gaetz, the biggest firebrand inside of the House of Representatives.
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You're not taking Matt Gaetz off the board, okay?
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Because Matt Gaetz is an American patriot and Matt Gaetz is an American hero.
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We will not continue to allow the Uniparty to run this town without a fight.
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I want to thank you, Matt Gaetz, for holding the line.
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If we had hundreds of Matt Gaetz in D.C., the country turns around. It's that simple.
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He's so tough, he's so strong, he's smart, and he loves this country. Matt Gaetz.
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It is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you.
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We will save America. It's choose your fighter time. Send in the firebrands.
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Welcome back to Firebrand. I know it's been a minute and a lot has been going on here in Capitol Hill
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and really throughout the world. We're going to talk about some of that.
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But if you've tuned in for the latest on the Trump trials, the lawfare, Attorney General Merritt Garland,
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you will be disappointed today because our focus is going to be exclusively external, global.
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Things going on in the rest of the world as America struggles through this period of decline,
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So if you're interested in the questions we ask the Attorney General,
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strongly encourage you to check out our X timeline.
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But we will focus today on a nation that is in the Western Hemisphere, in Latin America,
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in our sphere of influence, that is experiencing one of the,
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really one of the most miraculous turnarounds we've witnessed for any country in my lifetime, for sure.
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And the president of that country is Naib Bukele, who we have covered extensively here on Firebrand.
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And his bold vision is creating a security dynamic in El Salvador, El Salvador of all places,
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that could turn that small Pacific country into the Singapore, the Dubai, the Doha of the Western Hemisphere.
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So here to join me, I've got two great friends and colleagues,
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Gavin Wax, the president of the New York Young Republican Club,
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and my legislative counsel here in our congressional office, John Wilson.
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John and Gavin were both with me in El Salvador to experience the swearing in,
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the inauguration of President Bukele for his second term, his second mandate.
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And this is a time where he was addressing security issues,
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because you have traveled the world to places like Hungary,
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to places throughout Europe, where populism is trying to take hold.
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And here in El Salvador, we seem to see a lot of those common sense,
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populist policies increasing quality of life for people.
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So give us your take on the Bukele inauguration,
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and really where you think it sits within this broader move to embrace populism globally.
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And seeing what's happening on the ground in El Salvador is nothing short of a miracle.
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For some of your listeners, if they're not aware,
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this is a country that was engulfed in a brutal, vicious, bloody gang war that spanned decades.
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And even before that brutal gang war, they were also in the midst of a civil war that also spanned decades.
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So this is a country that's seen nothing but bloodshed and conflict for the better half of the past century,
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and is now coming out of that, rising from the ashes under the leadership of Nayib Bukele,
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who has, in a short period of time, turned this from one of the deadliest countries
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based on the homicide per capita rate in the world to, I believe, the safest country
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based on its homicide per capita rate in the Western Hemisphere, even safer, I believe, than the United States.
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So it just goes to show that with strong leadership, visionary leadership, populist leadership,
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you can achieve massive results in a very short period of time.
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And that's what Nayib Bukele was able to achieve in El Salvador,
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bringing about safety and security for his people,
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sort of the base needs of this, you know, hierarchy of needs of a nation, if you will.
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And now he can begin to focus on the rebuilding, on these additional, you know,
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improvements to his country's infrastructure, to its economy, to its overall well-being,
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things that were impossible to even conceive of under the boot of, you know, a civil war
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and a gang war that have basically destroyed that country's future for the past several decades.
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So what we're seeing on the ground is nothing short of a miracle.
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You can see it in construction that's all over.
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You can see it in just the aura and atmosphere and the vibes that people are giving off.
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They're excited to welcome in, you know, foreigners to invest.
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He's legalized Bitcoin as legal tender, the first in the world, a kind of a revolutionary move.
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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.
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It's something that any American can appreciate.
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It's something that any European can appreciate as we've seen a lot of managed decline across the Western world.
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So, John, you run the El Salvador desk in our office.
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You've been studying President Bukele and the reforms that he's put in place to achieve what Gavin just described.
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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,
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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?
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Well, President Bukele, first and foremost, mentioned this in his inaugural speech.
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You have to remove the cancer before you heal the rest of it.
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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.
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And by physical removal, all I mean, really, is that he took these people and put them in prison.
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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.
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El Salvador is still a developing nation by our standards.
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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.
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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.
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And because of that, he's inspired his country with a, you know, a very service mentality, a very law-abiding mentality.
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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.
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It reminds me of one story that he told us about a school in a rural area.
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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,
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and the teachers would have to try and stop them, and sometimes they were successful, sometimes they weren't.
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He said this past Halloween, these kids dressed up like firemen, policemen, soldiers, and even one kid who wore a business suit,
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That type of inspiration is what Bukele has changed in El Salvador.
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He's given his people something to be proud of and some leaders to look up to.
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And you would think that with that type of success, there would be universal acclaim and celebration,
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and undeniably in these images you're seeing from the inauguration,
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that there were 84 international delegations in El Salvador, something completely unheard of.
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And I want to go, Neil Patel, one of the founders of The Daily Caller, put out some great commentary.
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I want to put it on the screen and then have Gavin Wax from New York Young Republican Club react.
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After just returning from Bukele's inaugural in El Salvador, it's glaring just how truly dishonest the American coverage is.
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Here's the essential true story of what happened in El Salvador.
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You will not find it in a single American corporate media outlet.
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The U.S. helped screw up El Salvador and all of Central America by ousting dozens of governments when it suited our interests.
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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,
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followed by more than a decade of dominance by rival gangs originally from the U.S., with roots in Satanism.
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These gangs terrorized the small nation for more than a decade.
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They used torture and disbursement and even human sacrifice as a matter, of course.
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They brought El Salvador to the world's highest per capita murder rate.
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They took huge extortion payments from virtually every business crippling the economy.
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All this is our business because it resulted in a huge exodus of migrants to the United States.
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Under new President Nayib Bukele, virtually every gang member has been put behind bars.
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In a brand new prison he built in only seven months.
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He has the highest adult prison rate per capita in the world right now.
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The murder rate went from a peak of 103 per 100,000 down to 2.4 per 100,000.
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This means El Salvador went from having the highest murder rate in the world to a lower murder rate than the United States.
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Once the gangs were all locked up, the economy started to come back to life.
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Most importantly for us, illegal immigration to the U.S. virtually stopped.
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And in fact, many law-abiding Salvadorians who fled to America are now returning home.
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The MS-13 Salvadorian gang members still prefer the U.S.
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They torture our citizens rather than return to face actual justice back home.
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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.
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He won re-election with similar numbers and now has virtually all of the legislature as well.
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His inaugural address celebrated the victory and continued to focus on rebuilding the economy that the multi-decade crime problem has impacted.
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This is the only solution offered to date that could actually help fix the immigration system to the U.S.
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Other countries are flying in to learn what he did and replicate it.
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So, Gavin, in the face of that, what is the criticism from the left of Bukele as you understand it?
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And how is that working out in the information space as a lot of countries are oscillating between productive populism and destructive socialism?
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Well, it's the usual array of attacks against any effective leader globally who goes against, you know, the State Department's interests.
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You know, what we're seeing is him under fire for supposed human rights violations.
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All the usual, you know, smears that they've used over the past, you know, several decades.
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But they're no longer effective, for one, calling him a dictator.
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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.
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He has practically every seat in the legislature under his party, Nuevas Ideas, except for four.
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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.
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So you have tons of victims of these these these criminal gangs.
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Now they're being jailed in a new modern facility, you know, housing close to, I think, 70,000 of these gang members.
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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.
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Nayib Bukele has not told the world what phase seven is yet.
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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.
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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.
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He threatens all of the propaganda that they've been pushing, that you can't have a strong man.
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You can't have a country that's putting their national interest first.
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You can't actually solve crime in an effective way.
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All of these are just the things we have to accept as part of living in modern society, yada, yada, yada, yada.
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It's all the sort of, you know, weaponized nihilism that they push out on the airwaves here in the United States.
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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.
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We don't have to accept our country being taken over by corrupt interests.
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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.
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There's a lot of parallels there to what we're seeing in the United States and the broader Western world.
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So with strong visionary leadership and a national unity, a national consensus to solve these problems, anything is possible.
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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.
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Chris McVeigh on Facebook says that our podcast here is amounting to MAGA worshiping authoritarianism.
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Is it a bad thing to want people to be able to start a business without being extorted?
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And the critique of Bukele that he's some sort of authoritarian belies some of the direct discussions we had with him.
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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.
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And you have a lot of, we have a lot of common friends.
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Everybody's copied because AI will become a commodity.
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It's not like, you know, everybody will have AI on their phones and their watches.
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I mean, I'm not trying to pitch anything, but I mean, all the innovations are still in
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the U.S., but once you start going to Europe, like people are going to ban this and ban that
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and ban this and ban that, innovation is going to move.
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So, if you lose the innovation advantage that you have right now, you lose some more.
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So, the United States has a lot going on for them, for you.
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President Bukele was so kind to host us at, I guess, their version of Camp David, a chance
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to be able to get his perspective on, really, the technology agenda.
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John Wilson had a cameo there, as well as our executive producer, Joel Valdez.
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But, John, he made a point with me where he said, Matt, if I go back to manufacturing and
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textiles, it'll take me 100 years to catch up, because the industrial revolution passed
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And so, now, Bukele's got this vision where the way to advance an economy is actually to
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leapfrog some of the kind of traditional things we push the global south to do.
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And he's embracing fintech, Bitcoin, these various technology platforms.
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Do you think there's a role for the global south in those things, you know, where they
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get away from, like, the Western Union theory of the case on economic transfers, and we start
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to see a decentralized society occur in the global south through some of these embraces
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You know, the early United States had a similar problem on its hand.
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You know, do we want to become a peripheral economy that exports raw goods and textiles
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and certain things to places like Great Britain?
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And I think Bukele sees that, you know, we can't, a small country like El Salvador can't
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rival us in industrial might, but it might be able to play a role like Taiwan or some other
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small nation, you know, in tech or things that are more niche.
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So trying to leapfrog his adversaries and competitors through, you know, financialization
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and foreign investment and getting ahead in the tech industry is a huge gamble, but it's
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also a huge challenge, and it will, it could reward him greatly.
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And if education in his country and foreign investment keeps up, then there's no telling
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what you could do under a man like his leadership.
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Maria on X says that on All Hallows' Eve, the only appropriate outfit is Saints.
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It shouldn't be anything other than the Saints.
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Gavin, you know, I wanted to ask you about the imagery and the symbolism of all this.
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Sasha, go ahead and put up the outfit side by side here.
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Here you can see on the screen what Bukele wears and a striking kind of homage to Simone
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You know, you're president of the New York Young Republican Club.
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The event of the year every year on the political right is the New York Young Republican Club
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Should we take something from the Bukele outfit choice, the pageantry, the way you saw
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This is a man that understands aesthetics, the power of aesthetics, the visuals, the imagery.
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All of these are very effective tools to convey your vision of the future.
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I mean, there's a lot of history to that outfit.
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There's a lot of history, you know, to Central American political dynamics.
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I mean, this was a region that was once united in a very similar way to the United States.
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They had the Federal Republic of Central America, these united provinces of Central America.
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They sort of modeled themselves on the United States.
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And there's always been a large political contingent in Central America, in these various
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nations to unite this, these different countries back into one once more under some sort of
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And that's something that Bukele has discussed and promoted.
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And it's something that's been coming up more in the discourse there because of his successful
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So I think between that history, the visuals, the outfit, I mean, everything, it's all pointing
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in one direction and one direction only, this sort of returning to greatness, elevating
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And again, you know, we saw this at the inauguration, this big, beautiful palace, I think, constructed
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in the early 1900s, the artillery firing, the flyovers, the beautiful, you know, decor and
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Everything is showing that this is a country on the upswing.
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And you can always look to these sort of outward signs to show the health of a country.
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And you look at our country and what we're producing and and the symbols and the and
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the rhetoric and the visuals that the Biden administration is putting out.
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And it's one of a nation moving rapidly towards sort of tyranny.
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On the other hand, you have Bukele with this optimistic imagery, these optimistic discussion
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about fixing the country and moving forward and now being able to focus on things like the
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And they are building right in that plaza that we were in.
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And they built a beautiful new library that I had the pleasure of visiting.
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And it just goes to show where his administration's priorities are.
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And every administration or regime, however you want to describe it, has their priorities.
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Well, one of the first things he did was build a beautiful, large library dedicated to improving
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literacy, dedicated to improving the education and well-being of the youth of El Salvador.
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They're being drawn into learning and studying.
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And I visited this library and it was filled with young families and young people reading
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books, studying and enjoying the facilities that several years ago would have been completely
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Everything from the books to the computers to the air conditioning.
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I'm sure as hell needed it and everything else about that facility.
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So these are the types of things that he's focusing on, uplifting his people, uplifting
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his country and building new and building better.
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The concern that he has as we're experiencing this 18% increase and just the way construction
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But the concern is that our State Department does not go into these interactions with what
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I think you and I would want, a reinvigorated Monroe Doctrine.
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I get criticized all the time for being an isolationist because I don't want to go fight every single
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war in the Middle East and I don't believe we could turn every cave in Central Asia into
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But when it comes to our neighborhood and a reinvigorated Monroe Doctrine, you have to
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have shining examples outside the United States that other countries could see their own future
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And John, you see all the time here on Capitol Hill how much the staffs, how much the members,
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the committees, are focused on Indo-Paycom and focused on CENTcom and even to an extent
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But right here in Southcom, oftentimes there is neglect.
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And how do you think policymakers ought to be thinking about using the progress here in
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El Salvador to reinvigorate a regional Monroe Doctrine?
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Well, what's going on right now with our federal government and our State Department, USAID,
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and these globalist NGOs is just absolute criminal malpractice.
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You have a budding country like El Salvador that we could be incredible allies with.
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And instead of reaching out to them and working with them, we're treating them, you know, standoffishly,
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criticizing how Bukele goes about the day-to-day governance that is very much up to him, in
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And, you know, an America-first foreign policy is an isolation.
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An America-first foreign policy is interest-based rather than value-based.
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So right now, you know, the Russians will come to your country and they will say, we'll
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The Chinese will come to your country and they'll say, we'll give you money.
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And then the United States will come to your country and say, we're going to give you drag
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queen story time in your public library unless you work with us.
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So people like President Bukele say, yeah, you know, I don't know if I want to work with
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We need to go to them and offer them economic security.
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This could be a great ally in the war on cartels.
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Now that the MS-13 style satanic gangs have moved out of country, there is a vacuum potentially
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that needs to be filled by President Bukele and he's working hard to do it.
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But the last thing you want is Sinaloa cartels and other cartels in Mexico filling the void
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And if we can stop them there, we don't have to worry about as much of the drugs, the
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violence getting exported to the United States.
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Take just a moment and educate people about really how MS-13 was not an El Salvadorian
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gang that invaded the United States so much it was as a feature of the U.S. prison system
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that then was visited in El Salvador where it then grew, it was nurtured, and then became
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So MS-13 was actually founded in California's prison system by El Salvadorans who had immigrated
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So we took these people and deported them, rightly so, but unfortunately that meant El
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Salvador got a hold of all these new gangsters who set up shop in their country.
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And it took their country from, you know, a normal developing country into a state of not
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only just anarcho-tyranny or decline, but frankly, in my opinion, a complete and total
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And we played both sides in the region down there, and to no avail, gangs dominated El Salvador.
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And as we see with President Bukele and his military, you know, once he got the military
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up and operating, the gangs were no match for them.
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Cartels are a totally different entity, and we have to take that very, very seriously.
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I know President Bukele told us about when he got into office, he saw that his military
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had holes in their shoes and terrible uniforms.
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And it was viewed in this country as if you joined the military, well, then you must have
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So when he gets into power, he says, you know what, we're going to fix the equipment.
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We're going to give you good boots, good uniforms, good weapons.
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And now these guys are walking around wanting to join the military.
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Because instead of being in some holy shoes and some rat tat uniform, these guys are decked
00:25:35.100
They created medals when there is merit, when they showed bravery, when they were successful.
00:25:46.680
There's a national campaign to get people to not litter on their streets, but to take
00:25:52.220
Like when you love the country, then you create a permission structure to allow for beauty and
00:25:59.020
And in so many places on earth and frankly, in the United States, we see regression off of
00:26:07.480
And they have it in El Salvador right now and they're better off for it.
00:26:09.860
So Gavin, I got to tell you, I got to bring you into one of the discussions we had because
00:26:14.980
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
00:26:24.840
You really need to move past this, you know, very, very strident security policy and move
00:26:31.700
And Bukele first described that anything built by man, a wall, a building, a dam, requires
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
00:26:52.340
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.
00:27:27.260
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.
00:27:39.880
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
00:28:00.980
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
00:28:12.700
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
00:28:29.420
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
00:28:50.480
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.
00:29:21.600
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
00:30:15.580
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
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
00:31:13.040
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
00:31:48.720
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.
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
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
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.