The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz. Let's talk about the news.

00:00:20.340 Atlanta leads the news today following the killing of Rayshard Brooks,

00:00:23.880 an African-American who was shot by police. I was reacting to this in real time on Judge

00:00:30.000 Janine's show. Here's my segment with Judge Janine. I'm certainly not going to defend

00:00:34.160 chokeholds or lynching or no knock warrants. If Democrats want to improve policing,

00:00:39.840 they can count on the president and other Republicans to work with them toward those

00:00:43.820 goals. But judge, what we will not tolerate are reforms that make the lives and safety of our

00:00:50.140 police officers diminished in some way. For example, in the Democrat bill that they want

00:00:55.180 us to vote on next week, there's a provision that would stop our local police officers from being

00:01:01.080 able to get lower cost body armor. Now, I'm certainly not for militarizing the police,

00:01:06.820 but I certainly think also that body armor is appropriate to keep those folks who bravely

00:01:11.960 serve our communities safe. And when it comes to this terrible outcome in Atlanta, I certainly think

00:01:17.660 that the shrill voices on the left who've been calling for violence against our police have

00:01:23.020 blood on their hands. We need to deescalate these tensions. And when you've got folks out there

00:01:28.060 demonizing the police, they make our community safer. They make policing less safe.

00:01:32.640 There was also interesting commentary from Dan Bongino. Here was some of the reaction he had to the

00:01:38.740 potential mindset that law enforcement would be in in a circumstance where they could be incapacitated.

00:01:44.540 They seem to suggest there should be some kind of an equal level of force applied here.

00:01:49.660 That's not how the use of force continuum works, Judge. If someone turns around and points at your

00:01:54.860 taser they stole from you after assaulting you at you and points it at your face, you don't have to

00:02:01.140 pull your taser and get in a taser fight. If they pull a knife out, you don't get into a knife fight.

00:02:07.100 You are allowed to use an equal or superseding amount of force to stop what is happening.

00:02:12.660 If the subject dies, yes, that's tragic. Nobody shoots to kill. Cops aren't trained to shoot to

00:02:18.080 kill. They're trained to shoot to stop the use of force. This is important. A gun comes to every

00:02:24.040 single fight a police officer's in. It's brought there by the police officer. If you hit him with

00:02:29.100 his baton, Bernie's absolutely correct, or incapacitate him, you can take his gun. The

00:02:33.820 police officer brings the gun to the gunfight every single time.

00:02:37.140 Rayshard Brooks fell asleep at a Wendy's. I think we could all agree that falling asleep

00:02:42.900 in a Wendy's drive-thru should not lead to a death, that that is a tragic outcome. No matter

00:02:49.160 who's at fault, no matter how the investigation ultimately unfolds, every politician is being

00:02:55.200 asked, was this an excessive use of force? And clearly the mayor of Atlanta believed it was.

00:03:02.000 The police chief resigned. The mayor terminated the police officer who was involved in the shooting.

00:03:07.760 I thought that Dr. Ben Carson on Face the Nation had a good response to this when asked

00:03:12.420 whether or not it was an excessive use of force.

00:03:14.420 Because we don't know what was in the mind of the officer. When somebody turns around and points a

00:03:20.180 weapon at him, is he absolutely sure that that's a non-lethal weapon? This is not a clear-cut

00:03:27.460 circumstance. Now, could it have been handled better? And certainly in retrospect, there probably

00:03:32.980 are other ways to do things. But again, we don't know. We, the public, don't know. Is there a reason

00:03:40.560 that they don't use, you know, nightsticks or those expandable clubs to subdue somebody who's resisting?

00:03:49.100 We don't know the answer to that. There are qualified officers who would know the answer to that.

00:03:54.700 An autopsy has come back with the cause of death being homicide in Rayshard Brooks' death. And he

00:04:01.440 was shot twice in the back. Now, Dr. Carson did not have the benefit of this autopsy when he provided

00:04:06.700 his answer yesterday. Tim Scott had an interesting take as well. He talked about de-escalation being

00:04:13.480 perhaps the antidote to this type of a circumstance where just the non-violent beginnings should not

00:04:20.540 erupt into someone not being alive as a consequence of interaction with police. Here's Tim Scott on

00:04:26.520 de-escalation. I think you've seen under the previous administration, under this administration, we're

00:04:30.280 focusing, at least I am, on trying to find a way to get the former police officers, current police officers

00:04:35.760 and civilians to work on a commission to help us to discern what it looks like to have effective

00:04:42.900 policies that lead to better outcomes and those intense split-second decisions. That's what we're

00:04:50.380 achieving through our commission that studies the use of force and the best practices around it.

00:04:55.860 There are other aspects of it that we can be more clear on, like the chokehold. This is a policy whose

00:05:00.620 time has come and gone. And we try to tackle that on the local level. The House policy tackles that on

00:05:06.740 the state level, I think the president's looking at a national perspective on that from his executive

00:05:11.920 order. But every single aspect, all three levers want to tackle the issue of chokeholds. And that's

00:05:18.360 part of that entire conversation around the de-escalation of force. To this point of de-escalation

00:05:24.320 as the antidote, I think there are a couple of ways I think about this. First, no matter how much

00:05:29.800 training you have, both the police and the suspect get a vote in terms of whether or not it is an

00:05:36.660 escalating circumstance or a de-escalating circumstance. You could have the best trained

00:05:41.260 police officer in the world. You could have them doing everything possible to try to preserve life

00:05:47.180 and limb in a police encounter. And if someone is hell-bent to escalate that circumstance, to resist

00:05:54.520 arrest, to go for the weapon of a law enforcement officer, to point it at the law enforcement officer,

00:05:59.920 to discharge a weapon, there is not an opportunity for the police officer to deploy that training

00:06:08.940 and de-escalate if you've got someone who is the suspect and uncooperative and that desire

00:06:15.700 to achieve a more peaceful outcome. So I think it's really important not to phrase it just as a

00:06:20.780 catch-all. Now, at the same time, it's also clear that training can be helpful at multiple points

00:06:29.320 during an encounter. It's not just whether or not, in this case, there's de-escalation at the

00:06:36.200 beginning. If someone escalates and then drops a weapon, turns and runs, does that provide another

00:06:44.860 opportunity for de-escalation? Could training help there? I think those are the types of discussions

00:06:49.560 we need to have in the Congress. And I think there's broad bipartisan support for training as an

00:06:55.700 objective, implicit bias training, being part of the platform that we would want to make available

00:07:02.860 to our officers as they're going out to protect our communities. And then, of course, following this

00:07:09.420 tragic death, the rioters go and light the Wendy's on fire. Like, it wasn't Wendy's fault. I mean,

00:07:14.740 this destruction of community, this desire to inflict fear on people through these terror events,

00:07:25.700 you know, you have seen the death of law enforcement officers. You've seen assault. You've even seen

00:07:33.280 harm come to fellow protesters. Again, I don't consider the people who light the Wendy's on fire

00:07:39.320 protesters. That's not political speech. That's rioting. And as unserious and troubling as that is,

00:07:45.920 we do have the very serious task before us of police reform legislation. And I've talked about,

00:07:52.960 in some detail, the elements of that legislation. But I want to go a little deeper into one piece.

00:07:59.180 And with each of our shows, we want to examine in some detail an element of this legislation that

00:08:05.720 the Judiciary Committee will be reviewing that I know beyond that the Senate is developing a package

00:08:10.840 on. And then hopefully we're able to get a great piece of police reform legislation to the

00:08:15.740 president's desk that has broad bipartisan support. And this can be some good to come out of a series of

00:08:22.540 tragic events. So I want to talk a little bit about no-knock warrants. Tim Scott does not have a no-knock

00:08:30.380 warrant prohibition in his bill. Rand Paul has drafted a bill to eliminate functionally these no-knock

00:08:40.020 warrants. And there's a great piece in Politico by Marianne Levine. We'll post that up on our social

00:08:45.960 media. So there's the study of data regarding no-knock warrants in the Tim Scott legislation.

00:08:52.980 There's the prohibition in the Rand Paul legislation. And then the Democrat legislation in the House has

00:08:59.200 a removal of no-knock warrants in drug cases. So they would still be available if you've got some

00:09:05.980 sort of charging event with a violent crime. That would still be a chance for the judge to review

00:09:14.080 a no-knock warrant option. Here's what Tim Scott had to say in defense of studying no-knock warrants

00:09:20.700 instead of prohibiting them when he was on Meet the Press. Well, on no-knocks, we certainly want to

00:09:26.600 understand there's no actual database on no-knocks. We don't know when it's used, to whom it's used against.

00:09:31.980 We don't know the race, the sex, the age. We know nothing about no-knocks except for the Breonna Taylor

00:09:37.260 situation that was tragic without question. So I want to take the Breonna Taylor case and have an

00:09:44.060 act that requires more data to be provided so that we can actually come out with policies that are

00:09:49.680 consistent with the best use of no-knocks or the elimination of no-knocks. We just don't have the

00:09:55.140 information to get there. I know that the House bill says, let's just eliminate it for drug cases,

00:10:00.540 but we have no information that supports that that is the best way to go. I'm interested in having

00:10:06.300 that conversation. If we get to the end of the road and we have a negotiation, that will be on

00:10:11.080 the table. Whether it's a local or state approach on chokeholds, that will be on the table. Whether

00:10:17.120 there's a national registry, a state registry, or a local department by department registry around the

00:10:24.140 misconduct, that will be on the table as well. So there are approaches that are very similar and

00:10:30.260 somewhat different at the same time. I think we're going to get to a bill that actually becomes law.

00:10:34.960 So I think you can combine the Tim Scott idea and the ideas by Rand Paul and the Democrats. I mean,

00:10:41.280 here's a thought. Rather than just banning these no-knock warrants indefinitely without data that

00:10:50.220 maybe Tim Scott thinks can inform on better decision-making, and rather than allowing no-knock

00:10:55.740 warrants to continue to kill people as we're having government study something, why not initiate the

00:11:02.880 study that Tim Scott talks about, prohibit no-knock warrants as Rand Paul would suggest. And maybe you

00:11:11.100 limit that as the Democrats are talking about to these drug cases, and maybe you have a wider view

00:11:16.040 of it. I don't know. I want to have the debate. I want to review the evidence. But there's a way to

00:11:21.720 do the study while banning the no-knock warrants during the pendency of that study. And then if the

00:11:27.260 study concludes, you don't just indefinitely have the ban beyond that. You have an opportunity to come

00:11:32.440 back, use that study information to inform better decision-making. That may be the amendment that I'll

00:11:38.760 offer in the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. I'll talk to the sponsor of the bill, Karen Bass, the chair of

00:11:43.960 the Congressional Black Caucus. I'll talk to some of our great law and order Republicans on the Judiciary

00:11:48.780 Committee. But maybe there's a way to get good data, to preserve life and limb, and to ultimately have a sound

00:11:55.260 bipartisan outcome on no-knock warrants. What is going on in the Chaz, the Capitol Hill autonomous

00:12:05.420 zone, the Woketopia that the radical left would bring to your state and your neighborhood? It is

00:12:12.480 a dicey place there. So on Friday, the Seattle police chief makes these comments regarding life

00:12:19.540 in the Woketopia. Our 911 response times have tripled in the area. They've gone from just over five minutes

00:12:26.300 to about 18 minutes. Rapes, robberies, and all sorts of violent acts have been occurring in the area

00:12:33.020 they were not able to get to. But then the very same police chief of Seattle goes on the Sunday shows and

00:12:39.540 says something radically different. There are people who have occupied the area. My understanding is they've

00:12:46.760 actually changed the name to the Capitol Hill occupied protest area. There are a lot of folks there, a lot of

00:12:54.360 differing objectives and agendas and people who have congregated into the area. One of our real challenges there is

00:13:03.820 trying to determine who is a leader or an influencer that seems to change daily. I know that many of our city officials and

00:13:14.600 others are trying to establish some sort of communication with someone who can give us some direction about what the intent

00:13:22.120 is and how we might move forward. Identifying the influencers. This isn't Instagram. This is an area where just days before the

00:13:31.160 police chief gives the interview with Margaret Brennan, she's saying that response times are impacted, that emergency services are not

00:13:39.000 not able to be provided, that when people need an ambulance, they're not able to get it. So I don't really give a damn

00:13:44.920 who the influencers are of the Chaz. I think that the police chief needs to restore law and order. If that doesn't

00:13:52.200 happen, then the governor of the state needs to mobilize the National Guard. I mean, it's hard to think that these

00:13:58.280 people are worth it because they're very likely going to just fail anyway and sort of give up. This is like the modern day

00:14:05.080 Occupy Wall Street, right? Like when Occupy Wall Street happened, we didn't send in the military to

00:14:10.280 bust them up. We largely perceive that to be a circumstance of their own failure, right? And I think

00:14:18.440 here you got kind of the same Occupy Wall Street crowd all going to the Chaz and desiring to create

00:14:25.000 these autonomous zones. But I mean, I would not allow a bunch of people who want to just ignore the laws for

00:14:33.880 themselves. I would not allow them to put others at risk. And so if people are getting in the way of

00:14:39.080 the, you know, the ambulances and the emergency services and the assistance that that people may

00:14:45.560 need, you know, fire trucks, if they're lighting stuff on fire, then I would use the full force of

00:14:50.440 government to ensure that we provided a safe society for people who are willing to follow the law.

00:14:58.120 I still stand with Tucker Carlson, but Disney doesn't anymore. You know, I really hate to see

00:15:07.080 this. Disney's a Florida company in so many ways. They've got a big platform here, been a big part of

00:15:12.920 our state's development. We're always at our best in Florida when Disney seeks to be a good corporate

00:15:18.840 citizen, but here they have not been. I mean, give me a break. How long until Disney Inc. has to cancel

00:15:25.960 Walt Disney? I mean, Walt Disney had views that were certainly far more controversial than those of

00:15:32.440 Tucker Carlson. And yet Walt Disney still has statues on Disney property. They still tell the story of

00:15:39.080 Walt Disney at Disney events and Disney attractions. I think there's still some plaques up to him. And so I

00:15:47.160 think that if we all just sort of take a breath and realize that, yes, sometimes people have controversial

00:15:52.360 views. And the right response to that is to offer your own perspective that might be different, that

00:16:00.120 might be more enlightened, that might draw people to your perspective, you know, with greater energy

00:16:08.360 and greater desire to share that. I don't know. But this whole, you know, cancel thing, outwoking each

00:16:14.920 other in corporate America. I'm not signed up for it. I still stand with Tucker Carlson.

00:16:22.600 If you do not know who Ron Perlman is, do not feel bad. Neither did I until yesterday. We had

00:16:29.960 quite the lively exchange on Twitter. It all started with the tweet that I offered up on US soccer

00:16:37.880 after the US soccer board of directors repealed the rule that required players to stand for the anthem.

00:16:43.640 I tweeted that, frankly, I would rather not have a soccer team than have a team that won't stand for

00:16:48.680 the anthem. And, you know, this isn't some club team. This is the national team. And if they want

00:16:53.960 to play under our flag, I think they ought to be able to stand up for it or we'll find somebody

00:16:59.080 who will. The president retweeted that. He retweeted a number of articles about it, said he wouldn't be

00:17:04.760 watching soccer anymore if this policy were not reversed and if we did not see that great patriotism

00:17:12.200 expressed in our players. So, Ron Perlman takes exception with this. He replies that US soccer

00:17:21.720 doesn't care what the president or I think. He drops an F-bomb and calls us both, I guess, another bad

00:17:27.640 word. And, you know, I'm just thinking to myself about that Ricky Gervais monologue where he just

00:17:35.560 roasted all of Hollywood, the double standards, the hypocrisy. I think my favorite line in that

00:17:41.720 speech was when Ricky said, if ISIS had a streaming service, half of Hollywood would be trying to get

00:17:48.600 their agents to line up a potential contract. And so I'm thinking about this Ron Perlman guy.

00:17:54.360 And I guess he's been in a few things, but the only thing that I remember him from was the television

00:17:59.320 show on FX Sons of Anarchy. And in this show, the guy is a white supremacist leader of a motorcycle

00:18:08.920 gang. And essentially, it's like the motorcycle gang against other motorcycle gangs and against the

00:18:14.600 cops. And they're like sort of the protagonists in the whole deal. And of course, within the motorcycle

00:18:19.240 gang, there are moments when they're each kind of protagonist or antagonist. But like the ones you're

00:18:24.600 rooting for in this show are all members of this white supremacist motorcycle gang. And, you know,

00:18:31.080 it's just one thing for like the woke Hollywood crowd to want to tell everyone else how to live

00:18:37.400 their lives all around America. But like they don't mind making movies that glorify violence,

00:18:43.400 but then they just want to go speak against it. You know, they don't mind being in television shows

00:18:48.840 and in movies that embrace the rape culture, but then they want to go and act, you know,

00:18:55.320 deeply impacted by it. And I'm sure some are, you know, they, and then here you've got this guy,

00:19:01.720 Ron Perlman, you know, oh, just being so taken by all of the, you know, desire of members of the

00:19:08.680 soccer team to be able to protest when in reality, when he had an opportunity to step up for racial

00:19:14.520 justice and perhaps have the sons of anarchy show, think or speak more critically about race and how

00:19:21.080 it's central to all of our identity. You know, he didn't do that. He just took the paycheck to go

00:19:25.720 be in a show that glorified a bunch of white supremacists. And then, so it, the conversation

00:19:32.360 gets a little bit weird because I point that out. And then Hollywood goes crazy, says, oh,

00:19:37.720 Gates doesn't understand acting. And then he says, oh, well, Hollywood hates you. He makes some

00:19:42.680 reference to the fact that I am, I am not liked by people on Twitter. And, uh, I point out that,

00:19:48.520 you know, look, I don't really work for Twitter. I don't really work for Hollywood. I work for the

00:19:53.960 700,000 folks here in Northwest Florida who seem to overwhelmingly continue to allow me the opportunity

00:20:00.600 to have the, have the privilege of serving them in Congress. And then Ron Perlman writes about, uh,

00:20:06.360 gerrymandering be the reason, being the reason that I'm, I'm successful, uh, in being elected to the

00:20:12.040 seat and serving my constituents, which is quite something because, uh, the district border to my

00:20:18.680 West and to my North is the state of Alabama. And the district word to my South is the Gulf of Mexico.

00:20:25.400 So literally you just like go East until you hit this statutorily constitutionally required number

00:20:31.000 of people. And then you draw a line and that is Florida's first congressional district. So

00:20:35.960 not really a whole lot of opportunity for gerrymandering. I posted a map. I'm sure he felt silly.

00:20:41.320 The responses sort of petered out after that. So yet another conflict with sort of a D minus,

00:20:47.960 maybe D level celeb, someone who's certainly not going to take over the local cartography club,

00:20:56.360 if you know what I'm saying. And I don't know why I can't get like the A list celebrities. I mean, I,

00:21:01.320 I think the last celebrity I got in a fight with on Twitter was Montel Williams.

00:21:05.320 At least people know his name. I mean, nobody even knows who Ron Perlman is.

00:21:09.480 I guess the most famous celebrity I probably got into it with was Alyssa Milano.

00:21:14.440 And that's been quite some time. So I miss you, Alyssa. I'm, I'm down to the D list with Ron Perlman.

00:21:21.720 Thanks for listening to Hot Takes. This is Congressman Matt Gates. If you like this show,

00:21:26.200 give us a five-star rating, a comment, steal the phone of a loved one and subscribe.

00:21:30.680 We'll be back tomorrow with more Hot Takes.

Episode 25 - Atlanta Reaction. No-Knock Warrants. Twitter Wars with the Hollywood D List

Summary

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