The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - Episode 29 - Do More AG Barr. Gator Bait and Chief Canceled. Nestor’s PrimeTime Debut.

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Hot Ticks. This is Congressman Matt Gaetz. Let's talk about the news.

00:00:20.440 My family was in the news over the last 24 hours, and I can't say I was expecting this to happen this

00:00:28.500 week, but I certainly don't mind that it did. Here's Tucker Carlson's set up last night of

00:00:33.820 the interview that I had with my son Nestor. Democratic Congressman Cedric Richmond of

00:00:38.280 Louisiana argued that some people just shouldn't be in the debate because they're the wrong skin

00:00:43.400 color or their children are. Richmond's claims started off with a fight with Florida Congressman

00:00:48.120 Matt Gaetz. You all are white males. You never lived in my shoes, and you do not know what it's like 1.00

00:00:54.580 to be an African-American male. Are you suggesting that you're certain that none of us have non-white

00:01:00.400 children? Because you reflected on your black son, and you said none of us could understand.

00:01:04.920 Matt, Matt, stop. I'm not about to get sidetracked about the color of our children. We're talking

00:01:10.040 about black kids. I reclaim my time. It is not about the color of your kids. It is about black males, 0.94

00:01:18.140 black people in the streets that are getting killed. And if one of them happens to be your 1.00

00:01:23.860 kid, I'm concerned about him, too. And clearly, I'm more concerned about him than you are.

00:01:29.240 So let's be clear about that. You're claiming you're more concerned for my family than I do?

00:01:34.340 Who in the hell do you think you are? If the shoe fits, you don't know how much we care about

00:01:39.260 our families. This is outrageous. You should take those words down. I'm letting you care about your

00:01:44.280 family and love your family. The gentleman will suspend. The gentleman will suspend. The time

00:01:49.040 belongs to the gentleman from Louisiana. Cedric, would you yield? Was that a nerve? Yeah, you

00:01:54.140 did. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana. When you attack people on the basis of their race

00:01:58.620 and their children, you get exchanges like that. It's disgusting. Of course, Cedric Richmond will 0.97

00:02:05.240 never be disciplined for it. Afterward, Matt Gaetz issued this statement on Twitter. For all those

00:02:10.440 wondering, this is my son Nestor. We share no blood, but he is my life. He came from Cuba legally,

00:02:14.740 of course, six years ago and lives with me in Florida. Nestor is the best thing

00:02:19.020 that has ever happened to me. I thought I'd just take a moment and share a little bit about

00:02:23.520 our story. When I was a young state legislator in Tallahassee, I met a wonderful woman who

00:02:30.120 was working in a catering establishment in Tallahassee, our state capital. She was kind 0.57

00:02:37.000 of the go-to person to set up events for legislators, hosting constituents from their district or fundraisers

00:02:43.800 or other things. Gosh, I ended up having just about every event I could where she would be the catering 1.00

00:02:49.720 director because I had such a crush on her. We ended up dating. She was from the island of Cuba,

00:02:54.840 was born there, had immigrated to the United States with her father when he won the visa lottery.

00:03:01.800 After six months of dating, she went back to Cuba because after eight years of waiting, her mother

00:03:08.280 mother and her little brother were going to be coming to the United States. And I knew that her

00:03:13.720 mother had been quite ill with breast cancer. And when she went down and came back, she came back only

00:03:20.120 with her brother and their mom died 10 days later in Cuba. I had a chance to talk to her a time or two

00:03:28.600 in Spanish. I told her she was one of my heroes. And I just think about her so often, even though we

00:03:34.360 never met in person, her last trip from that deathbed was to go to the consulate and pick up

00:03:41.640 those visas and put Nestor on that airplane with his sister to the United States. And so he gets here

00:03:49.880 just, you know, obviously dealing with the grief of the loss of his mother, but also amazingly filled

00:03:57.000 with opportunity and love for this country and just an eagerness to embrace it. He didn't speak a word

00:04:03.800 of English. He didn't have a single friend. And so we spent a lot of time together, as you might

00:04:10.360 imagine. And my Spanish was pretty rusty, but he helped me get it better. And we worked on English

00:04:16.920 together. You know, most nights we would work on Rosetta Stone because it was so hard for him in

00:04:22.040 school and it became frustrating. I mean, I can only imagine if you put me in a classroom where people

00:04:27.080 were all speaking the language I didn't speak, it would be hard to focus and hard to really make a

00:04:32.920 meaningful contribution. And I would remember those nights, you know, we would, we would sit there and

00:04:37.800 he would cry and tell me that he thought he would never learn English and you know, that, that it was 0.79

00:04:42.760 too hard and that he used to be such a smart boy in Cuba and he didn't want to be a dumb person here,

00:04:49.000 but he just wanted to understand people. And seeing all the successes now, I'm so proud of him. He is 19 years

00:04:57.320 old. He's graduated from Choctatchi High School in my district, and he's off to Troy University where

00:05:04.360 he plans to study nursing. And, you know, I, I know that sometimes you don't always end up studying

00:05:09.320 exactly the thing you plan on studying, but he talks about, you know, the care that, that he gave his

00:05:14.360 mother, uh, in her, in her final months. And, uh, I have seen the way he shows compassion to people and

00:05:21.320 he's always the first to rush up to give someone a bandage or assistance or to help someone up.

00:05:27.080 And so I think he'd be a fantastic nurse and I would be super proud of him, uh, if he chose to do

00:05:31.400 that. Sadly, uh, things didn't work out with his sister and I for reasons that I'm sure were more

00:05:37.720 my fault than hers. And, uh, so he spent, you know, time with me and his sister. He's, uh,

00:05:43.400 spent time with his biological father in Miami. Uh, he spends time with our,

00:05:48.200 with my parents and with family friends in Northwest Florida. As I, uh, work in Congress,

00:05:53.400 I, I sort of feel like a single step parent at times. And either of those things are tough.

00:05:59.400 I know, but when you combine them, it's a unique set of challenges. I do feel a special kinship

00:06:04.920 with step parents all over. You know, there's a certain kind of love that, that you can give

00:06:11.400 to another human being, you know, that is not your own flesh and blood. That's not your own kid,

00:06:16.600 but you love them as much as you would love anyone that, that was your own child that you

00:06:22.200 couldn't imagine loving them anymore. And I don't have any biological children, uh, but I absolutely

00:06:27.560 have a son and I couldn't imagine him being any more a part of my family or a part of my life. So,

00:06:33.320 uh, it was, uh, it's been, you know, just a great experience for me and I hope a great one for him

00:06:38.840 along the way. Some people on social media have asked, well, you know, why, why have you kept him a

00:06:43.880 secret for this long? And the bottom line is this isn't a secret. Uh, if you go and look at my social

00:06:48.760 media page, you see a number of the people who know me, my friends, people I've worked with over

00:06:54.440 the years, acquaintances of mine, even, even Democrats, even people who don't agree with me

00:06:59.480 on things saying, yeah, you know, Matt, uh, stepped up for this young man. He helped him out.

00:07:04.440 He raised him as his son. And you know, the criticisms of our family are just hateful and,

00:07:11.080 and weird and mean. Uh, the other, their other, you know, criticism people say is,

00:07:16.040 oh, well, you know, how come you don't have, you know, adoption paperwork and all this. And look,

00:07:20.440 you know, uh, he's 19 years old now. Our family was never defined by paperwork or blood. Uh,

00:07:28.440 it was truly defined by the love we have for each other. And, uh, we got the chance to tell our story

00:07:33.400 to people magazine. And so we'll post that up as well. Uh, if you're interested in it, but, uh,

00:07:38.680 never expected I'd be sharing this much about my personal life and my family life this week,

00:07:43.160 but I'm certainly proud to do so. I'm proud of Nestor and I'm proud of our family and the great

00:07:49.160 work that he will do in his life going forward. Teenagers always think they know everything and

00:07:57.240 that their parents don't, and that they're really the ones teaching their parents. When I called Nestor

00:08:02.440 and told him that as a consequence of some heated debate in the judiciary committee that

00:08:07.320 folks were going to learn about him and our family, uh, he said, well, Matt, everyone already

00:08:13.000 knows about our family because, you know, when we go to our favorite burrito shack in Fort Walton,

00:08:18.360 everybody knows that we're father son. You know, when we go to church, when we go to the soccer games,

00:08:24.440 uh, when we hang out around his school, you know, there, there is obviously an awareness that

00:08:30.120 I'm the one taking care of him and you know, that, uh, that we're a family. And so it was funny that,

00:08:35.800 you know, he kind of conceived of the world like that he lived in as his whole world and that, well,

00:08:41.080 you know, the people in Fort Walton, they all know. So Matt, don't, you know, that already.

00:08:46.200 And then I said, well, buddy, you know, I, I get that the people in Fort Walton know,

00:08:49.320 but maybe not all the people in Washington knew yet. And they're going to be finding out. And he said,

00:08:54.760 well, Matt, don't they have Instagram? Uh, because Nestor and I have, have for years,

00:08:59.720 you know, posted pictures with one another on our personal Instagram. And I want to thank my,

00:09:04.280 my lovely, wonderful sister, Erin, for sharing some of those pictures that she had saved on social

00:09:09.160 media. Uh, it was a very heartwarming for us yesterday to be able to live all these great

00:09:14.760 moments together. My former boss, Florida Senator and former high school standout defensive back,

00:09:23.480 Marco Rubio has filed legislation to protect the NCAA from litigation. If they make changes to allow

00:09:31.720 players to get financial benefit by leveraging their name and likeness. I think this is a great

00:09:37.240 step forward in both Florida and California. Our governors have expressed support for legislation

00:09:43.880 that would allow college athletes. Again, these are, these are men. These, these are not minors.

00:09:48.920 They're over the age of 18. They could be drafted. They could go die in some war for our military,

00:09:55.560 protecting our country. They could go, you know, serve in any other number of capacities for our

00:10:01.000 government, but they can't get the economic benefit from the fact that they have built a brand around

00:10:08.360 their own skill and excellence. And that's just not capitalist to me. It's just not American. So

00:10:14.040 Florida governor Ron DeSantis supports allowing them to sell autographs, to sell photos, that type of

00:10:20.440 thing. Gavin Newsom agrees. And a group of current and former NCAA players have filed a lawsuit against the

00:10:29.560 NCAA seeking damages for having not been given that right. So this is a smart group of lawyers. They've gone out

00:10:36.760 and said, well, if this right is going to be vindicated, there might be some question as to

00:10:41.640 whether or not there's a legal claim for it having had existed before. And thus, there should be damages

00:10:48.680 paid. That would be how the lawsuit would be laid out. And so Marco Rubio goes and essentially files

00:10:54.680 legislation saying, well, if they change the law, we don't want them that to serve as an admission.

00:11:01.400 Because if it did, then you would entrap current people in the system as we were trying to resolve

00:11:08.840 disputes over people previously in the system. And that's not a very efficient way to resolve that

00:11:13.960 conflict. So Rubio says, if the NCAA makes this change, they will be protected from liability.

00:11:20.360 We will fix this going forward. And I would consider that great progress and economic justice.

00:11:26.360 Online technology platforms are principally managed, governed and directed by very far

00:11:37.240 left wing folks in Silicon Valley. And if left to their own devices, they will do everything in

00:11:44.280 their power to steal this election from Donald Trump. It's why I've been so forceful in calling for

00:11:51.000 action against big tech when big tech cheats. And the fundamental reason why Donald Trump was able

00:12:00.200 to avoid big tech's theft of his election in 2016 is that they never thought he could win it.

00:12:06.200 But he did. So here we are. Here's the news. The Department of Justice has very recently just

00:12:12.280 endorsed reforms that really Senator Josh Hawley honed into legislation over in the United States

00:12:19.560 Senate. These reforms would repeal some of the protections that big tech has from liability.

00:12:26.120 But here's the problem. The Department of Justice is not doing enough today to enforce antitrust laws.

00:12:33.640 That's right. Usually I am not a critic of the Trump administration. I support the Trump

00:12:38.760 administration, but they need to be doing more. The Department of Justice needs to be doing more.

00:12:44.280 Bill Barr needs to be doing more to enforce antitrust laws in litigation, in actions against the companies

00:12:54.520 that utilize their market power to redefine the nature of speech in this country. And so while I

00:13:00.760 appreciate the attorney general support of Senator Hawley's legislation, I am losing confidence in

00:13:08.040 legislation as the mechanism by which we're going to solve this, this problem. Because so much of

00:13:14.520 Congress is bought off by big tech. And I know how, you know, one, two, three, a small group of senators

00:13:21.800 could totally block any major legislation. It's frankly, a travesty, a great nation should not get

00:13:27.240 held hostage by a small band of senators. But that is the system that they have designed over there.

00:13:32.840 And so if this president wants a fair shot at getting reelected, he needs to direct his attorney

00:13:38.760 general to utilize the antitrust laws of this country fairly, apolitically, but actively against

00:13:48.760 any social media platforms that are improperly censoring speech. And by the way, whether that's

00:13:55.240 right wing speech, left wing speech, middle of the road speech, if it's whatever it is, if there is

00:14:00.520 unfair censorship, if there is, and by the way, here's how you figure that out. You go file the

00:14:06.440 action, you get to discovery, and you force them to disclose the ways in which they determine what

00:14:14.520 content is elevated and what content is suppressed. And when you find content that's been suppressed or

00:14:20.120 shadow banned or demonetized, you then have a way to probe that decision making process. And what you're

00:14:27.560 going to find is that it's freaking political. And so we need that, that not an executive order

00:14:34.040 strategy, we need a litigation strategy against big tech. Otherwise, we could have the greatest ideas,

00:14:41.560 we could have the best branding, we could have the best slogans, we could offer the best vision for the

00:14:47.080 country. But it is not one that will ever be fairly absorbed or fairly even presented. Because these

00:14:54.120 online platforms have developed too much power to constrain and control speech. And it's time we

00:15:00.360 speak out against them. And it's time we speak through lawsuits filed by the Department of Justice

00:15:06.840 and antitrust actions filed by the Department of Justice. Let's get on it, Mr. Attorney General.

00:15:14.680 Cancel culture getting its latest two victims, the gator bait cheer from the University of Florida, 0.95

00:15:21.080 and also the term chief itself. That's right, the blaze is reporting that in Duluth, Minnesota,

00:15:27.400 community leaders are questioning whether or not to eliminate the term chief from fire chief or

00:15:33.480 police chief or any other type of chief that they may have. And I'm just wondering, like,

00:15:39.960 to what extent is this reaching the absurd where, like any root word or title that could at any point

00:15:48.200 have been used in any derogatory way? Like now we're all too snowflake to be able to deal with that.

00:15:54.200 I mean, whatever happened to the people who said that if there's bad speech, the best response to

00:15:58.920 that is more speech? Like, when did we reach a point in our society where instead of confronting the

00:16:05.640 things that were uncomfortable or challenging, we just we had to cancel them and anybody said it was a

00:16:10.600 racist? We may be getting to the point in America where, like, there are more racist hunters than there are

00:16:17.160 racists. And so we have to have this construct where things that aren't really racist, like calling

00:16:24.120 the police chief the police chief or the fire chief the fire chief, has to be labeled as racist so as

00:16:29.960 to satisfy the appetite of the racism hunters. That's really what this feels like in Duluth, Minnesota.

00:16:36.600 I mean, the country music singer Eric Church had an album named Chief. Does he have to rename that?

00:16:43.400 You know, the university that I attended, Florida State University, we have a Chief Osceola.

00:16:50.120 You know, the Seminole Indian tribe is one of the most sophisticated and successful businesses

00:16:58.040 you could imagine. You know, they go out and engage in a lot of entrepreneurial activity. They're even

00:17:03.320 partners, not only from a business sense, but from a cultural development sense and an education sense

00:17:08.520 in a healthcare sense with Florida State University. It is a great honor that we share with the Seminole

00:17:16.840 tribe to be able to do more to recognize their heritage, their background. And part of that is

00:17:24.680 Chief Osceola being a part of the ceremony that we conduct before a football game. So do we have to

00:17:32.280 rename him something? The Seminole Indian tribe doesn't have a problem with it, but maybe the

00:17:37.320 folks in Duluth, Minnesota would. But speaking of the great state of Florida and the universities that

00:17:43.160 reside within it, the University of Florida is now discontinuing the Gator bait cheer. So they're the

00:17:51.000 Florida Gators and they do this obnoxious cheer, and I can say this as a Seminole, where they kind of 1.00

00:17:57.160 raise up their hands in a clapping motion and clamp down like the chomp of an alligator while the band

00:18:04.280 plays at like a almost Jaws-like ominous, you know, music and Gator bait is what they cheer.

00:18:13.240 Now apparently there's some story from time in like the early 1920s that says that at one point

00:18:21.000 in Chipley, Florida, African-American children were allowed to play in shallow water as snipers

00:18:28.840 from far away would shoot any alligators that came toward them. Now, I just can't even believe this,

00:18:36.360 how ridiculous it is. First of all, in Chipley, everyone is saying this is absurd and ridiculous. 0.98

00:18:42.200 Even the Chamber of Commerce came out with a statement calling this characterization a lie.

00:18:48.920 Second, there are people hanging out by the water with guns all the time, and there are also children

00:18:55.240 playing in the water all the time. That's what happens in Chipley. That's what you do. You get your

00:19:00.760 guns and, you know, go down to the old watering hole, maybe grill something up, let the kids play in the

00:19:06.760 water. And so might there have been a possibility where there was an African-American child playing in

00:19:10.920 the water and somebody shot an alligator? Well, sure, but that didn't make the child Gator bait of any kind.

00:19:17.800 And by the way, like, where does it stop? Well, the alligator was obviously going to eat the

00:19:23.560 African-American child in that scenario. So is the alligator racist? Should the Florida Gators have

00:19:29.560 to change their name altogether? And why even have names? I mean, you know, Seminoles, that comes from

00:19:35.880 something. And hurricanes, I mean, by having the Miami Hurricanes, we are really trivializing the negative

00:19:43.000 consequences of climate change, aren't we? You know what I mean? So I think there is a reason

00:19:48.440 that anyone can be offended about anything. But to get rid of the Gator bait cheer is just nonsense.

00:19:55.240 I mean, in Florida, the Gators have been playing a little bit better college football lately.

00:20:01.240 The Seminoles lost to the Gators pretty badly in their last contest, I hate to say, as a Seminole.

00:20:07.000 But at least at Florida State University, we haven't canceled Chief Osceola yet. Meanwhile,

00:20:12.760 down at Gainesville, I guess they're too woke to cheer Gator bait. We have blown past a thousand

00:20:20.120 ratings. Thank you, everyone, so much for your reviews, positive, negative, or otherwise. I love

00:20:25.000 reading them and seeing what everybody thinks about the show. Keep up those ratings. If you haven't done

00:20:29.640 it in a while, you can actually do it again, and it will count. Have a great weekend, everybody.

00:20:33.480 We'll be back Monday with more Hot Takes.

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - June 19, 2020

Episode 29 - Do More AG Barr. Gator Bait and Chief Canceled. Nestor’s PrimeTime Debut.

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript