In this episode, we talk to Rep. Mo Brooks (R-VA) about his thoughts on the anti-Vaxxers rally outside of D.C. and what the truckers are doing to fight for their freedom. We also get an interview with Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-GAetz.
00:04:47.000So what are you hoping that lawmakers will do as a result of this, you know, this massive convoy that, you know, has never really been seen before in this country?
00:04:56.000The political community has a systemic way of kind of saying things but not really doing much.
00:06:03.000They've both been on firebrand a good amount.
00:06:05.000Here are some highlights from that discussion.
00:06:07.000What would be your message specifically to Republicans who would say, well, we're sympathetic against these mandates, but we've got to keep funding the government.
00:07:07.000All she had in northern Michigan, she raised chickens, and she had 10 dozen eggs to donate.
00:07:14.000They're putting their trust in a bunch of truck drivers because their politicians are not doing what the hell they're supposed to do for them.
00:07:23.000What do you think would give people hope?
00:07:31.000They need somebody to follow that has a voice, has conviction, will not back down, and has their best interests at heart.
00:07:40.000I mean, after we're gone, and after the midterms, there's going to be another flare up, I would imagine.
00:07:45.000What's to keep this from ever happening again?
00:07:48.000What do you guys have in store and in mind to keep this from ever being re-implemented and us having to come back here again to make this happen?
00:07:57.000During this time of pandemic, these agencies have developed these exquisite authorities that we would have never guessed.
00:08:04.000And I do think that part of the legislative agenda for Republicans should be specifically in law, black letter, no room for interpretation,
00:08:12.000to constrain these elements of government so that even if they only had one dollar, they wouldn't have the legal authority to go and bind people to this tyranny.
00:08:27.000And now to the interview with Congressman Mo Brooks.
00:08:41.000Mo Brooks from the state of Alabama is one of Congress's best fire brands.
00:08:46.000Someone I admire and look up to a great deal.
00:08:49.000And Mo Brooks has been my colleague on the Armed Services Committee for the last five years.
00:08:53.000And we're going to have a very important discussion about what's going on in the world.
00:08:57.000So, Mo, maybe start just by letting folks know why was the Armed Services Committee an area of focus for you in the Congress?
00:09:04.000Well, I have the home of Redstone Arsenal in the 5th Congressional District of Alabama, which is the northern part where Huntsville is, the Tennessee Valley.
00:09:13.000And we are one of the largest military facilities in the United States of America.
00:09:19.000And if you look at all these gee whiz bang weapons that you see, the things that empower our military personnel to do so much with so little risk of loss of life,
00:09:28.000to a large degree that is either invented or manufactured or contracted for out of Redstone Arsenal.
00:09:35.000We have a number of different commands, including the Army Materiel Command.
00:09:39.000Everything that's purchased for the United States Army from bread to butter to guns to tanks goes through our Redstone Arsenal community in North Alabama.
00:09:50.000Well, your focus on the committee has not just been for those great warfighters in Alabama.
00:09:56.000You've really been looking at a lot of the issues that go on in the world.
00:09:59.000And one thing I remember, Mo, is that when we had people like Liz Cheney and others in the Republican and Democrat establishment working against President Trump on the Armed Services Committee,
00:10:10.000you and I would often have to team up with our friend Scott Desjardins out of Tennessee and actually fight back against what they were doing to, in many ways, support other countries at the expense of our country.
00:10:23.000And so maybe talk a little bit about what it's like to be on a committee that often favors war when you and I try to do everything possible to build a strong military so that we don't have to have so many wars.
00:10:34.000Well, that's a very good point to emphasize.
00:10:37.000That's the second function of being on House Armed Services Committee is making sure from a national level that we have the right armaments our people need in order to win,
00:10:46.000in order to win, but also to have influence on when we should actually be engaging in conflict and using those armaments.
00:10:53.000And quite frankly, I'm like a lot of Americans. I'm like you. I'm like President Trump.
00:10:58.000We don't want these never ending wars. It's a drain on our treasury. It's a cost of human life.
00:11:04.000Our young men and our young women are sacrificing their lives often and sometimes they're suffering horrendous personal injuries with a loss of a limb or what have you because of the places that we put them in harm's way across the globe.
00:11:19.000So I only want us going into military conflict if the stakes are high enough to justify it and hopefully it will be part of a multinational effort.
00:11:30.000I don't want us to be the sole cowboy on the street pulling out their six shooters and blasting away.
00:11:37.000If it's only us, that suggests to a large degree, not all the times, but to a large degree that perhaps we shouldn't be there.
00:11:44.000If it is of interest to the entire free world and we have our allies joining with us, then by golly, that certainly increases the probability that we should likewise be involved.
00:11:56.000And so you and I, we fought against some of, I don't, I don't know if I should call them warmongers or probably better words than that.
00:12:03.000I'll call them warmongers. Liz Cheney's a warmonger.
00:12:05.000But there are people who believe in these forever wars and it's at such cost to the treasury and cost of lies, I can't justify it.
00:12:14.000Um, and for example, Afghanistan, I agree with president Trump.
00:12:20.000Now we should have gotten out a whole lot better than what you saw with the way Joe Biden so badly mishandled it.
00:12:27.000But we have people on the armed services committee. We still would be over there.
00:12:30.000And there's a big reason that I don't think we should still be over there aside from the fact that it's a cost of American lives and it's a cost to our treasury.
00:12:38.000And that is that I don't believe that the people in Afghanistan truly appreciate the sacrifices we were making on their behalf.
00:12:45.000And I think that belief has been ratified and confirmed by the debacle that has occurred after we have left.
00:12:52.000They did not adopt our principles. They did not adopt our belief systems.
00:12:56.000They have their own belief system. And unfortunately it conflicts with ours.
00:13:00.000And we needed to realize that in my judgment, if I had been commander in chief and I was not.
00:13:05.000And of course, in hindsight, it's a whole lot better, clear that crystal ball.
00:13:13.000That's when the military had punched the Taliban in the nose.
00:13:17.000That's when the military had toppled that government.
00:13:20.000And in 2011 is when we had killed Osama bin Laden.
00:13:24.000The military's mission was successfully accomplished and we won with winning being the definition of achieving our goals.
00:13:32.000But instead, we had politicians that forced our military to be there under untenable circumstances that over 10 years did not change the ultimate outcome of where we are.
00:13:44.000I think 80% of Americans would agree with what you just said, that when you accomplish an objective, you have to notice that and you have to behave differently having accomplished the objective rather than allowing the objective to change and metastasize and sort of shift with the sands.
00:14:03.000Why do you think Washington politicians in both parties are so detached from just the common sense that most Americans, most folks in Alabama and Florida have?
00:14:13.000I'm at a real loss as to some of the things that transpire.
00:14:16.000I will say that they think we're crazy, but we think they're crazy a lot of times in this town.
00:14:21.000Generally speaking, Washington, D.C., if you follow the money, then you know why a lot of the policies are being made.
00:14:27.000I believe that our military personnel are there to fight wars.
00:14:32.000I do not believe that they're supposed to be for decades on end police cops on every corner of the world.
00:14:41.000If we have to engage an enemy, our military personnel are the best in the world at engaging an enemy and doing the destruction that is necessary to accomplish whatever the mission may be.
00:14:52.000But to have them sitting on every police, excuse me, every corner of the globe, that sets them up for the kind of bushwhackings, the kinds of killings, the kinds of maimings that we've seen all too often at a waste to our treasury and at a waste of human life, American life.
00:15:07.000So do you believe we stayed longer in Afghanistan and Iraq than we should have so that people could make money off of those wars?
00:15:18.000That probably was a factor with some individuals.
00:15:25.000I would hope that that is not the primary motivation of our of a lot of our congressmen and senators.
00:15:32.000I would hope that our congressmen and senators are not that misguided.
00:15:35.000But based on what I've seen in Washington, D.C., it wouldn't surprise me if that was also not a motivation for some of these people who believe in these forever wars.
00:15:44.000After all, they're not the ones going over there and fighting.
00:15:47.000They're not the ones going over there and risking their lives.
00:15:49.000And it's not necessarily their money that is being spent in this endeavor.
00:15:53.000I believe that we need to be much more frugal, not only with our money, but our risk to human life, American human life.
00:15:59.000And we should only risk that American human life when America's national interests are truly at stake.
00:16:04.000And for the last decade in Afghanistan, in my view, and I concur with President Trump's view in this regard,
00:16:11.000over the last decade, the risk to human life, the consumption of our treasury did not justify being there for as long as we were.
00:16:23.000If you want to know what the America first foreign policy is, that's it in a nutshell.
00:16:28.000What Congressman Brooks just said, that we put our citizens, our treasury, our service members as the prime objective.
00:16:35.000And if we do that, I think the decision making flows pretty naturally.
00:16:39.000But these common sense views that you consistently champion in the Congress are not always popular with the leadership.
00:16:48.000I am not a deeply popular person with the leadership of my own party, probably in either the House or the Senate.
00:16:54.000I don't get the sense that you're deeply popular with the leadership in our party in the House or the Senate.
00:17:01.000Well, I think it's because you and I try to do what's in the best interest of America.
00:17:05.000And we believe that if we do what's in the best interest of America, that is the best way to get reelected.
00:17:10.000There are others in Washington, D.C. who believe that the best way to get elected is to satisfy the special interest groups and get the money that empowers them to run these commercials that attack their opposition.
00:17:21.000That's not the way I operate. That's not the way I understand you operate.
00:17:26.000People may not know this, but, you know, you have to pay money, big money, to be chairman of a major committee, to be on some of the major committees.
00:17:34.000We've broken down our committees in Congress as A, B, and C.
00:18:12.000You've got to do something special that is far too often in conflict with the general interest of the United States of America in order to get their money.
00:18:20.000And if we've got time, I'll give a really good example that involves Thomas Massey, a congressman from the state of Kentucky.
00:18:27.000A lobbyist came to Thomas Massey and said, look, I will pay your entrance fee on ways and means, $500,000 if you will support this patent bill.
00:18:36.000And Thomas said, well, I'll look at your patent bill.
00:18:39.000And by the way, Thomas Massey of Kentucky, great guy.
00:18:44.000His wife's an MIT grad, has his own patents himself.
00:18:47.000He looks at the bill and he says, sorry, this is bad for the small time inventor like myself.
00:18:54.000It really helps the people with the big cash, but it's not good for America.
00:18:57.000The people actually come up with the ideas.
00:18:59.000They should be the ones who are reaping the rewards of those ideas, not somebody else who can perfect a patent simply because they have the power of the money.
00:19:28.000And I said, I thought that was a great article.
00:19:30.000I can't stand the corruption of the public policy debate that we're seeing because of the way in which the House of Representatives is established.
00:19:37.000And Thomas said, well, Mo, I made one really big mistake in the article.
00:19:51.000And that's that's if you want to know why so much bad is being done in Washington, D.C.
00:19:56.000It's because of this buying and selling of committee assignments and chairmanships that so badly corrupts the public policy debate and favors the special interest groups over the regular American citizen.
00:20:07.000There might be 12 members of Congress that would lay out in technicolor what you just did.
00:20:13.000Most would be afraid to do so because they want that system to benefit them.
00:20:18.000How do we change it when there are so few of us and there are so many people who I think are good people, but who get to Washington and they go to the big embassy parties and they see how the committee chairman gets more staff and a bigger office and it seduces them into this corruption.
00:20:34.000Well, you need more congressmen and senators who have integrity and will stick with that integrity come hell or high water.
00:20:42.000But the ones that don't look just like the rest of us, that is the challenge, figuring out who's who.
00:20:47.000And the downside to all this special interest group money is they run these slick ads and these slick ads are based on polling data that tells the pollster and then tells the candidate what kind of ads to run because the public has already agreed with what you're about to say.
00:21:04.000And there is no requirement that the candidate actually believe what is in those ads.
00:21:09.000But if the candidate covets that elected position, the pollster and the consultant are going to tell the candidate that's what you have to say, parrot it back to the voters.
00:21:18.000And so the challenge for us is to do our best to help the public understand the corruption that is taking place, perhaps legally, in Washington, D.C.
00:21:27.000And to be mindful of the homework the voters have to do in order to ascertain what the true facts are.
00:21:33.000Don't be led like sheep, which is what those campaigns are all about.
00:21:36.000What you described was a system by where the elected representative is essentially an actor in a movie that is written, produced and directed by others.
00:21:46.000Do you think that groupthink impacts Washington, D.C. more than regular America, where just everybody starts swimming in one direction and folks kind of draft in?
00:21:55.000Well, you bring up groupthink. That was a college reading book when I was at Duke University of political science and in some other subjects.
00:22:05.000Yeah, I think that that's probably the case. There's always a go along, get along kind of attitude that a lot of people have.
00:22:14.000You do want to get along with your fellow people. And if that's what everybody else is doing, where they're selling these votes for the campaign contributions.
00:22:22.000And that seems to be a rubber stamp of approval. That seems to be a way things are.
00:22:27.000There are a lot of people who just go ahead and give in.
00:22:29.000They might crave the political power that you get by getting a chairmanship or getting on an A committee where you can get more money from lobbyists.
00:22:36.000And so all that put together, it's not good for America, but it does explain a lot about some of the bad legislation that gets passed that the voting public is so angry about
00:22:46.000and why the voting public is so often now saying a pox on both houses.
00:22:50.000The key, though, is for the American people to get smarter, to figure out what's going on, and then to vote accordingly.
00:22:56.000Because after all, what we have in Washington, D.C. is by definition what the people wanted because the people sent them there.
00:23:01.000I think also just a little bit of political courage can do great damage to the groupthink dynamic here in Washington.
00:23:09.000I saw that in you. When we saw an election that we had legitimate concerns about, where we saw illegal aliens voting,
00:23:17.000where we saw a departure from constitutional standards, from the way elections had been run all of our lives,
00:23:24.000to this new pandemic justification for all these changes in law, you were the very first person in Congress who said that you intended to offer an objection.
00:23:34.000Now, everyone makes that out to be some really unprecedented event.
00:23:39.000We, of course, know that Jim McGovern objected to your state of Alabama in 2017,
00:23:45.000which I think President Trump won by about 40 points and probably won it even bigger today.
00:23:52.000And I remember specifically a meeting with you where you laid out your purpose.
00:23:57.000You gathered Republicans together who had made comments after you initially took this bold position.
00:24:03.000And really, your purpose was to set the stage for the coming years so that we could fix problems, so that we could make elections better.
00:24:10.000Do you feel like what you were originally aiming for and what the way you inspired people like me, like Madison Cawthorn,
00:24:18.000like many others to offer our objection as well, that that's been misinterpreted by the media?
00:24:23.000Well, of course, the media is basically the propaganda wing of the socialist movement of America.
00:24:28.000So you can't expect them to tell the truth. I mean, you just can't.
00:24:31.000It's unfortunate, but the advent of the Internet with the advent or combination with their biases makes them almost wholly and completely unreliable, untruthworthy.
00:24:41.000And probably you could give them the kind of credibility that you could give the old Pravda coming out of Moscow.
00:24:49.000So, you know, it is it is a big challenge.
00:24:53.000But what do you think they get wrong about your goals?
00:24:56.000Well, I have a different belief system. That's it.
00:25:00.000They're attacking me based on a belief system.
00:25:03.000They don't want to analyze whether you and I are right or wrong.
00:25:06.000They just want to figure out the best way to attack.
00:25:08.000And if there's not an honest way, then they'll resort to a dishonest way.
00:25:11.000But when you get into what happened with the elections in 2020, I'll say what I've said many times before.
00:25:17.000In my judgment, if only lawful votes cast by eligible American citizens were counted, Donald Trump won the Electoral College.
00:25:24.000To get that out to the public, though, unfortunately, we often have to go through the news media and the news media shuts you down.
00:25:37.000But you've already said enough where we can't post this on YouTube.
00:25:40.000But everybody just needs to do one thing.
00:25:43.000Go read the 2005 Bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform report.
00:25:49.000And it itemizes the systemic flaws in our election system.
00:25:52.000This is a group headed up by Jimmy Carter, Democrat, James Baker, Ronald Reagan, White House Chief of Staff.
00:25:58.000And they examined all the basic flaws, the weaknesses that allow people to steal elections in the United States of America.
00:26:04.000And what the Democrats did in 2020 was use that as their playbook.
00:26:08.000And they magnified those flaws and took advantage of them.
00:26:11.000But read that report and you'll find out what truly is going on with our election system.
00:26:16.000And I'm pretty sure that, what, 17 years ago, they did not have a bias about Ronald, excuse me, not Ronald Reagan, that's James Baker, about Donald Trump versus Joe Biden in 2020.
00:26:30.000They didn't have that in their minds when they wrote that 2005 report.
00:26:34.000And so I think you can take it with some degree of confidence that they really mean what they say.
00:26:56.000Because what I remember is when we were strategizing for a debate on January 6th, not violence, not harm to our country, but a debate,
00:27:03.000different members had signed up to present the objections and lay out the affidavits and the evidence and the regression analysis on the data.
00:27:11.000Marjorie Taylor Greene and I, I know, were working on Michigan.
00:27:14.000Our colleague Jody Heiss was working on Georgia.
00:27:17.000I believe that Jim Jordan was working on Pennsylvania.
00:27:20.000And you said you wanted to volunteer to organize the data for the Nevada election.
00:27:25.000And you showed us some pretty compelling information about illegal aliens voting in the state of Nevada.
00:27:31.000Well, it's Nevada, but it's also across the board with almost every state in the union.
00:27:41.000We've had a multi-judge court order out of Pennsylvania that has found something like 2.6 million ballots that were illegally cast in violation of law.
00:27:52.000In Wisconsin, we've now had a trial court judge find that there were also a number of legal violations with the way in which the election process was handled there,
00:28:02.000with an admonishment to, if I recall correctly, the Wisconsin Secretary of State.
00:28:09.000But most importantly, we had mass violation of Article 1, Section 4 of the United States Constitution.
00:28:15.000That is the election clause for the watchers, the listeners who are unfamiliar with it,
00:28:20.000or unfamiliar with it, that says that it is up to the legislature and the United States Congress, those two bodies, to determine the, quote, times, places, and manner, end quote, of elections.
00:28:31.000Not secretaries of state, not Pennsylvania Supreme Court judges or any other judges, but those two bodies.
00:28:38.000And Article 1, Section 4 was violated en masse across the United States of America in 2020.
00:28:45.000And I could also add that another big violation dealt with the United States Code section that sets our election day.
00:28:53.000It's the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
00:28:56.000We did not set an election week or an election month or an election season.
00:29:01.000You're supposed to vote on that election day under the United States Code,
00:29:05.000and there are specific exceptions where you can vote absentee ballot under the United States Code,
00:29:10.000and the Democrats just threw that all out the window.
00:29:12.000Who tells us that's racist, that if you don't have early voting and vote by mail, if you just have an election day, that that has a discriminatory effect?
00:29:31.000All of us are being treated absolutely equal under the law and to suggest that someone is inferior in some way and cannot get it done when everybody else can.
00:33:16.000And whatever the American people are willing to support with respect to the investment of our treasury and the risk of our lives.
00:33:27.000But as a bedrock principle, we should not send American troops or aircraft in or over the Ukraine.
00:33:37.000We should be in a position to consider that if our European allies have first taken the lead role and the majority substantive role,
00:33:47.000in which case we should be in a position to consider supporting our allies in their endeavor.
00:33:53.000But if they're not willing to risk their own people, their own economies, their own equipment, then that should tell us that if it's not worth it to them, it's not worth it to the United States of America.
00:34:07.000But if it is worth it to them, then I am more than happy to consider what request that they may make of us to insist them to ensure that it is a successful endeavor.
00:34:17.000And I say that in this context, I'm mindful of what happened in World War Two.
00:34:21.000Adolf Hitler and dictatorial socialist Germany, they took land, they took land, they took land, they took land, they took land about five different times and maybe more in five different nations.
00:34:35.000And finally, they took Poland, which precipitated World War Two with the UK and the French declaring war.
00:34:42.000But you had this appeasement for a long period of time and that appeasement empowered and emboldened Adolf Hitler and dictatorial socialist Germany to do what they did.
00:34:51.000Do you think we're in an era of appeasement now with Putin?
00:34:53.000To some degree we are. We certainly have been.
00:34:56.000The Ukraine was first invaded in 2014 with the Crimea. What did the world do? Little did nothing.
00:35:02.000Yeah, but I mean, Ukraine and Russia were in the same country when like I was 10.
00:35:07.000It's like the biggest thing in the world. I mean, I, you know, I agree with you that Europe ought to be in the lead and this has to matter more to Europe more than it does to us or anything we do wouldn't be successful anyway.
00:35:18.000Now, you and I again have been have gotten the benefit of a lot of briefings where we have seen Europe doing a little more than than even frankly I expected at the outset.
00:35:27.000We can't get into too many details obviously in this format because some of that information is classified, but it is not as if Europe has withdrawn from what is going on in Russia, Ukraine, which is comforting because they ought to be in the lead.
00:35:40.000I don't know that I would be as accommodating to any requests for a no-fly zone because we have to recognize that Russia is a nuclear power, right?
00:35:47.000And, you know, Germany and World War II wasn't and so it was more about land than about some of these strategic features.
00:35:53.000Well, I think the real question is where do you think Russia will stop?
00:35:56.000Because at one point in time, the old Soviet Union also had control over various parts of Poland, the Balkans, go down the list of nations.
00:36:07.000So are they going to have a similar claim to a right to invade and conquest of each of those other nations, some of which are members of NATO now?
00:36:14.000Well, and you could tell you're obviously closely watching Putin's rhetoric that would gaslight that very proposition, right?
00:36:20.000I mean, when you look at what Putin's saying, his ambitions seem to go beyond Ukraine, don't they?
00:36:26.000They do, and I would emphasize that I don't want Ukraine to be in a conflict with Russia for many, many years.
00:36:33.000But one of the nice things about what happened with Afghanistan and Russia when the United States, you may have seen the movie Charlie Wilson's War.
00:36:42.000Where the United States began supplying weaponry to the Afghan people.
00:36:48.000That tied down the Soviet Union forces and that also to some degree, with a lot of other things going on, to some degree,
00:36:55.000helped bring about the breakup of the Soviet Union so that we had one less major problem area on the planet.
00:37:02.000We've got Russia under Putin trying, in effect, to recreate a dictatorial landmass called Russia out of the old pieces of the Soviet Union.
00:37:14.000And you put that many more people, that many more natural resources, that many more of everything into a larger aggressor nation,
00:37:26.000But if it's a bigger Russia, it's a bigger problem until such time as they're able to replace Putin with a liberty-loving, a freedom-loving governance.
00:38:03.000I mean, my proposition is, freedom cannot be won for a group of people by a foreign force.
00:38:08.000They have to fight for it, they have to develop the heroes, just like you're saying,
00:38:12.000so that there's a sense of nationalism where they protect that freedom from any strongman in the future.
00:38:17.000Well, I would hope that the Russian people would be able to topple the current Russian government without loss of life.
00:38:24.000But if they want liberty and freedom, they're going to have to do what it takes.
00:38:27.000They can't even protest in the streets without loss of life right now.
00:38:30.000I mean, it's pretty brutal over there.
00:38:32.000Thousands are being imprisoned simply because they engage in no war protests.
00:38:36.000And we might not see all of those people back in their families and in their communities again, which would be a real shame.
00:38:42.000You know, we come from the land of the lower creeks, Mo, in Alabama and in Florida.
00:38:48.000And in those Native American communities, there was always someone designated as the firekeeper,
00:38:53.000the person who ensured that values and beliefs were maintained and that there was that sense of culture.
00:39:00.000And you really are the MAGA America first firekeeper for our movement in the Congress.
00:39:06.000You were espousing these beliefs and fighting these battles, I would suggest, even before Donald Trump was elected president.
00:39:12.000And I know that for some of the newer members of Congress, like myself, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn,
00:39:19.000Madison Cawthorn, we really look up to you and we sit together on the floor.
00:39:23.000Folks may not know that, but we sit a few seats away from each other.
00:39:26.000And I know how much I benefit from the experience you bring, but also your willingness to buck this corrupt place when necessary.
00:39:34.000And I want to thank you for doing that.
00:39:36.000Thank you for being a great firebrand.
00:39:38.000And we wish you the best of luck in all your endeavors.