The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - Episode 36 - Iran Wants to Arrest Trump. Black Lives Matter Threatens to ＂Burn Down the System.＂ Biden’s Unprotected America.

00:00:00.000 You ever watch this guy on television?

00:00:03.820 You all were not telling the truth and you should not be trusted.

00:00:06.540 Congressman Matt Gaetz, thank you for what you did for your country tonight.

00:00:09.280 Be offended with the Democratic whip, not House of Republicans.

00:00:12.240 Like a machine, Matt Gaetz.

00:00:16.280 Welcome to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz.

00:00:19.600 Let's talk about the news.

00:00:21.420 This week, the House Armed Services Committee will debate and likely pass out

00:00:26.460 its version of the National Defense Authorization Act.

00:00:30.000 This is the bill that is passed each and every year.

00:00:32.740 I think there's a multi-decade record of passing this legislation through the Congress

00:00:38.200 that authorizes our military, sets policy for our military,

00:00:42.380 and funds the necessary tools, instruments, weapon systems, body armors,

00:00:48.060 technologies that are needed to ensure that we never send America's bravest patriots

00:00:53.560 into a fair fight, that we preserve the edge that generations before us have earned

00:00:59.040 in military might and strength.

00:01:01.880 And I think that's very important.

00:01:03.220 While many people have heard me talk about foreign policy in realistic and honest terms

00:01:09.080 about where the United States needs to be engaged and where our engagement,

00:01:14.180 I think, has been counterproductive,

00:01:15.520 I always believe that we have to maintain a qualitative edge in our military might over everyone in the world.

00:01:23.960 That is essential to global peace and order,

00:01:27.360 and that's why I'm a strong supporter of military spending and a military budget

00:01:33.480 that reflects the dynamic challenges that we truly face.

00:01:37.600 Here's the frame that I think is most important in determining whether or not a National Defense Authorization Act

00:01:44.280 is consistent with my values in the world as we see it currently.

00:01:48.440 I'm looking for an NDAA that acknowledges that we have real issues with the major world power of China, 1.00

00:01:55.940 that near-peer adversary competition is going to be essential to American peace and prosperity and security,

00:02:04.080 and that our continued involvement in skirmishes and resentments and tinderboxes around the world

00:02:14.340 in places like Afghanistan or Syria or Libya are distractions from the importance of maintaining the technological edge,

00:02:25.640 the human edge over our near-peer adversaries, and I would say just most explicitly China.

00:02:32.320 I think that we've made a lot of strides in that regard, upgrading our nuclear program,

00:02:38.940 keeping our nuclear protection system and regime as capable as it currently is today.

00:02:45.420 I think that that is an area where we do need to see continued investment and continued support.

00:02:51.480 I also believe that an NDAA is only acceptable if it continues to provide for our military families.

00:02:59.140 The military families in my community inspire my service every day.

00:03:04.300 I mean, they are truly the best among us in Northwest Florida, and we cherish and value them so much,

00:03:10.180 and we have so many of them.

00:03:11.220 It's frankly why a lot of people choose to live in my community.

00:03:14.220 You get surrounded by a bunch of patriotic Americans who believe in this country,

00:03:18.980 and in times like these, trust me, I value these folks even more as constituents.

00:03:24.040 Last year's NDAA was phenomenal in this regard.

00:03:28.220 We were able to extend a family leave to our military service members.

00:03:32.680 So important because the military bonds with family are really put under a lot of pressure

00:03:40.100 through these frequent deployments and the intensity of the training that is necessary to maintain hair trigger readiness.

00:03:47.600 So everything we can do to support that family unit, I think, is critically important to our warfighters

00:03:54.580 and to the patriotic Americans who support them and who we value.

00:03:59.140 The other thing we did was we got rid of the widow tax.

00:04:01.920 There was this crazy interpretation of DOD policy that resulted in widows who,

00:04:08.100 or I should say widowers, who lose their spouses in the line of duty,

00:04:13.280 having to potentially substitute some of the benefits that they had earned as a spouse

00:04:18.080 from those combat death benefits that would otherwise inure to their benefit.

00:04:24.840 And it was just nuts that we were forcing this election when the patriotism,

00:04:30.660 the sacrifice is endured in both of those circumstances by the spouse,

00:04:36.600 both the loss and the time spent supporting that service member through their time.

00:04:44.020 And so we got rid of that in the last NDAA, ton of work with Republicans, Democrats, the Trump administration.

00:04:51.200 And now I think we're looking to be ambitious again about what we can do for military families.

00:04:56.960 So I'll be breaking down some of those components.

00:04:59.500 But on the broader strategic level, remember, critically important,

00:05:02.640 are we moving away from being a distracted nation,

00:05:06.600 you know, trying to build empires out of blood and sand in the Middle East?

00:05:11.580 Are we moving away from that and towards that real focus to ensure that America remains free

00:05:17.660 because America remains dominant and that we do not see China close the gap

00:05:22.380 or ever eclipse our military strength?

00:05:24.720 We had a tweet from my personal account at Matt Gaetz go a little more viral than usual.

00:05:34.760 This one got tens of thousands of likes and comments and I guess around 12,000 retweets.

00:05:44.020 And, you know, whenever there is like a viral tweet,

00:05:47.380 I don't always know that that's going to be the one that just tends to get a lot of engagement.

00:05:52.000 I mean, sometimes I think, oh, man, this one's a monster.

00:05:55.020 This is really saying something.

00:05:56.480 I'll throw it out there.

00:05:57.900 It'll get a couple dozen retweets.

00:05:59.920 And then there are times when I just have sort of an off-the-cuff perspective on something

00:06:04.760 and we'll throw it on social media, maybe parlay.

00:06:08.360 Maybe I parlay out the tweet on Parler.

00:06:15.280 Maybe we throw something on Facebook.

00:06:17.420 But anyhow, there is a certain concoction to the necessary elements of a viral tweet.

00:06:24.100 And the first is there has to be at its core like an element of truth.

00:06:28.940 Like if you're just putting, you know, kind of a spin out there, it's never going to go viral.

00:06:35.020 You will never see spin go viral.

00:06:37.260 There is always some truth that cuts to the bone that causes people to interact, share,

00:06:43.400 and respond to content.

00:06:45.600 And so like when you're out there like hate responding to my tweets in the tens of thousands,

00:06:51.120 as sometimes is the case, just know how much I appreciate that you recognized that element of truth

00:06:59.120 so much so that you felt the need to take your time to respond.

00:07:03.720 And then the other element is there has to be something sort of, you know, interesting, appealing, captivating.

00:07:09.820 So you've got to mix like the truth bomb with the interest element.

00:07:14.420 And I did not know this was going to be a big winner.

00:07:17.740 But here is the tweet that seemed to be trending, at least in the politics section for some part of yesterday.

00:07:26.360 In Joe Biden's America, your job is illegal.

00:07:29.860 You're locked in your home.

00:07:31.620 Borders don't exist.

00:07:33.260 MS-13 lives next door. 0.96

00:07:35.440 And the police aren't coming when the mob arrives.

00:07:38.260 This is all of us.

00:07:40.500 And then there is a tweet of this like middle-aged white couple.

00:07:44.640 The dude is holding an AR-15 and the lady is holding what appears to be a pistol.

00:07:50.760 And they just have a very concerned look on their face.

00:07:53.260 Like, I mean, it's obvious that they do not want to be holding these firearms

00:07:56.940 and they do not want to be outside their house with these firearms.

00:08:00.100 But like there is a real concern that this is now what we have come to,

00:08:04.660 what may be necessary in some circumstances.

00:08:06.820 So, the woke left Twitter woke world goes crazy in response because, as it turns out,

00:08:15.320 this is a husband-wife lawyer team that has actually brought action against law enforcement for police brutality.

00:08:22.880 And they put out this statement saying,

00:08:24.380 We support Black Lives Matter.

00:08:26.260 The folks that were causing concern to our family were white. 0.88

00:08:31.880 Look, I am not one to get into this back and forth because, to me, it doesn't matter what the race is, 0.98

00:08:39.080 whether they're white rioters or black rioters or brown rioters or whatever. 0.89

00:08:44.500 To me, we have to have security for prosperity. 0.98

00:08:50.220 I mean, it is the basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right?

00:08:53.080 Like, if we become a society that is fundamentally insecure in our home, when we send our kids to the bus stop,

00:08:59.960 when we go shopping, when we just interact with our fellow Americans and our fellow human beings,

00:09:06.920 when that no longer becomes a safe and secure thing,

00:09:09.520 then we are less capable as a society to get to the type of thought and reasoning and enlightenment,

00:09:17.720 perhaps, that the woke left would want us to reach, right?

00:09:20.820 Like, I think we should always strive to be more aware and understanding human beings.

00:09:26.600 Certainly, we have done that over time.

00:09:29.000 That's the definition of progress.

00:09:30.660 But if you put people's physical security in danger, then you are unable to achieve that.

00:09:36.280 And this no longer now is a debate about what the best way to achieve, you know,

00:09:41.700 the best opportunity for an advancing society is.

00:09:44.960 It's like whether or not we want to have society at all or whether or not all of us is this, like,

00:09:51.180 this couple who doesn't want to be holding firearms but, in fact, is doing so.

00:09:56.920 That was the message I was trying to portray.

00:09:59.320 And it's really a question that's opened the air.

00:10:01.220 And I'm trying to inspire folks through my service that taking up the defense of America

00:10:07.500 is a worthy and noble endeavor in these times.

00:10:10.540 And I do not believe history will look back and say that the rioters and looters,

00:10:16.080 the people that were, like, chanting outside that couple's home were the right ones in all this.

00:10:21.140 I think that history is going to appreciate the brave, patriotic Americans who stand forward and say,

00:10:26.960 we have a complex history.

00:10:29.360 We have a history of flawed human beings.

00:10:31.920 But this is a great history.

00:10:33.280 This is a group of people who came to America with an ambition for a human society

00:10:39.000 that would tolerate freedom of religion,

00:10:42.200 that would be egalitarian to people in a way that had not existed before in the old world,

00:10:48.760 that would resist colonialism in really the most successful way that colonialism had been resisted at that point in history,

00:10:57.420 a resistance that would inspire other rejections of colonialism, right?

00:11:00.860 But we don't want to appreciate that because we have to adopt this notion of great grievance.

00:11:08.220 And that grievance makes people angry and it makes them do violent things sometimes.

00:11:12.920 And we should not think that we just have to tolerate that.

00:11:15.840 We don't have to.

00:11:17.480 This is a great society with a great history and the patriots are the ones fighting for it.

00:11:22.260 President Trump is under arrest in Iran, apparently.

00:11:30.720 The Islamic Republic of Iran has issued an arrest warrant for President Trump over the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani.

00:11:39.720 So the night that Trump issues the order to kill Soleimani, I'm with the president at Mar-a-Lago.

00:11:48.140 He's there having dinner.

00:11:50.040 We're chatting about the importance of resetting deterrence in the region.

00:11:55.580 And it was directly after meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and two scoops of ice cream with the president

00:12:01.800 that I went on Shannon Bream's show and provided this frame for the killing of Soleimani.

00:12:07.140 I am no cheerleader for war with Iran. 0.96

00:12:09.680 The president has shown amazing restraint when it comes to Iran.

00:12:13.080 Remember, there were people who wanted the president to respond aggressively militarily

00:12:17.040 when Iran shot down a drone or when they were engaged in activities in the Straits of Hormuz.

00:12:22.140 But the president was very clear that if there was harm to Americans,

00:12:26.280 that he would respond not with proportionate response but with overwhelming force.

00:12:31.720 And that is what we've seen occur here.

00:12:33.800 I support the president's decision.

00:12:35.320 Soleimani was one of the leading destabilizing forces in the Middle East. 0.99

00:12:40.100 And he's really the architect of the genocidal strategy that we saw at play in Syria. 0.94

00:12:44.500 So I believe the world will be a better place without Soleimani.

00:12:47.260 And so now Iran's attorney general has, I guess, placed 36 people under the arrest powers of Iran,

00:12:59.240 Trump being at the top of the list.

00:13:00.800 But he claims Trump would be prosecuted as soon as he stands down from the presidency.

00:13:07.480 So I guess in a way, Iran's Justice Department is treating the president perhaps better than our own did 0.72

00:13:13.560 at the beginning of his first term.

00:13:16.620 I mean, I don't know if anyone's told Iran this, but our deep state has already tried this and failed.

00:13:22.580 And they're probably better than the Iranian deep state. 0.71

00:13:26.380 So I'm not too worried that the president is going to be turning himself over anytime soon to the Iranians. 1.00

00:13:32.900 He made the right decision to kill Soleimani.

00:13:35.040 Our position is stronger in the Middle East as a consequence, and we're less likely to go to war as a consequence.

00:13:41.900 I do not favor some new forever war with some new Middle Eastern country.

00:13:47.740 Iran's just not worth it. 1.00

00:13:49.900 But at the same time, I think that you've got to draw a red line.

00:13:54.840 And unlike the Obama administration, you've got to be willing to enforce it.

00:13:58.340 The president did that in Syria and then got us the hell out.

00:14:01.380 And that now as a consequence of Soleimani being taken off the battlefield, the Iranians have less infrastructure to be a malign influence. 0.94

00:14:11.400 And it didn't take some invasion of Tehran.

00:14:14.820 It didn't take, you know, thousands of troops spending, you know, months of deployments and then doing it, you know, tens of times over and over again.

00:14:24.020 It took effective technology, the exquisite reach of U.S. lethality and the strong leadership of President Trump.

00:14:34.820 Our good friend and Fox News' Martha McCallum had Black Lives Matter Greater New York Chairman Hawk Newsome on the story.

00:14:44.260 Listen to what he had to say.

00:14:45.680 It's terrifying.

00:14:46.640 You said burn it down. 0.91

00:14:48.360 You said burn it down. 0.95

00:14:50.000 It's time.

00:14:50.640 So that makes me think that you want to burn it down.

00:14:55.440 I said if this country, if this country doesn't give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.

00:15:03.840 All right.

00:15:04.240 And I could be speaking figuratively.

00:15:07.280 I could be speaking literally.

00:15:08.740 It's a matter of interpretation.

00:15:10.480 Like, let's be very real and let's observe the history of the 1960s.

00:15:16.980 When black people were rioting, we had their highest growth in wealth, in property ownership. 1.00

00:15:24.300 Think about the last few weeks. 0.73

00:15:26.560 Since we started protesting, there have been eight cops fired across the country.

00:15:32.700 You remember they were telling us that there was due process.

00:15:35.060 That's why the cop that choked Eric Gardner to death had kept his job and received raises for five years.

00:15:41.980 Anytime a cop hurt a woman, hurt a child, hurt pregnant people, hurt our elders, there was always a call for due process.

00:15:50.060 You must wait.

00:15:50.900 You must wait.

00:15:51.660 But the moment people start destroying property, now cops can be fired automatically.

00:15:57.700 What is this country rewarding?

00:16:02.140 What behavior is it listening to?

00:16:04.900 Obviously, not marching.

00:16:06.700 But when people get aggressive and they escalate their protests, the country listens.

00:16:12.260 You feel like that's when you're getting results.

00:16:12.880 Cops get fired.

00:16:14.120 Now you have police officers.

00:16:16.600 You have Republican politicians talking about police reform.

00:16:19.800 I don't condone, nor do I condemn, rioting.

00:16:23.300 But I'm just telling you what I observe.

00:16:25.340 You're saying that that's what appears to be working and getting results.

00:16:29.720 He believes our country was built on violence, that it's justified.

00:16:34.240 I mean, did this strike you as someone who was eager to hear where the newest Opportunity Zone would be created?

00:16:42.660 Did it strike you as someone who would be less likely to support harm to other people if we invested more in historically black colleges and universities?

00:16:52.600 You know, is it do you think this guy could could break down the intricacies of prison reform?

00:16:59.240 No.

00:16:59.600 I mean, what we are facing right now is in in some cases, not in every case, not with every protester, but in terms of the leadership that is benefiting from millions upon millions of dollars from corporate America is a desire to see people harmed through violent revolution.

00:17:19.040 And I don't say that to get people to do anything to hurt their fellow Americans of any reason.

00:17:26.760 I would never want that to happen.

00:17:28.320 There's no reason for political violence of any kind in this country from any side.

00:17:33.100 We've got a great country.

00:17:34.880 And if we will all love the country, then we won't feel the need to hurt each other over politics so much.

00:17:40.800 But this guy is not the solution to a greater understanding of one another and to any sense of unity. 0.97

00:17:48.420 And it's a shame that so many in corporate America continue to fund this kind of garbage.

00:17:55.560 Thanks, everyone, for listening to Hot Takes. 0.97

00:17:57.720 I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz.

00:17:59.400 And thank you especially for the reviews you leave, the ratings you give.

00:18:03.400 Helps us move up the podcast ranking so more people are able to interact with our content, which is ultimately the goal.

00:18:09.140 So I wanted to address one issue.

00:18:12.220 We had one commenter say, hey, when are we going to get back to talking about deficits and financial responsibility?

00:18:19.660 And then we had another commenter say, what do we do to get the Republican Party passed just talking about deficits?

00:18:25.540 So on the question of deficits and spending, I do believe that this generation of leadership, Republican and Democrat,

00:18:34.860 is going to be judged harshly for allowing our fiscal situation to get so out of whack.

00:18:41.740 At the same time, I understand that the reason that you maintain a strong dollar,

00:18:48.320 the reason you do so much to preserve your status as the global reserve currency,

00:18:53.780 is so that at a time of pandemic, at a time when you have to render elements of the economy illegal for some portion of time,

00:19:02.340 that you're able to make provision for your people.

00:19:05.280 I believe in making provision for our people over this policy of spending gazillions of dollars trying to go and liberate the world,

00:19:15.200 while that has not been a successful strategy during the Bush, Clinton, Obama years,

00:19:22.340 and then also just letting anyone come into the country.

00:19:26.240 I mean, you know, I just think if we were to provide provision for our people, we would be able to do so.

00:19:32.660 And we wouldn't have such extensive spending if we were to have, I think, some adjustment on those edges of public policy.

00:19:40.580 So I think there is a right focus on it.

00:19:43.500 But I think that the focus is not just like what beans can you move from one category to another.

00:19:48.980 It's about what you envision is the role of government.

00:19:52.600 And I don't want a government that drives decisions into people's lives.

00:19:56.740 I don't think that we make better decisions in Washington, D.C. than we do in Tallahassee or Albany or Sacramento.

00:20:04.380 Well, probably we probably make them better than Sacramento, but and maybe even Albany.

00:20:08.160 Heck, but in most of the state legislatures around the country,

00:20:10.740 I think there's decent governing and a lot of contribution from local government.

00:20:15.740 And but we've seen Washington grow over both parties and we've seen spending grow and we're not going to be able to count on the folks that are in like their 70s and 80s in Congress to fix this.

00:20:27.540 Right. But the problem is the young people that are going to bear the challenges of the spending that we're on are not the ones that are running the committees because it's a seniority based system.

00:20:39.260 So there needs to be some disruption in the way we approach generational issues.

00:20:47.360 And I look forward to being a part of it with some of the new crop that we got coming in.

00:20:51.780 Let's help serve the country.

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - June 30, 2020

Episode 36 - Iran Wants to Arrest Trump. Black Lives Matter Threatens to ＂Burn Down the System.＂ Biden’s Unprotected America.

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