In this episode of Firebrand Live, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GA) takes a look at the impact of primary day on the two major parties, and how the primary results influence the direction of the agenda and the focus of debate in Congress.
00:03:29.000And so you've had people like Republican Governor of West Virginia Jim Justice, even Democrat U.S. Senator Joe Manchin supporting the infrastructure bill, saying it's good for West Virginia.
00:03:41.000You've had Congress members like Alex Mooney opposing that infrastructure bill.
00:03:45.000So if you see a Mooney win today, that's bad news for the Democrats, even though it's an outcome in a Republican primary, because it shows that this infrastructure bill that is not only the signature accomplishment of the Biden presidency.
00:03:59.000It is the only thing that they could possibly trump it as an accomplishment.
00:04:03.000And if it's not driving votes, if it's not a voting issue, then I think you really see a narrative that's without any sort of cohesion or central focus or grounding in the challenges that are really very prevalent out in the country and challenges we're definitely going to talk about in the show.
00:04:21.000So that brings us to Congress this week, and we are getting news that a $40 billion package for Ukraine in arms, in aid, in cash is being decoupled from a vote on COVID.
00:04:38.360Now, first of all, what is so freaking wrong with Congress that you would ever couple Ukrainian aid with coronavirus response, regardless how you think of those things?
00:04:48.580They definitely don't belong together, but it tells you something about how your government behaves and responds, that they would think about this not as a policy debate, but as a political fusion of these issues.
00:05:02.360Now, for me, it's not that difficult, because as I'll explain, I'm against both of them.
00:05:06.440But really nuts that they thought about joining COVID and Ukrainian aid.
00:05:11.360Like, to most people, you would think your government would actually be sophisticated and mature enough to address those issues on their own merits independently.
00:05:19.980It does look like that's going to happen.
00:05:21.480I think the COVID obsession needs to come to an end.
00:05:25.160We cannot continue to print money to subsidize COVID fear porn policies.
00:05:31.860You want to know why we have inflation problems in this country today?
00:05:35.000It's not because of Vladimir Putin, principally.
00:06:00.920More freedom, more economic activity, more personal choice.
00:06:04.980And by the way, for those who want to stay locked up for their personal health reasons, who want to get vaccinated, that's entirely their right.
00:06:15.840But I think Americans who want to go back to work, who want to open businesses, who want to interact with family members, ought to be able to do that as well.
00:06:23.720So in this COVID package, you've got, you know, the hospital industrial complex and the pharmaceutical industrial complex doing their thing.
00:06:33.560But the $40 billion for Ukraine, that is undeniably the military industrial complex.
00:06:40.200And after seeing what the big pharma lobby got and the big hospital lobby got, no doubt the war lobby wants to get right back at it.
00:06:49.700They certainly don't want to see the savings that the American people should realize as a peace dividend with hostilities in Afghanistan coming to an end, at least as far as Americans go.
00:06:59.340No, they don't want that peace dividend realized for our country.
00:07:03.540They want us to continue to spend money just, you know, littering weapons abroad for the use of others who sometimes don't share our values.
00:07:12.180Ukraine is the money laundering, like, capital of Europe.
00:07:16.960And in a lot of ways, this $40 billion is a money laundering operation for the elites.
00:07:22.360And you saw how quick it went from $33 billion to $40 billion.
00:07:27.780By the way, Customs and Border Patrol are going to be requesting through the Biden administration about $17 billion.
00:07:34.540So it tells you a lot about your leaders and your government that they are just lickety-split going to send, like, more than twice as much money to Ukraine to defend their borders than they are defending our border through Customs and Border Patrol.
00:07:53.400My grandfather used to say, don't tell me about your values.
00:07:55.700If you show me your checkbook, I can tell you about your values.
00:07:59.820And in this case, America's checkbook seems to be valuing Ukraine more than Europe does and more than even we value the critically just devastating crisis on our southern border with Mexico.
00:08:11.660And here, within this country, not for nothing, but there's, like, no baby formula anymore.
00:08:18.840$40 billion for Ukraine when you have a baby formula collapse in the marketplace here in our country.
00:08:25.700And astonishingly, it was a CNN data assembly report from the CEO of data assembly, Ben Reich.
00:08:33.760And here's a quote directly from this report about the real problems with baby formula.
00:08:39.240Quote, this issue has been compounded by supply chain issues, product recalls, and historic inflation.
00:08:47.820Unfortunately, given the unprecedented amount of volatility due to the category, we anticipate baby formula to continue to be one of the most affected products in the market.
00:09:00.300So, just take a listen to how bad this is by the numbers.
00:09:05.780Right now, 40% of the nation's formula is out of stock.
00:10:16.200And what's so sad is that these Democrat policies are failing the people most in the places where they've been most reliant on Democrats to look out for them
00:10:26.240and to provide some degree of safety and comfort.
00:10:43.340And this draft decision that we have now seen represents the overturn of Roe v. Wade
00:10:52.100and something that Republicans and conservatives and just pro-life people have been praying for and hoping for and working towards for so long.
00:11:33.320When you actually do the work to craft the bills, to create a culture of life, we can win.
00:11:39.260And I think so often in Washington, D.C., the Republicans are willing to oversee, manage decline, to just surrender less and less ground to the left over time.
00:11:49.080But there was a movement in the pro-life community that would not allow the politicians off the hook.
00:13:22.940That in no way rubs negative to the pro-life movement.
00:13:27.100So we can stop the murder of unborn babies with the overturning of Roe, by accepting a culture of life, by advancing pro-adoption policies, which, by the way, is a huge part of this.
00:13:40.520I am very proud of the work I did in the Florida legislature to work on policies, to cut the red tape for adoption, to create incentives for adoption, to do everything possible to create that positive pro-life culture.
00:13:54.640But here's what you're going to hear from Democrats.
00:13:56.800Oh, well, we could ban interracial marriage because of this decision.
00:14:05.440And in the decision itself, actually, Justice Alito takes a moment to express that there's something about this abortion issue and the flawed science and the flawed law that underpins Roe that makes the court's robust reasoning specific to this.
00:14:21.400So don't buy in to the fear-mongering that, like, this vastly changes the whole concept of reproduction in America.
00:14:29.260No, this is to overturn Roe, bad law, to return this authority to elected people.
00:14:37.380If you don't like what abortion law is, you have somebody to go vote for or vote against.
00:14:44.420And my suspicion is abortion law will be debated by elected officials.
00:14:49.260The problem with Roe is you had nobody to go vote against if you didn't like it.
00:14:53.700It was just a court seizing jurisdiction on unsound constitutional principles that relied on penumbras rather than actual text.
00:15:02.500The freak out on the left has gotten so broad and away from the specific focus of abortion that we had Senator Gillibrand of New York questioning whether or not women were even still citizens in America.
00:15:14.460Look, reasonable people in America can disagree on the matter of abortion.
00:15:37.160And by the way, one of the reasons why we had to overturn Roe is because science regarding viability has changed since the 1970s.
00:15:47.820And as science changes and as our understanding of viability becomes more accurate, our laws ought to reflect that.
00:15:56.220The political discussion we have in this country, our campaigns, ought to be responsive to those changes in science and to enhanced viability.
00:16:04.640So reasonable people can disagree about abortion.
00:16:09.400And frankly, what we see from a lot of the people that are, you see them in these viral videos, you see them everywhere, protesting for a pro-abortion, pro-murder position.
00:16:22.920And I was observing, like, these people who are out there protesting because they, like, want their abortions or whatever.
00:16:30.700And I'm thinking to myself, for a lot of them, that probably wouldn't be an issue because they strike me as very lonely people.
00:16:36.900And not for everyone, but I think in some cases, like, people's personal loneliness has, like, manifested in their pro-abortion view.
00:16:46.160So I released this tweet, how many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, underloved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats and no bumble matches?
00:17:07.280But I want you to know what I was talking about.
00:17:09.760Again, I was asking the question, what percentage of this overall universe of people who are, like, so animated about this that they go out and protest are, like, deeply lonely people?
00:17:18.680And, frankly, I think a lot of millennials of every gender got sold a bill of goods that, like, oh, well, the best way you're going to meet the best partner is to drive toward the highest degree of education.
00:17:31.120And now people are wanting Joe Biden to go cancel their $50,000 in student debt that they got to get a master's degree in intersectional feminist studies.
00:17:39.620And they find themselves out at some crazy protest probably looking and sounding a lot like this.
00:18:34.180What we believe is that people who reasonably disagree about the matter of abortion ought to be able to access our halls of Congress, our state legislators, to be able to discuss and present evidence.
00:18:50.000And look at when a heartbeat really starts, when a soul has been created.
00:18:55.080Not to allow unelected judges to universally resolve this.
00:18:58.420We still have a lot of work to do in the pro-life movement to ensure that from the moment of conception all the way through life that we are being pro-life.
00:19:10.280That we do everything possible to assist mothers who have unwanted pregnancies with options that don't include abortion.
00:19:16.740But that was the sickness, the vile, just odious behavior of the people who would want to use intimidation and who would want to, I think, go to measures that were beyond normal politics to try to achieve the outcomes that they desire.
00:19:39.540Those are not the people that I think represent where a vast majority of Americans are on this issue.
00:19:45.020So we'll continue to cover not only this decision and the ongoing jurisprudence from it, but the legislative action here in Congress and throughout the several states that I think is sure to follow.
00:19:58.360But to be pro-life, we have to support the things in America that drive life and sustain life.
00:20:05.900And if you've been paying attention, you see that American farmers are in a total state of crisis in this country.
00:20:13.300And it's not an accident and it's not a mystery.
00:20:16.800It is a direct result of the policies of the Biden administration.
00:20:20.900Just take some of the headlines that we've been seeing.
00:26:53.140Is it going to mean that there are going to be fewer investments in irrigation plant, you know, in more fields or how do you?
00:27:01.860I can tell you most, most every farmer has cut back on fertilizer because the land is kind of like a savings account.
00:27:11.440You know, if we've been doing good fertility progress, we have some stored nutrients.
00:27:15.160But wait, by that, by that measure, once you withdraw from the savings account, you're in real trouble.
00:27:20.920We're going to be bankrupt from a, from a fertility standpoint.
00:27:26.980I think the problem is, is coming later on.
00:27:30.660I think we're setting ourself up for next year.
00:27:33.900Are you saying that because of what we're doing to the land, not making that investment back in the land and fertilizer, that it's actually going to get worse before it gets better?
00:27:43.080Unless we come up with some alternatives for nutrients.
00:27:47.220Look at, one thing I think that you guys.
00:27:49.540Well, wait a second, because I got to go into specific votes that directly affect us.
00:27:53.760Where I was on the outside of a majority of Congress, because a lot of these petroleum-based fertilizers, we get from Russia, we get from Belarus.
00:28:03.140And the ones we don't get from that, that whole global market is impacted by them because they're big producers.
00:28:09.480And I had to take a vote as your public servant on whether or not we were going to end all that.
00:28:14.900And there was no plan on how we were going to replace it.
00:28:18.580You know, you just said, well, that depends on whether or not we have a plan.
00:28:31.360But I do worry about what we are looking at six months, 12 months, 18 months down the road if, you know, you're seeing two and three time increases on what it takes to operate a 700-acre farm.
00:28:44.280Well, this is an interesting side note, and maybe this is not politically correct, but we do have a Russian connection to farming, whether we like it or not, because there's a lot of technology in farming.
00:28:56.740All of these planters, all these tractors, they're running off of GPS.
00:29:00.680All of this equipment used to have mechanical road markers.
00:30:02.820I think that a lot of farmers feel very desperate, because I talk to some of my colleagues, and they say, you know, if a certain piece of equipment breaks down, you're not going to fix it this year.
00:30:14.280And that's true, and we've never been in this situation before.
00:30:18.540So, is there a way that, is there something that we can do?
00:30:25.240I mean, because I think people feel pretty helpless.
00:30:31.560We have printed so much money over the last few years.
00:30:35.020We've taken a complex, sophisticated food supply system, and we've just sort of run it awash.
00:30:44.080And we don't make enough of the stuff that we need here, which means that when we have global supply chain issues, you know, Xinjiang province gets a cold and we get pneumonia in this country.
00:30:54.960And my sense is, you know, the Obama years were depressing.
00:31:28.400And if there's any benefit to the pain that so many Americans are feeling right now, I think they're actually starting to connect the dots more.
00:31:36.360That if you attack ag, you're going to feel that when you go to the grocery store.
00:31:40.280If you embrace the most radical forms of environmentalism, you're not going to be able to get around anymore.
00:31:45.460And you're going to see that $5.99 gas or worse.
00:31:48.640You know, you go and create conflict with other countries and you visit the pain of what's going on in Russia and Ukraine on Americans and on the global fertilizer market.
00:32:03.420You know, you're not going to do that without consequence.
00:32:05.400And so part of what I try to do, truly, is just let people know what's going on.
00:32:09.480And I think the more people connect the dots, I think the more sophisticated we'll become in our decision making.
00:32:15.180There's a lot of things in place that I see that's not on anybody's radar that could really work against us in this country.
00:32:24.720And I think you've got probably the hardest job that anybody's ever had because you're going to have to be the one that stands up there and takes the brunt.
00:32:33.900You're going to have to tell these people that, hey, we've got a problem.
00:32:36.460Well, if you'll plant the peanuts, I'll go pull the weeds up in the swamp where I work.
00:32:41.100Oh, I thought you was going to come help me pull some weeds.
00:33:03.120We're going to try to have a report available for you tomorrow regarding some of the work that's going on in the committees in the Congress.