The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - May 15, 2020


Episode 5 - Proxy Voting, Media Bailouts, and Pelosi's Radical COVID Bill


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

159.006

Word count

2,681

Sentence count

152

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) joins Hot Takes to talk about the latest news coming out of Congress, including the latest on the coronavirus outbreak and the efforts being taken by the Trump administration to get a vaccine.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to Hot Takes. This is Congressman Matt Gaetz. Let's talk about the news. And today,
00:00:21.180 we specifically get to talk about the news in the Capitol building. That's right.
00:00:25.280 Congress has returned. We're back. We're voting. And as rare as it feels good to be in the capital
00:00:32.540 of Washington, D.C. and not back home in my beloved Florida, I am glad that we've answered
00:00:37.920 the call of so many like my colleague Brian Mass to actually get back here and do some work. So
00:00:42.960 later today, I'll be getting a briefing on the ISIS situation in Iraq and Syria as a part of my
00:00:48.720 service on the Armed Services Committee. We're continuing to get briefings about the coronavirus
00:00:52.960 and corresponding economic response. And in that light, it's great to see that the Trump
00:00:58.960 administration is really moving forward aggressively on vaccines. I think ultimately
00:01:04.060 that's what's going to build consumer confidence. And Operation Warp Speed is the latest presidential
00:01:12.000 endeavor to ensure that we get that vaccine on time and perhaps even this year. President Trump
00:01:18.620 and other senior members of the administration today were in the Rose Garden talking about
00:01:22.860 Operation Warp Speed and how it's going to impact our country. Let's take a listen.
00:01:27.500 We have the mightiest military in the long history of humankind. We have the best and most devoted
00:01:33.020 workers ever to walk the face of the earth. And now we're combining all of these amazing strengths
00:01:39.100 for the most aggressive vaccine project in history. There's never been a vaccine project anywhere in
00:01:45.020 history like this. And I just want to make something clear. It's very important. Vaccine or no vaccine,
00:01:53.500 we're back and we're starting the process. And in many cases, they don't have vaccines and a virus or a flu
00:02:00.620 comes. And you fight through it. We haven't seen anything like this in 100 and some odd years, 1917.
00:02:08.780 But you fight through it. Oftentimes, we talk about things happening in our country at Trump speed.
00:02:15.100 That's when senior administration officials know that we've got an energetic and at times
00:02:19.980 impatient executive who wants to see us working fast and working hard. And so here's hoping that our
00:02:26.380 prayers are answered and that the great ingenuity that is inherent in American innovation will be
00:02:32.940 unlocked and that we will be able to get a vaccine for this virus. Here in the United States Congress,
00:02:39.020 today we're taking a number of votes and I want to walk through them. The first vote that I just took
00:02:43.820 was a vote against proxy voting. That's right. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat leadership have put into our
00:02:50.620 rules an allowance for voting without members of Congress being present. They can do so by giving
00:02:57.500 their proxy to another member of Congress. Now there are a few reasons I am against proxy voting. First,
00:03:04.780 we already do enough proxy legislating around this place. I mean, half the time I feel like my colleagues
00:03:10.860 on both the right and the left can be themselves proxies for special interests to exert their will and
00:03:18.620 seize and hold on to their power. And so anything that gets the representatives of the people
00:03:24.620 further away from the decision making process is something that I do not support. I support legislation
00:03:30.860 that I would say is on the other side of the spectrum of proxy voting. Bills like the Read the Bill Act
00:03:36.620 that I've co-sponsored that require members of Congress to certify that they have reviewed legislation.
00:03:41.980 I support the rules, changes to the House that require major pieces of legislation to actually
00:03:48.140 be presented where we have enough time to go over them with our staffs, to review them with our
00:03:53.500 constituents and feedback groups in our communities. And we're not just here rubber stamping the work
00:03:58.620 of the leadership of both parties. Another reason to oppose proxy voting is that under the rule that Nancy
00:04:05.660 Pelosi has created, it literally elevates the House physician and the sergeant at arms to positions
00:04:13.180 within the congressional body. To unlock the powers that the speaker would have to
00:04:18.380 authorize proxy voting, it merely requires a certification from the physician and sergeant that
00:04:24.460 we're in an emergency. Well, there's no Americans who voted for the House physician or the sergeant at arms.
00:04:30.220 While we select them as a body, I just don't think that giving unelected people the power to create
00:04:37.180 a certification that then undermines the legislative process and the actual voting part of the process,
00:04:43.340 which some would say is a pretty darn important part of it. And so I don't like eroding the powers
00:04:49.100 of the elected members and giving those powers to people who aren't elected. And a final reason to
00:04:54.300 oppose this proxy voting is that it really creates super legislators within the body of Congress.
00:05:00.140 Not everyone will be able to hold a proxy, only the people designated by the leadership and by the
00:05:07.500 rules committee. And so, you know, anytime that you get to a system where you're elevating some members
00:05:12.620 of the body over other members of the body in terms of the legislative powers they hold,
00:05:17.420 it really creates a diminution in representation among some Americans who may not have their member
00:05:23.420 of Congress designated as one of these super legislators. So I have voted against proxy voting.
00:05:29.820 There might be a way somehow with technology, with enhanced accountability to be able to get
00:05:36.060 something like this done, but the super partisan mechanisms of Nancy Pelosi certainly weren't the 1.00
00:05:42.140 right approach. And that's why I voted no.
00:05:51.500 Sports is always an area of great interest. It's something that revives and renews the American
00:05:58.220 spirit, gives us a chance to recreate and interact with each other. And there's big news today being
00:06:03.100 reported by Sports Illustrated's Tom Brew regarding what the major commissioners are saying in the various
00:06:10.460 athletics conferences in college athletics. I talked in the last podcast about Florida and its approach to
00:06:18.140 professional athletics. I support the fact that our Governor Ron DeSantis is encouraging professional
00:06:24.060 athletics to get going again under safe and responsible conditions. But college athletics
00:06:29.740 is a very different thing. Here's what some of the folks are saying. Again, Tom Brew reporting in Sports
00:06:36.220 Illustrated that there is optimism. And here's the American Athletic Conference Commissioner Mike Oresko saying,
00:06:44.380 I'm cautiously optimistic and I'm growing more optimistic daily that we are going to have a season and that we might even be able to
00:06:51.820 start on time under certain circumstances. At the core, they're attempting to salvage college athletics, namely their
00:06:59.340 cash cow, the $1 billion college football industry amid the national shutdown. The Big 12 commissioner, Bob
00:07:07.820 Bowlesby on record saying, I would say I'm a little more optimistic today than I was two weeks ago. Some of that is
00:07:14.060 has been in the calls I've had with the White House. One of the things I've heard is that they've expected
00:07:18.700 that testing nationally is going to double from a month from now. So again, with the thought of testing
00:07:25.820 being directly linked to this recreational activity, you see some optimism out of the Big 12. But then,
00:07:31.740 you know, you see a different perspective by the Notre Dame athletic director, Jack Swarbrick. He says, and I quote,
00:07:39.980 I hate talking in absolutes, but I can't see doing it. The students have to be on campus. And right now,
00:07:47.020 I don't know if the students are going to be on campus. So here is, from my perspective,
00:07:52.060 the real difference in college athletics versus professional athletics. I think for pro sports,
00:07:58.780 they could get away with doing the contests and competitions absent a live audience and then doing some
00:08:05.740 sort of enhanced digital experience, television experience to be able to play the games and to be
00:08:12.220 able to realize that revenue, frankly, that comes off of those media publications of the events.
00:08:20.140 College athletics is very different. I cannot imagine a world in which college football is played
00:08:28.780 without fans in the stadium. Because if you say that, that essentially the athletes and the students
00:08:35.100 are, are both students, if you maintain that standpoint, which by the way, that, that is kind
00:08:39.740 of the whole deal on how at the NCAA, they're able to not pay players in revenue sports is by saying,
00:08:45.500 well, they're not, they're not professionals, they're student athletes. So imagine that it's not
00:08:51.180 safe for students to be on campus, but it's safe for student athletes to be playing football. It's
00:08:58.940 not safe for students to be in the stands, but it's safe for student athletes to be out there playing
00:09:04.460 the game. To me, if they try to do this, it will really expose the fact that, that they're being
00:09:11.580 treated like employees, not student athletes. And if these folks out there playing the games while
00:09:16.460 they're enrolled in classes are being treated like employees, then frankly, they should be getting
00:09:22.140 paid. And that's the trend that things are moving to anyway. I mean, if you look at Rhonda Sanders 0.98
00:09:26.700 in Florida, Gavin Newsom in California, they actually are looking to get these players some compensation
00:09:33.020 for enhancing the value of their likeness. And I think that those questions about pay for college
00:09:39.100 athletes are ripened in how we approach coronavirus and potentially playing. But, but here's the deal.
00:09:47.020 If you don't see college football played at some point this season, you are going to see major
00:09:55.020 college athletics programs have to shed sports and they're going to have to largely shed male sports. 1.00
00:10:01.820 I mean, sports like soccer, other non-revenue male sports are endangered. Non-revenue female sports
00:10:09.900 may be endangered too, but possibly to a lesser extent because of Title IX. And so I think that
00:10:15.580 you've got every incentive for college athletics to go from the money side, but you have to be able
00:10:23.420 to put students in the stands. You have to be able to put students on campus. Otherwise, I agree with
00:10:28.940 the Notre Dame athletic director that it just becomes very untenable if that's the circumstance.
00:10:40.140 So today, Nancy Pelosi has put on the floor her over $3 trillion spending package for coronavirus,
00:10:48.380 but it's not really for coronavirus. I detailed out in yesterday's podcast how there's amnesty for
00:10:54.860 illegal immigrants, how there are changes to the way we conduct elections from a state-based system to
00:11:01.260 a nationalized system. And there's more spending on just ridiculousness that wasn't negotiated, 0.86
00:11:08.220 that isn't really directed to help the American people, American businesses. It's largely to repay
00:11:15.180 political allies. And that's how I think a lot of Republicans are viewing it. But the big news today,
00:11:21.900 and this is news being broken by Julie Grace Berfke at The Hill. She says,
00:11:27.180 GOP rep Peter King plans to buck the party and vote for the Democrats' coronavirus relief bill. Let me
00:11:34.460 start by saying Peter King is a good guy, good friend. A lot of Americans know him because he's
00:11:39.660 been out on television, particularly as an immigration hardliner. Here's what Peter King says to Julie
00:11:45.980 Grace Berfke in The Hill about his plans to vote for the Nancy Pelosi bill. He says, look, I disagree with
00:11:51.820 a lot of things that are in the bill. Some of the provisions involving illegal immigrants, some of the
00:11:55.980 absentee ballots, the mail, all that stuff. But the fact is, to me, McConnell sort of laid it down.
00:12:01.980 He's talking about no federal aid to state and local governments. New York is going to die. My
00:12:07.020 county, Nassau County, and Suffolk County, also in my district. Not only are they running up tremendous
00:12:12.060 costs, their revenue losses are unbelievable. We have not seen the same inclinations from other New 1.00
00:12:18.860 York members of Congress. My good friend Tom Reed, who's co-chairman of the Problem Solvers Caucus,
00:12:24.060 and also Greg Walden, a retiring Republican from Oregon. Both are more moderate members. They say
00:12:30.700 that even though their areas have been heavily impacted by the pandemic, that they are not going
00:12:35.820 to endorse the Nancy Pelosi path of no negotiation. So again, I broke down why I'm not going to vote for
00:12:41.900 Bill on the last podcast. Certainly not going to say anything bad about Peter King. But to me,
00:12:47.100 we cannot get in this game with Democrats, where because we need money, we're going to surrender to
00:12:52.620 them on these great matters of policy. Because the one thing that the Democrats kind of understand
00:12:58.060 under Nancy Pelosi is how to always be fighting on the immigration front, because they think that 0.99
00:13:04.140 radical demographic shifts in the country are going to help them politically. I think that there are
00:13:09.580 great debates and discussions to have about immigration. I don't think that the coronavirus
00:13:14.140 response bill is the right place to have those discussions. And so I, for me, that's a red flag
00:13:19.820 where I wouldn't vote for it. When it comes to revenue losses for state and local governments,
00:13:24.620 I think that there's going to be a role for our government to play. There's going to be a role for
00:13:29.500 the Fed to play. But I just don't think that the answer is a full bailout of all things. And I don't
00:13:36.780 know that this bill really forces governments to make the choices necessary to preserve their fiscal
00:13:44.220 footing, while at the same time responding to the virus. So I respect Peter King, great deal,
00:13:49.500 wish him well, certainly not going to be voting with with him and with Nancy Pelosi on this bill.
00:14:00.300 Also from The Hill today from Edward Moreno, we're getting news that Vice News will be laying off
00:14:05.660 55 employees in the United States and 100 employees globally. Vice News confirming that.
00:14:11.580 Vice News is a liberal leaning media outlet. They were on HBO with a show before they got canceled
00:14:19.420 from that and then continued to do writing and publishing and they would air their episodes on
00:14:25.900 their own cable network. It appears as though that model is not successful. But I will say this about
00:14:31.500 Vice. They're always pretty good to me. When I was being shadow banned on Twitter, along with Jim Jordan
00:14:37.420 and Mark Meadows and Devin Nunes, it was actually Vice News, a liberal media outlet who busted Twitter,
00:14:44.220 shadow banning the president's best offender. So I always appreciate their investigative reporting on that.
00:14:49.980 I also think that Vice News has done very good reporting on climate change and global warming,
00:14:55.980 human impact and how the choices that we aren't making to embrace an innovation agenda to solve
00:15:02.300 our climate crisis is harming some of the world's most vulnerable people. So even though Vice News appears
00:15:08.140 to be sort of on on the down slope, laying off employees, they've still created some good content.
00:15:15.020 I don't think that members of Congress are well served to try to direct federal coronavirus money
00:15:23.420 to failing media outlets. My colleagues, David Cicilline, Democrat from Rhode Island and Jim
00:15:29.100 Sensenbrenner, Republican from Wisconsin, sent letters to the leadership, to the administration
00:15:34.780 saying that we've got to include in our coronavirus response bailouts for local media. I don't think that
00:15:41.500 local media is really seeing a diminution in revenue as a consequence of coronavirus. There are some
00:15:46.860 in local media who are seeing a diminution in revenue because their readers and viewers are going
00:15:52.300 elsewhere for news. Some have bad business models. Some have old business models that have been replaced.
00:15:58.620 So I just don't think that the right answer when we're in a pandemic is to find every excuse to take
00:16:06.700 every excuse from every entity that might have been on the downward slope anyway. So I do not agree that
00:16:13.900 local newspapers and local media necessarily need a special carve out or special access to
00:16:20.060 bailouts in the coronavirus era. And I would be hopeful that more members of Congress would agree.
00:16:27.340 Thanks for listening. We'll have more hot takes next week.
00:16:39.820 Thank you.
00:16:45.660 Thank you.
00:16:47.660 Thank you.
00:16:49.660 Thank you.