A new name for the deadly monkeypox virus, and the spread of HIV/AIDS among gay men around the world. Firebrand's own Lauren Boebert joins host Emily Edwards to talk about it all, and why it matters.
00:00:30.000We're in the right place. This is the movement for you.
00:00:33.240You ever watch this guy on television? Like a machine, Matt Gaetz.
00:00:38.060I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet. Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.
00:00:46.000They aren't really coming for me. They're coming for you. I'm just in the way.
00:00:51.040Welcome back to Firebrand. We're broadcasting live out of my office on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., 1721 of the Longworth Building.
00:01:03.080And I have got one of Congress's very best firebrands with me today, Lauren Boebert.
00:01:07.600In just a moment, we're going to be breaking down the gun control legislation that the United States Senate is poised to adopt that we believe would be very harmful to most Americans.
00:01:20.760William Shakespeare reminds us it's all in a name.
00:01:23.400He'd be proud of the naming gymnastics recently endeavored by the World Health Organization.
00:01:28.900The WHO has taken a break from the hard work of fear-mongering about COVID and playing defense for the Chinese Communist Party to bring something urgent to our attention.
00:01:39.980Time magazine reports that the WHO is renaming monkeypox.
00:01:44.700After concerns that the term is discriminatory, of course, monkeys everywhere are relieved.
00:01:51.780But seriously, apparently 29 experts signed a letter calling for a speedy decision and the adoption of a new name.
00:01:59.040They said that the reference to the virus being African is inaccurate and, of course, discriminatory.
00:02:04.860They're referring to two types of monkeypox, the West African clade and the Congo Basin clade, aptly named because this is where the virus was found in populations of wild monkeys.
00:02:14.700I know that'll shock you. Seems like good names to me.
00:02:18.480Naming viruses after regions in which they're found not only seems fair, but it's also rational.
00:02:23.560It's common, too. Remember the MERS virus? It stands for Middle Eastern Respiratory Virus.
00:02:29.640Ever heard of the West Nile virus? I'll give you a guess as to where that might have come from.
00:02:33.680Losing the plot because there's a worry about stigmatizing Africa is woke nonsense, not health policy.
00:02:40.300Besides, it's good to remember where viruses come from.
00:02:46.140There's an interesting narrative in the media among many scientists that they're trying to link the present global outbreak to Africa or West Africa or Nigeria, close quote.
00:02:55.840Just because a virus is named after the region in which it originates or is found naturally doesn't mean anyone is going to negatively discriminate against the inhabitants of that region.
00:03:04.060Now, under certain circumstances, we may want travel bans or quarantines, other public health endeavors to stop people from going to high risk areas and pretending that certain regions or groups are not more at risk actually impairs our public health response.
00:03:18.220For instance, while most deaths have occurred in the Dominican Republic over monkeypox, I'm sorry, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, two very different things.
00:03:27.900Where the virus may have originated, the WHO has admitted that the spread of monkeypox around the globe has largely been amongst the LGBTQ community, at least in the initial cases.
00:03:38.140In May, Madrid's senior health official, Enrique Ruiz Esquerdo, said that authorities are investigating possible links between a recent gay pride event in the Canary Islands, which drew 80,000 people.
00:03:51.800And initial cases from a gay bathhouse in Madrid.
00:03:55.740AIDSMap.com is a site dedicated to helping homosexual men avoid contacting AIDS and other diseases prevalent in their community.
00:04:02.280And that website is reporting that monkeypox is spreading among gay men worldwide.
00:04:06.040Hans Kludge, who's the regional director of the WHO in Europe, has warned that transmission can be boosted by the fact that most of the initial cases among gay men who sought treatment are presenting in sexual health clinics, suggesting that transmission may have been going on for some time.
00:04:24.560The UK Health Security Agency chief's medical advisor, Susan Hopkins, said she's particularly been urging gay and bisexual men to look out for the symptoms of monkeypox, or whatever they're going to call it.
00:04:36.040Noting that a notable proportion of the cases in the UK and Europe come from this group.
00:04:41.460The same can be said for other Western countries.
00:04:46.300When groups like the World Health Organization change names and lie about origins, when they pretend that certain groups aren't disproportionately affected,
00:04:53.420they undermine our ability to fight and eradicate viruses and diseases.
00:04:57.420They care more about a perceived offense than reality.
00:10:59.240This is a lawless administration that we are serving under.
00:11:02.920And I would implore the Senate to not compromise on the American citizens' rights.
00:11:10.100And I would like to just note that the 10 that we have heard of who are considering siding with these people who would limit the liberties and freedoms of American citizens
00:11:19.000are either not coming back to the Senate, they're retiring, or they're not up for re-election.
00:11:26.360And I think that that is very, very telling.
00:11:29.240And I will not give an inch of the Second Amendment, of the rights of the people to keep and bear arms, to protect themselves,
00:11:36.840especially when cries from this chamber are calling to defund law enforcement.
00:11:43.620And our southern border is wide open, allowing the cartel to send whatever they want through those borders without any added security.
00:11:51.720Joe Biden wants to disarm you and then invite MS-13 to live next door.
00:11:58.440And Congresswoman Boebert, in that speech, you laid out the risk that Republican senators present to the Second Amendment.
00:12:07.180How are you assessing the framework that has now been endorsed by Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, many members of the Republican leadership,
00:12:15.080even my senator, Marco Rubio, has endorsed the framework?
00:13:04.900We're hearing sheriffs in Canada saying, you know, the egregious things that they are passing there with handguns and limiting those and making them illegal.
00:13:14.340This is not going to stop crime because then the handguns are illegal.
00:13:17.060And they're only in the hands of criminals.
00:13:18.920By definition, criminals do not obey the law.
00:13:20.940So by layering on another law, this does not solve any of the problems.
00:14:55.800You think that the very people that are now trying to pass new domestic extremism authorities, the very people that are trying to use anti-terrorism authorities against MAGA, might try to red flag their MAGA neighbor over politics, not over danger.
00:15:11.460I mean, you know, I wouldn't put it past them.
00:15:15.120People in Florida are worried about that.
00:15:16.740We've seen it used 8,000 times in Florida.
00:15:19.040I don't think we stopped 8,000 school shooters.
00:15:21.680I think this became a part of marital disputes, neighbor disputes, business disputes.
00:15:26.660And, like, your Second Amendment rights just shouldn't be up for negotiation over something like that.
00:15:30.980Right, especially when you do not have the right to due process, when you don't have the right to face your accuser, when it's a judge determining your mental stability rather than a mental health professional.
00:15:46.140If you are a danger to yourself or to others, you have mandatorily have to go into a center for 72 hours and have a mental health evaluation.
00:16:26.300Are you saying that if this bill were to become law, and right now it looks like it will become law, that we're actually going to have to rely on local sheriffs in some places saying, I'm not going to go enforce this.
00:16:36.840I'm not going to go take someone's guns away because my state government got bribed to do so by Washington.
00:16:42.820And that's what we should have been doing for a really long time now when it comes to the pandemic and the overreach that we saw from the federal government with this Fauci-funded Chinese virus that punished Americans.
00:16:55.160We should have been relying on our local sheriffs to take a stand and say, not on my watch, not in my county.
00:17:02.280You know, this is where local control matters the most.
00:17:05.520We're talking to Lauren Boebert, the co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus here in Washington, D.C.
00:17:09.600We're breaking down the Senate legislation that we're both very concerned about.
00:17:13.440Beyond red flag laws, there's also the development and resourcing of federal databases so that if something happens in one state, that information is accessible nationwide.
00:17:23.960And I was having a conversation with a judiciary Republican yesterday who said, well, gosh, I mean, isn't this what we would be for, using technology to allow law enforcement to communicate better?
00:17:34.220And I'm just a little skeptical of federal databases because I've seen how they've been used.
00:19:00.200Talk about some of those bills and your leadership of the caucus to make sure that people know about them.
00:19:05.100Yeah, so Congressman Michael Cloud, he had a bill to come in and expose the ATF and to abolish this database that they had that's keeping a record of all firearm sales in the United States.
00:19:17.400And so we highlight these good pieces of legislation to put them forward.
00:19:21.080Congressman Thomas Massey is my co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus.
00:19:25.220And, you know, he has a bill that would end our schools being gun-free zones.
00:20:07.940In Florida, we have a Sentinel program that allows school districts, if they so choose, to have special training for former military, former law enforcement people who are experts at some of these matters.
00:20:20.260Would Colorado be a place that that could help as a school hardening tactic?
00:20:25.120So what we have, we have an organization called Faster Colorado, and they actually work with our school districts to train and certify and arm teachers.
00:20:38.440The school district can decide if they want to allow their teachers to carry in these schools.
00:20:43.940There's a wonderful little loophole in Colorado law that allows them to do that.
00:20:48.200So if the school district so chooses, they connect with Faster Colorado, and the teachers are very well-armed and certified, and they begin to carry in those schools to protect our children, which is much more effective than hiding behind a desk.
00:21:02.300End gun-free zones, make schools a hard target, empower local sheriffs.
00:21:23.220First of all, call your representatives.
00:21:25.300Call your senators, and make sure that they hear your voice, because that matters.
00:21:29.760We get phone calls in my office every day, and we keep record of these phone calls, the types of calls, the people who are for something or oppose another thing.
00:21:38.460And so it really does matter to call them, because I'll tell you what, I'll tell you who is calling these senators right now.
00:21:44.860They are calling these senators, and they need to be hearing from you, the electric.
00:21:50.180They need to be hearing from the people who actually hired them and sent them, and they need to know exactly how the American people feel about these laws.
00:21:58.260With people so under siege, I think it will be demoralizing to America if now they have to face gun control while crime is increasing, while our borders become a turnstile.
00:22:08.820I think it could really affect the American psyche.
00:22:11.540And nobody in Washington wants to talk about the root cause of this stuff.
00:22:20.220And now they're saying that—and I mean, you know, to me, these lockdowns really impacted people's mental health, especially adolescents.
00:22:27.160I mean, I see so many folks who you almost want to wake them up out of the lockdown mentality.
00:22:33.320I mean, are we going to look back 10 years from now and say, gosh, these lockdowns actually increased violence among young people, potentially even school shootings?
00:22:41.160Well, I think you and I are saying that now.
00:23:27.320So, uh, a lot of the legislation that I have is on my website, um, bober.house.gov.
00:23:31.720And, uh, we—we need to talk Congressman Thomas Massey into getting us a Twitter for the Second Amendment Caucus.
00:23:36.560Maybe I just need to take the reins on that one.
00:23:37.860So, if you and Massey ran a Second Amendment Twitter account, it would get banned in, like, the—the first 72 hours of it being, uh, open because it would be a—it would be a fountainhead for freedom.
00:23:47.200Uh, Congresswoman Boebert also serves on the Natural Resources Committee, and Democrats passed a bill off the floor of the House this week that spent $12.7 billion during the budget window on land acquisitions.
00:24:00.100What should people know about that bill?
00:24:01.840Um, well, first of all, um, this—this bill, it allows states to tax hunting.
00:24:06.100Uh, you know, this is—this is just more spending.
00:24:08.240This is nothing that actually, um, protects, uh, wildlife conservation.
00:24:12.160Uh, this—this grows, um, uh, what they call restoration projects, but it's really not.
00:24:18.880Um, it—it's really a hands-off approach.
00:24:21.020So, uh, serving on the Natural Resources Committee, I—I fight these battles on a regular basis.
00:24:25.380These not-in-my-backyard extremists are fine with outsourcing energy production to our enemies, to our adversaries, uh, in other countries.
00:24:31.420Having 40,000 children mined with their bare hands for cobalt in the Congo, uh, in these China-owned cobalt mines.
00:24:38.740Uh, and then we buy solar panels from China and feel great about ourselves.
00:24:41.940Um, but these are the extremists that I'm having to fight on a regular basis, and now they want to spend, uh, another $12.7 billion.
00:26:23.060Lauren, you're, you're in your first term in Congress.
00:26:25.400And one of the reasons I knew you'd be very successful here and you're leading on energy, you're leading on firearms, is because you're very authentic.
00:26:31.660I think we get the same version of you in Washington that your constituents get, that your family gets.
00:26:37.080You know, just being in your first term, uh, what is your perception of this place?
00:26:42.700Uh, so I, I, I think everybody knows this place, um, uh, kind of sucks, which is unfortunate because it could be really wonderful.
00:26:49.620Um, there, there's so much history here, but the people who are in charge are, are destroying, uh, the, the very values that, that created, uh, our, our nation.
00:26:59.260And so, um, why is everyone so damn fake in this town?
00:27:12.440I don't have those donor meetings when I'm here in Washington, DC.
00:27:15.260Uh, I'm fine with actually legislating while we're in Washington, DC, rather than, uh, than bribing donors and, and making shady deals with donors.
00:27:23.920Uh, and so I think that's an important part, um, to recognize as being a representative of the people, uh,
00:27:28.900that you're not a representative of the lobbyists, uh, it's the people back home that matter.
00:27:32.720And so I get out of here as quick as I can.
00:27:34.460I'll be on an airplane today to get back home, to get to my people.
00:27:37.220But you were talking about earlier, uh, you know, rather than being on defense all the time, I go on offense.
00:27:42.240And that is what we need to be doing in the minority.