The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz


Episode 55 LIVE： National Malaise (feat. Rep. Anthony Sabatini) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz


Summary

In this episode of Firebrand Live, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GA) and State Rep. Anthony Sabatini (D-FL) talk about the current national malaise and what it means for the country.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 In battle, Congressman Matt Gaetz.
00:00:03.620 Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress
00:00:06.480 who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
00:00:10.900 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
00:00:13.700 He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws.
00:00:16.720 So we're going to keep running those stories to keep working in.
00:00:20.080 If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer,
00:00:23.300 if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground,
00:00:26.760 then welcome, my fellow patriots. You are in the right place.
00:00:31.020 This is the movement for you.
00:00:33.100 You ever watch this guy on television?
00:00:35.280 It's like a machine, Matt Gaetz.
00:00:37.860 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the Internet.
00:00:41.020 Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.
00:00:45.840 They aren't really coming for me. They're coming for you.
00:00:49.620 I'm just in the way.
00:00:50.920 Welcome to Firebrand Live.
00:00:57.980 Congressman Matt Gaetz here.
00:00:59.360 We've got State Representative Anthony Sabatini from Florida joining us in just a moment.
00:01:04.200 But we are in the moment of national malaise.
00:01:08.660 Of course, that being the famous remarks by President Jimmy Carter.
00:01:12.200 Take a listen.
00:01:12.640 So I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation.
00:01:22.020 I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.
00:01:32.120 I do not mean our political and civil liberties.
00:01:36.340 They will endure.
00:01:37.300 And I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world with unmatched economic power and military might.
00:01:50.420 The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways.
00:01:57.660 It is a crisis of confidence.
00:02:01.100 It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.
00:02:09.160 We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.
00:02:22.160 Loss of purpose, loss of success seems to be very similar to what we have going on right now.
00:02:27.660 Joe Biden gives a rare interview to the AP recently where he says,
00:02:32.980 As for the overall American mindset, people are really, really down.
00:02:38.380 Their need for mental health in America has skyrocketed because people have seen everything upset, Biden said.
00:02:44.160 Everything they've counted on, upset.
00:02:47.460 But most of it is the consequence of what happened, what happened as the consequence of the COVID crisis.
00:02:54.100 This view that we have returned to the 1970s national malaise that Jimmy Carter presided over is one not only reflected by many independents, many Republicans on the Hill,
00:03:07.780 even over at MSNBC, Chuck Todd and his guests are talking about how disastrous the Biden presidency has been.
00:03:16.160 Take a listen.
00:03:16.580 We've covered a lot of politics over the years.
00:03:21.060 Can you remember a more tumultuous period?
00:03:23.280 I mean, you have to go back to 68 when we had a summer where you feel as if everything, there's just a lot of instability.
00:03:30.660 You know, all this stuff's coming together in a way that feels a little disconcerting.
00:03:36.680 And, of course, 68 far enough away that neither of us covered that.
00:03:40.280 That was certainly a time of great tumult.
00:03:42.760 You know, some historians say you have to go back to the Civil War to find a time when Americans are so angry and so divided and democracy is in such peril.
00:03:51.540 That was The Washington Post's Susan Page joining Chuck Todd on Meet the Press Now.
00:03:59.820 And they say it's as bad as it's been since the Civil War.
00:04:03.700 Joining us now, Florida Man State Representative Anthony Sabatini.
00:04:07.640 Anthony, from your perspective in the Sunshine State, are they right?
00:04:11.400 Is this as bad as it's been since the Civil War?
00:04:13.920 Well, I got to tell you, you know, they're going to say a lot of things to make excuses for what's happening right now.
00:04:21.800 Biden obviously has had the worst set of failures in his domestic and foreign policy agenda that we've ever seen.
00:04:27.880 I mean, Jimmy Carter finally gets the good of his grave saying he's not the worst president of the modern era.
00:04:32.680 He's the second worst.
00:04:34.040 And they're going to do everything they can to, you know, try to blame the American people.
00:04:38.640 You know, Jimmy Carter started a trend, by the way.
00:04:41.000 He was one of the first presidents to really blame the American people for his own failures versus looking in the mirror and try to change course on his policies.
00:04:49.160 Biden is continuing that today.
00:04:51.360 And it's always, you know, whether it be COVID or whatever else, it's got to be some other extraneous event to explain the failure of their policy, never just what they're doing.
00:04:59.920 It's COVID's fault.
00:05:01.300 It's Ultra Maga's fault.
00:05:02.860 It's Vladimir Putin's fault.
00:05:04.140 It's everyone's fault except the party that has unified control over the American government right now, the Democrats.
00:05:11.140 And it's just, it's going to be very hard for, I think, Democrats to convince the American people that while they have had their hands on the levers of power,
00:05:19.200 that somehow it's these external forces that are causing people to have higher grocery bills, higher gas prices, inflation.
00:05:26.180 But we remember Rahm Emanuel, the Obama chief of staff, saying, never let a crisis go to waste.
00:05:33.080 And I wonder, with Joe Biden talking about gas prices in terms of a transition, whether or not they are, in fact, using this crisis to try to control the behaviors of the American people.
00:05:43.980 Take a listen to President Biden in Delaware.
00:05:45.740 My dear mother used to have an expression, if anything lousy, something good will happen if you look hard enough for it.
00:05:54.340 We have a chance here to make a fundamental turn toward renewable energy, electric vehicles, and not just electric vehicles, but across the board.
00:06:03.400 And that's something we should be, my team is going to be sitting down with the CEOs of the major oil companies this week.
00:06:11.920 And so I can give an explanation of how they justify making $35 billion in the first quarter.
00:06:17.700 Are you planning to sit down with oil and gas CEOs, Mr. President?
00:06:20.620 Why is that, sir?
00:06:21.640 Because my team's going to do that.
00:06:23.400 Okay.
00:06:23.900 But you did that with retailers and logistics companies and consumer companies.
00:06:28.000 Because I had it already done.
00:06:29.120 So, Representative Sabatini, in the great state of Florida, are people more concerned about gas prices?
00:06:38.600 Or are they more excited about Joe Biden's transition to renewable energy and electric cars?
00:06:45.340 Well, I got to tell you, as somebody who talks to hundreds of people in my constituency every single day, it's almost unanimous.
00:06:52.480 You have about 99.9% of people talking about gasoline and inflation.
00:06:56.140 Very few talking about the things that the Biden administration wants to focus on.
00:07:01.120 And electric cars and all of this green new energy that they're trying to rom Emanuel into existence.
00:07:08.540 So that's where we're at right now, especially in Florida.
00:07:11.540 And I assume every state's the same way.
00:07:13.500 So the faster we can get these guys out of power and get Republicans in who are actually going to focus on fixing America's issues
00:07:20.100 instead of just trying to confuse people about what's going on, I think the better for the country.
00:07:25.040 I'm joined by Florida State Representative Anthony Sabatini.
00:07:28.700 Representative Sabatini has been one of Governor DeSantis' strongest conservative allies in the State House of Representatives.
00:07:35.880 Also, there's rarely a tax URI encounter, Anthony, that we wouldn't want to cut or suspend.
00:07:41.720 Almost anything that starves the government of resources to be able to grow larger and dig deeper into people's lives,
00:07:48.500 well, we would be for that constraining of government resources.
00:07:52.060 There's a lot of talk right now about the gas tax.
00:07:55.700 What's your perspective on the gas tax and whether or not some reductions might be helpful
00:07:59.780 or even a moratorium or a suspension of the gas tax might be helpful for your constituents?
00:08:04.320 I think it's probably the single most important issue, both at the federal and state level.
00:08:08.460 We need to make sure we're giving immediate relief to make up for this mismanaged economy that Biden has created.
00:08:14.620 So suspension and moratorium on the gas tax, I mean, quite literally immediately is what we need to do.
00:08:19.700 Here at the state of Florida, the governor wanted a billion-dollar tax cut.
00:08:22.960 Unfortunately, some of our legislators whittled it down to $200 million.
00:08:26.320 But still, the fact that we got something done is very important.
00:08:29.540 But I believe we need to go much further than that.
00:08:32.020 I'm calling for a total suspension on it, kicking into effect immediately.
00:08:35.980 So that way people make up for, you know, get back in their pockets what they've been robbed of.
00:08:41.660 You know, inflation is a hidden tax.
00:08:43.300 It's robbery.
00:08:44.480 And they're being basically robbed by these policies which are intentional.
00:08:48.540 It's not just incompetence.
00:08:49.600 There's a lot of incompetence in the Biden administration.
00:08:52.000 But in this case, they're actually doing this stuff intentionally.
00:08:54.620 They know that their fiscal policies result in this direct inflation, but they just don't care.
00:08:59.540 I think, and I could be corrected if I'm wrong, the last person to author a billion-dollar tax cut in the Florida legislature was me when I was chairman of the Finance and Tax Committee there.
00:09:09.300 But I agree with you.
00:09:10.900 Suspension of the gas tax, reduction of the gas tax, that should be the action that we see from our government.
00:09:17.040 But the reason you have not seen the Biden administration take action on this is because they're worried that they might not get full credit for their infrastructure bill.
00:09:27.140 Take a listen to the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Grantholm, give up the entire game in this response in an interview she recently gave.
00:09:37.720 What's he waiting for on the gas tax?
00:09:40.100 Well, I mean, part of the challenge with the gas tax, of course, is that it funds the roads.
00:09:43.980 And we just did a big infrastructure bill to help fund the roads.
00:09:46.580 So if we do, if we remove the gas tax, that takes away the funding that was just passed by Congress to be able to do that.
00:09:53.200 So this is really interesting from a policy standpoint and a political standpoint, Anthony,
00:09:59.560 because they know that this bipartisan infrastructure bill is a total zero with the voters.
00:10:06.880 This has given Biden and Democrats and even the Republicans who joined with them no bump among their constituents,
00:10:14.160 no enhancement in approval ratings.
00:10:16.560 And yet now they won't give relief that is needed to the American people because they're worried that this might drain away all their slush fund resources for their infrastructure bill.
00:10:28.080 Is there any case to be made, Anthony, for taking more money right now out of people's pockets so that Joe Biden feels like he gets sufficient credit for something that the American people aren't really that enthusiastic about?
00:10:40.520 Definitely not. And there's no argument that can be made.
00:10:44.340 Obviously, they're searching for political capital and goodwill wherever they can find it.
00:10:49.320 And if that means delaying common sense policies and smart decisions just to try to cover and stop and stop the bleeding,
00:10:57.800 the political bleeding that the administration is feeling right now, they're willing to do that.
00:11:01.500 It's really sad to see.
00:11:02.820 And it also explains why they've focused on some of these extraneous items that the American people, quite frankly, don't care about.
00:11:09.880 They're looking for some political territory where they can try to achieve a win.
00:11:14.300 And so I'm sure we'll bring it up momentarily.
00:11:16.140 But January 6th and, you know, items that are different from the ones that are on the front of the minds of the American people are what they're going to try to focus on.
00:11:24.320 It's everything is filtered through the prism of politics for these people.
00:11:27.100 And they're dwindling poll numbers, which are the worst poll numbers of any presidency at this point in time, really, in American history.
00:11:33.600 It's quite shocking.
00:11:34.660 So you've got MSNBC saying these are the worst times since the Civil War.
00:11:40.080 We've got inflation going through the roof.
00:11:42.500 We ask the Secretary of Energy, hey, are you going to advance these reductions in taxes to help people?
00:11:50.320 Answer no.
00:11:51.060 But don't worry, Representative Sabatini, because the left has the response to solve inflation.
00:11:57.260 And you guessed it.
00:11:58.260 It's more amnesty for illegal aliens.
00:12:00.760 Take a listen to Governor Jared Polis make the case for amnesty to solve your inflation problems.
00:12:08.920 We need an aggressive policy response around saving people money.
00:12:12.080 We talked about some pieces of it, getting rid of the Trump tariffs.
00:12:15.440 We talked about a gas tax holiday.
00:12:18.180 I think there's other taxes that can be cut temporarily.
00:12:20.840 And I also think that we should move forward if we can't get an immigration reform through Congress.
00:12:26.020 President Biden should move forward with DAPA, which is a sister to DACA.
00:12:29.820 This is the 10th anniversary of the Dreamer program, DACA, deferred action for young people who grew up here.
00:12:35.160 There was a sister program that President Obama attempted to get through, but the clock ran out on DAPA.
00:12:40.120 It's deferred action for the parents of American children.
00:12:43.340 It would address some of the workforce shortages we have today and contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to our economy
00:12:48.540 and absolutely would reduce inflation if we can get that done.
00:12:53.900 That's what they say we need, Representative Sabatini, just more amnesty.
00:12:57.540 And, you know, around the DACA issue, we recall all of the arguments that we had to be compassionate to these children
00:13:04.360 that had been brought, you know, unwittingly by their parents into the country illegally.
00:13:09.580 And now you've got left-leaning politicians, the governor of Colorado no less,
00:13:14.600 out there saying that what we have to do is we have to have a blanket amnesty, not through the Congress,
00:13:19.100 not with a vote of the people's representatives, but by executive action to have all of these people
00:13:25.740 just freely in our country, even though they came here without permission.
00:13:30.060 Is there any argument that amnesty is the solution to rising inflation?
00:13:36.080 Well, to borrow a phrase from American history, I would describe that as voodoo economics.
00:13:40.920 It actually makes literally no sense.
00:13:42.920 It's totally irrational.
00:13:43.820 And it's deeply disturbing.
00:13:45.900 You know, the Democrat Party for decades was always characterized as the pro-working class,
00:13:51.460 pro-protectionist party.
00:13:53.600 And obviously that's totally changed.
00:13:55.220 The issue that characterized their party that they sort of had control over for a long time
00:13:59.640 is now squarely within our wing of the Republican Party,
00:14:02.380 which is stopping and slowing down immigration, doing an immigration more to protect the working class.
00:14:07.740 You know, this is a party that punishes the working class with unrestrained, totally, totally insane,
00:14:14.980 irrational amounts of illegal and legal immigration.
00:14:18.380 It makes no sense whatsoever.
00:14:20.240 And, you know, Governor Polis, he's really sort of a perfect trajectory of where the Democrat Party was years ago in the Congress.
00:14:26.780 You know, people consider him somewhat more sensible Democrat, more libertarian-esque.
00:14:30.740 And look, he's just completely drank the potion of full wokeism.
00:14:35.840 The guy is just totally irrational, advancing policies to hurt his own working class voters
00:14:40.760 and doing it just for a political spin.
00:14:42.800 But then again, he's one of the many guys that knows that Biden's probably not running again.
00:14:46.480 And so he's trying to get it ahead of the pack so he can be the Democrat nominee in a few years.
00:14:50.000 And you're going to see these guys do this again and again and again.
00:14:53.080 Interesting.
00:14:53.260 You think there's a stalking horse feature where there's going to be the advancement of the most woke policies
00:14:58.740 to try to carve out a lane in the far left and a potential 2024 run.
00:15:03.980 Did I hear you correctly, Representative Sabatini?
00:15:06.260 You called for a full moratorium on immigration, not just illegal, but legal as well?
00:15:12.800 100% legal immigration moratorium.
00:15:16.240 I believe that we should have actually done this years ago.
00:15:19.160 And maybe it could have been debated years ago.
00:15:21.280 Today, it's without a debate.
00:15:22.500 What we experienced with the rampant illegal immigration in the last five or ten years,
00:15:26.240 I think no argument can be made that that's something that we against the fact that we need that immediately as fast as we can possibly get it.
00:15:34.000 No immigration.
00:15:35.060 Study the issue.
00:15:36.020 And then maybe in a decade or so, once the working class has been alleviated from the pressure that we intentionally put on,
00:15:42.160 the Democrat Party intentionally put on that part of our economy and our American people,
00:15:46.960 then we can take another look at it.
00:15:48.620 But since the 1960s, with the Hard Seller Act, we've had a pretty schizophrenic and ridiculous immigration policy
00:15:55.660 that's not focused on advancing American interests, but actually just the bottom line of giant, woke, globalist corporations.
00:16:02.020 And so we need to reprioritize that and focus on actually helping our own people again.
00:16:07.080 And immigration war times is the best way to do it.
00:16:08.880 And it is a crisis here, totally created by policies embraced by the left, right?
00:16:14.580 They're saying, oh, you have these children who are American citizens.
00:16:17.320 I mean, obviously we can't deport their parents, but that is why the anchor baby concept is so dangerous to our country.
00:16:25.320 I do not believe that America should honor birthright citizenship by fraud, by illegal act.
00:16:32.580 I think we actually need to go the other way from amnesty and actually tighten up birthright citizenship
00:16:37.620 so that, you know, the cartel leaders in Mexico don't just ship their baby mamas across the border
00:16:45.140 so that their prodigy then somehow has the same rights that you and I do as Americans.
00:16:51.420 It is not the same thing.
00:16:53.760 Do you believe that there is a constitutional way to potentially deal with birthright citizenship
00:16:58.760 so that a fraud is not perpetrated on our country?
00:17:03.000 Well, I believe the whole thing's been a fraud since the beginning.
00:17:05.600 You know, you've been one of the strongest voices in the Congress in getting out the truth about birthright citizenship.
00:17:12.140 John Eastman, Michael Anton and others have written about it for a few years now about its duplicitous constitutional history.
00:17:19.700 It was essentially made up whole cloth and people just started coming in.
00:17:23.100 If you look back at the 14th Amendment, you look back at the actual language of the 14th Amendment
00:17:27.160 about the rights granted to people who were under the pursuant to basically under existing American laws already.
00:17:36.580 It never was.
00:17:37.720 It was never meant to be extended to people who were accidentally born on American soil,
00:17:41.480 but who were not who were not allegiant to the sovereign of the United States,
00:17:46.140 the people of the United States, the government of the United States.
00:17:47.960 And so the whole thing has just been sort of a lie, advanced out of thin air and needs to be repealed and stopped immediately.
00:17:55.020 I don't even think we really need a constitutional member to do it.
00:17:57.060 We just need a statute.
00:17:58.140 We've got to stop birthright citizenship.
00:17:59.760 It makes no sense.
00:18:00.580 And its history is fake.
00:18:02.500 And just once again, you know, dressed in a moral cloth,
00:18:06.940 like a lot of the policies pushed by the left, they'll cover it with moralism.
00:18:10.900 And it's the moral right thing to do.
00:18:12.300 But at the end of the day, it's about advancing the power and the interest of the Democrat Party
00:18:16.340 and woke leftist elites and not about helping the vital interests of the American people.
00:18:21.200 I'm joined by Anthony Sabatini, state representative in the state of Florida,
00:18:25.080 probably Governor DeSantis' strongest ally in the Florida House of Representatives,
00:18:29.500 certainly one of the toughest fighters against lockdowns, against mandates,
00:18:33.940 and against wokeism that we see permeating almost every element of corporate America
00:18:39.680 and big media and government.
00:18:42.260 CBS went total critical race theory this last Sunday on their flagship program, Face the Nation,
00:18:49.960 or as President Trump calls it, DeFace the Nation.
00:18:52.480 Margaret Brennan actually had Ibram Kendi on the show to talk about critical race theory
00:18:58.500 and the impact of racism on the minds of three-year-olds.
00:19:03.880 Take a listen.
00:19:04.360 For so long, people were taught, be blind to color.
00:19:11.780 You're saying acknowledging this is important because if you ignore it, it allows racism to survive.
00:19:19.160 Is that right?
00:19:19.940 It does.
00:19:20.700 And unfortunately, we as parents and teachers and caregivers of children and just, you know, adults
00:19:26.520 want to believe that.
00:19:28.740 But unfortunately, it's just not true.
00:19:30.320 I mean, studies show that as early as three years old, our kids have an adult-like concept of race.
00:19:36.100 They're not only seeing color, but they're attaching it to qualities like smartness, like honesty.
00:19:42.640 Are you buying it, Representative Sabatini?
00:19:50.200 Three-year-olds are actually born racist, where they look at someone's color and determine how smart or honest they are.
00:19:56.980 I didn't even know that three-year-olds were making, you know, analytical decisions about relative honesty and smartness.
00:20:03.760 So how dangerous is this perspective?
00:20:06.820 You know, in the eternal war of Florida State University versus University of Florida, I think you get an extra point over us for not ever having Ibrahim Kendi as a tenured faculty member at your alma mater.
00:20:20.340 You know, Kendi taught at UF.
00:20:21.940 We subsidized this guy for years.
00:20:24.020 It's one of the best arguments for restructuring our universities so we're not throwing money at these anti-American, radical leftist people.
00:20:31.540 I mean, three-year-old kids, are you kidding me?
00:20:34.640 This guy is being taken seriously by, you know, mainstream journalists and political thinkers and people in the nonprofit industry, et cetera.
00:20:43.960 It's crazy.
00:20:45.060 This guy's got, to be totally honest about it, a very hate-filled heart.
00:20:49.760 I mean, their idea of justice in society is structuring things in such a way that we're always thinking in race-based classifications.
00:20:58.920 Everything must be based on race and filtered through race.
00:21:01.940 And that's just wrong.
00:21:03.180 That's quite literally what the American civil rights movement in the 60s was trying to do the opposite of.
00:21:08.580 And this guy is actually very honest about that.
00:21:10.560 If you read his works, he'll say, I want to sort of reverse the civil rights movement and have a 100 percent focus on race and racial outcomes.
00:21:17.680 So he's wrong.
00:21:18.880 It's crazy.
00:21:19.560 I wish this guy never taught at UF.
00:21:21.780 He's moved far beyond that.
00:21:23.440 I think he's Soros-funded at this point.
00:21:24.920 He's got some mega-donor that's putting his poison everywhere, apparently now CBS.
00:21:29.460 And the best thing we could do right now is get every Republican to understand critical race theory, understand the threat it is, and shut it down, especially in our institutions like we did in Florida.
00:21:38.500 We passed the strongest bill banning critical race theory, not just in government, but also in private enterprises.
00:21:44.040 If Walt Disney wants to try to use that stuff in their HR department and shove it into their employee manual, it's actually illegal under Florida law.
00:21:52.120 What was that debate like?
00:21:53.180 Was it a party-line debate?
00:21:55.400 Were you able to get through to any Democrats, maybe even in swing districts, that embracing a pedagogy that tells three-year-olds that they're racist is not really a productive one to society?
00:22:09.140 You know, it's interesting.
00:22:10.320 You would think if the argument was dealt with on its merits, that would have obviously happened.
00:22:14.860 There are always a few Democrats that are slightly more open-minded than the rest of the party.
00:22:18.860 But it actually didn't happen in Tallahassee, did not happen in the political legislature, because they mischaracterized their position in such a way that they just villainized anybody who could disagree with it.
00:22:29.560 They don't believe critical race theory is racism and is anti-American.
00:22:33.080 They just believe it's this new step in the eternal struggle for social justice and yada, yada, yada.
00:22:38.800 And they barely ever, you know, in very, in sort of bad faith way, they would never explicitly deal with the language of these critical race theorists and what they're advocating for.
00:22:48.560 Because if you read it, every American can read it and tell this is just fundamentally wrong on an American, but they just don't go to that level of politics.
00:22:56.740 They just ignore it and deal with two-dimensional ideas of what critical race theory is.
00:23:01.500 George on Facebook on the live stream says, when I was three, all I had on my mind was where my next cookie was coming from.
00:23:08.180 It's probably more similar to my experience as well.
00:23:11.300 The left tries to tell us that critical race theory is the next evolution of the civil rights movement, a way to get more progress for people of color.
00:23:20.080 But I think you laid it out correctly, and I think a lot of people need to understand this.
00:23:24.140 Critical race theory is a critique, a rejection of the civil rights movement.
00:23:30.020 The civil rights movement had as its principal goal colorblindness, right?
00:23:34.260 That was Dr. King's famous speech about the content of people's character rather than the color of their skin.
00:23:40.980 Black and white children holding hands together.
00:23:43.620 And Kendi seems to say, no, no, no, no, no.
00:23:45.900 We don't want to judge people just by the content of their character.
00:23:49.320 We have to recognize that everyone is in this packaging of race, and you have to evaluate that packaging more than what someone has achieved.
00:23:59.420 And I think that is a very, very dangerous thing for the country.
00:24:02.420 I'm glad that Florida led the way, not just in our schools, but from the classroom to the boardroom to get rid of this toxic poison.
00:24:10.720 And it just is interesting that at a time where you have MSNBC saying it's the worst it's ever been since the Civil War, you've got a president with historically low approval ratings.
00:24:22.300 They won't cut the gas tax.
00:24:24.280 Joe Biden says, get an electric car.
00:24:26.400 And then their answer for you is wokeism and amnesty.
00:24:29.500 I mean, that pretty much breaks down where we are in the country.
00:24:33.860 And, you know, do you think, Representative Sabatini, that our states are going to have to muscle up and use more of their 10th Amendment rights?
00:24:42.960 Or do you think that if we're able to get the right composition in the Congress, that we'll actually make life a little easier on the states by creating conditions that allow people everywhere to be more prosperous?
00:24:54.560 I think we're going to need both, but I definitely think there's more opportunity on the states.
00:25:00.620 You know, I always say red states use a 10th of the power that they actually have.
00:25:04.240 What DeSantis' greatest accomplishment was for me, you know, looking at it objectively, was that he basically just kind of showed the country how much all the other Republican governors really just sucked and weren't really doing anything.
00:25:16.560 And so he exposed them.
00:25:18.240 And so now they're saying, you know, you see Abbott and these guys say, well, geez, I got to catch up to DeSantis.
00:25:22.520 I need to use more power.
00:25:23.660 That's power they've always had, power they've always had under the 10th Amendment, of course, just of their own volition.
00:25:30.280 And they just refuse to use it.
00:25:31.980 He's exposing them, making them do it.
00:25:33.340 So they need to do that.
00:25:34.280 Red states need to really do everything they can to advance freedom in the America First agenda at the state level.
00:25:40.520 But at the same time, you know, we need to grow our sort of informal America First caucus in the Congress.
00:25:46.540 You know, you and Marjorie and Biggs and Massey and Gosar and all the good guys.
00:25:50.500 We got to expand that and hold the Republican leadership accountable and instill courage in them, because if they had the courage, they can do what's necessary to be done.
00:25:58.300 But right now it doesn't feel like they doesn't seem like they have the courage.
00:26:01.520 You know, they're looking they're sort of running an anti Democrat agenda right now.
00:26:07.120 But it's just an opposition agenda.
00:26:08.980 They're not advancing positive policies of what America needs to look like and what we need to do.
00:26:13.760 And I think that's one of the best things we could be doing right now alongside red states using their powers, getting a Congress that pushes leadership to advance positive America First policy, especially when it comes to energy.
00:26:23.840 You're so right.
00:26:24.600 And this was my critique of Republicans during the Obama years when Obama was president, Republicans were just against anything he was for.
00:26:32.000 And then that gave Obama the ability to essentially craft not only his own agenda, but ours as well.
00:26:39.460 Right.
00:26:39.840 We cannot just be an opposition.
00:26:42.480 We actually have to show people how better choices in government will lead to higher wages, better jobs, more investment in our companies and in our country.
00:26:52.280 And I really think that was the benefit of the Trump presidency.
00:26:55.640 It showed us how good we, in fact, can be.
00:26:59.300 And now take not my word for it, but MSNBCs were literally in the doldrums of our country.
00:27:05.540 You mentioned Governor DeSantis, Representative Sabatini, and I want to get to another Florida man story.
00:27:10.600 Big headline in Fox News, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says White House lying about COVID vaccine policy.
00:27:17.140 I've had a number of calls to my congressional office about this issue where Florida is the only state that will not use its state infrastructure to distribute COVID vaccine to children five years old and younger.
00:27:30.480 Give us the update as to the rationale for this decision and your standpoint on it.
00:27:35.160 Well, first of all, the media coverage, this is sort of becoming a typical, almost stereotype occurrence.
00:27:40.820 DeSantis says something.
00:27:41.880 They lie about it.
00:27:42.840 He says something else.
00:27:43.780 They say that he retracted or corrected himself, and all of it's a lie.
00:27:47.160 DeSantis did something that the Republican governor should have absolutely done, and they should have said this.
00:27:51.760 When the federal government was pushing these new emergency-approved vaccines for children less than five years old, they said, you know, no thanks.
00:28:00.060 We're not going to jump into that.
00:28:02.260 It's under an emergency authorization.
00:28:04.700 We're no longer in an emergency.
00:28:06.440 We don't need it.
00:28:07.320 These small children have a 99.99% survival rate from COVID.
00:28:13.860 So what are we doing here?
00:28:14.900 Other Republican governors didn't join it, but he bullied the right thing.
00:28:17.940 Now, once they approved it, he said this statement right before the emergency authorization went through.
00:28:21.640 Once it went through, he said, you know, at the end of the day, if some people want to order this thing, we're not going to stand in the way.
00:28:27.020 We're just not going to go out of the way at the state level to start pushing this thing.
00:28:30.440 And they tried to mischaracterize his statements.
00:28:32.780 You know, he's a bold and courageous guy, and he often has to stand alone to do what he has to do.
00:28:37.400 And so the media just jumps on that and tries to mischaracterize his stuff.
00:28:41.220 But we have the best state health surgeon in the country.
00:28:43.860 His name is Joe Lopido.
00:28:44.860 He's a well-respected doctor, and he is actually looking at all the evidence, not just narratives, not just woke medicine narratives that are coming out about vaccine.
00:28:53.420 Remember, these are the people that were wrong on everything related to COVID, okay?
00:28:57.140 You know, at one point, they were advocating wearing two or three masks.
00:28:59.980 They were wrong about everything.
00:29:01.700 We were right, and we need to look at all sources.
00:29:04.520 And this is just about disciplining Republicans that want to think differently about public health.
00:29:09.600 And so that's why they always are attacking him.
00:29:12.440 DeSantis and the public health infrastructure in Florida has been a hallmark of consistency.
00:29:19.080 Meanwhile, with the CDC and Dr. Fauci, it sort of feels like public health magic eight ball, where you shake the ball,
00:29:25.680 and then a different response comes up every time about vaccines, masking, transmissibility, survivability.
00:29:33.300 Is Florida, you know, when we look at all this, do you think Florida is going to shake out well on the health statistics,
00:29:41.440 as well as on kind of the freedom metric that's so important to our people?
00:29:44.960 Absolutely, on both counts.
00:29:48.120 So, you know, at the end of, like, sort of the height of COVID, we found that Florida ended up having the best response.
00:29:54.420 It was mostly, it was the most rooted in freedom of all 50 states.
00:29:57.380 It had the best response on spread, death, illness, injury, all of that.
00:30:02.160 And then alongside that, when you look at the economic metrics, we had the lowest unemployment, the most small businesses,
00:30:09.640 the most net migration into our state, et cetera, et cetera, during COVID.
00:30:13.720 So we won on both counts.
00:30:15.160 And, of course, one of the worst states was California, which Governor Newsom over there is always doing everything he can
00:30:20.580 to stand toe-to-toe at DeSantis and call him out on everything.
00:30:22.900 Yet he has the worst metrics, along with Cuomo, before he got canceled.
00:30:26.840 So we won on both counts.
00:30:28.680 This next step, I think we're going to win again.
00:30:30.460 We're going to show that we can protect kids, protect society, keep the economy open,
00:30:33.800 but at the same time not shove vaccines down the throats of kids when they're understudied.
00:30:38.660 You know, all Dr. Labudeau asked for was, hey, before we start pushing this thing,
00:30:43.040 why don't we study this COVID vaccine just a few more years before we mass prescribe it?
00:30:48.000 Of course, they said no because the economics and woke medicine disciplines were pushing it
00:30:54.780 as hard as they possibly could for political purposes.
00:30:57.920 We have not studied it.
00:30:58.880 We don't know if there's going to be a health effect on these small children and on adults either.
00:31:04.220 And so instead of taking his advice, they did the emergency authorization,
00:31:09.240 and we're already seeing what looks like circumstantial health effects,
00:31:15.100 which is something we should have really slowed down on.
00:31:17.860 And I'm glad Florida stood up for rationality and freedom when it came to this decision.
00:31:21.740 And if you're a parent and you want your four-year-old or three-year-old to get the vaccine,
00:31:27.820 there's nothing in Florida that blocks that or renders that illegal or unable to occur.
00:31:33.820 We're just not going to use the apparatus of the state to do distribution on the vaccine.
00:31:39.080 I think that's where the national media has been lying about Governor DeSantis and the policy choices in Florida.
00:31:44.600 They've been saying, oh, you know, now all these people won't have the freedom to make this decision.
00:31:49.600 And in fact, if that's what you choose based on your circumstances, I believe that that's between doctors, families.
00:31:56.160 But I support Governor DeSantis' decision, and it sounds like you do as well.
00:32:00.880 Well, shifting gears to our final topic, Representative Sabatini, the January 6th committee is unconstitutional, unfair,
00:32:09.880 and I would suggest fundamentally uninteresting.
00:32:12.680 A lot of this information was known.
00:32:15.380 A lot of it is baked in.
00:32:17.080 I think a lot of people are still rightly concerned about election integrity as an issue.
00:32:21.460 As a state leader, a state lawmaker, as a political leader in your community,
00:32:25.940 what's your perspective on the ongoing January 6th committee hearings?
00:32:28.700 Well, the two most predominant feelings I have is, one, I agree with President Trump when he says this is an unselect committee of political hacks and political thugs.
00:32:39.560 And the other part of me says, well, this is just also extremely boring.
00:32:43.240 You know, they're doing something that's at one point very vicious and unheard of,
00:32:47.200 which is weaponizing a political, I'm sorry, a congressional committee to try to destroy the lives of their domestic political opponents.
00:32:55.400 But at the exact same time, it's a massive distraction versus the most immediate threats against liberty and prosperity in this country.
00:33:03.820 Our border, gasoline, the failed foreign policy in Afghanistan and around the world.
00:33:08.280 Everything that's happening, the breakdown of the rule of law, you know, got Supreme Court justice death threats happening now on a weekly basis.
00:33:15.000 So all of these really immediate threats are looming on the American people.
00:33:19.880 And so at the same time, it's just crazy distraction.
00:33:23.180 But, you know, but on the one hand, it's a blueprint they're using.
00:33:26.500 What they're trying to do is very similar to what I read in an article the other day,
00:33:30.260 set something up like the Soviet show trials where they don't allow anything that goes against their neighbor.
00:33:36.000 And if they're not looking at evidence to deflate their points, it's just one party controlling the apparatus of Congress and then just trying to label anybody,
00:33:45.480 not just the protesters, by the way, not just the protesters on the Capitol lawn that day,
00:33:50.980 but anybody that has been involved in advancing what we know to be strong claims about fraud in the 2020 election,
00:33:59.660 would they want to they want to label them and us all domestic terrorists.
00:34:03.180 And so at one point, it's very heinous and disgusting.
00:34:06.820 But at the other hand, it's this it's this sort of political shroud that they're trying to advance to distract us from these other domestic and foreign policy failures,
00:34:16.880 which have characterized the Biden regime.
00:34:19.760 We could really rename the January 6th committee hearings, the betrayal of Liz Cheney,
00:34:25.060 the ongoing betrayal of Liz Cheney, because she's all about betrayal.
00:34:28.560 She betrayed the state of Wyoming when she voted for an impeachment that those folks were absolutely against.
00:34:34.520 She betrayed the Republican conference when serving as conference chair, choosing to engage in her own revenge tour against Donald Trump.
00:34:43.340 She even betrayed her own sister when she wanted a United States Senate seat.
00:34:46.940 It was politically expedient to throw her own family member under the bus.
00:34:50.340 And in these hearings, she is betraying our country.
00:34:53.340 She's betraying America by engaging in this just total political theater when we ought to be focused on the issues that are concerning to Americans so that they can live better lives and escape this national malaise.
00:35:08.220 Anthony Sabatini, thanks so much for joining us.
00:35:10.540 Share your coordinates on social media so that folks can stay up with the work you're doing.
00:35:14.800 Thank you, Carson Gates.
00:35:16.900 It's at Anthony Sabatini on every social media platform with truth and Facebook, Twitter, everything.
00:35:24.520 And of course, they could always just reach out to me directly through my email, which is afsabatini at gmail.com.
00:35:31.640 Would love to hear your thoughts and stay in touch.
00:35:34.340 Representative Anthony Sabatini, one of Florida's very best state representatives, a top ally of Governor DeSantis, a top ally of the America First agenda.
00:35:42.960 Thanks for joining us.
00:35:44.580 Thanks, everyone, for tuning in.
00:35:46.140 Roll the credits.
00:35:46.660 Roll the credits.
00:36:12.960 Roll the credits.