On today's show, Firebrand joins us from our office in Washington, D.C., where we are broadcasting live from the Capitol Hill office of our Firebrand headquarters. Firebrand is a conservative political talk show that focuses on the politics of gun control and gun control. Today's show is dedicated to the victims of the U.S. shooting in Aurora, Colorado, and to the hero, Elijah Dickin, who shot and killed an armed man in an Indiana shopping mall.
00:03:52.000The assault weapons ban of 2022 would have banned the very weapon used by Elijah to save those lives in Indiana.
00:04:01.000This bill would turn heroes into more victims.
00:04:06.000The Democrats and Joe Biden want to go on a gun grab so that you won't have what you need when you need it.
00:04:14.000If they had their way, that mall in Indiana would have been a massacre like Uvalde.
00:04:20.000By the time the police got there, many more possibly dozens would have been killed.
00:04:25.000And even then, if the cops in Greenwood are anything like the cops in Uvalde, it might not have been much help when they finally did arrive.
00:04:33.000Though there were terrific border patrol who ultimately took action in that tragic and deadly leadership vacuum.
00:04:40.000Now, any Republican or Democrat who votes for this unconstitutional assault weapons ban is betraying his or her oath to uphold the Constitution.
00:04:52.000You know, you don't take an oath to the special interests.
00:04:55.000You don't take an oath to the March for Our Lives people.
00:05:01.000And if you violate that, there are ways the voters can hold you accountable in our great system.
00:05:07.000So just today, we were in the House Judiciary Committee and we were debating these issues.
00:05:12.000And Democrats act like we all ought to be so terrified and afraid of guns.
00:05:16.000We ought to stigmatize gun ownership, stigmatize gun owners.
00:05:20.000And my colleague from the great state of Ohio, Jim Jordan, pointed out searing examples of a good guy with a gun being the difference between life and death.
00:05:34.000Both semi-automatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices have been used for self-defense purposes.
00:05:41.000This legislation will not make our community safer.
00:05:45.000It will, in fact, make them more dangerous.
00:05:47.000In 2019, there were 386 self-defense killings that were determined to be, quote, justifiable homicides by investigators and prosecutors.
00:05:56.000In 2013, a study ordered by the CDC and carried out by the National Academy's Institute of Medicine and National Research Council found that annual defensive uses of a firearm range numbered up to 3 million.
00:06:09.000And this number has likely gone up since then, as more states have passed laws allowing law abiding citizens to carry a concealed firearm.
00:06:16.000And most importantly, the very types of firearms we are discussing here today have been used in numerous self-defense situations just this year.
00:06:24.000On July 7th, 2022, a Florida homeowner fired his AK-47 style rifle when individuals forcibly entered his home.
00:06:33.000After the homeowner opened fire, the individuals immediately fled.
00:06:37.000When asked if the homeowner would face charges, Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons said, absolutely not.
00:06:44.000The homeowner's protecting himself and in Florida and in Escambia County, you can protect yourself.
00:06:50.000On April 8th, 2022, a man in Melbourne, Florida, sitting in his truck outside a friend's house was confronted by an angry acquaintance who opened fire on him.
00:07:00.000The man grabbed his own handgun and shot back.
00:07:02.000When the handgun jammed, the man retrieved his AR-15 from his backseat and started shooting back.
00:07:06.000The man maintained defensive fire until the assailant ran away.
00:07:09.000Police were able to arrest and charge the assailant.
00:07:17.000And you see how these elites in Washington, D.C. who don't know anything about guns, who don't understand how life really exists in a lot of flyover country in America,
00:07:27.000they are just so eager to ban any type of gun that they can possibly list.
00:07:33.000Getting some great feedback, we've got on Facebook, Darlene says, we love you and MTG.
00:07:39.000And on Instagram, Snakebite says, get rid of the rhinos.
00:07:43.000And it is oftentimes a very unfortunate political fact that too many Republicans are willing to join with Democrats in these gun control endeavors, red flag laws, assault weapons bans.
00:07:55.000And we should make sure that doesn't happen.
00:07:57.000The Republican Party has to stand for freedom and liberty.
00:08:01.000And those freedoms and those liberties are preserved as a result of the rights that are vested in us, not by government, but by God.
00:08:09.000That's the reason I support the Second Amendment.
00:08:12.000And it's also the reason why these overeducated elites want to deprive the American people of those liberties.
00:08:21.000And that's something that we must resist.
00:08:23.000Now, there are some political warnings coming to the left as a result of this embrace of overeducated elitism.
00:08:30.000And there was this delicious display of it this past Sunday on Fareed Zakaria's program.
00:08:35.000We all know Fareed is a mouthpiece for the liberal globalist left.
00:08:40.000And he issues a warning to them that as Joe Biden is contemplating this elimination of student debt by executive order, that you really are moving the Democratic Party further away from the working man and the working woman.
00:08:55.000You know, it used to be the case that the Republicans might win the country clubs, but the Democrats might do a little better, you know, out with blue collar workers, people who join unions, people who don't want to see wealth and power concentrated in the elites.
00:09:13.000President Trump led this amazing political realignment where Republicans finally were pushed to stand for the working man and the working woman on immigration, on trade, on issues that affect us every day, like gas prices.
00:09:27.000Inflation, the strength of the American economy, rising wages, more capital investment here in our country and not overseas.
00:09:36.000Joe Biden and these Democrats, they've ruined it all.
00:09:39.000And they risk giving up the game with policy solutions that don't focus on those folks who, you know, wear their name on their shirt when they go to work, but instead are focusing on the overeducated elites.
00:09:54.000The president seems inclined to cancel $10,000 worth of debt per borrower, excluding individuals who make more than $150,000 a year.
00:10:04.000Some Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren want him to cancel $50,000 for all borrowers, which Biden opposes.
00:10:12.000The most extreme proposal championed, of course, by Bernie Sanders is to eliminate all student debt in the country, which amounts to $1.7 trillion.
00:10:22.000Biden's anticipated student debt plan, which is the least generous one on the table, appears to be the most popular one among the public.
00:10:30.000Yet populists on his left flank are calling it grossly inadequate and demanding more.
00:10:58.000A lot of folks agreeing with the argument that we just brought you from my colleague, Congressman Jim Jordan.
00:11:03.000Now, Fareed Zakaria there makes the argument explicitly that Democrats are leaning into their greatest political vulnerability, overeducated elites.
00:11:13.000Now, it wasn't all that long ago I said something somewhat similar in regard to the abortion debate and how these pro-abortion endeavors would not go well for the Democratic Party.
00:11:23.000I tweeted, how many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are overeducated, underloved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats and no bumble matches?
00:11:35.000And, oh my gosh, when I said the very same thing, the left went crazy.
00:11:42.000And, oh my gosh, when I said the very same thing Fareed Zakaria said, the left went crazy.
00:11:46.000In response to the nationwide protests this morning, Gates tweeted, how many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are overeducated, underloved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats and no bumble matches?
00:12:00.000Now, now, folks, if that statement sounds insane, remember, for Matt Gates, overeducated is any woman who's already graduated high school.
00:12:10.000It is very telling that you think overeducated is a burn.
00:12:32.000They think you don't want your women too educated.
00:12:34.000You want them dumb so that they believe you when you take away their rights and you make them serve you.
00:12:40.000Women, this is who you wanna vote for?
00:12:43.000You wanna vote for someone who says, I mean, I wouldn't want you to be smart and overeducated and then have your own agency and your own power and be able to control your own lives.
00:12:53.000I would want you destitute and dependent upon me so I can tell you and command you to do whatever I want.
00:13:36.000We've got a lot of folks, I think, that wanna see our government actually work for the working people in our country.
00:13:43.000Now, Charlie Kirk wrote a recent book called The College Scam.
00:13:47.000And what I would suggest is it's actually a really good look into how these elitist structures are built in our country.
00:13:54.000How you get these professors and you get the, you know, deputy provost of intersectional feminism at a lot of these higher ed institutions.
00:14:38.000And that college system is the higher education industrial complex that ultimately generates the workforce for the globalist left that is such a threat to our country.
00:14:51.000So I fight against the higher education industrial complex.
00:14:55.000And I do it in a way that's a little different than many Republicans.
00:14:58.000So President Biden right now is offering this potential $10,000 waiver of student debt with the stroke of a presidential pen.
00:15:16.000Like if you know you can just go accrue debt and ultimately the government is going to wipe it away, that is going to encourage more accrual of debt.
00:15:22.000And third, it doesn't actually get to the real problem of education affordability.
00:15:26.000And that's the cost of higher education as a result of these ivory towers to liberalism on college campuses.
00:15:34.000So I think that instead of wiping away debt with a presidential executive order, we ought to allow people who are victims of predatory systems to declare bankruptcy.
00:15:47.000And if people are able to discharge their student loan debt through bankruptcy rather than through action by the federal government, then I think you can literally bring down the entire higher ed system.
00:15:58.000I made that very argument in the House Judiciary Committee.
00:16:04.000The underlying piece of legislation that would allow students to discharge student loan debt through bankruptcy would shatter the foundation of higher education finance.
00:16:14.000It would create a dramatic and sudden shift in the pricing of higher education.
00:16:19.000It would disrupt almost every university budget in America.
00:16:24.000And that's exactly why I'm voting for it.
00:16:30.000If you could discharge student loan debt from predatory brokers or lenders or colleges that sold people a bill of goods, then the federal system of subsidizing these bad loans would crash.
00:16:43.000The university system of facilitating these bad loans would crash.
00:16:47.000And the value of an education would actually have to match the dollars that Americans were paying for that education should they choose to do so.
00:16:58.000And it's a critical distinction with what Joe Biden's doing.
00:17:01.000But again, he's totally captive to people who went to like Colgate and Tufts and the like.
00:17:04.000Now, as Democrats are going through this change where they're losing working class voters, when they're becoming a party of the elites, there are demographers that are actually trying to tell them this.
00:17:18.000And sometimes it doesn't go particularly well.
00:17:20.000So on Inside Politics, one of the hosts is Abby Phillips.
00:17:24.000And the interview you're about to hear is between her and one of these demographers that she's brought on to do political prognosis.
00:17:31.000And it's the very person who kind of laid out the data that caused Democrats to adopt this demographics as destiny theory.
00:17:40.000The problem now is those demographics that matter most aren't necessarily racial.
00:17:45.000Their income level, their education level, and the largest portions of the electorate are moving further and further away from the Democratic Party.
00:17:54.000And they're doing so really at a speed we've never seen before.
00:17:58.000And as a direct result of the policies that this Congress continues to push under Nancy Pelosi's failed leadership.
00:18:04.000So when this demographer tries to tell Abby Phillips this, you are just going to love how she tries to cut him off and then come back from the cut with the most ridiculous partisan, just left wing utilization of opposition research.
00:18:19.000Take a listen. We'll talk about the clip after.
00:18:21.000You know, when we say the Democrats are too focused on certain things, when you say that, is that real or is it a lot?
00:18:30.000I mean, you see the same things that I do. Conservatives elevating small issues and making that the Democratic Party brand.
00:18:38.000Maybe they're maybe the Democrats are allowing that to happen is the point that you're making.
00:18:42.000Well, I don't think so. I would dissent from that.
00:18:44.000I mean, this is what I characterize as the Fox News fallacy, which is basically the only reason why issues like crime and immigration,
00:18:53.000you know, things around race and gender ideology, what's happening in the schools, etc.
00:18:57.000The only reason these are issues is because Fox News is talking about them.
00:19:01.000There's a lot of propaganda and disinformation.
00:19:04.000And what I think that leaves out is these are real problems to real voters.
00:19:08.000Voters are concerned about crime. Voters are concerned about the situation at the border.
00:19:12.000Democrats have tried to wave that away.
00:19:14.000Now they're doing it a little bit less now, but they tried to wave it away.
00:19:17.000And, you know, this is not just created by conservatives.
00:19:20.000It's created by the real world about the concerns of voters.
00:19:23.000And conservatives are able to take advantage of that because the Democrats are essentially not defending themselves.
00:19:30.000Fascinating conversation, Roy. Thanks for joining us here.
00:19:33.000And coming up next for us, why a Jersey Shore star found herself in the middle of Pennsylvania's Senate race.
00:19:39.000Does Mehmet Oz even live in Pennsylvania?
00:19:42.000Democrat John Fetterman wants that to be the question on voters minds as the state's pivotal Senate race approaches.
00:19:49.000So he's enlisted New Jersey's most famous reality TV star to help drive home the point.
00:19:54.000I heard that you move from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to look for a new job.
00:20:00.000And personally, I don't know why anyone would want to leave Jersey because it's like the best place ever.
00:20:46.000And oftentimes people use their access and their leverage and their influence to put special interests and foreign interests above American interests.
00:20:56.000Now, I think that people in Congress should not be able to go be lobbyists.
00:21:02.000The reason I think that is because you've made a choice to be a representative of the people.
00:21:06.000You're one of the few Americans who has the opportunity to come to this place and advocate on behalf of the needs of those who sent you here.
00:21:15.000And then to be able to turn around from that and go lobby for money to just be a paid influence peddler.
00:21:24.000And we saw it on full display recently in the House Judiciary Committee.
00:21:28.000Now, Bob Goodlatte is the former Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
00:21:33.000He was someone Jim Jordan and I disagreed with very frequently because Goodlatte was always an apologist for Mueller and Comey.
00:21:42.000He was always the last one to agree with us that we shouldn't be championing and cheerleading Robert Mueller.
00:21:48.000We should have been scrutinizing him the entire time.
00:21:50.000We should have been showing what a total sham this was, that there was no no no requisite context for an investigation into the president for being an agent of the Russian government.
00:22:02.000So Goodlatte finishes his unremarkable term as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, retires, and then, lo and behold, shows up as a lobbyist.
00:22:12.000Now, if that alone isn't swampy and creepy enough, you get to see what he's fighting for.
00:22:19.000He is a paid lobbyist for the Walt Disney Corporation.
00:22:22.000Now, why would the Walt Disney Corporation go hire the former Republican head of the Judiciary Committee?
00:22:28.000Don't they only want to work with Democrats?
00:22:31.000We see what matters to the Walt Disney Corporation the most, their copyright.
00:22:36.000This exquisite, unusual, and perfectly tailored to them legislative structure that allows them to protect their copyright assets way beyond the scope of what other companies would be able to do with similar content.
00:23:11.000Then, Bob Goodlatte signs a different client, a client that pays him to show up and testify against data collection of the American people through these data brokers that buy and sell the data coming off of your cell phone.
00:23:30.000Sometimes they buy and sell to one another.
00:23:33.000Sometimes they buy and sell to people who want to provide you goods.
00:23:36.000Sometimes they buy and sell to America's enemies.
00:23:39.000Iran, the Chinese Communist Party, Russia.
00:23:44.000And so I thought it was pretty insane that chairman Goodlatte was in the committee to testify about the horrors of this data collection while at the same time representing the Walt Disney Corporation that engages in that very practice.
00:24:03.000I believe that we can have bipartisan agreement on legislation out of this committee that might be our hallmark achievement of this Congress.
00:24:11.000But I want to echo the point Mr. Issa made.
00:24:13.000It is not just the government that engages in these really terrifying data marketplaces.
00:24:20.000It's the Chinese Communist Party, Russia, big corporations.
00:24:23.000Chairman Goodlatte, does the Walt Disney Corporation engage in this terrifying data marketplace?
00:24:38.000You come here and you tell us about all the harm in this data enterprise, but you don't know that, I mean, you're the Republican that the Disney Corporation hired because they have problems with Republicans.
00:24:49.000And you didn't ever talk to them about this?
00:24:52.000I came here today to testify regarding the importance of this legislation, which, as you noted, is bipartisan.
00:24:58.000And it relates to the importance of the government.
00:25:01.000So the L.A. Times says Disney is running the happiest surveillance operation on Earth.
00:25:05.000Had you seen that article from the L.A. Times?
00:25:14.000They've been sued because Disney installs software on applications used by children, and then they not only buy data from data brokers, Disney then turns around and sells the data that they collect off of children.
00:25:29.000Are you familiar with that litigation?
00:25:32.000And there's a Forbes article that came out while you were chairman of this committee, and it talks about the robots that Disney sends around its park to collect data on the people at the park to utilize.
00:25:47.000Quote, Disney is even dabbling in making robotic versions of Mickey and Minnie and all of its characters that would move around with the guests and interact with them.
00:25:55.000So as you sit here and talk to us about the harm of this data enterprise, are you concerned that the people who pay you also engage in that very same work?
00:26:06.000I think that it would be appropriate for the Congress to look at data collection practices beyond the scope of what this committee is looking at here today.
00:26:15.000But I also think it's very important to understand that what government can do with that data is very different than what individual enterprises can do.
00:26:25.000And so that's why I'm here to talk about the Fourth Amendment.
00:26:29.000Sometimes. Right. I saw in your testimony say, well, only the government can tax you and only the government can regulate you.
00:26:36.000But what I'm worried about is that private entities can try to program you.
00:26:41.000They can try to get you to think a certain way and they can use this data in a very harmful way.
00:26:45.000And like particularly with the Walt Disney Corporation that is in business with the Chinese Communist Party that thanks the Chinese Communist Party for all of the accommodations they got in the filming of Mulan.
00:26:58.000Like, you know, does it concern you that the Walt Disney Corporation is selling the information of children?
00:27:06.000Are you being purposefully ignorant to the fact that Walt Disney engages in the very activities that you're here testifying against?
00:27:14.000Well, I do not know the facts that you've stated, so I can't comment.
00:27:20.000Well, right. But are you are you are you purposely not learning them so that you can simultaneously take money from Disney to try to make them look less evil to Republicans and then advocate on behalf of other organizations before the Congress that critique the very work that Disney's doing?
00:27:35.000I'm I'm here to advocate on behalf of people who are concerned about abuses of the Fourth Amendment.
00:27:41.000Chairman Goodlatte, do you remember a conversation you and I had when you led this committee at the Capitol Hill Club where you said the best way to be successful in the Judiciary Committee is to find interest groups that are opposed to one another.
00:27:53.000And to tell both of them that you'll support their positions. So they'll both make donations to your I do.
00:27:58.000I definitely do not. You're on your own conversation. I do not know.
00:28:02.000Well, I hope that's not the case in lobbying as well, that you go in, you know, that as a legislator, you try to find interest groups to play off of one another.
00:28:12.000Then as a lobbyist, you go and take money from the Walt Disney Corporation that is quite literally buying and selling data in precisely the way that you find objectionable today.
00:28:21.000I think it's a it's a reason why a lot of people are concerned about folks who go from being in Congress to being members of the lobby corps and then using the relationships and that they've developed in order to sell influence.
00:28:34.000And that selling influence can be just as damaging sometimes as the buying and selling of data and the Walt Disney Corporation that, you know, that goes against so many of the values of their own patrons certainly certainly isn't worthy of that.
00:28:48.000And, you know, since there's no federal like legislation on this issue, it doesn't seem like it's preempted.
00:28:54.000So maybe if we had a really smart governor like Governor DeSantis in Florida, they could actually have state based laws that would attack these issues.
00:29:02.000Wouldn't that be quite a thing? Mr. Chairman, I now seek unanimous consent to enter a few articles in the record.
00:29:07.000I have Disney takes over Hulu, a company with serious data collection issues from combardo.com.
00:29:17.000I have from the L.A. Times, Disneyland is tracking guests and generating big profits doing it.
00:29:24.000I have from WDinfo.com, Disney facing lawsuit over collecting and selling children's personal information.
00:29:34.000And I have Disney uses big data, IT and machine learning to boost the customer experience.