The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - Episode 64 - President Trump Brilliantly Calls Pelosi's Bluff. Fighting Back Against Election Interference. China is the True Threat.

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz. Let's talk about the news. The news

00:00:21.800 over the weekend dominated by President Trump's executive orders. Take a listen to the president.

00:00:28.180 Therefore, I'm taking executive action. We've had it. And we're going to save American jobs

00:00:34.360 and provide relief to the American workers. And I'll be signing these bills in a very short

00:00:39.720 period of time. First one is I'm providing a payroll tax holiday to Americans earning

00:00:45.620 less than $100,000 per year. In a few moments, I will sign. Second, I'm signing an executive

00:00:52.500 order directing the Department of Housing and Urban Development, HHS and CDC to make

00:00:58.720 sure renters and homeowners can stay in their homes. The third action I'm taking today will

00:01:04.220 also provide additional support for Americans who are unemployed due to the China virus.

00:01:10.940 Fourth, I'm signing a directive providing relief to student loan borrowers. Earlier this year,

00:01:16.820 we slashed student loan interest rates to zero. I don't know if people know that because the

00:01:20.840 press doesn't ever report it, but maybe they're watching now. The press doesn't report a lot

00:01:26.340 of good things that are good for the people and good for the country.

00:01:29.460 You will hear Democrats this week crying their alligator tears about executive orders and the

00:01:36.680 need to constrain the powers of the president. But you didn't hear that during the Obama administration.

00:01:43.560 There are no Democrats that are offended by executive orders. I mean, Obama used executive orders to

00:01:50.040 extend amnesty to illegal aliens. That was the DACA decision that the Obama administration made.

00:01:57.700 And during the campaign, you heard Democrat candidates for president talking about using the power of the

00:02:04.600 executive to seize the firearms of law-abiding gun owners. And they were met with enthusiasm and support

00:02:12.660 and just gushing from the Democratic base when they talked about using executive powers in this

00:02:18.000 fashion. But when president Trump uses the power of the executive to provide for the American people,

00:02:25.260 to meet the needs of our fellow countrymen and women, oh, well, that is just beyond the pale for

00:02:31.860 Democrats. Look at the issues that president Trump is addressing. Evictions, unemployment, so that people

00:02:39.120 can bridge their way back to work. But like if your job is illegal, that's not possible. So there has to

00:02:45.260 be some provision for those folks. And I think also critically important is the forbearance of additional

00:02:53.680 interest on student loans. Young people have been hit very hard by this virus when you look at the impact

00:03:00.520 on schooling, learning, the economy, entry-level jobs, internships. So that forbearance of that student loan

00:03:07.320 interest, critically important. And what the president's done is really exposed the failure of the

00:03:14.400 Congress. Look, there's not disagreement on the eviction issue or the student loan issue. I think

00:03:20.700 we all agree that there has to be some bridge for people on unemployment, but the Democrats won't put

00:03:26.640 those bills, those ideas, those issues up for an independent vote. Oh no, they've got to create these

00:03:33.180 massive expansions of additional programs that are, are really left-wing programs in a lot of

00:03:41.240 circumstances. And they have to bootstrap their desire to see that growth of government to the

00:03:48.020 coronavirus pandemic. And president Trump has brilliantly called their bluff because he's basically

00:03:54.300 said, okay, I'm going to take the stuff that we actually agree on that nobody's against the student loan

00:04:01.160 issue, the eviction issue, the unemployment issue. And I'm, I'm going to do something on that. And yeah,

00:04:07.860 like I think the president essentially admitted in his public remarks that there's going to be a legal

00:04:14.280 battle. There's going to be a fight, but he wants that fight. The president wants Nancy Pelosi and the

00:04:19.880 Democrats, you know, inside 90 days of an election, basically suing to stop help for students, for people

00:04:28.400 working on reemployment, but who haven't achieved that reemployment yet, oftentimes through no fault

00:04:34.080 of their own. Uh, and, and, and I think that if the president does that, it's highly likely that

00:04:39.720 the Democrats will just stop, that they won't take action, uh, to hinder the ability of our country to

00:04:48.380 provide for our people in this time of need. So Nancy Pelosi, it's your move. Are you going to sue

00:04:54.540 so that evictions are easier? Are you going to sue so that things are harder on students? Are you going

00:05:00.560 to sue so that there's not unemployment assistance for some of the folks, at least at some level who

00:05:07.060 haven't seen their jobs come back? I doubt it. I think the president has Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer

00:05:12.680 right where he wants them. He's providing for the American people. And they, as usual, are reflective

00:05:19.480 of the failures of Congress to even do the basic things that we all agree on. And you know,

00:05:25.700 the president has Pelosi right where he wants her. When you observe this interview she does

00:05:30.860 on CNN with Dana Bash, take a listen. Well, let's talk about what he did do or what he said he did

00:05:36.440 with these executive actions. Are they legal? And if you don't think they are, are you going to sue

00:05:43.500 to block them? Well, the fact is, is that whether they're legal or not takes time to figure out. I

00:05:48.880 associate myself remarks with Senator Sasse who says they're unconstitutional slop. But will you sue?

00:05:55.160 I think that's right. Well, right now we want to address the needs of the American people.

00:06:01.840 As constitutional, my constitutional advisors tell me they're absurdly unconstitutional.

00:06:09.560 The speaker doesn't want to answer. She doesn't want to commit to suing to stop help for Americans

00:06:16.000 while Democrats had no problem with executive orders for amnesty for illegal aliens. Good

00:06:21.880 interview by Dana Bash, press in the speaker and usual politician talk from Nancy Pelosi.

00:06:29.240 The American people can see through it and they know who's fighting for him. It's President Trump.

00:06:34.520 How long until we see a positive impact from President Trump's executive orders to

00:06:44.400 maintain some support for Americans during this time of great calamity during the coronavirus?

00:06:51.860 That was the question that Larry Kudlow was asked on CNN. And I think he had an interesting answer

00:06:57.260 regarding the utilization of state-based systems to provide for folks. Take a listen.

00:07:02.340 We've talked to experts about this who say that even if this did happen, that it could take months

00:07:09.660 to get this new system up and running. You agree with that?

00:07:13.320 No, I don't. The Labor Department working with the states, states believe it can happen much,

00:07:20.460 much faster than that. Mind you, all the federal money we have been putting in was running through

00:07:28.840 the state's systems. So those systems, which needed some reform and needed some updating to be sure,

00:07:36.320 those systems are in much better shape today than they were three, four months ago.

00:07:40.760 Obviously states like Florida have had to upgrade their infrastructure, improve the digital interface

00:07:47.580 that they have for folks. But Kudlow makes an interesting point that a lot of this federal

00:07:52.440 assistance hasn't solely relied on like the Small Business Administration or the Treasury. In a lot

00:07:59.520 of cases, we've leveraged the capability of private banks, of state-based systems. And so I think that

00:08:06.300 that decision early on, not to try to centralize every decision in Washington, D.C., will allow the

00:08:12.880 Trump administration to do a lot more now through the enhanced capability of the states and of the

00:08:20.660 private sector to get resources in the needs of Americans to bridge us to a time when we have

00:08:27.340 the recovery that I think we're going to see with pent-up demand and with hopefully a vaccine right

00:08:33.000 around the corner. I had the chance to join Steve Hilton with Sarah Carter last night. And one of the

00:08:42.340 issues that came up was the treatment of the issue of race by Joe Biden, the former vice president.

00:08:49.280 Take a listen. Unlike the African-American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino

00:08:53.940 community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different

00:08:59.720 things. What are the odds that the only thing that Joe Biden consistently remembers is his own

00:09:05.780 racism? Like this isn't a one-off gaffe. Like this is part of a pattern in practice for Joe Biden that dates

00:09:12.080 really all the way back to when he was up against Barack Obama in the Democratic primary. And he said Obama was

00:09:17.160 clean and articulate. What's obvious here is that when Joe Biden sees a black person in America, he has

00:09:23.060 a homogenous view of how that person ought to think and how that ought to act. That is explicitly the

00:09:28.620 definition of racism. And I don't think in this country we ought to view skin color as the sole

00:09:33.940 function of diversity. I think that people of all different skin colors and backgrounds solve problems

00:09:39.860 differently, approach issues differently, have different ideology and doctrine. And I think that's what makes

00:09:45.080 America so special. And with President Trump, we see the policies that lift up all Americans, not just

00:09:50.600 one class of Americans. And I think that can be ultimately the unifying message of a successful

00:09:55.380 campaign.

00:09:59.160 Will Democrats succeed in changing tax policy that has nothing to do with coronavirus as a result of the

00:10:07.980 coronavirus. Take a listen to Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Fox News Sunday make reference to

00:10:14.740 the salt issue. That's S-A-L-T in his response to Chris Wallace.

00:10:19.780 They're talking 900 billion, not quite a trillion, but 900 billion. You're talking 150 billion. Is there a

00:10:27.080 place in between there for aid to states and cities?

00:10:30.280 Chris, they're actually asking for 915 plus the reversal of salt, which gets you over to a trillion. But

00:10:35.500 on us, we gave 150 in the last bill. We'll give another 150 billion more. We can deal with in

00:10:43.660 January, if there's ongoing issues, we can pass more legislation. This will be the fifth bill.

00:10:48.280 We don't have to get everything done at once. What we should do is get things done for the American

00:10:52.720 public now. Come back for another bill afterwards. This is what we're talking about. The tax bill was

00:10:58.840 passed. It was signed into law by the president. It resulted in a tremendous improvement to the

00:11:06.160 American economy, more consumer confidence, more capital investment. I think just a greater sense

00:11:13.420 that America was not dead money in global deals anymore, that we would protect the dollar, that we

00:11:20.840 would protect our workers. And one of the main decision points in that tax bill was what to do with

00:11:26.400 the deductions that people were able to take from their state and local taxes. So like if you lived in

00:11:33.260 some, you know, awful blue state with some awful blue municipal government, the tax, the Dickens out of

00:11:40.980 you, you didn't always necessarily feel the full pain of that taxes, because you could deduct it from

00:11:47.580 your federal tax liability. And with the Republican tax bill, we did away with that deduction. We didn't think

00:11:55.540 that red states should be subsidizing blue states. We didn't think that in communities like mine in

00:12:04.120 Florida, where you have some of the lowest taxes in America, that you should not be able to access

00:12:10.400 a particular element of the tax code that people were able to access in places where frankly, the

00:12:16.480 government just hadn't made sound decisions like we'd made in the state of Florida on taxes.

00:12:21.520 So we get rid of the SALT deduction, the state and local tax deduction. And it, you know, whether

00:12:28.300 you like it or whether you don't, that tax bill resulted in a vibrant, thriving, roaring American

00:12:35.220 economy. And there's no argument to be made that as a result of the coronavirus, that we ought to change

00:12:42.960 the tax bill or the tax policy. So Nancy Pelosi is trying to slide this in. I'm glad Secretary Mnuchin

00:12:49.880 called her out about it. And look, I mean, I just got to be honest, as a Floridian, this

00:12:55.500 change in the tax policy has resulted in tremendous growth in our state. I mean, if you know that

00:13:01.640 you live in California, and many of our listeners do or Illinois, and you're not going to be able

00:13:07.060 to deduct this crazy state and local tax liability, you're going to make your way to Florida or Arizona

00:13:13.940 or Texas or South Carolina or any of the states that are inviting the Capitol. And I think that's

00:13:20.640 a good thing. Because ultimately, I suspect that more and more voters around the country will not

00:13:27.000 only uproot, but that they'll demand better of their states and their local governments, the government

00:13:33.660 will actually meet the needs of the people without going to excesses that are unchecked. And I think

00:13:40.580 that's what unlocks the potential and the freedom and the progress in the American economy that we

00:13:47.300 knew to be the greatest in the world before coronavirus. And I know President Trump can

00:13:53.160 make it that way again. So stop trying to undo the progress, Nancy Pelosi. Let's make sure the

00:13:59.600 coronavirus legislation actually deals with the coronavirus.

00:14:03.960 On Face the Nation yesterday, Margaret Brennan had the National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien on the

00:14:13.960 show, and they talked about election interference from our adversaries. Take a listen.

00:14:19.400 The intelligence community issued this very sharp warning on Friday, detailing efforts to interfere.

00:14:25.680 Looking at the statement from July 24th, though, the language there says adversaries are trying to

00:14:31.400 access candidates, private communications, and election infrastructure. And that's at both the state

00:14:38.840 and the federal networks. That sounds an awful lot like what Russia did back in 2016. But now it's

00:14:46.440 happening on your watch. So what are you doing to stop it?

00:14:49.560 Well, what we're doing is we've got our cyber teams in place. DHS is working very hard to track down those

00:14:55.640 malign actors, but again, it's not just Russia. Is it Russia again? Well, look, we know it's China. We know it's

00:15:02.340 Russia. We know it's Iran. Tampering with election infrastructure? Well, absolutely. Trying to access

00:15:06.840 secretary of state websites and that sort of thing and collect data on Americans and engage in influence

00:15:12.600 operations, whether it's on TikTok or Twitter or in other spaces. So, no, it's a real concern. But it's not just

00:15:20.120 Russia, Margaret. It's the Chinese don't want the president reelected. He's been tougher on China

00:15:24.200 than any president in history. I just want to clarify something here, because in the statement

00:15:28.360 that we saw Friday, the counterintelligence chief released the statement saying China prefers President

00:15:34.760 Trump to lose, but it specifically referred to public statements, policy disagreements. Are you here today

00:15:42.520 saying that China is tampering with U.S. election infrastructure? Well, they'd like the president to lose,

00:15:49.080 and China, like Russia, like Iran, have engaged in cyber attacks and phishing and that sort of thing.

00:15:55.000 We've made it very clear to our adversaries, whether it's China or Russia or Iran, stay out of our

00:15:58.680 election, and we're taking steps across the board to harden our election infrastructure. We're pumping

00:16:03.240 money into the states. DHS has a massive program running. So, for quite some time on this podcast,

00:16:08.200 I've reflected on the propensity and probability that not only Russia, but that our other adversaries

00:16:15.320 would participate in election interference. And by the way, that's nothing new. It's not even

00:16:20.280 particularly that unique to the United States. Just as we've seen our economy and our travel and the

00:16:26.360 flow of information globalized, our elections, unfortunately, have become more globalized. And

00:16:32.600 I'm glad that Robert O'Brien was there to trumpet the success that the Trump administration has made

00:16:40.440 on election security, working with our secretaries of state and our supervisors of elections to build

00:16:46.760 that resilience against interference. But it's coming. And it's noteworthy to me that China,

00:16:54.120 our real geopolitical threat, prefers Joe Biden. Now, why do you think that is? It's because they know

00:17:02.040 that Joe Biden will be more malleable to their viewpoint. And I think we all know like the

00:17:07.480 familial history with Hunter Biden and China and the personal enrichment that the Biden family

00:17:15.160 has received from China. Then you look at the decisions the Trump administration has made to

00:17:20.120 confront China on trade, to rebuild our military so that we are a credible deterrent to Chinese

00:17:27.720 aggression and that we will maintain that dominance over potential Chinese military modernization.

00:17:35.000 I mean, they're hard at work. And frankly, under the Obama administration and under the Bush

00:17:40.920 administration, we were distracted trying to build democracies in the Middle East while China was

00:17:47.720 building skyscrapers and supply chains and aircraft carriers even to project military might and military

00:17:55.320 force. In some cases, they were building islands out of nothing in the South China Sea where just

00:18:01.080 reefs had existed before. So China prefers Biden. Iran prefers Biden. And then the claim that's being made

00:18:11.640 by Pelosi and others is that Russia prefers Donald Trump. Now, why do you think it is that Russia would

00:18:18.120 prefer Trump and China would prefer Biden? Well, probably because the Trump administration sees the

00:18:23.480 world for what it is. Russia is a declining power. I mean, Russia's two principal exports are models and

00:18:31.400 oil and the United States has plenty of both. I don't think Russia has ever mattered less in in my entire

00:18:38.680 life than they do now stuck in this demographic tailspin with a fully commoditized energy economy.

00:18:45.400 Meanwhile, as I mentioned, China is a real threat. Whether or not young people in America today will be

00:18:52.120 successful, we'll get to feel that American dream and realize the prosperity that we all hope comes to

00:18:59.640 future generations in our country. That will depend on our ability to beat China. And to beat China, I

00:19:07.160 think we have to recognize that they are the true threat. And they want Joe Biden because they know Joe

00:19:13.720 Biden is weak. And Russia, I think, appreciates the fact that the Trump administration won't scapegoat

00:19:20.600 Russia for their own failures. I mean, that's what we saw from the Obama administration. The Obama

00:19:25.720 administration makes up the Russia hoax against the Trump administration because the Russia reset failed.

00:19:32.600 Their foreign policy failed. I mean, Russia essentially walked into Georgia as a consequence of

00:19:37.320 the Obama administration's weakness. And then, you know, the Obama administration and their man,

00:19:44.120 James Comey, who was left over and was the kind of carryover man into the Trump administration,

00:19:50.920 they tried to blame Hillary Clinton's electoral failures on Russia. And they're trying to do it again.

00:19:58.360 The American people see clearly what our threat is. And it is far more likely to be an authoritarian,

00:20:07.720 hegemonic China than it is to be a Russia in decline. So don't just listen uncritically to the claims that,

00:20:15.520 you know, oh, well, Russia wants Trump, China wants Biden. Think about why that's the case and who our true

00:20:21.920 threat really is. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Hot Takes. I'm Congressman

00:20:28.340 Matt Gates. Give us a five star rating. Leave us a review. Let us know what you'd like to hear on the show.

00:20:34.100 And make sure to tune in tomorrow for more Hot Takes.

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - August 10, 2020

Episode 64 - President Trump Brilliantly Calls Pelosi's Bluff. Fighting Back Against Election Interference. China is the True Threat.

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript