The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - August 12, 2022


Episode 66 LIVE： Agents of Chaos (feat. Dr. Darren J. Beattie) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz


Episode Stats

Length

47 minutes

Words per Minute

158.52005

Word Count

7,485

Sentence Count

453

Misogynist Sentences

7

Hate Speech Sentences

7


Summary

On this episode of Firebrand, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GA) and Dr. Darren Beattie (D-VA) discuss the FBI raid of Mar-A-Largo and the implications for President Trump.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 We'll be right back.
00:00:30.000 You ever watch this guy on television? It's like a machine. Matt Gaetz.
00:00:38.060 I'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.
00:00:45.980 They aren't really coming for me. They're coming for you. I'm just in the way.
00:00:51.020 Welcome to Firebrand. We're live in the Longworth House office building here in our nation's capital.
00:01:00.760 And chaos is the word of the day. Democrats are inflicting chaos on our economy with this terrible spending bill.
00:01:07.900 My legislative director, Mike Robertson, has been going through it. We're going to have all the updates on that in just a moment.
00:01:13.360 And chaos at the IRS, where they are gearing up for something.
00:01:18.900 Like, is the IRS gearing up for war in our country? Is Nancy Pelosi trying to start a nuclear war in Asia?
00:01:26.240 Is there an effort by the national security state to stoke violence in a civil war here at home?
00:01:31.420 We certainly hope not. But here to break it down with us, once again, one of the very favorites on Firebrand, Dr. Darren Beattie, the publisher of Revolver.news.
00:01:41.000 Dr. Beattie, I think our last episode has over a million and a half of views on Rumble.
00:01:45.260 So certainly folks enjoy the conversations we're able to have.
00:01:48.860 You have a recently published piece in Newsweek.
00:01:52.640 The national security apparatus is now the enemy. Walk through that piece for us.
00:01:58.500 Well, it's simply my reaction to the pretty outrageous escalatory episode we saw with the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.
00:02:12.840 And it explores the implications of that.
00:02:15.720 You know, in a nutshell, it says, yeah, we can be outraged.
00:02:19.140 We can point to the hypocrisies, but we shouldn't be cheap dates about it.
00:02:23.980 They overstepped their bounds.
00:02:27.020 They know it.
00:02:28.500 They overplayed the hand.
00:02:29.740 That's why they're engaged in frenetic finger pointing.
00:02:33.680 So the ball's in our court.
00:02:35.300 The ball's in the court of conservatives, Republicans, GOP in particular.
00:02:40.440 And really the only thing to do is to come up with a real plan and implement it.
00:02:46.780 And I explore some ideas for how to do that in the piece.
00:02:51.100 You specifically talk about a comparison with Hillary Clinton and some of the records retention and records management laws that may be impacted by this investigation.
00:03:02.720 How should people think about what's happening to President Trump through the lens of what we saw play out with Hillary Clinton?
00:03:08.260 Well, it really is bizarre and actually quite ironic because, you know, one of the major sort of themes of the 2016 campaign was Hillary Clinton's criminality.
00:03:20.280 And one dimension of that criminality was the improper storage of classified material.
00:03:28.340 In fact, it wasn't simply that she had a private email.
00:03:31.640 She had a private server where she was storing classified stuff.
00:03:34.640 And there are a lot of really disturbing questions as to what was actually going on there.
00:03:39.280 It was taken seriously enough that, of course, James Comey famously, you know, reopened or reconsidered the email question shortly before the election.
00:03:51.160 And everyone went apoplectic about that.
00:03:53.880 Of course, Hillary Clinton wasn't they weren't searching Hillary Clinton's house in New York or anything remotely like that.
00:03:59.660 Simply the idea that they were looking into it was considered scandalous enough.
00:04:04.760 And then on Trump's side, as we all know, the wonderful chant, lock her up, lock her up, lock her up, that became a staple of the rallies, galvanizing the base, that never materialized.
00:04:19.500 That is ultimately sort of rhetorical bluster.
00:04:24.080 And nonetheless, the reaction to it was, oh, the idea of locking her up is that's a step out of bounds.
00:04:32.560 That's not who we are.
00:04:33.740 That's not what democracies do.
00:04:35.480 That's something that dictators do.
00:04:37.360 And they threw out a number of comparisons with people like, you know, Mugabe and Myanmar and things like that.
00:04:46.680 But, you know, it's it's one of those things for better or worse.
00:04:51.760 You know, Trump never went through with it.
00:04:53.920 It was all sort of.
00:04:55.220 Well, I blame Jeff Sessions for that.
00:04:57.080 I actually think that with a an attorney general focused on the facts and the law, Hillary Clinton should have faced punishment.
00:05:04.380 But there are three key distinctions.
00:05:06.080 One, Hillary Clinton was never president.
00:05:08.660 She might have thought she was, but she was never president.
00:05:10.720 So this is an unprecedented step to utilize criminal process to try to stop somebody who has literally been the leader of our country that has unique implications globally, like you referenced.
00:05:24.440 Second, Hillary Clinton was actually transmitting and receiving classified information improperly, which creates a unique vector of vulnerability.
00:05:34.360 But a few boxes that might have been inadvertently taken to Mar-a-Lago down in a basement in Florida, not the same thing as moving this type of information on and off of your smartphone, where there are tools like Pegasus, like other intelligence collection tools that could actually put Americans in danger.
00:05:54.200 No American was in danger for any moldy box in the basement in Mar-a-Lago.
00:05:59.920 So very different thing with Hillary Clinton.
00:06:02.340 And I also think the intent was there.
00:06:04.060 You see the bleach bit efforts on her part, this holistic effort by Clinton world to try to absolve her of that responsibility.
00:06:11.960 Here you had Trump and his team doing everything they could to work with the government and comply with reasonable requests.
00:06:19.460 And so I think that that is like a really important thing to evaluate when looking at the Hillary Clinton example.
00:06:25.700 This notion that like technical noncompliance with the Archives Act is the basis for this is so laughable.
00:06:33.540 It like does not pass the straight face test.
00:06:35.880 What do you think they're really after, Darren?
00:06:38.900 Well, I mean, I think they're really after taking Trump off the table.
00:06:42.480 They want to completely neutralize Trump and the broader Trump phenomenon as a political force.
00:06:49.960 And they tried everything.
00:06:51.380 They're trying everything in their arsenal to do that.
00:06:53.940 And this is just another vector, just like the January 6th nonsense is a vector, just like the tax nonsense is a vector, just like the Russiagate nonsense is a vector.
00:07:05.260 They're using a multi-pronged approach, but the objective is to completely silence, suppress, crush, and neutralize Trump, but also Trump supporters and also the energies associated with the Trump movement.
00:07:27.440 It's as simple as that.
00:07:29.000 And if that's the goal, my hypothesis is no indictment, no charge, no trial even has to occur for them to largely achieve features of that goal.
00:07:42.780 They're trying to use criminal process in politics to try to cloud the prospects of a candidate, in this case Donald Trump, who they're afraid of.
00:07:53.440 And you don't even have to indict him to do that.
00:07:55.960 You could just try to make people concerned that, oh, the other shoe's going to drop at any moment.
00:08:00.860 And in a way, Darren, the national security state is going for the hat trick when it comes to election interference.
00:08:08.740 I mean, in the 2016 presidential contest, the national security state interfered with the Steele dossier.
00:08:15.560 You point that out in your piece saying that, oh, well, you know, Trump's a Russian agent and there are these tapes and he's going to be totally compromised by Putin.
00:08:24.380 By the way, Trump, only president in recent history to serve and not have Putin invade another country in our last few decades.
00:08:33.200 Then you have, in 2020, them also interfere in the presidential election by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop, showing clear compromise of the Biden family, clear financial ties and interests with the Chinese Communist Party.
00:08:50.680 And the national security state played a role in suppressing that.
00:08:54.220 That was not just big tech and big media.
00:08:56.340 That was big government and the FBI is now seeing a cascade of whistleblowers come forward to say that any time anything came in about the Bidens that was derogatory, they just labeled it foreign interference and downgraded it.
00:09:11.680 And now you literally have the third presidential contest in a row where the national security state is trying to pick the winners and losers by trying to now disqualify Trump and use criminal process against him before he's able to announce his candidacy.
00:09:25.760 So, I mean, they did it in 2016, they did it in 2020, we're watching it unfold right now in 2024.
00:09:33.540 Dr. Beattie, have we seen the last election where the FBI and the national security state isn't actively a participant in the electioneering process?
00:09:44.480 Well, I think that's a great question and I think it remains to be seen, but it really invokes a question that I've been asking really since,
00:09:55.760 since 2016, which is, you know, the national security state is doing everything in its power to make sure that the American people will never meddle in their own elections again.
00:10:07.800 And I think everything that you've described is consistent with that.
00:10:13.480 It is consistent, again, with what I've said, that politics as we generally understand it will really exist only at a superficial and performative level unless the national security state's role is brought into its proper relation to the will of the people.
00:10:35.900 And that's something that everyone who is an elected official who wants to run for office, everyone who wants to do something real has to understand.
00:10:45.460 It raises the stakes because if you want to actually do something real in politics, you can no longer subsist in the safe playpen of partisan finger pointing.
00:10:58.940 It can't just be, oh, look at the outrageous thing that AOC did or look what the socialists did, look at this or that.
00:11:06.500 If you want to play the real game, you have to ruffle the feathers of the national security state because they're the premier and chief bottleneck to anything meaningful happening politically.
00:11:19.020 And if you do that, as you well know, you're playing a very different game with very different stakes.
00:11:24.360 And very few people, understandably, are willing to get into that.
00:11:28.060 But that's just the reality.
00:11:29.840 And if we don't address that problem, we just don't have a country anymore.
00:11:34.940 We don't have a meaningful party anymore.
00:11:38.980 And we're only going to get more of the same but actually much, much worse if present trends continue.
00:11:46.120 Someone you and I both know well who is involved with some of these alphabet soup three-letter agencies told me recently,
00:11:55.560 you never can be a truly viable contender for the presidency in the United States if you don't have at least one element of the national security apparatus in your corner.
00:12:07.740 You know, I mean, maybe it's not the FBI, but then you've got to have the CIA.
00:12:11.420 And if you don't have them, you've got to have the NSA.
00:12:13.440 And if you don't have them, well, you've got to have Homeland Security.
00:12:16.720 And if you don't have them, you have to have DOD intelligence.
00:12:19.640 I mean, are we now at a point where the principal stakeholders in our politics are less the traditional interest groups,
00:12:26.640 you know, big sugar, big insurance, big health care, and it's actually big intelligence that's driving the train?
00:12:34.540 Well, I think all of those stakeholders still exert considerable influence.
00:12:39.080 But absolutely, we're seeing more and more the intelligence apparatus, which used to subsist at a kind of very quiet, subterranean level, make its presence felt.
00:12:51.780 And I think it's not that this is a new phenomenon.
00:12:56.920 It's not like this influence is new.
00:12:59.340 It's simply that Trump was the first president in a very long time to pose a meaningful challenge to the authority of the intelligence apparatus.
00:13:11.600 And that's why we're seeing the response that we're seeing.
00:13:15.100 And that's why politics is very different from what it ordinarily has been.
00:13:20.460 And you're seeing such kind of dramatic and otherwise really unimaginable things happening,
00:13:26.020 like the FBI raiding the private home of a former president over some nothing trivial, kind of de minimis record storage violation.
00:13:38.080 You made the argument in a number of your writings and in your reporting that folks can check out at revolver.news that America is a joke nation.
00:13:47.560 And I bristle at that because I don't want to believe it.
00:13:51.720 I think perhaps I'm a bit more optimistic than you are.
00:13:55.000 But there is a quote from your piece in Newsweek.
00:13:58.600 Unless and until a radical change occurs, conservatives must treat the FBI and the rest of the national security apparatus as the hostile and partially illegitimate institutions that they are
00:14:12.160 and not run back into the arms of their national security tormentor whenever the uniparty regime saber rattles about the threat from some hostile entity overseas.
00:14:24.580 It's almost like you're describing battered spouse syndrome, Dr. Beattie, that you have these political actors, as you've described them in Washington,
00:14:33.800 who get abused by the national security apparatus.
00:14:36.300 But at the first opportunity to run back and say, no, no, no, I'll love you more this time, they do so.
00:14:43.020 How do we break that cycle?
00:14:44.920 That's a great formulation.
00:14:46.740 And that's exactly what what what's going on is that, you know, on the one hand, you have all of these national security organizations from the CIA to the FBI to Department of Homeland Security,
00:15:00.880 you name it, that are not only not on the side of American patriots, but are actively hostile to American patriots and not simply incidentally hostile.
00:15:12.560 You have the DHS, which even under Trump proclaimed effectively, you know, white supremacist domestic terror is the number one national security threat.
00:15:23.980 And I think by now we all know that that's code language for Trump supporters.
00:15:30.260 And that's how it's played out.
00:15:31.620 And you see that in the Michigan entrapment operation and everything else.
00:15:36.080 And so you have the national security apparatus, which is at war against Trump supporters and Trump supporters more or less are beginning to understand this.
00:15:47.500 I point out in the piece that there's something about the conservative political psychology that somewhat resists this because it's so disposed to venerate just and well functioning institutions of authority,
00:16:02.220 whereas people on the left, to put it charitably, want.
00:16:06.080 To challenge unjust institutions of authority, people on the right, want to venerate just institutions of authority.
00:16:12.780 But all of these institutions are now hostile and many people are coming to understand this,
00:16:18.960 except the second you hear the same national security apparatus that hates your guts start to say, well, wait a minute.
00:16:28.860 We need your help, you know, with this Cold War with China to feed the coffers of Raytheon.
00:16:34.960 We need your help with, you know, with this Russia nonsense.
00:16:39.560 We need your help with this largely manufactured threat overseas.
00:16:44.320 We need you to come in line.
00:16:46.080 And actually, it's largely conservatives that are paying, doing most of the sacrifices on a military level, too.
00:16:53.340 And I think at a certain point, we need to kind of reevaluate this relationship because the contract seems to have been broken in some decisive degree.
00:17:03.500 And I think it's reasonable for patriotic Americans to say, look, national security state, look, stakeholders of the globalist American empire.
00:17:13.640 If you expect sacrifices from us, can we at the very least ask you not to use your considerable resources to destroy us domestically?
00:17:25.100 And I think they're still kind of catching up to this new reality, but it is frustrating to see.
00:17:31.980 It's like the second the second any kind of alleged foreign threat is mentioned by any of these hostile institutions, you see a lot of well-meaning conservatives just, you know, completely forget about the last beating and say, OK, sign me up.
00:17:49.580 I want to help. I want to help. I want to fight for your interests. Well, who are you really fighting for?
00:17:53.420 And I think as things progress, this will become more and more of a pronounced problem.
00:18:01.760 And it's a problem that the stakeholders in the national security state will have to take seriously.
00:18:07.920 So I think it's time to get rid of this, you know, beaten spouse syndrome.
00:18:12.940 It's time to stop being cheap dates and it's time to start demanding some level of reciprocity and respect from these institutions.
00:18:23.320 Well, and Darren, the reason the reason that's so important is because their actions are becoming like more acute with each move on the board.
00:18:32.780 Right. Like, let's go back to 2016. They thought that obtaining some secret warrant for secret surveillance that nobody would know about through illegitimate means would be OK.
00:18:45.520 They thought that using the authorized leak structure that the DOJ absolutely has in place to try to get information out so that their hands are clean, but so that others are smeared.
00:18:56.920 And then in 2020, they didn't use those clandestine tools. They actively suppressed the Hunter Biden information.
00:19:06.540 They used the strongest possible hand that they could to say, no, we are going to jettison this, to degrade this.
00:19:14.320 And as if that wasn't acute enough, now we get to the run up to 2024 and they're literally now raiding houses of political opponents.
00:19:23.580 You know what I mean? Right. We're in a country right now where we got grandmothers being attacked on the streets in broad daylight.
00:19:30.740 We got people being carjacked in our cities and we have political opponents being raided by the regime in power.
00:19:36.580 That sounds more like Venezuela than it does the United States of America.
00:19:41.400 I want to bring us to the moment in January 2023 when Republicans take control of the Congress.
00:19:46.780 I believe that you have to have a three-vector attack on the national security state's worst elements.
00:19:55.180 First, power of the purse, funding.
00:19:57.900 We cannot continue to fund the institutions that get turned against our people.
00:20:02.400 Not one more damn penny if we find out that this is what it certainly appears to be from our initial inspection.
00:20:10.840 Second, structural changes, authorities. That's stuff like FISA repeal.
00:20:17.520 My colleague Dan Bishop of North Carolina suggested that we just quite literally break up the institutions of the FBI and DOJ,
00:20:25.120 get them out of the beltway of Washington, D.C., and make them go live out in real America
00:20:29.720 so that you don't have this vortex of politics infecting them.
00:20:33.340 And then the third, which is really, I think, a well-detailed in your piece in Newsweek that people should check out,
00:20:39.900 is the counter-investigation strategy, running out the whistleblowers,
00:20:44.680 making sure that when people have the courage to come forward and say that they've seen something wrong,
00:20:51.640 that we're able to follow up on that.
00:20:54.160 So starve them of the money, restructure the enterprise,
00:20:57.720 and then follow to ground every investigation whistleblower fact pattern that we can.
00:21:03.880 Do you think that's a worthy strategy?
00:21:06.920 And is there anything in that that I'm missing?
00:21:09.800 I think that's an excellent strategy to start with.
00:21:12.780 And the question is really in the implementation,
00:21:16.280 because, you know, you're one of the stalwarts, you're one of the firebrands,
00:21:20.600 but there aren't very many like you.
00:21:23.280 And I wonder if there is a critical mass to really implement something with teeth.
00:21:30.500 I hope there is.
00:21:31.580 I think we're close.
00:21:32.820 But it's I think for these things, it's all about who's going to have the focus,
00:21:38.720 the determination and the courage to actually follow through with this
00:21:42.940 when there are so many opportunities to kind of have a way that you can look like you're doing something to the public
00:21:50.280 when you're actually not really doing something.
00:21:53.320 As for the whistleblower issue, I think that's very important.
00:21:58.480 It's something to explore.
00:21:59.700 It's something that doesn't even at the present moment,
00:22:03.320 doesn't even require Republican control of Congress.
00:22:07.160 The GOP is sitting on a ton of money.
00:22:09.860 We you know, we all see those emails of solicitation.
00:22:12.960 They're sitting on a lot of money.
00:22:14.340 I think they could do a lot worse than to dedicate some of that money, a considerable sum,
00:22:21.720 to a fund that would defend and support potential whistleblowers within this national security apparatus we're talking about.
00:22:32.260 So, Darren, there is a tool that we're going to have that we don't now.
00:22:35.960 Subpoena power, the ability to bring people in for depots.
00:22:38.680 So, like, right now I get a whistleblower case.
00:22:41.060 I can run it to ground with open source.
00:22:43.940 Our staff can conduct interviews.
00:22:46.220 We can expose certain things.
00:22:48.340 But, man, when I'm able to take these whistleblower investigations that we are currently running,
00:22:52.140 I mean, these are active investigations that we do work on every day that involve current people who are employees at the Bureau.
00:22:59.340 When we can do the document requests,
00:23:01.420 when we can compare those documents to travel logs, expenditures,
00:23:05.300 it really opens the door to the type of investigative work we can do.
00:23:08.300 No, absolutely.
00:23:09.360 No, absolutely.
00:23:10.260 I think in conjunction with control of the house, it can be a very powerful tool.
00:23:15.180 I just don't think it needs to wait for that.
00:23:18.320 I think it's something that could be done now is to start, you know,
00:23:21.480 thinking about what the process would be to set up such a fund.
00:23:25.120 Because if we've seen just in recent months how powerful it is when whistleblowers are willing to step forward,
00:23:31.220 and I think there would be a lot more of that, or at least there could be if there were a more favorable incentive structure in place for such potential whistleblowers.
00:23:43.980 And, you know, of course, this is predicated on the assumption that there's still, you know,
00:23:50.100 a meaningful number of patriots within these organizations.
00:23:53.200 But I think there are.
00:23:54.300 I think there are a lot of good people who are still there.
00:23:56.860 And, you know, they probably joined these institutions because they wanted to do the right thing for the country,
00:24:04.800 and they wanted to be brave.
00:24:07.520 And actually now they have an opportunity, probably not what they thought it was,
00:24:11.500 but now they have the opportunity to actually do something brave and right for the country,
00:24:16.780 which is the original reason they joined these institutions in the first place.
00:24:20.180 And you give a special deal at Revolver.News to employees of the FBI, right?
00:24:26.060 Yes, we give them free, ad-free subscriptions, no leaks required.
00:24:31.700 This is just out of the generosity of our souls at Revolver because we know we have so many fans within the Bureau.
00:24:39.680 We just wanted to give back.
00:24:41.940 Dr. Darren Beattie, the publisher of Revolver.News, has a hot piece out in Newsweek
00:24:47.000 about what the Republican Party needs to do to fight back.
00:24:50.580 We need backup.
00:24:51.440 You know, Darren, you covered that race out in Washington's 3rd Congressional District,
00:24:56.680 Joe Kent prevailing over Jamie Herrera-Butler toward the general election out there.
00:25:02.840 Some races feel like they mean a little more than the other ones.
00:25:07.380 I get the sense that Joe Kent's presence in the Republican conference will really do what you described
00:25:14.260 and getting us to the point where we're not engaging in just performative lobs back and forth of rhetoric,
00:25:20.440 but we're actually running these investigations to ground.
00:25:23.500 Am I right that that one might mean a little more than some of the rest?
00:25:27.160 Absolutely.
00:25:27.980 I think Sir Kent is a very courageous individual.
00:25:32.740 He has the right background.
00:25:34.920 And that's something that's needed is, you know, you need the courage, you need the brains,
00:25:39.260 and you need the background, the kind of institutional knowledge.
00:25:41.980 And I think he combines all of those things.
00:25:44.300 And so I'm very encouraged by the fact that in every expectation, he will be joining the team,
00:25:52.680 the elite few within Congress that actually, you know, has the courage and the discernment
00:26:01.220 to take on the national security apparatus.
00:26:04.500 The inward turning of the national security state against our people is the greatest domestic threat to our country.
00:26:13.080 It's actually not even, there's not even a close second from my standpoint.
00:26:16.800 And Dr. Beattie lays it out each and every day at revolver.news.
00:26:20.120 Check it out.
00:26:21.120 Darren, thanks for joining us on FireBrain.
00:26:23.000 Thank you.
00:26:23.820 And just one quick thing.
00:26:24.980 I would like to plug a piece at Revolver News that provides definitive proof that the FBI is withholding critical footage of the alleged January 6th pipe bomber.
00:26:37.320 So if any viewers haven't seen that, it's really a must read, a must look.
00:26:42.280 It's proof.
00:26:43.560 And we should start demanding that footage.
00:26:46.480 Why would they hide it from us?
00:26:48.740 I'll leave it to the audience to speculate.
00:26:51.720 But they are hiding it.
00:26:52.780 So everyone should check that out.
00:26:54.980 Thanks, Darren.
00:26:55.740 We'll push people there and we'll definitely send out the link.
00:26:58.540 Thank you.
00:26:59.700 So it's not just the national security state at the FBI and the Department of Justice creating problems in our country.
00:27:05.680 We also see a weaponizing of a lot of the bureaucratic entities that we normally would have viewed as more benign or at least less heavily armed.
00:27:16.980 It seems more and more that the IRS is gearing up for some sort of war.
00:27:23.380 I hope they're not.
00:27:24.980 We already reported on the millions of rounds of ammunition ordered by the IRS and I introduced a bill to stop it.
00:27:34.180 Now we see that the IRS, through the legislation that Nancy Pelosi has on the floor of the House right now, is receiving billions more in funding and looking to hire over 87,000 new IRS agents.
00:27:48.760 Now, I've been in this job for three terms now, and I have never had an American say, you know what, we need Congressman Gates.
00:27:56.300 I'm worried that we just don't have enough authority and manpower and ammunition at the IRS.
00:28:02.540 I'm actually pretty sure that there's not a single member of our elected government that has ever heard that from a single American.
00:28:09.880 But now, they're going to need new people at the IRS to engage in this new grant of authority that they have.
00:28:18.020 So check out this job description posted by the IRS that was quickly deleted.
00:28:24.720 In the description of the job, it says that the requirements are, quote, maintaining a level of fitness required to respond to life threatening situations on the job,
00:28:36.340 carrying a firearm and being too willing to use deadly force if necessary, and being willing to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments.
00:28:48.980 Is the IRS, like, building up an army physically fit enough to engage in deadly force?
00:28:55.460 That's crazy.
00:28:57.220 Now, the IRS has a bad history of targeting conservatives.
00:29:00.680 Think about Obama and Lois Lerner.
00:29:03.440 No one has ever been held accountable for their targeting of conservatives, by the way.
00:29:09.680 But the IRS did all of that in a day's work.
00:29:13.380 The question now is, what does Biden's IRS intend to do with its newly weaponized and expanded powers?
00:29:21.260 Why are they hiring these people that they say have to be willing to use deadly force against Americans at the IRS?
00:29:27.700 Who's going to need the massive stores of ammunition?
00:29:30.900 When Great Britain was preparing to wage war on the colonies, Patrick Henry gave his famous liberty or death speech.
00:29:40.240 And he famously argued,
00:29:42.340 Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation?
00:29:48.400 Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love?
00:29:57.900 Let us not deceive ourselves.
00:30:01.140 These are the implements of war and subjugation, the last argument to which kings resort.
00:30:07.240 I asked, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission?
00:30:16.200 Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it?
00:30:19.960 No, sir, they are meant for us.
00:30:22.980 They can be meant for no other.
00:30:25.880 That was Patrick Henry in his time.
00:30:27.860 But is the massive expansion of the IRS the work of a government that really wants to reconcile us?
00:30:34.380 Do they need five million rounds of ammunition for their reconciliation?
00:30:38.740 Does deadly force some element of national unity?
00:30:43.040 Wasn't Joe Biden the guy that ran for president because he promised he was going to make everything normal again?
00:30:47.260 There's nothing normal about IRS agents armed to the gills punishing regular Americans.
00:30:52.580 And by the way, that's exactly what they intend to do, force regular folks into submission.
00:30:59.400 The weaponization and expansion of the IRS is meant for you.
00:31:04.300 No other motive can be assigned, Patrick Henry might say.
00:31:08.440 They aren't going after the elites and their offshore holdings.
00:31:11.740 No, those folks will have plenty of high-priced accountants and lawyers to make sure that they still get out of paying taxes.
00:31:17.540 This move by Joe Biden is not to go after the poor because they don't owe any taxes.
00:31:24.620 They're going after working class and middle class people.
00:31:28.020 They will squeeze every dollar out of you that they can to fund their reckless spending,
00:31:32.520 their payment for interest on a debt that they created,
00:31:36.540 and to keep up with the inflation that they have caused.
00:31:41.200 Times are tough, but we need to stay strong.
00:31:43.500 We cannot let the IRS further take advantage of law-abiding Americans.
00:31:49.360 We've seen it before.
00:31:50.320 We do not need to see it again.
00:31:52.000 We're going to keep fighting to rein in the administrative state,
00:31:55.020 and when we take back the Congress in 2022,
00:31:57.500 we are going to hold these bad actors accountable once again.
00:32:01.360 With this in mind, I have introduced H.R. 8268,
00:32:04.860 the Disarm the IRS Act,
00:32:07.340 to ensure that the IRS will stop acquiring ammunition upon its enactment.
00:32:13.500 Well, that's the trouble that we see from the IRS,
00:32:16.460 but there is much more in this crazy spending bill
00:32:20.460 that Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer have agreed on,
00:32:23.300 and here to break it down with me is my legislative director,
00:32:26.360 back on Firebrand, Mike Robertson.
00:32:28.840 And Mike, just like, for folks watching at home
00:32:31.860 that want to understand the, like, complexities of this,
00:32:35.700 hold up the bill.
00:32:36.760 Just what you've been going through.
00:32:38.880 Everyone on Firebrand can see.
00:32:40.780 My colleague, Mike.
00:32:41.920 Whoa.
00:32:42.180 Hit the mic there.
00:32:43.260 There you go.
00:32:43.700 Sorry to everyone listening on podcast.
00:32:45.000 It's quite a heavy load.
00:32:46.000 How many pages is that?
00:32:47.400 730 pages.
00:32:48.640 Bring that mic a little closer so folks can hear you.
00:32:50.680 So, 730-some-odd pages.
00:32:53.160 730.
00:32:54.480 Wow.
00:32:54.920 And you've read them.
00:32:55.780 So, one of the elements of this bill is this 15% minimum tax.
00:33:01.920 Why is that a bad idea for Americans?
00:33:03.840 Right now.
00:33:04.520 Bring that mic a little closer to you.
00:33:05.740 Right now we're coming off of 9%.
00:33:08.360 Here, if you twist this one right here.
00:33:10.320 All right.
00:33:10.740 There we go.
00:33:11.760 That bill wore me out a little bit.
00:33:13.280 I hear you.
00:33:13.900 All right.
00:33:14.200 15% minimum tax.
00:33:15.620 Yeah.
00:33:15.820 Coming off of 9% year-over-year inflation,
00:33:18.320 I just do not understand whether there is some incompetence
00:33:23.160 and understanding basic economics or some deception here
00:33:26.700 because taxing businesses, double-taxing business for making capital investments
00:33:33.120 because they are already being taxed on their book income
00:33:35.500 is not what's going to lead us to inflation reduction.
00:33:39.380 You know, in fact, a little side note, I just saw on CNN this morning,
00:33:43.500 the headlines everywhere inside the Beltway,
00:33:46.220 House set to pass sweeping health care and climate change bill.
00:33:49.780 And you know what I'm missing when I see that lower third is inflation
00:33:54.140 soon to be reduced immediately.
00:33:56.540 Well, isn't the most recent analysis we got from Wharton
00:33:59.380 that this will actually increase inflation in the short term?
00:34:02.040 Like, to me, hearing that we're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars
00:34:07.020 with the hopes that that will lower inflation
00:34:09.740 is sort of like me saying I'm going to eat my way to weight loss.
00:34:12.860 Exactly.
00:34:13.300 And that's why I have to doubt the authenticity and honesty
00:34:18.420 on behalf of the Democrats.
00:34:19.920 Maybe there's a little combination of not understanding
00:34:22.900 what's really at play here.
00:34:24.100 But we are trying to grasp onto a fertile labor market.
00:34:28.560 We want to make sure people can get jobs in this country.
00:34:30.840 And by making sure, as you mentioned with the IRS,
00:34:33.840 we're going to six times the budget is what the $80 billion is for the IRS.
00:34:38.940 So let's make sure hardworking Americans are poorer.
00:34:41.360 No agency in Washington, D.C. should ever grow sixfold.
00:34:45.700 Exactly.
00:34:46.360 And they're never going away either.
00:34:48.380 And speaking of going away, the Democrats,
00:34:52.400 the people voting for this legislation aren't thinking,
00:34:54.460 hey, we want to get rid of inflation.
00:34:57.760 We're going to get rid of programs.
00:34:59.100 They probably forgot that some of these programs have been existent forever.
00:35:03.160 And so we want to make sure we're collecting more of your money as an American.
00:35:07.160 We want to make sure if you have a successful business
00:35:08.920 and you're looking to hire people,
00:35:10.160 you're going to have to fork over more of your income.
00:35:12.640 So you're going to have less of it to give people bonuses to hire.
00:35:16.760 So that's just one part.
00:35:17.640 That's only one part.
00:35:18.620 Well, let's keep drilling down on this 15% tax
00:35:21.400 because I could see the argument among some people saying,
00:35:24.120 well, gee, Congressman,
00:35:25.380 these big corporations that don't pay a lot of taxes,
00:35:27.940 I pay taxes,
00:35:29.200 shouldn't they pay taxes on their gross?
00:35:31.220 But if you drill down into all 700 and some odd pages as we have,
00:35:36.640 what we see is also a complex system of tax credits
00:35:41.480 that are intended for really social engineering more than anything.
00:35:46.100 And so there's the 15% tax,
00:35:48.840 which is going to drive capital offshore,
00:35:50.960 which is going to ensure that we don't have investment in our country,
00:35:53.860 which is going to enrich all the accountants and lawyers,
00:35:56.400 but actually hurt regular folks.
00:35:57.840 But then they're going to create this system of ESG tax credits.
00:36:02.220 Explain to people what ESG tax credits are.
00:36:05.200 So this is targeted for a category of self-proclaimed corporations
00:36:09.940 that you may have heard are going to reduce emissions,
00:36:13.740 are going to make sure that their focus is not on profits to hire more folks,
00:36:18.740 but to make sure that they're equitable
00:36:20.300 and that they're, you know, as a facade doing things
00:36:23.760 to make sure that the world's temperature isn't going to warm.
00:36:27.000 And when in reality,
00:36:28.720 this legislation is going to punish your average corporations in America
00:36:32.720 making at least $1 billion.
00:36:34.100 So above average, but profitable.
00:36:36.320 As you said, they're going to drive away those receipts
00:36:39.680 and reappropriate them via tax credit
00:36:42.100 to companies that claim they're just more ethical than you
00:36:45.400 or than a large business.
00:36:47.420 So it's very much a favoritism bill.
00:36:49.740 And by the way, what does this have to do with an inflation reduction?
00:36:53.240 Nothing.
00:36:53.580 Yeah, nothing at all.
00:36:54.540 Now, it does also, the bill does create some Obamacare extenders.
00:36:59.600 I know when you're thinking about inflation, you're thinking,
00:37:02.020 I know, what I really need to solve my inflation issues
00:37:04.960 is more of an Obamacare extender.
00:37:07.140 Explain to folks what the bill does in that regard.
00:37:08.840 Yeah, so they're going to, they want to renew subsidies,
00:37:12.720 credits for enrollees in Obamacare,
00:37:14.940 making up to 400 times above the poverty line.
00:37:19.280 And my calculations are showing $300,000 could be your household income
00:37:24.020 to make sure that you get that tax credit that you deserve.
00:37:27.600 Meanwhile, the middle class, the downtrodden,
00:37:30.660 that may not be opted into Obamacare because they don't need it,
00:37:34.200 are still paying for all the other taxes that the IRS will come get from them.
00:37:38.560 So we've already, you know, we've got 50% minimum tax,
00:37:42.380 there's some other, there's a 1% punitive excise tax on buying back stocks,
00:37:47.060 and we've got the IRS, and that's just the first portion of this bill.
00:37:51.360 We can move on to health care negotiation and price controls,
00:37:55.440 but it doesn't end there.
00:37:56.420 I mean, again, we're probably only 200 in at this point.
00:37:59.500 Well, when you have a bill of this size and complexity,
00:38:02.440 there's always going to be some real crap in it,
00:38:04.360 and you've highlighted some of it for us.
00:38:07.120 Now, there's a $10 million appropriation to, quote,
00:38:12.580 address racial equity issues within the Department of Agriculture.
00:38:17.900 I've got it here.
00:38:18.580 Now, I just thought that was how crops grow.
00:38:20.820 Does white supremacy invariably affect the growing of the food weed?
00:38:29.380 Not at all.
00:38:30.160 It's unrelated.
00:38:30.760 And, I mean, my take, first of all, if there is such a racist government entity
00:38:37.020 that requires $10 million to pay to investigate, to hell with the agency.
00:38:42.640 Let's get rid of it.
00:38:43.520 I mean, it's a little bit of a doublespeak here where there may or may not be a lack
00:38:48.160 of equity and diversity in the agency,
00:38:50.480 and instead of putting your foot on the table and saying this is ridiculous,
00:38:54.440 this is against American values,
00:38:56.120 we're just going to throw more of the taxpayer dollars and we'll find out.
00:38:58.960 Yeah, so, I mean, in this country we've seen a broken supply chain over baby formula.
00:39:03.460 We've seen fuel costs rise so fast we can't afford to get places.
00:39:06.960 We've seen those compounding fuel prices affect us at the grocery store every time we want to get
00:39:11.240 stuff for our family to eat.
00:39:12.740 But if you're worried about the cost of food or groceries, fuel, any of that stuff,
00:39:18.360 don't worry.
00:39:19.420 The Democrats have $10 million to make sure that the USDA isn't so racist.
00:39:24.580 I can't get enough of this, but it's not just the USDA.
00:39:28.760 It's the Department of Transportation, too.
00:39:30.960 Now we're talking about $3 billion to stop all of those racist roads and bridges
00:39:36.680 that Pete Buttigieg has been telling us about.
00:39:39.100 What is that going to do for Americans?
00:39:41.060 Nothing at all.
00:39:41.700 It's really code for preferential grants to certain areas that are probably not where you live.
00:39:47.420 And we just want to make sure that you as a taxpayer, everybody watching, your money
00:39:52.600 absorbed by the now six times larger IRS is going to be distributed somewhere where you're
00:39:57.160 not going to see any ROI on it.
00:39:58.720 That's the Buttigieg code.
00:40:00.140 $87 billion for the Civilian Climate Corps.
00:40:05.040 Yeah.
00:40:05.520 What is the Civilian Climate Corps?
00:40:07.060 Good question.
00:40:07.720 We're still trying to discover what they're up to over there.
00:40:10.120 But we just have all these fancy terms.
00:40:12.660 We're running out of acronyms and syllogisms, I think.
00:40:15.700 And so now we just have new team names.
00:40:17.380 Is this like just a bunch of angry Karens, like waving their fist at the sky, telling
00:40:21.400 the earth not to warm?
00:40:22.860 Yeah, and maybe your wallet.
00:40:25.380 Well, and there are regulatory powers that are new and that are going to really increase
00:40:30.420 costs for business.
00:40:32.040 It's hard to think of any industry that will not have higher regulatory costs after this
00:40:38.180 bill goes into effect.
00:40:40.500 And when business has higher regulatory compliance costs, they pass that on to the consumer,
00:40:45.060 which results in higher prices, which contributes to inflation.
00:40:50.020 Absolutely.
00:40:50.180 What are the industries you think are going to be hardest hit?
00:40:53.680 Energy?
00:40:55.260 Energy, definitely.
00:40:56.680 We haven't gotten there yet, but there are some punitive taxes on the cost of inputs.
00:41:02.740 We're talking about how we want.
00:41:04.080 I mean, I get the left doesn't like fossil fuels, but we can't just cut it off immediately.
00:41:08.860 For example, in the energy industry, we've got an increase from 9.7 cents to 16.4 cents
00:41:18.480 on the cost and excise tax of importing petrol and crude oil.
00:41:23.540 We want to have a strong energy industry in the United States, but this is the cart before
00:41:27.980 the horse.
00:41:28.760 We're trying to get over what's now an impending recession or a current recession, if you will.
00:41:33.260 But the Biden solution, within a bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, I'll keep reminding
00:41:37.700 everybody, is to increase the cost of fuel, even if it's coming from abroad, before we're
00:41:43.300 deciding to unleash our energy capabilities here.
00:41:45.920 So if you're following me, we're trying to switch, or they, excuse me, are trying to
00:41:50.340 switch the paradigm of all use of fossil fuel oil.
00:41:54.280 And we know that's the Al Gore motive and the end goal.
00:41:56.680 But what's really a tragedy is they want to do this all in one piece of legislation during
00:42:02.340 a recession.
00:42:03.480 We need cheap gas prices.
00:42:05.640 Why is it the idea of the Democrats to increase excise taxes on them right now?
00:42:10.180 Well, the pain is the point, right?
00:42:13.680 I mean, you see that in the public comments of the people in the Biden administration who
00:42:18.180 just don't understand why every American doesn't go buy a $60,000 electric car, right?
00:42:22.640 They want you to feel so much pain that you comply with their worldview.
00:42:28.560 You know, when the history is sort of written on this legislation, I think we'll clearly see
00:42:33.160 that it did not favorably impact inflation, but that it did centralize a lot more power
00:42:40.000 in Washington, D.C.
00:42:41.160 I mean, all these themes, a militarized, vastly six-toubled IRS, a new climate corps, these sweeping
00:42:49.600 new authorities for the Department of Transportation to think about roads and bridges, not in terms
00:42:54.440 of connecting people and goods, but in terms of whatever the sophistry of racial equity
00:42:59.360 is that they feel at the moment.
00:43:01.900 And the choices that businesses make, that states make from a regulatory standpoint, those
00:43:07.600 seem to really be stolen from the people in this bill.
00:43:10.740 And speaking of who this bill really benefits, back to if you have more money, you can afford
00:43:15.340 an electric vehicle, don't worry, there's a tax credit in there.
00:43:17.980 So this, once again...
00:43:19.800 Yeah, so when we tried to simplify the tax code, make it easier on people, double the
00:43:25.700 standard exemption, make it where you can fill out your taxes on a postcard, now this
00:43:29.520 is a way to re-complicate things.
00:43:31.380 And regular folks don't need a more complicated tax code.
00:43:36.620 The ESG corporate credits here, you're not getting.
00:43:40.900 You're just getting the higher prices and the inflation.
00:43:43.560 But then somebody in some boardroom is going to be able to say, oh, well, don't worry,
00:43:47.860 we were able to find some clever way to obtain some credit or avoid some tax liability.
00:43:54.060 And if they don't, then they'll just push their cash, their intellectual property, their
00:43:58.120 manufacturing offshore.
00:44:00.400 I mean, for all of the investment we saw come back to our country during the Trump economy,
00:44:07.040 how much of that should we expect is going to be reversed with legislation like this?
00:44:11.460 I would say billions, billions.
00:44:14.200 I mean, we have $433 billion, I think, is the total top line on the spending.
00:44:19.000 Now, when you search on the internet, that'll be scrubbed because they're counting all...
00:44:23.700 We haven't got...
00:44:25.200 They're counting all of these offsets in spending and why it's reducing inflation to projected
00:44:31.160 tax revenues.
00:44:32.420 So they're claiming that this is reducing spending because the spending is coming from you to pay
00:44:38.120 for the bill.
00:44:38.900 So billions is my answer.
00:44:40.340 And unbelievable, you know, I get asked the question all the time when Republicans are
00:44:44.420 able to get sufficient, you know, control over levers of power in our government, will
00:44:49.840 we be able to undo this?
00:44:51.420 And frankly, we don't have a great track record of that.
00:44:54.360 I mean, we went and promised people were going to repeal Obamacare and then didn't.
00:44:57.960 I don't know that the Republicans are going to fire these 87,000 IRS agents, though we should.
00:45:04.200 And the last thing the Republicans do when we take power is constrain spending the way we promised.
00:45:09.160 And you and I have discussed this a lot.
00:45:11.920 This is not an impossible problem to solve with inflation, okay?
00:45:15.500 This is not Vladimir Putin visiting it on you.
00:45:19.000 This is not some global, inescapable economic condition.
00:45:23.620 Joe Biden's policies and the policies of this Democratic Congress did this to you.
00:45:28.780 They caused this harm.
00:45:30.320 They hurt your business.
00:45:31.540 They hurt your pocketbook.
00:45:32.720 And they hurt your family.
00:45:34.880 And I believe that when Republicans get in control, we have to start dismantling this
00:45:39.820 brick by brick, stone by stone.
00:45:42.460 My friend Senator Rand Paul says when Democrats are in charge, Republicans are the conservative
00:45:46.760 party.
00:45:47.620 And when Republicans are in charge, there is no conservative party.
00:45:51.380 Well, you know what?
00:45:51.800 We have to defy that history to save our country.
00:45:55.280 I'm going to be voting against this terrible spending bill.
00:45:58.140 I'm going to be doing everything I can to encourage my Republican colleagues to actually, you
00:46:04.240 know, exercise some fiscal discipline.
00:46:07.120 And you know what?
00:46:07.500 If we have to shut this government down in order to bring it to its appropriate level in
00:46:13.480 American life, then you know what?
00:46:15.320 We may have to get ready for some shutdowns.
00:46:17.120 Mike, thank you for going through this legislation.
00:46:19.520 Thanks for breaking out some of the most troubling points of it for our audience.
00:46:24.020 And we look forward to being back with you soon with another episode of Firebrain.
00:46:29.080 Roll the credits.
00:46:54.020 Firebrain.
00:47:12.480 Firebrain.