The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - November 10, 2022


Episode 74 LIVE： McCarthy, McConnell, McDaniel： McFailure (feat. Russ Vought) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz


Episode Stats


Length

30 minutes

Words per minute

180.63762

Word count

5,462

Sentence count

312

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Matt Gaetz joins Tucker Carlson to discuss his controversial comments on former Vice President Dick Cheney and her comments about President Trump and his wife, Liz Cheney. Rep. Steve Scalise and Rep. Kevin McCarthy have come under fire for comments they made about the former vice president.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:01.000 The embattled Congressman Matt Gaetz.
00:00:03.000 Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress
00:00:06.000 who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
00:00:10.000 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.
00:00:13.000 He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws.
00:00:16.000 So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
00:00:20.000 If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer,
00:00:23.000 if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground,
00:00:27.000 then welcome, my fellow patriots. You are in the right place.
00:00:31.000 This is the movement for you.
00:00:33.000 You ever watch this guy on television?
00:00:35.000 It's like a machine. Matt Gaetz.
00:00:38.000 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.
00:00:41.000 Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.
00:00:46.000 They aren't really coming for me. They're coming for you.
00:00:49.000 I'm just in the way.
00:00:57.000 Biden's closing message on ultra-MAGA and threats to democracy worked.
00:01:02.000 Establishment Republicans will blame Trump as they always do.
00:01:05.000 Never mind that other presidents from George W. Bush to Barack Obama
00:01:09.000 failed to keep their otherwise winning coalitions together
00:01:13.000 during non-presidential elections.
00:01:16.000 As I wrote in a recent column published in the Daily Caller,
00:01:19.000 quote, we had an economic boom under President Trump, secured the border,
00:01:23.000 and rewrote the political map.
00:01:25.000 Why would we stop the progress now and go back to Republicans supported by Wall Street?
00:01:30.000 We shouldn't bench our star quarterback at halftime.
00:01:33.000 There are so many more accomplishments left for us to achieve with President Trump.
00:01:38.000 There's still much swamp to be drained in every administrative agency of our government.
00:01:43.000 There are still miles of wall to be built
00:01:45.000 and a long-time counterproductive foreign policies to be reversed.
00:01:50.000 President Trump was and is targeted by the intelligence community
00:01:54.000 because he applies intelligent thought to avoid wars, not start them.
00:01:59.000 The saying goes, if you're taking flack, you're over the target.
00:02:03.000 President Trump has not stopped taking flack from the lying media,
00:02:07.000 the non-stop investigations, and that's because he's the swamp's worst nightmare.
00:02:12.000 So, advocacy organizations will say that unmarried women went overwhelmingly against Republicans
00:02:18.000 and that the red wave hit a wall.
00:02:21.000 Matter of fact, one of our Twitch commenters just put up that 68% of unmarried women voted Democrat.
00:02:27.000 Now, substantial data suggests that we've got work to do there,
00:02:31.000 and we shouldn't be so arrogant as to assume we know how or why that dynamic fully played out.
00:02:36.000 So, we should listen, learn, and lead.
00:02:41.000 But to lead in a slim majority, we need leaders,
00:02:45.000 not people who have sold shares of themselves for such a long period of time
00:02:50.000 to the lobbyists and PACs that they no longer have agency over their own decisions.
00:02:55.000 House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wants to be Speaker.
00:02:59.000 He is not my first choice, or frankly, even in my top 100.
00:03:06.000 Before the election, audio recordings were leaked of conversations between McCarthy, Liz Cheney, and House Whip Steve Scalise.
00:03:14.000 Because I was criticizing Liz Cheney with words, they thought I might be putting people in danger.
00:03:21.000 Steve Scalise, who wants to be a majority leader, said that my criticism of Liz Cheney might have been criminal.
00:03:28.000 Here's my discussion with Tucker Carlson on that matter.
00:03:32.000 Congressman, thanks so much for coming on.
00:03:33.000 So, you were accused by Kevin McCarthy, the guy who is in line to be Speaker of the House,
00:03:38.000 of committing an act of violence by giving your opinion, by saying he was against the former president.
00:03:43.000 Like, is speech violence? What do you make of this?
00:03:47.000 Well, I was just describing the facts.
00:03:49.000 You had a group of people who were going to try to join with Democrats to impeach President Trump,
00:03:54.000 and that is precisely what has played out.
00:03:56.000 You mentioned he's in line to be Speaker.
00:03:58.000 I mean, I don't know that Kevin McCarthy is in line to be Speaker.
00:04:00.000 I don't know if the guy could get an account on Truth Social at this point,
00:04:03.000 based on the inconsistency between the recordings and what he says to us.
00:04:07.000 And it is debasing for Republicans to give this guy a standing ovation after he smears Trump, lies to the country,
00:04:14.000 and then tries to sick big tech and the DOJ on members of Congress whose views he doesn't agree with
00:04:21.000 and whose factual representations are ultimately borne out.
00:04:24.000 And the crazy thing about this, Tucker, is that it was all done for the sake of protecting Liz Cheney.
00:04:30.000 I mean, at the time I was protecting President Trump from impeachment and Kevin McCarthy was protecting Liz Cheney from criticism.
00:04:37.000 And now she is owning them with their own words.
00:04:42.000 And maybe Liz Cheney has done us a favor because now, finally, you don't have to be a lobbyist with a $5,000 check to know what Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise really think.
00:04:52.000 You know, I was upfront about the fact that I was going to politically oppose Liz Cheney.
00:04:57.000 I went to Wyoming. I made my case there.
00:05:00.000 This notion that you can have these sniveling calls and try to foment action against Republicans by big tech and the DOJ is not fitting of leadership.
00:05:10.000 Well, that's exactly right. I mean, you can represent Republican voters if you're personally annoyed with Trump. Okay.
00:05:15.000 But you cannot represent Republican leaders if you're calling on big tech to censor voices who criticize you and if you're accusing people who criticize you of committing an illegal act of violence as Steve Scalise did.
00:05:26.000 Now, you saw Scalise today. Did he apologize to you for that?
00:05:30.000 He said he was sorry if it caused many problems.
00:05:33.000 But what I said to Steve Scalise is that if you accuse someone of potentially breaking the law, and by the way, he wasn't reacting to something.
00:05:41.000 He raised the prospect of the illegality of my statement that Liz Cheney was anti-Trump.
00:05:47.000 I know I really went out on a limb there, Tucker.
00:05:49.000 But if you accuse someone of breaking the law, you have to say what law you think they broke and you have to present what evidence you think you have.
00:05:57.000 And if there is no evidence, you need to acknowledge that.
00:06:00.000 And if not, then you're like maintaining this fiction for the sake of your own pride.
00:06:05.000 And that's not what leaders do.
00:06:07.000 But what you're doing is reading the other side's script.
00:06:10.000 I mean, listen to these guys talk and they sound like MSNBC contributors.
00:06:13.000 I'm so triggered.
00:06:14.000 He criticized me.
00:06:15.000 That's a crime.
00:06:16.000 We should boot him off.
00:06:17.000 We should censor him.
00:06:18.000 I mean, they're equating speech with violence, calling for censorship and describing disagreement as a criminal act.
00:06:24.000 How is that not?
00:06:25.000 How are these people not liberals?
00:06:26.000 That's what liberals say. 0.99
00:06:27.000 Like, what is this?
00:06:28.000 Well, you see, I will be the one criticized because people will say this is divisive.
00:06:33.000 We should be unified against the Democrats.
00:06:35.000 The problem is the Democrats win if Republicans take power and then think and talk and behave just like the Democrats.
00:06:44.000 So I'm presenting an alternative vision.
00:06:46.000 And it would be nice if the leadership wasn't the lagging indicator on these things.
00:06:50.000 They were the last ones to realize that Liz Cheney should have been tossed out of leadership. 1.00
00:06:54.000 I was out there making the case and ultimately they caught up.
00:06:57.000 But leaders lead from the front.
00:06:59.000 They're not the lagging indicator.
00:07:01.000 For Speaker of the House in the next Congress, I prefer Ohio's Jim Jordan.
00:07:09.000 And it is not always easy for a guy from the Deep South to be for someone from a Big Ten state.
00:07:14.000 But I am certain that Americans didn't hand Republicans this majority in the House just to watch the Speaker's gavel get handed from one member of the California delegation to another.
00:07:26.000 Jim Jordan is the hardest working, most ethical, most talented member of the House of Representatives.
00:07:33.000 He is the true leader of our caucus, no matter who has the fancy titles or big offices.
00:07:39.000 And so with such a slim majority, we shouldn't be starting the C team.
00:07:44.000 We need to put our star players in a position to shine brightest so that we can attract more people to our policies and ideas.
00:07:51.000 The policies Kevin McCarthy has pushed, they are as unhelpful as they are unserious.
00:07:57.000 His commitment to America is predicated on the notion of using federal tax dollars to go hire 200,000 more cops.
00:08:05.000 You know what? In my community, we hire our own cops and pay for them out of our own tax funds.
00:08:11.000 And so if in Detroit they want to go defund the police, I don't think the Floridians should have to pay for it.
00:08:17.000 Apparently Kevin McCarthy does.
00:08:19.000 He also thinks we should have the Congress rate your local DA.
00:08:22.000 Guess what? In Florida, we don't need anyone in Congress rating our local DA's because when we have local DA's who don't follow the law,
00:08:30.000 our Governor Ron DeSantis removes them as he did recently with a Central Florida DA who just said he wasn't going to enforce the law out of wokeism.
00:08:39.000 So it doesn't matter to McCarthy that these ideas offend federalism and belie common sense.
00:08:45.000 They did well in a poll tested survey, so they must now be doctrine our commitment.
00:08:51.000 Weren't the pollsters wrong in this last election anyway?
00:08:54.000 I have spoken with many Republicans in Congress and many who will join our ranks soon.
00:09:00.000 None are actually inspired by Kevin McCarthy, though many feel financially beholden to him because he is the LeBron James of special interest fundraising.
00:09:12.000 In this last cycle, Kevin McCarthy, his team, they raised half a billion dollars in campaign money.
00:09:18.000 That buys a lot of friends or at a minimum rents them.
00:09:23.000 Like I said, we don't know how many people will be in this Republican majority, but I can assure you that as of this broadcast,
00:09:29.000 Kevin McCarthy does not have the 218 votes to become Speaker of the House and we should not give them to him.
00:09:36.000 Leverage is a critical feature to understand politics.
00:09:40.000 My guest tonight is Russ Vogt.
00:09:42.000 He led the Office of Management and Budget under President Trump.
00:09:45.000 He has not been a bean counter, but in fact, a strategist, because when you lead the Office of Management and Budget,
00:09:53.000 you have to constantly be deploying strategy in this swamp of Washington, D.C. to accomplish the agenda to get your priorities funded.
00:10:03.000 Russ did an amazing job working for President Trump in this role.
00:10:07.000 He understands strategy and leverage as well as anyone in Washington, D.C.
00:10:12.000 Now he leads the Center for Renewing America and joins Firebrand exclusively.
00:10:17.000 So, Russ, thanks for being here.
00:10:19.000 What is your argument about how House Republicans should approach the Speaker's race?
00:10:24.000 Thanks for having me.
00:10:25.000 They have an incredible opportunity.
00:10:27.000 Right now, after this last election, it was a failure from the standpoint of where the expectations were.
00:10:33.000 And that was largely because they never ran on anything.
00:10:36.000 And so this election did reward people that had fought on cultural issues on America first agenda.
00:10:42.000 And so for the members that are going to vote for the Speaker, because it is such a small majority, they now have the numbers to be able to deny Kevin McCarthy on the floor.
00:10:56.000 What's important to know, there will be a cartel vote next week.
00:11:01.000 That's when everyone goes behind closed doors.
00:11:03.000 The cartel will vote for who they want.
00:11:06.000 But that's not the actual vote.
00:11:07.000 The actual vote is on the floor of the House of Representatives, where every member will go into, with all cameras on them, will have to say,
00:11:14.000 I'm for Kevin McCarthy, or I'm for Matt Gaetz, or for whoever it is.
00:11:19.000 And they're going to have to justify to their constituents where they were.
00:11:22.000 They're not going to be able to play the shell game where they say, I am with you, but I'm actually, you weren't behind closed doors.
00:11:28.000 And so because of that, and because of the unpopularity of leadership for decades now, where we've never really had someone that understood the conservative movement, the America First movement, what we're trying to accomplish.
00:11:41.000 To realize that the hour is late, we're losing our country.
00:11:44.000 We have a woke and weaponized government.
00:11:46.000 You have seen that firsthand.
00:11:48.000 And we need to go at them with everything we got, with every tool we have, the funding process, the oversight process.
00:11:55.000 Someone like Jim Jordan understands that.
00:11:58.000 And all we need is about 10, 15, potentially 20 members to go down there and say, Kevin McCarthy's not happening.
00:12:06.000 And because this is fundamentally a cartel-busting vote, I think there's all sorts of leverage.
00:12:11.000 Right now, I believe that he is in deep trouble.
00:12:14.000 And based on the momentum for people like you and I over the next several weeks, I think he's not going to be the speaker.
00:12:20.000 There was probably not a single consequential decision made during your time in the White House that you didn't weigh in on or have a member of your team weigh in on in a very meaningful, meaningful way.
00:12:31.000 What do you think it says to Republican voters if their member of Congress votes for Kevin McCarthy?
00:12:36.000 I think it's business as usual.
00:12:38.000 I think it's a reflection that that member has decided to not put on their shoulders the reality of leadership.
00:12:46.000 You, as a member, have the ability, and you've taken this leadership and run with it.
00:12:52.000 You have a member to be a lion, to roar, and to be able to say, the country can be saved or not saved on my watch.
00:13:02.000 And we need members to go out there and make public statements that say, I'm not voting for Kevin McCarthy.
00:13:07.000 They do that.
00:13:08.000 They'll be in a position so that the House of Representatives, with the power of the purse, with subpoena power,
00:13:14.000 will be in the hands of someone like Jim Jordan and not Kevin McCarthy who has taken these options off the table.
00:13:20.000 Do you think it's problematic that the fundraising apparatus in Washington, D.C. is very central to how people think about leadership races?
00:13:31.000 I think it's tragic, number one, because it means a member doesn't think about what's necessary to save the country.
00:13:38.000 So we have this situation with big tech firms that are no longer, they're not private companies.
00:13:43.000 They have government benefits that allow them to wield powers on, they're the arms of the regime.
00:13:49.000 And so instead of being able to approach that like you all do in the Judiciary Committee,
00:13:54.000 here's the antitrust reforms that we need, here's the Section 230 repeal that we need.
00:13:58.000 Instead of doing that, you're trying to play all the angles and to be able to play it safe.
00:14:03.000 And we're a part of our country right now where you can't play it safe anymore.
00:14:08.000 And so that's what's tragic.
00:14:09.000 And it doesn't have to be that way, because the most anti-establishment members have the ability to nationalize and be leaders, and people want to fund that.
00:14:19.000 And you know where that comes from?
00:14:20.000 It doesn't come from businesses with interest.
00:14:22.000 It comes from people with $50, $100 that's really hard to give, but they do it because they know, man,
00:14:28.000 Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz are going to be fearless and frugal with their hard-earned dollars.
00:14:34.000 Well, and we look at people like Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama almost as a model of certainly not good policy choices,
00:14:40.000 but structurally liberating from the corrupt features of Washington that get people to serve the special interests instead of their constituents.
00:14:49.000 I can't tell you how liberating it is to have the perspective that the lobbyists and special interests don't own me
00:14:56.000 and can't even think that they do because they don't even have the opportunity to rent me.
00:15:00.000 You talk about conflict in a string of tweets.
00:15:04.000 Folks can find it at Russ, vote V-O-U-G-H-T.
00:15:08.000 And you talk about how Republicans in the upcoming majority need to approach conflict.
00:15:13.000 You say it needs to be seized.
00:15:16.000 We need to go out and find the areas where people, where our government is being weaponized and attack that.
00:15:22.000 And you make the criticism of McCarthy that he will steer a Republican majority away from conflict.
00:15:28.000 Why do you believe McCarthy will steer people away from conflict?
00:15:32.000 And what do you think is the consequence of that?
00:15:34.000 Yeah, I used to be a staffer here in the House of Representatives.
00:15:37.000 So I've seen in leadership how they talk about their members, how they think about them.
00:15:42.000 They use a phrase called member management.
00:15:45.000 And I used to think that that was like, hey, Matt Gates wants to be on some CODEL or something.
00:15:51.000 It really has nothing to do with that.
00:15:52.000 It has to be about how they dangle certain fights for their members who care about defunding Planned Parenthood in a way to kind of distract them away from a vote or a consequence that will be destabilizing to their cartel.
00:16:08.000 And so I call it a cartel because there is so much more policy gains on the table that they could achieve, we could achieve, if they were willing to have conflict and deal with risk.
00:16:19.000 Not massive, the roof caves in risk, but the risk that the country expects when they put Republicans in charge.
00:16:27.000 And those are things that are necessary when you use the funding process, when you use the opportunity of a debt limit increase.
00:16:34.000 Those are things that the Republican leadership teams that we have seen in recent memory have just run away from.
00:16:41.000 And yeah, there's risk involved.
00:16:43.000 The execution will be something that you have to monitor if you're trying to save the country.
00:16:48.000 But you know what?
00:16:49.000 People deal with execution problems all over the time and they overcome them.
00:16:52.000 I love working for Donald Trump because he ate conflict and risk for breakfast.
00:16:56.000 And that was something that he woke up and said, we're going to save the country.
00:17:00.000 We're going to take the risk that's necessary to accomplish our policy objectives.
00:17:04.000 And as a result, he made substantial gains.
00:17:06.000 We need a speaker like that.
00:17:09.000 Some of the tools for member management that our viewers might not be aware of.
00:17:14.000 We've talked about fundraising, but also committee assignments.
00:17:17.000 Whoever the leadership team is of the Republican and Democrat caucus have a lot of say over whether or not you get to be on a committee of interest to you or whether you're sent out to pasture.
00:17:28.000 And many of my colleagues are concerned that if they don't vote for McCarthy, maybe they lose a committee assignment, maybe they don't get promoted to a committee of interest.
00:17:38.000 What would be your message to people concerned about that feature of their public service?
00:17:43.000 Two points.
00:17:44.000 Number one, when you fight, you become more powerful.
00:17:47.000 When you become more powerful, the interest, the establishment, the cartel cannot take action against you.
00:17:53.000 So if you're competent, if you do your job, if you're back home, you're explaining your vote and you're fighting and you're becoming a national lion on the national stage, they do not have the power to get away with it.
00:18:05.000 Number two, committees are not the end all be all.
00:18:09.000 So I have long believed that committees was largely a waste of time.
00:18:15.000 I mean, there's the Judiciary Committee where you make the best bang for your buck, but it comes at a consequence because there are so many things happening on the national stage that require your leadership.
00:18:27.000 And, you know, you look at Marjorie Taylor Greene, she's become a national procedural leader because they kicked her off for committees. 1.00
00:18:33.000 So she goes to the floor and next thing you know, she's, you know, knows all the procedure.
00:18:38.000 And that's a great story to tell.
00:18:40.000 And so it's not to say, you know, your committee, you know, your armed service, that's not important.
00:18:45.000 It's just to say that you're going to land on your feet.
00:18:48.000 You know, leaders, lions, they land on their feet and you're going to have the ability to serve the country either on that committee or in a different way.
00:18:55.000 We need a pack of lions. 0.97
00:18:57.000 And here would be my message to my colleagues.
00:19:00.000 No committee assignment is worth it.
00:19:02.000 The most important vote you take is the vote for speaker.
00:19:07.000 And really, it's number one through probably 100 in terms of the most important votes you'll take in the Congress in a given term.
00:19:15.000 And so don't give that away for something that can be taken away,
00:19:21.000 for something that really doesn't define who you are as a fighter and as a lion as much as where you stand on the vision and direction and leadership of the conference.
00:19:33.000 But one feature of this town is that the swamp always finds out what you want and they dangle it in front of you.
00:19:39.000 For some people, it's an appropriation they have to have, some poor spending.
00:19:43.000 For some people, it's a title, a committee assignment.
00:19:46.000 For some people, it's renaming a post office.
00:19:49.000 And just don't allow your public service to be ransomed in such a way.
00:19:55.000 Jim Jordan told me when I was here in my first term, if you wake up and you want to go to battle on behalf of your constituents, there are so many battles that are calling for you.
00:20:06.000 Maybe it's a constituent service matter where you can fundamentally change someone's life by getting the government to actually work for them, not against them.
00:20:14.000 Maybe it's the speech you give that inspires someone to embark upon their own journey in public service.
00:20:19.000 But the notion that filing some amendment and having a certain committee on your letterhead is so worthy of compromise, I think, is disrespectful to the institution.
00:20:31.000 Certainly disrespectful to the patriots that have allowed us to be the greatest country on earth.
00:20:36.000 I was a bit unsettled to see a recent tweet from Kevin McCarthy saying that he was already naming transition teams to lead on various issues.
00:20:47.000 And I thought, gosh, given that we haven't had our leadership elections yet, for him to be setting up transition teams struck me as a bit premature.
00:20:56.000 I wonder aloud whether or not some members will feel as though that is already delegitimizing their vote even before he would presumably get the gavel.
00:21:08.000 Yeah, I think it's incredibly disrespectful to his members to be able to be that presumptuous when he knows he doesn't have the votes.
00:21:15.000 We know he doesn't have the votes. We don't even know what his majority is.
00:21:18.000 And so, you know, my hope is that's something that should offend members of Congress who have a vote on this and want to have a conversation behind closed doors about the direction of the Republican Party and the House of Representatives.
00:21:29.000 And my view on this is a member of Congress should do everything they can.
00:21:34.000 And honestly, citizens at the local level should do this.
00:21:37.000 Align your life so that your interests are about saving the country.
00:21:42.000 You align your life so that you're serving God and saving your country, you're not going to go wrong.
00:21:47.000 And don't make this about a committee assignment.
00:21:50.000 Don't make this about a chairmanship.
00:21:52.000 Make this about what's necessary to save the country.
00:21:55.000 And when you put that filter on, this is an easy decision and your voters will reward you.
00:21:59.000 You'll be a national leader for it.
00:22:01.000 There is a movement among some in the House Freedom Caucus to request a delay in the leadership elections because we don't yet know who will be a Republican member of Congress.
00:22:11.000 I think out in Pennsylvania, they'll be counting for a few weeks.
00:22:14.000 What a shame there in Arizona, subject of a whole nother discussion.
00:22:18.000 But, you know, the the concept of holding leadership elections without firming up the precise size of the majority and the precise membership of the Republican conference seems to, you know, really be dispositive.
00:22:31.000 So I support the effort with the Freedom Caucus to delay leadership elections, at least until we know who will be our Republican team members and who will have a legitimate vote in that election.
00:22:42.000 I mean, you know, it's something for us to go complain about illegal votes diluting elections in states around the country to then allow people who might not even be elected to be casting votes in our leadership elections would presumably dilute the districts and constituencies that ultimately will be sending Republicans to be sworn in.
00:23:00.920 So I want it clear on the record that I support that effort from the Freedom Caucus, you know, the the vote on the floor.
00:23:09.920 You make a point that publicly that's a watershed moment.
00:23:15.920 You know, the Democrats always seem to find a way, even with small majorities, to kind of rally together.
00:23:24.920 Do you worry that there'll be criticism from the right that, you know, if it takes us a little bit to work this out?
00:23:30.520 That, oh, it means the Republicans are in disarray or, you know, it seems to be your perspective in mind that a little bit of disarray here might be helpful at ultimately reaching the more consequential and meaningful decision in the end?
00:23:43.260 Yeah, I think that's a that's an opportunity.
00:23:45.880 Confrontation is an opportunity for the media to report on what's going on.
00:23:49.560 When the media reports, you have an opportunity to get your message out that says, what would that story be?
00:23:54.180 Republicans are having a debate about the future of the country and whether they're going to have leadership that says that does what it says it does.
00:24:00.880 And so I don't think that's that's a negative in any way.
00:24:04.820 Well, Russ, I appreciate your perspective on this.
00:24:07.520 You know, it is my expectation that we will hear more voices contribute to this discussion.
00:24:12.420 Last night, Tucker Carlson's commentary was that all those who were involved in this disappointing election cycle for Republicans really needed to find something else to do and that it wasn't a personal criticism of them from his perspective.
00:24:24.920 It was just if you don't succeed, you typically don't get promoted.
00:24:29.140 You'll be on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast tomorrow.
00:24:32.200 I really encourage everyone to watch Russ there and to get Steve Bannon's perspective on this matter.
00:24:38.640 And is it your expectation that there'll be other groups, other voices encouraging the boldness that you've encouraged tonight?
00:24:45.860 Yeah, I think we're going to see a movement arise from the grassroots movement.
00:24:48.820 I mean, we just met and talked with our national leaders or call across the country that occurs on Thursday night and they are ready to go.
00:24:56.180 And so take us take us in the room.
00:24:58.000 I mean, what's the what's the sentiment?
00:24:59.640 What's the feeling?
00:25:00.400 What are the arguments people are making?
00:25:01.800 This is again, this is not something where they need to be convinced.
00:25:04.780 This is something where their expectation is we were you were going to swallow Kevin McCarthy if you had a massive majority, maybe with some rule changes, but not after the majority is so slim when everything they said would occur, did not occur.
00:25:18.820 We didn't have an opportunity to just rely on, hey, inflation is bad when you have no plan to actually deal with it.
00:25:25.180 And so the grassroots is going to demand this action.
00:25:28.140 That's going to build between now and January.
00:25:30.740 And that's what I that's what I'm trying to articulate when I say that leverage point doesn't go away even next week.
00:25:37.660 If for some reason someone hasn't arose to be the candidate against Speaker McCarthy.
00:25:43.380 The only vote that matters is the vote on the floor.
00:25:45.940 Exactly.
00:25:46.220 The vote in conference is procedural.
00:25:48.120 That's the cartel vote, as you described it behind closed doors without your name attached to it.
00:25:54.860 That is not the real vote.
00:25:56.640 The real action, the live rounds that's on the floor of the House of Representatives.
00:26:01.260 That's in January.
00:26:02.380 And so I would encourage our viewers, contact your Republican member of Congress.
00:26:07.560 Encourage them to make a decision not based on who raised them the most money or who can introduce them to the most lobbyists, but who can actually embrace the conflicts that we've been discussing that we absolutely must prevail on to save the country.
00:26:22.400 That is the message that you need to deliver to your Republican member of Congress.
00:26:25.800 And if you're willing to make a second phone call or send a second tweet, how about hit up my man Jim Jordan?
00:26:31.680 Get this athlete, get this champion, get this lion off the sidelines and into this race.
00:26:37.320 I believe Jim Jordan has been appointed for this.
00:26:39.900 I believe he is prepared and I know he would inspire the base of our movement and he would bring more people in.
00:26:47.540 Jim has a way to be encouraging and to be thoughtful and to be persuasive.
00:26:52.280 If you've seen Jim Jordan on television, if you've seen him in hearings, you know this.
00:26:56.740 We need to be a growing movement.
00:26:58.460 Look, that's the message I think we need to take from this midterm.
00:27:01.240 We cannot be stagnant.
00:27:02.680 We need more people to want to align with Republicans.
00:27:05.920 I don't think that's going to happen with Kevin McCarthy.
00:27:08.420 I don't think it's going to happen with Mitch McConnell.
00:27:11.180 I don't think it's going to happen with Ronna McDaniel.
00:27:13.440 I think we need a clean sweep and we need to get off of the McFailure strategy and get into the fighting spirit,
00:27:22.160 embrace the conflict, and do not be afraid.
00:27:25.080 Our movement should not be a fearful movement.
00:27:27.480 Our leaders should not be fearful leaders.
00:27:29.700 And they certainly shouldn't be the people who have sold the shares of themselves on K Street.
00:27:33.800 Russ, tell us about the Center for Renewing America, the mission, the purpose there, and how folks can follow your work.
00:27:40.620 There has never been an institution that has a cultural mission on the America First issue.
00:27:47.000 So when I left the White House, I wanted there to be a place that cared about the border, cared about restraint in foreign policy,
00:27:53.640 cared about drugs in our communities, thought that critical race theory was something that you can actually get rid of as opposed to something you have to tolerate as free speech in our schools.
00:28:02.040 And so we are there to nationalize those issues, provide a solution, like state governors declaring a border invasion.
00:28:11.400 Those are the things that we put forward to declare, get results, and to ensure fundamentally, and this is the takeaway,
00:28:18.480 that Washington, D.C., in the aftermath of Donald Trump, cannot go back to business as usual around the issues that we know are flawed
00:28:26.180 and that won't save the country and don't allow us to reach new voters.
00:28:30.960 And so we're going to keep the agenda-setting process so fixed on the America First issues that that's what we're going to be able to learn from the lessons the last 50 years where we did not know those.
00:28:42.200 Donald Trump changed that, and we're going to keep the issues on that agenda.
00:28:46.120 You know what?
00:28:46.540 The Floridians who embraced those fights were very much rewarded by their voters for doing so,
00:28:51.940 and I think that's a model on policy for the rest of the country and certainly a model that our Republican conference should certainly embrace.
00:29:00.780 Russ, thanks for the work that you did for our country serving alongside President Trump.
00:29:04.620 I'm thinking through all the times I went into the Oval and had meetings across the Resolute Desk,
00:29:09.040 and I can't remember one of them where you were not there, right at President Trump's right hand,
00:29:14.260 and I know he got great benefit from your wise counsel, and the work we're doing now, I think,
00:29:20.500 is the continuation of that legacy and that movement and, most importantly, that agenda.
00:29:25.580 And that agenda is not going to happen without strong leadership, strong leadership I know we could get from my buddy Jim Jordan from Ohio.
00:29:32.340 Thanks for joining us on Firebrand.
00:29:33.900 Thanks to everyone for tuning in.
00:29:35.680 Make sure you're subscribed with notifications turned on.
00:29:38.880 We're going to be back next week.
00:29:40.720 A lot of session days.
00:29:41.780 There'll be a lot of Firebrand.
00:29:42.680 Thanks for joining us.
00:29:43.740 Roll the credits.
00:29:44.260 We'll be right back.