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.
00:02:21.000Matter of fact, one of our Twitch commenters just put up that 68% of unmarried women voted Democrat.
00:02:27.000Now, substantial data suggests that we've got work to do there,
00:02:31.000and we shouldn't be so arrogant as to assume we know how or why that dynamic fully played out.
00:02:36.000So, we should listen, learn, and lead.
00:02:41.000But to lead in a slim majority, we need leaders,
00:02:45.000not people who have sold shares of themselves for such a long period of time
00:02:50.000to the lobbyists and PACs that they no longer have agency over their own decisions.
00:02:55.000House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wants to be Speaker.
00:02:59.000He is not my first choice, or frankly, even in my top 100.
00:03:06.000Before the election, audio recordings were leaked of conversations between McCarthy, Liz Cheney, and House Whip Steve Scalise.
00:03:14.000Because I was criticizing Liz Cheney with words, they thought I might be putting people in danger.
00:03:21.000Steve Scalise, who wants to be a majority leader, said that my criticism of Liz Cheney might have been criminal.
00:03:28.000Here's my discussion with Tucker Carlson on that matter.
00:03:32.000Congressman, thanks so much for coming on.
00:03:33.000So, you were accused by Kevin McCarthy, the guy who is in line to be Speaker of the House,
00:03:38.000of committing an act of violence by giving your opinion, by saying he was against the former president.
00:03:43.000Like, is speech violence? What do you make of this?
00:03:47.000Well, I was just describing the facts.
00:03:49.000You had a group of people who were going to try to join with Democrats to impeach President Trump,
00:03:54.000and that is precisely what has played out.
00:03:56.000You mentioned he's in line to be Speaker.
00:03:58.000I mean, I don't know that Kevin McCarthy is in line to be Speaker.
00:04:00.000I don't know if the guy could get an account on Truth Social at this point,
00:04:03.000based on the inconsistency between the recordings and what he says to us.
00:04:07.000And it is debasing for Republicans to give this guy a standing ovation after he smears Trump, lies to the country,
00:04:14.000and then tries to sick big tech and the DOJ on members of Congress whose views he doesn't agree with
00:04:21.000and whose factual representations are ultimately borne out.
00:04:24.000And the crazy thing about this, Tucker, is that it was all done for the sake of protecting Liz Cheney.
00:04:30.000I mean, at the time I was protecting President Trump from impeachment and Kevin McCarthy was protecting Liz Cheney from criticism.
00:04:37.000And now she is owning them with their own words.
00:04:42.000And 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.
00:04:52.000You know, I was upfront about the fact that I was going to politically oppose Liz Cheney.
00:04:57.000I went to Wyoming. I made my case there.
00:05:00.000This 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.
00:05:10.000Well, that's exactly right. I mean, you can represent Republican voters if you're personally annoyed with Trump. Okay.
00:05:15.000But 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.
00:05:26.000Now, you saw Scalise today. Did he apologize to you for that?
00:05:30.000He said he was sorry if it caused many problems.
00:05:33.000But 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.
00:05:41.000He raised the prospect of the illegality of my statement that Liz Cheney was anti-Trump.
00:05:47.000I know I really went out on a limb there, Tucker.
00:05:49.000But 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.
00:05:57.000And if there is no evidence, you need to acknowledge that.
00:06:00.000And if not, then you're like maintaining this fiction for the sake of your own pride.
00:07:01.000For Speaker of the House in the next Congress, I prefer Ohio's Jim Jordan.
00:07:09.000And it is not always easy for a guy from the Deep South to be for someone from a Big Ten state.
00:07:14.000But 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.
00:07:26.000Jim Jordan is the hardest working, most ethical, most talented member of the House of Representatives.
00:07:33.000He is the true leader of our caucus, no matter who has the fancy titles or big offices.
00:07:39.000And so with such a slim majority, we shouldn't be starting the C team.
00:07:44.000We need to put our star players in a position to shine brightest so that we can attract more people to our policies and ideas.
00:07:51.000The policies Kevin McCarthy has pushed, they are as unhelpful as they are unserious.
00:07:57.000His commitment to America is predicated on the notion of using federal tax dollars to go hire 200,000 more cops.
00:08:05.000You know what? In my community, we hire our own cops and pay for them out of our own tax funds.
00:08:11.000And so if in Detroit they want to go defund the police, I don't think the Floridians should have to pay for it.
00:08:19.000He also thinks we should have the Congress rate your local DA.
00:08:22.000Guess 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,
00:08:30.000our 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.
00:08:39.000So it doesn't matter to McCarthy that these ideas offend federalism and belie common sense.
00:08:45.000They did well in a poll tested survey, so they must now be doctrine our commitment.
00:08:51.000Weren't the pollsters wrong in this last election anyway?
00:08:54.000I have spoken with many Republicans in Congress and many who will join our ranks soon.
00:09:00.000None are actually inspired by Kevin McCarthy, though many feel financially beholden to him because he is the LeBron James of special interest fundraising.
00:09:12.000In this last cycle, Kevin McCarthy, his team, they raised half a billion dollars in campaign money.
00:09:18.000That buys a lot of friends or at a minimum rents them.
00:09:23.000Like 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,
00:09:29.000Kevin McCarthy does not have the 218 votes to become Speaker of the House and we should not give them to him.
00:09:36.000Leverage is a critical feature to understand politics.
00:10:27.000Right now, after this last election, it was a failure from the standpoint of where the expectations were.
00:10:33.000And that was largely because they never ran on anything.
00:10:36.000And so this election did reward people that had fought on cultural issues on America first agenda.
00:10:42.000And 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.
00:10:56.000What's important to know, there will be a cartel vote next week.
00:11:01.000That's when everyone goes behind closed doors.
00:11:03.000The cartel will vote for who they want.
00:11:07.000The 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,
00:11:14.000I'm for Kevin McCarthy, or I'm for Matt Gaetz, or for whoever it is.
00:11:19.000And they're going to have to justify to their constituents where they were.
00:11:22.000They'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.
00:11:28.000And 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.
00:11:41.000To realize that the hour is late, we're losing our country.
00:11:44.000We have a woke and weaponized government.
00:11:48.000And we need to go at them with everything we got, with every tool we have, the funding process, the oversight process.
00:11:55.000Someone like Jim Jordan understands that.
00:11:58.000And all we need is about 10, 15, potentially 20 members to go down there and say, Kevin McCarthy's not happening.
00:12:06.000And because this is fundamentally a cartel-busting vote, I think there's all sorts of leverage.
00:12:11.000Right now, I believe that he is in deep trouble.
00:12:14.000And 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.
00:12:20.000There 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.
00:12:31.000What do you think it says to Republican voters if their member of Congress votes for Kevin McCarthy?
00:13:08.000They'll be in a position so that the House of Representatives, with the power of the purse, with subpoena power,
00:13:14.000will be in the hands of someone like Jim Jordan and not Kevin McCarthy who has taken these options off the table.
00:13:20.000Do you think it's problematic that the fundraising apparatus in Washington, D.C. is very central to how people think about leadership races?
00:13:31.000I think it's tragic, number one, because it means a member doesn't think about what's necessary to save the country.
00:13:38.000So we have this situation with big tech firms that are no longer, they're not private companies.
00:13:43.000They have government benefits that allow them to wield powers on, they're the arms of the regime.
00:13:49.000And so instead of being able to approach that like you all do in the Judiciary Committee,
00:13:54.000here's the antitrust reforms that we need, here's the Section 230 repeal that we need.
00:13:58.000Instead of doing that, you're trying to play all the angles and to be able to play it safe.
00:14:03.000And we're a part of our country right now where you can't play it safe anymore.
00:14:09.000And 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.
00:14:20.000It doesn't come from businesses with interest.
00:14:22.000It comes from people with $50, $100 that's really hard to give, but they do it because they know, man,
00:14:28.000Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz are going to be fearless and frugal with their hard-earned dollars.
00:14:34.000Well, and we look at people like Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama almost as a model of certainly not good policy choices,
00:14:40.000but structurally liberating from the corrupt features of Washington that get people to serve the special interests instead of their constituents.
00:14:49.000I can't tell you how liberating it is to have the perspective that the lobbyists and special interests don't own me
00:14:56.000and can't even think that they do because they don't even have the opportunity to rent me.
00:15:00.000You talk about conflict in a string of tweets.
00:15:04.000Folks can find it at Russ, vote V-O-U-G-H-T.
00:15:08.000And you talk about how Republicans in the upcoming majority need to approach conflict.
00:15:16.000We need to go out and find the areas where people, where our government is being weaponized and attack that.
00:15:22.000And you make the criticism of McCarthy that he will steer a Republican majority away from conflict.
00:15:28.000Why do you believe McCarthy will steer people away from conflict?
00:15:32.000And what do you think is the consequence of that?
00:15:34.000Yeah, I used to be a staffer here in the House of Representatives.
00:15:37.000So I've seen in leadership how they talk about their members, how they think about them.
00:15:42.000They use a phrase called member management.
00:15:45.000And I used to think that that was like, hey, Matt Gates wants to be on some CODEL or something.
00:15:51.000It really has nothing to do with that.
00:15:52.000It 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.
00:16:08.000And 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.
00:16:19.000Not massive, the roof caves in risk, but the risk that the country expects when they put Republicans in charge.
00:16:27.000And those are things that are necessary when you use the funding process, when you use the opportunity of a debt limit increase.
00:16:34.000Those are things that the Republican leadership teams that we have seen in recent memory have just run away from.
00:17:09.000Some of the tools for member management that our viewers might not be aware of.
00:17:14.000We've talked about fundraising, but also committee assignments.
00:17:17.000Whoever 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.
00:17:28.000And 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.
00:17:38.000What would be your message to people concerned about that feature of their public service?
00:17:44.000Number one, when you fight, you become more powerful.
00:17:47.000When you become more powerful, the interest, the establishment, the cartel cannot take action against you.
00:17:53.000So 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.
00:18:05.000Number two, committees are not the end all be all.
00:18:09.000So I have long believed that committees was largely a waste of time.
00:18:15.000I 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.
00:18:27.000And, you know, you look at Marjorie Taylor Greene, she's become a national procedural leader because they kicked her off for committees.
00:18:33.000So she goes to the floor and next thing you know, she's, you know, knows all the procedure.
00:18:40.000And so it's not to say, you know, your committee, you know, your armed service, that's not important.
00:18:45.000It's just to say that you're going to land on your feet.
00:18:48.000You 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.
00:19:02.000The most important vote you take is the vote for speaker.
00:19:07.000And 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.
00:19:15.000And so don't give that away for something that can be taken away,
00:19:21.000for 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.
00:19:33.000But one feature of this town is that the swamp always finds out what you want and they dangle it in front of you.
00:19:39.000For some people, it's an appropriation they have to have, some poor spending.
00:19:43.000For some people, it's a title, a committee assignment.
00:19:46.000For some people, it's renaming a post office.
00:19:49.000And just don't allow your public service to be ransomed in such a way.
00:19:55.000Jim 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.
00:20:06.000Maybe 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.
00:20:14.000Maybe it's the speech you give that inspires someone to embark upon their own journey in public service.
00:20:19.000But 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.
00:20:31.000Certainly disrespectful to the patriots that have allowed us to be the greatest country on earth.
00:20:36.000I 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.
00:20:47.000And 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.
00:20:56.000I 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.
00:21:08.000Yeah, 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.
00:21:15.000We know he doesn't have the votes. We don't even know what his majority is.
00:21:18.000And 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.
00:21:29.000And my view on this is a member of Congress should do everything they can.
00:21:34.000And honestly, citizens at the local level should do this.
00:21:37.000Align your life so that your interests are about saving the country.
00:21:42.000You align your life so that you're serving God and saving your country, you're not going to go wrong.
00:21:47.000And don't make this about a committee assignment.
00:22:01.000There 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.
00:22:11.000I think out in Pennsylvania, they'll be counting for a few weeks.
00:22:14.000What a shame there in Arizona, subject of a whole nother discussion.
00:22:18.000But, 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.
00:22:31.000So 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.
00:22:42.000I 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.
00:23:00.920So I want it clear on the record that I support that effort from the Freedom Caucus, you know, the the vote on the floor.
00:23:09.920You make a point that publicly that's a watershed moment.
00:23:15.920You know, the Democrats always seem to find a way, even with small majorities, to kind of rally together.
00:23:24.920Do you worry that there'll be criticism from the right that, you know, if it takes us a little bit to work this out?
00:23:30.520That, 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?
00:23:43.260Yeah, I think that's a that's an opportunity.
00:23:45.880Confrontation is an opportunity for the media to report on what's going on.
00:23:49.560When the media reports, you have an opportunity to get your message out that says, what would that story be?
00:23:54.180Republicans 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.
00:24:00.880And so I don't think that's that's a negative in any way.
00:24:04.820Well, Russ, I appreciate your perspective on this.
00:24:07.520You know, it is my expectation that we will hear more voices contribute to this discussion.
00:24:12.420Last 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.
00:24:24.920It was just if you don't succeed, you typically don't get promoted.
00:24:29.140You'll be on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast tomorrow.
00:24:32.200I really encourage everyone to watch Russ there and to get Steve Bannon's perspective on this matter.
00:24:38.640And is it your expectation that there'll be other groups, other voices encouraging the boldness that you've encouraged tonight?
00:24:45.860Yeah, I think we're going to see a movement arise from the grassroots movement.
00:24:48.820I 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.
00:25:00.400What are the arguments people are making?
00:25:01.800This is again, this is not something where they need to be convinced.
00:25:04.780This 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.
00:25:18.820We didn't have an opportunity to just rely on, hey, inflation is bad when you have no plan to actually deal with it.
00:25:25.180And so the grassroots is going to demand this action.
00:25:28.140That's going to build between now and January.
00:25:30.740And 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.
00:25:37.660If for some reason someone hasn't arose to be the candidate against Speaker McCarthy.
00:25:43.380The only vote that matters is the vote on the floor.
00:26:02.380And so I would encourage our viewers, contact your Republican member of Congress.
00:26:07.560Encourage 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.
00:26:22.400That is the message that you need to deliver to your Republican member of Congress.
00:26:25.800And if you're willing to make a second phone call or send a second tweet, how about hit up my man Jim Jordan?
00:26:31.680Get this athlete, get this champion, get this lion off the sidelines and into this race.
00:26:37.320I believe Jim Jordan has been appointed for this.
00:26:39.900I believe he is prepared and I know he would inspire the base of our movement and he would bring more people in.
00:26:47.540Jim has a way to be encouraging and to be thoughtful and to be persuasive.
00:26:52.280If you've seen Jim Jordan on television, if you've seen him in hearings, you know this.
00:27:02.680We need more people to want to align with Republicans.
00:27:05.920I don't think that's going to happen with Kevin McCarthy.
00:27:08.420I don't think it's going to happen with Mitch McConnell.
00:27:11.180I don't think it's going to happen with Ronna McDaniel.
00:27:13.440I think we need a clean sweep and we need to get off of the McFailure strategy and get into the fighting spirit,
00:27:22.160embrace the conflict, and do not be afraid.
00:27:25.080Our movement should not be a fearful movement.
00:27:27.480Our leaders should not be fearful leaders.
00:27:29.700And they certainly shouldn't be the people who have sold the shares of themselves on K Street.
00:27:33.800Russ, tell us about the Center for Renewing America, the mission, the purpose there, and how folks can follow your work.
00:27:40.620There has never been an institution that has a cultural mission on the America First issue.
00:27:47.000So when I left the White House, I wanted there to be a place that cared about the border, cared about restraint in foreign policy,
00:27:53.640cared 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.
00:28:02.040And so we are there to nationalize those issues, provide a solution, like state governors declaring a border invasion.
00:28:11.400Those are the things that we put forward to declare, get results, and to ensure fundamentally, and this is the takeaway,
00:28:18.480that Washington, D.C., in the aftermath of Donald Trump, cannot go back to business as usual around the issues that we know are flawed
00:28:26.180and that won't save the country and don't allow us to reach new voters.
00:28:30.960And 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.
00:28:42.200Donald Trump changed that, and we're going to keep the issues on that agenda.
00:28:46.540The Floridians who embraced those fights were very much rewarded by their voters for doing so,
00:28:51.940and 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.
00:29:00.780Russ, thanks for the work that you did for our country serving alongside President Trump.
00:29:04.620I'm thinking through all the times I went into the Oval and had meetings across the Resolute Desk,
00:29:09.040and I can't remember one of them where you were not there, right at President Trump's right hand,
00:29:14.260and I know he got great benefit from your wise counsel, and the work we're doing now, I think,
00:29:20.500is the continuation of that legacy and that movement and, most importantly, that agenda.
00:29:25.580And that agenda is not going to happen without strong leadership, strong leadership I know we could get from my buddy Jim Jordan from Ohio.