The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - Episode 78 LIVE： Congress Is Broken (feat. Rep. Andy Biggs) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

00:00:00.000 Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand

00:00:07.520 up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.

00:00:10.540 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem for the Democratic Party.

00:00:13.680 And he could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.

00:00:16.680 So we're going to keep running those stories to get hurt again.

00:00:20.100 If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn

00:00:25.980 her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots.

00:00:29.280 You are in the right place.

00:00:30.980 This is the movement for you.

00:00:33.080 You ever watch this guy on television?

00:00:35.240 It's like a machine.

00:00:36.780 Matt Gaetz.

00:00:37.600 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the Internet.

00:00:40.980 Many days, I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.

00:00:45.800 They aren't really coming for me.

00:00:47.780 They're coming for you.

00:00:49.580 I'm just in the way.

00:00:50.880 We have the great one, Mark Levin.

00:00:57.260 Let's go and play this for a second.

00:00:58.440 I would like to have your observations on this.

00:01:00.460 Congressman Gaetz.

00:01:02.700 Andy Biggs is part of the Freedom Caucus.

00:01:05.180 Andy Biggs is on TV all the time promoting himself as a conservative.

00:01:09.720 But a guy like that today parading around as Mr. Conservative, Mr. Conservative with the Freedom

00:01:16.860 Caucus, that he's going to bring conservatism to the House of Representatives.

00:01:20.880 He doesn't even fundamentally understand the Constitution.

00:01:26.940 Now, I've called out Andy Biggs and four others in the House of Representatives who are

00:01:32.360 trying to sabotage the election of a speaker in a what will be a Republican House where

00:01:39.000 the Republicans have maybe a four or five vote majority.

00:01:43.440 Now, what does that mean?

00:01:44.760 That means that these individuals can block the Republicans from choosing their speaker,

00:01:50.980 which means you could go to the floor of the House.

00:01:54.200 And there's already talk about this in the press where liberal Republicans, moderate Republicans

00:02:00.100 could join with Democrats and wind up choosing a speaker who's quite liberal.

00:02:07.020 Well, they talk about Fred Upton.

00:02:09.520 Fred Upton is a rhino.

00:02:12.100 OK, it got a little more.

00:02:14.240 It got the hang on.

00:02:15.620 Hang on.

00:02:16.000 The vitriol got a little worse after that.

00:02:17.860 The great one, Mark Levin.

00:02:18.980 And we understand Mark's got a lot of problems with us populist nationalists, but Mark's a

00:02:23.560 good guy, super guy.

00:02:25.180 And he knows the Constitution.

00:02:26.900 Why is he wrong there, Matt Gaetz?

00:02:29.900 Well, it's interesting to see Mark Levin follow the flashy lures that are strung out by the

00:02:37.140 mainstream press.

00:02:38.020 Like this notion that Fred Upton was going to be speaker.

00:02:40.420 Oh, yeah.

00:02:40.740 Everybody wrote articles about that and got all worked up about it.

00:02:43.300 And then they went and asked Fred Upton, are you a candidate for speaker?

00:02:46.560 And he said, no, I'm taking my wife skiing that weekend.

00:02:49.460 So it just shows you kind of how harebrained some of those red herrings are. 0.82

00:02:53.780 Keep in mind about Mark Levin.

00:02:56.300 Mark Levin was against Kevin McCarthy before he was for Kevin McCarthy, just like Mark Levin

00:03:02.560 was against Donald Trump before he was for Donald Trump.

00:03:06.640 So who knows?

00:03:08.200 Being against Andy Biggs might be just like the first Mark Levin step to being Andy Biggs

00:03:13.280 as campaign manager in the next election cycle.

00:03:16.500 Mark Levin said that Kevin McCarthy was a creature of the establishment and thus could

00:03:22.480 never be speaker.

00:03:23.740 Those were his own words.

00:03:27.880 Welcome back to Firebrand.

00:03:29.580 We are live broadcasting out of room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building on the

00:03:35.120 Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C.

00:03:37.300 We have a lot of breaking news on the Hill this Monday.

00:03:40.920 We're going to get a key update regarding the growing effort to impeach Homeland Security

00:03:46.580 Secretary Mayorkas.

00:03:47.980 I've got just the guy here to chat about that.

00:03:50.500 Our reaction to the latest dump of the Twitter files.

00:03:54.040 We've just got breaking news regarding the Democrats being unable to get the votes together

00:03:59.640 for their government funding bill.

00:04:01.260 So we'll talk about what that means for the country and potentially an omnibus that would

00:04:06.500 steal Republicans coming into control of the House of the opportunity to have a big spending

00:04:11.080 fight.

00:04:11.920 But what everyone's talking about right now is the speaker's race because Kevin McCarthy

00:04:16.720 does not have 218 votes to be speaker.

00:04:19.640 My colleague Andy Biggs, who has just been reelected to his fourth term, has announced that he is

00:04:25.420 still a candidate for speaker of the House.

00:04:27.080 I intend to vote for him and he joins us again on Firebrand now.

00:04:31.060 Andy, thanks so much for being here.

00:04:33.540 You know, when we hear these scenarios like, oh no, we could have a Democrat speaker if Andy

00:04:39.900 Biggs continues his candidacy.

00:04:42.100 Do you think that, you know, that's something that ought to concern folks?

00:04:46.740 No, I don't.

00:04:47.460 I think that is a red herring.

00:04:49.060 I think that is a threat.

00:04:50.300 I think that's the McCarthy machine and the establishment machine working to try to scare 0.85

00:04:55.920 the crap out of people.

00:04:57.560 And the reality is that would require a bunch of Republicans to say, you know what, we're 0.95

00:05:03.700 really not Republicans.

00:05:04.800 We're going to vote for Democrat.

00:05:06.080 And it also is pregnant with this thought.

00:05:08.660 There is nobody in the Republican conference who can be the speaker other than Kevin McCarthy.

00:05:13.300 He's the only guy. 0.71

00:05:14.900 I find that to be absolutely ludicrous and actually condescending.

00:05:19.420 You wrote a recent piece where you talked about your candidacy functioning as a mechanism 0.78

00:05:25.060 to break up the establishment, to bust up this D.C. cartel.

00:05:30.880 Talk to people in the country about the power centers that really exist in Washington.

00:05:35.340 You know, folks back home that want to be really engaged or informed, they may look at

00:05:39.280 the roll call votes and see, were you on one side or the other?

00:05:42.220 And that certainly does matter.

00:05:43.500 It's why you've called for a number of those votes to be taken publicly.

00:05:46.660 But in terms of who really decides the agenda and the focus and the impact of this place,

00:05:54.920 where do you see that playing out and why is that wrong?

00:05:57.280 So where the power is centered is there's four people in Congress, two in the Senate,

00:06:02.480 two in the House, that really kind of control everything.

00:06:04.360 In fact, they call it, they have the audacity to call it a four corners bill.

00:06:07.900 That means that the minority leader in the House and the speaker and the majority leader

00:06:12.160 and minority leader in the Senate, they've agreed to it and they expect everybody else

00:06:15.960 to respond.

00:06:16.400 So that's one power center.

00:06:17.360 So let me just pause you right there.

00:06:19.660 So when they talk about a four corners agreement, I mean, it used to be in the Congress, I guess,

00:06:26.120 we're currently in, that you could get two of those corners without even leaving the state

00:06:30.920 of California.

00:06:32.300 Because you had Pelosi and McCarthy representing the House of Representatives, but really, I think,

00:06:39.060 coming from a place with a particular worldview.

00:06:40.940 So this notion of top-down leadership, that's one power center.

00:06:45.620 What else?

00:06:46.160 Yeah.

00:06:46.400 So then you also have two other power centers that that four corners place to.

00:06:51.960 It's the lobbyists, the K Street, the big moneyed interests, the special interests that

00:06:55.880 are out there.

00:06:56.280 And a lot of them like big tech, you know, you just name it, any big major interest, big

00:07:01.560 pharma, those types of things.

00:07:02.980 And they're going to respond to that because it's big money, because both, if you're in

00:07:08.740 the four corners group, you got to raise a bunch of money.

00:07:11.400 So you're delivering on that.

00:07:13.660 The other one is, a lot of people don't talk about this, but it's big bureaucracy.

00:07:18.280 So you got big government married to big money, married to a tight controlled power.

00:07:25.040 And we used to call that type of thing fascism.

00:07:28.080 Well, and those big moneyed interests want the bureaucratic system to be as complicated 0.89

00:07:33.540 as possible, because if you've got the armies of lawyers and lobbyists and accountants and

00:07:39.060 consultants, you can attack that bureaucratic system and you can actually bend it to your

00:07:43.420 will.

00:07:44.140 And so that's not free market.

00:07:46.120 That's not giving everybody an opportunity to get ahead.

00:07:49.200 That is a system in Washington that is weaponized against the American people, often no matter which

00:07:55.820 party is in charge.

00:07:56.900 But the McCarthy team has been out there pushing hard, this doomsday scenario where a Democrat

00:08:01.580 might be elected speaker.

00:08:03.160 And there was a great piece in Politico, Rachel Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Politico

00:08:08.980 playbook, busting the unity speaker bubble.

00:08:12.760 And it goes through a list of reasons why this will never happen.

00:08:16.420 The first of which, the most obvious, any strategy that would have a more moderate Republican

00:08:24.180 Republican elected would require every Democrat to vote for a Republican.

00:08:29.140 Now, you've got Democrats that don't even want to vote for other Democrats someday.

00:08:32.960 But Andy, how likely is it that every single Democrat, all 212 of them, would vote for any

00:08:38.780 Republican?

00:08:39.500 It's impossible.

00:08:41.080 They just elected Hakeem Jeffries.

00:08:43.320 Hakeem Jeffries is the Congressional Black Caucus's leader.

00:08:48.060 He is the guy that, for decades, that CBC has been trying to get someone in leadership.

00:08:53.280 Now they have this guy.

00:08:55.040 And CBC is basically going to say, if you're going to take away our guy to vote for a Republican,

00:09:03.360 we're going to burn the place down.

00:09:05.340 And if you think what the squad did was bad, or if you think holding out and trying to leverage

00:09:11.180 what votes we have on this is bad, you watch what happens if the Democrats reject Hakeem

00:09:16.640 Jeffries for a Republican.

00:09:17.820 Yeah, hear us now.

00:09:19.100 You know, Andy Biggs is telling you, I'm telling you, there is no way that Hakeem Jeffries does

00:09:24.320 not have every vote of every Democrat on every ballot.

00:09:27.920 And it's not us just saying this.

00:09:29.740 It's listed as the number one reason why some notion of a moderate Republican would never

00:09:35.120 be accepted.

00:09:36.240 The second reason that this piece identifies is that there is no negotiation or back channel

00:09:42.780 even happening right now between moderate Republicans and Democrats.

00:09:46.620 Now, we heard Don Bacon go out and say, well, we could reach across the aisle.

00:09:51.000 Have you seen any evidence that that's happened?

00:09:53.260 No, no evidence.

00:09:54.340 You're not.

00:09:54.740 If there was evidence there'd be somebody besides Don Bacon saying how mad he is at us, there

00:10:01.000 would be people from the Democrats saying, oh, yeah, maybe so.

00:10:03.840 But just yesterday, even on CNN, you had a Democrat saying that, oh, well, it's not going to happen.

00:10:09.780 Because it's not going to happen.

00:10:12.500 The Republicans, and they're not the moderate, they're the kind of more liberal Republicans

00:10:16.680 that are on the other side of the spectrum of you and I.

00:10:18.940 But what they are, they would have to basically manipulate a whole host, literally dozens and

00:10:26.600 dozens of Democrats and Republicans in order to make that happen. 0.86

00:10:31.140 There are no secrets in Washington, D.C., none at all.

00:10:35.660 And so if there was some actual coalition of multiple members working together, everyone

00:10:40.640 in this town would know about it.

00:10:42.340 And by the way, every reporter would be dying to get the scoop on the next one.

00:10:46.820 And here you have Politico saying, we've searched everywhere and there's no real evidence this

00:10:51.040 is happening.

00:10:51.740 And you know what that proves?

00:10:53.400 That Don Bacon's statements are nothing more than a McCarthy op.

00:10:58.280 And I know Don Bacon, I like Don Bacon, we sit next to each other on the Armed Services

00:11:02.980 Committee, care a lot about national defense together.

00:11:05.720 But what Don Bacon is saying is not sincere.

00:11:09.520 It is just an operation being run on behalf of the McCarthy coalition to try to scare those 0.74

00:11:16.020 of us who are trying to actually change Congress into accepting just kind of the next iteration

00:11:22.540 of swamp controlled decision making.

00:11:25.960 Yeah.

00:11:26.140 That's what it is.

00:11:26.500 Am I too aggressive to call the Bacon thing just a McCarthy op? 0.60

00:11:31.200 No, that's exactly what it is.

00:11:33.620 You know, Matt, everything we're talking about, what you're going to bring up next, they all

00:11:37.300 point to one thing.

00:11:38.500 The establishment is in control.

00:11:40.840 The establishment doesn't matter what party it is.

00:11:43.400 Its purpose is to maintain control and power.

00:11:48.640 And so you're going to see these rather macabre ops that are coming out there like, oh, we're

00:11:53.760 going to come together, you know, we're going to bring in...

00:11:56.540 Hillary might be speaker. 1.00

00:11:58.040 Liz Cheney's the speaker.

00:11:59.620 This is crazy talk.

00:12:02.820 Yeah.

00:12:03.100 And the next reason that Politico outlines is that in any sort of hypothetical deal, Democrats

00:12:09.360 would want something in return, and if Republicans were to surrender that, that would be the

00:12:14.820 death of those candidacies in any upcoming primary.

00:12:18.060 They say that it is a surefire recipe for a primary challenge to any centrist Republican.

00:12:23.800 Now, if you're a frontline Republican, a centrist Republican, you don't want to be challenged

00:12:28.620 in the primary because you likely already have a general election that is very costly and

00:12:34.320 requires a lot of effort.

00:12:35.980 And so the notion that centrist Republicans are going to go surrender away the powers of

00:12:41.580 the House of Representatives to Democrats and then have to explain that to primary voters

00:12:45.520 down the road defies like every feature of political physics.

00:12:51.680 Yeah, exactly.

00:12:52.340 So, and the final one is that Democrats, frankly, don't mind watching the GOP squirm.

00:13:00.120 And look, I wish that making the demands that we are making for a better Congress, a more

00:13:07.040 honest institution, a more transparent institution, I wish that didn't require discomfort in our

00:13:13.000 caucus.

00:13:13.460 I wish that every single person held the views that you and I frequently hold about the need

00:13:18.040 to transform Congress.

00:13:19.340 But sometimes you have to meet, make even members of your own team a little uncomfortable.

00:13:25.000 And real leadership is not just always giving the rah-rah speech at halftime, right?

00:13:31.540 You know, we underperformed in the lead up to this election.

00:13:35.520 And sometimes we have to have that discomfort to say, you know what, maybe if we like embrace

00:13:40.080 better policies and have better leaders, more inspirational figures guiding our decision making, maybe we

00:13:46.000 won't need $12 to $15 million, you know, for every frontline seat that we have to go raise from

00:13:51.280 lobbyists and special interests.

00:13:52.360 Maybe we'll just do what we said we would do for the people.

00:13:54.400 Yeah, I mean, amen to that.

00:13:56.160 And, you know, I want to add one other thing here that I think is just important to say.

00:14:00.680 We were told when we were in the minority, oh, you can't have a change in leadership.

00:14:04.420 By the way, Kevin's been in leadership for 12 years.

00:14:06.640 So we were told you can't have a change in leadership because we're in the minority.

00:14:09.580 That would be bad.

00:14:10.560 And then we were told when we were going to get, that we were going to get 20 to 40 seats and

00:14:13.980 we'd have this massive majority and we couldn't change the trajectory of Congress because Kevin

00:14:20.860 would have deserved it.

00:14:21.900 And now we're being told it's just too doggone close.

00:14:25.620 In other words, what they're saying is you can never change the direction of this Congress,

00:14:32.140 this congressional body because, well, it'd be uncomfortable, it'd be awful, it'd be awkward.

00:14:36.500 It'd be, and the reality is it's because they never want to lose the establishment.

00:14:41.220 They never want to lose the control and power.

00:14:44.600 And I'm grateful for you because that's what we're trying to do here is break down that

00:14:48.560 power structure so that people can actually, members of Congress can actually represent

00:14:53.360 their districts.

00:14:54.600 And we can't even go down and amend the bills on the floor.

00:14:59.960 You have a $2 trillion deficit, excuse me, $2 trillion bill, and you can't go down and

00:15:05.680 have a meaningful debate or offer amendments.

00:15:07.640 It's out of control and except for those four people.

00:15:14.220 Several of our colleagues, seven of them, in fact, have prepared a memorandum regarding

00:15:19.620 the important requirements of leadership of anyone who would want to be Speaker of the

00:15:25.080 House.

00:15:25.800 Those in the press have really categorized it as a sort of a, you know, message to McCarthy

00:15:32.140 that he doesn't have their vote in the absence of these things.

00:15:34.580 But let's go over the goals of this movement.

00:15:37.460 You know, what are the goals of the people who are trying to maybe shake up the leadership

00:15:42.960 race and not have everything be a coronation?

00:15:45.780 And one of the first ones is to have 72 hours to read the bill text that is unwaivable.

00:15:52.620 Now, that just seems like something both parties should support, that every American would support.

00:15:57.960 And sometimes you're dealing with bills that are thousands of pages.

00:16:01.580 So really, 72 hours isn't enough for these complex bills.

00:16:05.480 But what kind of pushback have you gotten as we've presented this to even our Republican

00:16:10.420 colleagues?

00:16:11.280 I've been told that there's just no way that we're going to have to go.

00:16:16.140 And as a prime example, the bill that we just did, 4,408 pages with a 36-hour window

00:16:22.860 to look at it, a complex bill filled with all kinds of interesting things.

00:16:27.720 But I've been told that if that happens, we will stultify, we will stop the process of Congress.

00:16:37.900 And I'm like, stop the process?

00:16:40.440 Oh, why can't we just at least read the bill?

00:16:43.540 Why can't we have debate?

00:16:44.880 But I mean...

00:16:45.420 But you know the real reason.

00:16:46.580 Yes.

00:16:46.940 The real reason is that they don't want us to have the chance to really see what the

00:16:51.560 operative effects are of the legislation, because then we would have stronger critique

00:16:55.940 of bills that don't always serve the interests of the folks who send us here to work for them.

00:17:01.000 I had a very powerful committee chairman tell me once, well, Gates, the reason we don't

00:17:05.400 give you guys the bills in advance is legislation's a lot like roadkill.

00:17:09.120 It gets picked after too much after about 48 hours in the sun.

00:17:12.360 And that is supposed to be the deliberative process that our fellow Americans deserve.

00:17:18.320 So know this, as Andy and I are fighting with the seven certainly who've signed this memo

00:17:24.100 and many others to try to open that up, there are people in this town who think that the

00:17:29.340 only way this town can work is if we don't really know the operative effects of the legislation

00:17:33.920 when we're required to vote on it.

00:17:35.440 Another demand in this memorandum is single subject.

00:17:38.460 The requirement that every bill address a single subject and that the appropriations bills

00:17:44.040 be considered separately, not just as one up or down vote.

00:17:47.700 So you've got to vote for the troops and keeping our military funded right alongside funding some

00:17:53.960 of these woke agencies.

00:17:55.820 Walk through your vision on single subject.

00:17:58.700 So single subject would, I mean, even that's probably too broad because you can just kind of

00:18:04.960 morph a bunch of things into subject.

00:18:06.300 But what that would do ostensibly would be the first step to letting us actually have control

00:18:12.180 so where you don't see, you know, this is the first thing that comes to mind is like,

00:18:17.200 let's say like a DACA amnesty bill in a National Defense Authorization Act.

00:18:23.140 It's where you wouldn't see something like a safe banking act, which is the marijuana banking

00:18:28.600 act, whether you're for it or against it, in the National Defense Authorization Act

00:18:32.260 has nothing to do with that. You would actually silo some of these votes so the American people

00:18:40.620 could see what we're voting on, members would see what we're voting on, and you would not have

00:18:45.460 this, the leverage that the leadership uses because they use this as leverage.

00:18:50.080 I mean, that's what it's all about.

00:18:51.260 Yeah. I mean, if you want to know the nitty gritty, if you're watching and wondering, well,

00:18:55.120 why would you ever have to vote on water infrastructure at the same time as the defense

00:19:00.080 authorization? Why would you have to vote on an issue regarding the war powers in Yemen and the

00:19:06.480 farm bill? The reason is that as the leadership is trying to construct a way to 218 votes on

00:19:13.220 something, they realize that some of these ideas cannot get the votes on their own merit. And so they

00:19:19.960 have to hang ornaments onto the tree, hoping that that will become a payoff to get two or three votes

00:19:26.060 here, or an incentive to get four or five votes there. And so it's not worthy of the greatest

00:19:32.960 country on the planet Earth to sit there and legislate like you're building a Mr. Potato Head doll,

00:19:39.840 right? And that's ultimately what a lot of these bills look like, and it's one of the principal

00:19:43.880 demands being made. Conservative representation on committees is another demand in the memo.

00:19:49.960 Explain to people why this need is not currently being met.

00:19:54.900 It's not currently being met because, like on the appropriations committee, leadership does not

00:20:02.380 want to have people on there that are going to say, we're going to vote no on this because it's going

00:20:07.180 to bust our spending and increase our deficit, which will in turn increase the national debt.

00:20:12.040 They want to have control of the committees. So most conservatives are kind of funneled into

00:20:18.280 two or three committees. We have on natural resources, we're on judiciary, and we're on

00:20:26.700 oversight. But you're not going to find us on appropriations. You're not going to find too many

00:20:30.700 of us on house armed services. You're not going to find us on anything that the leadership wants to

00:20:36.320 have control of. And you're definitely not going to find us on rules committee in any kind of

00:20:41.100 significant ratio. The appropriate ratio would mean that the chairman or chairwoman is going to have

00:20:50.020 to deal with objections to the leadership bills. And they just simply don't want that.

00:20:56.520 Yeah. It's almost like if you want to be on the war committee, you've got to be for the wars.

00:21:00.580 If you want to be on the appropriations committee, you have to be for all of the appropriations.

00:21:05.200 If you want to be on the foreign affairs committee, you have to be for more foreign affairs. If you

00:21:10.680 want to be on the committees that oversee banking and insurance, you have to be captive to those

00:21:15.760 lobbying interests. And what we're saying is that, look, we've got a cross section of ideologies in

00:21:21.340 this conference. And I don't purport to say that every committee should just have folks that are in

00:21:27.640 the Freedom Caucus or Freedom Caucus aligned. I think that every committee needs to reflect the

00:21:32.880 ideological sort of bandwidth of our conference. That way, if there are issues with bills where

00:21:38.520 maybe, you know, there's something that the moderates will not vote for that you and I want,

00:21:43.100 I'd rather sort that out in committee working on those matters rather than have it come to the

00:21:48.200 floor and say, well, we don't have the votes for it, so we have to bootstrap some other crazy

00:21:51.880 legislation to do it to try to force it over the finish line. Well, that's what a committee is for. 0.96

00:21:56.920 The committee is for the hot debate, the push-me-pull-ya that's supposed to come in legislating.

00:22:04.180 And then you could actually, then everybody else should say, well, we trust it because it's come

00:22:07.700 out of this committee. We know that they've fought hard over this thing, but that isn't the way it

00:22:11.740 happens today. The only thing I trust when a bill comes out of committee in Congress now

00:22:15.880 is that the lobbyists who lobby that committee are okay with the bill. Not that it's actually good

00:22:21.000 for my constituents. And so you have to think about the committees now as totally captive creatures

00:22:26.860 to the interests that lobby those committees. That's how you get on those committees. That's

00:22:31.480 how you fundraise off those committees. And what we're saying is if you had ideological diversity

00:22:35.620 and not just Freedom Caucus and Freedom Caucus aligned people, also folks from the more centrist

00:22:40.560 groups, then it would be about something more and something meaningful. Fran on Rumble says you also

00:22:47.680 have her vote for speaker. So I don't know which congressional district she represents,

00:22:51.540 but a lot of folks saying we need to fight hard, that these are valuable. And Star on Instagram

00:22:58.120 saying that the power needs to be with the people. And that's really what this drives at. The people

00:23:04.540 do feel like the government has been weaponized against them. And there is a organizational demand

00:23:09.740 about the House of Representatives in this memo our colleagues have signed for a church commission.

00:23:14.460 And, you know, you and I are on the Judiciary Committee. We're going to be focused a lot there

00:23:20.560 on the FBI and the national security apparatus being weaponized against people. But then on the Armed

00:23:26.880 Services Committee, I'm going to be looking at DOD and its weaponization against troops. And then on

00:23:31.400 oversight, you're going to be looking at these foreign entanglements of the Biden family and how that's

00:23:36.360 shaped China policy. And the argument in this memo is that all of those committees need to do that

00:23:42.080 work. But at the end of the day, this has to crystallize in a church commission style report. Do you agree

00:23:48.340 with that analysis?

00:23:49.320 Yeah, yeah, I do. And I'll tell you why, because I do think the the committees have have the bandwidth to

00:23:54.760 handle certain things. But the church commission is church style commission would basically say things

00:23:59.600 like, okay, what we have found is this, this interlocking weaponization of the federal government. And

00:24:07.620 what we're going to do is we need to stop that. And they can provide prescriptions, they can subpoena

00:24:12.680 people, and they can give due process, unlike the phony January 6th committee. You're actually trying to

00:24:19.980 get to the root of the problem. You're trying to find out what has happened. You're trying to find it out in a

00:24:26.240 proper due process way. And it'll take a long time. But when you get to the bottom of it, you have to do that to

00:24:33.540 clear out the underbrush that's been going on. And we're finding out more and more with these Twitter

00:24:38.260 dumps that are coming out that Elon Musk is providing, you're going to find that most of what

00:24:43.040 we thought, what we were saying, and everybody said, Oh, you bunch of conspiracy theorists. It turns out that

00:24:48.260 there really was a conspiracy.

00:24:50.080 Yeah, indeed. Well, for those of you watching the speakers race closely, there were 36 votes that Kevin

00:24:56.740 McCarthy did not capture when Republicans got together to make a speaker designation choice.

00:25:02.400 Of those 36, zero have come out publicly saying their mind has been changed, and now all of a sudden

00:25:09.800 they intend to vote for Kevin McCarthy. Zero of them. Five of us have come out to say that we really

00:25:15.800 can't envision a circumstance voting for Kevin McCarthy, given his recalcitrant to some of these

00:25:21.660 goals we have for the House of Representatives to be more transparent, open, and just available for

00:25:27.700 lawmakers to be able to serve the needs of our constituents. And now an additional seven,

00:25:33.840 including Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Paul Gosar of Arizona,

00:25:39.400 Representative-elect Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Chip Roy of Texas, Andrew Clyde of Georgia,

00:25:44.340 and Representative-elect Eli Crane of Arizona, that these additional seven are coming out and saying,

00:25:50.620 this isn't about a person to us. This is about a series of policy goals. And the number one thing

00:25:58.460 that was listed is the motion to vacate. And the motion to vacate being really the enforcement

00:26:04.020 mechanism for these other goals. And I know this sounds like inside baseball, but I mean,

00:26:08.140 this is how power and who wields it is going to get crafted in Washington, D.C. So it's very important

00:26:13.280 for people to understand that, you know, for 200-ish years, a single member of the body could call for

00:26:21.100 a no-confidence vote, essentially, on the presiding officer. And it was rarely, if ever, used. I think

00:26:26.220 you could count on one hand the number of times it was used in over 100 years. And really, the goal

00:26:31.460 is to never use the motion to vacate, to never have to use the motion to vacate. And you know what?

00:26:36.860 If the Democrats want to do it every single day, we can do the prayer, the pledge, and vote to keep our

00:26:42.080 speaker intact. But what it ensures is that when we agree to these rules, that there will be

00:26:47.760 accountability. Is that your vision for the motion to vacate? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the key word is

00:26:53.260 accountability, as you say. I mean, I know, I know where, I think I know where you are. I know where

00:26:58.300 I am. I, you know, when I look at Mr. McCarthy, I have a certain reticence, because I think he is,

00:27:04.940 he, he needs accountability, okay? I think he, he'd be willing to say, yeah, I'll give you

00:27:11.680 everything. But I'm not going to give you the motion to vacate. Now, why is the motion to vacate

00:27:15.980 important? Because when he violates these rules, or attempts to waive these rules, which we haven't

00:27:21.520 even talked about the waiver, that, that happens on every bill, they waive the rules of the House,

00:27:27.160 then we can, we can go to him and say, wait a second, you just waived these rules that you

00:27:32.460 negotiated to put in there, and we're going to hold you accountable. But if you can't hold him

00:27:37.540 accountable, I'm going to just predict right now. He's going to waive these rules as often

00:27:44.020 as the conference lets him. And by the way, the conference is going to probably let him do it a lot.

00:27:49.000 Our goal is to ensure that principled conservatives do not trade the cow for the magic beans. And this

00:27:57.540 entire negotiation, this entire process will be wholly fruitless if rules changes to the institution

00:28:05.700 are not undergirded with a motion to vacate that any one member can execute. It is the principal

00:28:13.340 enforcement mechanism. It is a total deal breaker. It seems not only for my seven colleagues who spoke

00:28:19.700 through, through their own words in the memo, but for many others who I've chatted with inside

00:28:24.680 conversations these last several weeks. And I mean, isn't the reason we need the motion to vacate,

00:28:30.860 because we don't trust Kevin McCarthy to deliver on any changes to the rules that he promises.

00:28:36.900 Yeah, no, that's, that is exactly right. And by the way, you had for literally 150 plus years

00:28:43.960 a motion to vacate, actually since the early 1800s. You know who changed it was Nancy Pelosi. 0.81

00:28:50.220 And we're not asking for anything that's historically outrageous. We're actually asking for what has been

00:28:56.540 the norm in the United States Congress. And there is an amazing red line reticence on the part of Kevin

00:29:03.260 because he doesn't want to be held accountable. He wants to be able to make these promises and say,

00:29:07.540 yeah, I'll do anything, anything you want. And then that's betting on the come. That's betting against 0.61

00:29:13.640 yourself. In my opinion, what I want to know is, is there a mechanism to hold you accountable?

00:29:20.240 I'm glad you mentioned that because you watch some of the coverage of all of this and folks are like,

00:29:24.540 well, the right wing conservatives are making crazy demands. And like what the crazy demand that

00:29:30.380 seems to be hanging up McCarthy the most is to return to something that we've had for, you know,

00:29:34.800 more than a century. And, you know, then he prefers to defend something more akin to the Pelosi rule.

00:29:41.960 I don't think that that makes us outrageous in our demands. But my plan is to vote for Andy Biggs.

00:29:47.380 Andy has been a presiding officer in the Arizona Senate where he led a majority that was how many seats?

00:29:53.040 Two seats. Two seat majority in the Senate and still got a lot of stuff done for conservatives.

00:29:58.200 And I think that the size of this majority dictates the type of leader we need. We need a leader with

00:30:03.680 broad trust and confidence across the various groups within the Republican majority. And just

00:30:09.860 the fact that we have to enforce these rules based on something other than trust shows you,

00:30:16.080 I think, all you need to know about the McCarthy candidacy and its ultimate destiny.

00:30:21.220 Andy, there is breaking news in the Congress now I want to get to. But first, you have a great

00:30:26.600 podcast. What's the Biggs idea? How can folks find your podcast? And how can folks follow you on

00:30:30.960 social media before we go to the government funding? You can go you can find me on Twitter

00:30:34.040 at RepAndy Biggs AZ. You can go to what's the Biggs idea on Apple and every other good your

00:30:45.420 neighborhood podcasting distribution center. You had a good conversation with Bob Gooder regarding

00:30:51.180 a lot of these issues that if you want to get deeper into some of the rationale and some of the

00:30:56.120 currents that are running through this leadership race, I strongly recommend that episode. So so

00:31:01.660 breaking today, Democrats were supposed to release their funding package. And we get this from Bloomberg

00:31:08.920 government. Democrats put off plan to release funding package. They are abandoning the release

00:31:15.140 of this bill. They are extending us to the 23rd of December. They don't have Republican support for

00:31:21.720 this omnibus spending legislation. Your thoughts? Yeah, so I saw Leahy was giving it a different spin

00:31:28.460 this morning when I was watching him. He was like, well, you know, I'm so confident we're going to put

00:31:32.920 it off. Well, that's exactly not what happens when you are confident you've got the vote. So they don't

00:31:38.340 have the votes. And this is a very good thing for us because we need the Senate to kill the omnibus

00:31:44.660 bill, which is this big, massive spending package we've been talking about. Because if that passes,

00:31:50.660 Matt, it's going to fund the government all the way through next September. And what that does is

00:31:55.720 that takes away 95% of the leverage that we will have against the Biden administration. And what most

00:32:00.900 people forget is we will be moving into the fall of 2023, which is the kickoff of the presidential

00:32:07.600 cycle. And this place will basically shut down. I hate to tell you American people, but this place

00:32:13.620 kind of shuts down for the presidential campaign. We'll just do one or two things along the way to make

00:32:19.040 it look like we're doing. I think that's performance art. But the reality is we have got to stop the

00:32:24.740 omnibus. And quite frankly, this is where Kevin McCarthy could show he has leadership chops. He's not doing

00:32:30.140 so. He needs to be out there talking about killing the omnibus bill, do a short-term spending bill so

00:32:37.080 that the Republicans can be in control of the budget come January. This is the swamp's play to

00:32:43.780 keep control of spending for as long as possible before Republicans have even the opportunity or the

00:32:50.180 platform or the vote to deliver on the promises we made on the campaign trail to rein in the spending.

00:32:55.400 I mean, the principal mandate that Republicans have after the midterm election in the House of

00:33:01.240 Representatives is to curtail inflation. And we won the argument that the driving factor of inflation

00:33:07.080 wasn't Vladimir Putin. It wasn't some global economic condition. It was government spending.

00:33:12.180 That's right. And so here we are trying to present that fight to even have the opportunity to battle on

00:33:18.100 it. And the cards are being dealt from under the deck, just away from us with Republicans in the Senate

00:33:23.980 who are retiring and just want their earmarks and pork to bring them to their district and Republicans

00:33:29.240 in the House who might prefer to not have the fight and might be all too willing to allow the

00:33:35.360 lobbyists in the swamp to win. So we are fighting against this omnibus spending legislation for that

00:33:41.180 reason. Democrats don't seem to have the vote. How does it end, Andy? It's going to end. We're going to do

00:33:47.180 a short-term spending and then they're going to come through with the omnibus. I have bad news. I think

00:33:52.040 that the senators will cave, Republican senators will cave and give it away. Our people elected

00:33:59.340 us to fight. And if the first opportunity we have to kill a massive spending bill, we don't take that

00:34:05.800 opportunity, then it will be demoralizing to the people that were expecting more of us.

00:34:12.260 Exactly. Exactly right. And I just want to just comment on that. The fight is in the Senate,

00:34:16.080 but a lot of people forget we have a voice in the House even though the fight's in the Senate.

00:34:24.220 That is what leadership chops would do. There should be a letter that we've all signed to

00:34:28.560 Mitch McConnell. There should be a press conference on the steps of the House. There should be a meeting

00:34:34.760 called between the appropriate chairs in the House and in the Senate. There should be continuing pressure

00:34:41.200 put on the senators by the House leadership team, but they're MIA right now. Very disappointing and

00:34:48.820 hopefully not a sign of things to come. You are leading the fight on this effort to impeach

00:34:53.600 Ali Mayorkas. And I want to get to that because you've got big news coming later in the week. The

00:34:58.040 movement is growing. You are assembling more and more Republicans. What are people seeing in the

00:35:04.100 Congress now that are bringing more and more folks to this impeach Mayorkas effort?

00:35:09.020 Well, we still have an uphill climb with some of our colleagues, but the reality is you just look

00:35:14.400 at the border. Just look at the sheer numbers and then we can talk about the more granular effects.

00:35:23.020 So on the border, 73,000 plus known gotaways in November. 205,000 roughly encounters. Unknown

00:35:33.300 gotaways estimated to be somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000. Think about that.

00:35:38.200 Roughly 300,000 to 350,000 people illegally entered our country. Title 42 is going away. That will jump

00:35:46.860 it up to about 18,000 people a day coming into this country. The violence that is erupting. We had a

00:35:53.960 CBP agent killed last week. The drugs that are coming, record amounts, but we still get the same

00:35:59.980 percentage. So you might be interdicting more, but you're still only getting 7% of what we estimate

00:36:06.820 totally coming in. The fentanyl deaths, the opioid crisis, the human and sex trafficking is permeating

00:36:13.080 the country. And right now, if you could get CBP intelligence to go on the record, they would tell

00:36:19.920 you there is not a community in this country that does not have a Mexican cartel presence in this

00:36:25.860 country. And all the time, you've got Alejandro Mayorkas saying, we're not going to remove people,

00:36:32.160 the 1.25 million people who've been ordered to leave the country, we're not going to remove them.

00:36:37.660 There's no plan to remove them. There's no plan to remove them. Instead, in fact, what they're

00:36:41.260 talking about is amnesty, to bring more people, to grant amnesty. And every time they ring that

00:36:46.880 amnesty bell, it just churns up those caravans. Exactly right. So when is the press conference

00:36:52.820 that you're leading on the impeach Mayorkas effort? How can folks follow? The press conference,

00:36:57.740 oh, Matt, you asked me these specific questions. The press conference is this week, I want to say

00:37:02.080 it's tomorrow afternoon. Okay. It'll be- Are you streaming? How can folks follow?

00:37:07.140 Yes, it will be live streamed. You can go to my website, bigs.house.gov, and see the live stream

00:37:12.780 there. It will be live streamed by one of the networks. I can't tell you which one because I

00:37:17.220 can't recall. I'm just leading it. That's all, Matt. Very well. Well, I'm glad you're leading the

00:37:23.500 effort because I do believe that impeachment is the proper tool when people are violating their

00:37:28.920 duty on purpose. I'm not for political impeachment. I'm not for reflexive impeachment. I'm not for

00:37:35.060 impeachment because people use bad judgment. But this is not an issue of bad judgment.

00:37:39.480 They're doing this on purpose. Everybody has talked about the shakeup in the Senate,

00:37:44.580 driven by the Arizona delegation. I heard on one of the Sunday shows someone say, well, you know,

00:37:49.540 Kyrsten Sinema for a long time has said she's friendly with Andy Biggs, that they actually

00:37:54.000 have a working relationship. So, I mean, this evolution of Kyrsten Sinema from, you know,

00:37:58.640 almost Green Party activist to now not associating with the Democratic Party is quite the evolution,

00:38:05.340 and it seems you've had a front row seat to it. Well, you know, she and I served together for a

00:38:09.860 long time in the Arizona legislature. I will just say this about Kyrsten. I was sitting next to her on

00:38:14.440 the plane going home, Matt. So, the flight was actually 520. So, about six hours we're sitting

00:38:19.980 there. We're just talking back and forth periodically, you know, about life and everything

00:38:23.780 else because we're friends. She didn't tell me this was going to happen. I get off the plane and I'm

00:38:28.260 walking to my car and I'm like, what? But it's, the reality is she is, she is, she's going to vote

00:38:37.640 with the Democrats most likely. She's, but she's not going to caucus with them. She is an independent

00:38:43.620 minded person. Her mantra, and we have the same mantra, quite frankly, it's just we're on the

00:38:52.100 other side. It goes like this. If you've got a good idea and a good policy that I think works for

00:38:56.660 the country that's constitutional, I'll get on it. And she's kind of that way, but she leans to the

00:39:03.720 left far more than you. Yeah, I wonder whether or not this was an act of true disassociation or

00:39:09.260 whether she just looked at polling that showed she was going to lose a Democratic primary to Ruben

00:39:13.000 Gallego. And by her declaring that she's an independent now, the Democrats are presented

00:39:19.180 with this choice of whether or not to field a candidate against her. And if she punches through

00:39:22.700 to a general election, she's, she's obviously a stronger general election candidate than she is a 1.00

00:39:26.860 primary candidate, right? Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's right. So the Democrats in Arizona censured

00:39:31.760 her, they're ticked off at her because of the filibuster issue because she, and she, by the way, 0.63

00:39:35.780 she's held that for 20 years. We've known each other 20 years. She's had the same position.

00:39:39.060 So that wasn't a political expedience. That was a deeply held belief. Oh yeah. Yeah. So the next

00:39:45.320 thing happens is if, if so, so Ruben will probably be the Democrat candidate. He's licking his chops

00:39:50.980 because now he doesn't have a primary probably. Yeah, but good luck for him getting, getting through

00:39:55.920 a general if Sinema's in there. Yeah. So Sinema, Sinema will be in there because all she has to do in 1.00

00:40:00.720 Arizona is you have to just get signatures. So you don't have a, an election at all. And then you're

00:40:05.540 going to have a Republican. Maybe it's Blake Masters again. I don't know who it'll be. So

00:40:09.980 it's going to be a real, uh, Hobson choice there in some ways, because for Republicans, uh, we like

00:40:18.540 Kyrsten Sinema because she's, she's open, she's transparent. She, she, she votes a lot of ways, 0.58

00:40:24.600 but, and certainly the chamber of commerce loves Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona. So how does that shake out?

00:40:32.540 I don't know. Everything weird in politics has some association with Arizona these days. You guys

00:40:38.520 were like a sleepy Western state for so long where, where people, you know, went to like escape the

00:40:44.320 army from chasing them down. But now everything going on in Arizona is, uh, is at the top of,

00:40:51.880 uh, the political headline. Andy, thanks for joining me. Thanks for running for speaker.

00:40:55.760 Thanks for being in the fight. And you know, I, I'm grateful for this discussion because as we have

00:41:00.900 reporters hound us all week, we can point to the goals of this movement, the objectives that are

00:41:06.820 not rooted in any personality conflict, but that are truly rooted in an opportunity, a once in a

00:41:13.040 lifetime opportunity to change the way the house of representatives works. And if we accomplish that

00:41:17.200 probably won't even matter who the speaker is because we'll have an open, honest place to serve

00:41:22.000 and our constituents will be all the better for it. What's the bigs ideas, the podcast,

00:41:25.960 follow him at rep Andy bigs, right? At rep, Andy bigs, AZ rep, Andy bigs, AZ. Thanks for joining

00:41:33.660 me. Roll the credits.

00:41:34.460 Thank you.

00:41:55.960 All right.

00:42:04.460 All right.

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - December 12, 2022

Episode 78 LIVE： Congress Is Broken (feat. Rep. Andy Biggs) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

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