The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - Episode 89 - A Hairy Situation in the Congress. America's Student Loan Crisis. Cool Cats and Kittens...and Commercials.

00:00:00.000 You ever watch this guy on television?

00:00:03.820 You all were not telling the truth and you should not be trusted.

00:00:06.580 Congressman Matt Gaetz, thank you for what you did for your country tonight.

00:00:09.300 Be offended with the Democratic whip, not House of Republicans.

00:00:12.280 Like a machine, Matt Gaetz.

00:00:15.960 Welcome to Hot Takes, I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz.

00:00:19.040 Let's talk about the news.

00:00:20.660 The West is dealing with wildfires and the American Southeast is dealing with Hurricane Sally

00:00:26.260 in the northern Gulf of Mexico making landfall today.

00:00:30.400 We're likely to see a majority of that impact kind of in the New Orleans to Pascagoula area,

00:00:35.640 though the impacts of the storm from a flooding and water standpoint could be felt as far east

00:00:42.320 as Florida's first congressional district.

00:00:44.820 I spoke with state emergency management officials yesterday and was informed that they believe

00:00:50.220 flooding poses the greatest risk in Florida.

00:00:53.520 They've activated water rescue teams for low-lying areas.

00:00:57.140 They've created voluntary evacuations with shelters.

00:01:00.760 Make sure to check with your county emergency management social media pages.

00:01:06.240 Be subscribed to them, and that way you'll get the most up-to-date information.

00:01:10.720 You can also check out our website at gates.house.gov.

00:01:14.720 Subscribe to our newsletter, and we are sending out information to help folks through Hurricane

00:01:19.460 Sally as well. 0.83

00:01:23.220 The House Judiciary Committee has principled oversight jurisdiction regarding the Department

00:01:29.240 of Justice.

00:01:30.360 We're supposed to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed and at times hold hearings

00:01:35.420 to fulfill that oversight function.

00:01:37.260 We now know that 31 phones were destroyed by members of the Mueller team from the standpoint

00:01:46.040 of evidence collection.

00:01:48.040 Instead of being preserved, instead of being maintained, they were all restored to factory

00:01:53.880 settings.

00:01:54.880 Now, you'll remember that initially the claim was that some of the struck page text messages

00:02:01.940 were gone as a consequence of the resetting of certain phones to their original factory

00:02:09.680 positioning.

00:02:11.160 But this is now what's happened with the Mueller team.

00:02:14.280 And is the House Judiciary Committee calling in witnesses?

00:02:18.100 Are we putting on evidence?

00:02:19.640 Are we finding out what happened for this to occur?

00:02:23.140 Did someone give a coordinated order?

00:02:25.320 Presumably for, you know, dozens of these phones to have seen the same treatment, there

00:02:31.760 was some conspiracy, some coordinated conspiracy to ensure that someone wasn't able to follow

00:02:39.320 their tracks and see the extent to which they were trying to ruin people's lives, you know,

00:02:45.680 potentially, you know, cause people to go broke in defense of very frivolous claims, at

00:02:52.080 times, just process claims that were generated out of the investigation itself, not some

00:02:58.720 underlying criminal activity, as was the case in the Roger Stone matter.

00:03:04.340 Now, we're not doing that, actually, today in the House Judiciary Committee.

00:03:08.620 We instead are taking up the Crown Act.

00:03:12.360 That will pass on a party line vote.

00:03:14.680 The Crown Act, if you're wondering, is the creating a respectful and open world for natural

00:03:21.760 hair act.

00:03:23.300 It's offered by Cedric Richmond and would ban discrimination on the basis of hair texture

00:03:29.920 or hairstyle in federal programs, housing, public accommodation, employment, and would

00:03:36.000 make hair discrimination actionable under a Section 1983 civil rights claim.

00:03:42.720 So, the Section 1983 claims were originally comprised so that there would be a way for federal

00:03:50.800 courts to get jurisdiction over individual state actors who were refusing to, you know, desegregate,

00:03:59.180 who were not following federal civil rights laws after their implementation in the South.

00:04:04.100 And so, they want to take that very extreme utilization of government power, going after an individual

00:04:11.760 who is acting through the scope of their authority.

00:04:14.240 And they now want to use that to federalize our national policy regarding hair.

00:04:22.200 And the argument is that certain people with certain types of hair are seeing an implicit

00:04:30.360 discrimination in federal employment.

00:04:34.540 And the bill specifically lists hair that is tightly coiled or tightly curled, locks, cornrows,

00:04:43.200 twists, braids, bantu knots.

00:04:46.140 I would not know how to discriminate against someone with a bantu knot because I would not 1.00

00:04:49.880 even know what a bantu knot is.

00:04:52.020 And afros.

00:04:54.180 I cannot believe that we are spending the time and effort of the House Judiciary Committee to

00:04:59.360 nationalize the policy on hair.

00:05:01.340 You may be wondering, why is this so bad?

00:05:03.580 We wouldn't want anyone to be mistreated as a consequence of their hair.

00:05:07.420 But that's not how this is going to play out practically.

00:05:10.260 You see, what's going to happen is the trial lawyers are going to send people with these

00:05:14.800 like listed hairstyles in to get housing, in to get jobs, in for a certain plants.

00:05:22.040 And then if those people do not go to the front of the line with these particular hairstyles,

00:05:28.140 then the individual making that decision could be subject to Section 1983 litigation and they

00:05:35.040 could just present a field day for trial lawyers.

00:05:38.120 And so obviously some, you know, poor government employee who's there being a civil servant doing

00:05:43.400 their patriotic duty, they're not going to want to be subject to that.

00:05:46.440 They're not going to want those hassles and that harassment. 0.65

00:05:48.500 So they're just going to take people with these particular hairstyles and move them to the

00:05:54.980 front of the line in our governing policy and in the execution of the programs for the provision

00:06:01.180 of Americans.

00:06:02.040 And I can't imagine this ever becoming law, but it sure is a shame that we got to spend

00:06:08.380 time debating it.

00:06:09.660 This is not what America needs right now.

00:06:12.480 We need to fight this virus.

00:06:14.340 We need to revive the economy.

00:06:15.900 We don't need to become each other's nationally federalized hair critics.

00:06:23.360 Jake Tapper is an opinion journalist.

00:06:26.640 Sometimes he pretends not to be, but boy, does he have an opinion about Disney and Mulan.

00:06:33.400 Take a listen.

00:06:34.120 So then maybe you seek this respite and you subscribe to Disney Plus, Disney streaming service, and

00:06:40.060 you turn on their new live action film, Mulan.

00:06:43.500 Fun, nice, family friendly.

00:06:47.720 But maybe you stay for the credits and you see Disney thank the propaganda authorities of

00:06:53.900 the ruling Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang.

00:06:57.960 That's right.

00:06:59.000 Not only did Disney film this movie, Mulan, in the epicenter of the part of China where the

00:07:05.580 U.S. State Department estimates the Chinese government has detained as many as two million

00:07:11.540 ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in internment camps, places China claims are

00:07:18.860 for re-education and job training.

00:07:20.960 But the U.S. government says that they are subjecting Uyghurs to torture and cruel and inhumane

00:07:27.920 treatment. But not only did they film Mulan there, Disney also thanks a local police department in

00:07:36.200 their credits, a police department that was sanctioned by the U.S. government for its role

00:07:41.520 in running these concentration camps.

00:07:44.200 Now, while Jake Tapper is going ham on Disney for their just obvious tilt of the hat to China,

00:07:53.340 you see then the House of Representatives on Thursday of this week planning to take up

00:07:59.300 the anti-Chinese sentiment legislation that they've put together.

00:08:04.680 And this is a political messaging bill intended to attack the president for using phrases like

00:08:10.320 the China virus or the Wuhan flu or any other number of colloquial terms that have been broadly

00:08:17.020 used to describe this virus that undeniably did start in China and that Dr. Yan, a recent

00:08:22.940 whistleblower, has identified as likely generated in this lab or altered in this lab.

00:08:29.280 The Wuhan Institute of Virology worked in coordination with, that's the same Wuhan Institute of

00:08:34.660 Virology that I called for an end of U.S. funding to. It resulted in an end of that funding.

00:08:40.740 But now Democrats don't want to work to continue to disentangle our research and our medicine from

00:08:46.940 China. No, they instead want to criticize those who they believe have had anti-Chinese or anti-Asian

00:08:53.700 sentiment. So quite interesting with that going on, while Jake Tapper seems to have no problem

00:08:59.840 teeing up China. It's a rare circumstance where he and Nancy Pelosi aren't reading off the

00:09:04.640 same script. But I don't think it's going to help Democrats in the upcoming election in tens of

00:09:09.760 days that, you know, they're out here simping for China when clearly China lied. They withheld

00:09:16.600 information. They didn't disclose the genome sequence. They hoarded PPE, limiting access initially.

00:09:23.920 And now I think we can see clearly the threat that they pose and certainly the danger that comes

00:09:31.680 with American corporations just so obviously and grotesquely bending over backwards for China.

00:09:37.640 It's almost like you don't know which is trying to do China's bidding first, the corporatists in

00:09:44.000 America who still have the Chimerica dream or Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats.

00:09:49.340 Abigail Tracy at Vanity Fair usually covers me pretty fairly, by Washington standards at least.

00:09:59.360 And we gave her an early read of my upcoming book, Firebrand, and Abby wrote a story about it in

00:10:05.960 Vanity Fair. We'll post it on our social media. And one of the things I address in the book is the

00:10:11.620 future of the Republican Party. There are those who think that Trump is like, you know, this weird

00:10:17.720 one off thing that we just have to endure. I think that what Trump has done to the conservative movement

00:10:24.060 has animated a new generation of warriors capable and prepared to be entertaining and engage people

00:10:32.220 in politics and then put out bold solutions rather than the kind of boring nonsense that we heard during

00:10:38.260 kind of the Paul Ryan era of the party. So the Abigail Tracy story reads, as conservatives like Bill

00:10:44.800 Crystal and George Conway pontificate about the future of the Republican Party post-Trump, Gates

00:10:50.660 seems to recognize that its evolution is complete and irreversible. The sun has set on the so-called

00:10:57.800 young guns once hailed it as its future, the Paul Ryans and Kevin McCarthy's and Eric Cantor's.

00:11:04.020 Speaker of the House Paul Ryan once knocked me for going on TV too much without considering that maybe

00:11:09.520 his own failures as a leader stemmed from spending too much time in think tanks instead of in the

00:11:15.240 green rooms where guests wait to appear on TV and are thereby connected to the dinnertime of real

00:11:20.720 Americans. She quotes the book. I take his recent elevation to the board at Fox News to be his very

00:11:27.760 silent apology. It's impossible to get canceled if you're on every channel. Why raise money to advertise

00:11:33.720 on the news when you can make the news? And if you aren't making the news, you aren't governing.

00:11:39.320 And again, that reflects the position that, you know, I took in the HBO movie, The Swamp, and that

00:11:44.800 I've taken in my personal approach to campaign finance that, you know, the special interests

00:11:50.040 really shouldn't be in charge. They shouldn't be writing the agenda. And the way to bypass the special

00:11:55.940 interests is to go directly to the American people. And the way to do that is by, you know,

00:12:01.940 making myself available on television programs, by sharing my thoughts every day on this podcast,

00:12:07.220 by being candid and real time in social media to the greatest extent possible, and being a good

00:12:14.000 public servant to my constituents. That's ultimately what the job calls. It's what I write in the book.

00:12:19.440 Check out Abby's piece with some pretty funny excerpts.

00:12:25.400 Should students be able to discharge student debt through the bankruptcy process? That's the question

00:12:31.520 that will be posed to the House Judiciary Committee this week. And I have a different view than many

00:12:36.340 Republicans. I look at a lot of these private colleges as Ponzi schemes, where they defraud people,

00:12:45.500 where they get folks hooked on these federally subsidized student loans, and then they overcharge

00:12:52.020 for the product while they build massive empires out of administrations. And it's no good for the

00:12:58.700 students. And it's just interesting that America has these laws that allow you to discharge almost

00:13:04.920 any other kind of debt, but not student loan debt. And I'm going to post an article on our social media

00:13:09.980 today from The Intercept. It's by Ida Chavez entitled, Joe Biden's role in creating the student

00:13:16.320 debt crisis stretches back to the 1970s. And the article talks specifically about the gravity of the

00:13:23.340 student loan problem. Today, more than 44 million Americans owe nearly $1.6 trillion in student loan

00:13:31.300 debt. That's more than Americans owe in auto loan debt. That's more than Americans owe in credit card

00:13:37.660 debt. And it didn't used to always be this way. But politicians made it easier and easier to access

00:13:44.320 loans. At the same time, they made it harder to get rid of the debt. And those two forces combined

00:13:50.800 have essentially created a generation of indentured servants, where a lot of millennials weren't able

00:13:57.900 to afford to get married or put that down payment on a house because of the extensive student loans

00:14:04.700 that so many were carrying. And this piece in The Intercept goes over Joe Biden's role from one of

00:14:11.980 the architects of the bankruptcy reform legislation that made it almost impossible to discharge the student

00:14:17.440 loan debt through that process to Biden's support for more and more of these private colleges to take

00:14:24.940 the federally subsidized loans from more and more students. And those ended up being some of the worst

00:14:30.460 actors in the process. So check it out and give me some feedback on whether or not you think student loan

00:14:36.060 debt should be discharged through bankruptcy. I'm not so sure it shouldn't be a little easier to do it.

00:14:41.580 I don't know that Joe Biden was right about this then. He's probably not right about it now.

00:14:45.580 Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you know that in the upcoming Dancing with the Stars series

00:14:53.700 on ABC, there will be a feature presentation of Carole Baskin as one of the contestants. That's right,

00:15:01.220 Carole Baskin of Tiger King fame. And her husband had disappeared in the series under some strange

00:15:08.440 circumstances. And now you've got his family literally buying one of the commercial slots

00:15:15.440 to run this ad during Dancing with the Stars.

00:15:18.560 I'm Gail. Don Lewis was our daddy. I'm Linda. And we miss our dad. I'm Donna. We need to know what

00:15:25.560 happened to our father. I'm Anne. All we're asking is justice for Don. Don Lewis mysteriously

00:15:31.320 disappeared in 1997. His family deserves justice. Do you know who did this or if Carole Baskin was

00:15:37.780 involved? A hundred thousand dollar reward has been funded. You can call the tip line

00:15:42.140 at 646-450-6530. It's quite something that at the same time you've got Disney under attack,

00:15:49.900 you see their sister company ABC getting trolled during their own ad time by folks who think that

00:15:57.480 one of their contestants is a murderer. Thanks for listening to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt

00:16:03.480 Gates. And I'm told by our team that we've gone over a million listens on the Hot Takes podcast. And

00:16:09.640 so I wanted the opportunity to thank my communications director, Luke Ball, my press assistant, Joel Valdez,

00:16:18.000 my chief of staff, Jillian Lane Wyatt. They're the team that put it together, particularly Luke and Joel.

00:16:22.780 And I also want to thank you, the listener, a million spins. That's freaking awesome. Love having

00:16:28.780 everybody as a part of the conversation as we detail what's going on in the Congress and talk a

00:16:34.180 little bit about the news. Thanks so much. Tune in tomorrow. Make sure you subscribe for more Hot Takes.

The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - September 15, 2020

Episode 89 - A Hairy Situation in the Congress. America's Student Loan Crisis. Cool Cats and Kittens...and Commercials.

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