Episode 89 - A Hairy Situation in the Congress. America's Student Loan Crisis. Cool Cats and Kittens...and Commercials.
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Summary
In this episode of Hot Takes, Rep. Matt Gaetz talks about the latest in the Mueller investigation, the impact of Hurricane Sally, and the House Judiciary Committee takes up a bill that could lead to a ban on discrimination based on hairstyles.
Transcript
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You all were not telling the truth and you should not be trusted.
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Congressman Matt Gaetz, thank you for what you did for your country tonight.
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Be offended with the Democratic whip, not House of Republicans.
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Welcome to Hot Takes, I'm Congressman Matt Gaetz.
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The West is dealing with wildfires and the American Southeast is dealing with Hurricane Sally
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in the northern Gulf of Mexico making landfall today.
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We're likely to see a majority of that impact kind of in the New Orleans to Pascagoula area,
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though the impacts of the storm from a flooding and water standpoint could be felt as far east
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I spoke with state emergency management officials yesterday and was informed that they believe
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They've activated water rescue teams for low-lying areas.
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They've created voluntary evacuations with shelters.
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Make sure to check with your county emergency management social media pages.
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Be subscribed to them, and that way you'll get the most up-to-date information.
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You can also check out our website at gates.house.gov.
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Subscribe to our newsletter, and we are sending out information to help folks through Hurricane
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The House Judiciary Committee has principled oversight jurisdiction regarding the Department
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We're supposed to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed and at times hold hearings
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We now know that 31 phones were destroyed by members of the Mueller team from the standpoint
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Instead of being preserved, instead of being maintained, they were all restored to factory
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Now, you'll remember that initially the claim was that some of the struck page text messages
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were gone as a consequence of the resetting of certain phones to their original factory
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But this is now what's happened with the Mueller team.
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And is the House Judiciary Committee calling in witnesses?
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Are we finding out what happened for this to occur?
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Presumably for, you know, dozens of these phones to have seen the same treatment, there
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was some conspiracy, some coordinated conspiracy to ensure that someone wasn't able to follow
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their tracks and see the extent to which they were trying to ruin people's lives, you know,
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potentially, you know, cause people to go broke in defense of very frivolous claims, at
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times, just process claims that were generated out of the investigation itself, not some
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underlying criminal activity, as was the case in the Roger Stone matter.
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Now, we're not doing that, actually, today in the House Judiciary Committee.
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The Crown Act, if you're wondering, is the creating a respectful and open world for natural
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It's offered by Cedric Richmond and would ban discrimination on the basis of hair texture
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or hairstyle in federal programs, housing, public accommodation, employment, and would
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make hair discrimination actionable under a Section 1983 civil rights claim.
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So, the Section 1983 claims were originally comprised so that there would be a way for federal
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courts to get jurisdiction over individual state actors who were refusing to, you know, desegregate,
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who were not following federal civil rights laws after their implementation in the South.
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And so, they want to take that very extreme utilization of government power, going after an individual
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who is acting through the scope of their authority.
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And they now want to use that to federalize our national policy regarding hair.
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And the argument is that certain people with certain types of hair are seeing an implicit
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And the bill specifically lists hair that is tightly coiled or tightly curled, locks, cornrows,
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I would not know how to discriminate against someone with a bantu knot because I would not
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I cannot believe that we are spending the time and effort of the House Judiciary Committee to
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We wouldn't want anyone to be mistreated as a consequence of their hair.
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But that's not how this is going to play out practically.
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You see, what's going to happen is the trial lawyers are going to send people with these
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like listed hairstyles in to get housing, in to get jobs, in for a certain plants.
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And then if those people do not go to the front of the line with these particular hairstyles,
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then the individual making that decision could be subject to Section 1983 litigation and they
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could just present a field day for trial lawyers.
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And so obviously some, you know, poor government employee who's there being a civil servant doing
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their patriotic duty, they're not going to want to be subject to that.
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They're not going to want those hassles and that harassment.
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So they're just going to take people with these particular hairstyles and move them to the
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front of the line in our governing policy and in the execution of the programs for the provision
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And I can't imagine this ever becoming law, but it sure is a shame that we got to spend
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We don't need to become each other's nationally federalized hair critics.
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Sometimes he pretends not to be, but boy, does he have an opinion about Disney and Mulan.
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So then maybe you seek this respite and you subscribe to Disney Plus, Disney streaming service, and
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But maybe you stay for the credits and you see Disney thank the propaganda authorities of
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the ruling Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang.
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Not only did Disney film this movie, Mulan, in the epicenter of the part of China where the
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U.S. State Department estimates the Chinese government has detained as many as two million
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ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in internment camps, places China claims are
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But the U.S. government says that they are subjecting Uyghurs to torture and cruel and inhumane
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treatment. But not only did they film Mulan there, Disney also thanks a local police department in
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their credits, a police department that was sanctioned by the U.S. government for its role
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Now, while Jake Tapper is going ham on Disney for their just obvious tilt of the hat to China,
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you see then the House of Representatives on Thursday of this week planning to take up
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the anti-Chinese sentiment legislation that they've put together.
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And this is a political messaging bill intended to attack the president for using phrases like
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the China virus or the Wuhan flu or any other number of colloquial terms that have been broadly
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used to describe this virus that undeniably did start in China and that Dr. Yan, a recent
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whistleblower, has identified as likely generated in this lab or altered in this lab.
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The Wuhan Institute of Virology worked in coordination with, that's the same Wuhan Institute of
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Virology that I called for an end of U.S. funding to. It resulted in an end of that funding.
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But now Democrats don't want to work to continue to disentangle our research and our medicine from
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China. No, they instead want to criticize those who they believe have had anti-Chinese or anti-Asian
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sentiment. So quite interesting with that going on, while Jake Tapper seems to have no problem
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teeing up China. It's a rare circumstance where he and Nancy Pelosi aren't reading off the
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same script. But I don't think it's going to help Democrats in the upcoming election in tens of
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days that, you know, they're out here simping for China when clearly China lied. They withheld
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information. They didn't disclose the genome sequence. They hoarded PPE, limiting access initially.
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And now I think we can see clearly the threat that they pose and certainly the danger that comes
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with American corporations just so obviously and grotesquely bending over backwards for China.
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It's almost like you don't know which is trying to do China's bidding first, the corporatists in
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America who still have the Chimerica dream or Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats.
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Abigail Tracy at Vanity Fair usually covers me pretty fairly, by Washington standards at least.
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And we gave her an early read of my upcoming book, Firebrand, and Abby wrote a story about it in
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Vanity Fair. We'll post it on our social media. And one of the things I address in the book is the
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future of the Republican Party. There are those who think that Trump is like, you know, this weird
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one off thing that we just have to endure. I think that what Trump has done to the conservative movement
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has animated a new generation of warriors capable and prepared to be entertaining and engage people
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in politics and then put out bold solutions rather than the kind of boring nonsense that we heard during
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kind of the Paul Ryan era of the party. So the Abigail Tracy story reads, as conservatives like Bill
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Crystal and George Conway pontificate about the future of the Republican Party post-Trump, Gates
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seems to recognize that its evolution is complete and irreversible. The sun has set on the so-called
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young guns once hailed it as its future, the Paul Ryans and Kevin McCarthy's and Eric Cantor's.
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Speaker of the House Paul Ryan once knocked me for going on TV too much without considering that maybe
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his own failures as a leader stemmed from spending too much time in think tanks instead of in the
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green rooms where guests wait to appear on TV and are thereby connected to the dinnertime of real
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Americans. She quotes the book. I take his recent elevation to the board at Fox News to be his very
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silent apology. It's impossible to get canceled if you're on every channel. Why raise money to advertise
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on the news when you can make the news? And if you aren't making the news, you aren't governing.
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And again, that reflects the position that, you know, I took in the HBO movie, The Swamp, and that
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I've taken in my personal approach to campaign finance that, you know, the special interests
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really shouldn't be in charge. They shouldn't be writing the agenda. And the way to bypass the special
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interests is to go directly to the American people. And the way to do that is by, you know,
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making myself available on television programs, by sharing my thoughts every day on this podcast,
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by being candid and real time in social media to the greatest extent possible, and being a good
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public servant to my constituents. That's ultimately what the job calls. It's what I write in the book.
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Check out Abby's piece with some pretty funny excerpts.
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Should students be able to discharge student debt through the bankruptcy process? That's the question
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that will be posed to the House Judiciary Committee this week. And I have a different view than many
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Republicans. I look at a lot of these private colleges as Ponzi schemes, where they defraud people,
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where they get folks hooked on these federally subsidized student loans, and then they overcharge
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for the product while they build massive empires out of administrations. And it's no good for the
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students. And it's just interesting that America has these laws that allow you to discharge almost
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any other kind of debt, but not student loan debt. And I'm going to post an article on our social media
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today from The Intercept. It's by Ida Chavez entitled, Joe Biden's role in creating the student
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debt crisis stretches back to the 1970s. And the article talks specifically about the gravity of the
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student loan problem. Today, more than 44 million Americans owe nearly $1.6 trillion in student loan
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debt. That's more than Americans owe in auto loan debt. That's more than Americans owe in credit card
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debt. And it didn't used to always be this way. But politicians made it easier and easier to access
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loans. At the same time, they made it harder to get rid of the debt. And those two forces combined
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have essentially created a generation of indentured servants, where a lot of millennials weren't able
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to afford to get married or put that down payment on a house because of the extensive student loans
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that so many were carrying. And this piece in The Intercept goes over Joe Biden's role from one of
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the architects of the bankruptcy reform legislation that made it almost impossible to discharge the student
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loan debt through that process to Biden's support for more and more of these private colleges to take
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the federally subsidized loans from more and more students. And those ended up being some of the worst
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actors in the process. So check it out and give me some feedback on whether or not you think student loan
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debt should be discharged through bankruptcy. I'm not so sure it shouldn't be a little easier to do it.
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I don't know that Joe Biden was right about this then. He's probably not right about it now.
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Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you know that in the upcoming Dancing with the Stars series
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on ABC, there will be a feature presentation of Carole Baskin as one of the contestants. That's right,
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Carole Baskin of Tiger King fame. And her husband had disappeared in the series under some strange
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circumstances. And now you've got his family literally buying one of the commercial slots
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I'm Gail. Don Lewis was our daddy. I'm Linda. And we miss our dad. I'm Donna. We need to know what
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happened to our father. I'm Anne. All we're asking is justice for Don. Don Lewis mysteriously
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disappeared in 1997. His family deserves justice. Do you know who did this or if Carole Baskin was
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involved? A hundred thousand dollar reward has been funded. You can call the tip line
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at 646-450-6530. It's quite something that at the same time you've got Disney under attack,
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you see their sister company ABC getting trolled during their own ad time by folks who think that
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one of their contestants is a murderer. Thanks for listening to Hot Takes. I'm Congressman Matt
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Gates. And I'm told by our team that we've gone over a million listens on the Hot Takes podcast. And
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so I wanted the opportunity to thank my communications director, Luke Ball, my press assistant, Joel Valdez,
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my chief of staff, Jillian Lane Wyatt. They're the team that put it together, particularly Luke and Joel.
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And I also want to thank you, the listener, a million spins. That's freaking awesome. Love having
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everybody as a part of the conversation as we detail what's going on in the Congress and talk a
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little bit about the news. Thanks so much. Tune in tomorrow. Make sure you subscribe for more Hot Takes.