The Anchormen Show with Matt Gaetz - February 28, 2023


Episode 90 LIVE： Lab Leak – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Topics
lab leak conspiracy Project Veritas leadership
Hosted by
Matt Gaetz
Mentioned
James O'Keefe Peter Daszak Scott Pelley Joe Biden Jake Sullivan Trump Howard Rourke Dan Sullivan Elon Musk Zelensky Fauci Chuck F-16s Obama Insta Azar Mark
Episode 89 LIVE： America's Bravest (feat. Sergeant First Class Martin Acosta) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz Episode 91 LIVE： Detain or Remove (feat. Rep. Chip Roy) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

149.33

Word count

3,718

Sentence count

277

Harmful content

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

12

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, we take a look at how the deep state is trying to delegitimize our ability to do what we need to do to protect ourselves from pandemics, and why we should be worried about pandemic viruses coming from China.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:01.000 The embattled Congressman Matt Gaetz.
00:00:03.000 Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress
00:00:06.000 who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
00:00:10.000 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem for the Democratic Party.
00:00:13.000 He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing the clause.
00:00:16.000 So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.
00:00:20.000 If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer,
00:00:23.000 if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground,
00:00:27.000 then welcome, my fellow patriots.
00:00:29.000 You are in the right place.
00:00:31.000 This is the movement for you.
00:00:33.000 You ever watch this guy on television?
00:00:35.000 It's like a machine, Matt Gaetz.
00:00:38.000 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.
00:00:41.000 Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.
00:00:46.000 They aren't really coming for me.
00:00:48.000 They're coming for you.
00:00:50.000 I'm just in the way.
00:00:55.000 Here's something remarkable and upsetting.
00:00:58.000 Congressman Matt Gaetz represents.
00:00:59.000 On April 14th, Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz claimed China's Wuhan Institute had,
00:01:05.000 quote, birthed a monster.
00:01:07.000 Birthed a monster virus.
00:01:08.000 Gaetz is a vigorous defender of the president.
00:01:11.000 He's been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly threatening a witness against Mr. Trump.
00:01:17.000 And he led a protest to delay impeachment testimony.
00:01:21.000 The NIH gives this $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:01:27.000 They then advertise that they need coronavirus researchers.
00:01:31.000 Following that, coronavirus erupts in Wuhan.
00:01:34.000 Is there a way to know that this virus, SARS-CoV-2, emerged from the wild into the human population?
00:01:44.000 Or has that not been proven yet?
00:01:46.000 Well, I'm a scientist.
00:01:47.000 And what I do is I look at the evidence around a hypothesis.
00:01:51.000 There is a huge amount of evidence that these viruses repeatedly emerge into people from wild animals in rural areas through things like hunting and eating wildlife.
00:02:01.000 There is zero evidence that this virus came out of a lab in China.
00:02:05.000 I've called on Secretary Azar to immediately halt this grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:02:12.000 They have not been honest.
00:02:13.000 And at worst, they've been negligent to the point of many, many deaths throughout the world.
00:02:18.000 Dishonest and negligent allegations have now ended EcoHealth's carefully reviewed research designed to stop pandemics.
00:02:27.000 This politicization of science is really damaging.
00:02:31.000 You know, the conspiracy theories out there have essentially closed down communication between scientists in China and scientists in the US.
00:02:39.000 We need that communication in an outbreak to learn from them how they controlled it so we can control it better.
00:02:45.000 It's sad to say, but it will probably cost lives.
00:02:49.000 By sort of narrow-mindedly focusing in on ourselves or on labs or on a certain cultural politics, we miss the real enemy.
00:03:01.000 That clip is amazing every time I hear it.
00:03:04.000 What is garbage masquerading as journalism coming from the premier CBS news product, 60 Minutes?
00:03:12.000 But what you heard there was this Peter Daszek guy explaining to Scott Pelley that COVID was through some animal transmission, 0.90
00:03:24.000 maybe the Wuhan wet market, but certainly not the lab that the US taxpayer had been funding, that Daszek had been benefiting from.
00:03:33.000 And this great collaboration with China that they champion is certainly not something that is inured to the benefit of Americans.
00:03:39.000 We've got a million dead people as a result of us putting money behind the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:03:44.000 And of course, now you saw from the report in the Wall Street Journal that the lab leak is the most likely origin of COVID-19.
00:03:53.000 The US Department of Energy had not concluded that previously.
00:03:56.000 So this is news, but it mirrors what we've been saying all along.
00:03:59.000 That the origins of COVID are undeniably this lab funded by the American taxpayer.
00:04:08.000 And so there weren't a whole lot of voices out there making this argument after 60 Minutes said it was conspiratorial and outlandish and dishonesty that we were the ones politicizing science.
00:04:21.000 When in fact, it was Peter Daszek and the folks there perverting science engaged in gain of function research and the consequences were tragic.
00:04:32.000 It's important to note that everything that we take as fact today was a discredited conspiracy theory.
00:04:39.000 And it would have gotten you banned from Twitter before Elon Musk bought it, but it was the truth.
00:04:46.000 And that gain of function research certainly was among the most dangerous research going on.
00:04:54.000 And it also mirrors the State Department cables that showed back in 2019 or 2018 that the United States had grave concerns about the lack of safety around that lab.
00:05:07.000 But yet Peter Daszek is praised by Scott Pelley as heroic.
00:05:13.000 I wonder what he thinks now.
00:05:15.000 What's even more ironic is that this gain of function research was funded by the American taxpayer.
00:05:21.000 It was the National Institute of Health that got paid millions of dollars through NIH paying for a Chinese lab, resulting in one of the largest pandemics in recent human history. 0.66
00:05:35.000 I guess that explains why Dr. Fauci was so nervous at the beginning of the pandemic.
00:05:40.000 He probably knew exactly what COVID was and exactly where it came from.
00:05:45.000 That's a $3.7 million grant, Wuhan Institute of Virology, signed by you, the American taxpayer.
00:05:52.000 And then COVID erupts in Wuhan.
00:05:55.000 And we all know the rest of the story.
00:05:57.000 How many Americans we lost.
00:06:00.000 And there has to be accountability for it.
00:06:03.000 There is a COVID select committee that has been set up.
00:06:07.000 And I hope that they do the diligent work to confirm this work by the U.S. Department of Energy.
00:06:12.000 And like, where's the apology from Scott Pelley, who said that I had, quote, killed critical research funding.
00:06:20.000 Meanwhile, CBS was boosting and platforming corrupt scientists, deadly scientists like Peter Daszak.
00:06:28.000 The damage is done and the plethora of lies have been peddled to the American public.
00:06:33.000 But we must hold this administration accountable and the corrupt industries that were intermediaries for this devastating lab leak and research.
00:06:43.000 Also want to share my thoughts on what's going on around the world.
00:06:49.000 Now, the Washington war machine is raging at full speed right now as the Biden administration continues to escalate the war in Ukraine.
00:06:58.000 It was Lincoln on Facebook who asked the question, why are we paying Ukrainian salaries and pension?
00:07:06.000 Not just salaries, but literally the U.S. taxpayer is funding pension liabilities for Ukrainian officials.
00:07:15.000 It's amazing right now.
00:07:17.000 They're also dabbling in serious mess.
00:07:19.000 And I'm going to get to that in a moment.
00:07:21.000 But first, take a look at this this clip.
00:07:24.000 This is United States Senator Dan Sullivan on Meet the Presque.
00:07:28.000 And he is opining on the need to send Ukraine American F-16s.
00:07:33.000 Take a listen.
00:07:34.000 You know, Chuck, your interview actually highlighted one of the problems.
00:07:39.000 Jake Sullivan's talking about, well, we're not going to do F-16s today.
00:07:43.000 That's for another time.
00:07:44.000 Not right now.
00:07:45.000 Now, that has been a pattern with this administration from the beginning where they have slow rolled critical military weapons systems.
00:07:54.000 You know, it's a long list.
00:07:55.000 It's patriots.
00:07:56.000 It's high Mars.
00:07:57.000 It's tanks.
00:07:58.000 And now it's F-16s.
00:08:00.000 And to me, that is a real blunder.
00:08:03.000 We need to get them what they need now.
00:08:06.000 And listen to the Ukrainians.
00:08:08.000 Right.
00:08:09.000 Not, as he said, the policymakers.
00:08:11.000 They've proven their ability to fight bravely.
00:08:14.000 And I think we need to do a much better job.
00:08:16.000 It took nine months to get them the patriots.
00:08:19.000 And I fear the same things happening right now with the F-16s.
00:08:22.000 You just saw it from the National Security Advisor.
00:08:26.000 Mark my word.
00:08:28.000 They're getting ready to do the F-16s.
00:08:30.000 That's troubling.
00:08:31.000 That is not the posture that the US should take.
00:08:34.000 That's not our role in this conflict.
00:08:37.000 Now, since the onset of this war in February, the United States has been the top contributor of military equipment and aid to Ukraine.
00:08:45.000 Sending over $110 billion of our money into those hostilities.
00:08:51.000 And we're hemorrhaging money to Ukraine right now.
00:08:54.000 And it's not only extended the brutality, but also piled up a lot more death.
00:09:00.000 Thousands of people have died, civilians and combatants.
00:09:04.000 And it's terrible.
00:09:05.000 And thousands more will die if this war does not end.
00:09:09.000 We need to urge Ukraine and Russia to sit down at the table and negotiate for peace to stop the killing.
00:09:18.000 That's the only way out of this.
00:09:20.000 And it's exactly why 11 congressmen joined me in introducing my bill titled the Ukraine Fatigue Resolution,
00:09:28.000 which halts USAID to Ukraine and urges the parties to negotiate an end to this conflict.
00:09:35.000 And we totally have the power to do this.
00:09:38.000 You know, we hear Jake Sullivan and so many others take the White House's message that only Ukraine can decide the future of Ukraine.
00:09:50.000 But that just totally rejects a realistic view of foreign policy where our relationships with our neighbors do in a lot of ways define our boundaries and the way we protect our boundaries.
00:10:03.000 In the United States' posture currently, you've got Mexico, a captive narco state, that is functioning as a turnstile for people all over the world to enter into our country illegally. 0.86
00:10:14.000 We pay less attention to that.
00:10:16.000 And in Ukraine, of course, the relationship with Russia is going to define who controls Crimea and different portions of the territories that even the Ukrainians called the ungoverned territories in eastern Ukraine.
00:10:30.000 One thing that shocked me, even China has a peace plan for Ukraine.
00:10:36.000 That's right.
00:10:37.000 China put out a peace plan.
00:10:39.000 And while the United States just rejected it summarily, nope, can't do it, can't do a peace plan, send another several billion dollars in arms.
00:10:49.000 Ukraine didn't reject it. 0.61
00:10:52.000 And I found that interesting that Ukraine, that Zelensky indicated that he wanted to meet with Xi.
00:10:59.000 And so while China is undeniably an adversary that seeks to dominate the world, you always hear from the hawks and the neocons that it puts America in a better posture to combat China and all of our adversaries if somehow we're the world's policemen.
00:11:15.000 Well, what if China sees that our involvement is extending the bloodshed in the conflict that I'm sure the people in this area would like to see come to an end and they swoop in with a peace deal and they look like the adult in the room while you've got U.S. policymakers just shilling for defense contractors.
00:11:32.000 That won't advance America's interests.
00:11:35.000 So we should be champions for peace, not extended forever wars.
00:11:39.000 And in a lot of ways right now the United States is in a state of managed decline and we cannot continue to meddle in other countries' wars.
00:11:49.000 We need to put the needs of our country and our own people first before the wants and wars of other nations. 0.94
00:11:56.240 But if Ukraine isn't enough of a quagmire, we surely are making matters worse in Syria. 0.87
00:12:02.660 It was recently reported that there were four American troops and a working dog injured in Syria while chasing an ISIS leader during a partnered raid with the Syrian Democratic Forces, whoever they happen to be loyal to today.
00:12:18.100 As we know, in Syria, the alliances and allegiances often shift as frequently as the sand.
00:12:26.160 So since when are we at war in Syria?
00:12:28.720 This was Obama's war.
00:12:30.180 Why are we still doing this?
00:12:31.360 Congress has never authorized any kinetic participation of the U.S. armed forces in Syria.
00:12:37.780 And that is why I have recently introduced a war powers resolution to direct Joe Biden to remove our troops from this zone of hostilities.
00:12:47.380 Let us not forget, the Department of Defense has consistently lied about our involvement in Syria.
00:12:54.820 President Trump wanted our troops out, but the DOD always pushes back.
00:12:59.820 I'm glad in at least one case where you had folks out there, tens of Americans between armies of tens of thousands.
00:13:08.460 We at least had the wherewithal to not be there igniting World War III. 0.65
00:13:16.260 But here is the recent clip of Joe Biden claiming we don't have any military in Syria.
00:13:21.480 Take a listen.
00:13:21.940 There's a significant greater threat to other places in the world than it is from the mountains of Afghanistan. 1.00
00:13:38.240 And we have maintained the ability to have an over the horizon capability to take them out.
00:13:43.000 We don't have a military in Syria to make sure that we're going to be protected.
00:13:47.340 And you're confident we're going to have that in Afghanistan? 0.97
00:13:49.920 Yeah, I'm confident we're going to have the over-rising capability.
00:13:52.320 So at the time of this statement, we had over 900 troops in Syria.
00:13:59.280 We clearly cannot trust the executive branch to act responsibly.
00:14:03.240 Whether the root cause is the military-industrial complex making billions of dollars
00:14:07.980 or the nation-building pipe dreams of the Ivy League foreign policy regime,
00:14:12.740 it is destabilizing to the world.
00:14:15.400 And we are wasting American tax dollars while our own people suffer,
00:14:19.300 where they have real problems.
00:14:20.380 It's just not sustainable.
00:14:23.480 How many Afghanistans do we need before our leaders learn their lesson? 1.00
00:14:28.760 Do we need to turn Syria into another Iraq? 1.00
00:14:32.780 Maybe some will never learn, but it's the American people who will pay the price in the meantime.
00:14:38.080 And it's up to Congress to do its job by reining in our military presence abroad.
00:14:44.020 Our founding fathers warned about us excessively entangling ourselves in foreign entrapments.
00:14:49.100 It has destroyed empires, and it will destroy us if we are not careful.
00:14:54.140 We have no choice but to rein in these excesses and enter into an era of realism.
00:15:02.320 America first? 0.84
00:15:03.620 That is the principal policy option that will work.
00:15:06.540 But let me just tell you, there are a lot of folks in both parties right now who continue to be cheerleaders for war,
00:15:13.540 whether it's U.S. involvement in Yemen or Syria or Ukraine, something we need to get back into Afghanistan. 0.87
00:15:20.720 What a mess.
00:15:21.260 And it's hard to see where these U.S.-funded, U.S.-led efforts are ultimately successful in accomplishing the objective of servicing our goals.
00:15:34.280 And so I think we need to be more realistic and do less, say less, as they say, do less me.
00:15:40.080 So I want to talk a little bit also about what's going on at Project Veritas.
00:15:45.040 Project Veritas has long been at the tip of our spear, exposing corruption and fighting for truth and transparency,
00:15:53.360 often in uncomfortable places, often with nontraditional features of journalism.
00:15:59.860 Now, we used to call the search for truth, even if it's uncomfortable, regardless of where it leads, we used to call that journalism.
00:16:09.380 But until James O'Keefe founded Project Veritas, it seemed dead as a doornail.
00:16:15.600 James O'Keefe single-handedly resurrected journalism from its swampy grave, and it hasn't been easy at times.
00:16:21.660 James has faced every challenge imaginable, from trumped-up charges to civil suits to FBI harassment and more.
00:16:30.260 And yet, throughout these trials, he has managed to take on our biggest enemies, the most powerful political institutions,
00:16:38.580 some of the most powerful businesses.
00:16:41.260 And he exposes these people for the evil that they often manifest.
00:16:47.360 And he's never given up.
00:16:48.700 He's always stayed loyal to the cause.
00:16:50.940 And sadly, it appears as though not all have stayed loyal to James O'Keefe.
00:16:55.980 You may be aware that he was recently forced out of Project Veritas after being indefinitely suspended by its board of directors.
00:17:03.320 The board of Project Veritas, a company that James built, was claiming that James wasn't frugal enough to their liking.
00:17:13.100 But the best they could come up with was too many Ubers and an expensive Christmas party.
00:17:18.540 Give me a break.
00:17:19.340 Do you expect James O'Keefe to show up to a confrontation in a Chevy Malibu UberX?
00:17:27.140 Oftentimes, security is important, especially when you're holding the power to account.
00:17:31.920 People's physical safety can be in jeopardy.
00:17:34.640 And having the right security posture, the right operational posture, makes whistleblowers and insiders safer, makes journalists safer.
00:17:42.320 And the expensive Christmas party. 0.88
00:17:44.840 This is so ridiculous.
00:17:46.620 They had an event at Miami Beach that was like a musical celebration of the journey of Project Veritas and all the courage that has to go into this type of guerrilla journalism. 0.89
00:17:58.940 And when you're out there trying to encourage people to be whistleblowers or insiders, you have to acknowledge that their life is going to change, especially if they're publicly making allegations against the powerful.
00:18:13.420 Oftentimes, they lose friends.
00:18:16.040 They have family members disavow them.
00:18:18.240 Their housing situation can change if they have a recalcitrant or agitated roommate.
00:18:23.120 And so an important part of the Project Veritas experience is celebration and having a moment to celebrate the brave who came forward is the only way to perpetuate the system where more people will see that that risk in life is worth it and can lead to change and can be acknowledged by others.
00:18:46.360 And so bringing these folks together with policymakers and others was actually a really important thing for Project Veritas to be involved in.
00:18:55.780 And it was lovely.
00:18:56.720 I attended. 0.97
00:18:58.580 So when you look at the fact that it's like black cars and a Christmas party that undergird the allegations against O'Keefe, they kind of sound ridiculous.
00:19:08.320 And to O'Keefe's credits, he has the receipts.
00:19:11.980 He exposed this coup for what it really is.
00:19:15.400 And if you listen to him explain in his own words in his farewell speech, you'll see it too.
00:19:21.100 Take a listen.
00:19:23.600 There were tactical disagreements about the boldness of approaches soliciting donations.
00:19:29.380 I was told, and I'm paraphrasing, by asking for X dollars right now, you will prevent 10 X dollars down the road.
00:19:38.500 That advice ran contrary to everything I knew to be true in my 13 years of fundraising.
00:19:43.120 But that conflict was even more fundamental and essentially boiled down to this.
00:19:48.680 And my vision, I'm going to paraphrase Howard Rourke, the architect, quote, I don't have I don't build in order to have donors.
00:19:55.720 I have donors in order to build.
00:19:58.880 That's what I believed.
00:20:00.440 And I felt like we had a conflict of visions.
00:20:02.420 We measure our success in terms of what we produce, not just in terms of our wallets.
00:20:09.580 That was a pretty fundamental conflict, I felt.
00:20:11.780 Later that same day, that's Thursday, February 2nd, a few days after the 50 million viewed visor videos, I was informed by a different officer of Project Veritas.
00:20:41.340 That he would go to the board in a few hours from that moment and have an emergency vote to restructure this company.
00:20:49.080 Receiving an agenda in my email while I was sitting on an airplane tarmac with the doors closing, the meeting was scheduled for the moment that my plane landed in Nashville.
00:20:59.020 It became clear to me in that moment I would be removed from my position at Project Veritas by the time I landed at my destination.
00:21:07.180 That was James O'Keefe.
00:21:12.260 And what's interesting to me is that James almost forecasted this eventuality on this podcast, on Firebrand.
00:21:21.860 There's a lot of love for James O'Keefe right now on the Insta feed.
00:21:26.040 One person calling me a QAnon conspiracy theorist, but a lot of love for James O'Keefe.
00:21:30.500 But take a listen. This is an episode we did with James O'Keefe, February 3rd, 2022.
00:21:37.500 I worry that the fact that your organization is the only organization in America that does what you do, it brings a certain frailty to it.
00:21:48.980 And that's what I what I fear most is that something could happen to Project Veritas and then there would almost be no way to get corruption out.
00:21:57.420 There would be no platform for whistleblowers. And so I just wonder, like, what do you fear most as you wake up every day with with the burden of managing this organization, inspiring these whistleblowers, being the caretakers of their stories?
00:22:11.920 What worries you? Well, good question. I don't think what worries me is what worries everyone else.
00:22:17.280 I mean, people ask these questions like, do you fear for your life and this sort of thing?
00:22:20.680 And I mean, you should. I guess the question presupposes that one is afraid to begin with.
00:22:25.700 And I think it's the fear that is dangerous. Like FDR said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
00:22:30.000 Well, I think being a leader is hard. Like Veritas has like 70 employees now and quite a budget that's that's given to all these, you know, by these generous people, thousands and thousands of people.
00:22:40.840 Just leadership. Just it's hard being a leader.
00:22:42.960 It's hard, you know, it's it's hard commanding respect from being in the office and running an organization, running a company.
00:22:52.460 I've had to learn how to be a CEO. I've had to learn how to be an organizational entrepreneur.
00:22:56.460 That's probably the hardest thing about what I do. Not so much the external battles.
00:22:59.820 It's really remarkable that quite some time ago, James realized that if something was going to hurt Project Veritas, it wasn't going to be a threat from the outside.
00:23:12.440 That that internal leadership is so critical to the success of an organization like Project Veritas.
00:23:18.900 And this development sheds a light on what James told me.
00:23:22.900 I'm sure there's going to be more details to come.
00:23:25.320 But what I know for sure is that there is really no Project Veritas to even imagine or contemplate without James O'Keefe.
00:23:34.940 James O'Keefe is Project Veritas and Project Veritas's supporters agree.
00:23:39.960 Since James O'Keefe's departure, Project Veritas has lost hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter.
00:23:46.600 I didn't follow them once they weren't associated with James O'Keefe.
00:23:51.000 My official office account stopped following them.
00:23:53.940 I don't think Project Veritas survives without its leader.
00:23:58.380 If there's one person in our movement that deserves our loyalty, it's James O'Keefe.
00:24:03.200 And if anyone stabs him in the back, they're stabbing our movement in the back.
00:24:08.700 And they should know better.
00:24:10.540 Thank you guys so much for joining us today on FireBrain.
00:24:13.340 We hope to have other episodes this week.
00:24:15.540 Make sure you're subscribed.
00:24:17.420 Give us that five-star rating, especially if you're listening on Apple.
00:24:20.080 Help our content get to more folks.
00:24:22.420 We'll see you soon. Roll the credit.
00:24:23.940 We'll see you soon.