REP. MATT GAETZ SAYS IT’S TRUMP TIME, HE’S OUR MAN AND THIS IS HIS FIGHT TO WIN. HE’S OUR CHAMPION, OUR WARRIOR & WILL BE RE-ELECTED
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Summary
In this episode of The Great America Show, host Lou Dobbs is joined by Congressman Matt Gates (R-GA) to discuss the ongoing leftist witch hunt against President Trump and his supporters. The two also discuss the Democratic Party's continued attempt to delegitimize the Trump administration.
Transcript
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Hello everybody. Welcome to the Great America Show. I'm Lou Dobbs. Welcome. Let's start with
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the Marxist Dems' continuing persecution of President Trump, who, by the way, has to be
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the most popular president in modern history, two years after leaving office. His numbers are up 25
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points over Governor Ron DeSantis in all of the latest polls in a field of wannabe challengers.
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And wannabe tough guy Marxist Dem Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, coming up empty
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and lost. Bragg shut down his grand jury, giving them a whole month off, he says. He has no case
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against President Trump, never had a case. But the Soros-created and backed Bragg pressed ahead
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anyway. Even after his star witness, Michael Cohen, was dismantled by the testimony of one of Cohen's
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former lawyers, the well-known New York power attorney, Robert Costello. The DA's office,
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not happy. And all of them know there is no case. Trump supporter and ally Congressman Matt Gaetz
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going after the oh-so-woke trans booster Pentagon officials. Here's Congressman Gaetz introducing the
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ever-woke defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, to the facts of the matter when it comes to Secretary
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Austin's support of drag queens on military bases.
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How much taxpayer money should go to fund drag queen story hours on military bases?
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You know, drag queen story hours is not something that the department funds.
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Wait a second. That's actually not what the record seems to suggest. You were going to fund one at
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Ramstein Air Force Base. That one got canceled, but that's DOD Insignia. That's a drag queen story
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hour for children. Then also at Malstrom Air Force Base outside of Great Falls, Montana, you had a drag
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queen story hour for kids. At the Joint Base Langley Eustace, you put on a drag queen story hour on a
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Saturday for the first ever kid-friendly diversity equity inclusion summer festival. And at Nellis Air Force
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Base, you had the drag you, Nellis, on June 17th. Who funded these things, Mr. Secretary?
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Listen, drag shows are not something that the Department of Defense supports or funds.
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Why are they happening on military bases? I just showed you the evidence. Why are they happening?
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I will say again, this is not something that we support or fund.
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So you think hosting a drag queen story hour on a military base isn't supporting the drag queen
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story hour? I stand by what I just said. But you may stand by it, but it's belied by
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the evidence over and over again. I mean, are you aware of the piece Biden's military Air Force
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Base in Montana holds drag show, drag queen story hour for kids in the Western Journal? Are you aware
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of that? Again, I will say what I said. You're saying what you're saying, but I guess it just
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doesn't comport the facts. Gates, as you heard, blasting the defense secretary and the Pentagon's
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priority on outrageous woke nonsense rather than on meeting recruitment goals and combat readiness.
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Congressman Gates also wants our troops out of Somalia, and he's introduced a resolution to bring
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our troops home. Gates is none too pleased as well that the FBI that has been a big part of the
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political persecution of President Trump over the past seven years. Gates also is none too pleased
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that the FBI has been a big part of the political persecution of President Trump over the past seven
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years. And the congressman is trying to prevent the FBI from building a new headquarters in D.C.
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that would cost more than three hundred and fifty million dollars. And Congressman Matt Gates is our
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guest today. Congressman Gates, great to have you with us. The FBI wants a building to compete with
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the Pentagon. Are you kidding me? You don't think they should have any such thing, do you?
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Well, Lou, what I can tell you is that the evidence we have developed in the weaponization
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subcommittee tells a pretty clear story about what's happening in the FBI out in the country in,
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you know, Wichita, in Miami. The FBI agents are largely fulfilling their duty to follow the facts
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and the law to prevent crimes when they're able and to prosecute crimes when necessary. And inside
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of Washington, D.C., it's a very different FBI. It's an FBI focused on politics. We've seen
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inspector general's reports that members of the mainstream media whine and dine FBI officials and
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even DOJ officials to try to get scoops and to try to weaponize leaks, particularly against
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conservatives and anyone close to President Trump. We've also seen that within the Washington field
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office of the FBI, there's a real effort to cook the books on domestic violence extremism data.
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They've tried to pressure other field offices to reclassify cases that could normally easily be
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disposed of as domestic violent extremism or even when they targeted school board parents that emerged
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out of the Washington field office and the head shed. A lot of the bad things that Andy McCabe did that
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you've covered extensively during the Russia hoax emerged out of the Washington field office. And so this is a
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case where we've got to cut the head off of the snake. We've actually got to get more of the decisions
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regarding the FBI made under the U.S. attorneys that are confirmed by the Senate where there's some
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semblance of accountability. And Nancy Pelosi, in one of her final acts, authorized a brand new $325
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million FBI complex in the Washington, D.C. area, a building bigger than the Pentagon. So, I mean,
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the FBI has a workforce about 2% the size of the Department of Defense, and yet they want a bigger
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headquarters. I think that's because they want to insource a lot of the human resources to the swamp,
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and they want to get people focused on politics, not the facts and the law. So, some of my Republican
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colleagues and I are taking the stand that we ought to claw back those funds. They have not been
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expended. We ought to claw them back. We ought to not fund any of this weaponized government if we're
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able to correctly assess where the rot is coming from. And in all the research we've done, and the
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research, frankly, we're still developing, the real bad action is at the Washington field office.
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And the real question is whether or not we're going to use the power of the purse. I think we have to use
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these tools that we got during the speaker's contest in January to zero out bureaucrats, to claw back
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funds, and to defang this weaponized government.
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Well, I have to say that this is just stunning to hear the comparison between the Pentagon and the proposed
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building for the new building for the FBI, and it sounds like it was a last-minute thought from the
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outgoing Speaker of the House to do so. Is there, just out of, well, just to sort of round out our
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knowledge, because I have to say, I have no idea as to whether or not there are blueprints for this,
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how long this has been, the building has been in the works, as it were. Is there such a square footage
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blueprint, the layout for this proposed new building? So they do have the plans for it, and
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that was part of their appropriations request, but I don't believe that there's any sort of
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land that's been fully acquired and entitled to be able to do the building. So legally, we would be
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able to claw back the funds, but this is a really troubling trend to try to get more decisions made
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inside of Washington. I was troubled when I heard whistleblowers come forward from other field
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offices in other parts of the country to say, look, you know, we were out there doing our work,
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chasing the bad guys down, trying to stop violent crime, and every time we turned around, the
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Washington field office was trying to get us to go after somebody because they happened to be in the
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Washington vicinity on January 6th, even though there was no predicate that that person may have even
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committed a crime or done anything violent or illegal. They tried to get different field offices
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to go and look at these school board parents. They tried to get field offices where there might be
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one network where there's concern about extremism, and the Washington field office would say, well,
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don't just evaluate that one network under one case. Go open separate cases under each of the
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individuals who were members of that network, so they would create the illusion or the veneer
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that there was this great problem of domestic violence extremism everywhere emanating from the
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country, and the reality was it was a political outcome that folks in Washington wanted to achieve
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to try to fan the flames around that issue set, and they were asking people to do improper and unjust
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things, and I'm glad that some of those whistleblowers have come forward to share those stories,
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but of course you see what the Democrats do to them. The Democrats have leaked information,
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tried to smear our whistleblowers, and they've tried to deter other people from coming forward
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and telling the truth about a variety of injustices persecuted by the FBI, and so I've said to my
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Republican colleagues that we shouldn't even allow the Democrats in the transcribed interviews
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and the depositions if their entire purpose for being there is to disrupt the investigation
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and limit our investigative tools going forward, and that's not unprecedented because during the
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January 6 investigation, Nancy Pelosi kicked off Jim Jordan and Jim Banks, so if that's the way the
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Democrats are going to play, I think that we ought to allow them to ask questions during the open
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hearings, but to let them be a part of the investigative work that goes on behind the scenes
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has proven to be unwise. Congressman, I couldn't agree with you more about it being unwise, and I hope
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that your message to your colleagues in the Republican Party is being heard loud and clear because
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I think most of the people listening to your voice right now believe Matt Gaetz is 100% correct.
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They would love to see the Democrats not be leaking this information, not being an impediment
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to what you all are accomplishing, and I'm talking about the Republicans in the 118th Congress with
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these committees that are investigating, as you said, weaponization, investigating the Biden corruption.
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It's just extraordinary, the task you have before you, and all I can say is-
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It's a task, Lou, but it's also a lot of evidence.
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We have just really, I think, got a big breakthrough by going into the bank records
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of some of these pass-through corporations that the Biden family used to launder Chinese cash into
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their own bank accounts. Because the truth is, Lou, a lot of these businesses that were funneling
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that Chinese cash had no other business purpose. The entire point of some of these shell companies
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was just to use Chinese money to buy influence with the Biden family and to compromise the
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Biden family against our country. And when you see those bank records, it's a telling story.
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And then we've also got evidence that the Bidens weren't only being protected at times by the FBI,
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with people like Tim Tebow and others deeming anything derogatory about the Biden family
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as Russian disinformation so that it wouldn't be further developed. But they even had a mole
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inside the FBI. They even had this person called One-Eye who would steer Hunter Biden and the Biden
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family away from where the investigations into the Chinese Communist Party were going.
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And if you believe this evidence, as I clearly do, and as it sets forward quite squarely,
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you have to wonder, OK, well, then what was the Chinese Communist Party buying? What were they
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getting as a consequence? And I am very concerned that one of Joe Biden's first actions when he became
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president was to dissolve President Trump's China initiative at the Department of Justice.
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And for the listeners who are unaware of it, the China initiative was a specialized group that looked
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at the consolidated strategy of the Chinese Communist Party to compromise academicians,
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politicians, business leaders, all to harm our nation. And that resulted in prosecutions.
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It resulted in convictions. It had a deterrent effect because then they knew somebody was
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after them. And Joe Biden dissolved it. And you have to wonder if that was the real damning quid pro quo,
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cash to the Bidens in exchange for them having moles in the organization and for them being able to
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really sell out the country. There is that. And there is also the fact that the Biden administration
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is selling our crude oil from our strategic petroleum reserves for whatever reason into Chinese owned
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companies, Chinese state owned companies, either directly or indirectly without purpose. He's drawn down 40%
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of the strategic petroleum reserves. They're at levels not seen in almost a half century. And to what purpose?
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It makes absolutely no sense. As you say, there are a lot of questions here. There appears to be an FBI that is
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rotten to the core working with an administration that is rotten to the core as well.
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Give us your judgment, if you will, just how courageous the GOP is going to be in continuing this charge against
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an administration, the Biden regime, which looks to be corrupt from top to bottom and throughout.
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Here's the way I think about it as we have this discussion in March. We worked very hard at the
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beginning of January to develop an exquisite toolkit to be able to change this town, to go after the
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bureaucrats, to expose the weaponization, to reduce spending levels, to secure the border. These were tools
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that I have not had in my time during the Nancy Pelosi speakership, during even the Paul Ryan
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speakership, right? They wanted all the power centralized in the special interests and the lobbyists
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often reflected by a speaker who was just a masthead for those America last interests. And so we said, no,
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we're going to have the ability, any member, to zero out a specific bureaucrat's budget, which is exactly what we
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should do at the ATF, first and foremost. We're going to have a weaponization subcommittee that goes
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after these very things. And you're starting to see the work that we've done on the censorship
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industrial complex and what the government is doing to even limit what people can hear regarding the
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Bidens and the truth. And we also demanded specific votes on specific pieces of legislation.
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And you know what? We probably aren't going to pass them all. We might not pass term limits. We might not
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pass the border bills we actually need to solve the problem. But if we can try and fail for 14 votes
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to elect a Speaker of the House, we can try time and time again to get this government reined in,
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to get our border secure, and to change the corruption in Washington by passing important
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bills like term limits. And if we use those tools, then the answer to your question is yes.
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But if all we do is sit around patting ourselves on the back and admiring the fact,
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that we for once stood up at the beginning of January, then we will be part of the problem
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and part of the swamp. And that is what I am trying to do to hold together the courageous
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conservatives that are in the House of Representatives so that that courage can be
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contagious to others and so that it can be necessary and required for Kevin McCarthy to continue to gavel us
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in to House business each and every day as our speaker. And McCarthy has been largely faithful to his
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commitments to this point. But the big fights are ahead, Lou. And the problem with what Nancy Pelosi and the Senate
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Republicans did during the lame duck Congress is they pushed a lot of these fights later because they passed that
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terrible omnibus spending legislation. So my organizing principle is we will never govern by omnibus again.
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And what we really need to do is fight on the debt limit, fight on the border, fight for election integrity and let the
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chips fall where they may. But I am yet to I cannot issue a verdict at this moment as to whether or not we have been
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worthy of the trust that's been placed in us, because we got to take these tools out of the toolbox and we got to put them to
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Well, I have to say, I'm encouraged listening to to your plan, your your operating principles and first
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principles. When you go to the, for example, the three hundred and twenty five million dollars of the F by
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building, that sounds like a Nancy Pelosi payoff to the permanent bureaucracy, the deep state for their
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collusion with the Democratic Party and going after President Trump and others throughout the past seven
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years, seven years of political persecution. They get a new building in Washington, D.C., which, frankly, I think
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has to be one of the last necessary building projects in the capital, perhaps everything else.
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Why don't we actually abolish some of these agencies and rent their buildings out for commercial office space?
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We could probably start with the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, the EPA.
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And instead of building new buildings in Washington, why don't we clear out some of the ones we have?
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Well, I couldn't be more and more in agreement. I couldn't cheer louder for you on that idea.
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And for whatever building is rented first, I think it should be renamed the Gates Building,
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maybe the entire project. But I think that's a wonderful idea. Let me let me turn to something
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because you're talking about real world problems. Let me give you an example of some real world problems.
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As we look at with the testimony of Matt Taibbi, the journalist with the Twitter files,
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we know what has been happening. Every quarter of the government seems to be in some sort of collusion
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or arrangement with Twitter, with whatever the social media outlet is. Facebook mentioned prominently
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amongst those, along with Twitter. It's outrageous what the FBI is doing. And they are intimidating.
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They are basically laying down the principles by which these social media companies will give
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any kind of constitutional right to their constitutional rights. Freedom of speech doesn't exist as far as social media
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and the FBI and DOJ are concerned. I want to give you a real world example. Our producer of this podcast
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the other day just found out that one of the visitors to his LinkedIn account was the FBI.
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I've been told by a source that the FBI is monitoring us live. That is continuously on this podcast.
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That's got to drive up your listenership. I hope they also listen to Firebrand, my podcast.
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I have to say, it's the idea of intimidation that is outrageous.
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There was a time, this didn't start until the, and this is not partisan politics, folks,
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but this truly didn't happen with journalists, to my knowledge, except under the Obama administration
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where they went after people like my former colleague, James Rosen, and a lot of other
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journalists during that period from 2008 through 2016.
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Now it rears its head again with the FBI here under the Trump administration when they were going after a president.
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And now they don't even blink at the eye of trying to intimidate us.
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I'm talking to the folks down in Smyrna, Georgia, where the Outdoor Adventures Gun Shop is.
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I mean, there is intimidation from nearly every quarter of this government in some fashion,
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whether it's the FTC, even trying to intimidate the world's wealthiest man at Twitter.
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What can you do about that in real world terms to deal with what is a contemporaneous problem?
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Well, you and I both know that what Republicans do too often is have a hearing where we yell at people
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I believe we have to use the power of the purse to defund these entities, to choke off the oxygen stream to them.
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And then I think we have to limit their authorities.
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And you can't just do one of those things, right?
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If you just limit the authorities, they violate them.
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We've already seen Inspector General reports showing that the ATF kept 250 million records that they had no legal authority to keep
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and they had to destroy them because they were operating outside the law.
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Now, compare that to how they treat our fellow Americans.
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If they find someone out of some technical compliance with some promulgated rule, they have a zero-tolerance policy
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and they go after people who have no intention of violating any law.
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And yet when they break the law, it's give us more power, give us more people, and give us more money.
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This is a little wonky, Lou, but you've got a sophisticated audience.
00:22:57.260
One of the things that we got in the concessions with McCarthy, the ability to name a bureaucrat, list their salary,
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and defund that specific salary in the appropriations process.
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Now, that hasn't happened the whole time I've been here in Congress because they just dropped some multi-thousand-page bill on our desk
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with a few hours to read it before taking a vote.
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But being able to evaluate these things individually with a high level of scrutiny will allow us to make some of the worst actors
00:23:25.980
in this bureaucracy very famous by highlighting their illegal activity, and then second, to zero out their compensation
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so the taxpayers aren't paying for some corrupt bureaucracy to attack them.
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Now, is that something that you can do relatively quickly and without a vote from the Senate?
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Well, I believe that we should pass our budget and put demands on the Senate.
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I was in the state legislature, Lou, where sometimes the House won, sometimes the Senate won.
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Seems like in Congress, like the Senate always wins every time.
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So I actually think that we can use our leverage more effectively with the Senate, and it would require their concurrence with the overall budget deal.
00:24:10.900
If John Tester, who's up for election, if Joe Manchin, if they want to go vote for these specific bureaucrats when we go and lay out what those folks have done,
00:24:20.120
then probably their constituents are going to hold them accountable for that in the upcoming elections.
00:24:24.580
So I'm pretty bullish about being able to get some of these senators who are in cycle in states where the Second Amendment is highly, highly valued,
00:24:34.680
and you've got woke-topian bureaucrats that are offending the Second Amendment with their conduct.
00:24:43.120
When it comes to the timing of it, I have been told that I am a very impatient person in this town and that patience would be a virtue of mine.
00:24:52.380
I wish we were already right now voting on appropriations bills on the floor individually, combing through them.
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But today, the only vote – we took two votes the entire day today.
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One of them was on whether or not we were going to take another vote, and the second vote was about the rules for the vote we're going to take tomorrow.
00:25:17.280
So I think we need to pick up the pace a little bit, but I'm told that that process is just dating.
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The process to get rid of the process is just dating.
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The President of the United States the other day, a week ago, started talking about shutting down the Second Amendment
00:25:43.860
and to basically be sure that you take away the guns of citizens who are somewhat dependent on that Second Amendment
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because they love guns, they love to hunt, they love to shoot, and it's their right.
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And now we've got a two-bit impaired puppet president talking big when he's not talking about ice cream.
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It's a real shame that law-abiding gun owners seem to be the boogeyman every time there's a terrible event.
00:26:18.540
We have many millions of law-abiding gun owners in this country, and they actually make communities more safe, not less safe.
00:26:26.340
And with this tragic event in Nashville, you've got a lot of folks in Washington wringing their hands.
00:26:33.740
But I'm not entirely sure that a gender dysphoric, mentally ill individual on some sort of a vengeance spree
00:26:41.400
is a justification to turn against law-abiding people who hunt and fish and who keep firearms for sport
00:26:50.960
and for personal protection, which is entirely allowed.
00:26:54.740
And one thing, Lou, this is going to sound a little bit geographically bigoted.
00:26:59.280
It really gets me when these lawmakers from Rhode Island and Delaware and the Northeast
00:27:08.420
always want to be the ones limiting the gun rights of people in the South and the Midwest
00:27:18.520
There's just like a certain arrogance to that that has always graded me.
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I think it's a recognition that there is a homogeneity to our great republic and its federalist system.
00:27:38.500
States and states' rights have important meaning because each state is not the same,
00:27:44.320
and each population has different demands, different challenges, different opportunities in point of fact.
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And as you say geographically, greater space within which to enjoy, if you will, those rights,
00:27:57.460
in particular among those rights, the Second Amendment.
00:28:00.940
You know, the shooter's mom, you mentioned the tragedy, the sickening, horrible tragedy in Nashville,
00:28:09.940
And the reflex, again, from the left is, oh, we've got to take away guns.
00:28:16.020
This transgender shooter shows up with at least two AR-15s and apparently a pistol.
00:28:28.180
Who knows what the rest of the weapons are that she owns.
00:28:31.160
But we do know that her mother was an anti-gun activist, and here she's showing up with all of this.
00:28:39.680
She was mentally ill to begin with, and then with her own mother worrying more about guns than the illness, it appears, of her daughter.
00:28:48.480
What we're dealing with here is mental illness in nearly every one of these cases,
00:28:52.600
and people want to take away the Second Amendment rights of millions of Americans.
00:28:58.040
This is a form of madness in and of itself, don't you think?
00:29:03.040
Indeed, and it seems to be the people who are at times utilizing guns most responsibly who get most punished by these actions.
00:29:16.800
There are a lot of disabled veterans in my district who have better mental health,
00:29:21.440
who have a higher morale because they're able to get out and engage in sports shooting,
00:29:28.260
and many of them need the assistance of a pistol brace.
00:29:31.180
But because some people didn't like it with green eye shades and the bowels of the ATF in some windowless cubicle,
00:29:39.800
they promulgated a rule without even legal authority to ban those pistol braces.
00:29:45.180
And part of the work that we've got to do very quickly in the House of Representatives is repeal that ban
00:29:51.740
because we're punishing people who often utilize guns in the most responsible, most appropriate way.
00:29:58.680
But there is one place, Lou, where the Biden administration has no problem sending guns and weapons, and that's abroad.
00:30:05.340
Would you mind if I took just a moment on your show to share my perspective on the Biden administration and Somalia?
00:30:12.760
So, Lou, President Trump took the 700 Americans out of Somalia,
00:30:19.400
realizing that 700 people isn't enough to get the job done,
00:30:22.780
and in many cases it was inflaming tensions and not creating more stability.
00:30:27.720
It wasn't enough to win, but we certainly don't want Americans sitting ducks and targets anywhere in the world.
00:30:34.820
And one of the first acts Joe Biden did was put 500 American troops back in Somalia.
00:30:39.840
So Somalia is a country of about 7 million people, and there's about 5,000 to 7,000 hardened Al-Shabaab terrorists there.
00:30:47.920
And my view is that a country of 7 million ought to be able to deal with that.
00:30:52.440
And if they can't, 500 American troops isn't going to be the difference one way or the other.
00:30:57.020
We are not months or even years away from turning Somalia into some sort of Jeffersonian democracy guiding light of Africa.
00:31:09.200
And so I am looking at places all over the world, Syria, Somalia, where we are engaged in misadventurism without clear focus.
00:31:19.320
And that drains our talent and our resources and our treasure away from the real fight that matters,
00:31:27.220
which is the fight against the Chinese Communist Party.
00:31:29.580
The Chinese Communist Party right now is in the middle of a leveraged buyout of the Russian Federation.
00:31:36.020
Putin is essentially a dog on a leash for Xi, and Xi is preparing to invade Taiwan and destabilize all of Asia.
00:31:44.700
Meanwhile, we're fiddling around in Somalia with trying to answer some Georgetown Foreign Service essay exam about great power competition and democracy promotion.
00:31:57.920
So I filed legislation just moments ago that will withdraw U.S. troops from Somalia.
00:32:05.220
And within 18 legislative days, the House is required to take a vote on that.
00:32:09.960
I predict that I will likely lose that vote, but I think it's important to make people go on the record regarding these conquests all over the world.
00:32:26.100
There's just no – this is no time in our history for the United States to not be putting America first,
00:32:33.040
as a former president, soon to be future president, once said.
00:32:38.980
I just want to close by saying we've got some very good news for everyone.
00:32:43.920
The president's popularity has – it is at the highest level – this is my research – but at the highest level of any four-term president some two years' distance from his presidency.
00:32:56.140
It's really extraordinary, and those numbers are rising.
00:32:59.520
It looks like the American people are getting ready to speak again.
00:33:02.980
Your thoughts as we conclude here, Matt Gaetz, congressman of the great state of Florida.
00:33:09.420
I was in Waco recently, and it was one of the most energetic Trump rallies I've been to in many years.
00:33:20.700
He understands why this is the moment for someone with the experience and the drive and the resolve and the vision, really the vision, to be back at the helm of our country.
00:33:32.860
I don't believe that the real conflict is between Donald Trump and the other Republicans running.
00:33:37.360
The real conflict is between the American people and a corrupt system in Washington that has trampled on us for decades.
00:33:46.700
And Donald Trump is our champion and our warrior, and I think he's going to do a great job when he's reelected as president.
00:33:53.120
And really it's about getting the people back in the room when the decisions are made, not the corrupt influences of this town.
00:34:00.500
And with all due respect to the other Republicans that are running for president and thinking about running for president, this is Trump time.
00:34:19.400
Thanks for being with us here on The Great America Show.
00:34:25.020
Here tomorrow, Russ Vogt, former OMB director and now the president of the Center for Renewing America.
00:34:33.400
Till then, thanks, God bless you, and God bless America.