Best of the Program | Guests: Rep. Thomas Massie & Kevin Roberts | 11/14/24

42m
Glenn and Stu discuss the logic Trump may be using for some of his latest questionable Cabinet picks. One of the more questionable picks was Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Was Gaetz's abrupt House resignation connected to a possible ethics report coming out against him? Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts joins to discuss the critical need to kick out the elites and give America back to the people. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) joins to address Trump picking Matt Gaetz for attorney general and why he supports the pick.
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Transcript

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stu

your favorite part from today's show

probably the third one the third the third part

i don't we don't usually break it up that yeah third part was great i like the second part quite honestly and that's when uh that's when kevin roberts was in uh and we talked about the twilight's last gleaming or the dawn's early light do we have a golden era coming back to america we also talked to thomas massey we talked about all the latest appointments

and

the propaganda industrial complex, how to take that down.

All that and more on today's podcast.

The third part.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program in 60.

It's a

nice thought here in the next few months.

We finally, you know,

won't have to be worrying quite as much about the disasters coming at us from Washington, D.C.

It's nice to have that off our plate, but it is still going to be a real battle.

There's still kinds of, there's other things that could be coming at us.

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Well, I wasn't bored with the news yesterday, Stuart.

I'm not sure anybody was.

We said it.

We did say these are like kind of, you know, just normal Republican, like any Republican nominee may have put these people in office.

Um, and uh, that changed, I would say.

That that would uh, yep, yep,

this is what you promised, right?

You get, it's, it's always exciting.

Yeah, and uh, we got a lot of exciting yesterday.

There's a couple of things that I find uh

worthy of pointing out if you look at it from his point of view.

Last time he was in office, he didn't know who to trust, right?

He didn't know the system, he didn't know the players, he didn't know the parties, how they actually work in Washington.

And he was stabbed in the back, in the side, in the shoulder,

you know, in the chest, in the stomach.

Everywhere he was stabbed by everybody.

Okay.

So he's looking first, I think, for people who are loyal to his vision

and perhaps also loyal to him because he was stabbed over and over again.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously, this is a factor.

Right.

And it's logical and reasonable.

I mean,

Stu, you know I've been stabbed

from every direction, right?

Sorry about that.

Yeah.

So

wait a minute.

And you know that

I have a tight circle around me, and they are people that not everybody necessarily likes each other, but

they're all people I know because I've seen them battle-hardened.

They will never stab me in the back.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

No,

you're a very reasonable desire.

So that's what, that's the first thing that needs to be taken into consideration.

The second thing I noticed yesterday is he's also nominating people that the left will say, this is vengeance.

No, no, not necessarily, although it could quickly become that.

And I will be against that if it is a grudge fest, okay?

But I don't think that's what it is.

I think this is people who have been

wronged by the department they're now running.

You know what I mean?

For instance, Tulsi Gabbard, DNI.

Well, what did DNI?

She oversees CIA, Homeland Security, all intelligence, okay?

Well, she was put on the terror watch list.

Now, you could look at that and say, oh, she's going for vengeance.

She wants retribution.

No,

I know tulsi well enough to know she wants no one to ever face that again for political reasons you know what i mean she was deeply not offended deeply disappointed in her country she it was it was

an assault on her honor That's where Tulsi is.

And she's like, my country, I mean, it's shattered for her.

My country is saying that I'm a traitor and they're only saying it because of politics.

This is not America.

So I think she's perfect for that role.

Now, Matt Gates

is an interesting pick.

I don't know how I feel about Matt Gates as the Attorney General.

Wouldn't have been my pick, but I'm going to give Donald Trump the, I'm going to give him all the rope he's asking for.

I think he has earned our trust.

He has earned the right to go fishing and pull up any fish that he wants.

Now, that is not a blanket,

wait a minute, this isn't working out well kind of

deal.

If it's not working out well, I'm still going to say it's not working out well.

However, if you look at what he's done in the past,

he was one of the toughest people

against the Justice Department.

I mean, it's him, Massey,

Rand Paul.

He went after the Justice Department, and he was in oversight of the Justice Department.

So

he knows it.

He is qualified for it.

He just is

possibly a loose cannon.

But the other thing I know about him is he will not stab Donald Trump in the back.

Definitely not.

He will do anything that Donald Trump asks him to do.

And I that's I hope that's not.

Wait a minute.

I hope that's not a blanket statement

from anybody.

And I'm not talking about you, but from anybody.

I will do what the president asked me to do unless it's unconstitutional.

Look, I don't have that much worry that Donald Trump is going to request an unconstitutional thing, though I don't think Matt Gaetz would be the

obstacle in his path if he did.

Right.

I just don't, I'm not all all that concerned about Donald Trump doing that.

But I think Matt Gates will do it.

I mean,

I can understand if I'm Donald Trump.

Like, I've been through this.

They've come after me.

I need somebody to go in there and basically fire everybody and not feel bad for,

you know,

because they have relationships inside that world.

And so from that perspective, I understand the Gates pick because Gates will do that.

He will, if Donald Trump says go in there and fire 75% of the people, he will fire exactly 75.0% of the people.

Yeah.

And I will tell you that,

you know, there are different,

there are different phases of a job.

And,

you know, there are war generals and there are peacetime generals.

A war general isn't afraid of getting bloody, isn't afraid of just going in just with a hatchet and just kill them all.

You know what I mean?

And I think that that's a Gates role, that he may or may not be, I mean, proof is in the pudding, a a peacetime guy.

You know, he's the guy who goes in when you're at war and says, all of you out.

You know, he does that for two years.

Oh, and who's open for a gig in two?

Oh,

Ron DeSantis is open in two years.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, it kind of seems like he's specifically designed for the beginning of this.

Yes.

Now, again, the question of whether he gets confirmed is a whole nother situation.

And I know that the recess appointment situation, they're trying to get it so that they don't have to confirm him.

I think that's probably the only way he gets the job.

I don't think he'll get through the Senate.

But it's not impossible.

And if he goes through the recess appointment approach, he can get in there and he can go for two years because of that clause.

So he would be able to only do two years and then he would need to be confirmed.

And I don't...

I mean, maybe in two years, if he just did a really good job, he would get confirmed by the Senate.

So it's possible.

But I think right now he he just got, you know, like the guy's got a lot of enemies in Congress.

A lot of times that's a good sign.

So, but I do think you're right in that.

He's the type of person that's just going to go in there and light the place on fire.

And that's exactly what Donald Trump, I think, wants to start out because of how corrupt he believes it is.

And so I understand it from that perspective.

I guess my,

look, if

I'm making the pick, which I'm not, I was not actually elected president of the United States, so I don't get to make this pick.

But like, you know, think of a person like Eric Schmidt

who is, I think, a more,

you know, I don't know.

I think he would do a lot.

He would not be, I think, a rubber stamp.

Like I think Gates will be for anything that he wants.

However, he is a really serious person, can absolutely do the job, would be

an incredible pick for that job.

And I think brings a little more credibility, not to mention a much easier path in the Senate.

And I think that's true.

Again, you know, it's up to Trump.

He gets to make these picks.

And if this one fails, he moves on to somebody else.

And I like Ken Paxton.

Paxton's a guy.

Paxton wouldn't have affected the balance of power in the Senate and the House.

You know what I mean?

The House is

getting into worry time here, guys.

We've not seen three House members out when you have a very small majority.

And I'm sure Trump is thinking about this because it is

important to him.

He does need the House.

Critical.

And I think they're going to get to 220 or 221.

He's got to stop poaching from the House.

He has to.

I mean, and Johnson's like begging him at this point.

Please, nobody else.

Almost, no more.

But again, you know, they'll have a quick ⁇ because he dropped out quickly.

Now, there's, of course, a lot

around that.

Gates is ⁇ he was ⁇ they were scheduled to vote on whether they were going to release a report on all of his personal issues here in two days.

And so the fact that he immediately drops out, that means they theoretically don't.

Where do you stand on those issues?

Do you believe those to be true, or is that another hatchet job?

It's an interesting question.

I think it's,

to me, again, I will say I haven't spent a lot of time diving into this.

To me,

the idea that he was sex trafficking seems like a real stretch.

I don't know.

I could be right.

There are sex traffickers in the country, and they seem to miss a lot of those.

They don't even look for a lot of those.

Yeah, like, and he was not charged, it should be pointed out.

And, like, the idea that it seems like even the accusation itself is sketchy.

Strikes me as like they're stretching that into a larger crime.

Like they're saying basically, I mean, the accusation, we don't need to go through all this because none of it's been proven.

We don't even have the report.

But the bottom, the accusation, if you don't know, is that he slept with a 17-year-old girl and

took her on

trips, which they call as across state lines.

And Venmo, they say they had his Venmo records, and they say that he Venmo's these women a bunch of money, which I think that part of it is true.

The question is, what was it for?

The accusation is it was for paid sex.

So paid sex across state lines, that's sex trafficking.

Now, look, when I think of sex trafficking, I'm thinking of like people being smuggled in from other countries and kept hyperspace.

You immediately think of a cargo container.

Exactly.

And that is not the accusation against him.

You know, look, they're serious.

You know, look, if he actually is having sex with underaged girls, like, that's a big enough deal.

And

obviously, Trump is convinced he didn't.

He has denied this.

You know, there are a lot of accusations from multiple other members of Congress who say that he was, at the very least, showing them pictures of girls that he was having sex with on the floor of the House.

You know, and again, that doesn't necessarily

a crime, but not necessarily the best activity for someone you're putting, you want to appoint to Attorney General.

it's more clinton-esque

worthy of the president of the united states but you know as we know uh

there are it's it's difficult to find somebody who isn't engaged in some horrible activity in washington so i know but i don't know i hope these things are wrong we can't have somebody who has any dirt on them oh and he and look gates is tons they're about to release an ethics report on him that they they are saying is very damaging now gates is going to deny it and and i he has some uh like I remember him saying, oh, they're coming.

I'm being framed.

Yeah, he's denying this hard.

Some of that was true.

I mean, some because they were coming after his dad and some related things.

So there's a long story here.

If that report comes out, which by the way, I would expect it to.

It would be very surprising if somebody who he has a lot of enemies does not leak this report before this.

But you have to remember, too,

the report is still just raw.

And it's an ethics investigation.

It's not going to result in charges

at the end of the day, right?

Like, you know,

this is going to come down to whether Republicans want to cross this line for Trump.

And this is the biggest one he's presented to them so far.

If he went to Thune, and this is what I expected, he went to Thune and said, look, I'm not going to endorse Rick Scott if you give me these

recess appointments.

That's my guess is that was a big part of the deal.

He was pretty clear about it, and the reporting was pretty clear on it going out.

If that happens, he will be able to get in there.

He'll go in, he'll shake the place up, and probably only last two years.

Yeah, because he will be acting Attorney General.

Acting, and that's the maximum limit on that.

So, but I will say

it will be an interesting test of that relationship and how serious Thune is in keeping that promise.

Oh, yeah.

Because

Thune is not a guy that I would trust with a promise like that.

I wouldn't trust Thun with anything.

I mean, you know, he's like.

Hey, could you hold this pile of dirt for me?

I'm not giving in to Thune.

Absolutely.

I'm all over it.

Thune, I mean, the easiest way to think of Thune is McConnell.

I mean, he's a protege of McConnell's.

He's basically McConnell.

Now, look, McConnell, maybe he would keep that promise.

But usually what happens here is the Senate wants their opportunity to give their opinion and their consent.

The one thing I do like

about Gates is, you know, he was pushing to stop the influence industry in Washington, and he was pushing for the end of stock trader, you know, stock trading inside information, blah, blah, blah.

He's very good on that.

And he reached out to the Uber left.

I mean, he stood with AOC.

And I love this comment from him.

AOC is wrong a lot, but she's not corrupt.

And I'll work with anyone and everyone to ensure that Congress is not compromised.

I think that's good.

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Now, back to the podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

I think we really truly understand the meaning of our national anthem.

The way we sing it, it's like, okay, that's good.

Play ball.

This is one of the most tense national anthems that I have read.

It is, it's describing one night.

And it happened to the author, Francis Scott Key.

We were at war with the British.

And at Fort McHenry, the British were about to attack.

And we were trying to get a couple of prisoners back.

And so he was selected, along with another guy, to go onto this British ship and negotiate and return the American prisoners on the ship.

But when they got there, they saw that they were preparing to attack the fort.

And so the captain of the ship said, you can't leave now because now you know you're going to be held here until this is over.

And so he put them down at the bottom of the ship and they watched what was happening through one of the little ship's portholes.

Now, imagine

you're on the other side.

You're now on an enemy ship locked away so you can't go anywhere.

And you're watching to see what?

You want to see if that flag comes down and another flag goes up, right?

So the lyric, oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, means, Is that flag still there?

Last night, it was there.

Is it in the morning?

This is a guy waking up in the morning after a long battle and going, is it there?

Or the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming and the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in the air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

So he could only see it when bombs would go off or things were burning or there were rockets in the air.

When that would happen, they would look, is the flag there?

But now the sun has come up.

And he asks us the question, does that star-spangled banner yet wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Are we at the twilight's last gleaming

or are we at dawn's early light?

We don't know yet.

I mean,

I don't know if we're entering dawn's early light.

yet, but we are at the twilight's last gleaming.

This is a fork in the road.

right now.

This will be studied for centuries.

This is a fork in the road right now on Western civilization.

I want to bring in Kevin Roberts, who I love the name of the book, Dawn's Early Light, Taking Back Washington to Save America.

It is out now.

Kevin, how are you?

Man, I'm doing great.

You ought to do broadcasting for a living.

What a perfect framing of where we are in this country.

And as you know, from this early American historian to you, a great patriot and friend who has forgotten more about American history than most students learn, thank you for that framing.

That's really where we are.

We have a lot of work ahead.

The election is just the beginning.

So you do believe that we're at the twilight's last gleaming right now?

I think that,

as Churchill would put it,

the end of the beginning just occurred, which is to say, in the next several weeks, the Biden-Harris regime comes to a close.

I think that we're tilting toward dawn's early light.

I'm hopeful by my nature because of my faith and because I'm an American.

But I think the key thing to the underlying point that you're making, Glenn, is that just because we won the election doesn't mean that we can go back to everything we were doing.

The hard work begins now.

Yeah.

And we're in for some really difficult times to make this turn

and to make it without collapsing everything

and to make it fast enough to where people will feel, you know, like Malay.

You know, he's turned that around quickly in Argentina.

I don't know if we can turn that fast.

I hope we can, but he's down to 3% inflation now.

And that's a massive, massive turn for Argentina.

But it's going to be difficult.

So what are the things that you're seeing and you outline in the book that we have to do to get this ship to turn?

Three or four things in the next 90 days, let's say.

The first has already happened.

We had to secure an election victory, which has happened.

But the second thing is the men and women who are in key positions, we're in great shape with the president and vice president.

I would argue in great shape with the Speaker of the House.

I think we will be okay with the new majority leader of the Senate, nothing against Senator Thune personally, but he's not the most aligned with this framing that we've just outlined, to put it charitably.

But popular will might be something that he responds to.

But the good thing, Glenn, is point number three,

which is that not everything that needs to happen is in Washington.

And if you look across the fruited plain and you see the governors and also very importantly, an increasing number of local officials, county executives, county commissioners, school board officials, the center right in this country has been awakened to the reality that we all have to dig a little bit deeper in spite of all the sacrifices we've made to participate in the revitalization of the American dream.

But it's point four that that is the most important and to some extent it's the hardest.

Politics, to some extent, doesn't matter.

It's all about society and culture, our local communities, our families.

The thing that I try to emphasize in the book is not just an America-first posture, but a family-first posture in which we're going about our lives virtuously.

We're all flawed, of course, but as virtuously as we can because our institutions and our politics reflect us as individuals, and it's really important we not lose sight of that as we are making this turn to Dawn's early night.

We can't restore America if...

We don't restore ourselves and our families, if we don't put first principles back into our our own lives, our society is just a reflection.

I mean, our government is just a reflection of our society.

That's all it is.

We don't care about lies and corruption, then they'll lie and produce tons of corruption for us because we don't really care about it.

We say we do, but do we really?

You know,

a guy on your side gets caught doing something or like, yeah, well, that's not that big of a, no, you got to care about it.

You got to care about it in your own house.

You have to care.

You know, I remember, Kevin, when I was a kid, if I got in trouble with the teacher, or God forbid, I was called to the principal's office,

I was less afraid of the school than I was my dad and my mom because they weren't going to listen to my side.

You know what I mean?

They just weren't.

They were like, nope, I know you too well.

You did that.

And, you know, that happened.

Now, parents go and try to broker deals for their kids or blame the school when it is the kids' fault many times.

Oh, it is.

That doesn't,

you know, you can't do that in your own home and expect the culture to be well.

You know, it's an excellent example.

And it reminds me when I was a senior in high school, and I thought I was a bit of a hot shot.

And so I had this liberal English teacher, who's a very good teacher, her politics were terrible.

And she was probably saying something in class she shouldn't have about politics.

And I said something that was disrespectful to her.

And I got called into the principal's office and he was a mentor and a great guy.

And he said, look, Mr.

Roberts, you just can't do that.

I was courteous to him in that meeting.

But when I got home, to your point, Glenn, I mentioned this to my mom.

She was livid at me.

I thought she was going to be livid.

at the English teacher and at the principal.

And she said, Kevin Roberts, you get your rear end to that school early tomorrow and you apologize to that principal.

You apologize to that English teacher.

I don't care if she's liberal and you're conservative.

You must own that mistake.

And boy, that has stuck with me because it's those kinds of things that my mom stepping up in that moment to say, no, you must comport yourself better than that.

That that's the kind of thing we have to do writ large across this republic.

Because just to come full circle here and to sum up in this response, Glenn, if you read Madison's notes about the constitutional debates, as you know well, Madison said, really, our motivation in building this constitutional system is to build a a framework that acknowledges the fallen nature of humans.

And that's really what we're up against in the 21st century.

And people, I don't think, understand that we've trusted government.

The founders didn't trust government.

They knew how, because they knew people.

How the progressives want to put the elites in place.

And they treat the, you know, the hardworking, you know, everyday guy as really the forgotten man.

That guy doesn't have the power.

You have all the power.

And we know, because of history of the human race, the more power you have, the more corrupt you're likely to be.

But they just dismiss that.

And that's what I think Donald Trump is trying to reverse.

I really feel,

I feel very optimistic.

Kevin, you know me.

I'm not optimistic very often,

or maybe ever.

But I am so optimistic because I do think if we pay attention, if we don't do what we did in 2016 and say, okay, well, he's got it.

I voted.

It's done.

If we keep the pressure on, we stay awake, we make the changes we have to and help them make the changes in Washington,

I think we are on the verge of a golden age of America.

I'm convinced of that.

And while I am not as prone to pessimism as you are, you know that

I am a hopeful realist.

And so the advice that I've been giving to people, you know, I've had family members from across the country call me, friends, elected officials.

They say, Kevin, you know, what's the advice or what's the posture that Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action are taking with all of this?

We're going to be accountability partners.

And all of us need accountability partners, whether informally or formally.

And by that, it's not so much a negative thing, but these elected officials need people who are trusted friends, who are aligned with them philosophically, who want the same thing, which is the restoration of the American dream, but who also are such good friends that as good friends do and only good friends can do, we can level with them, hopefully behind the scenes and say, don't do that.

Stop doing that.

And if we have this attitude, if everyone in your audience has that attitude, and going back to my point about comportment, we do that in a way that's charitable, that's civil, but also candid, I actually think that we are at the beginning of this golden era era of conservative reform.

Me too.

We have to be able, you know,

it's so weird how

shaming in our culture has become all about politics.

If you don't agree, then you're run out.

Where

we used to agree, not on politics, we used to agree on principles.

That's why you could be a kid in a grocery store and somebody who you didn't recognize would walk up to you and say,

you're Bill and Mary Beck's son, aren't you?

Yes.

I don't think they'd want you behaving this way.

And you would just go beat red and you'd stop it.

You just wanted to become invisible.

Now we're saying, how dare you tell me what to do?

No, there is a place for shame.

There is a place for the community to say, look,

We all agree on the same values and what you're doing here is wrong.

When it is clearly wrong, we just shut up now because we're afraid of the response or the attorneys that are going to get involved or whatever.

We can't be afraid of that anymore.

No, we can't.

In fact, so much of what I talk about in the book, although I do cover quite a bit about politics and policy because they are important, is about the point you just made, just our daily relationships.

And one of the reasons I decided to hone in on that, Glenn, is because I've learned in the second half of my career where I've moved from academia to politics, as you know, that what people are looking for, people who listen to you, people who support heritage, largely the same people, they say, Kevin, you know,

give me some solutions that I can do in baby steps or bite-sized pieces.

And what I realize is let's start by doing that in our individual relationships, our individual conversations.

And so I'll just give you an example.

I'm encouraging people, as exciting as it is with all of these cabinet appointments the president's making, of course, support those and pay attention and be accountability partners, but don't lose sight of what's going on in the politics of your city, of your county, of your state, and develop a relationship with someone who represents you, even if they are a member of the opposing party and you're going to disagree on everything.

Now is the time for us to press the advantage on what the American people have said loudly and clearly over the last eight days, and that is we want to wake up in a normal country.

So use the power of shame to, when people are being abnormal, be charitable about it.

But the American people are with us on this point.

You're streaming the best of Glenn Beck.

To hear more of this interview and others, download the full show podcasts wherever you get podcasts.

All right.

Thomas Massey is going to join us.

We're waiting for him to call in.

But Thomas is going to call in and talk to us a little bit about everybody freaking out about matt gates as attorney general uh because massey has come out massey was a little bit sassy uh

about this um

and is is supporting the nomination obviously uh and here he is this is cut six

He's the Attorney General.

Suck it up.

He's the Attorney General.

Suck it up.

That's what he says.

Get over it.

He's got to be the attorney general.

That's what he meant.

I couldn't tell.

It was kind of hard to hear, but he's basically saying, look,

get over this.

It's going to be happening.

Yeah.

Because the recess appointment thing looks stupid.

I mean, it's not been confirmed.

I think that's why Trump was so

okay with Thune, is he wanted that recess appointment, which means he's not confirmed by the Senate because he'll have a hard time going through the Senate.

Yeah, I don't think he'd have any chance, honestly, to get through the Senate in normal procedures.

Right.

There's a lot of people who don't like Matt Gates.

Right.

And so

he's going to be a recess appointment.

As soon as they go on recess, Trump nominates, and then it just slides through.

But

it's an acting role, and the limit on that is two years.

So somebody else is coming after Matt Gates.

And this is probably a very well-laid plan.

I don't know what the plan is yet, but I'm going to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt here.

Thomas Massey, welcome to the program.

Hey, great to be on.

Glenn, to talk about my friend Matt Gaetz.

Okay, so first of all, let's start at the worst possible place for Matt Gaetz.

You know, there was

this

inquiry that was going to be released into how bad he is on Friday.

That's why he had to quit right away.

That's why it happened.

Can you address that?

Well, who better to take on the weaponization of the government than somebody who's had the government weaponized against them?

I mean, this is what I call touching the red wire to the black wire.

If you've ever jumped a car with jumper cables, you know, you don't put them together.

It's going to melt the insulation off the place over there.

And if anybody knows how to fix it, it's Matt Gates, how to fix the DOJ.

Why do you say that?

Because most people know him just as a bomb thrower.

Well, because he served on the committee, the judiciary committee that Jim Jordan chairs and I serve on as well.

And we have sat there, I don't know how many times, and heard Merrick Garland try to say, when we ask a question, I'm sorry, that's the subject of an ongoing investigation and it's our long-standing policy not to comment.

That's bull crap.

And I told Matt, I expect to never hear that answer from him when he comes in front of me.

I am looking forward, Glenn, this is my dream, to cross-examining Matt Gates in the hot seat there in front of judiciary.

And have him not say what Merrick Garland said.

Right.

I can imagine saying, hey, where are those documents that we ask for?

Matt would probably reach under the table and say, here are those documents.

So tell me, because I don't think this is, you know, the left is saying, oh, this is revenge.

He's going to go on a scorched trip.

He's going to go after all his enemies.

No, I think, like with Tulsi Gabbard, he's appointing people who have direct experience of the weaponization of government in that role.

Right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Look, the DOJ was weaponized against teachers at school board meetings, right?

Matt Gates, it's not revenge to say

we're not going to go after

parents at school board meetings.

Or to fire those people that were responsible for that.

Correct.

Or to go after whistleblowers, for instance.

It's not revenge to say we're going to set things right.

There's nobody that's being targeted.

I am certain there are some people going to be cleaning their desks

when Matt Gates takes over.

Some of them will be given the notice, and some of them will be trying to get out of Dodge before the new sheriff gets to town.

So, Thomas, is he a kind of guy that is well thought out and well-planned?

Because

he has to move in on

Inauguration Day and lay down the law quickly.

He's got to take that bull by the horns day one.

Listen, I don't always agree with Matt Gates, but he is one of the smartest guys up here.

You can tell that from his wit.

But,

you know, when we question people in the Judiciary Committee, it's usually his questions that are the most pertinent.

He knows the right questions to ask.

When he gets to DOJ, he's going to know which rocks to turn over, which ones are going to have snakes and scorpions underneath of them.

Because

he spent many years asking these questions.

I can't imagine the day he walks in there and actually, instead of asking for the documents, gets to pull the file open and pull the documents out.

They got to be, I mean, have you guys

issued a warning on destroying of any kind of documents?

Because that's what they did to you guys with the January 6th committee.

They destroyed them.

They only gave you half of them.

And then they were locked up and they were like, oh, we can't.

We don't know what the code is to get those.

Do you have penalties right now?

Have you issued any warnings on this?

Well, you're right about January 6th.

The Secret Service received five preservation notices from different committees in Congress and still deleted all of their phones and their texts from January 6th.

So I'm not, I mean, I'm not sure what good that will do.

And then you have people who use illegally are using their private phones.

They're going to be doing that.

It's going to, you know, the forensics, you better hire a forensic expert to try and find some of the stuff that's been bleach-bitted over there.

I'm sure the shredders are in overdrive, illegally so.

But to answer your specific question, I don't know what preservation notices we've sent, but we should be sending them in overdrive.

Yeah, to every agency.

And here's why it should make a difference.

The DOJ is responsible for putting people in jail and holding people accountable for that.

If you've destroyed any documents, you were involved in any of that, if you're the person in charge of those documents and they can't be found, you go to prison.

Period.

That's what it should be.

There should be ramifications, repercussions for anybody that engages in that kind of malfeasance.

It's usually the cover-up that gets them.

Not necessarily what they did, but their effort to cover it up.

And look, they were not planning for Trump to win.

And then they had a backup plan for Trump to hopefully appoint another Bill Barr type who would coddle

them and

really work against Trump.

That is not the case with Matt Gaetz.

Matt Gates is somebody, again, who's been the subject of political witch hunts, is going to be more motivated and more knowledgeable than anybody else on how to stop that crap from being turned loose on the American people as it has been at DOJ.

I got to tell you, Thomas, you make me feel much better.

I mean, I know you.

I know your integrity.

I know what you believe, and we're friends.

Hearing you

give some testimony here here on Matt Gates and what's been going on in his life is

very heartening.

Thank you for that.

Well,

there are some appointments where we're going to be scratching our heads and saying, can we really trust that person?

Does that person have a connection to the Cheneys and the Bushes?

Are they deep state?

Matt Gaetz, I can assure you, has none of those connections.

If he did, he wouldn't have been prosecuted like he's been.

Right.

How do you feel about Tulsi Gabbard being DNI?

I've only got about 30 seconds, 45 seconds.

Love it.

Again, this is touching the red wire to the black wire.

She's one of the people who was targeted and put on a watch list.

Who better to have go clean up the watch list than Tulsi Gabbard?

Do they have teams that have to come in with them?

Because, I mean, I'd hate to be DNI all by myself.

Oh, there'll be undersecretaries and lawyers and things they'll need to bring in, too.

Thomas Massey, thank you so much.

The Republican from Kentucky, actually, he's a libertarian.

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