'I'd love to be a part of the Senate'

'It’s a ratings and revenue game'

The right people are losing their minds over President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to become attorney general—the now-resigned Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. “THIS IS WHY WE WERE FROM THE START NEVER TRUMP,” neoconservative ideologue Bill Kristol posted on X. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton also took to X to pile on: “Gaetz must be the worst nomination for a cabinet position in American history.”  I already liked the Gaetz pick for attorney general; Kristol and Bolton are simply making it easier. Since the nomination, however, defenders of Gaetz have been few and far between. Over the past week, a lot of ink has been spilled at National Review opposing the Gaetz pick. “Matt Gaetz Cannot Be Allowed to Become Attorney General,” wrote staff writer Jeffrey Blehar. “Trump Doesn’t Have a Mandate for Chaos,” senior writer Noah Rothman proclaimed, taking aim at Gaetz’s nomination. The dead horse wasn’t quite beaten enough. The headline “The Senate Should Reject Matt Gaetz” adorned the top of a Nov. 15 piece from the editorial board. In fairness, National Review’s editorial board sees the logic of Trump’s pick. They understand Trump’s decade in politics has made him “highly resentful and suspicious of politicized law enforcement.” They’ll even admit that Trump needs a loyalist—Gaetz just isn’t the right one. But Gaetz is the right man for the job.  Since coming to Washington in 2017, Gaetz has been the most outspoken Republican in Congress about the abuses of the federal justice system and the need for drastic reform. There is now broad consensus on the American Right that the federal government has been weaponized against everyday Americans and that the Department of Justice and purportedly independent federal law enforcement agencies are the most egregious perpetrators. Such a consensus simply didn’t exist when Trump won in 2016. Gaetz was there from the start, and his work in Congress is why that consensus exists today. Trump’s statement announcing Gaetz’s nomination recognizes as much.  “Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice,” Trump’s statement read. “On the House Judiciary Committee, which performs oversight of DOJ, Matt played a key role in defeating the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and exposing alarming and systemic Government Corruption and Weaponization. He is a Champion for the Constitution and the Rule of Law. Matt will root out the systemic corruption at DOJ, and return the Department to its true mission of fighting Crime, and upholding our Democracy and Constitution.” In January 2018, Gaetz led the effort to release a top-secret memo circulated to members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence members that outlined Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses from the Obama administration to unlawfully spy on the Trump campaign and transition in 2016. Sixty-five of Gaetz’s House colleagues petitioned then-committee Chair Devlin Nunes to release the document that was made available to the public in February 2018. At the time, Gaetz promised the memo would “shock the conscience of this country.” It did. The memo revealed how the Obama administration heavily relied on the Steele dossier to obtain its warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court without disclosing that Christopher Steele was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and by the Hillary Clinton campaign through the law firm Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS.  .@RepMattGaetz: "There are 4 pages of a memorandum prepared by the Intel. Cmte. that will shock the conscience of this country when it comes to the horrific abuses that occurred during the last admin. and that I believe continue to pose a threat to @realDonaldTrump's presidency." pic.twitter.com/g19BvDVUEe— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 21, 2018 Furthermore, even after Steele’s media leaks forced the FBI to terminate Steele as a source, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, a top DOJ official whose wife worked for Fusion GPS, maintained a professional relationship with Steele. Steele once reportedly told Ohr that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected.” None of this was ever disclosed when obtaining the FISA warrant. It was one of the first of many revelations that showed the public the Russian collusion scandal was a hoax, and Gaetz deserves that credit. Less than two weeks later, the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, would take the lives of 17 students and injure 17 more. Gaetz was one of a group of bipartisan lawmakers to put pressure on the FBI to reform after enforcement failures in the lead up to the shooting. The end result was a $127.5 million settlement between the DOJ and the Parkland shooting victims’ families, and the FBI instituted reforms suggested by Gaetz and other members of Congress to prevent similar failures in the future. Throughout his time in Congress, Gaetz was the thorn in the side of the DOJ and its attached law enforcement agencies.  When Bryan Vorndran, the assistant director of the FBI Cyber Program, testified in Congress in March 2022, Gaetz simply asked if he was aware of where the FBI was keeping Hunter Biden’s laptop. Vorndran didn’t know. This after it was already widely speculated that the FBI and outside intelligence-related organizations pressured Big Tech companies like Facebook into censoring stories about the illicit contents of Biden’s laptop. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in October that the FBI colluded with Facebook to suppress the laptop. Later, in July 2023, FBI Director Christopher Wray would testify before Congress. Gaetz again went after the abuse of the FISA process. “Who has been held accountable or fired as a consequence of the FBI using the FISA process as their like, creepy, personal snoop machine?” Gaetz asked.  “There have been instances in which individuals have had disciplinary action,” Wray said. But when Gaetz asked the FBI director to name names, Wray couldn’t. “Don’t you see that that’s kind of the thing, you preside over the FBI that has the lowest level of trust in the FBI’s history!” Gaetz exclaimed. “People trusted the FBI more when J. Edgar Hoover was running the place than when you are and the reason is because you don’t give straight answers, you give answers that later a court deems are not true and then at the end of the day you won’t criticize an obvious shakedown when it’s directly in front of us and it appears as though you are whitewashing conduct of corrupt people.” As a member of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Gaetz continued to aggressively attack the DOJ and its subsidiaries.  When Special Counsel John Durham testified before the committee in June 2023 about his investigation into the “Crossfire Hurricane” operation against the 2016 Trump campaign, Gaetz suggested that Durham let high-ranking DOJ officials off the hook.  “It seems like more than disappointment. It seems like you weren’t really trying to expose the true core of the corruption. That you were trying to go at it another way,” Gaetz told Durham. He faulted the special counsel for allowing key DOJ officials to avoid questioning, along with other failures in the investigation. Surely, Gaetz might get the same treatment he gave DOJ officials in his Senate confirmation hearings. He’ll have to fight tooth and claw just for the chance to serve in Trump’s cabinet. Details of the now-ended House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz are already leaking, and will likely be leaked in full before Gaetz’s confirmation hearings. But when President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice refuses to bring charges after an investigation into one of its political opponents, suffice it to say I have my doubts about the validity of the claims brought against Trump’s nominee for AG—not to mention that a Florida man is serving a 5-year prison sentence for attempting to extort Gaetz’s family over the sex-trafficking investigation. Republicans in the Senate might not read the tea leaves. Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Ak., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, the most moderate members of the Senate GOP conference, have already expressed their shock over Gaetz’s nomination and hinted they may be opposed. But Murkowski and Collins might not be alone. “My phone is blowing up with Senate Republican aides aghast at Trump’s nomination of Gaetz,” Andrew Desiderio of Punchbowl News posted on X. “Some quite confidently saying there’s no way their boss votes to confirm him. We’ll see.” See, there aren’t many folks in Washington, and even fewer lawyers, who know what time it is. Matt Gaetz does. The post Matt Gaetz Is a Great Pick for Attorney General appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Trump Dance Now a Global Sensation

Red Pilled Chicago Residents Let Hizzoner Have a Little Unfiltered Piece O' Their Minds

Virtually all of Trump’s cabinet picks have resulted in the left throwing a fit, but no one has sparked more controversy than former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who is poised to replace Merrick Garland as attorney general should the Senate confirm him. Besides being unapologetically brash and outspoken against the establishment, Gaetz is ruffling feathers because he’s had some serious allegations filed against him, the most notable being accusations of sex trafficking. However, no indictments have followed, meaning that the scandal has either been buried intentionally or the accusations are false and this entire ordeal is a smear campaign. Liz Wheeler is leaning towards the latter. “We are going to untangle exactly who is behind the accusations against Matt Gaetz,” she says. “When you hear the whole story written out in a timeline of exactly what happened, when it happened, it is quite a phenomenal story.” “Whenever [Gaetz] is mentioned in the mainstream media, for example, he’s always mentioned as being under ethics review by the U.S. House or having faced sex trafficking allegations,” she points out. It’s important to establish that “people in Washington D.C. don’t like Matt Gaetz,” partially because “he was kind of a playboy,” partially because “he’s kind of obnoxious,” but most importantly because he’s been “a fighter for Trump” since 2016, she explains, adding that immediately following his election to Congress, Gaetz began butting heads with establishment GOPers. “What happens in Washington, D.C., when you’re disliked by the establishment is that makes you a target,” Liz explains. And that seems to be exactly what happened to him. In 2020, the FBI suddenly started investigating Matt Gaetz for “allegedly having a relationship with a minor — a 17-year-old girl — ... and paying for her to travel over state lines.” “If an allegation like this is true, then that’s the definition of sex trafficking,” says Liz. “So that’s where the sex trafficking allegations come into play.” However, the person who enlightened the FBI to Gaetz’ alleged crimes is a scandal in and of himself. The accuser’s name is Joel Greenberg, and he’s a former Florida tax collector who was indicted on 33 criminal accounts, including sex trafficking, theft, stalking, and cryptocurrency fraud, among others. Greenberg alleged that he was friends with Matt Gaetz. Following Greenberg’s accusations, the Department of Justice began investigating Gaetz for a period of two years. While the investigation was going on, “Gaetz said that he and his dad were the victims or were targeted for extortion.” And he was correct — a businessman named Stephen Alford indeed tried to extort Don Gaetz for $25 million in exchange for making the investigation against his son “go away.” “Gaetz and his dad instead cooperated with the local FBI office, and it resulted in Alford’s arrest, and he pled guilty to extortion,” says Liz. Fast forward to later in 2022, and Biden’s DOJ announced it would not bring any charges against Matt Gaetz. The investigation was closed because both Greenberg and the 17-year-old girl Gaetz allegedly trafficked were found to be “non-credible.” “In other words, they were such bad liars that even the Biden Department of Justice thought, ‘There’s no way that these two could be believable,”’ says Liz. “This is the Biden Department of Justice — the Biden Department of Justice that invents things in order to target their political enemy. ... There was so much nothing to these allegations that even the Biden DOJ dropped them.” But there’s another layer to the story. Back in 2021, an ethics investigation was opened on Matt Gaetz but was soon paused when the DOJ began its investigation into the sex trafficking allegations. Then, in 2022, before former speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was elected, certain GOPers demanded a “series of reforms,” one of them being “that any single member of the House of Representatives could motion to vacate the chair.” “Well, that fight was led by Matt Gaetz,” says Liz. Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted and replaced by Mike Johnson in 2023 as a result of the policy Gaetz championed, “hates Matt Gaetz.” Prior to his removal, “the McCarthy-led House revived the ethics investigation.” “In October 2023, Matt Gaetz motioned to vacate the chair, and McCarthy became the first speaker in U.S. history to be ousted,” says Liz. “Kevin McCarthy claims that Matt Gaetz did this to squash the ethics investigation into him. Gaetz claims it’s because McCarthy was failing to uphold his promises, and now here we are in 2024. Matt Gaetz is nominated by president-elect Trump to be attorney general of the Department of Justice of the United States of America,” Liz explains. The nomination led to Gaetz resigning from Congress, meaning that he can no longer be investigated by the Ethics Committee. Further, any reports it may possess “cannot be released publicly” now. Liz calls the scandals surrounding Gaetz “personal, petty, political grievances”; “a character assassination of the worst kind”; and a “smear campaign from the depths of hell.” To hear more of her commentary, watch the episode above. Want more from Liz Wheeler?To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was caught lying about illegal immigration under the Biden and Trump administrations by PolitiFact. Pelosi was arguing with journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro about whether immigration was a factor in the Democrats' astounding election losses when she claimed that fewer illegal aliens were allowed into the country under President Joe Biden than during the first term for President-elect Donald Trump. 'It’s wrong to say illegal immigration, which reached historic highs under Biden, is lower overall than it was during Trump’s first term.' The former speaker tried to twist immigration into the category of a "cultural issue" when Garcia-Navarro contradicted her. "When the candidate for president is saying that these people coming in are murderers, rapists, thieves and all the rest of that. He made that a cultural issue," Pelosi said. "I don’t think we were clear enough by saying fewer people came in under President Biden than came under Donald Trump," she added. PolitiFact rated the claim false. "Illegal immigration under Biden has dropped significantly in the past four months, reaching levels lower than President-elect Donald Trump’s last few months in office," it wrote. "But it’s wrong to say illegal immigration, which reached historic highs under Biden, is lower overall than it was during Trump’s first term." The fact-checker reported that Pelosi's office did not respond to their requests for comment, but an aide to the congresswoman tried to explain to the Washington Post that she was speaking about deportation data. "That data shows that Biden’s administration repatriated more people than Trump did, but that’s not what Pelosi said in the interview," PolitiFact retorted. The article went on to cite specific statistics that showed illegal entries into the U.S. skyrocketed under Biden as compared to Trump. Under Biden, Border Patrol agents encountered migrants trying to enter the U.S.7.2 million times; under Trump, officials encountered migrants 1.8 million times. Encounters don’t mean people were let in, and there’s no data for how many people who were encountered are now living in the U.S. But the numbers of people released to await court hearings don’t corroborate Pelosi’s statement, either. There were about 313,000 under Trump compared with 3.6 million under Biden."We rate Pelosi’s statement False," PolitiFact concluded. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A union representing staffers at the Democratic National Committee released an angry statement excoriating the DNC firing staffers with little notice and no severance pay despite raising a billion dollars in the election. The DNC Staff Union posted the statement about the layoffs from Wednesday and made demands of the DNC in expectation of further layoffs after the astounding election losses. 'DNC leadership refuses to disclose to the DNC Staff Union the full extent of these layoffs and whether additional cuts are planned.'"The Democratic National Committee is facing the fallout of callous and short-sighted mismanagement by senior leadership," the statement read. "Starting Wednesday night, permanent employees were notified of their termination, effective Friday and with no severance pay. DNC leadership refuses to disclose to the DNC Staff Union the full extent of these layoffs and whether additional cuts are planned. These cuts go far beyond typical campaign turnover and impact employees who were previously told their positions would be retained after the election."The union went on to criticize the DNC for raising more than a billion dollars for the campaign before firing employees. "Despite record-breaking fundraising, the DNC failed to provide any financial support to those who have tirelessly served the Democratic Party and its mission," it said in part. "The DNC staff is proud of the values that our party stands for," the statement continued. "We want to make it clear, however, that the principles we champion on the national stage have been disregarded in our own workplace. The process of regaining the trust of the American people must start with living our party's values."The union demanded that the DNC leadership align its actions with its principles by offering severance pay and addressing the staff "honestly and transparency." The Harris-Walz campaign has been under intense scrutiny after some reports indicated the campaign had ended in nearly $20 million worth of debt after spending more than a billion dollars on lavish parties just to lose control of two branches of government. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

MSNBC Host Says ‘Normalizing Trump Is a Bad Idea’

Ex-Agent Tells The Hill Kash Patel Would Do ‘Massive Damage’ to the FBI