Firebrand: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the MAGA Revolution

by Matt Gaetz

  Minority Leader McCarthy chimed in next. “What will the media say? He did mention Biden. That isn’t great.”

  “It was a perfect call!” The president’s voice shot out of the speakerphone. The president is always his own best communications director and hype man. He was right. We agreed that the media would look foolish for, as they typically do, exaggerating. Rep. Schiff would likely slither away following the disclosure, humiliated again so soon after Russia. Pelosi would move on to her next attempt to virtue signal. We had overestimated their sense of honor and underestimated their sensitivity to shame. Evidence or not, they decided the impeachment show must go on! There was no other act or agenda from the Democrats.

  “Russia” had died with Muller looking more like someone who escaped a nursing home memory ward than the Trump slayer that the Democrats and their allies in the Fake News media had advertised. Ukraine would emerge now as the “go-for-broke” impeachment strategy, evidence be damned. We do stupid things when we are desperate.

  October 23, 2019

  House Intelligence Committee. Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF).

  “Mr. Gaetz has returned,” I overheard a staff member whisper to Adam Schiff. Much to my surprise, I had been thrown out of the SCIF days before. I assumed because the Judiciary Committee has principal jurisdiction over impeachment—and since they were impeaching my president—that I’d be able to at least observe. Not so. Well, screw that. This time I brought backup. About fifty House Republicans and I had just held a press conference lambasting the Democrats’ secret impeachment-related proceedings going on within this “Secret Compartmentalized Information Facility.”

  At this point, Speaker Pelosi had seen enough of the bumbling, disheveled Rep. Jerry Nadler in Judiciary Committee proceedings. It was like a line change in hockey it was so instantaneous. Judiciary Democrats had been benched, and the Intelligence Committee had subbed in. You only change the lineup if you are losing. After Russia, they were.

  During Russia, Democrats always believed they were “one shoe-drop” away from a massive swing in public opinion that never happened. Try as they might, nothing seemed to work. Michael Cohen! Roger Stone indicted! Manafort and Gates! A Russian troll farm! Nobody cared. While President Trump focused on provisions for the American people, the Democrats couldn’t stop spinning fiction about distant lands. To many of my hardworking constituents, it was like, Russia…Ukraine…what’s next? Are they going to accuse Trump of colluding with Narnia?

  From Comey’s fake diary leaks to the unmasking of Gen. Flynn, the Russia hoax strategy was to get information out as fast as possible, to feed their narrative. That failed. Now, they were going to take their time, but time is dangerous to fraudsters. In the Ukraine sequel, the goal was to keep information secret, closed, and opaque to all those “smelly Walmart” voters who had the audacity not of hope, but to vote for Trump. No more letting witnesses like Corey Lewandowski roast helpless Democrat congressmen on live TV. No more letting Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz treat dishonest witnesses as piñatas before tens of millions of viewers.

  The Democrats’ procedures for formulating their charges of impeachment in October 2019 proved to be even more secretive than Ukrainian business dealings and far more secretive, apparently, than the contents of the president’s phone calls.

  That is not to say that the Schiff playbook to this point was not brilliant and well executed. It was also repugnant to justice. First, Schiff found deep state lifers who really and sincerely believed that they were “the government” and that those of us who won elections were merely the passing fancies of uninformed voters. These people hated Trump and the populist revolution he led. Former ambassadors Bill Taylor and Marie Yovanovitch fit the bill. Department of Defense hack Fiona Hill seemed sent from central casting. She even had the snooty British accent.

  Unlike Nadler, Schiff understood the importance of prepared, timed leaks to drive the news cycle. Depositions began at 9:00 AM daily. By 10:00 AM, their carefully crafted opening statement, prepared to put the president in the worst possible light, would be leaked to a media all too willing to play their part in the coup. Stories would be written, narratives furthered, characters developed. They know that stagecraft is statecraft.

  By the time Republicans drew blood during a 2:00 PM cross-examination session, the cement of the daily news cycle had already hardened. We had been playing defense, playing catch-up every day, all day. The polls were starting to show it. Days before, I called the president’s 2016 deputy campaign manager and overall “MAGA Yoda,” David Bossie. David is not a peacetime consigliere. “The Schiff Show has been going on eleven days with these closed-door hearings and handcrafted leaks,” I lamented. “Be honest. How many of these days have we won?”

  “Zerooo!” Bossie exclaimed. “You people are ineffectively defending an innocent president. Get your shit together and do something.”

  He was right. We had to get Schiff out of the SCIF basement. Only open, aboveground hearings would give us the fair fight we knew we could win. Enough congressional niceties for me. I was busting in to flush the Democrats out—and I’d lead my own coalition of the willing.

  Just as Schiff was asking me to leave (again), the SCIF door swung open with force. I didn’t see an arm, hand, or face, but a crutch plowing through the opening. Republican Whip and bonafide Ragin’ Cajun Rep. Steve Scalise had not long ago been shot by a Bernie Sanders devotee and Southern Poverty Law Center fan and reduced to crutches during his recovery.

  “We aren’t leaving,” he announced. I was relieved to see Steve. I was only partially certain that any of my colleagues would follow me from the routine press conference to undertake the riskier invasion of the SCIF. None disappointed. Leadership can inspire, especially in the spur of the moment. Steve Scalise inspires all who serve among us. It was an honor to have him as my wingman. He stands tall even when he hobbles. Our physical presence, our resistance some might call it, drove home the point in a manner speeches or outraged prose alone couldn’t.

  The American people were being shut out of the Schiff star chamber, but we had come to jailbreak the truth. Nothing much good happens in basements, and so we wanted sunlight to disinfect the whole process. The media was forced to cover our objections, now made vivid and ripened. Rather than complaining about an unfair process, we had images and video now to show it. And every network ran the video of our operation wall to wall. Perfect. Sometimes you have to put on a show to show up.

  To hear critics such as Mieke Eoyang, a former House Intelligence Committee staffer, tell it (in a stream of angry tweets that got reprinted as a Vox article), we had practically raided the Cheyenne Mountain headquarters of NORAD and put the entire apparatus of national security in jeopardy—“a VERY serious national security problem,” she tweeted. Spare me.

  If anyone violated the great sanctity of the SCIF it was Adam Schiff by turning it into his mysterious kangaroo court. There was no classified information sought or offered during these interviews. Schiff wasn’t hiding from the Russians/Chinese/Iranians down in that bunker. He was hiding from us—and we found him.

  “You broke the fever!” Steve Bannon’s voice and energy are unmistakable. He was the first call I took upon being reunited with my phone. Electronics aren’t allowed in the SCIF, even for righteous invaders. Bannon was right. Demonstrative action beats rigid adherence to rules written by others in a game that the people so rarely win. Most Americans would soon agree that the process used by Democrats was unfair. A fall 2019 Politico poll showed only 37 percent of voters supporting impeachment proceedings.

  From this, they would never recover. The veil of legitimacy and equity was stripped. This wasn’t about Ukraine or Russia or arms—arms that Trump delivered and Obama withheld. The Democrats were being exposed as sore losers. President Trump had promised us that we would win so much that we would get “tired of winning,” but every now and again the president nee
ds a great team to help him prevail.

  December 9, 2019

  House Judiciary Committee.

  “You don’t get to interrupt me!” I shouted at Stanford Law Professor (and outed “Resistance” member) Pamela Karlan.

  When faced with the outrage of others, sometimes it’s good to have a reservoir of your own. Never grant the premise of the question, the sanctity of the venue, or the validity of the endeavor to the Left. They were trying to ruin the Trump presidency. Sure, they had contempt for us, but I had more than enough for them. It’s not every day that I, a graduate of William & Mary Law School (ranked 31), get to tell a Stanford Law professor (ranked 2) exactly what I think of those who think so little of the American people.

  Once we got into a fair fight we had to win it. Then and now, Team Trump doesn’t win by playing by the “norms” of Washington aka “establishment rules.” Politicians worshipping at the altar of said norms soon find themselves in political graveyards alongside Jeb Bush, John Kerry, John Kasich, and, of course, Hillary. In fact, in each of our most recent presidential contests, the winner seems to have been the candidate who followed the script the least! Don’t play by the book if you want to write a chapter of history.

  In an era in which everyone has to have a hot take, it’s always fun to scald them by reminding them of their worst ones. Karlan was an outraged and outrageous witness. She made fun of the president’s minor son’s name. On a Versus Trump podcast, she revealed how partisan she is by saying, “Conservatives can’t even stand to be around each other.”

  UNC Law Professor Michael Gerhardt, another Democrat impeachment witness, had donated to Barack Obama. Four times.

  Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman was on record writing that Trump should be impeached for mean tweets, owning Mar-a-Lago, and attacking the Fake News. Feldman had previously admitted, also in writing, that impeachment was “primarily, or even exclusively, a tool to weaken President Trump’s chances in 2020.” Feldman gets some points for honesty there.

  These were the “unbiased witnesses” Chairman Nadler called to craft a legal framework for impeachment analysis. Nadler had his own problems, targeted by an AOC-backed primary challenger in his district, and needed to put on an anti-Trump show. A Democratic primary is a dangerous place for an old, unattractive white guy in New York. Just ask now former Rep. Joe Crowley.

  Both corruption and the Resistance to America’s rising conservative populism should be on plain display for the public, not cooped up in stuffy congressional hearings. I’m sure my aggressive, sometimes angry questioning of these supposed titans of legal education didn’t win me votes in faculty lounges. But we aren’t governed by them, are we? And they aren’t my audience. They were barely my audience when they graded my exams at the William & Mary Law School. Law school “gunners” may one day nestle into cozy tenure and intellectually titillating book clubs. But Firebrands play for the win. The country club can become a funeral home. I wanted the hearings to come alive.

  In subsequent hearings, I’d be criticized for attacking Hunter Biden’s crack use. Let me be clear. I have nothing against drug addicts or drug users, so long as they don’t hurt others. I’ve known and partied with plenty of both in my wilder days. Hunter admits to wandering around homeless encampments looking for crack, and that doesn’t make him a bad guy—though it does make him unlikely to be a legit Eastern European energy savant. Hunter Biden couldn’t even resolve a dispute with Hertz Car Rental after leaving his crack pipe, ID, and Secret Service detail’s business card in a wrecked vehicle.

  That doesn’t make him an unsympathetic human. But he probably wasn’t leading dispute resolution for Burisma in any competent, non-corrupt way.

  July 24, 2019: Conclusion of Mueller Testimony.

  Longworth House Office Building. White House operator connects.

  “You were amazing. Everyone in the White House was glued to the TV when you took apart Mueller. Nobody said a word. You kicked his ass!” Trump said.

  “Thank you, Mr. President. This bullshit is finally over. Let’s get back to making America great again.”

  “I never stopped,” he replied, not knowing what was coming.

  The perfect call with the president of Ukraine occurred the next day. And so the coup attempt against Trump revived the day after that. Beria’s cynical attitude, as I mentioned above, was “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”—a Soviet mindset that resulted in the prosecutions (over non-Russian matters) of Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Rick Gates. Ukraine would then become the more narrowly focused “show me the president and I’ll show you the impeachment,” no matter how scanty the evidence.

  If an investigation requires made-up evidence to proceed, it is a corrupt investigation. With Russia, an FBI lawyer altered emails presented to a secret court in order to spy on Dr. Carter Page. With Ukraine, Rep. Adam Schiff—who once moonlighted as a screenwriter—made up a fake call transcript and theatrically performed it before God and everyone. It was a disgrace to the House—for which Schiff should face ethical sanctions, if Pelosi’s House really cares about ethics at all.

  The Ukraine controversy teaches us that the establishment is the establishment for a reason. It didn’t happen by accident. It happened because they don’t take days off, even after a stinging defeat. Their Russia failure didn’t deter them from taking the bait on Ukraine. They grind away relentlessly, like the brain-dead zombies they are. It’s why it has taken someone with the stamina and magic of Donald J. Trump to beat them over and over again.

  Russia and Ukraine were different fights. And we’ll have evolving battles ahead to maintain our populist movement. But there is one enemy we always see on the battlefield of ideas: the corrupt media.

  They will never stop coming for us, so we must come for them first.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Enemy of the People

  “Let’s just stay very focused on impeachment…[and faced with multiple possible interpretations of current events] we shouldn’t just pretend, oh, this is going one way [or another]. And so all of these moves are toward impeachment.”

  —Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, during a daily 8:00 AM news conference call in 2019 (obtained by guerrilla journalist group Project Veritas)

  The commander in chief knows that to troll the press is to control the narrative. Flood the zone and the press will drown. He tweets to set the schedule and program the media. This ultimately is why they are so angry at his tweets. He doesn’t need the press to get the message out, and everyone knows it. It is also why they’ll do everything in their power to see that President Trump is muzzled and that never again will another conservative be able to use the latest tech to end-run the press. “This must never happen again,” they tell themselves.

  For it isn’t only politicians or self-important bureaucrats who are threatened by the Trump movement and thus determined to derail it but the professional bloggers-for-billionaires, aka the #AmericaLast press. Indeed, for all the claims that the media is unfair to the forty-fifth president—they are, and it’s worse than you think—it is also undeniable that Trump turns the media into one of his best weapons by feasting on all of the attention he gets, starving his rivals of coverage. Brilliant! To make news, you must break rules and above all be interesting. President Trump is nothing if not interesting. He makes the news because he breaks the news. He doesn’t worry the public will be offended by him because he knows that the American people are already mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore.

  As the media get played, while Trump throws the stick and they chase it, their resentment builds. Most media work hand in hand with the most devious #NeverTrump operatives. They share a common objective: destroy, defame, and de-platform powerful “America First” messages and messengers. Their misguided ends justify any means. There are no rules in love, war, or the media. The media companies are rival intelligence networks, paid fo
r by oligarchs who lack even the pretense of due process.

  If politics is “Hollywood for ugly people,” media is Hollywood for annoying people. The zealot won’t change his mind and won’t change the topic. CNN’s Jeff Zucker knew their mission wasn’t just to record events, not anymore. It was to end the Trump presidency. Impeachment or bust!

  America deserves leaders bold enough to make history and journalists disciplined enough to report it. Instead, we get the perverted reverse. Politicians witness the events before them as they empower special interests to run government. Media tycoons don’t want to make a simple record of that or anything else that transpires. They want to make a point. It would probably bore them to be objective.

  Jeff Zucker didn’t want his journalists to report like neutral witnesses. He wanted them steering events like advocates. Repeat a narrative (or lie) often enough, especially with the appearance of authority and knowledge that TV news anchors possess, and you may make it reality, or at least shape perceptions of whatever events do come to pass. Meme the dream.

  You can sense the reluctance with which news operations surrender their grip on a narrative when it bumps up against facts that don’t fit their preferred story. Journalists often become angry at both their political foes and the stubborn facts that prove those foes know better than the media.

  Witness the scandal—brief yet revealing—over a Miami Herald columnist wishing Trump supporters would die from coronavirus.

  The thought that some unruly beachgoers might end up having fun during such an important crisis was more than the Herald’s Fabiola Santiago could bear, and she tweeted, “[P]acked beaches should work nicely to thin the ranks of Trump/DeSantis/Gimenez supporters in #Florida who value money over health.”

  She was soon rightly shamed into deleting the tweet and then brayed a phony non-apology apology, as has become all too common: “I deleted the tweet commenting on people at the beach because it didn’t accurately convey my sentiment and I want to apologize for the phrase I used that offended many people. Regardless of political differences, I would never wish any harm on anyone.”