0:01

Gates is really, he's an anomaly in

0:03

the party. More than a couple

0:05

of people said to me, he's the most unpopular member

0:07

of Congress. And

0:10

yet, he just almost single-handedly, not

0:12

quite, but almost single-handedly succeeded

0:15

in removing the

0:17

House Speaker. And so it's kind

0:20

of a paradox, you know? Like how is

0:22

it possible that somebody this unpopular is able

0:24

to pull off something like that?

0:32

That's my colleague, Dexter Filkins. Dexter

0:34

has spent months digging into Florida Congressman Matt

0:37

Gates, who has become one of the Republican

0:39

Party's rising stars, even as he threatens to

0:41

break the party apart. I

0:43

asked Dexter to come on the show to tell

0:45

us more about Gates' rise to power and about

0:48

what actually motivates him, aside from just creating chaos.

0:51

This is The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett,

0:53

and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker. So,

1:04

Dexter, you often report on conflicts overseas, but

1:06

you were also raised in Florida and you

1:08

sometimes write about Florida politics. You came on

1:10

the show a little more than a year

1:12

ago to talk about your profile of Ron

1:14

DeSantis. So, I'm wondering what got

1:17

you interested in doing a deep dive into

1:19

Matt Gates. Well, Gates

1:21

is a really interesting character. On one

1:23

hand, he's very colorful. He's

1:25

really funny. He's

1:28

very sarcastic. He's very quick-witted. He's fast

1:30

on his feet. On

1:32

the other, he has become

1:34

incredibly powerful. No one in American history

1:36

had taken down a speaker

1:39

of the House before the end of his term,

1:42

and Gates basically did that. He's

1:45

become very, very powerful very, very

1:47

quickly. All those things together, I

1:49

thought, would make for a

1:51

very interesting story. Can you tell

1:53

us a little bit about his backstory? Who was

1:56

he before he became so incredibly

1:58

powerful? Well, again,

2:01

super interesting. He is from

2:03

the Florida Panhandle, which for the

2:05

rest of us from Florida, we

2:07

always refer to as lower Alabama.

2:12

But he grew up in

2:14

Niceville, Florida, which is the town of the

2:17

Panhandle. He comes from a very

2:20

politically prominent family and

2:22

a very wealthy family. His father, Don

2:24

Gates, was the president of the Florida

2:26

Senate and also a very successful businessman.

2:28

So I think I was looking at

2:31

his campaign finance disclosures. The most recent

2:33

one I saw, I had his net

2:35

worth at $33 million. He

2:38

had a reputation being very smart in

2:40

high school. He was the state debate champion,

2:42

which is no small thing. But I think

2:45

pretty quickly, at least according to what

2:48

I could find in the public record,

2:50

he's got this bad boy

2:52

side to him. He piled up something

2:54

like at least eight speeding

2:57

tickets, including

3:00

an arrest for drunk driving.

3:02

And people said this to me, which

3:05

is basically he was

3:07

the classic son of rich

3:09

parents, very entitled. He

3:12

carried on as if he, A, wouldn't get

3:14

in trouble and B, he wouldn't have to

3:16

worry about the consequences of

3:19

his actions. And I think there's

3:21

that part of them and

3:23

there's the serious part of them and

3:25

kind of both of those things carry

3:28

through over the years until the present.

3:30

For this piece, it looks like Gates actually

3:33

cooperated with you at least somewhat. How did

3:35

you get him to talk to you? Emphasis

3:38

on the word somewhat. I asked

3:40

Gates for an interview pretty early

3:43

on when I started working on

3:45

this piece. He very politely declined.

3:47

He said no. And the following

3:49

has happened to me before. The

3:51

person that I'm writing about says

3:53

no. And then over the

3:55

course of several weeks, Gates

3:58

discovered that I was essentially talking to him. to

4:00

everyone who he'd ever known.

4:05

And so, and so, and so, I think that was my son.

4:09

So he called me up one day. I mean,

4:11

I was sitting at my desk working and

4:13

my phone rang and it was Matt Gaetz. He

4:15

said, okay, let's, you know, let's talk. And

4:18

so I ended up meeting him in a

4:20

town called Little Elm, Texas, just

4:22

a couple of weeks ago, where he

4:24

was doing a campaign event for a congressional candidate,

4:26

Republican congressional candidate. So we sat down and we

4:28

had a 40 minute chat. How

4:31

did that family background that you

4:34

described earlier, how did that

4:36

inform his politics or his brand of politics?

4:40

That's a really good question. I asked him that

4:42

question. I think it's fair to say his father

4:44

is a pretty, like kind of

4:46

old guard for Republican and Senate. He's

4:48

pretty low key. He endorsed Jeb Bush

4:51

for president in 2016. Matt,

4:54

he's a libertarian, but I think

4:56

what Matt is attempting, I think it's more

4:58

fair to say that he's more

5:00

inclined to radical change than he is

5:02

to being a conservative. I think of

5:04

a conservative, a small C conservative as

5:07

somebody who kind of respects tradition, wants

5:10

to kind of carry it on into the future, wants

5:13

incremental change, doesn't trust radical

5:15

change. That's not Matt Gaetz.

5:18

He's a libertarian, truly

5:21

speaking. What really struck me was he

5:24

said essentially, Tallahassee,

5:27

the capital of Florida, state

5:30

government works. Now, Florida politics, the

5:32

governor is Republican and both houses

5:34

of the legislature are Republican and

5:36

have been Republican, I think, for

5:38

something like 25 years. So

5:41

that, it's not gridlocked like the Congress

5:43

is. But he said, look, it

5:45

works. And one of the reasons it works

5:47

is term limits. You come to Tallahassee, you

5:50

have a very limited amount of time to

5:53

do what you want to do, and then you're done. And

5:56

he said that changes everything. When you go

5:58

to Washington, it's a permanent culture. culture. The

6:01

congressmen are there forever. They're trying to please

6:03

the lobbyists. They're trying to raise money. And

6:05

it changes everything. And I thought, you know,

6:07

that's a super interesting point and a really

6:10

critical insight into like not only

6:12

how he thinks, but also like

6:14

why doesn't Washington work? So

6:17

there are a couple of key events that you

6:20

revisit in the piece that kind of speak to

6:22

how Gates became a national presence.

6:25

And one of them is the 2018 Florida

6:27

election recount. I'm wondering if you could tell

6:29

us what happened there and what Gates' role

6:31

was. Well, it's super

6:33

interesting. So it's remarkable. Florida has changed quite

6:35

a bit as far as we can tell

6:37

since 2018. But

6:40

at the time, it was almost

6:42

a kind of perfectly divided state

6:44

between Republican and Democrat. And so

6:46

you had two statewide races, one

6:49

with Ron DeSantis and then the other

6:51

with Rick Scott for governor and Senate

6:53

respectively. But those races were deadlocked

6:55

and they were super, super close

6:58

divided by less than 1% of the vote.

7:01

Automatic recount followed. So the recounting

7:03

had begun. And who

7:06

turns up in Fort Lauderdale where the ballots

7:08

for Broward County, one of the biggest counties

7:10

in the state, are being counted.

7:12

You didn't know any better not to destroy

7:15

ballots. Gates turns up. You

7:17

know, Rapunzel spun straw into

7:19

gold. Here you're

7:21

spinning tens of thousands of ballots out

7:24

of thin air, out of nothing. There's no

7:26

chain of custody for these ballots. And

7:29

so super interesting when you go back,

7:31

I kind of vaguely knew

7:33

about that demonstration. I honestly

7:35

forgot about it. And

7:37

then if you see what happened in 2021

7:40

in January in Washington, stop the steal. We

7:43

should vindicate the rights of states. We

7:45

should vindicate the subpoenas in Arizona that

7:48

have been issued to get a hold

7:50

of these voting machines. And we should

7:52

reject these electors. I yield back. In

7:57

some ways it looks like a dry run. It's one

7:59

of the key. moments when members of

8:01

the Republican Party begin to

8:03

basically deny election results. And

8:06

the first of those, which I mentioned in my piece, that

8:09

was in 2000, when George W.

8:12

Bush and Al Gore, when their race for

8:14

president was tied. Also in Florida, it's known

8:16

sort of jokingly as the Brooks Brothers riot,

8:19

when a bunch of Republican activists

8:22

tried to storm the Miami-Dade County

8:24

election office when the ballots were

8:26

being recounted. An

8:32

impromptu protest by Republicans in the

8:34

lobby of election headquarters after the count

8:36

is taken into a room which could only

8:38

hold a handful of observers. The

8:44

point being that there had been these organized

8:47

attempts to basically deny the election results. And

8:49

you see it in 2000, and then in

8:51

2018, in Fort

8:53

Lauderdale, and then 2021 in Washington.

8:55

2021 was not the beginning of something.

8:57

It was kind of the culmination of

8:59

something. Yeah, and your piece, you mentioned

9:02

that the Proud Boys were at that rally in 2018,

9:04

and they were, of

9:06

course, there at the Capitol on January 6, as

9:08

well. Can you explain Gates' ties to

9:11

the Proud Boys? Are there ties? He

9:15

shows up in the same place, basically.

9:17

They know each other. I talked to

9:19

a staffer who served on the January

9:21

6 committee that investigated the

9:23

riot in 2021. And he said, Gates

9:26

is part of this milieu of kind of

9:29

election deniers, in the case of the Proud

9:31

Boys kind of street thugs. It's

9:34

an ecosystem of people who have

9:36

begun to deny election results. And the

9:38

Proud Boys are part of that. Gates

9:41

is part of that. And they know each other. So

9:43

let's talk more about Gates' role on January 6.

9:46

He was at the Capitol, along with his colleagues in

9:49

Congress. And when the rioters

9:51

dispersed, Gates was one of the Republicans who

9:53

voted not to certify Biden's victory. He

9:55

also gave a speech shortly afterward, where he

9:58

basically blamed the whole thing on Antifa. The

10:00

Washington Times has just reported some

10:02

pretty compelling evidence from a facial recognition

10:05

company showing that some of the people

10:07

who breached the Capitol today were

10:09

not Trump supporters. They were masquerading

10:12

as Trump supporters and in fact

10:14

were members of the violent terrorist

10:17

group Antifa. What would you say motivated

10:19

that speech? I mean, what do you make of that

10:21

speech? I found

10:23

it to be a constant

10:25

political performance. I think he

10:27

was trying to make the best of a terrible situation.

10:31

But the way Gates explains it is,

10:34

well, you know, I didn't know who

10:36

did the riot. There was

10:38

this story that appeared in the Washington

10:40

Times that said that it was a

10:42

story about a piece of facial recognition

10:44

software that had identified members of Antifa

10:46

at the demonstration.

10:49

And that was the basis of the speech he gave. So

10:52

in Gates' words, he's like, I didn't know, but I

10:54

read the story in the Washington Times and like I

10:57

was just talking about that. But

10:59

I found that, to be honest, a

11:01

little disingenuous. You

11:03

know, Gates knows the

11:05

people, he knows many of the

11:07

people who were involved. Again, it's

11:09

the milieu. It's the kind

11:12

of ecosystem. Gates knows these

11:14

people. And so I thought for him

11:16

to kind of, you know, moments later

11:18

to kind of say, well, this

11:20

is our, he had every

11:22

reason to know that it wasn't Antifa.

11:24

In your piece, Dexter, you wrote that Matt

11:26

Gaetz was visiting the White House ahead of January 6th.

11:30

What were those meetings about? Like do you know

11:32

what Matt Gaetz wanted? It's

11:34

not entirely clear what Gates, why

11:36

Gates was doing what he was doing. We

11:39

only know what he was doing. I mean, he

11:41

told me himself, I went

11:43

to the White House because I had

11:45

questions about the elections

11:47

and I had questions about the certification

11:50

of the ballots in several states. And

11:53

so, you know, we met with Mike Pence

11:56

and we discussed those things and ultimately

11:58

he votes against certifying. ballots, and

12:01

specifically in several states. That's one piece,

12:03

but they're all trying to keep Trump

12:06

in office, even though Trump has

12:08

just lost the election. But there's

12:10

another reason why he's in the White House, which

12:12

is, and he made more than one visit, and

12:14

that's to get a pardon. In the words of

12:16

one of the Trump White

12:18

House officials, he was seeking a

12:21

blanket pardon for anything he

12:23

did from the beginning

12:26

of time until the present. And

12:29

again, it's not entirely

12:31

clear why he's looking for a pardon.

12:33

It could be for the discussions he

12:35

had over January 6th, but I think

12:37

the more likely explanation is

12:40

that he was trying to get a pardon

12:42

for the potential indictment that he was facing

12:44

at the hands of the Justice Department. More

12:50

after the break. Dexter,

12:58

can you talk about the origin of

13:00

the Justice Department's sex crimes investigation into

13:02

Gates? Yeah, it's complicated.

13:07

It's complicated, but it's really fascinating.

13:09

It starts in a town outside

13:12

of Orlando called Sanford,

13:14

Sanford, Florida, in Seminole

13:16

County. There was a tax collector there

13:18

named Joel Greenberg. From the moment he

13:20

got elected, he just went on basically

13:22

a crime spree. I mean, he just

13:24

starts embezzling money, stealing

13:27

money, all kinds of

13:30

things. I mean, it's quite remarkable. And he was

13:32

a friend of Matt Gates. Gates used to come

13:34

into town, apparently for the weekends or whatever, and

13:37

they would all go out and have a good

13:39

time together. Kind of a long story, and it's

13:41

recounted in the piece. Ultimately,

13:45

investigators, when they arrested Joel Greenberg, they

13:47

found that he had been making ID

13:50

cards for himself. He was taking old IDs

13:53

from other people who lived in other parts

13:55

of the country and putting his picture on

13:57

them. They became intrigued and they wanted to

13:59

know. know why. And one thing led to

14:01

another. And ultimately, it leads to this

14:04

website, which I think was at the

14:06

time was called seeking arrangement.com. It's kind

14:08

of like a sugar daddy website. That's

14:11

how Greenberg and Gates were friends. As

14:13

far as I can tell, that's how

14:15

they would entertain themselves. That's how all

14:17

that started. I think where it sort

14:20

of turns potentially bad.

14:23

Greenberg, the tax collector finds out

14:25

one day that one

14:27

of the girls was not 18, she was

14:29

17. And so that makes it a

14:31

crime. And so what the

14:33

federal prosecutors were investigating is whether

14:36

Gates had transported

14:38

this woman, girl

14:40

at the time for the purposes of

14:42

sex. So that was what was investigated.

14:45

At the same time, Greenberg

14:47

pleaded guilty to like a whole slew

14:50

of crimes. He gets sentenced to

14:52

11 years in federal prison. He

14:54

agrees to cooperate with prosecutors against

14:56

Gates. And so there's a lot

14:58

of evidence against Gates. And

15:01

the federal prosecutors were kind of going through all this, but

15:04

ultimately concluded that there wasn't enough

15:06

evidence to charge Matt

15:08

Gates. Gates has

15:11

vehemently and many

15:14

times denied any

15:16

kind of wrongdoing at all in this case.

15:18

Does he say that he thought she

15:21

was 18 or that she was 18? I mean,

15:23

what is his line on all of this? I

15:26

think the best statement of

15:28

it that he made, he made on

15:30

Tucker Carlson's show on when Tucker was

15:32

still with Fox News. This was an

15:34

operation to destroy me, to harm

15:36

my family, to hinder my ability to

15:38

serve the district and the movement that

15:40

I represent in Congress. I'm innocent. I

15:43

have maintained my innocence. I have been

15:45

entirely consistent on this fact. He denies

15:47

everything across the board. I think most

15:49

of what I know of the case

15:52

is from the lawyers involved and also from a

15:55

series of letters That Greenberg

15:57

wrote. And In these letters, Greenberg. There's.

16:01

Armed. He got an enormous text one day

16:03

saying hey, you know that that woman you're sleeping

16:05

with. Is. A girl in, ah,

16:07

she's underage. And and according to

16:09

Critique Greenberg, he's like oh my God. Like

16:11

we had no idea. You. Know

16:13

odd gates had no idea like

16:15

become freaked out. On. You.

16:18

Know we, we waited. We didn't have any

16:20

contact with her again and until she turned

16:22

eighteen thousand Greenberg's Excuse The laws. Pretty cut

16:25

and dry here though at least as I

16:27

understand it. A Doesn't matter if you thought

16:29

there was older, it's like us are not

16:31

eighteen than it's It's statutory rape right? Yeah,

16:33

exactly. Doesn't matter. It's like it's like what

16:36

they would want a lawyer would say is

16:38

the case of strict liability. If he did

16:40

it, you're guilty. It doesn't matter

16:42

what you thought, what you thought, you knew

16:44

what the girl said. It's like. Period.

16:46

Paragraph. On. Field.

16:49

Is charged. Why did the Justice

16:51

Department decide to close it's investigation? It

16:53

was are unclear as to why the Just

16:56

Worms and. Didn't. The by

16:58

the decided not to charge gates they gave

17:00

no statement or any explanations be kind of

17:02

made around of calls to the to the

17:04

lawyers was in the case of said we're

17:06

not going to charge this case. The

17:09

by. So. You're kind

17:11

of left to speculate far as to

17:13

why he didn't happen. It.

17:16

Seems like this is kind of a

17:18

pattern with Gates. you talked about the drunk

17:20

driving thing earlier and that whole incident

17:22

ended with Gates engaging a lawyer and contesting

17:24

the case and ultimately the charges were

17:26

dropped for lack of evidence, but then later

17:29

the deputy who arrested Gates was forced

17:31

to resign. These are obviously

17:33

two very different things, but. You. Are

17:35

left with the sense that Gates is

17:37

continuously able to kind of pull something

17:39

off. What? Was not

17:41

is not out of is not

17:43

of the woods yet. When the

17:45

Just Hardman closed it's investigation skates

17:47

the house that sucks committee opening

17:49

the best guess gates and so

17:52

bizarre criminal matter which can put

17:54

him in jail. But. They you

17:56

know they could make of finding they will make

17:58

finding bomb as to the fact. And

18:01

they could make some kind of recommendation. Of

18:04

one potential outcome for Gators: What

18:06

happened to George Census was expelled

18:08

Him He's not. Done. With it.

18:10

Yeah. For. Sure, I know that

18:12

the house Ethics committee is kind of

18:14

hard at work on this case. And

18:17

what is the feeling among Republicans

18:19

in Congress? About about the as

18:21

well as Gators really is an

18:23

anomaly, and the party more than

18:25

a couple people certainly is most

18:28

unpopular member of Congress on it.

18:30

And yet he just almost singlehandedly

18:32

not not quite, but almost single

18:34

handedly. Or succeeded in

18:36

removing. The. House Speaker

18:39

And so it's. It's. Kind of

18:41

a paradox, you know, like how how is

18:43

it possible to somebody this unpopular is able

18:45

to pull off something. Like. That.

18:53

Old more to debate. The

19:02

let's talk more about the removal

19:04

of Speaker Mccarthy always motivating gates

19:06

and all this from what you

19:08

can tell, I think

19:10

I think the best answers? we don't

19:12

know. I mean, we know it, Gates

19:14

said and then they're in. Other indications

19:16

that maybe there was something else and

19:18

play and I think a lot of

19:20

a lot of voters certainly gave supporters.

19:23

You. Know when they hear. Case make

19:25

these arguments. They. Ring True

19:27

says carries a lot of support and

19:29

and what would gates said at the

19:32

time was. Schedule spending is

19:34

out of control. The National

19:36

Debt. Is. Out of control. And

19:38

and here's a republican congress, which is kind of,

19:41

you know, Committed. Itself

19:43

to kind of fiscal responsibility to signing

19:45

off on these enormous federal deficit which

19:47

ultimately going to be ruinous to the

19:50

contrary. And so I my gates and

19:52

to do something about it. I was

19:54

sent here by my constituents to kind

19:56

of. May. Change And I'm going to

19:58

make change. And if I got. shocked the system to

20:01

do it, I'm going to shock the system. I saw

20:03

Gates tell that story and make

20:05

that argument to a lot of people. I saw

20:07

it in Texas, I saw it in Virginia, and

20:10

it's compelling. The

20:12

federal deficits are gigantic. If

20:15

they're not out of control, they're certainly

20:17

very large historically. And yet,

20:19

kind of both parties, what Gates and others

20:21

around him would call the Uniparty, there's no

20:23

difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, they

20:26

sign off on them, and they kind of

20:28

carry on. So Gates, and this is the

20:30

remarkable thing, with McCarthy, with that

20:32

entire incident, Gates, again,

20:35

deeply unpopular among his colleagues in

20:37

the Republican House. He

20:39

has nine people, that's it. And

20:42

what he calculated was the Republicans in

20:44

the House of Representatives have a tiny

20:46

majority. So with

20:48

my group of people here, if

20:52

we stay together, we can

20:54

basically dictate terms to everyone, because without

20:56

us, they can't get anything done. And

20:59

so on that basis, he hit

21:02

with a relative handful of Republicans, tiny

21:04

majority of the party. He

21:06

takes down McCarthy, because all the Democrats join

21:08

him. The Democrats hate McCarthy

21:10

because he began

21:12

impeachment proceedings against not just

21:15

Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary,

21:17

but also President Biden, no

21:19

love for McCarthy. So

21:21

the Democrats were only too happy to go along, and they take

21:23

down the Speaker of the House. Gates figured

21:25

that whole thing out. He gained it out, and

21:29

he went out, and he did

21:31

it, and he did it without

21:33

any support or very little support among

21:35

his Republican colleagues. So it's kind of

21:38

super complicated, like parliamentary procedure, et

21:40

cetera, et cetera. But the net result is that

21:43

Matt Gates has emerged as

21:45

one of the most effective and

21:48

consequential Republicans in

21:51

Congress. I feel like

21:53

I have read, I don't know how

21:55

conspiratorial these things are, but just there's

21:57

this idea that The investigation

21:59

has. You know, recently ramped

22:01

up as a result of Mccarthy

22:04

and his allies seeking revenge for

22:06

Mccarthy getting removed from the speakership?

22:08

Mean do you think that. Politics.

22:11

Do play a larger part in this investigation

22:14

or is this kind of Congress you know?

22:16

Doing. Business as usual. Move.

22:19

That sounds like inside baseball to me. I

22:21

mean Mccarthy and Gates. Despise each

22:23

other necessities, no question there.

22:25

But I don't. I.

22:28

Would be very surprised and I

22:30

haven't seen evidence. Showing.

22:32

That. Kevin. Mccarthy was

22:35

in any way involved in that have

22:37

expressed guess I think. There

22:39

is the result of a very interesting

22:41

question which some people told me which

22:44

I think the card These people believe

22:46

the gates wanted Mccarthy when he was

22:48

speaker. To kill the investigation

22:50

and Mccarthy refused to do it and

22:52

basically said look, it's not my place,

22:54

I I, I don't have the legal

22:56

authority do it anyway. You know

22:58

for data. And that that

23:00

is the principal motivation behind gates

23:03

to condemn courses. Some.

23:05

I don't know. You know that it's it's hot. It's hard

23:07

to know. You know you tie him up people's motives. Bomb.

23:10

But but I think Mccarthy just. Letting.

23:13

Mccarthy is tried to stay away from. All

23:15

that is is far as I can tell. I

23:18

mean, but they, but they the people around Mccarthy

23:20

definitely believe. That with it.

23:22

Gates's. Removal

23:25

of Mccarthy was motivated by

23:27

Mccarthy's refusal to help kids.

23:30

They. Definitely were. I guess

23:32

I'm wondering what that prominence as someone

23:35

like Matt Gates means for the future

23:37

of the Republican party, given that he

23:39

has become so prominent by. Kind.

23:42

Of wreaking havoc on the party. At it

23:44

seems like a dynamic that can't really last forever.

23:47

Yeah, I'd that's a really good question to the I think

23:49

it goes to the heart of. Everything

23:52

that he's doing now. I.

23:54

Think if you know reboot, stand back and

23:56

look And Republican party and Twenty twenty four.

23:59

The deeply sport. The gonna be old

24:01

guard you know like your father the

24:03

Republicans are. They go to country clubs,

24:05

they play golf, they work at banks.

24:08

They are a happy with incremental change.

24:11

They. Tend to be conservative in their kind of

24:13

outlook. That's. That's the old Republican

24:15

party and the and that's represented by

24:17

people like. Kevin. Mccarthy. And.

24:20

Then you have. The new

24:22

guard which is I think. Rapidly.

24:25

Taking over the party and that's that's

24:27

my presented First, my dogs and. And

24:30

second time I met. it's. It's.

24:33

Directly opposed to what the Country

24:35

Club republican stance for his populist.

24:37

Straight. Up it's very

24:40

angry, doesn't respect tradition,

24:42

has no problem. With.

24:44

Breaking furniture to get would it's needs

24:46

it needs because he believes that the

24:49

system is essentially corrupt and so and

24:51

so gates. It's like talks about

24:53

that all time. I mean he's like I got

24:55

to Washington and. I discovered what

24:57

I what I believed to be a

24:59

terribly corrupt system and so on. Going

25:02

to shocked that system and maybe even

25:04

break that system. But I'm I'm not

25:06

terribly invested in preserving a system because

25:08

I think it's I think it ultimately

25:10

hurts the mark people. And so that's

25:13

what's happening inside the Republican party right

25:15

now. But I think standing way back

25:17

what's happening. The party philosophically like a

25:19

party has to decide what it is.

25:21

and it's not what it used to

25:24

be and it's rapidly becoming something else.

25:26

You know, in in the interregnum we're

25:28

seeing all these morbid symptoms as the

25:31

party kind of convulse is and tries

25:33

to figure out it's new identity and

25:35

that I think I think Gates is

25:37

and trump or the personification that. What's.

25:39

The latest in the house Ethics committee

25:41

investigation. What? We don't

25:43

We don't know precisely. We know that

25:46

the the ethics committee has reached out

25:48

to. Lawyers. In the

25:50

case, there's one lawyer in particular. I'm thinking

25:52

of children birds lawyer. They've reached out to

25:55

him. And she's provided.

25:57

Watch documents to themselves.

26:00

They're. They're. Hard at work. I

26:02

believe that they've reached out to do. Some.

26:04

Of the witnesses in the case, I eat the

26:06

women. They're still in the middle of it. I'm yeah,

26:08

I think we got. I think we have a ways to go. He.

26:10

I feel like in the past, even

26:13

being associated with Lives Greenberg would be

26:15

enough to kind of, you know, take

26:17

a politician down, let alone being like

26:19

implicated in some of the same allegations

26:21

of crimes. It's just insane to me

26:23

that we'd we talk about Mack Gates

26:26

all the time and yet this investigation

26:28

does not come up. As

26:30

often as it should. Well.

26:33

As I think what I think with Gates

26:35

has veered off my thing with Trump is

26:37

figured out which I think to be honest.

26:39

The last in America or the Democratic

26:41

Party in America as not figured out.

26:44

Is that the more the people like

26:46

dates and top or criticized by the

26:48

people who are perceived as being. Of.

26:51

The last or in the media in the

26:53

mainstream media, the straw or they got. And

26:56

so you can say, and I think it's

26:58

perfectly accurate. You know, twenty years ago. It.

27:01

Would have been, you know, politically lethal for

27:03

for a politician to hang out with. To

27:06

do some of the things that. Data.

27:08

Cities doing or even say I was

27:10

on be like Joe Greenberg that they

27:12

get stronger with that and because gives

27:15

them the more outrage that they inspire

27:17

on yes, Cnn and Msnbc and the

27:19

New York Times and and frankly in

27:21

the New Yorker. I

27:24

love that. you know because they can turn around

27:26

of their supporters and say look I'm sticking to

27:28

it and sticking to the Elites and and people

27:30

love that You know they love it. I want

27:32

to or gates. Gates spoke at

27:34

a rally for a congressional candidate in.

27:37

A place called Little Elm Texas which

27:39

is which is outside of Dallas. Total.

27:42

Trump Country or daughter percent you know

27:44

and and speeches were like one out

27:46

of the other. Their

27:48

anti establishment there any games as popular

27:50

as a straight a populist, but it's

27:52

like. You. Know. Stick.

27:55

It. To. the had stick to

27:58

the to the establishment They

28:00

don't care about us and the hell with them.

28:03

And I think that's what Gates and Trump

28:05

are both tapping. And so the

28:07

more people criticize them, the stronger they

28:09

get. Thank

28:16

you so much, Dexter. Thank you, Tyler. This

28:23

has been the Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett.

28:26

The show is produced by Julia Nutter with

28:28

editing from Stephanie Karauki and Mixing by Mike

28:30

Kuchman. Our executive producer is

28:32

Steven Valentino. Chris Bannon

28:34

is Conde Nast's head of global audio. Our

28:37

theme music is by Alison Leighton-Brent. Enjoy

28:40

your week and we'll see you next Wednesday.