Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said he would “object to electors from states that didn’t run clean elections” on January 6, 2021, when Congress is scheduled to certify the electoral college’s vote. He made his remarks during a speech on Saturday at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit event in West Palm Beach, FL.
Gaetz stated:
My name’s Matt Gaetz, I’m a Florida man, Florida congressman, and I am Nancy Pelosi’s worst nightmare in the United States House of Representatives.
I’ve got bad news. The last time I gave a speech, I got banned from the state where I gave the speech, The governor told me I was no longer welcome, but the good news is it was only New Jersey. Banned from Jersey for giving a political speech. I guess if I brought a cinder block and threw it through the glass store front of a Nike stored walked out with some Air Jordans, it would be a peaceful protest. Maybe if I lit a Wendy’s on fire I would be exercising my First Amendment rights.
Or in my state now this is Trump-Desantis-Gaetz country, and it will never be illegal to have a good time in the state of Florida.
So I have a message for the governors of California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois. Lockdowns make you look weak, not strong. Closing down restaurants makes you look foolish, not compassionate. Canceling Christmas makes you a Grinch, not a leader.
And so that can go and issue their emergency orders and they’re bitchy little edicts, but we will never give them the power to shut down the American spirit and the American way of life. That’s because every American is special and we will not accept the labeling of tens of millions of Americans as deplorable or cancelable or non-essential. Every job in America is essential to the family that relies on it and the communities that are stronger as a consequence.
As Americans, we have difficult challenges ahead, and President Trump has taught us how to deal with them straight on. Never giving in on matters of principle. Donald Trump won a landslide election among people who actually showed up and voted. Think about that.
And you know what? The farther you got away from the validation of the voter and their identity, the more Joe Biden’s margins went up. I mean, with the people whose votes weren’t validated who came in by the mail Joe Biden was getting vote totals that would have made Bashar al-Assad blush.
Now, in 2016 they couldn’t beat Trump with actual voters at the Ballot Box. So they tried with impeachment at the witness box, and when that failed they ran to the mailbox where they could process hundreds of thousands of votes, oftentimes in the dark of night without signature matches, excluding the observers, sometimes where people voted in different states, sometimes when they lived in different states, sometimes when they weren’t even alive at all.
And so on January 6th, I’m joining with the fighters in the Congress and we are going to object to electors from states that didn’t run clean elections.
“We are done running plays from the establishment’s losing playbook,” added Gaetz. “It is time to stand and fight.”
Gaetz referenced Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-AL)’s previous career as a football coach when describing his planned opposition to electors from some states on January 6.
“The odds may be tough,” Gaetz said. “It may be the 4th and long, but we’re going for it on January 6th. Our friends in the media will breathlessly exclaim that we are attacking democracy. That’s nonsense. Democracy is left undefended if we accept the result of a stolen election, without fighting with every bit of vigor we can muster.”
Gaetz highlighted left-wing political coordination between news media and Big Tech in terms of information control and censorship.
“Meanwhile, the media and their woketopian allies in Silicon Valley only grow stronger in their ability to superspread lies and bullshit,” Gaetz warned. “Our constitutional system reposes power in the people, and the media resents the hell out of it. They no longer want to program the news. They want to program you, controlling what you see and what you hear so that they can manage how you behave.
Gaetz continued, “Well, I guess in their eyes, we’re all behaving a little badly, but maybe more bad behavior is what we need to advance the America First agenda, because I don’t know about you, but I’m not going back to yesterday’s Republican Party.”
Gaetz added, “I’m not going back to losing politely with Mitt Romney. I’m not going back to the Bushes or the Cheneys. This is Donald Trump’s party, and I am a Donald Trump Republican.”
Left-wing and Democrat-aligned news media framed the Turning Point USA event as a public health threat in the context of the coronavirus outbreak. Vanity Fair described America as consumed by a “raging pandemic” while Business Insider wrote of “surging cases” of COVID-19 in the Sunshine State.