CPAC 2021- Big Government

I haven't gotten that good a warm welcome since I was in Wyoming. My fellow patriots, don't be shy and don't be sorry. Join me as we proudly represent the pro-Trump America First Wing of the conservative movement. We're not really a wing, we're the whole body. We're the main attraction in the greatest show on earth. It's our ideas that fill the stadiums with cheering fans and while the establishment owns the think tanks, we're the ones doing all the thinking in the populist movement as conservatives. Turns out populism is popular and everyone can see who the fakes and the phonies are and where we can find the real deal. A year ago at CPAC, I was the first Republican in Congress to swear off donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees. Their money is no good with me. I can't say I started a movement, not a single other Republican joined me. But it turns out I was ahead of the curve because the woke corporations turned around and canceled us. Many Fortune 100 companies will not donate to pro-Trump Republicans. Some have even pulled their sponsorships of this conference. American business should be worried about business, not wokeism. We gather here today in the shadow of Disney, a corporation that recently canceled its own founder, Walt Disney. Look out Mr. Potato Head, you're next. I'm sorry, I think now he's going by Potato X. Can't be Mr. Potato Head. See, to me, the whole concept of the Mr. Potato Head was he could move the parts around. Mr. Potato Head was America's first transgender doll and even he got canceled. So while I stand alone in the House Republican conference in my rejection of PACs and lobbyists, I am never alone when I stand with you, the great people of the greatest country that has ever existed. Now unlike the left and even some Republicans, the America First movement will never sell out to foreign interests abroad or special interests here at home. Our citizens come first. Sorry, not sorry. Now I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet. I'm a banned man in the state of New Jersey. The governor literally said I was unwelcome. Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state, but every day I'm a Florida man and it is good to be home. Florida's like, Florida's like an amazing woman. Adventurous, beautiful, mostly sunny, sometimes a little crazy and always here to encourage and support success. By contrast, New York is like a bad ex-husband. Mean, won't let you go out to dinner. You're less safe, financially spiraling downward and they may kill your grandparents. Now the fake news media and their allies in Silicon Valley made Governor Cuomo out to be some iconic cross between King David and Tom Brady. What a big lie that turned out to be. According to former aides, Governor Cuomo was offering to replace staff meetings with strip poker. Meanwhile, they were stripping granny out of the COVID ward at the hospital and tossing her in the nursing home. Just enough time to infect everybody and then go back to the hospital so that deaths could be recategorized for politics. How about freedom for young and healthy people? Learning for students? Opportunity for entrepreneurs? How about we ditch the locked down governors like Cuomo and Newsom and Murphy and never ditch the American way of life and the American spirit? Now speaking of all this bias, it was awful the way the media treated Ted Cruz. I mean, the left and the media were more worried about Ted Cruz going to Mexico to spend his own money than they are about the caravans coming through Mexico to take ours. You know, the greatest threat to our liberty is big government and the second greatest threat to our liberty is big business and there is no bigger business than big tech. The flow of digital information impacts every aspect of our lives. If we win the debate but lose the internet, ours will be the last generation of American greatness. They'll open the borders, lock down our businesses, and squelch even the faintest whispers of dissent. And here's what I don't get. Leaders in both parties have no problem flooding the deserts of the Middle East with American cash and American blood over the mirages of democracies potentially emerging far, far away. But they won't lift a finger here in our country to do what is necessary to preserve our republic and that is to ensure access to the digital world for everyone regardless of their politics. Elon Musk calls Silicon Valley sanctimonious valley for a reason and the terms of service on Twitter can never be more important than the values that undergird our constitution. We need more than a legalistic definition of the first amendment. We need a culture of free speech in America. Now when big tech and big government team up, America starts to look more like China and the chimerica dream is shamefully a nightmare for our people. All technology means is doing more with less. When big government fuses with big tech, government only becomes more efficient at acquiring and centralizing power. Tyranny with greater ease and lower cost. Bill Clinton famously joked that China's attempt to control the internet would be like trying to nail jello to the wall. It turns out the Middle Kingdom has done even more nailing than the 42nd president. They even send their spies to nail some of our politicians. Conservatives rightly rail against the evils of socialism yet the China model perhaps embodies something more dangerous and we're heading in that direction. A captive capitalism. A corrupt linkage between business and government that enriches the elites and reduces the rest of us to interchangeable parts. Just producers and consumers and we should never let the virtue of disagreement and debate go away for the ease of clicks and memes. We were promised that technology would disrupt and democratize power but what happens when all of the technology companies ultimately get the power and the government all at once? There are no checks and balances when they can control, alt, delete anyone for any reason. Now in China this means that the government assigns people a social credit score where you live, where your children go to school, professional opportunities, access to government programs. It all depends on what government and tech think of you. Just look at what's happening in the Biden administration today. A revolving door with Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon executives rolling into the government to create a unified system and maybe we would feel better if government was getting big tech's brightest. Sadly we're not. Listen to how things have changed. Prior to social media in Silicon Valley the most significant investor and customer was the Department of Defense. Our best minds worked on bombs and radar and stealth often in partnership with DARPA. Jeff Bezos' grandfather was actually the number four person at DARPA. But as commerce moved online the incentives for focused digital talent moved too. Today America's sharpest minds are focused on memes not munitions, likes not lasers, ratios not robotics and hyper viral not hypersonic. So are these social networks really making us stronger, safer or do they just further addict us to our vices? Instagram for vanity, Twitter for wrath, Uber Eats for gluttony and Tinder for lust. We need a renewed patriotic nationalism in America. In technology that means let's get our best team together and go whip China and in politics it means let's get our best team together and go whip the establishment. Speaking of people who ought to lose primaries, if Liz Cheney were on this stage today she'd get booed off of it. What does that say? The leadership of our party is not found in Washington D.C. You are the energy, we are America, that's why they're in the eight square miles of Washington D.C. and we're here in the sunshine state of Florida. Now Trump may not have drained the swamp all the way yet so if you want to finish the job maybe hire a Florida man. We've drained swamps before, we faced down the alligators and the pythons and the lizards and mosquito as big as grapefruit. America needs real fighters today maybe now more than ever and we must win or we have a country to save. And so come fight with me, go to mattgates.com, join our America First movement and let's go get them.