[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 1339-1342]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               FAST START UNDER THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we are off to a fast start this year under 
the Trump administration. It is difficult, apparently, for some of the 
press to keep up with how quickly some of the things are going.
  I did want to make clear something that has been completely muddled 
by the mainstream media. They keep wondering why they continue to lose 
out to news channels like FOX News and why some of the conservative 
news sources online do so well compared to the leftwing sources. It is 
because a majority of people really are seeking truth, really are 
seeking answers.
  I realize that is not true for everywhere. The areas that Hillary 
Clinton won are basically relegated to the edges, the fringes of the 
country: around the coasts and southern valley, Chicago, Detroit, and 
some of those areas. It is really the fringe party.
  After someone--anyone with the least amount of even a small modicum 
of fairness--looks at the actual executive order that Donald Trump 
issued, it seems eminently reasonable. When looking at it, for example, 
compared to orders signed by a President named Obama, a President named 
Carter--I couldn't find any CNN, MSNBC, or anything like CNBC, and I 
could have missed that somebody did break through all the 
misrepresentations of those networks and actually point out, because 
sometimes I am going by and I don't have the sound on and I will be 
reading the subtext, but you would think that someone in one of those 
networks would make a big deal out of the fact that Muslims were not 
banned under the Trump executive order. Yet people all over the world 
and all over this country are still under the mistaken impression they 
can trust certain networks. They still haven't figured out that they 
can't.
  They see that, my gosh, the President has banned Muslims. I actually 
have the executive order here because, just as I read ObamaCare before 
I voted against it, I have read the President's executive order. I made 
highlights in bold on some things. I saw that there is no reference--
not one--to Muslims, to Islam. It is just not there. So it is a total 
misrepresentation.
  Now, to try to cover for the way the executive order news is being 
spun, some of them, to try to grasp back just a small portion of 
something resembling fairness, would say the words ``Muslim-majority 
country banned,'' try to bring it back so they can work in the word 
``Muslim'' when it wasn't about religion at all. It is about the safety 
of the United States, the people we are sworn to protect, the 
Constitution that we raise our right hand and we swear to protect. We 
just took that oath earlier this month, and already it is forgotten.
  The refugee program that President Trump has paused is the same one 
that ISIS terrorists have repeatedly vowed that they are infiltrating, 
and they are intending to use it to kill Americans. The President is 
acting temporarily and prudently to give his administration and this 
Congress the time it needs to properly evaluate the refugee program and 
reform it to ensure that we help legitimate refugees and ensure the 
safety, as much as is possible, of the American people.
  When an FBI Director warns that they have no information from a 
country with which to compare identity information that refugees have 
or present or even orally convey, then I would think at some point we 
would take that information seriously from the sworn testimony.
  Now, I realize that the past administration has played fast and loose 
when you keep telling the American people and the Members of Congress 
that the attack in Benghazi was all about a video, and you even try to 
cover that by encouraging the producer of the video to be arrested and 
put in jail to help with this misrepresentation of the truth. Then I 
guess, under those circumstances, you don't take testimony from the 
prior administration Cabinet members all that seriously because you 
know that they have been out there and misrepresented the truth before.
  I don't know if Klein's book about, I think it was, the blood feud 
between

[[Page 1340]]

the Obamas and the Clintons was right, but there had to be a reason 
that Hillary Clinton did not come out on the Sunday shows after 
Benghazi and make this claim that was adverse to what she emailed her 
daughter and what she emailed to the President of Libya, saying that it 
was an attack. She didn't mention a video because it wasn't about a 
video. She knew that. I realize that, between the concussion, the 
problems, she may not remember that, but she knew it at the time.
  According to that book, she called and talked to former President 
Bill Clinton; and she was encouraged not to go public and say it was 
about a video, that, in essence, that was indefensible. Nobody in their 
right mind was going to believe that, so she couldn't be out there.
  There were thoughts being entertained of maybe resigning rather than 
going out and trying to defend that story, but, gee, they realized that 
if she was going to run for President in 2016 and she resigned right 
before the election in 2012, it would have likely cost President Obama 
a second term, and then Democrats would not be very kind and forgiving 
even though that would have been a stance based on truth and honor. If 
it cost the Presidency in 2016, it was just not something that could be 
done.

                              {time}  2030

  Apparently, according to the book and his sources that he says are 
close friends of the people involved, they decided the best way was not 
to resign and cost the President the reelection in 2012, but refuse 
under all circumstances to go on the Sunday shows and try to tell 
America six times that the attack at Benghazi was not planned; it was 
just instantaneous that arose from a protest over the video, but just 
don't go make that representation. Make that clear to the 
administration you are not going to do that, and then let the chips 
fall where they may. Because we haven't been able to figure out outside 
that representation in the book, why in the world did Susan Rice come 
out and say all that?
  That should have been Hillary Clinton's role. So he provides the 
excuse or the reasoning. So Susan Rice goes out and over and over on 
Sunday shows, it was all about a video.
  Well, I know from my days as a judge hearing of incidents where 
someone perhaps in a company that was not being honestly run would keep 
somebody in the dark so they could go out and make certain 
representations. The person really didn't want to know what the real 
truth was so they could come out and say with a clear conscience, here 
is what happened, and that wasn't it. So it may well be Susan Rice just 
did not know that her statements were lies. And if she didn't know, 
then they are not lies; they are just falsehoods she didn't know were 
false.
  We don't know, but it is an interesting representation. And it still 
brings us back to the fact that in certain countries in the world, we 
don't have adequate information to check individuals coming in against. 
No matter how much the credibility of the FBI Director may have been 
harmed last summer when he came out and made a totally political move 
of outlining that Hillary Clinton basically committed a crime, but no 
reasonable prosecutor would pursue this, that is my interpretation of 
what he said basically, and those who have prosecuted--I have 
prosecuted. You know, there are a lot of prosecutors who would take 
that. But he made the statement. So I figured that was pretty 
political.
  Despite that, when he says, you know, look, we had some information 
from some of these countries we got from their governments so that when 
we see their passport, we see some of this information, we could say, 
all right, we can check it against their government's records: What do 
you have on this person?
  But we had heard from Syria, for example, that they had actually 
taken over facilities that could print official passports. So they 
could print a totally fictitious passport because they have the means 
to do it. They have captured that. Not only do we not have a 
cooperating government, but we have no information. We don't have 
fingerprints off IEDs like we did from Iraq, and most of the time we 
had cooperation so we could compare this information. But we had 
nothing in some of these countries that could give us the assurance 
that the leaders of radical Islamist groups were not doing exactly what 
they said they were, and that is infiltrating the refugees with people 
who were going to come in and kill Americans. They said they were doing 
that in Europe. At some point we need to take these things seriously.
  I am thrilled to death to have a President--fortunately it is nice 
being thrilled to death instead of being beaten or knifed or hit with a 
truck. But I am thrilled to have a President who is taking seriously 
the things that the Obama administration found should be taken 
seriously. Let's be clear, no one is being discriminated against in the 
President's executive order based on religion. Christians, Jews, 
Muslims, any religious group, agnostics, atheists from the countries 
designated for a pause--it is not a ban; it is a pause so we can look 
better at what we need to do.
  I am thrilled to be joined by one of our sharpest new freshmen.
  Mr. GAETZ. I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding. I similarly 
thank him for many nights coming to this floor and defending values 
that are not only uniquely American, but which are unmistakably 
conservative. I appreciate him for being the fire keeper on this floor 
for those values and those principles for constituents in his district 
and in mine and all throughout this great country.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my fellow northwest 
Floridians, brave airmen who serve at Eglin Air Force Base and Duke 
Field and skilled aviators who train out at NAS Pensacola and Whiting 
Field and some of the planet Earth's most hardened and successful 
warriors in the 7th Special Forces Group and those who also deploy out 
of Hurlburt Field in northwest Florida. They are the best among us and 
they often inspire the best within us as a consequence of their 
patriotic service.
  So when I encounter them at townhall meetings or in church or at 
grocery stores, I often ask: How do you do it? How do you leave your 
family, your home, your community, risk your life, your health to go to 
places that many Americans couldn't point to on a map and to fight 
against an enemy who is evil and vicious and determined and 
increasingly equipped?
  And almost to a man and woman, they tell me: We fight them over there 
so that we don't have to feel the consequences over here in America.
  It is that spirit that I join in supporting and honoring in my full-
throated and unequivocal support of President Trump's most recent 
executive order so that we are not devaluing the service of my 
constituents by risking the lives and the health and security of 
Americans here in this great country.
  Mr. Speaker, I wish so much that President Trump's executive order 
were unnecessary. I wish that we lived in a world that was more stable 
and secure, where America could welcome with open arms anyone from 
anywhere for whatever reason at whatever cost. But the reality is that 
American taxpayers can't pay for everything, and American families 
cannot shoulder the risks of insecurity for the consequences of 
terrible foreign policy decisions that have been made over the last 8 
years.
  Maybe if the former President hadn't withdrawn from the Middle East, 
these regions would be more secure. Maybe if our policies hadn't so 
destabilized north Africa that we had failed state after failed state 
functioning as a caldron of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, this 
order would not have been necessary. But, alas, it is necessary.
  I think it is important to distinguish between the realities of this 
executive order and the hysteria that has been created by the media. 
Some would believe, if they were to look only at media reports, that 
this was a ban on all Muslims who would seek to come to this country.
  Let me affirm: our war, our conflict is not with the Muslim faith. As 
a matter of fact, this consequence, this conflict we are engaged in is 
all about the

[[Page 1341]]

future of that faith and religion, and I am hopeful as a Christian that 
we are able to forge a lasting peace among all people on Earth. The 
reality is that there are more than 50 countries that are majority 
Muslim, and most of those countries will see no impact as a consequence 
of this most recent executive order. But there are seven countries--I 
guess it is perhaps a bit generous to call them countries, Mr. Speaker, 
because they are failed states that function to do very little other 
than to breed more terror and discontent and anti-Americanism. But from 
those seven countries, the President has taken the position that we 
ought to take a closer look, we ought to have a belt-and-suspenders 
approach to the security of American families. Of the more than 325,000 
people who have recently come to the United States from foreign 
countries since the President's most recent executive order, about 100 
have been kept for additional screening, more thorough review, and a 
more thoughtful approach.
  So as I stand here with the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Speaker, know 
that I am in full support of President Trump's most recent order. When 
I go back to northwest Florida and I look into the eyes of the 
warfighters, the airmen, the sailors, and the patriots, I will know 
that in this House there were those who were willing to stand with 
them, honor their service and sacrifice, and do everything possible to 
put America first and to keep Americans safe.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, as I told my friend from Florida, I am 
honored anytime he comes to the floor to speak because he knows what he 
is talking about. When I was a judge back in Texas, a young prosecutor 
also shared his first name, and he is now the DA. He is as sincere and 
intelligent. Anyway, it is just an honor to serve with Mr. Gaetz. I 
wondered if he might yield for a question.
  The Attorney General--I am sorry, this is the acting Attorney General 
because the Senate is dragging its feet on one of its own, Jeff 
Sessions, but this came out today in The Hill that ``Acting Attorney 
General Sally Yates sent a letter Monday ordering the Justice 
Department not to defend President Trump's executive order . . .'' even 
though it is an order that basically has been done by the Obama 
administration--except President Obama had done it one country that is 
included in the seven for 6 months instead of 3--and also by President 
Carter. I don't think he was a Republican. Anyway, these things have 
been done before, and the letter says we are not going to defend it.
  This story from Lydia Wheeler today says: ``Yates's''--the acting 
Attorney General--``decision suggests she does not want to put the 
credibility of the Justice Department behind the order. . . .''
  I wanted to ask the gentleman from Florida, does he have concerns 
that, if the Justice Department were to defend this executive order, it 
would hurt the credibility of the Justice Department when acting under 
its Democratic leadership?
  Mr. GAETZ. I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding. I believe 
his question highlights an increasing problem that we have had for the 
last 8 years that I hope we will cure, and that is the politicization 
of the important work that the executive branch ought to be doing on 
behalf of the American people.
  The Justice Department should not be Republican or Democrat. It 
should stand up for the rights of all Americans, the laws that are 
enacted by this Congress, and the orders that are issued by the 
President. We shouldn't have circumstances where we have to wonder 
whether or not the people who are tasked to uphold the law, as the 
gentleman from Texas did as a jurist and did in a very colored legal 
career--we shouldn't have to worry about that. But, in fact, for the 
last 8 years, that has been the problem. That is perhaps one of the 
reasons why the Senate should act with due haste in confirming Jeff 
Sessions as the Attorney General, so we go back to a system that is 
governed by the rule of law, not the rule of popular opinion or 
politics or one particular ideology.
  More specifically to the gentleman from Texas' question, I believe 
that what undermines the Justice Department is this partisan tilt, are 
these lenses through which many of President Obama's appointees 
evaluate the great questions that impact the security of Americans.
  The gentleman from Texas correctly points out that what President 
Trump has done is hardly unprecedented. In 1979, President Carter, 
hardly one that is held out among conservatives as a great standard-
bearer on foreign affairs and a strong America, was one who recognized 
that there were unique challenges in a unique period of time from those 
who may be coming to the United States from Iran, and he took action.

                              {time}  2045

  Similarly, in 2011, President Obama was concerned that, during an act 
of conflict with Iraq, there may be circumstances where people would 
come from Iraq to do harm to Americans on American soil, and so he took 
action. I guess the difference with President Trump is that he is 
willing to take action immediately, and that we are not going to have a 
Presidency with a bunch of handwringing and bedwetting over the 
questions that impact the safety of Americans and the dignity of this 
country and its borders.
  President Obama was unwilling to heed the counsel of those in his own 
administration who indicated that there were insufficient vetting 
procedures in place previously. And so it strikes me as only 
reasonable, Mr. Speaker, that a new President coming in, having heard 
that there were inadequate screening procedures, not from a Trump 
appointee but from an appointee of President Obama, that we would take 
a finite period of time, 90 days, and we would analyze what would be 
the appropriate protocols, screening procedures, and vetting algorithms 
that we would use to ensure that America's interests were placed first.
  I am glad we have a President who puts this country first; I am glad 
we have a President who does not view himself as a citizen of the world 
more than he views himself as a citizen of this country; and I am glad 
that he takes that responsibility seriously.
  And to answer the gentleman's question, I would say that we ought to 
have a Justice Department that is led by those who will follow the rule 
of law, who will defend the rights of Americans, and who will stand up 
for the security of this country.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Great points. And I 
wish I were as articulate.
  I have been critical of the majority leader in the Senate, Senator 
McConnell, but this story is from CNS News. Majority Leader McConnell 
says: ``Well, I think it's a good idea to tighten the vetting 
process.''
  And he went on to say: ``I don't want to criticize them''--the Trump 
administration--``for improving vetting.''
  And I applaud the majority leader for not running for the hills when 
all of the media does their typical thing and just goes freaking out. 
But, we found this story goes also, I think, to illustrate the point 
Mr. Gaetz was making. This is from Daniel Horowitz's article today. It 
turns out that 17 sitting Democrats in the House and Senate voted to 
ban visas from some Muslim countries and that law still exists today. 
Of course, this was back in 2002. And back at that time, you had some 
quite conservative Democrats in the House and Senate, people like 
Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Dianne Feinstein, you know, real 
bulwarks of conservatism, who voted to ban visas from these type 
countries, of the Muslim majority countries, as CNN would like to call 
them. Gee, names like Cardin, Markey, Menendez, Murray, Nelson of 
Florida, Reed of Rhode Island, Sanders of Vermont. Wow, there is 
another conservative, Sanders of Vermont. Schumer, another strong 
hearted conservative. Stabenow, Wyden, Durbin, Feinstein, Leahy, and 
Udall.
  So it kind of begs the question: If this is only a temporary ban from 
countries until we can ascertain better vetting, how much worse is it 
for these 73 sitting Democrats to have voted for a permanent ban? That 
is rather shocking.

[[Page 1342]]

  And it is notable that President Obama, not exactly consistent with 
former President George W. Bush who went 8 years without coming out and 
making formal criticisms--well, President Obama has said he is very 
heartened by all of the anti-Trump protests. We even have Democrats 
here in the House who said: `` . . . as we've heard before, the 
President fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating 
against individuals because of their faith or religion.'' Because I 
know my friend here in the House would not misrepresent the truth. So 
it just shows, obviously, he hasn't read this executive order that 
makes very clear it is not banning a religion or a faith, it is 
countries where we don't have enough information.
  And I just find it interesting that we are standing on the side of 73 
Democrats--Markey, Bernie Sanders, Feinstein, people like that--who 
thought it was a good idea when they were closer to 9/11.
  Mr. GAETZ. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. GOHMERT. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. GAETZ. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Texas 
yielding for a question.
  Not long ago, we heard members of the Congressional Black Caucus take 
to this floor and make the argument that it was hypocritical and 
improper that in President Trump's order and in the follow-on execution 
of that order by the Department of Homeland Security that there would 
be some preference given to religious minorities in these predominantly 
Muslim countries, particularly Christians, who are often persecuted, 
harmed, or killed. In many circumstances in which the President has 
allowed for through exceptions to his order, there will be people from 
these seven countries allowed into the United States as a consequence 
of the persecution that they feel and that they endure as a consequence 
of their Christian faith.
  And so my question to the gentleman from Texas is whether or not he 
shares the Congressional Black Caucus' view that it is improper to 
treat Christians who are being discriminated against in these 
predominantly Muslim countries differently and to give them the 
opportunity to immigrate to the United States of America and realize 
freedom in the absence of this terrible persecution that they feel?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, my friend makes such a great point. I think 
the way this country has, in recent years, been so discriminatory as 
has been the United Nations against Christian refugees, I am afraid 
that this United States of America could be called to account for the 
slaughter of so many Christians who we could have helped. And as we 
know from the numbers, there are a lot of excuses by the U.N. as to why 
they are not helping an equal percentage of Christians to the 
percentage of makeup of those countries they are coming from. There 
have been all kinds of excuses.
  But even our Secretary of State, under the last administration, John 
Kerry, admitted there was a genocide going on of Christians in the 
Middle East. Now, there is not a genocide going on of Muslims in these 
countries. There are Sunni versus Shia and vice versa, and there are 
clashes within the Islamic religion, but there is not a genocide of all 
Muslims in any of these countries. And yet there is clearly a genocide 
clear enough for John Kerry to note.
  So one of the most heinous and outrageous answers that I have heard a 
U.N. general secretary make was--well, I didn't hear it, I read--that 
the U.N. general secretary was asked about a year and a half or so ago, 
when he was in charge of the United Nations' refugee program, and this 
issue of the U.N. not helping the same percentage, in fact, just 
helping a fraction of the percentage of Christians who exist in these 
countries, his response was basically that it was important to leave 
these Christians in the areas where they are being killed because they 
have historical precedence in those areas.
  So we are going to bring Muslims out, according to the U.N. general 
secretary, because they didn't have as much historical significance, 
whereas the Christians who are being wiped out--throats cut, heads cut 
off, crucified, women raped, and just the most heinous of crimes 
committed against individuals are taking place--our U.N. general 
secretary and, apparently under our past President, the State 
Department felt like it was important to leave Christians there in 
larger percentages than existed among the refugees of Muslim because, 
hey, they have been there a long while, so let's leave them there, 
which ultimately means they will all be slaughtered. It is quite 
distressing.
  But here is a point made by George Rasley today in an article, 
``President Trump Stops Suicidal Immigration Policy . . . ,'' where he 
points out that:
  ``Had President Trump's policy been in place participants in many 
Muslim terrorist incidents would have been prevented from entering our 
country, for example the Ohio State University attack by Somali 
`refugee' Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the September 2016 stabbing attack in 
a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and two foiled bomb plots--one in 
Portland, Oregon, in 2010 and one in Columbus, Ohio, in 2000.
  ``Indeed, some 74 terrorist incidents have been attributed to Somali 
Muslims alone. And while the Obama administration did its best to 
cover-up the immigration status of the perpetrators we know that at 
least 13 of them were admitted to the U.S. as `refugees.'
  ``Fourteen were legal permanent residents at the time of their 
radical activity, and 10 were naturalized citizens.''
  So it is quite disturbing.
  And by the way, as a result of the Kentucky case where we had two 
refugees who had been brought in from Iraq, it was reported, in 2013, 
that in 2009, two al Qaeda Iraq terrorists were living as refugees in 
Bowling Green, Kentucky. Anyway, because of that discovery, the Obama 
State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for 6 months in 2011.
  So I do think it is important, as people keep screaming around here, 
what I believe as a Christian, Jesus said: The greatest commandment is 
to love God, and the second, he said, is to love each other. But he had 
also stated: Love thy neighbor as thy self.
  And what some have not realized, if you don't like America, if you 
don't like Americans, if you don't like our own country, and you don't 
love yourself, it is a bit hard to love your neighbor as yourself if 
you don't love yourself.
  I think it is time Americans stood up and thanked God for--and/or 
thank whatever force they may be, some would say, or agnostic, 
whatever--just thank your lucky stars, but be thankful we have had the 
opportunities to live in the greatest country in the history of the 
world. And the only one who has truly given lives and treasure, not for 
imperialist sake but simply for freedom sake, for liberty sake, for 
people we didn't know, but we wanted them to share in freedom and 
liberty. That is a rare country. It has been a blessed and blessed 
country.
  And I think it is important that if we are going to continue or get 
back to being that city on a hill, glowing that draws people to it, 
that would draw people to the Statue of Liberty, you have to be a 
nation of laws, you have to protect the people in the country, 
otherwise we go back to the Dark Ages, and we become a country that no 
one wants to come risk their lives to get to because there is nothing 
special.

                              {time}  2100

  We squandered our opportunities and refused to take up our 
responsibilities to protect this Nation against all enemies, foreign 
and domestic.
  Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for a friend like Mr. Matt Gaetz from 
Florida, as articulate and intelligent as he is, and I look forward to 
working with him and with the Speaker in the days ahead.
  God has blessed America. Let's keep asking for God to bless America. 
If we ask, we are told: you will be given.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________