During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) spoke about the need to discuss current government action, not that of the former administration.
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00:00You know, and first let me say, Mr. Chairman, we appreciate your service to the country and
00:05your continued commitment to folks in the State Department and going to other countries
00:10during times of need. I mean, you have been there. What we're saying, many things we're saying is
00:17like, look, we didn't agree with the Biden administration on many things. There were many
00:20things that we didn't agree. And we had these hearings already. These DEI hearings were
00:25occurring for two years when you guys had the 118th. But at least when we disagreed with the
00:31Biden administration, we were like able to say it. You can barely find a Republican who's willing to
00:36come out and disagree with the current administration, at least in the House. I mean, a couple
00:40senators have come out and talked about the tariffs. I barely can find a Republican to come out and talk
00:45about the tariffs. I mean, can you imagine if President Biden did anything that caused the
00:51stock market to go down 7,000 points? I mean, they would show like 500 pictures of different
00:56basements trying to find out where President Biden is. Okay. You know, there is a lot to talk about
01:03of what's going on right now. A lot to talk about. Right. And Republicans should feel okay to defend
01:10those things. If they believe in them, then they should be able to defend it. But there's not a
01:14single committee, subcommittee or main committee talking about anything that is going on now. It's
01:21all backwards. It's all looking backwards. I mean, you know, the president came in and said,
01:27we're going to solve the Ukraine war on day one. That hasn't happened. Right. That war is still going
01:32on. In fact, Putin is the one who just turned down a ceasefire. Right. We should be talking. We should be
01:38talking about that. We had battle plans, attack plans, whichever adjective verb you want to use
01:44leaked on signal. We talk about trust with our allies. I mean, that undermines trust with our
01:51allies. We have tariffs. We're tariffing friend and foe alike, the whole world. That undermines trust
01:59and credibility. And that doesn't mean that there isn't bipartisan support to try to fix supply chain.
02:04As someone who was the emergency management director during COVID, our supply chain is broken.
02:09Democrats and Republicans in the Trump administration and the Biden administration
02:12spent $8 trillion after COVID, didn't fix anything in the supply chain. And so, yeah,
02:17we do need to figure out how to onshore some of our manufacturing back. But the execution of this
02:23is crazy. I mean, that's why you're seeing people within the Trump administration fighting with each
02:28other in this Peter Navarro, Elon Musk stuff. You're seeing some of Trump's ardent supporters,
02:33billionaires coming out and attacking the administration. Everyone understands we've
02:38got onshore jobs. But to tariff the whole world at the same time, to crash the stock market when that
02:45was clearly going to be a repercussion, these are things we should be talking about.
02:51You know, there was a lot, and you know how I like boards. I bring boards sometimes.
02:56You know, when President Zelensky came to the White House, right, about with, you know,
03:02during, for, to talk about trying to bring the conflict to an end, we heard a lot about what
03:07he was wearing. Oh my God, the precious Oval Office. He didn't wear a suit. I mean, here's,
03:14here's a picture of Kid Rock in the Oval Office. He looks like he's about to jump over 10 buses,
03:19okay, when he's done on the White House lawn, okay. So, like, give me a little bit of a break.
03:26Okay, we can put that down now. I think, I think, I think that picture, that picture solves itself.
03:31But, you know, what else are we talking about, right? Oh, Canada, they're going to be the 51st state.
03:36I'd love to have a hearing on that, right, to figure out how many people want to make that happen.
03:42By the way, if Canada were becoming the 51st state, it'd be the last time we had a Republican president.
03:47It'd be the last time the Republicans ever controlled the U.S. House of Representatives,
03:51because between California and Canada, you'd have a lot more Democrats. We heard that we're all going
03:56to vacation in Gaza. I mean, are you guys excited to go vacation in the Riviera of the, of the Middle
04:04East? You know, we, we, we've been treating Canada and Greenland for the first three months tougher than
04:12we were treating Iran. I'm glad now that we're focused on Iran. I'm glad that we're moving
04:17strategic resources there. It is an opportunity to talk about Iran. But we've been tougher on Europe
04:23for the first 90 days than we were on Tehran. And so these are, there are lots of things that we can
04:30be talking about, Mr. Chairman, things that we haven't yet talked about, things that Republicans
04:35should feel comfortable in defending if they believe in them. But we're going back to hearings
04:41we've already had, not just in this committee, but a number of committees. And so that's why
04:46we're, we're bringing it up. Mr. Chairman, my time is elapsed and I yield back. Thank you.
04:51Thank you, ranking member. We will now go to a second round of questions. I will just state for
04:56the record that in order for us to move forward as a nation, we must understand the mistakes of the
05:03past. And while this is just our first hearing, I think it is apropos for us to go through the past
05:10so that our next hearings can focus on how do we actually resolve key issues. But we did talk about
05:18oversight. The role of oversight is also how taxpayer monies, us as good stewards, are being utilized.
05:24And I think that we have seen where the offices of DEI utilizing the 2 million and 7 million and 10
05:30million and continuing to go up in numbers could have been better spent on things that we all care
05:35about. Stopping the Iranian regime from nuclear power and allowing it to be a democratically elected
05:41free Iran. Stopping Russia's aggression, making sure that it's territorial sovereignty, and stopping
05:47China's continuation of its advancement towards a one nation unification towards Taiwan. So I'm with
05:53you 100 percent. And we all share that sentiment.