Why Are Our Tax Dollars Paying The Salary Of A Newsmax Fill In Host?

Your tax dollars are paying the salary of a man who happens to serve as a lowly Newsmax fill-in host. That man is Congressman Matt Gaetz, and this past Friday he served as the guest host for Greg Kelly's program. A sitting member of Congress acting as a TV news host is not only unprecedented, but it is completely disgusting given that his salary comes from our tax dollars. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains why this is absolutely ridiculous.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

I have a question, and I think it's a question that everybody watching this should also be asking. Why are we as American taxpayers paying the salary for a guy acting as a fill-in host on the conservative Newsmax network? Because we are now, we're not paying his Newsmax salary. Of course, absolutely not. That would be a bit ridiculous. But we're paying him as a United States representative. That man, of course, is Matt Gates, because last Friday and this past Monday, Matt Gates filled in for Newsmax host Greg Kelly in the 10:00 PM slot. So sitting member of Congress, filling in on a cable news, political talk show, and we are paying his salary as a lawmaker. Both of these fill-in nights occurred obviously during the whole debt. Uh, ceiling negotiation. Will they, won't they? Who knows? But rather than focusing on that, like all the rest of the lawmakers, Matt Gates had to go out there and prep for his appearance, had to get ready for the big show, had to get ready for his cable news tryouts, we should call it, and he did it on our dime.

Now again, we're not paying for him to be on newsmax. I hope Newsmax didn't pay him to be on newsmax, but I have been in the media business for nearly 20 years now. I have seen people prep for cable news programs. I have seen people prep for cable news fill-ins. I have had to book shows for hosts on cable news. I know what I'm talking about. Probably better than most people you could talk to. It's not just a couple quick hours. It's an all day process, all day, every day. So you can't tell me that while Matt Gates was working out his fill-in, working out the lineup, suggesting who they were gonna talk to, what they were gonna talk about, prepping questions, reading over the script, doing the research, reading the notes, you can't tell me that none of that happened while he was technically on the clock as a member of the House of Representatives. I'll do you one better. I want to know if any government equipment, government issued computers, laptops, cell phones, if any of that was used for Matt Gates to make his arrangements to be a fill-in host on NEWSMAX Act. Now, I'm not saying those things are illegal, but I'm saying not just as a taxpayer that pays his salary, but as one of his frigging constituents,

I'm off about this. Can you imagine? Let's just do it this way. Imagine what the conservative world would do out there. If Nancy Pelosi filled in one night for Rachel Maddow, do you think that would go over very well with conservatives? Or do you think they would be throwing a bigger hissy fit than they threw over Bud Light and Target? And now of course, chick-fil-A combined, we would hear about it for months on end. They would accuse Pelosi of abusing her power of engaging in unethical behavior, of using government resources to prep for her fill-in night on Ms. N B C. Yet this little Matt Gae thing right here, not even a blip on anybody's radar. In fact, the only story I found about it was from Mediaite, and all they talked about was how Matt Gates's ratings on Friday actually beat CNN's in that hour.

Whoa, the ratings were still pretty crappy at 280, 2000 total viewers. That's it. I mean, if I have a day of only 282,000 total viewers, I consider that a failure of a day. But you know, whatever, to each their own. Either way, I do this for a living.