Reps. Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks talk Joe Biden, Ukraine corruption and Democrats' impeachment push

This is a rush transcript from "Life, Liberty & Levin," November 3, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARK LEVIN, HOST: Hello America, I'm Mark Levin. This is "Life, Liberty & Levin." We two great guests. Congressman Mo Brooks. How are you, sir?

REP. MO BROOKS, R-ALA.: Doing fine.

LEVIN: Congressman Matt Gaetz.

REP. MATT GAETZ, R-FLA.: Good to see you.

LEVIN: Good to see you, fellows. Well, the other day you had quite a little session on the floor of the House of Representatives. Every Democrat but two voted for what they call a resolution. And every Republican voted against it and two Democrats joined you.

And I want to get into this in a moment because I see a lot of propaganda here where a lot of the Democrats are saying, we're doing exactly the same thing we did with Bill Clinton.

Well, the funny thing is, I have both resolutions. And they're doing exactly the opposite. But before we get to that, I agree with the President. We're ought to talk a little bit about substance and the substance of this phone call.

We have the phone call. I don't know what we need witnesses for. A witness -- why can't we read English? Can't we reason? Can't we digest this stuff? So I need a whistleblower to tell me what I'm reading. I need a Lieutenant Colonel to tell me what I'm reading. No.

So let's read one of the sentences that they say is the troubling sentence.  All right. Now, this is deep into the conversation. In fact, it's near the end of the conversation, where the President says to the President of the Ukraine, " ... the other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of the people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that stop the prosecution. So if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me."

Is that not a public fact, Representative Gaetz that Biden was bragging about the fact that he stopped the prosecution?

GAETZ: Of course. And we've learned over the course of these interviews that the Democrats defense, well, there were all these international organizations that also wanted the prosecutor gun is bogus. Because those international organizations were reacting to what was emanating from the United States, where Joe Biden specifically wanted to get rid of a prosecutor in exchange for aid -- a quid pro quo.

And by the way, oftentimes in American foreign policy, we demand things in exchange for aid. But what Joe Biden did was a little odd, because it seemed to be directly related to investigations of his family and his son.

And Mark, how in the hell is the United States of America supposed to pursue an anti-corruption agenda globally if the second family of the United States is running a pay-for-play scheme out of the Vice President's office?

LEVIN: Congressman Brooks, do you have a problem with what the President said here?

BROOKS: No, absolutely not. I think the President and I would hope that every President would try to ferret out corruption wherever it may exist.  And in this particular instance, we have a video that the public can look at, in which Joe Biden in his own TV, boasting about how he was withholding a billion dollars of American taxpayers money from the Ukraine, conditioned to own Ukraine within six hours, firing the prosecutor, who at the time was in charge of numerous corruption investigations to include one of the employer of Joe Biden's son who is being paid $50,000 a month for who knows what, if not influencing the United States government to perhaps do things we should not be doing.

So I'm thankful that the President of the United States is trying to ferret out corruption wherever it may exist. And if you have the investment that the President was asking for, there are two outcomes. One is, the Biden family is cleared, nothing unethical, nothing corrupt. Fine. That helps Joe Biden, it doesn't hurt him.

But the other outcome of an investigation is that there was corruption.  There is that kind of evidence. There is a prosecution. And heaven help us if we're not going to try to prosecute corruption that may go all the way to the White House, which it would have, if that's the finding, with Joe Biden being Vice President of the United States.

GAETZ: One thing that surprised me was that almost every other Democratic Presidential campaign rushed to Joe Biden's defense in the absence of any facts. And so I wonder, as Democrats ultimately select a nominee, and I don't think it will be Joe Biden, will they all come to deeply regret the fact that they just reflexively opposed Trump, supported Biden, despite the fact that Hunter Biden's bad activities were not defensible and will Hunter Biden now no longer just be a smear on Joe Biden, will also be smearing the integrity of all of the other Democratic presidential candidates?

LEVIN: Here's what I see, and let me get your take on this. It's okay to have a Special Counsel appointed to investigate a President of the United States even though that appointment violated Justice Department regulations. There was no criminal pretext.

Two and a half year investigation, $40 million to see if it never happened.  The President of the United States clear, no allegation that they wanted to even bring an indictment. You know, they said, oh, well, there's 10 examples of obstruction. Well, why didn't you recommend an indictment even if you couldn't bring one? Because there was no charge that could have been brought.

We have a President of the United States who has been the subject of a subpoena campaign about his bank records, his tax returns, his businesses, his family, his communications with his accountant. We have a President of the United States has been attacked on the Emoluments Clause. Nobody ever even heard of that clause before thrown out by a Circuit Court.

He is under constant, relentless attack. Russia came to nothing. All of a sudden, this Ukraine thing happens. Now, look, I've been around long enough. You guys run Congress. These things don't just happen.

All of a sudden, Ukraine hits the table, not Ukraine, because Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election according to POLITICO and "The New York Times" to help Hillary Clinton and hurt Trump. That's a fact. But now, Ukraine and a phone call? How did we get to this?

GAETZ: I believe that the Ukraine knockoff sequel to the Russia hoax is a direct consequence of the humiliation that Adam Schiff, a lot of folks on the left and frankly, the mainstream media feel after peddling a lie for two and a half years about this President. They set the bar so high.

They said they had more than circumstantial evidence that Trump was acting at the behest of Russia. It was total nonsense. And so rather than doing what we should be doing, finding out why this corrupt investigation began into the President, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have tried to distract us with this Ukraine nonsense.

Look, we don't need hours and hours of testimony so that the American people can interpret what is clearly before us in the transcript of this call, the American people can read that call and can understand there is nothing illegal at all about it. That it is entirely appropriate for the President to be rooting out corruption and where we have a Joe Biden problem that is Joe Biden's fault, not President Trump's fault.

LEVIN: I'm also confused about this Joe Biden stuff. Are you immune from investigation because you decide you want to run for office and you might be the opponent of the President of the United States and therefore, the President of the United States talking to the President of another country shouldn't elicit, even suggest you might want to look into something that's in the public realm.

That's the President of the United States trying to get a foreign country to interfere in the election? You could turn that on the head of any politician running for office at any time another politician or another candidate says, or elected official, you know, you might want to look at this. It's in the public record, oh, you're interfering with the election, you should be expelled, you should be impeached, you should be removed. Is that how it works?

BROOKS: It should not work that way. Let's be clear here about what the Democrat argument is. If you happen to be running for public office against someone that is doing an investigation of you or prompts an investigation of you, you have absolute immunity.

That cannot be sound public policy. Yet, that is exactly what the Democrats are arguing for that because Joe Biden happens to be a Democratic candidate for the presidency, by the way, one that I don't think has much of a prayer given the makeup of the Democratic primary, but putting that aside for a moment, given that situation, he is not entitled to immunity from his prior remarks about his having held a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine as hostage in order to stop or interfere with an investigation of a company that is paying his son $50,000.00 a month.

To me, American taxpayers have a right to know where their Hunter Biden was really earning that money. Or if the purpose of that $50,000.00 per month payment was to influence American foreign policy through his dad who happened to be Vice President of the United States.

Now, with respect to this other issue that we just touched on, understand the Democratic goal in all of this. They have said before President Trump was inaugurated that they want to impeach him. Of course, they want to succeed in subsequent elections. And so with the Russian collusion hoax that they put together, they were unable to come up with the evidence, the information to establish that this was anything more than a hoax, but they were able to use it to influence the 2018 elections.

So they were not punished by the American people for having committed this fraud. The fake news media was not punished by the American people for having committed this fraud. In fact, at least with respect to the Democrats, they have been rewarded for having committed this fraud. And that kind of reward is prompting them to use the Russian collusion hoax 2.0, which involves Ukraine.

That's all it is, it is a hoax motivated by an effort to influence the 2020 elections, where the socialists can take the House, the White House and the Senate and impose their dictatorial policies on freedom-loving Americans, that's why we have to fight.

LEVIN: Isn't he right? Isn't this about 2020? They know this is going nowhere in the Senate, they want to push the trial into the general election. They want to put that scarlet letter I on the President's forehead so and he's running, they are not talking about destroying our healthcare system under some government-run program, keeping our borders open, eviscerating the United States military, taxing every man, woman and child in this country out of their households, and so forth.

Isn't a true, even look today, all we talk about is impeachment.

GAETZ: I guess, the question to you, Mark, would be, what would the Democrats use to galvanize their movement if not impeachment? Would Democrats be able to point to their infrastructure plan? Would they be able to point to their healthcare plan? Will they be able to point to sound policy on trade? Of course not. They haven't done anything.

And so this is the cop-out for the lack of an agenda that impacts the lives of the American people. This House Democratic group has issued more subpoenas than they have passed bills.

And so when they run back to their districts in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, in Florida, I don't know what they're going to tell people who were promised, especially in these districts that Donald Trump won, that their Member of Congress would go and work with the President to try to help folks. Instead, they are caving to the most radical fringes of the left Democratic base because I think they're afraid of them.

I think Nancy Pelosi is specifically afraid of the squad-led group.

LEVIN: You know, most of the so-called moderates who want in these Republican districts or Trump districts said they would vote against Pelosi for Speaker, they voted for her.

They said they wouldn't vote for anything like this, every one of them but two voted for this. So that's going to be their scarlet letter.

GAETZ: And that's an important point though. The only bipartisan vote that occurred was a bipartisan vote to shut this garbage down. There was no ability for the Democrats to be able to convince a single Republican that what they were doing was in the best interest of the country and I am sick and tired of the crocodile tears on the Ukraine.

If this was really about the Ukraine, where were all the Democrats when Barack Obama withheld this very military aid from the Ukraine indefinitely?  Where were they? Where are these same Democrats now when we have $250 million in military aid for the Ukraine in our National Defense Bill that Mo and I worked on in the Armed Services Committee, and they won't bring that bill to the floor, because they're so obsessed with going after Donald Trump for temporarily withholding Ukraine aid, that they're actually withholding more aid to the Ukraine.

LEVIN: Don't forget folks to check out Levin TV, Levin TV. Most weeknights you can join us by calling 844-LEVIN-TV, 844-LEVIN-TV or go to blazetv.com/mark to sign up, blazetv.com/mark. We'll be right back.

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LEVIN: Both legislators, is there ever been a bill that requires people to do things in order to get money? Whether it is domestic or foreign. For instance, I hear Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and Buttigieg and the rest of them, say Israel, you better agree to a two-state solution or we're not going to back anymore with foreign aid? Is that a quid pro quo?

BROOKS: Absolutely.

LEVIN: And don't we do this all the time?

BROOKS: Absolutely.

GAETZ: If we don't, we're fools. And by the way, if we give aid to people within expectation that they're going to adhere to our values to our goals in a particular area, then why in the world would we ever give the aid?

I mean, the entire point of aid is to ensure that we have a more cooperative and more productive arrangement with a country that we might not have without the aid.

And so I guess, you know, we would have to ask the folks on the far left, would you really borrow money from China to go give it to another country with no expectation that we would even articulate a goal to help the American people? It seems foolish.

LEVIN: Ukraine -- this now, we were obsessing over Russia and the interesting thing is what we were obsessing over Russia about, not Hillary Clinton and the D.N.C. and Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele and the FISA Court and all of the rest, somehow that was bifurcated by the Special Counsel's Office and the media and the Democrats. We are doing this again with Ukraine. All of a sudden we're interested in Ukraine.

I have an article here. Second full paragraph, "Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election, and they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a POLITICO investigation found."

"A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the D.N.C. met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign a Paul Manafort and Russia according to people with direct knowledge of the situation. The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race helping to force Manafort's resignation and advancing the narrative that the Trump campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine's foe to the east, Russia."

Tell me are the Democrats, Mr. Schiff, Mr. Nadler, and Mr. Whomever, looking at any of this?

BROOKS: No, of course not. It does not advance their own political agenda. Same thing with the mainstream news media, whether it be CNN or MSNBC, "New York Times" or "Washington Post" -- they have lost all semblance of partiality. They now are the communications arm of the socialist movement in the United States of America.

And what we have to do as elected officials, and hopefully, folks like yourself, and you're doing a great job of it, and others of like mine, who understand the foundational principles that have helped make us the greatest nation in the world history, what we have to do is trying to overcome that onslaught of media power and political power to make sure that the public gets the right message.

So you cannot depend on the mainstream news media, or the powers that be in the House of Representatives to explore this kind of information, because that does not help them achieve their socialist agenda.

GAETZ: And nothing shows this more than the focus of the Mueller investigation. Robert Mueller was initially tasked with evaluating all election interference in the 2016 Presidential contest. And yet when I asked him the very direct question that you just asked us, well, these efforts through the Steele dossier to influence the election, were those part of some foreign interference campaign?

You know what Mueller said, not in my purview. Not something I was looking at. And so everything in this town is tilted to try to delegitimize President Trump, because he is changing things, the way we look at things.

We have these bureaucrats, these career diplomats giving testimony in the basement of the capitol saying, oh, well, we're certain that Trump was doing something improper. You know what this is really, Mark. It's a policy disagreement.

Because you've got these folks that all went to the same liberal universities, that all kind of cycle through the same left-leaning think tanks that end up in the revolving door of government at some point, and they think that their view of the world is the only acceptable view of the world.

Well, you know what? Donald Trump didn't campaign as somebody who was going to go post up on Russia every chance he got. He campaigned as a guy who was going to cooperate where cooperation was appropriate.

Now, you can agree with that, or you can disagree with that. I frankly think that Russia is not our friend, I believe they are a foe. But that's not the decision for some unelected member of the diplomatic corps to make.  That's the decision for the President to make.

And when they don't like his decision, they have two options, follow orders or resign. And instead, what you saw was a group of these people conspired together, run to the apron of Adam Schiff, and then collude to create this story that President Trump had done something improper where it was just a bunch of people who want their judgment to be substituted for the judgment of the duly elected President.

That is the real reason Donald Trump was elected President, to stop this circumstance where it didn't matter which political party won the election.  It was the same special interests and the same mental paradigms that govern the day. And I'm grateful we've got a President who looks at things differently and they need to either work for him or get out of our government.

LEVIN: Isn't he right?

BROOKS: Absolutely.

LEVIN: In other words, there's really two things happening with this impeachment farce. Number one, they're trying to build up a whole list of bureaucrats and others, advisers to the President who disagreed with him.  You know, I went to the White House Counsel's Office and I said, I don't agree with this call. I'm concerned about this. Well, so what?

We now have the call. Well, I was the Ambassador, and they were saying bad things about me and I was a holdover by Obama, and they forced me out.  Well so what? Who gives a damn? You should have gotten out anyway.

Well, look, he's not listening to career -- well, so what? There's a lot of Presidents who has had Rudy Giuliani types going all the way back to George Washington, who had second channels because of the bureaucracy in the State Department -- Democrats included.

And then the other channel that they seem to be messing around with an impeachment, every time they issue a subpoena or make a demand if you don't immediately agree, that's obstruction. So we've got a whole list of obstruction, people who aren't sure under separation of powers, people who are being told different things, people who want to go to court to check.

You know what? I'm Adam Schiff, I'm king of the world. You know what?  That's obstruction. So they line up obstruction, so they say see this, Ukraine, the President interfering with an election asking Ukraine for help. Quid pro quo and look at this, we've never had so much obstruction in the history of the presidency.

I want your answers when we come back. We'll be right back.

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JACKIE IBANEZ, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Live from "America's News Headquarters," I'm Jackie Ibanez in New York. The whistleblower who shed light on President Trump's call with the President of Ukraine is open to written questions from House Republicans - that's according to his or her lawyer.

The lawyer says the whistleblower will answer questions in quote "writing" under oath and the penalty of perjury. The person's identity will not be answered. It comes as President Trump renewed his call today for the release of the whistleblower's identity.

Meanwhile, a knife-wielding man injuring five people in Hong Kong Sunday including a pro-democracy politician whose ear was partially bitten off.  Two of the victims are in critical condition tonight. The attack happened outside Cityplaza Mall in Tai Koo where pro-democracy protests were taking place. According to "Hong Kong Free Press," the attacker was a pro-Beijing supporter.

I'm Jackie Ibanez. Now back to "Life, Liberty & Levin."

LEVIN: You know, history is going to look back on this. And I've studied the Johnson impeachment, Nixon and Clinton and give this a very, very low mark. And what's happened to this President? What's been happening to this President?

And this big spectacle, the vote on Thursday. They don't even know what to call it. Is it an Impeachment Inquiry? No, no, no. Why is that? Well, you know, we have 13 members who may not like the word impeachment. Okay, well, what is it? Well we're formalizing the process -- formalizing what process?

Let's talk about it because I heard this guy, Raskin and others go on TV, make comment and lied through their teeth about what's in this resolution.  It's seven and a half pages long. So even they should understand what it says.

This is what it says. Resolution. It doesn't say Impeachment Inquiry Resolution. Resolution. It says, "The House authorizes the Committee on Judiciary," when it eventually gets there from the Intelligence Committee.

The intelligence committee will give them a report. And then Nadler kicks in again. " ... to conduct proceedings relating to the Impeachment Inquiry referenced in the first section of this resolution, pursuant procedures submitted for printing and the Congressional Record by the chair of the Committee on Rules, including such procedures as to allow for the participation of the President and his counsel."

That's all it says about the President and his counsel, and I keep hearing Democrats on TV say it's the same as Clinton. All right. Now, let me read you the Clinton. This is what it says. This is October 7, 1998. Just the section on the President. It says in part, "The committee adopted by voice vote a number of protections for the President. The President and his counsel shall be invited to attend all executive session and open committee hearings. The President's counsel may cross-examine witnesses. The President's counsel may make objections regarding the pertinency of evidence."

"The President's counsel shall be invited to suggest that the committee receive additional evidence. Lastly, the President or the President's counsel shall be invited to respond to the evidence produced by the committee at an appropriate time."

Did you hear that in this? So what rights to the President and his counsel have? We have no idea.

GAETZ: It's as if Democrats wrote a process to create the least amount of access to evidence to try to hide the ball for as long as possible. And I think the reason that's the case is because the evidence isn't very good, and it's not getting any better.

We keep coming back to where you began the show. All Americans can read this transcript between President Trump and President Zelensky. All Americans can hear President Zelensky himself say that he felt no pressure and that there was no improper conduct directed at his administration.

And so now, as a consequence of that eroding case for the Democrats, they've got to do everything they can to stack the deck. I serve on the Judiciary Committee. They wanted to impeach the President over the Mueller report in the Judiciary Committee, but we showed the American people what a sham that was.

The Mueller hearing, the Lewandowski hearing. Heck, you remember when they even brought John Dean back like the ghost from Christmas Past -- they were all nightmares for the Democrats.

And so now, instead of pushing information out, they are trying to draw information in and keep it from the rest of us, and that ought to tell us a lot about what's really going on here. This is not a substantive case against the President. It's an effort to distract from the fact that these people lied to our country for two and a half years about Russia.

BROOKS: When we talk about this resolution, let me emphasize something.  I'm a former prosecutor, district attorney, also have been on the defense attorney side. I've litigated in probably half the states in the United States of America on the civil side with commercial litigation, and there are rules in place that help ensure that you have a process that maximizes the chance that judges and juries will get probative evidence that will help them determine what the truth is when they get to their verdict.

And what you have with the process that the Democrats are now using is so badly tainted, everything that is going on in that process should be discarded. It should start anew. It should be done in public where the American people can see it, where I can see it as the United States Congressman representing 700 and something thousand people from the state of Alabama.

And if the Democrats aren't going to do that and with this resolution that recently passed, they are not doing that. There is no requirement that there be public proceedings. It appears that Schiff is going to continue in the subterranean basement of the United States Capitol secret Star Chamber type proceedings where the public can't see it, then we're at a loss to come to the proper judgment.

And that's why process is so important, and why the Democrats ought to be abiding by a process that will enhance our ability to determine what the truth is.

By way of example, if you can't see a witness when they make a statement, and all you can do is read what's on a piece of paper, you have been deprived as an observer of your common sense that enables you to look at a person and help form a judgment as to whether those words are true or false.

So what the Democrats are doing is a complete sham. They're doing it this way, for political reasons, because they want to enhance their maximum impact ability on the 2020 elections.

It's not about removing President Trump from office. It's about taking the Senate, keeping that House of Representatives and taking over the White House and imposing their dictatorial socialist views that they cannot get if the American people are talking about public policy issues.

LEVIN: When we come back, I want to ask you about how the media has been playing this because the media doesn't seem to be so concerned about secret testimony anymore or due process, do they? We'll be right back.

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LEVIN: Congressman Brooks, Congressman Gaetz, the media. You know, I remember when Jim Acosta was thrown out of the White House and there was still four billion reporters reporting on what was taking place there.

The media circled the wagons, they went to court, they sued under the First Amendment. They hired Ted Olsen's firm and oh, my God, the President is attacking freedom of the press.

Now, you have a Committee Chairman, press isn't allowed in the room whatsoever. The only thing that gets out is what he leaks and his people leak to "The New York Times" and the other media. That's the headline.  The other media pick it up, they run with the same thing. They don't really know what's going on in there, either. They only know what they're being told.

I don't hear a damn thing about the First Amendment. I don't hear the media groups litigating, going to Federal District Court. I don't see the media associations jumping up and down. They're fine with it. Why are they fine with it?

GAETZ: I believe that far too many people in the Washington media have given up journalism, and instead have taken on the role of advocacy. They don't believe that their job is to report on what is happening. They are trying to shape public opinion to be consistent with their worldview. It's a worldview where you eat nothing but kale and quinoa, where those of us who cling to our Bibles and our guns and our fried foods and real America are looked down upon.

Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot, Mark. Imagine if Republicans were holding secret hearings on an impeachment matter. You would have the Washington press out there lighting fires and bringing out the battering rams to get through those doors and find out what was going on.

But now, they sit out there like pigeons, waiting for Adam Schiff to throw them a little bit of bird food and then they just go take it and fly off it with whatever narrative that he wants to spin.

And as critical as I am of it, it is hard not to acknowledge that the strategy between Schiff and the mainstream media has been effective to a point. Because what they do is they have a perfectly crafted opening statement that paints things in the worst possible light for President Trump.

They release that at nine or ten in the morning. The media goes and just devours that. They put it out there like it is the scripture itself. And then when Republicans ask penetrating questions about documents, timelines, other witness statements that show inconsistencies and at times misrepresentations in those opening statements, well, you never hear about that. There's a total gag rule on it.

This is why Democrats have chosen to be so secretive. When they had to have their witnesses like Robert Mueller in public, we whooped them on a fair court. And so now they're trying to change the battlespace because they can't win on equitable terms.

LEVIN: Aren't you amazed, you, a former litigator, former prosecutor, courtrooms are open. It's an extraordinarily rare situation when they're not. One of the reasons at the Federal level, we have to make these deals with spies. So the information doesn't get out in court.

And so sometimes rather than get the death penalty, you have to agree with life sentences. I remember this as an old Chief of Staff to an Attorney General, some of the worst spies, we think should have gotten capital punishment, but we didn't want all the information to get out in the public.

There's nothing classified going on here. They're leaking. They say they're a grand jury. This isn't a grand jury. We have never, ever seen anything like this in American history, have we, Congressman?

BROOKS: Not in my judgment, certainly not in my lifetime, and not from the history that I have read. This is an instance in which the news media, "New York Times" and "Washington Post," CNN, MSNBC and a host of others have totally abrogated their role as watchdogs of the Federal government.

And as Matt so eloquently said, they have become advocates for the socialist agenda in the United States of America to the point where you cannot trust a single word that they utter. And that is most unfortunate in this digital age.

Now, in fairness to them, they have time constraints. They are all trying to get stories out. Editorial staff rarely really goes over and proves what's being put out to make sure that it has evidentiary support for what's being argued.

And to make matters worse, though, in this particular scenario, they don't seem to want the public to get it firsthand. The media doesn't seem to want to get it firsthand themselves by being able to see the actual witnesses as they are testifying.

In fact, what the Democrats have done and perhaps it's smart, I don't know, time will tell, but they have misappropriated a skiff, which is designed to protect National Security secrets and information from getting into the hands of the Russians, the Chinese and other adversaries.

And instead they're using a skiff in a bad way to hide from the American people and investigation that would trash -- if successful -- the votes of over 60 million Americans and undermine our Republic in the process.

LEVIN: Isn't this the point really? They are in that skiff to keep, we, the people in the dark?

BROOKS: Bingo. Spot on. That's it. That's the only reason.

LEVIN: It's not even just the Republicans and the press. They want to keep we, the people in the dark so they can keep pushing their propaganda, their propaganda.

GAETZ: The American people are smart.

LEVIN: And this Ukrainian issue is a pseudo issue. It is a fake issue, one pseudo one issue after another. And they bring in a conga line of witnesses to keep pushing this narrative, narrative, narrative but the President really did Trump them, didn't he, by releasing phone call?

Folks, don't forget, you can join us on Levin TV most weeknights just give us a call at 844-LEVIN-TV, 844-LEVIN-TV or go to blazetv.com/mark, blazetv.com/mark. We hope you'll join us. We'll be right back.

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LEVIN: One of the interesting things that happened by the way on Thursday was all the Democrats voted for what Nancy Pelosi told them to vote for, except for two. Three-fourths of those Democrats don't know what the hell is going on in that skiff either. They're reading what's in the newspaper.  They just voted to be ignorant. They voted to be ignorant. They don't even know what they're voting on.

They said okay, we'll go along. The one-fourth of the Congress that's involved in this, that's fine. The rest of us don't need to know any of this.

This is what I'm -- this is what amazes me about the lack of representation.

GAETZ: But wasn't this the same party that said we had to vote for Obamacare before we found out what was in it? So maybe it shouldn't surprise U.S. --

LEVIN: In fact, it was Pelosi who said it.

GAETZ: Yes. Exactly. So this is sort of their legislative mantra. Let's -- so vote first and then let's try to analyze second and third-order consequences later.

LEVIN: But here is what's concerning, too. This creates a precedent for future Houses, for future presidencies and under the Constitution, a very, very bad press. If you don't like a President, you're chasing him down from the moment he's elected. You're trying to find a reason to claim to remove him.

You come up with phony issue after phony issue, then you figure out, let's do this secret stuff leaked to our media friends and we build -- you know, try to build a juggernaut toward that.

Under our Constitution, there's only one body that can protect us from this, the United States Senate. Will they?

BROOKS: I believe that the United States Senate will see through all this.  There is no high crime, misdemeanor, treason or bribery that has been committed, at least at this point, based on what we have seen. There is no credible evidence to support an impeachment charge.

Now that won't stop the socialist Democrats from doing it. Because that is not their primary motivation, the removal of President Trump. If they could get that fine, they would do it. Their primary motivation is to win the 2020 elections.

And so what they have discovered is a process by which they can use United States taxpayer money to do opposition research in a secure environment, where only the unrebutted damaging material can be seen by the public through their sycophants at "The New York Times, "Washington Post" or other mainstream news media outlets.

So if the public will just understand that this is a political matter designed to impact the 2020 elections, then I think they're much more likely to come to a more accurate and fair picture of what is occurring.

LEVIN: Will the Senate help?

GAETZ: I have seen reporting that Mitch McConnell may plan to spend up to six weeks holding an impeachment trial. And if Mitch McConnell does that, it is a betrayal of this President and it will do damage to this country that's totally unnecessary. Does the Senate not get why we're really here?

Is there a single Republican senator who believes that we would be impeaching the President over the Ukraine, if not for the Democrats' failures and lies about the Russia hoax?

I mean, before they got onto the Ukraine, they were playing pin the tail on the impeachment theory, like kids would play pin the tail on the donkey.  There was that crazy week where they wanted to impeach Kavanaugh. Remember that? Then they were even talking about impeaching Bill Barr.

And so they just sort of, you know, migrate from impeachment concept to impeachment concept. And if Mitch McConnell spends six weeks on this, it will tear the country apart. It will distract us from the important work we need to do and it will give Nancy Pelosi and her lying band of group of people over there in the House far more dignity to this impeachment matter than it deserves.

LEVIN: And they're going to lose the Senate if they do this --

GAETZ: They will because they will demoralize the Republic. This is the big mistake in the Senate. They all believe that you've got to play to the middle. You've got to look like you're some austere thinker, you know, that just walked out of the Roman Senate.

The reality is the American people want to see guts. They want to see boldness and they want to see folks that will call it like it is. That's why they elected Donald Trump. And we need more senators to stand up and say this whole thing is a sham. It only is here to distract us from the failures that the Democrats had on Russia and the true corruption in the deep state that started the effort to delegitimize the President in the first place.

LEVIN: It also has the benefit of being true and it also has the benefit of defending the Constitution and the impeachment clause in the Constitution.

GAETZ: What will it mean if McConnell spent six weeks on this?

LEVIN: I agree with you. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: Congressman Brooks, any final words?

BROOKS: Sure. The American people need to understand that this is a diversionary tactic by the Democrats. They want to have the American people focusing on Russian collusion 2.0, a hoax that helped them win the 2018 elections.

Our task as Americans is to make sure that the American people understand the foundational principles that help make America the greatest nation in world history and that those principles are under attack. They're under attack with open borders that are killing Americans at the hands of illegal aliens, thousands each year are dying.

Democrats don't want us to be talking about that. We could be talking about deficit and debt and the threat that that is to a national insolvency and bankruptcy. Socialism versus free enterprise. One produces wealth, the other produces poverty.

So we can't let the Democrats monopolize the conversation by creating this false image of impeachment, when there are very many substantive, challenging issues that define us as a people.

GAETZ: I hope this impeachment doesn't make us a less joyous country because we have every reason to be happy and excited right now.

The American economy is the hottest in the world. Wage growth faster than any other point in a decade. The lowest African-American, Hispanic- American, Asian-American unemployment in recorded history.

For all of us who have been fighting for this moment, for a transformational President like Donald Trump, we just have to remember no matter what the radical left and their allies and the fake news media do, we've got to keep marching forward to improve the lives of the American people.

And if we do that, voters are going to punish these Democrats in the upcoming election, and they're going to send President Trump back to the White House for four more years of doing a great job.

LEVIN: Quickly, the so-called moderate Democrats who won in these Trump Republican districts, are they in trouble now?

BROOKS: Well, first, there's no such thing as a moderate Democrat. I agree with your so-called preface to them.

LEVIN: Quickly, yes or no?

BROOKS: They are left wing. They ought to be beat if America is going to rescue our future.

GAETZ: They're stuck between the radical left voices in their party and their own voters and the voters always win.

LEVIN: Did they not deceive their voters at the get go?

GAETZ: They did and there's going to be a rude awakening because the voters always remember in November.

LEVIN: All right. It's been a pleasure, Congressmen.

BROOKS: Enjoyed it.

LEVIN: Thanks, Mark Gaetz. See you next time on "Life, Liberty & Levin."

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