Pete Hegseth is the first of President Trump's Supreme Court nominees to face a Senate confirmation hearing, and he's already proving to be a thorn in the side of his Democratic challenger, Amy Klobuchar.
00:05:39.100She's been a warrior at home taking care of the kids because they're sick with Novavirus.
00:05:44.540But even Tanya pointed out, she said to me, what kind of a country sends moms to the front lines?
00:05:50.660What kind of a country has government officials and puts this as their top priority that moms need to be sent into the battlefield and sent into war?
00:06:41.660Are the globalists gearing up for a pandemic scare after failing at the ballot box in November?
00:06:48.480There's a serious question that we should ask.
00:06:50.680And remember, the last pandemic started in the final year of President Trump's term.
00:06:57.380Well, just days before President Trump's inauguration, Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a bird flu state of emergency, granting himself sweeping powers reminiscent of those COVID-19 policies.
00:07:10.160This comes after a severe case of H5N1 bird flu was already reported down in Louisiana.
00:07:16.300Critics warned that pandemic fears may be weaponized to challenge President Trump's mandate, including the nomination of RFK Jr. to lead HHS.
00:07:26.060Is this a health crisis or a power play?
00:07:28.900Last summer, Dr. Peter McCullough warned us about the bird flu linking the virus's rapid spread to gain-of-function research, now a common practice in many labs globally, just like the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:07:40.160Dr. McCullough urges early prevention just in case, recommending a contagion emergency kit from the wellness company.
00:07:48.160His medical board-approved solution with five critical life-saving modifications like ivermectin, Tamiflu, and nebulizer and hydroxychloroquine.
00:07:56.120Every household can now have access to these hard-to-get medications in the event of another pandemic.
00:08:01.780Get yours now by filling out a digital intake form and your kit arrives in one to two weeks.
00:08:08.160Don't wait until the deep state puts their plans into action.
00:08:38.940A lot of fireworks from the Senate side of Washington today.
00:08:42.920Obviously, I know you're not on the Armed Services Committee, but wanted to know if you had any comment on Pete Hegseth, President Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, and this really whirlwind hearing that just finished moments ago.
00:08:58.380I was able to watch snippets in between my meetings.
00:09:02.100And first of all, I think Pete did really well.
00:09:03.960I think the Democrats sounded incredibly shrill.
00:09:06.100If anything, they were leveling more of an indictment against the Biden administration and how poorly they've run the Pentagon.
00:09:15.500Pete's goal is to make sure we remove wokeness from the military, that we focus on lethality, that we support the men and women, the warfighters.
00:09:32.360But I think just the symbol of him being Secretary of Defense, somebody who's been in the trenches, who's faced danger, who will have the backs of the finest among us, the men and women of our military, I think that would be a powerful recruitment symbol, but it'll also be, I think, powerful from the people who are currently serving.
00:09:51.260Well, and I think really, too, there are a lot of questions when it comes to Secretary of Defense.
00:09:55.840I noticed that there weren't a lot of questions about the use of our military.
00:10:00.260Now, certainly, those political questions and that strategy goes through the president, and that's his direction.
00:10:05.560But for a nominee who's going to be in charge of the warfighters, we really didn't get a lot of questions about the use of our military, a lot of questions about foreign policy, certainly hardly any questions about Afghanistan, hardly any questions about Ukraine.
00:10:20.820In fact, it was Pete Hegseth himself that tended to bring that up much more than certainly any of the Democrat senators.
00:10:27.440Well, what I would really like to know is what this administration's approach is going to be in terms of defense spending.
00:10:35.400You know, Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex.
00:10:38.000I think one of the facts that came out during this come out during the Ukraine war, Russia can build about four and a half million or produce four and a half million of these 155 millimeter shells at about 600 bucks a pop.
00:10:49.300The West, in total, can only produce about two million.
00:10:56.740So, again, we are getting hosed by the military industrial complex.
00:11:00.940I would really like to see Elon Musk devote a lot of his effort in terms of bringing efficiency to our procurement process and making sure that what we are purchasing, A, we get at a good cost, so we're not getting hosed.
00:11:13.540But secondly, just completely rethink what it is we're buying.
00:11:18.640We buy these, you know, platforms that can be taken out with an asymmetric drone or now hypersonic missile.
00:11:53.760I was just I was asked about this question a couple of days ago in an interview and, you know, I heard some comments about, oh, well, you know, we need to help Ukraine win on the battlefield and we just need to send them more money and send them more weapons.
00:12:06.480And, you know, I kind of turn around and say, where are they coming from?
00:12:09.460Because we've already had our admirals in the Pacific as telling us that our fleet is all is starting to run low on munitions, particularly any aircraft missiles and these SM2s that are used that are, by the way, are have been used to quite effect in the Red Sea against the Houthis.
00:12:26.640We're already hearing talk from our units in garrison here in the United States regarding artillery shells and the fact that those keep being sent over to Ukraine.
00:12:35.460So I guess my question is, where is all this coming from?
00:12:38.900Because we don't even have, in some cases, the manufacturing capacity, let alone the the retention in our own stockpiles to go into this stuff.
00:12:47.600So it's either you're going to talk more spending, you're going to talk manufacturing, potentially procurement from overseas.
00:12:53.100I'm not even really sure that's going to be a huge question and certainly something that I think that when we talk about waste, fraud and abuse,
00:13:01.100we can also talk about what should our priorities be when it comes to spending.
00:13:06.380And certainly we we know who's who's benefiting quite greatly from these wars and it tends to be the people that are being paid to fight them.
00:13:16.060Well, first of all, one thing Washington, D.C. is not particularly good at is recognizing reality.
00:13:21.000And the first awful reality, I don't like it, is Vladimir Putin will not lose this war.
00:13:43.920I think one of the most depraved explanations for sending another $100 billion to Ukraine was, you know, given inside the beltway here saying that, oh, this money is really not going to Ukraine.
00:13:55.220It's going to create jobs in your state.
00:13:58.680Listen, I'm all for jobs in America here.
00:14:02.160But at the expense of the young lives in Russia and Ukraine, again, I take no joy that Russian conscripts are dying in that, you know, just meat grinder of a stalemate.
00:14:16.000So, again, you have to face those realities.
00:14:17.940And, again, we have to ask ourselves some real hard questions.
00:14:20.460How much money are we, you know, fueling into the military-industrial complex?
00:14:26.340To what extent are we not getting our money's worth?
00:14:28.700I'd say we're not getting our money's worth at all.
00:14:31.280And we've got to really rethink what it is we really need to procure.
00:14:59.120And I think a lot of people later came on board saying that J.D. Vance was a fantastic pick for a vice president.
00:15:04.680And, of course, he drew upon those experiences.
00:15:07.760And not only that, but also the lies that were told to sell that war that he thought that he was signing up for, that he was going to be going over and serving the country and serving his nation.
00:15:19.200And he was happy to do so and proud to do so.
00:15:21.100And certainly Pete Heggseth said that again and again when he was on when he was on, you know, on the stand in his hearing today.
00:15:28.440And it's something that we've got a couple of minutes before the break, but Tulsi Gabbard as well, who's going to be coming up.
00:15:33.880This is a position where, look, she's she's not with Republicans on on every issue across the board.
00:15:38.320But when it comes to these issues of national security, she draws on her own experience as a combat veteran.
00:15:45.100Bobby Kennedy keeps reminding us that his uncle, JFK, said that the number one priority, that the top job responsibility of the president of the United States was to keep America out of wars.
00:15:56.300And from my standpoint, you get war fighters in these positions, they understand that war is hell.
00:16:01.200They're going to want to try and keep America out of wars.
00:16:03.340And I think of any president that during my lifetime, I think Donald Trump is probably the person the least likely to engage us in war.
00:16:11.420And the prime example is when I ran down the drone and the war drums were beating and everybody, you've got to retaliate.
00:16:18.020At the very end, President Trump finally asked the relevant question.
00:16:20.660First of all, how much that drone cost?
00:17:03.860This idea that we would have a managed decline or this idea that we could constantly go to the Fed or constantly go to the international markets and say, oh, you're going to buy our debt.
00:17:14.560You're going to buy our T-bills and we're going to just be able to keep spending into oblivion.
00:17:18.320Well, at some point, the rubber does actually have to meet the road.
00:17:21.380And at some point, if our expenditures and even our debt service becomes so much higher to our GDP ratio, then we are going to we are going to suddenly get into very dire straits.
00:18:45.280Well, you know, he obviously meets with senators and then he gets in front of the committee on the hearing.
00:18:50.340And if he performs well there, if they don't see anything in the background check, and I don't think they have, and he does well in the hearings, that pretty well sets the stage in for a confirmation vote.
00:19:01.160There'll be a vote on cloture, then a vote on confirmation.
00:19:52.180I think Tom Kahn's been pointing this out, that I think only two nominees in many, many years have not gotten all the votes of all the United States senators.
00:20:02.080So, again, the default position of both sides when they're guys in the White House or gals in the White House would be to confirm the nominees he puts forward.
00:20:14.180And I think that when you see a tectonic victory like President Trump had back in just a couple of weeks ago here, we're acting as if that the political winds haven't changed, that the American people certainly haven't had their voice told.
00:20:49.340And these are the people that he's chosen, whether it's Pete Hegseth, whether it's RFK Jr., whether it's Tulsi Gabbard.
00:20:54.660And one that I wanted to ask you about as well, Russ Vogt over at OMB.
00:20:59.080So The Washington Post came out yesterday and released this endorsement list basically coming out and saying they endorsed just about all of the nominees with the exceptions of RFK, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Russ Vogt.
00:21:12.220Now, for a lot of folks, they say the Office of Budget, you know, Office of Management and Budget, you know, it's not really something that is on anyone's top of their bingo card.
00:21:20.380I don't know if it's going to get the same ratings as the Secretary of Defense hearing.
00:21:25.500But, Senator, walk us through the importance of OMB and the wider budgeting process when it comes to Washington.
00:21:32.300First of all, I could not have been more pleased when I heard that President Trump is going to re-nominate Russ Vogt to be director of OMB.
00:21:39.440He's in charge of the budget, but he's also in charge of making sure that all the decisions of the executive branch can be implemented.
00:21:46.340Regulations, again, it's a crucial decision.
00:21:49.060And to have somebody with Russ Vogt's experience, plus his dedication to trying to reduce the size, scope, and cost of government will be crucial.
00:21:56.820One of the things I think the most important thing President Trump has to do is return us to pre-pandemic levels of spending.
00:22:04.420I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal pointing out that in 2019, total federal spending was $4.4 trillion.
00:22:39.980By the way, borrowing the money all the way.
00:22:41.620But that's exactly what the federal government has done.
00:22:43.540So what President Trump has to do is embrace and fight for a spending level that will dramatically reduce the size, scope, and cost of government as it exists today.
00:22:54.660And I've laid out a number of options.
00:22:56.200If you'd go back to, for example, 1998, Bill Clinton's spending levels, increase them by population and inflation, and use today's Social Security, Medicare, and interest numbers, you'd be spending $5.5 trillion this year as opposed to $7 trillion.
00:23:11.300If you go back to President Obama's 2014 budget, do the same thing, we'd be at $6.2 trillion.
00:23:17.020If you use President Trump's own budget, his last budget for the spending for 2025, again, use Social Security, Medicare, and interest as they are today, that'd be $6 trillion.
00:23:28.380So I'm just trying to lay out the rationale.
00:23:30.940We should not be spending any more than $5.5 to $6 trillion this year, and that should be used as our baseline for our 10-year budget in the future.
00:23:40.140Again, $7 trillion is completely unacceptable.
00:23:44.160Biden budgeted $7.3 trillion for this year, again, compared to $4.4 trillion only five years ago.
00:23:53.340And I'm going to be pushing hard for this, again, returning to a pre-pandemic level spending, which is what every family, every business in America would do, just not the federal government who has the power to print money and devalue your currency.
00:24:06.620One final thought, $19.98 is now worth 51 cents.
00:24:17.620That's what this massive printing of money, this massive debt of spending has done.
00:24:21.500It's devalued our currency, primarily hitting, it's a very aggressive thing to do.
00:24:26.360It is the tax on poor people in the middle class, but primarily hitting poor people.
00:24:30.700Well, actually, Senator, we had the great Glenn Jacobs on here a couple of weeks ago, and we were doing, funny enough, so we just had the Christmas season, and we did an entire special on It's a Wonderful Life.
00:24:45.040And we were talking about the film, and we were sort of going through the ins and outs of it, and, you know, the different depictions of, really, America.
00:24:52.160And, of course, everyone remembers that there's this crucial element in the story where George Bailey's character loses $8,000.
00:25:01.080And he lost $8,000, and, you know, that's a lot of money, right?
00:25:06.740I certainly wouldn't want to lose $8,000.
00:25:08.540But that film came out just after World War II, and we looked it up when we said it was 1946.
00:25:14.640And so what I was saying is what we need to do with these old movies is you need to bring in sort of an inflation converter.
00:25:21.960We call it the Bidenflation converter and have it pop up any time someone in these old movies mentions an amount of money.
00:25:28.880And so that dollar amount, and I looked it up.
00:25:30.760Actually, we were live on the show, and I looked, and I said, what is $8,000 in today's money?
00:25:35.340And, you know, it goes back and forth depending on how you calculate the inflation, but it's somewhere around $135,000 today.
00:25:45.480So when we see the film and we say $8,000, we're like, oh, my gosh.
00:25:50.760You know, and then, of course, as we all know, it leads George Bailey to contemplate suicide, and he's yelling at his family, and then the angel comes in.
00:25:58.900But we realize that there's a reason that for some reason when we hear those numbers, $8,000 doesn't resonate the way that it would have in just 1946.
00:26:12.200And so I keep saying there's another one of these in Bells of St. Mary's and a number of these other old movies, these classics, that it's actually a way to teach people about inflation because you realize that that was an incredibly significant amount of money to our grandparents' generation, our parents' generation.
00:26:29.720And yet we don't even realize how far it's come.
00:26:32.500So perhaps that can be my contribution to help explain to people that when you use the old movies, it's actually a great filter for understanding this stuff.
00:27:14.040But you do not want to have this kind of hyperinflation as we've had just relentlessly because, again, the federal government spends more than it brings in.
00:27:33.020And so this is something too, and what's so insidious about inflation is that because it's an invisible tax, it's a phantom tax.
00:27:44.700It's something where people can go and look at their bank account.
00:27:47.520I was just having this conversation with a family member the other day and saying, when your money is sitting in your bank account, you think, okay, my money's there.
00:27:54.140I haven't spent it, so it's the same amount.
00:28:14.680So you're losing amounts of that dollar every single day when you leave it in there.
00:28:19.800And, of course, the people want to do this.
00:28:21.600And, you know, this is, you know, I don't want to turn the program too much into Dave Ramsey here, but, you know, you can go and check him out.
00:28:28.180And he's got some fantastic tips for how to deal with that and how to try to deal with inflation and the difference between, you know, keeping your money and checking and savings and the rest of this.
00:28:36.840But I think that as well, though, a lot of government, and to your point, Senator, a lot of government hasn't really wrapped their minds around, and a lot of people in government, in Washington at least, have actually understanding the implications of this for the middle class.
00:28:50.480Or worse, they know about it and just don't care.
00:28:53.620Well, again, if you had $100,000 in your bank account at the start of the pandemic, now it's only worth $80,000.
00:28:58.960It's like the government came and taxed $20,000 out of your $100,000 bank account.
00:31:16.300What they're talking about is hormonal therapy or sex reassignment surgery on children.
00:31:22.100I thought fixing me externally would fix me internally, but of course I was wrong.
00:31:27.840The fact that the state thinks that they're more important and have a better say in what happens to your child over the actual parent's opinion is egregious.
00:32:54.300So when we're looking at this film, tell me why you felt that this was the right project to get involved in and why you felt that now is the time to really put this into a documentary.
00:33:06.540I feel like this documentary was so important because it goes into depth about how, about all the, on how it tears away families, how it's infecting our institutions.
00:33:24.220And it takes from a bunch of different perspectives of people like me, who have been transitioned, who have been damaged by it, by doctors, by parents, who have seen this happen firsthand with their children.
00:33:42.740And a lot of people still believe that this is not happening, that this is just too crazy to be going on in our medical system.
00:33:49.240So they have to see the damage for what it is.
00:33:53.520I could talk all day about the things that I have been through, what the doctors did to me, but it will never do as much justice as seeing it.
00:34:06.340And so we realize that you coming forward in this is a huge issue for the people that have been pushing this all for so long.
00:34:16.020Because people, again, and we've had you on before, and you've talked about how the way the doctors explain it is that it's going to help you.
00:34:53.280But, you know, when you see your child sick, when you see your child going through something, even when it's just, you know, a bug like that, as a parent, you want to do anything you can to make them feel better.
00:35:06.120It causes you that type of emotional distress, that type of psychological distress to want them to feel better.
00:35:13.040And, unfortunately, it seems that this industry plays on those fears and plays on those parental instincts to drive them to this extreme behavior, which, by the way, they have a profit incentive already built in for.
00:35:32.540I mean, they play on really the single biggest fear that a parent could ever have regarding their child.
00:35:38.480Like, no parent ever wants to see their child sick or even outlive them.
00:35:44.860A lot of that they told my mom and dad and that they continue to tell to millions of parents across the country and across the West is that they are dealing with a potentially suicidal or dead daughter or son.
00:36:00.140And that the only way out for them is to allow them to embark on the medical transition process, which is completely irreversible, which is dangerous, especially for a developing body.
00:36:12.280And they only talk about things like affirmation or gender euphoria or happiness in your transition.
00:36:19.700But they never really ever talk about the negative effects of how these treatments will actually affect the body.
00:36:26.300They have no we have no data really long term about how this actually impacts the system body.
00:36:33.020So we're just we're they're experimenting on the on these children entirely.
00:36:37.080And they never talk about the fact that.
00:36:39.800Transition could actually lead your child to suicide.
00:36:41.980They didn't tell I was not suicidal until I began on these treatments.
00:36:50.700And when I decided to come out of this, when I told my doctors that it was making me worse, that my health was compromised, that I didn't want to be a part of this any longer.
00:37:27.700Well, for the most part, I got a very nonchalant response from a lot of my doctors when I told them about the regret, about choosing to go back and going off of hormones and such.
00:37:40.480They never really helped me with any of the medical process of stopping.
00:37:49.480I had no guidance, so I had to figure all the medical parts of it out basically on my own.
00:37:57.260And there was even one doctor, the psychologist who offered me a surgery, who told me, well, aren't you sure?
00:38:07.460Are you sure this is what you want to do?
00:38:10.880Are you you don't think that this is just another part of your transition or perhaps that you're non-binary?
00:38:16.700Almost as if she was trying to still keep me in the system.
00:38:20.420And there is no acknowledgement of people like me in the medical system of people of the transition or the people who go through it.
00:38:30.900So even if doctors want to help, chances are they might be afraid to because you're effectively just continuing the experimentation that's already happened.
00:38:38.820And so I just want to be clear about what you just said, that when you started going to your therapist, so someone who is supposed to be there to help you with what you're going through in your life, their response was to almost reject what you were telling them?
00:38:59.560Yes, I mean, it was just treated as like almost like a normal outcome.
00:39:08.040And when I asked for things like regular blood tests or even changing my sex marker in the system back to female or changing my my name back, they refused to do so.
00:39:20.020I still get letters and emails from my old health care provider referring to me as a young man named Leo.
00:39:28.540And again, it just shows what it is, because to your point, they got you in the system.
00:39:39.020And then their job isn't to help you get out of the system and go on to live a productive life.
00:44:09.280Forbes has a report that in 2021 said that a few years ago McDonald's changed their policy and now instructs employees to provide the choice of toys by theme and not the gender of the child.
00:44:24.300But, of course, you know, look, it's like you would have Barbie and Hot Wheels at the same time.
00:44:30.720And, you know, I guess there's some girls that are into Hot Wheels.
00:45:41.500There have only ever been two genders.
00:45:43.280By the way, this came up during Pete Hegseth's confirmation because, you know, he was up there.
00:45:48.500And obviously that's not, you know, in the film.
00:45:50.820But there was this there was this comment.
00:45:52.700It's incredible where Kirsten Gillibrand was asking, you know, you know, you don't want women in combat and you don't want women on the front lines.
00:46:00.620And we need to draft moms and all this stuff.
00:46:02.600And I was looking up the votes of all the Democrats.
00:46:06.880And for all the ones that are there, they all voted for Rachel Levin to be the admiral of the Health and Human Services Department.
00:46:16.380And so I would have loved to have referencing another Daily Wire movie here.
00:46:22.320But I would have loved to have Pete Hegseth say, Senator, you keep using that word, but I wonder if you could define it.
00:47:26.180And what do you hope that people get from it?
00:47:28.680So this film illustrates some of the dangers and the damages of gender ideology through our country.
00:47:40.280And it features the perspectives of different commissioners, different parents who have had to deal with this and their children, different professionals who have had to deal with this in their fields.
00:47:50.600And it's one of the most important documentaries on our time on this film, on the subjects.