Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joins me on the Charlie Kirk Show to talk about the latest FBI Director Nominee, Kash Patel. We discuss his background and why he should be the next Director of the FBI.
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00:01:49.000Senator, first and foremost, your reaction on this very impressive roster that President Trump is presenting in front of the U.S. Senate.
00:01:56.000Charlie, I appreciate the fact that President Trump is fulfilling yet another promise, and that was to the American people that he would drain the swamp and that he would return Washington and the federal government as being a government of, by, and for the people.
00:02:20.000It's not business as usual for For Donald Trump as it relates to Washington, D.C. bureaucrats and bureaucracies, this is all about the people and making this country great again and making certain that government works for the people who, by the way, are paying the salary and paying the bill for all of these bureaucrats and all of these agencies.
00:02:50.000Yeah, so Senator, let's get into some of the recent appointments, most notably Kash Patel.
00:02:55.000So this weekend, my friend Kash Patel and friend of this program got nominated for FBI Director.
00:03:01.000Do you plan to support his nomination with a vote?
00:03:29.000He prosecuted terrorists for the DOJ. He was recognized for achievement and excellence in his work as a prosecutor for the DOJ. He served as the lead staffer for the House Intel Committee for Chairman Devin Nunes.
00:03:47.000He worked on unraveling the Russia hoax and Russiagate, all of those activities.
00:03:55.000He was the Deputy at DNI, which is National Intelligence.
00:04:01.000He was the Chief of Staff for the DOD, which of course, you are responsible for making certain that the budget is working, that the personnel are in place.
00:04:15.000When you were Chief of Staff, At the nation's Department of Defense.
00:04:20.000So he brings this nice, solid background, this firm understanding of the importance of our nation's intelligence from each and every one of our intel agencies.
00:04:36.000Now, for the FBI, which is the premier agency in law enforcement, this is a good thing.
00:04:44.000To have someone that understands the inner workings.
00:04:47.000And I'll have to tell you, I was listening to an interview that someone who had been a deputy director at the FBI was giving, and oh, they were just trashing Kash Patel and the fact that he had been nominated and he wasn't an FBI man.
00:05:10.000This individual was more concerned about the effect of the individuals at the FBI than they were about the nation's security and making certain that the people know that they can put their trust and confidence in the FBI. And that is what people want to see.
00:05:36.000They don't want to know, don't need to know every little detail, but they're saying to The FBI, to the Department of Justice, to the Secret Service, to the IRS. We want to trust that what you tell us is accurate and correct.
00:05:51.000So let's play cut three here because obviously I think you were talking about Mr. Andy McCabe.
00:05:58.000It's a terrible development for the men and women of the FBI and also for the nation that depends on a highly functioning, professional, independent Federal Bureau of Investigation.
00:06:12.000The fact that Kash Patel is profoundly unqualified for this job is not even like a matter for debate.
00:06:19.000The installation, or the nomination, I guess we should say at this point, of Kash Patel's FBI director can only possibly be a plan to disrupt, to dismantle, to distract the FBI, and to possibly use it as a tool for the president's political agenda.
00:06:39.000Senator, that was the quote that I think you were saying.
00:06:42.000Kash Patel wants to restore faith and integrity in the FBI. Your thoughts?
00:06:48.000That is his goal, is faith and trust and for people to know that what the FBI is saying is accurate.
00:06:56.000And Charlie, just listen to what McCabe is saying there.
00:07:02.000It is not about the institution and the transparency of the institution or the fact that the institution is responsible to the people of the country.
00:07:11.000It is about the people That are there at the FBI. In other words, he's saying he's more concerned about his buddies and friends and former colleagues at the FBI than he is about the nation's security.
00:07:25.000And when I listen to that quote from him, those comments from him, that is what is first and foremost in my mind.
00:07:36.000And quite frankly, I think for many people, they are tired of this.
00:07:42.000It's so interesting when you look at polls like the CBS poll that came out last week.
00:07:48.000And Charlie, over 60% of the American people agree with the way Donald Trump is handling the transition and with the people that he is putting forward as nominees.
00:08:01.000And the reason for that is they're pretty fed up with this incestuous nature of these bureaucracies in D.C. They're fed up with the fact that That people don't go to work and they're still working remotely and they're still drawing a paycheck.
00:08:21.000But you have the IRS that has two years of the backlog in dealing with IRS filings.
00:08:29.000You have the VA that has a backlog of over 1 million cases that are awaiting adjudication for benefits in health care.
00:08:41.000And people are saying, hey, wait a minute.
00:08:43.000You know, you're not there for yourself.
00:08:46.000You are there as a public servant for the people of this country.
00:08:51.000And you should be there to help people, not to thwart or slow down the process, not to hide information, not to say, well, my opinion is this, therefore I'm going to do it this way, regardless of what the law or the facts People are tired of that.
00:09:14.000This is why Donald Trump has a mandate.
00:09:16.000It is why the people in this country are saying, let's get this thing back on the right track because we have been on the wrong track.
00:09:26.000Senator, thank you for your clarity on this.
00:09:30.000Let me just ask you, do you believe that there is enough momentum amongst your Senate colleagues so that Trump's picks can be installed both quickly and as selected?
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00:11:42.000That is patriotmobile.com slash charlie or call 972-PATRIOT. Quite an honor to have our next guest, an American legend, truly, Dr. Ron Paul.
00:11:53.000Dr. Paul is a former Republican congressman from Texas, chairman of the Ron Paul Institute, and host of the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
00:12:05.000So, Dr. Paul, I want to start with the Department of Government Efficiency.
00:12:09.000You've been talking about quite some time about the waste, the abuse, and how the size and scope of the federal government has gone way off course.
00:12:18.000Tell us, what is your reaction to Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency?
00:12:24.000Well, it's very, very positive because I think people who are hitting that up, they're very dedicated and they want to cut back and they're going to make every effort.
00:12:34.000Of course, they have a big job ahead because the number of people who want In reality, to cut back, those numbers aren't as great as they should be.
00:12:48.000And that's what bothers me because when you put all the factions together, somebody's special interests will be attacked when you start cutting.
00:12:58.000But the cutting will be met with a great deal of resistance, but it still has to be done because all this stuff is going to quit anyway.
00:13:09.000It'd be better that we do it in a deliberate fashion by just starting to cut.
00:13:18.000I think they're getting cheated, but it has to be done.
00:13:23.000Otherwise, if we end up with this deficit exploding, not that it already hasn't approached that, it's going to be bad for much worse than if we deliberately pass laws that reduce the size and scope of government.
00:13:42.000But government, by its very nature, is inefficient.
00:13:46.000And that is an overwhelming task to rein it in because that is its nature.
00:13:52.000The founders tried very hard to make sure that the people would contain the size and growth of government because they too knew governments could get out of hand.
00:14:13.000But I think that it's the principle of government because there are so many people involved for profits, money, and political power that won't put up with it.
00:14:26.000So, Dr. Paul, let's dive into one of those elements that you mentioned, which is that both sides, Republicans and Democrats, are hesitant to cut spending about their kind of cherished On the Democrat side, it's welfare and just general government waste.
00:14:40.000On the right, though, on Republican side, it's in the Department of Defense and the war industry.
00:14:46.000You've been doing this for decades, literally.
00:14:49.000Let me ask you this way before we go even deeper in specifics.
00:14:52.000Is there almost a bipartisan agreement of Republicans saying we won't touch welfare and Democrats saying we won't touch the warmongering and we end up with a welfare-warfare state?
00:15:03.000Well, that's basically what's happened over the many decades.
00:15:06.000It's probably not written, but it's understood because that's the way it works.
00:15:11.000Because, of course, it used to be that you had a progressive part of the Democrat Party And they were the anti-war people.
00:15:21.000But now they're as hawkish as some of the Republicans are.
00:16:03.000I think there's less of that understanding that one side would go after spending for military and the other on welfare.
00:16:12.000I think both sides err on both issues.
00:16:17.000But that is a problem because too many people become dependent.
00:16:22.000And of course, I always make the point that if you get it for free, and that's what's the problem with our monetary system, none of this could happen.
00:16:30.000If you have had a solid monetary system where government couldn't buy the debt, so it's going to be endless.
00:16:36.000They're never going to stop until something is done about the monetary system, and that'll take care of itself eventually.
00:16:42.000One of the most formative books I read growing up in politics was Three Words, End the Fed by Dr. Ron Paul.
00:16:51.000Doctor, I have to ask you, in all of your decades of experience, what are a couple noteworthy elements of government waste that are just some of the most egregious?
00:17:01.000Well, the one that bothers me the most and continues to is the endless spending on unconstitutional, illegal, and evil wars that we have started with our deeply flawed foreign policy of interventionism and not following the Constitution.
00:17:18.000Because since the Second World War, we've never even declared a war.
00:18:20.000Yes, food stamps and everything else, but this is food stamps for the rich, and especially food stamps for the military-industrial complex.
00:18:28.000That's the one that bothers me the most.
00:19:08.000We send all these weapons to Ukraine and the Middle East and all these countries, Syria and whatnot, but the money...
00:19:16.000The money is stolen from the American people one way or another, either by taxes or by stealing the value of money through inflation.
00:19:24.000And they send that up to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and the big companies.
00:19:30.000You know, the F-35 is a Boondoggle, I don't know how many trillions it's been spent already, and nobody believes it's a good airplane, but it's being built.
00:19:40.000Somebody said once, every state has a piece of the action.
00:21:06.000So it's a combination of violation of the Constitution, violation of morality, and then servicing the very, very wealthy in the military-industrial complex.
00:21:42.000They know that 90% of permanent change comes from the mind, and they work on eliminating the reason you gain this weight in the first place.
00:21:48.000There's no shortcuts, pills, or injections.
00:21:49.000Just solid, science-based nutrition and behavior change.
00:21:52.000And finally, a probably most importantly, I lost 30 pounds.
00:22:38.000So, Dr. Paul, I want to dive deeper into one of the elements here and explain it to the audience that might not be as economically initiated as you are.
00:22:48.000Can you explain how a central bank allows for big government programs to exist?
00:22:54.000It is the original sin and it also is the operative initial ingredient.
00:22:58.000You cannot build a recipe of big government spending without a central bank.
00:23:05.000Can you please educate our audience on that?
00:23:08.000Well, the whole thing is, if you didn't have the central bank, they'd have to get the money from somewhere.
00:23:12.000People would have to loan the money to the government.
00:23:15.000They could borrow the money, but now all they have to do, the principle, the economic activity, is the monetizing of debt.
00:23:25.000The Fed doesn't buy the treasury bills and the bonds directly, but there's dealers who are the middlemen.
00:23:32.000They buy it, and the Fed buys them up.
00:23:34.000So where did the Fed get the money to buy these bonds?
00:23:39.000While they do that, they're participating in rigging interest rates for the benefit of the management of the economy.
00:23:53.000And so I would say that if you're serious about cutting back on militarism and wars, you have to go ahead and look into the Federal Reserve.
00:24:02.000And that's why I've spent a couple of years ago at least asking for an audit of the Fed so that they can look into it and see what happens.
00:24:13.000You know, when we have these international financial crises, they shift money around to trillions and trillions of dollars, billing out their friends on the audit.
00:24:24.000One of the strongest arguments against the audit is, I want to know what's going on internationally behind the scenes.
00:24:51.000And the longer they keep propping it up and running up these debts, I saw a figure this morning about how much debt into the trillions of dollars that student loans are owed.
00:25:17.000And the malinvestment, that is what Business people do, and savers, and every paper does, where they're deceived into thinking, oh, interest rates are 3%.
00:25:27.000That's a good time to invest in condominiums or some other business.
00:25:32.000But real interest rates might be closer to what the credit cards cost.
00:25:38.000Real interest rates would be 9 or 10. Oh, I can't do this.
00:26:10.000They're going to undermine the reserve currency of the world, so we have to deal with them.
00:26:15.000No, we have to deal with our system, and we have to deal with providing a sound currency that deserves to be called the reserve currency of the world.
00:26:24.000So let's just think hypothetically here.
00:26:28.000President Trump, coming as the incoming president, has a mandate to try to reform government.
00:26:33.000And I know that you don't agree with him on everything, but there certainly is that kind of energy.
00:26:37.000What could the president do to audit, to reform the Federal Reserve without Congress?
00:28:53.000If every young American was able to be schooled in Austrian economics, Chicago School of Economics, outside of Keynesian economics, We'd have a different country.
00:29:04.000And you understand that money is a finite resource and must reflect reality, that deficits do matter, that business cycles just don't go poof for no reason, that interest rates are how we communicate with people.
00:29:16.000These are fundamental truths to our existence.
00:29:18.000I think that they're harmonic with nature and the natural order.
00:29:23.000Dr. Paul, You said we should liquidate our debt.
00:29:26.000Wouldn't that cause potential global markets to react quite violently?
00:29:31.000How would we even do something like that?
00:29:33.000Well, it is not so much that I just like the idea of liquidating debt.
00:30:30.000But one way or the other, I think the market is very, very powerful, and it will demand that you go back to square one unless you have a very rich uncle that's going to take care of you.
00:30:41.000And so, it's all about enlightenment and getting people to realize the situation that we are in.
00:30:48.000And Dr. Paul, part of that is government-run schools.
00:30:51.000President Trump has pledged to break apart and end the Department of Education and this idea that the state should be educating our children.
00:30:59.000That is something you've been calling for for quite some time.
00:31:01.000In fact, I remember you called for that in a presidential debate back in 2012, sunsetting the Department of Education.
00:31:09.000And I just want to tell you, this is the power of Ron Paul.
00:31:24.000Well, they're moving in the right directions and people are realizing that there'll be tremendous resistance because there's a lot of money involved.
00:31:32.000But the truth about the government education is very real and very bad.
00:31:39.000But the other thing is, I like to move back what would be ideal.
00:31:44.000And the ideal is not available to us now, but I'm involved in it.
00:31:48.000And that's homeschooling and private schooling.
00:31:50.000But that's a small percentage of people.
00:31:52.000But the Constitution didn't prohibit the states from having a responsibility in education, so they do.
00:31:59.000It's sort of like the horrible things about COVID. Some people just moved away from these states that abused the civil liberties, and people will move because of the educational system.
00:32:13.000To me, it's amazing that so many people We'll move for those reasons.
00:32:20.000And this sort of tells you how smart the founders were.
00:32:25.000If there's individual countries there, and there's freedom to move about, and one country goes way off base, I think that not a whole lot of people are moving, leaving Texas and said, oh, I could find a better life in California.
00:32:41.000You know, people are coming from California to Texas.
00:32:44.000So that's that was one thing the founders did that we're making use of.
00:32:49.000But really, the moral thing is the parents are responsible for the education of their kids and they need to deal with it.
00:32:57.000And when you think of wokeism in our public schools, it should excite a lot of parents to do something about it.
00:33:04.000Dr. Paul, are you optimistic that more and more people are opening their eyes away from statism and embracing a more liberty centric worldview?
00:33:12.000Yeah, I'm optimistic because I think the educational effort has been panning out.
00:33:19.000When I went first to Congress, not that I had anything to do with it, but nobody ever had heard about Austrian economics.
00:33:27.000I'd have people on major networks, what's this Australian economics all about?
00:33:32.000But now, a lot of people know about it.