The Charlie Kirk Show - The Hidden Fraud Draining Main Street ft. Kelly Loeffler

00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.

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00:01:09.000 All right, welcome to hour two of the Charlie Kirk Show is underway, and we are turning our sights on Iran. 0.88

00:01:16.000 There has been, I would say, diversion.

00:01:18.000 Will he or won't he?

00:01:20.000 Yeah, will he or won't he?

00:01:22.000 And we're talking obviously about whether or not Trump is going to take kinetic military action, fully support economic, moral support of the Iranian people, all that stuff.

00:01:32.000 There's a huge question about military action.

00:01:35.000 To help us unpack this is Maya Tusi, I hope I got that approximately correct, founder of Tussi TV, based out of London.

00:01:43.000 He's Iranian.

00:01:44.000 Welcome to the show.

00:01:45.000 Thank you for having me, guys.

00:01:46.000 Thank you.

00:01:46.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:01:47.000 So there's multiple questions swirling right now about the Iranian question if you're an American, right?

00:01:53.000 Will President Trump take action militarily to support the independence movement that is obviously pouring over into the streets?

00:02:00.000 But there's also a question about how brutal has the regime crackdown on protesters really become.

00:02:07.000 I've seen some reports quote a number of 2,500 dead, which is already extraordinary, by the way.

00:02:12.000 I've seen other reports that it's 12,000.

00:02:14.000 Do you have any insight on what the accurate figure is?

00:02:17.000 Yeah, so you can't really take any of these because in the past, we've had a lot of uprisings and crackdowns.

00:02:24.000 I've had hundreds and hundreds, sometimes over a thousand when it comes to the massacre.

00:02:29.000 But obviously, the official figures that the mainstream media keep going with is 1,000, sometimes 600.

00:02:36.000 On the ground, all the information that we have from the hospitals and the whistleblowers obviously goes to the idea that it's thousands.

00:02:46.000 There was a leak from the inner circle of Al-Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, a few days ago, and the documents signed by him, the direct order, and they believe they themselves that it was about 12,000.

00:02:59.000 Now, there are also unofficial figures that's just come out that is closer to 20,000.

00:03:03.000 But as President Trump said, even one is enough.

00:03:05.000 And that is the main argument.

00:03:06.000 Right now, the mainstream media want to get into the debate.

00:03:09.000 Well, if it's 2,000 instead of 4,000, then is it really our business?

00:03:14.000 That's the problem.

00:03:15.000 Right.

00:03:16.000 There is sort of a, it's a weird math you have to contemplate if you're going to consider military action.

00:03:22.000 Is there a threshold?

00:03:24.000 Is there a, is there a, I mean, it's an awkward question to ask, but certainly when you're dealing with Iran that has a history of squashing uprisings, often violently with lethal force, this is not necessarily something new, but this is new because of the scale and the scope and just how widespread these protests have become in Iran.

00:03:44.000 Why don't you take us into that psychology about what is driving these protests?

00:03:50.000 Why is this unique?

00:03:51.000 Why is this new?

00:03:52.000 And why does this maybe portend an actual change in leadership in Iran?

00:03:57.000 Yeah, so firstly, when it comes to any potential action by the US and President Trump, it's not really just about the scale of the uprising, which I'll get into.

00:04:06.000 It's also about how dangerous the Islamic Republic has become to the world, including to President Trump directly, because they tried to assassinate him a couple of times over the last couple of years. 0.96

00:04:15.000 The reality of the situation is that this uprising was obviously building up for a very long time.

00:04:22.000 They have had attempts of uprisings.

00:04:25.000 And of course, there's been massive crackdowns because the regime, as the Iranians would call them, the Islamic occupation regime, don't really care.

00:04:32.000 They will just kill everybody.

00:04:34.000 But this time round, the regime is extremely weak.

00:04:38.000 The trigger point was when the currency in Iran collapsed.

00:04:41.000 And that was over two weeks ago, almost three weeks ago.

00:04:44.000 And of course, there's a lack of water, lack of electricity, a lack of money, lack of jobs, and lack of recognition on the international stage.

00:04:53.000 And people said enough is enough.

00:04:55.000 This time around, it wasn't just anger.

00:04:58.000 They are very, very motivated and they know they've got nothing else to lose.

00:05:02.000 Usually in the past, when you kill a few hundred people, people would go home, they get scared.

00:05:06.000 But after thousands have been massacred, people continue to stay out because they also finally have a unifying leader in the crown prince, Vazda Pahlavi.

00:05:14.000 And President Trump until now has had their backs, which has really helped people on the ground.

00:05:21.000 But they definitely need support as soon as possible.

00:05:24.000 So is there an ideological platform that unites these people other than wanting to overthrow the current government?

00:05:32.000 Like, do we have, let's just be right, are there Islamists who also oppose the government?

00:05:37.000 And also, are there steps the government could take to try to mollify this short of total collapse?

00:05:44.000 Like, I guess, apparently, I learned recently there actually is a council of clerics that could, for lack of a better term, fire the Ayatollah and say, there's a new one.

00:05:53.000 Could something like that happen?

00:05:54.000 No, no.

00:05:55.000 So people keep comparing it to Gorbachev and Soviet Union.

00:05:58.000 It's very, very different because this is a cult of personality behind one figurehead.

00:06:03.000 And the reality is they basically pretended to do what you just said, like reforming from within, things like that over the last few uprisings.

00:06:12.000 People know that this is an occupation since 1979.

00:06:15.000 There was a paramilitary occupation that basically resulted thanks to Jimmy Carter, US Democrats, MI6, the Fifth Republic in France, that basically decided, let's get behind the Ayatollahs because they were scared that the Soviet Union in the middle of Cold War are going to take over Iran in the 70s.

00:06:33.000 So they thought, let's back these guys. 0.98

00:06:35.000 They seem to be stupid enough that they can be controlled as puppets. 1.00

00:06:38.000 That backfired because the next day the Islamists went on and chanted death to America. 1.00

00:06:42.000 Right now, your question about what, you know, in terms of power vacuum or who is involved, well, Iran is very different to countries like Libya or Iraq or Syria.

00:06:52.000 There are no extremist groups in that sense.

00:06:54.000 There is no vacuum because people finally are united behind one concept.

00:06:59.000 Even if not necessarily the crown prince, which it is true, they are all united behind the original flag of Iran, the history, the heritage.

00:07:07.000 They simply want their country back.

00:07:09.000 It's more similar to the situation in Poland.

00:07:11.000 After the National Socialists in Germany got kicked out, and then again, after the communists from the Soviet Union got kicked out, Poland said, we just got our country back.

00:07:18.000 That's basically their fight.

00:07:20.000 It's not necessarily like Iraq or Syria.

00:07:23.000 There are no really extremist groups.

00:07:25.000 There is a tiny group called Mujahideen, MEK, and there are about 13 of them.

00:07:30.000 They're smaller than the Green Party.

00:07:32.000 Nobody cares about them.

00:07:34.000 But that's the main goal, that people don't really care about those guys.

00:07:38.000 They are basically a Marxist Islamic group.

00:07:41.000 They used to be with the IRGC in the 70s against the king, but then they split.

00:07:46.000 They basically had a fight.

00:07:48.000 And now they also want to bring down the regime because they want to have a different version of communist Islamic Republic. 0.55

00:07:54.000 That is the biggest problem.

00:07:55.000 Well, what about another concern I know we've seen is America's repeatedly had some involvement in the Middle East where you topple a government and then our own government is surprised to learn, oh, wait, there's a lot of ethnic grievances in this society.

00:08:08.000 This happened in Iraq.

00:08:09.000 Notoriously, President Bush apparently didn't quite get the Sunni-Shia split before we actually intervened.

00:08:15.000 We've seen it, of course, in Syria.

00:08:18.000 Lebanon is basically defined by those splits.

00:08:21.000 I know in Iran, there is Azeris as well as historical Iranians.

00:08:26.000 There's other smaller groups.

00:08:27.000 Is there any risk of a crack up along those lines if there's a power vacuum?

00:08:32.000 So this was a worry a couple of decades ago.

00:08:35.000 In fact, under the Islamic Republic, these different ethnic groups and regional groups were essentially being divided.

00:08:42.000 But over the last few years, the movement against the Islamic Republic has actually united them.

00:08:47.000 You now have the Persian Iranians, so that's my ethnicity.

00:08:50.000 We've got the Kurdish Iranians, Azeris, and all the others. 0.97

00:08:52.000 Even the Kurds in Iran, compared to the Kurds in Turkey or other places, they are actually calling for a united Iran and they're calling for the Crown Prince to return.

00:09:00.000 So all these other ethnic groups and other religious groups are getting together.

00:09:04.000 So ironically, the IRGC have united them.

00:09:07.000 But again, as I mentioned, it's very different to the situation in Iraq.

00:09:11.000 But it's the liberal mainstream media that are not helping the situation.

00:09:14.000 They continue to spread this propaganda.

00:09:17.000 For example, the CNN and many others have been calling it economic protests when it's an actual uprising.

00:09:23.000 They're literally calling for the overthrow of the regime.

00:09:26.000 But at least they're calling it something compared to certain other people, the self-appointed queens of expertise, like Candace Owens, who are saying that there are no protests.

00:09:35.000 There is no uprising.

00:09:36.000 It's just a start by the Jews. 1.00

00:09:37.000 She literally said that yesterday.

00:09:40.000 And that is embarrassing.

00:09:41.000 There are millions of people in Iran who are currently under occupation.

00:09:44.000 Tens of thousands have been killed.

00:09:45.000 At least thousands have been killed.

00:09:47.000 And apparently it's just the Jews. 0.97

00:09:50.000 But right now, people in Iran have called for the support of both the Crown Prince as their leader and the president of the United States.

00:09:58.000 It's different to 10 years ago.

00:10:00.000 If you had told me five years ago, 10 years ago, would you like the U.S. to get involved?

00:10:03.000 I would have said probably not because you need the consent of the public.

00:10:07.000 You need that consensus.

00:10:09.000 And they know they don't really want boots on the ground.

00:10:11.000 They don't want to put U.S. soldiers at risk.

00:10:14.000 You simply need to have a strategic, precise, targeted attack, similar to when recently they picked up Medora.

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00:12:23.000 Go ahead, Blake.

00:12:24.000 We've got more questions.

00:12:25.000 We've got a lot more questions for our guest.

00:12:28.000 And we were talking a lot about the Shah going in. 0.53

00:12:33.000 You were saying that there's large, there's actually almost unanimous support for the Shah.

00:12:38.000 But I guess my first question is, what does that actually mean?

00:12:42.000 Because my understanding is that Reza Pahlavi has basically just said, I'm willing to be a constitutional monarch.

00:12:50.000 And so then what would that mean?

00:12:52.000 Could we get Islamist parties running in the election who would then act on his behalf?

00:12:56.000 Or is there any is there a platform that exists other than reinstall this old monarch?

00:13:02.000 Well, that's a very good question, actually, because their propaganda has been for decades, and especially recently, that, oh, you can't bring back the king because that's an absolute monarchy.

00:13:12.000 That's dictatorship.

00:13:13.000 This is the 21st century.

00:13:13.000 Not really.

00:13:15.000 It works in Britain, more modern Britain, technically, a constitutional monarchy and actually having parliamentary democracy.

00:13:22.000 And it's going to work in Iran because these two countries have had the history and the heritage.

00:13:27.000 If I were to create a new country from scratch, I would probably create more of an American model with the constitution and everything else because the Republic in America has the good checks and balances.

00:13:36.000 But in those cultures, constitutional monarchy works.

00:13:38.000 And your question is actually very important because what is the limit?

00:13:42.000 Because the crown prince, his values are liberal democracy and of course freedom and free speech.

00:13:48.000 Does there have to be a line when it comes to certain groups or ideologies being restricted?

00:13:54.000 Or do you just allow it to happen?

00:13:56.000 So my personal opinion is that it's a very gray area because yes, my instinct would say, yeah, probably ban the radical communists and ban Islamists, radical Islamists from having a party, but then doesn't that create a bigger problem in terms of underground movements?

00:14:11.000 But I don't really think there's any problem overall in the cultures like Iran.

00:14:16.000 They don't really have Islamist problems and they don't really have communist problems.

00:14:20.000 They are socialists like any other country.

00:14:22.000 And generally speaking, the culture, obviously around 30% of Iran are Muslim, practicing Muslim, and they're all Shia.

00:14:29.000 They're not necessarily ISIS al-Qaeda.

00:14:31.000 Apologies for the connection, by the way.

00:14:33.000 And so I'm not really afraid of that.

00:14:36.000 But I think if you're going to go with liberal democracy, you're just going to have to allow people to have the freedom to set up their parties and basically have the checks and balances to ensure that the monarch prevents anybody from becoming a tyrant.

00:14:49.000 So Myra Tussi, founder of Tusi TV, thank you again.

00:14:52.000 This has been a fascinating discussion.

00:14:54.000 I have a kind of a pointed question.

00:14:55.000 I'm just going to preface it at the top.

00:14:57.000 So we had Elika LeBon on, another Iranian, perhaps you know her, and she stated to us that the protests will be successful only with outside intervention.

00:15:11.000 It felt like a direct pitch for American intervention.

00:15:15.000 I, you know, am American.

00:15:18.000 I'm born here, raised here, probably gonna die here.

00:15:21.000 My kids are born here.

00:15:22.000 I care about America, okay?

00:15:24.000 And forgive me if I have not heard this story before, and it feels like we perhaps there is a propaganda or a messaging campaign going on that wants to sort of, you know, lead us down the path of another foreign intervention.

00:15:38.000 Now, I've heard you say that this is different.

00:15:40.000 This is not like Libya. 0.89

00:15:42.000 This is not like Iraq. 0.99

00:15:43.000 And I actually do believe you, and I actually am convinced of that, that Iran is different.

00:15:48.000 I support economic warfare to bring down the regime.

00:15:51.000 I support moral support from afar.

00:15:55.000 How am I to interpret these signals, though, that we are perhaps getting dogwalked into another foreign conflict in the Middle East when we have our own problems here at home?

00:16:03.000 And what would your ask of the United States be?

00:16:07.000 Yes, well, the Americans should put America first, and you should not really get dragged into different walls.

00:16:13.000 And as I said, I'm not advocating for the U.S. troops to put boots on the ground.

00:16:18.000 Iranians are not asking that either. 0.94

00:16:21.000 This is not Iraq in 2003.

00:16:23.000 On the one hand, on a more kind of personal emotional level, I would say, in my own subjective opinion, well, the U.S. government in 1979 with Jimmy Carter caused this chaos, not necessarily just for the Iranians, for themselves and for the region.

00:16:37.000 You create instability and an enemy.

00:16:40.000 It would be nice if you could fix it for yourself, at least.

00:16:43.000 But you don't have to directly do regime change because the people are ready to finish the job.

00:16:48.000 Right now, the priority is to stop the killings and paralyze the regime.

00:16:52.000 And the hope is that those inside the Iranian military who are saying they are defecting, they can defect and they can continue and finish the revolution.

00:17:00.000 That is a priority.

00:17:02.000 I'm not asking for President Trump to come in and take over Iran and force them to change their regime.

00:17:07.000 Simply help the people to finish the job that they want to do.

00:17:10.000 Because whether we like it or not, this is the American empire and the United States is the world place.

00:17:14.000 It doesn't have to mean that American soldiers' lives should be at risk every single day.

00:17:18.000 Doesn't mean the Americans have to be involved with every war.

00:17:21.000 But if America is not keeping an eye on the world, the Chinese will. 1.00

00:17:26.000 Well, so one quick question, and we're nearing the end here, so you can make a quick response.

00:17:30.000 But if you say our goal is to stop the killings, what would be the military strike America could do that would stop the killings?

00:17:37.000 Is there a particular place?

00:17:38.000 Is there a particular target?

00:17:40.000 Well, the president has been presented with about 50 targets, apparently.

00:17:43.000 I'm not really sure exactly what specific targets they have.

00:17:46.000 But overall, you obviously have a lot of IRGC bases.

00:17:49.000 You have a lot of government buildings.

00:17:51.000 You have the actual generals and CIA know where they are.

00:17:55.000 The Supreme Leader, Ali Khomeini, is currently in a bunker in east of Iran, in Tabas.

00:18:02.000 So if they go for those things, and if they could pick up Khomeini and give him an Uber lift, like with Meduro, that would be nice.

00:18:10.000 But because he has to face justice.

00:18:12.000 He has to actually stand on trial, just like the National Socialists did in Germany.

00:18:17.000 But if you paralyze the actual IRGC, we believe that there are people in the military, the actual military, the army of Iran, who are ready to take control until the crown prince returns to his country and then they can have a referendum on their future constitution.

00:18:34.000 Well, fair enough.

00:18:35.000 I mean, you know, listen, the president, to your point, has been presented a suite of options from diplomatic options to military options.

00:18:42.000 And listen, we stand with the people of Iran.

00:18:44.000 We would love to correct the wrong of 1979 and have an Iran that we can work with and that was welcomed back into the international community.

00:18:51.000 Those things are all, we're completely in agreement.

00:18:55.000 We'll see what happens.

00:18:57.000 The position of this show is we've learned to trust Trump's instincts on some of these things.

00:19:00.000 So thank you for joining us.

00:19:02.000 Thank you for that analysis.

00:19:03.000 It was very, very fascinating.

00:19:07.000 Think about it.

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00:19:13.000 In today's economy, where you spend your money, it really matters.

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00:20:30.000 We are honored by an in-studio guest, and that is Kelly Leffler, 28th administrator.

00:20:36.000 I always love that I put that of this small business administration, so SBA.

00:20:42.000 And we were joking because it's like we change the titles.

00:20:45.000 Yeah, do we call you Administrator Leffler?

00:20:48.000 Well, you can call me Kelly.

00:20:50.000 That's my Twitter handle, SBA Kelly.

00:20:53.000 I'm so honored to serve in the Trump administration.

00:20:55.000 I don't care what my title is, as long as I'm a part of it.

00:20:58.000 Yeah, well, I was struggling with Kelly.

00:21:00.000 I was struggling about this with Lee Zeldon yesterday, who's the administrator of the EPA.

00:21:05.000 And I was like, Lee, you know, I just kind of, you know, we defaulted to, you know, calling him Lee.

00:21:10.000 Anyways, they might as well call us bureaucrats.

00:21:12.000 I know.

00:21:13.000 Thank you for joining us.

00:21:15.000 So Kelly Leffler, former senator. 1.00

00:21:19.000 You have a rich history in the state of Georgia.

00:21:22.000 You are now in the Trump administration.

00:21:23.000 But, you know, we were joking.

00:21:26.000 I think the best place to start for our audience is for you to just describe what the small business administration does.

00:21:33.000 Well, you're right, Andrew.

00:21:34.000 As we were talking, a lot of people don't know the small business administration is essentially a public-private partnership.

00:21:40.000 We're not giving grants out to small businesses.

00:21:43.000 We're providing a government guarantee on commercial loans for your local community banker to have the incentive to make that loan to a startup business to help that community have flourishing small businesses, have an ecosystem of startups and expansion.

00:22:00.000 And that goes into even manufacturing.

00:22:02.000 Most manufacturers in America meet the small business threshold.

00:22:06.000 What is the threshold?

00:22:07.000 Well, it depends on your industry, but for manufacturing, you can have up to 1,500 employees as long as you're not over the net worth level.

00:22:16.000 And that's why 98% of America's manufacturers qualify as small businesses.

00:22:21.000 I just came from a great small business manufacturing startup in Tempe, just down the road.

00:22:27.000 And this is the heartbeat of America.

00:22:29.000 And you've got everything coming, bringing to bear there from the capital that SBA provided for this facility to the skilled workforce.

00:22:36.000 You know, I met some of the contractors there in hard hats.

00:22:40.000 And this is what it's all about in the Trump administration.

00:22:43.000 His economic agenda is going to create more and more of that.

00:22:45.000 It's why we set a record in 2025 of putting out 85,000 small business loans totaling $45 billion.

00:22:54.000 The economic multiplier effect of getting $85 billion out is huge.

00:23:00.000 There's also a trade deficit.

00:23:02.000 This is a lot of news this morning.

00:23:03.000 So the U.S. trade deficit is at one of its lowest points in at least recent memory, last couple decades.

00:23:09.000 You put up a tweet here, 370.

00:23:11.000 The trade deficit has reached its lowest level in nearly two decades, while our exports hit a record high of $302 billion.

00:23:18.000 So President Trump's fair trade policy is restoring America's industrial dominance and strike.

00:23:22.000 So obviously we have much further to go.

00:23:26.000 But, you know, and then we've got this tariff question that is looming.

00:23:29.000 The Supreme Court's going to rule on that.

00:23:32.000 I do believe even just we had John Carney on, Breitbart Economics editor there saying that even if the Supreme Court rules against us, there's other levels, levers the Trump administration could pull to still, you know, enact tariffs because they are powerful.

00:23:48.000 How have you seen those play out with small businesses?

00:23:50.000 Because, you know, some small businesses are probably going to see a negative impact, but a lot are going to see a positive impact.

00:23:56.000 Absolutely.

00:23:57.000 I mean, I've crossed this country from Alaska to Maine, walking factory floors, talking to builders, entrepreneurs.

00:24:05.000 Look, when you hear the word tariff, think fair trade.

00:24:08.000 And that's what this country has not had.

00:24:11.000 And I am just grateful for President Trump for his courage and his vision to believe in American industry to help us reindustrialize.

00:24:20.000 And you look at every part of the Trump economic agenda from tax cuts to deregulation to generating a skilled workforce and those incentives to get back in the workforce.

00:24:30.000 And you see the building of this boom on top of the $18 trillion coming in.

00:24:35.000 So look, tariffs are just one piece of it, but they're an important piece that we haven't had.

00:24:40.000 And everyone forgets that Biden had a rose garden ceremony adding tariffs to China during his term that the Democrats never put.

00:24:47.000 It felt like this crazy scenario where America was just willing to get fleeced in countless ways because we had almost like this guilt about being the richest, most powerful nation.

00:24:59.000 So we didn't feel that we had the moral standing to exert our force to benefit our own people.

00:25:05.000 So we just let everybody else have trade barriers to us.

00:25:08.000 We let everybody else bilk off the American military. 0.85

00:25:11.000 And President Trump is rebalancing those relationships.

00:25:14.000 I've been completely in favor of President Trump's tariff agenda from the start.

00:25:19.000 I think, Blake, you've had some questions.

00:25:21.000 This is typically the yin and yang that we play here on the show.

00:25:25.000 Blake's the contrarian.

00:25:26.000 I'm sort of like more on board with a lot of the magic.

00:25:29.000 I'm the narrative experience.

00:25:31.000 I am now.

00:25:32.000 Okay, listen.

00:25:33.000 Okay.

00:25:33.000 All right.

00:25:34.000 Now we're going to get into debate here in front of Kelly, and I don't want to do that to her.

00:25:37.000 But here's the thing, though.

00:25:39.000 I do agree with that.

00:25:40.000 But then, so SBA is this engine sort of behind the scenes, providing capital, taking some of the risk out of these capital arrangements with riskier small business startups.

00:25:52.000 But then there's this other side of it that you've inherited, where there is fraud that you are uncovering.

00:25:57.000 Now, we're talking about Somali fraud. 1.00

00:25:59.000 We're talking about foreigners coming in, again, bilking off the system. 1.00

00:26:02.000 What have you uncovered?

00:26:04.000 What are you investigating right now?

00:26:05.000 Well, that's right.

00:26:06.000 I mean, from day one, we came in and I said, I will have a zero tolerance policy on fraud.

00:26:11.000 We convened a task force right away.

00:26:14.000 I called for an audit of the agency.

00:26:16.000 The agency hadn't passed an audit in four years.

00:26:18.000 And President Trump likes to say, you're the biggest bank in the country.

00:26:21.000 Well, guess what?

00:26:22.000 The biggest bank in the country is going to finally have an audit where we're accountable for the shortcomings.

00:26:27.000 That includes investigating fraud.

00:26:28.000 With his headline, there's a number on this.

00:26:29.000 Yeah, headline right here.

00:26:30.000 SBA investigating $1.2 trillion.

00:26:34.000 That is with a T. We've seen a lot of Bs floating around with Somali fraud, $9, $19 billion, whatever the number that is. 0.97

00:26:40.000 And to give a number on suspected fraud specifically, their internal watch, like in 2023, so this is Biden era, they said about estimated $200 billion in potential fraud with the PPP loans.

00:26:52.000 Was that all run through SBA?

00:26:54.000 It was.

00:26:55.000 That's the $1.2 trillion that ran through SBA during COVID.

00:26:58.000 Well, our own OIG said that about $200 billion was marked as fraudulent.

00:27:03.000 And guess what the Biden administration did?

00:27:05.000 They started forgiving it, sweeping it under the rug.

00:27:08.000 Exactly right, Blake.

00:27:09.000 And so we came in and said, we're going back.

00:27:11.000 We're looking at it all.

00:27:12.000 And that's what we did when it came to Minnesota.

00:27:14.000 As soon as that came on the radar, I asked the team to dig through the Minnesota loans.

00:27:18.000 They immediately found about 7,000 borrowers, 400 million in fraudulent loans in Minnesota alone.

00:27:26.000 That tells you that there are billions and billions out the door, fraudulently to thousands that should never touch SBA services again, and they need to be referred to the DOJ, and that's what we're doing.

00:27:36.000 Are these mostly Somali networks, or is it kind of across the board?

00:27:40.000 It's widespread.

00:27:42.000 We're investigating further to see how systemic it is because the level of fraud is almost organized.

00:27:50.000 And I've called it organized crime in some cases.

00:27:53.000 And we need to look across all government programs and see where people are systemically defrauding the government.

00:27:58.000 The thing that stands out about this, which is if you or I were to say, okay, I want to scam Medicaid, and you just went to 20 people we know and said, hey, I have an idea to scam Medicaid.

00:28:08.000 One, a lot, I think, would say no.

00:28:11.000 I think they'd all say no.

00:28:12.000 And some of them might say, I'm going to call the police.

00:28:15.000 I think this is a crime.

00:28:16.000 Well, and you have some communities that we've voluntarily brought into our country where that's just not the natural reaction, where they'll either 100% say nothing or a lot of them will help you.

00:28:26.000 Well, because they don't feel culturally tied or their heritage is not tied to the proud culture.

00:28:32.000 It's wrong to scam your cousin or your brother, but not to scam the government.

00:28:35.000 And to your point, I totally agree that it is organized because, you know, we think of organized crime as the Italian mafia.

00:28:41.000 But so often it's these.

00:28:43.000 An immigrant cabal. 1.00

00:28:44.000 Well, yes, exactly.

00:28:46.000 But that's, you know, those are the movies.

00:28:48.000 And, you know, it's been sensationalized.

00:28:50.000 But so often it's just more subtle than that.

00:28:53.000 It's a cousin calling a cousin saying, here, listen, I figured out this way.

00:28:56.000 You should go set up your own, you know, child care center over here.

00:28:59.000 You should do this.

00:29:00.000 Or listen, we found a way to smuggle all this money back to Somalia.

00:29:04.000 It's more subtle.

00:29:05.000 It's less dramatic, less, you know, movie Hollywood, but it's massively insidious and widespread.

00:29:11.000 Well, especially when there's no oversight.

00:29:12.000 And so we are going to go state by state and look for those states like Minnesota that really, as their largest expenditure, is welfare.

00:29:21.000 And in the federal government, I'm talking, that's at the state level.

00:29:24.000 In the federal government, we operate about a trillion dollars worth of welfare programs across 80 unique systems.

00:29:31.000 And so we really need to have a hard look at that.

00:29:34.000 And that's what's great about the Working Families Tax Cut that was passed this year.

00:29:37.000 There's a lot of verification that's now required.

00:29:40.000 There's work requirements.

00:29:41.000 We're going to start cracking down on this very systemically ourselves because we can't trust the states to do it, particularly those like California, Illinois, Minnesota, and others who've shown a willful disdain for taxpayer dollars.

00:29:53.000 And by the way, small businesses are some of the biggest taxpayers.

00:29:56.000 And so that's part of my advocacy is to say, I'm going to make sure these programs are going to deserving job creators on Main Street.

00:30:03.000 Yeah, and it's like you know them when you see them.

00:30:06.000 You know the real deal companies that should be getting the backing of the SBA.

00:30:10.000 And here's President Trump just having your back here.

00:30:12.000 This cut 313.

00:30:14.000 He's suspending SBA loans.

00:30:17.000 It sounds like specifically with scammers in Minnesota.

00:30:19.000 313.

00:30:20.000 We have also suspended nearly 8,000 SBA loans, small business association loans to suspected scammers in Minnesota, of which there are many.

00:30:32.000 It's a great state.

00:30:33.000 It was a great state. 1.00

00:30:34.000 Now it's getting destroyed by that stupid governor. 1.00

00:30:37.000 What a stupid guy he is. 1.00

00:30:39.000 But he's a crook. 1.00

00:30:40.000 I mean, he's an incompetent guy, but he's a crook. 1.00

00:30:43.000 He allowed this to go. 0.99

00:30:47.000 You can't have corruption on a scale that nobody's ever seen before.

00:30:50.000 And you're sitting as a governor and you don't know what's going on. 1.00

00:30:53.000 It's impossible, even though he's a stupid guy. 1.00

00:30:56.000 It's a really important, you know, I love this about President Trump, that he gets, his instincts are almost always right. 1.00

00:31:03.000 So when you guys at the SBA are working on rooting out this fraud, auditing it, this task force, have you gotten any cooperation from the state of Minnesota?

00:31:14.000 Well, of course not.

00:31:15.000 And we've even had other state governors attack us for looking into Minnesota.

00:31:21.000 So that tells you it lays another pretty strong trail of breadcrumbs.

00:31:25.000 And we're going to continue to do that.

00:31:27.000 The president has been right about everything.

00:31:29.000 He's right about fraud.

00:31:30.000 And we're going to continue to do it because, first of all, it's right for the taxpayers.

00:31:34.000 And second of all, it's creating an incentive system when it goes unchecked to do it even more.

00:31:40.000 So imagine that if 20%, as Treasury Secretary Besant said, 20% of all these programs are fraudulent, someday it could become 30% of an even larger number because these programs continue to grow.

00:31:51.000 Well, in COVID, really, I mean, Blake, you know, calling me the normie.

00:31:55.000 Blake was actually the guy that during some of the aftermath of COVID and these loans that went out and these scam artists that would set up like a transportation company.

00:32:04.000 And it was like, I mean, this became a meme online because you could all spot it, how it was, you know, what it was, what it looked like.

00:32:11.000 You could find obvious scam businesses.

00:32:13.000 One employee very recently created and consulting a Learing Center.

00:32:18.000 Learing Center, exactly.

00:32:20.000 Yeah, and so COVID unleashed a lot of this.

00:32:22.000 And I think you're completely right, Administrator Leffler, Kelly, that when you do not police this, you're only going to incentivize the creation of more and more and more fraud.

00:32:33.000 Well, and that's our commitment to small businesses and taxpayers is that we're just getting started.

00:32:38.000 We're not letting up.

00:32:38.000 We're not like dusting off our hands and saying we've sent it over to the DOJ.

00:32:42.000 This has given us a playbook, really a blueprint of how we go state by state now and how we handle this.

00:32:47.000 This needs to become an expertise of the government is tracking down fraud.

00:32:52.000 Well, I'm going to be saying prayers for you when you start cracking the books on California and New York.

00:32:59.000 This is Lane Schoenberger, Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner of YReFi.

00:33:04.000 It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turning Point and for Charlie to endorse us.

00:33:10.000 His endorsement means the world to us, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come.

00:33:16.000 Now, here Charlie, in his own words, tell you about YReFi.

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00:33:59.000 Go to whyrefi.com.

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00:34:08.000 We are joined by Kelly Leffler.

00:34:10.000 She's the administrator of the Small Business Administration, which is the biggest bank in the country.

00:34:16.000 People don't realize just how much power the SBA wields to help the economy.

00:34:21.000 And now you're rooting out fraud.

00:34:23.000 Blake has a really good question, though, about a certain variety of loans.

00:34:27.000 So, and other, yeah, another part of your portfolio.

00:34:30.000 So there is, it's not super famous, but it's called a 8A certification.

00:34:36.000 It needs basically being certified as a disadvantaged firm.

00:34:42.000 Some would say minority-owned, but it can also be women-owned or certain other groupings.

00:34:46.000 And it makes you eligible for favorable federal treatment.

00:34:50.000 And it's getting noticed by a lot of people, especially online.

00:34:53.000 This is a vector the federal government has used for, let's just call it, DEI, or as we say on the show, anti-white discrimination, anti-white male discrimination.

00:35:01.000 And my understanding is this does still exist within the SBA.

00:35:05.000 So could you talk to us a bit about that?

00:35:07.000 Blake, you're right.

00:35:08.000 Now, let's just level set on what small business is.

00:35:10.000 It makes up 99% of all businesses in this country.

00:35:13.000 And under President Trump, we have a record 36 million.

00:35:16.000 There's a group of small businesses that are under statute entitled to about 5% statutorily of federal contracting.

00:35:26.000 So small businesses that are socially and economically disadvantaged.

00:35:29.000 Well, under Biden, they tripled that target to 15%, and it created a big vacuum for veteran-owned businesses to get federal contracts.

00:35:38.000 Well, what we found in that was it was a front for shell and pass-through companies to put someone in front of the business and say that they were a small business, that they were socially and economically, they self-certified, that they were disadvantaged.

00:35:52.000 And then they were able to get these huge contracts.

00:35:54.000 Now, when Kamala was searching out root causes, she put of immigration, illegal immigration, she put a $700 million contract out, and it ended up coming through bribery. 1.00

00:36:07.000 The DOJ is investigating it through an ADA program.

00:36:10.000 Now, that's not a small business that does a $700 million contract.

00:36:13.000 And there's other ones.

00:36:14.000 I remember, I think when that hurricane hit Puerto Rico a decade ago, there was an issue where they hired like a one, it was a, I think a black woman owned a company to supply like 50,000 meals to the island, and that was a disaster. 0.99

00:36:26.000 And I have, I've personally had friends who have set up a business to get a government contract where they just cut in a guy who was part Native American or something and said, you get 51% of it. 0.96

00:36:26.000 And it never happened. 0.96

00:36:38.000 We'll do the work.

00:36:39.000 We get our cut.

00:36:40.000 You get your cut.

00:36:41.000 It just seems to clearly incentivize that.

00:36:43.000 And so I guess, as you say, Congress requires this to exist.

00:36:47.000 But they don't require it to be rife with abuse.

00:36:50.000 It has never been audited in its 45-year history.

00:36:53.000 It came in under Carter.

00:36:55.000 We are conducting the first audit in 45 years.

00:36:58.000 And what we've already found is a lot of malfeasance, a lot of fraud.

00:37:02.000 We're going to get to the bottom of it.

00:37:03.000 We're going to clean up the program and make sure deserving entrepreneurs get these opportunities.

00:37:08.000 So this brings up this, it's been percolating, bubbling up a little bit because of all this fraud.

00:37:15.000 And this is a reintroduction of this conversation about Doge.

00:37:18.000 I thought Doge was amazing.

00:37:20.000 Charlie always loved Doge because it changed the culture and the focus in D.C. to actually start rooting some of this stuff out.

00:37:27.000 But then you have this falling out between Elon Musk, even Elon and Scott Bessant.

00:37:31.000 And it got all messy.

00:37:33.000 But there is a coming back together.

00:37:33.000 We acknowledge that.

00:37:35.000 I mean, Pete Hegset just announced a partnership with Grok and XAI.

00:37:41.000 So what is going on with Doge?

00:37:44.000 How would you guys at SBA use it?

00:37:46.000 How did you use it?

00:37:47.000 And can we reignite this culture to root out some of this fraud?

00:37:52.000 Yeah, Doge was incredibly important in kicking off what is accountability in government.

00:37:58.000 It helped us facilitate a lot of the changes that we made very, very quickly.

00:38:03.000 And the mindset remains in this administration, which is right-sizing the government.

00:38:08.000 We've cut our agency by 52% in terms of headcount, 30% by spending in just the first year, and we've done more business than ever.

00:38:16.000 That is a Doge mindset, and that's what we have to continue to have. 0.99

00:38:20.000 I hope that it will stay within every agency in terms of what they look at is data.

00:38:26.000 We simply go through and look at the data and accountability, who's doing what and what are the results.

00:38:30.000 Now, is Palantir involved in this?

00:38:32.000 Well, I know there's been a lot of, like, there's a lot of weird theories about conspiracies around Palantir.

00:38:37.000 Basically, what Palantir is, as far as I understand, send us your emails, freedom at charliekirk.com if you think I'm wrong.

00:38:43.000 It's basically getting databases to talk to one another.

00:38:46.000 So you cross-reference different agencies and what they know, and you can root out fraud that way, which seems very common sense to me.

00:38:52.000 I actually independently brought on Palantir because this scale of the fraud that we're looking at is so vital that we use AI, that we are data-driven in our analytics, and then we have this support externally because there's a lot of resistance internally to right-sizing the federal government and tracking down fraud.

00:39:10.000 How big is your staff?

00:39:12.000 Well, we've gone from about 8,000 to about 4,000 now.

00:39:15.000 Wow.

00:39:16.000 So we do more with less.

00:39:18.000 We're like a small business.

00:39:19.000 We're very efficient to have the economic impact that we do.

00:39:22.000 We estimate it's about $1 trillion annually when you take a leverage impact of putting out $100 billion a year.

00:39:28.000 I should say $1 trillion over the four-year term of President Trump.

00:39:32.000 And it's meaningful on Main Street because small businesses create two out of every three new jobs.

00:39:37.000 Wow.

00:39:38.000 I mean, I'll just be honest.

00:39:39.000 I'm sort of sitting here feeling educated.

00:39:42.000 I hope the audience is getting a lot out of this because I candidly didn't fixate on SBA that much.

00:39:47.000 I didn't think about it that much, but it's apparent.

00:39:49.000 I mean, if Trump's calling you the biggest bank in the country, that says a lot.

00:39:53.000 He knows banks.

00:39:54.000 He knows banks.

00:39:55.000 I think he's being kind, but I think he knows how important small business in Main Street is.

00:39:59.000 He always says to me, Kelly, small business is big business.

00:40:02.000 He loves our job creators.

00:40:03.000 Like I said, I just came from a construction site, hard hats and everything.

00:40:07.000 These are the people who make this country great, and we've got to support them and get big government out of the way and get back to supporting free enterprise. 0.98

00:40:15.000 Well, ridding it of this DEI stuff, this anti-white garbage, ridding of the fraud. 0.96

00:40:21.000 I mentioned Scott Bessant before. 0.99

00:40:22.000 Let's go ahead and play this.

00:40:23.000 I think this is from yesterday, the day before.

00:40:26.000 He's talking about how much fraud we're dealing with.

00:40:28.000 384.

00:40:30.000 We are going to hold people accountable.

00:40:33.000 We're going to press this to the full extent possible for American taxpayers, for American families.

00:40:41.000 The GAO, the general accounting office, believes that there is somewhere between $300 and $600 billion of annual fraud, roughly 10% of government spending, that disappears due to fraud.

00:40:55.000 If we can recapture that, that is 1% to 2% of GDP.

00:41:01.000 So, Kelly, let's end this where Scott ended this.

00:41:04.000 Economics, the economy.

00:41:06.000 It's rip roaring, but Scott has also said we were setting the table in 2025.

00:41:11.000 This year we get to enjoy the feast and the banquet.

00:41:13.000 Are you seeing that?

00:41:14.000 Absolutely.

00:41:15.000 I see it every day.

00:41:16.000 I mean, the Trump economic agenda is rocket fuel for Main Street, for this country.

00:41:21.000 We see GDP growth.

00:41:22.000 We see wage growth, inflation coming down, interest rates coming down.

00:41:26.000 These factors, together with deregulating, is making sure that this economy is primed for 2026 and beyond.

00:41:33.000 We're just getting started, $18 trillion pouring into this country in investment.

00:41:36.000 We've never seen anything like it.

00:41:38.000 Yeah, and all the data centers, the AI, the crypto, the small businesses.

00:41:42.000 And by the way, if you're deploying capital more efficiently to better operators and you're getting rid of this DEI garbage, you're going to end up getting a bigger multiplier, forced multiplier on the backside.

00:41:53.000 It's going to have a bigger economic impact.

00:41:55.000 Well, we're running out of time.

00:41:56.000 I feel like I could keep talking about it for a long time, Kelly.

00:41:59.000 But thank you for joining us.

00:42:00.000 It's been an honor to have you in the studio.

00:42:02.000 Thanks for visiting Phoenix and doing all this great work for the administration.

00:42:06.000 Thank you both.

The Charlie Kirk Show - January 15, 2026

The Hidden Fraud Draining Main Street ft. Kelly Loeffler

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