Is DOGE A THREAT To 'Democracy?' Left V Right w⧸ PrimeCayes & Justin Gibbs
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 29 minutes
Words per Minute
210.74825
Summary
On today's episode, we debate whether or not Doge is a threat to democracy. We have a special guest, Admiral Gibbs, host of the "Debate Championship Series" and Twitch streamer PrimeKai, join us to debate.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
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00:00:30.800
Did you guys hear a judge is ordering Donald Trump to rehire a bunch of probationary employees saying you can't just mass fire people like this?
00:00:41.620
They view this as a very bad thing that Elon Musk is going in.
00:00:45.160
And for nefarious reasons, he is gaining access to data and terminating government regulators.
00:00:51.020
However, on the right, it's largely viewed as the first time anyone has actually tried to shrink the size of government.
00:00:57.040
So how about we just debate that whole thing and we'll get right to it.
00:01:00.520
We've got a couple of gentlemen here who want to have that debate.
00:01:03.140
Sir, would you like to introduce yourself first?
00:01:09.580
You can find me on Twitch and YouTube and Twitter and all that stuff.
00:01:12.260
Yeah, so I usually do debate streams and I'm on the left and I think Doge is a problem and I'm excited to talk about it.
00:01:24.040
I'm a rancher and business owner in Texas and I do streaming, political streaming.
00:01:28.440
I host the debate championship series and the Give Me Break podcast on Twitch, YouTube, and everywhere else.
00:01:44.860
I think that it's an end run around all the systems that we actually already have in place to do exactly what Doge says it's going to do.
00:01:52.820
And that's a way to avoid responsibility on our lawmakers for all the draconic changes that are going to be made.
00:02:01.400
Yeah, I mean Prime here will have you believe that the democracy is threatened by Doge.
00:02:05.440
But the real threat to democracy, in my opinion, is unchecked bureaucracy.
00:02:09.240
It's pretty clear that the Dems have set up a bureaucratic government that is basically just funneling money to all sorts of different places.
00:02:17.660
It seems to be peeling back this little nasty onion and letting us see what's underneath and love it.
00:02:22.420
It's what we voted for and we're getting what we wanted.
00:02:24.220
So, you know, you mentioned that it's undermining the structures that are already in place that should be dealing with it.
00:02:34.860
We have the Office of Inspector General, right?
00:02:45.260
We have the lawmakers themselves who have oversight.
00:02:47.960
We have oversight committees that do all these things.
00:02:50.380
Do you think they were working, like they were functioning as intended?
00:02:54.260
I think they were functioning, but not to the speed that anyone is happy with.
00:03:02.880
So, I suppose then it's fair to say it wasn't efficient.
00:03:12.520
What I'm trying to say is we have this position where you're saying it was working, but it wasn't working well enough.
00:03:22.400
And like efficiency, if efficiency comes at the cost of democracy, right?
00:03:27.880
If it undermines our ability, our constitution, our system of laws, yeah, that's not acceptable.
00:03:42.780
We can do all these things, but it's hard work.
00:03:45.960
Well, this gentleman over here says he voted for it, though.
00:03:55.100
The national debt that's held by the public is $28.9 trillion.
00:04:01.820
You know, Kevin O'Leary was recently on a show, and I was watching it.
00:04:05.080
He was just talking about how when you do a business, and I do this in my day-to-day life, you go in there, you evaluate what's working, you trim the hedges, and then you expand, right?
00:04:16.260
And I think that's what's happened with the government.
00:04:17.780
We've had Democratic leadership for 12 of the last 16 years in the presidency, and they've created this monstrous bureaucracy that definitely needs to have the hedges trimmed.
00:04:27.280
And this is what I voted for, and I'm getting exactly what I wanted.
00:04:29.800
I mean, look at USA being cut, and we find out there's funding, all sorts of random stuff all over the world.
00:04:37.180
They argued about, oh, the DEI programs with FFA.
00:04:39.620
Well, year-to-date, we actually have less plane crashes.
00:04:43.260
I mean, we're going through all these different programs.
00:04:45.380
The Department of Education halved, you know, right off the jump.
00:04:50.200
We've actually been going over the airline thing quite a bit, and year-to-date, it's worse.
00:04:56.460
I mean, I might have the wrong data then, but that's fine.
00:04:58.700
Well, so it is challenging to get the data because if you look at year-over-year data, they'll tell you about general aviation crashes,
00:05:06.640
but that could include, like, a tug hitting a plane on the ground or something.
00:05:12.020
So then when you track for fatal airline crashes, we have, I think, three out of five serious disasters so far this year,
00:05:25.000
So we already have – we're way ahead of schedule of the average so far.
00:05:30.880
I don't know what the reason for that is because I don't think Trump has been in office long enough.
00:05:46.200
And I'm like, you know, everybody wants to say that it's like DEI.
00:05:48.980
The – you've got some people on the left, they're saying, oh, it's because Trump came in with Doge and they're gutting the FAA.
00:05:54.620
People on the right are saying it's diversity, equity, and inclusion.
00:05:57.420
And I'm like, I don't think DEI would happen for years and then instantly in one month cause a bunch of crashes.
00:06:04.460
And I don't think that Trump got into office and then instantly a bunch of crashes happened simply from him being there.
00:06:10.760
So I feel like we've got an anomaly there that's hard to track.
00:06:13.860
Well, to back your point up, I like – you know, we know we've had a shortage for, what, aircraft controllers for, what, two years now, I believe.
00:06:20.560
I mean I, as like a conservative from Texas, Texans, we naturally don't like the government.
00:06:24.600
You know, I was initially hesitant when they said we're going to put Doge in because, hey, what's that slippery slope?
00:06:28.780
It's going to be, you know, another organization wasting my tax dollars.
00:06:31.740
But they've gone in there and they've done a lot of things.
00:06:33.440
And with the FFA, I kind of was – it wasn't my favorite Trump plan so far.
00:06:39.660
I think maybe we could have probably got a trained monkey to go in there and, you know, watch these things better than nobody.
00:06:45.480
I feel like, you know, if we have a shortage, it's better to have somebody than nobody.
00:06:51.140
I mean you could get the janitor to watch a thing.
00:06:54.660
It's – I would call it absurd but technically the truth that a trained monkey is better than no one.
00:07:02.460
It would be better to not have any signals from a control tower than like random signals.
00:07:08.420
They put chimps in spaceships and they know when to trigger the, like, the boosters and whatever.
00:07:12.600
Yeah, if they can go to Sputnik, they can handle that.
00:07:15.440
This is the high-level conversations I came to talk about.
00:07:21.660
And the dog was trained when the light turns on.
00:07:23.220
It paused the button and then the things happen.
00:07:33.220
But, like, so Doge says that it hasn't actually fired, in terms of the FAA, air safety individuals, right?
00:07:43.160
I think we actually have articles talking about this, like Rolling Stone reporting, that they spoke with an FAA employee who was once among a handful of employees working on an obstacle impact team at the Mike Morini Aeronautical Center in Oklahoma City.
00:07:55.480
The team evaluates many tens of thousands of potential new hazards, such as new buildings, windmills, and especially cranes, to inform flight procedures each year.
00:08:04.900
And, like, another one, a second-term employee whose job was ensuring that pilots are medically able and certified to fly.
00:08:16.400
These are just the ones listed in Rolling Stone.
00:08:18.280
I suppose the challenge, then, is – is this the article that I have pulled up?
00:08:26.900
Well, I mean, I kind of feel like we already went over the point of it may be disconcerting to many people, the points you're making.
00:08:35.080
But I don't know right now what the immediate effects of that are.
00:08:38.880
Like, I don't think that at this moment, like, things have crashed.
00:08:46.440
The people – and if you dig through the article, they're talking about how they've been gutted, right?
00:08:50.720
There's still maybe a few of them still there, but they're doing the work of – like, five people doing the work of 20.
00:08:56.500
And before, they weren't, like, fully staffed at first as well.
00:09:00.040
And then, of course, right, we have the reporting from that big meeting between Trump and his cabinet members, right?
00:09:06.520
So – and Elon Musk is there, not part of the cabinet, and Elon Musk gets into it with Treasury Secretary Duffy, right?
00:09:13.940
There's a bunch of reporting talking about this.
00:09:15.980
But Duffy says that the Doge team tried to fire air traffic controllers, right?
00:09:22.140
And then he asked Duffy to name the individuals who got fired.
00:09:27.680
Duffy's like, well, no one got fired because I stopped it, right?
00:09:30.980
But according to him, assuming this is correct, people were in the meeting or, you know, reporting back on it, assuming that's correct, then, yes, he did try to fire air traffic controllers.
00:09:44.340
Like I said, I'm a little bit critical of that as a conservative.
00:09:47.260
I'm not a huge fan of when there's government overreach.
00:09:49.420
I think the FAA was probably the worst thing that Trump's done so far, like how they've handled it.
00:09:52.960
However, overall, when I look at Doge, you know, I think it's a – it's been wildly successful.
00:09:57.980
I mean, just some of these stats here that Doge has been putting out, you know, they put – what was it?
00:10:04.460
11 point something million, like, loans went out to children?
00:10:11.060
I'm not saying, like, OK, we all know the YouTube kid that, like, you know, reviews toys and, you know, mom and daddy probably have to run his day-to-day.
00:10:18.160
But why are all these loans going out to children?
00:10:26.080
I was watching a Marine the other night, and he goes, hey, the only time we burn docks is when the embassies are getting run over by a terrorist organization.
00:10:37.880
The Trump administration is telling them to burn docks, right?
00:10:44.900
Yeah, USA and head for the Trump administration now.
00:10:51.400
They're burning docks, and Doge is trying to go in there and look at them.
00:10:53.240
They're doing that under the Trump administration.
00:10:55.200
You're saying this is a rogue employee that's burning documents?
00:10:58.420
Yeah, that's why they had to put a court order on it to stop it recently.
00:11:01.380
So you're saying that this individual is not operating under the Trump administration.
00:11:06.420
They're operating, like, in loyalty to the Biden administration and burning documents right this second.
00:11:11.120
Yeah, I mean, you know about – I mean, you can pull it up.
00:11:13.520
They're talking about it all over – it's all over the news.
00:11:17.440
But, like, as far as I know, I mean, this is done under Trump – like, if they – they can send marshals to stop this person.
00:11:23.860
Right, yeah, they have a court order out right now trying to stop them.
00:11:26.980
Court asked to intervene after email tells USAID workers to destroy classified documents.
00:11:33.480
Judge Carl Nichols set a Wednesday morning deadline for the plaintiffs and the government to brief him on the issue.
00:11:37.500
A person familiar said it comes as a Trump administration.
00:11:41.480
OK, they don't have the – no, we don't want to donate AP.
00:11:45.080
Thank you for your assistance in clearing out classified USAID headquarters.
00:11:48.320
It begins – I don't think it actually has the name in it.
00:11:59.200
I mean, yeah, it's the bureaucracy fighting back against Doge.
00:12:02.060
I mean, are you disagreeing that there's elements of – that have loyalty to other different, like, groups within the thing other than MAGA, like, and Trump?
00:12:08.180
Like, I mean, it's pretty clear, like, that there are different groups that have different interests.
00:12:13.300
Let me ask you, though, as it's being pulled up, if you were ordered – if you worked at a government institution, like, through multiple administrations, and Trump came in and said,
00:12:23.920
Prime, I want you to burn the documents, get rid of them all, would you do it?
00:12:29.520
Well, I would say this is an illegal act, right?
00:12:31.860
No matter who installed it, it's an illegal act.
00:12:33.880
But the claim here is that specifically it's being done to cover up, like, the crimes of the Biden administration.
00:12:41.160
I'm going to actually ask you for evidence that's happening under their auspices, right?
00:12:47.620
And they should be arrested or charged with a crime or whatever.
00:12:53.940
Erica Carr was appointed by Biden in January of 2021.
00:12:56.960
Is she doing it on Biden's orders or anyone else's orders?
00:13:00.700
Well, we know it's not Biden's orders because they have an open investigation of the autopists.
00:13:04.240
I don't think that has anything to do with what we're talking about.
00:13:07.240
But you're implying there's something, like, nefarious going on.
00:13:09.900
One, there is because they shouldn't be bringing the documents in the first place, right?
00:13:12.780
But, like, that this is the deep state fighting back.
00:13:22.860
I don't know what the motivation behind this is, right?
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00:13:59.280
Investigation, but isn't that what Doge is supposed to be doing, investigating?
00:14:01.720
That's their whole job, is to investigate ways to the fish.
00:14:07.420
Erica Carr was – previously worked in the Obama administration and was at the Office of Management and Budget.
00:14:17.360
She is now the acting secretary, executive secretary of USAID.
00:14:20.700
And she sent an email instructing staff to shred and – I believe the email sent something to prepare for burn.
00:14:31.120
It's like, keep shredding, and when the shredders get tired, like, use the burn bags, right?
00:14:42.940
What could the possible motivation be for wanting to destroy classified documents?
00:14:49.640
Well, I mean, when they're doing it to hide it from Elon coming in and trying to, like, clean stuff up, it's clearly nefarious.
00:15:07.320
I'm saying that, like – but I'm looking at his claim, right?
00:15:10.800
Like, if you're – it seems like you're – and if you're not doing that, then I take back my words, right?
00:15:14.920
If you're not claiming that this is, like, from the Biden administration, if you're not claiming that they're acting on orders, like –
00:15:22.440
Well, I don't think anybody's acting on orders from that.
00:15:24.700
Then I take it back because I have no idea what's going on.
00:15:28.600
Well, I don't necessarily think it's on acting orders from the Biden administration.
00:15:31.980
First of all, I have concerns about whether Biden's presidency is even legit after this auto-pin scandal has come out.
00:15:38.100
But, like, yeah, you don't know about the auto-pin thing?
00:15:40.400
So, basically, they found a bunch of documents recently that were all signed, and they have, like – when they were signed, we know for a fact he was in a different location.
00:15:51.960
Auto-pin is an online service where you can store a signature.
00:15:56.080
And then you click sign, and it will automatically imprint the signature.
00:16:04.480
To be honest, Obama and Trump have both done it, but I think it should be illegal.
00:16:08.340
The issue, as he pointed out, is there are questions of the location of Biden when some of these documents were signed.
00:16:15.460
I mean, that is a broader argument, but I think the – like, the actual legal core you'd actually get in court is, hey, Joe Biden wasn't there at the Oval Office.
00:16:31.640
But not to derail, to go back to where we were.
00:16:36.500
So, my point is with that, we have Mike Johnson on file saying that he doesn't – Biden doesn't know what's going on.
00:16:39.880
My point with this is I'm not going to sit here and go, oh, it's some sort of deep state, Biden, whatever.
00:16:44.520
What I'm saying is I think that Erica Carr knows they've been doing nefarious things.
00:16:51.580
And she's over here burning things because she doesn't want dozed and covering it because they're finding all sorts of fraud all over the place.
00:16:56.480
So, we're going to find a little agreement here, right?
00:17:01.640
USAID, like, does have – like, actually do nefarious things.
00:17:04.940
Like, for the intelligence services, it's been used to undermine, like, various foreign countries.
00:17:11.480
It goes in on the auspices of aid, but then it will, like, carry out intelligence operations.
00:17:17.340
But that doesn't mean, of course, it wasn't actually doing aid in other areas, right?
00:17:21.620
But they were used as a tool to – well, do whatever.
00:17:27.980
And so if that's what they're burning, again, I condemn it completely.
00:17:37.080
Did you forget the first half of this conversation?
00:17:40.840
Yeah, when I talked about the inspector general.
00:17:46.120
It wasn't like the CIA was a rogue agency doing this, right?
00:17:50.980
Like, hey, we want to do these operations within whatever country, right?
00:18:01.320
We have no – there is no – at least to my understanding, there's no evidence that these things were done by the CIA, on the CIA's own behalf, right?
00:18:12.420
I do think, though – I think the average person would not conclude that multi-administration or inter-admin agencies like the CIA are acting under the direct orders of the president who is currently in office.
00:18:27.920
With the example being Chuck Schumer saying that the intelligence agencies have six waves from Sunday from getting back to Trump if Trump tries to change what they're doing.
00:18:36.860
The implication, of course, is – I think this is fairly widely accepted in foreign policy.
00:18:42.180
The CIA has long-term operations that span decades.
00:18:45.460
So every time a president comes in, the CIA gives a briefing to the president of current operations.
00:18:50.920
That suggests largely that what the CIA and the other U.S. agencies are doing, they are not at the direction of the current administration.
00:19:01.960
Well, that current administration can cancel those.
00:19:08.160
Then we can just – we're just done with that, right?
00:19:09.980
I think Trump was the first president to try to do that, and they impeached him for it.
00:19:15.740
I'm not going to – I don't know about that claim.
00:19:18.240
So you'll have to show me that it was because that Trump was trying to attack the – and to be clear, I'm not defending the intelligence community, right?
00:19:30.780
My point is just that like the Ukraine Burisma scandal is a really great example of something untoward is going on, and it was a CIA agent who filed the initial paperwork to trigger the Trump impeachment.
00:19:41.720
And interestingly, YouTube – the man's name was Eric Charamella, and YouTube would delete any video that said his name.
00:19:49.560
Facebook would take down any post that said his name.
00:19:52.340
Twitter was the only platform, I believe, that would allow you to actually say the man's name.
00:19:56.180
Right, right, and this was rooted in – Joe Biden, of course, engaged in an illegal quid pro quo with the president at the time.
00:20:05.020
He said, if you don't fire the prosecutor, you're not getting the billion dollars.
00:20:08.000
And Donald Trump made a phone call to – at the time, I think it was Zelensky.
00:20:20.380
A CIA agent then blew the whistle, filing a report.
00:20:23.760
The Vindmans – I believe it was Alex Vindman – then took it up the chain.
00:20:29.040
Congress got a hold of it, and they impeached Donald Trump over this for trying to stop what was a CIA operation.
00:20:34.620
A CIA counterterrorism director was on the board of Burisma.
00:20:37.060
When Trump said, I want to know what Biden was doing here, they impeached him.
00:20:46.080
My point was simply, the CIA does not act underneath the president for my entire life until Donald Trump.
00:20:53.260
And only now, actually, and only to a certain degree because he's firing him.
00:20:58.700
And again, I'm not defending the – this is a weird space to be in because I can't really defend intelligence agencies, right?
00:21:07.380
It's – from an outside perspective, like I can't tell, like, at what points in time is the CIA more under control or less under control or the other agencies, right?
00:21:17.940
Well, yes, but that doesn't mean Doge is going to solve it, right?
00:21:23.220
If they were going to solve it, they've existed.
00:21:31.000
We open up the books and see what they're doing.
00:22:01.420
Again, from outside his perspective, like, the level of power these agencies have – or
00:22:07.200
sorry, the intelligence agencies have at any point in time.
00:22:09.600
So it's like, this is a weird space to, like, try to be defending them.
00:22:14.860
My point was not to ignite a whole thing on the CIA.
00:22:17.240
It was just to basically point out – I'll keep it flat.
00:22:20.600
The FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and all other, what, 14?
00:22:25.080
They exist with the same leadership through multiple administrations.
00:22:29.820
And that de facto means they're – like, if they're going to launch an operation, it
00:22:35.180
will start before Obama and extend after Obama.
00:22:40.220
You don't want them to be – so, like, it's a tough balance there, right?
00:22:43.100
Like, at some point, like, you want them to, like, complete a mission once it's
00:22:47.240
started, but also we want to adjust with the changing times, with the priorities,
00:22:56.340
Well, moving on, I guess, to, I guess, a related thing with this.
00:23:00.120
If you had told me five years ago that someone was going to set up an organization
00:23:04.080
to cut government bloat and government waste, I would have been – one, I would have
00:23:07.700
been hesitant because, you know, like I said, I'm a Texan.
00:23:10.440
I don't want more, you know, organizations, more, you know, agencies.
00:23:14.020
However, you know, Doge has come in and they've immediately done what they said
00:23:17.480
If you had told me five years ago that, hey, there's bloat, there's these things,
00:23:21.780
I don't think anybody, left or right, would have disagreed.
00:23:24.300
But now that Doge is actually uncovering the bloat and going through these things,
00:23:28.260
it's like up in arms because my pork belly project has been canceled.
00:23:36.000
But, I mean, so there is a level of waste within any organization, no matter what,
00:23:40.000
whether this organization, whether – you mean anything, private?
00:23:51.900
But, no, there's always a level of waste within any organization, right?
00:24:06.200
Are we – are they understanding how these contracts work?
00:24:09.940
I think again and again we're seeing they actually don't, right?
00:24:12.480
So there's plenty of reports of the errors that Doge has had, reports of, like, them overestimating contracts, of them saying that they saved on a contract that was actually canceled under Joe Biden.
00:24:31.500
And then we have people just fact-checking, fact-checking these contracts.
00:24:34.920
And they're shown that, yes, there's an inflated amount of savings that Doge is reporting.
00:24:40.800
Yeah, I mean, to be fair to that, though, all right?
00:24:43.860
So anytime you have a new organization come in and they go look at things, right?
00:24:46.600
So, like, there's the story with Elon Musk and Twitter, right, where they had this server farm and they go in there and they're like, we can pull this out on Christmas.
00:24:52.620
And him and two other guys go in there and pull it up and whatever.
00:24:54.980
And everybody's like, oh, look how bad Twitter's doing.
00:24:56.920
Well, you know, like I mentioned Kevin O'Leary earlier.
00:24:59.280
He mentions that, oh, okay, Twitter is back to, like, 60%, 70% of the stock price of what it was originally before Elon bought it after that.
00:25:14.760
You know, the site was running smoothly after a few hiccups.
00:25:17.760
So when I look at Doge, this is the exact same concept.
00:25:20.140
You're going to go in, you are going to have mistakes because you are clearing things out.
00:25:23.640
But then what they do is they will have the mistake and then they correct them.
00:25:27.420
And y'all are saying they've actively had to be called out.
00:25:34.420
So, for instance, the agency once claimed to have canceled contracts ended under President George W. Bush.
00:25:40.000
The agency also wrongly reported canceled an $8 billion contract when it was only worth $8 million.
00:25:48.260
This is not an isolated instance with this agency.
00:25:51.400
But the thing is, though, what people like you will do is that they'll talk about, like, the Doge number, right?
00:25:56.940
And what many news agencies report, they'll put the Doge number.
00:26:04.180
And you can take a look at the Doge wall of receipts, right?
00:26:10.680
But you can take a look at the Doge wall of receipts.
00:26:23.480
Because of all the errors that I'm talking about.
00:26:28.640
But there's no – at this point, there's no reason to believe that.
00:26:32.740
You're saying that the Department of Government Efficiency is not efficient at all?
00:26:38.080
Now, there's another website, all right, that you can also take a look called Doge Tracker Muskwatch.
00:26:55.960
So this takes a look and it looks at what's actually verified, like verified savings here, right?
00:27:09.620
You can go down to, like, let's say, like, the first USAID one, right?
00:27:28.700
So it shows the – what Doge says it's saved and then what's actually saved.
00:27:33.960
Now, this is an interesting website that I actually just discovered.
00:27:39.920
You go back to the last website if you don't mind real quick.
00:27:50.780
So it says $115 billion saved, $714.29 per taxpayer.
00:27:56.220
Back to the one that we were just on if you don't mind.
00:27:58.580
So on this one, what's crazy to me is when we look at these things, right?
00:28:04.280
The $254 million that was, like, not verified is what he just said.
00:28:11.900
What's interesting to me is when Dems talk about taxing people, right?
00:28:15.960
They're like, oh, we got to tax the billionaires.
00:28:19.460
But when Doge makes these kind of cuts that actually save taxpayers hundreds of dollars every year,
00:28:32.980
If you're doing canceled funding, it's taxpayer dollars being saved.
00:28:38.780
So if this is – your website is correct, right?
00:28:44.660
That means that's money that's been saved by the taxpayer that can be spent more officially.
00:28:51.700
Like, were those things things that should have been canceled?
00:28:56.580
We're just assuming that Doge knows what should and shouldn't be canceled.
00:29:00.420
Now, there could be things that you and I agree with, right?
00:29:02.240
I'm sure we can find common ground on contracts that haven't been canceled.
00:29:05.500
Even if they don't – they're not something that should be canceled.
00:29:10.320
And I don't care about just saving us money, right?
00:29:14.860
It doesn't matter to me that we simply save money.
00:29:17.360
I want to use that money for, like, important purposes to actually run the government.
00:29:22.940
It's not necessarily a correction, but when we highlighted USAID cuts showing $244 million,
00:29:33.660
So I just want to make sure everyone understands.
00:29:35.420
There's actually a bigger list of all the different USAID cuts.
00:29:49.060
So they're saying terminated funding is $351 million, not – wait, what?
00:30:06.600
So the first number on this must tracker says, for USAID, O&M follow-on contract was $350 million saved.
00:30:15.000
Just for example, there are a bunch of other USAID contract cuts.
00:30:23.640
This is pulling from government databases, right?
00:30:26.200
So if you – so there's – so there's the Doge website, the wall of receipts, right?
00:30:31.580
And on that website, for each of these council contracts, it sends you to what's called the Federal Procurement Data System, right?
00:30:38.140
If you click on one of those, right, you'll have no idea what you're looking at.
00:30:42.920
It's not something designed for, like, regular, like, individuals.
00:30:50.920
Well, why does it matter if it's not designed for regular individuals?
00:30:56.600
No, because the point is people are saying that this has been the epitome of transparency.
00:31:02.520
But actually, if, like, regular individuals can just look at this and think, I guess this is savings.
00:31:16.320
But real quick, additionally, we should point out that verified canceled funding and Doge claimed funding, neither are falsifiable.
00:31:28.420
Doge tracker is saying, here's what we looked at what Elon said.
00:31:33.480
That doesn't mean Elon is wrong, lying, or the numbers are not correct.
00:31:38.960
So click on that, the USAID contract you were looking at before, right?
00:31:57.840
So if you look at that, right, if you go back to the other one, right?
00:32:03.500
So this is what the Doge tracker actually linked.
00:32:07.840
It says that the Doge estimated savings is $595 million, but that's actually only $351 million,
00:32:17.860
But when you actually click the link they provide, it says the base and all options value is $596 million.
00:32:26.140
So if we go to the USA spending, the other link there, all right?
00:32:35.920
Do you agree that $351 million is a lot of money?
00:32:50.580
Because you have to actually learn to read this.
00:32:52.300
I spent the time to actually learn to read this thing, right?
00:32:54.580
So the current award amount, that's the amount that's already been spent.
00:33:13.920
And then you can say, hey, I'm going to extend that contract.
00:33:20.180
But if you don't extend those options, right, because they might not need the money.
00:33:27.540
I kind of feel like you tried pulling a fast one.
00:33:37.300
But the idea that an organization that has offered up an additional $250 million would
00:33:49.320
You do know that they sell $500 hammers to the Pentagon.
00:33:58.060
I'm aware the Pentagon doesn't pass audits, right?
00:34:06.620
I am aware that the Pentagon gets overcharged all the time, right?
00:34:11.840
And other agencies actually get examined and run in a different manner, right?
00:34:18.380
The Social Security Administration doesn't have the same amount of waste and bloat as the
00:34:23.940
We can understand these things that are treated differently.
00:34:25.800
The whole Social Security is bloat, but go ahead.
00:34:35.000
Just, you know, with the Social Security, if I invested my tax dollars that I spent that
00:34:39.660
would go towards Social Security, the same amount exactly in the S&P fund or a mutual
00:34:50.060
So, basically, Social Security is boning the American out of their money.
00:34:56.420
We have to actually design a system for people.
00:35:05.920
So do I, but this is the difference between, I guess, you and me on this, right?
00:35:09.220
We voted for Doge to come in and clear this stuff out, right?
00:35:14.320
Like, I can't tell you how many times I know people that are working three jobs that are
00:35:19.780
And it's going to pay people that are just, you know, living off the teat of society.
00:35:28.720
Let's just take your numbers at the $351 million mark.
00:35:36.840
I'm trying to figure out what these phrases actually mean.
00:35:40.680
There's a glossary that you can check out, right?
00:35:46.980
Current award amount, that means they did give $352 to this organization.
00:35:51.840
Wouldn't that then mean that there is still yet to be paid $250 million?
00:36:02.520
Yeah, and they can't make the assumption either.
00:36:04.060
If they say, currently we have given $350 million to them, the argument would be, we didn't
00:36:15.260
Elon Musk saved us $250 million because they've already given $350 million to this organization.
00:36:21.500
But I'm saying those options haven't been exercised.
00:36:30.340
Let's just round these numbers up so we can get it simple.
00:36:36.140
Let's just say, government organization gives $600 million contract to be paid out.
00:36:44.540
They say, okay, we've already given them $350 million.
00:36:48.140
You can't save money that's already given away.
00:36:52.100
However, the remaining $250 million that has yet to be dispersed when the contract is canceled,
00:36:59.240
If that is correct, it appears that the number is overstated because Elon is including in the
00:37:13.120
When it says terminated funding $351 million and the overstated savings is $244 million,
00:37:22.240
So the actual savings is the money we did not give.
00:37:28.780
If that's what it means, otherwise I'm trying to understand like...
00:37:34.980
Unless it means the current award amount is the government saying, we will over the
00:37:39.280
next 10 years give you $352 million and then potentially we could give you more if that's
00:37:55.900
The current award represents the amount that has already been awarded to a recipient.
00:38:01.220
It includes obligated funds, meaning the government has committed to paying this amount under
00:38:09.220
Potential award represents the maximal possible funding that could be awarded over the life
00:38:13.940
It includes both the current award amount and any future options, modifications, or extensions
00:38:22.780
The problem then becomes, how much did they give?
00:38:40.880
Obligated is what's promised and then outlay, I think, is actually what's been paid.
00:38:50.080
But you look through the glossary and it'll tell you which one's which.
00:38:53.160
I don't want to get false information, but go ahead.
00:38:58.440
In San Antonio, we're having exactly the situation you just described, Mr. Poole, was the – in San Antonio, they just shut down a migrant facility, right?
00:39:07.820
It was an overflow facility that's been used twice for like three months total, I think, whatever.
00:39:13.040
And it was costing us $15 million a year, and they canceled the contract, right?
00:39:19.980
I think it's 200 – so it equals that $215 million total a year or something around that.
00:39:25.960
And then it equals about $1.1 billion since 2001.
00:39:29.320
And there's nonprofits posting record profits and all sorts of crazy stuff.
00:39:33.180
And so it's gotten bipartisan support locally because it's barely been used and whatnot.
00:39:39.420
And, you know, I guess that's potential savings.
00:39:41.040
It fits exactly the criteria you're describing in this kind of case is when they're going in there, cleaning out bloat.
00:39:49.560
So when Tim's ready, hopefully – sorry, go ahead.
00:39:54.600
I think our original assessment of what this was was correct.
00:39:57.720
They have not yet – okay, so awarded means we signed a deal.
00:40:02.580
So, you know, you say to me, if you give me a million dollars, I will write a beautiful poem for you.
00:40:10.860
And then I say, okay, but I want more than one.
00:40:16.340
After the first year, we'll include an option for me to make another poem for you for another million.
00:40:24.300
The question is who has the option rights is the important thing.
00:40:28.560
If the recipient of the funds says we want the option, that means that money is basically committed.
00:40:37.200
If the U.S. government says we want the option, which tends to be more likely in most contract deals, the person paying will say we want to retain the option to re-up or cancel as opposed to the person doing the work.
00:40:48.520
So it would seem that – the thing about this is obviously Elon is going to stress we saved all of the potential money.
00:40:58.700
But if it was an option held by the government, then I suppose it's semantics.
00:41:05.200
I don't know that it is semantics though, right?
00:41:06.660
So like I just brought up that facility, right?
00:41:09.820
It's been used, what, like six months since 2001 or 2021, right?
00:41:14.340
It's – since 2021, that's a billion dollars, right?
00:41:16.840
Okay, if you've – let's just take six months out of that or like eight months.
00:41:21.480
Tim, if you can pull up Endeavor San Antonio, that's what we're talking about.
00:41:24.520
Yeah, so that's like – let's just say they take out a full year.
00:41:27.760
So, okay, it's basically they're spending $15 million a month to keep a cold facility open.
00:41:32.820
And they're saying that's what it costs to open this, like bring it back at any given time.
00:41:42.320
They used it for a full year, which they didn't.
00:41:44.740
Oh, you're talking about the facility that's $18 million per month.
00:41:51.020
It was reportedly shut down because of inhumane conditions or something to that effect.
00:41:55.860
No, it was shut down because it wasn't being used.
00:41:57.820
There were numerous – the reason it wasn't being used was because – I don't know.
00:42:02.020
This is what – I'll look it up, but apparently –
00:42:11.840
Let's just say for – it wasn't subpar, and let's just say it was used as it was supposed
00:42:22.680
And when you save that over a – that's a billion dollars in three years.
00:42:31.340
We can't judge these in the sense of individuals' pocketbook.
00:42:38.020
No, we actually can't because in all the numbers when we're talking about government
00:42:42.760
To fund anything, it's a massive amount, right?
00:42:45.340
So that in itself doesn't tell us whether something is worth spending on or not, right?
00:42:51.820
We actually have to judge these on the utility that's being processed.
00:43:05.760
So yeah, so I'll wait for that kind of evidence.
00:43:13.280
Since March of 2024, HHS has paid $18 million per month to keep the facility in Pecos,
00:43:16.680
Texas, used for housing unaccompanied migrant children.
00:43:18.840
That was previously at the center of reports of poor conditions.
00:43:23.440
So I don't know if that's the reason why they stopped using it.
00:43:27.780
As a result, family – this is the big controversy, right?
00:43:30.080
As a result, family endeavors cash portfolio investments grew for $8.3 million in 2020 to $520 million in 2023.
00:43:48.940
We understand – I know, Tim, you understand, like, migration flows, right?
00:43:57.240
So there are some times – and we've seen this, right?
00:44:09.780
And we've had a ton of facilities filled up to the brim, right?
00:44:13.480
To the point – and you might remember this, Tim – when there was – within Texas, right, we were housing migrants under a bridge because –
00:44:30.780
But we understand that we don't know when those migration flows are going up.
00:44:36.780
Welcome to Finally Caught, a true crime podcast from the hit North American and UK television series.
00:44:43.760
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00:45:00.800
The newly released first season of Finally Caught, available wherever you get your podcasts.
00:45:08.480
So when it does go up, we have a place to put the kids.
00:45:11.360
And if you want to complain, right, about the bad treatment of migrants – oh, I agree, right?
00:45:16.100
We treated them far worse than I think anything in this facility is probably done.
00:45:21.300
We remember the reports of what happened to those migrants.
00:45:25.400
We remember the freaking guy who was – he was – not castrating them, but he was like sterilizing women, right?
00:45:33.160
There was a doctor who was sterilizing women who were trapped in the immigration jails before.
00:45:38.320
We understand, yes, the federal government treats people badly.
00:45:42.740
But specifically talking about this contract, this contract is actually useful because we want to hold that space.
00:45:48.940
I don't want to dive too much into immigration because that's not –
00:45:55.480
Well, that's where I was going to go with that.
00:45:56.600
We have had a record number of catches, right, on the border that are having record numbers of not gotaways, right?
00:46:03.700
Because one, Abbott went down there and built the wall.
00:46:08.780
And it's proof that – hey, this is kind of how it relates to Doge – is it's proof that the government could have stepped in and done these things if they had wanted to, right?
00:46:16.540
And so then when we see this facility, this is clearly a fleece because they could have shut down the immigration because Trump's done it.
00:46:34.320
Did Trump suddenly build a massive amount of wall in the time since –
00:46:40.900
But has – even when that was happening, we saw massive amounts of people trying to come in.
00:46:46.780
And we also saw in the areas where the wall was built in locations like Eagle Pass,
00:46:51.280
it went from $1,500 a day to a three in a week.
00:46:56.080
So what I'm saying is we can stop it and then we do stop it and then we have these facilities that are just a fleece.
00:47:01.120
All you're saying is that migrants can't become intangible, right?
00:47:07.360
And so when they find a wall, right, they try to go around that wall or they try to look for a witness in that wall.
00:47:12.580
Well, then how has it been stopped completely then?
00:47:15.980
Like I don't understand where your argument is here.
00:47:24.420
If there's another crisis that happens, right, like within some Central or South American country, right?
00:47:41.100
Under each administration, right, under the Obama administration, the Trump administration, the Biden administration,
00:47:46.460
and then again during the Trump administration, there's going to be another surge.
00:47:52.340
And when that happens, the question is what do we do about them?
00:47:59.820
It's like, oh, well, last time this happened, this was a huge problem.
00:48:02.200
We don't have any place to put these goddamn kids, right?
00:48:04.180
So – or do we – can we have a place available at that time?
00:48:16.980
Two, the Texas government and then on top of that –
00:48:23.420
We've seen record numbers of like catches nationwide.
00:48:29.840
I didn't even factor in what Mr. Poole here brought up about the inhumane things.
00:48:35.340
But if it was inhumane, that's definitely one that should be shut down.
00:48:40.000
Why are we going to have – why are we going to have a facility that we clearly didn't
00:48:43.720
need because we could have stopped it from the get-go and then when we get there, it's
00:48:47.580
How can you justify $8 million a month to bring something from cold to like whatever?
00:48:53.900
What I do know is I know how businesses work, right?
00:49:00.980
Whenever I look at a business and they're charging $18 million a month to keep a facility
00:49:04.680
open because they got to keep it from cold storage.
00:49:10.780
Let's just say it costs a mil to replace medicine.
00:49:13.800
Let's say how many employees are you paying that are doing this?
00:49:17.040
Let's say another $3 million for all these employees.
00:49:19.360
There's no way you could justify $18 million a month.
00:49:25.460
I'm not going to necessarily go through and defend a contract.
00:49:30.480
But there's also the potential of that space, right?
00:49:39.560
Why wouldn't a business charge for that, right?
00:49:44.340
If Tim is told that someone wants to use his studio, right?
00:49:51.600
But they are going to use it at some point in time, right?
00:49:53.920
And Tim's like, okay, well, I guess I'll let you use the studio.
00:50:00.940
So what I'm going to charge you for this is the price of, like, the studio maintenance in and of itself
00:50:08.080
Like a nominal rate for what I might be able to make otherwise.
00:50:10.580
Otherwise, he's losing money because he doesn't know when that contract is actually going to come in.
00:50:20.760
I mean, I can – I respect the point you're making.
00:50:26.480
If I were to rent out my studio, we've got personnel who have to be on site to run and fix the cameras.
00:50:31.740
So if someone said, we don't know exactly when, but we're going to need to use that studio.
00:50:38.960
Well, if you want me to keep it open, we need facilities maintenance.
00:50:44.900
And they have to have a clipboard where they go to every single room and write down,
00:50:48.700
is the water working or the pipe's frozen, whatever might happen.
00:50:51.220
We have to check the cameras every single day because if you want to be able to use it on a dime,
00:50:54.360
on a moment's notice, we have to check the cameras and do all that every single day.
00:50:57.880
We're going to have to have a minimal skeleton crew who's there.
00:51:00.700
For a larger facility, it's probably going to be two people.
00:51:03.160
So for this facility, we need at least two people, one person in the studio at all times,
00:51:06.260
one person walking the grounds, people will steal things.
00:51:09.640
And you're going to have to pay us every single month to maintain that.
00:51:13.200
I think the bigger issue is this is interconnected to clearly the Biden administration was allowing illegal immigration
00:51:22.140
and then offering up facilities money to operate.
00:51:40.200
First of all, I love this, the context of that quote.
00:51:47.620
To be clear, I'm not a fan of the Joe Biden administration.
00:51:50.380
But in any case, Kamala Harris actually went to Central America and talked about, hey, don't come.
00:51:57.080
CNN reports from Andrew Kaczynski, Joe Biden promised to absorb two million asylum seekers in a heartbeat.
00:52:04.820
So the issue is bigger than just, I think it's a fair argument that if the U.S. government wants to maintain a facility,
00:52:12.260
The question is, why were they paying to keep a facility open?
00:52:15.500
They could have just said, we're not letting people in.
00:52:18.300
And if they knew that they were facing an immigration crisis and shutting the border down, they could have shut those facilities down.
00:52:23.540
International treaties, right, to say that if a person presents themselves at a border, right, or even not at a border, at two government officials,
00:52:39.120
I mean, you're talking about the asylum treaty.
00:52:50.360
We're legally obligated to process those people.
00:52:52.040
Yeah, we're not obligated to process them here.
00:52:56.680
And on top of that, people are claiming asylum because of gang violence.
00:52:59.460
Like, I'm sorry, that's not a real reason for asylum.
00:53:01.900
So they're prohibited from being under the Refugee Act of 1980 and the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.
00:53:09.400
They are prohibited from being returned to their home countries.
00:53:14.300
However, there is no requirement that they enter the United States.
00:53:19.940
Yeah, you can process them anywhere, sure, right?
00:53:24.340
But that doesn't—but some of them will end up being processed here.
00:53:29.600
And also, there's—you know, the immigration doesn't happen, like, straight through the border, right?
00:53:33.660
Because we get immigration from all kinds of sources.
00:53:36.700
But the point is, is that we are supposed to process them somewhere, right?
00:53:46.020
The U.S. doesn't treat any of its goddamn prisoners humanely, right?
00:53:48.660
Our citizen prisoners, we don't treat humanely.
00:53:58.420
That doesn't go to say that any individual contract dealing with these things is necessarily a problem.
00:54:05.800
There's something called the Safe Third Country Agreement.
00:54:09.060
Individuals are not required in the United States to apply for asylum in the first safe country they arrive in.
00:54:14.140
However, they can be denied—found ineligible if they do pass through safe countries without seeking protection.
00:54:23.280
Yeah, administration identifies, quote-unquote, safe countries that they can—like, so if you're coming up—
00:54:30.160
There's no safe countries in all of Central America.
00:54:37.380
Mexico's pretty good, but that's still North America.
00:54:43.360
Well, I guess anything Central America is technically—
00:54:57.960
People go to Mexico specifically because the medical care is cheaper.
00:55:06.880
Because you get medical treatment that's not legal in the United States, and it's, like, a tenth of the cost.
00:55:11.320
So, family members of mine get all their dental work done in Mexico.
00:55:14.980
Not only is it, like, a tenth of the cost, but they have advanced technology.
00:55:21.580
After you get dental work done, they take some of your plasma, they spin it in a centrifuge, take the concentrated platelets, and inject it at the site to increase healing.
00:55:35.800
I will say, they also have, like, drive-through pharmacies, which are pretty cool.
00:55:39.300
Like, you can go in there and tell them what you want.
00:55:41.140
So, if you wanted to get, you know, the gear or whatever, it's legal there, you get a prescription.
00:55:44.600
Bro, Mexico is—you can get really, really incredible food.
00:55:48.500
Like, I got to tell you, man, the reason why people go to Tijuana and Cancun places is because you can live well for very little money.
00:55:58.500
My point is, is that your situation is different.
00:56:01.180
You want—when you're in Mexico, right, I'm assuming you're not desperate for housing.
00:56:08.120
People coming—migrants coming through to Mexico get abused all the time, right?
00:56:24.060
You don't actually give a damn about anyone else, right?
00:56:26.320
But for the rest of us, right, for people who actually have humanity, we actually do care about these people, right?
00:56:34.080
But I'm not trying to be mean or rude or whatever.
00:56:36.400
I think that there is a banality of evil in let us entice people to travel from, say, Africa to Brazil, up through some of the most dangerous parts of the world.
00:56:47.100
What's that corridor in Panama that's considered one of the most dangerous places in the world?
00:56:50.560
We have children, young girls being raped mercilessly because people like you are saying, please, you can make it.
00:57:09.360
How about we say, you will not be granted anything from us.
00:57:19.580
Or we could do the thing that I'm actually in favor of and have more legal migration, right?
00:57:30.660
I am not in favor of undocumented immigration, right?
00:57:44.360
Like there's a certain level of burden that happens when you're dealing with undocumented
00:57:56.340
Gibbs and I know each other in case the audience doesn't know that.
00:58:05.020
But in any case – but no, we should actually have legalized immigration, right?
00:58:10.660
Explain – like do you have a view of the structure of the immigration you'd want to see?
00:58:15.020
Um, I would – I'm not going to go exactly because I'm not an immigration lawyer, so
00:58:22.600
But in any of our – the various paths that we use – because there's like all kinds
00:58:34.220
Like if there is quotas, if there is barriers of entry for like people coming here to work,
00:58:46.580
Like I like – I want a secure border, but I also want work – like one of my best friends
00:58:52.780
He works three minimum – this is also why I'm against welfare, right?
00:58:59.600
He just bought a Porsche, and he's getting married to like a large American woman.
00:59:04.020
And he's like, oh, Gibbsy, I have made the American dream.
00:59:09.640
And I'm like, this guy, what is your excuse when you're working – he's working three jobs.
00:59:13.360
He's a legal – yeah, I want more of these people that want to come work.
00:59:16.500
And a lot of them are people living off the welfare.
00:59:18.740
Like this guy is just sitting here – like you're going to work 60, 80 hours a week,
00:59:29.100
There's always going to be some level of people using government help, right?
00:59:32.480
There's going to be some level of people, including our own citizens, using government help.
00:59:35.920
But the point is like if what you're talking about –
00:59:38.380
But why can this guy do it and millions of Americans can't?
00:59:49.680
So what we're talking about is people like getting in, the process of getting in.
00:59:53.240
And do we want like what that process should look like?
00:59:56.740
And now I can agree with you that we should have a quote-unquote secure border, right?
01:00:00.920
Because like I just said, I'm not for undocumented immigration, right?
01:00:05.900
And if that comes along with a stronger border fence, like whatever, fine, right?
01:00:10.680
Because I don't want people to make that dangerous journey, right?
01:00:12.820
I want them to be able to come in here in a legalized manner, of course, right?
01:00:16.760
And so in that case, maybe we can find common ground, right?
01:00:19.060
We want them to come here and then to be able to work, right?
01:00:24.840
There's a lot of Republicans that will agree with that.
01:00:29.380
Sorry, like having more legalized immigration, right?
01:00:33.320
In terms of people here coming to work to be productive, of course, right?
01:00:38.060
Long answer is – it's not – the simple question of do we want an easier path, there's
01:00:44.840
way too many factors in the labor market to say more or less.
01:00:50.020
So it's overly simplistic to say, let's make it easier for people to immigrate here.
01:00:56.080
When we determine whether or not we're going to make immigration easier or harder, we have
01:01:03.680
There are certain times where we may want more.
01:01:05.640
There are certain times where we may want less.
01:01:07.620
And there's a whole bunch of different types of visas.
01:01:10.440
So the one thing we don't want – the one thing we do want to happen right now is all
01:01:20.560
So Donald Trump in his first term had a raid on numerous food processing plants in the
01:01:25.200
I think it was something like ICE raids led to 700 or 800 deportations.
01:01:28.900
The collective narrative from the corporate press and prominent Democrats was, these are
01:01:35.740
Literally within a day, there were lines out the door of people trying to get these jobs.
01:01:40.120
And when they interviewed people, one guy said, it pays more money than where I worked
01:01:44.400
So the issue is, first, legal immigration is fantastic, and I'm a big fan.
01:01:50.220
And I think, as Trump said, we want everybody in the world to come here, but they got to
01:01:55.900
So the response we get typically from Democrats is, so we should make it easier.
01:01:59.320
But that still doesn't address the, we need to make sure we have the appropriate unemployment
01:02:08.360
We want unemployment to be around 3% and 4%, and it's currently just at 4%.
01:02:13.480
The reason why is, no unemployment means there's literally no flexibility in the job
01:02:18.960
It means that a company who's looking to fill a position can't find someone to fill it
01:02:24.280
So there's a degree of unemployment that actually is not a bad thing.
01:02:30.220
If unemployment is low, then we need immigration.
01:02:32.160
What sounds like you're saying is that you're looking for a dynamic system, right?
01:02:36.620
That actually adjusts the current conditions, right?
01:02:38.540
If there is slack within the labor market that's not being filled by Americans, you'd
01:02:43.400
say, let's maybe increase the amount of immigrants coming in, right?
01:02:47.900
If there's not slack, then we put a pause on it.
01:02:50.960
Does that sound fair, like a fair assessment of the argument?
01:02:53.300
To simplify a dynamic system that fluctuates year over year, I think that's what we do.
01:02:57.420
Well, I want to talk a little bit about what you just brought up with the ag workers
01:02:59.860
and whatnot, because I directly work in ag, right?
01:03:02.680
My family has worked with immigrants their entire lives in regards to ranching.
01:03:06.860
I have some of my fondest memories of getting fresh tortillas from, in fact, still my favorite
01:03:11.700
food today, tortillas with butter on them, right?
01:03:16.720
Have you ever had a tortilla right off the press from a family Mexican restaurant?
01:03:24.160
But when we're sitting here and we're talking about these things, the Democrats, not you,
01:03:30.020
Brian, but the Democrats as a party, as a general, are arguing for what amounts to modern-day
01:03:36.020
They're arguing, oh, all these costs are going to go up with agriculture if we replace these
01:03:40.840
Well, that's fine, because the free market is going to fill it with American workers or
01:03:45.240
legal immigrant workers, because that's who should be getting the job.
01:03:51.420
Instead, what we're doing is we're having illegal immigrants here working in ag, and we're
01:03:54.840
underpaying the living shit out of them, and they're driving the cost down for everybody.
01:03:58.840
And that's hurting mom-and-pop ranchers way more than anything else.
01:04:03.960
We should have these people documented and then paying them a proper wage, so they're
01:04:11.960
Now, Tim, I don't know about this particular situation that you're talking about.
01:04:16.820
In terms of this, was it a factory or whatever, this processing plant?
01:04:23.080
But what I have seen is testimonials on the other side of farm workers or whatever, farm
01:04:30.600
owners, saying the opposite, that they don't have people to fill in these.
01:04:38.140
If a farm worker says, we can't convince Americans to do the jobs, then you need to find
01:04:45.040
I'm a big fan of Trump's tariffs, and I'm a big fan of companies having to pay a living
01:04:48.980
wage, so this argument of nobody wants to do this job.
01:05:18.080
But the problem we have is these people who are going, I can't convince anybody to do
01:05:22.960
What they're really telling you is, I want to exploit poor people who will go on perilous
01:05:33.040
If we're saying that we want more legal immigration, or sorry, you're not saying that.
01:05:37.940
But I'm saying at least, I want these people who are working here to be documented, be legalized.
01:05:44.480
But I think the reason why I didn't say yes or no to the should we increase or decrease
01:05:49.920
is it really depends on the current levels of unemployment.
01:05:57.320
So when you, and look, it's weird that this is even debated, but when you have a large influx
01:06:03.020
of migrants, you see this in every single country, you get cultural displacement, which
01:06:11.940
We've been lucky in North America with our immigration where it's very similar.
01:06:20.440
We have the Spanish who used to own Mexico and all this.
01:06:26.400
Our cultures are fairly similar compared to, say, Europe, where they're having vastly different
01:06:32.740
I don't think it's the same problem, you know, except on a mass scale.
01:06:36.820
But I'll give you a specific example because I went to Sweden, and this was like a big thing
01:06:40.600
In the 90s, Sweden brought in a bunch of refugees from Somalia.
01:06:46.880
They literally just said, have fun, figuratively.
01:06:49.820
And what ended up happening was, well, what does a refugee, migrant, or otherwise do?
01:06:55.300
They would prefer to live near people like themselves.
01:07:03.140
And so what ends up happening is the children of these Somali refugees were born in Sweden.
01:07:10.600
If they go and visit Somalia, they're called Swedes, and they have a weird accent.
01:07:15.480
In Sweden, they're called migrants, despite being born there.
01:07:19.100
And so they end up creating enclaves where the culture is dramatically different.
01:07:23.920
And Swedish people consider the things they do to be criminal, but the police can't go and
01:07:27.640
enforce it because you've got a dense population of tens of thousands of individuals.
01:07:33.540
You can be shaking your head no, but in the United States, we have a female genital mutilation
01:07:36.840
problem in Michigan because of the large Muslim population that comes.
01:07:41.080
To them, it is culturally normal to engage in female circumcision.
01:07:46.380
And they have to follow the laws of the United States.
01:07:48.780
I mean, in Jordan, they should make the Palestinian refugees create a civil war almost over the
01:07:54.120
So you are saying that state police in Michigan should go into Dearborns that are arresting
01:07:58.520
these groups that are practicing these traditions?
01:08:01.040
If an individual does female genital mutilation, yes, they should arrest an individual.
01:08:07.300
Not go in and simply arrest large groups of people on suspicion that they've done female
01:08:12.220
Do you disagree that large migrants can cause unrest, though, as a concept?
01:08:20.940
I honestly actually don't know how long the show is.
01:08:30.000
So one of the concerns we have on the right is if you have 100 people who like baseball
01:08:36.300
and every year they vote to allocate tax funds to a baseball game and you bring in 101 people
01:08:42.660
who play cricket, when it comes to a vote, cricket is going to win and the people who
01:08:46.920
are from there get angry and it leads to conflict.
01:08:49.100
So within our own country, right, there are people who like baseball and there are people
01:08:54.060
Let's say some people who like basketball from New York and they come to Florida where
01:09:00.620
And then from there, you can say there's cultural displacement.
01:09:07.700
That happens with an internalized movement and it happens with externalized movement.
01:09:12.620
That's what happens when new people get common contact with each other.
01:09:18.600
And the U.S. is actually uniquely capable of doing this, right?
01:09:21.820
We have been taking immigrants, a country of immigrants, we've been taking immigrants
01:09:26.440
We're actually very good with onboarding immigrants compared to a lot of those European countries.
01:09:30.700
But in any case, right, I actually do want to pull it back because we came here.
01:09:42.920
U.S. law banning female genital mutilation declared unconstitutional.
01:10:08.560
I'm assuming that you're giving this story correctly, right?
01:10:17.680
Do you think that gender identity should be protected-
01:10:24.800
In the context of this, I have a series of questions to ask you.
01:10:36.100
I'm not going to ask you about female genital mutilation.
01:10:44.320
Invite me back, and I'll have that conversation with you.
01:10:46.620
No, I'm not going to have that conversation right now.
01:10:47.780
I'll explain the issue as to migration, as we were talking about it, which correlates
01:10:52.480
with the San Antonio Endeavor facility, the waste of money, and the Biden administration
01:11:02.940
The ban on female genital mutilation was unconstitutional.
01:11:07.920
how is it possible that a judge would declare such a thing?
01:11:11.140
So the reason I bring up human rights law, and you don't got to answer it, whatever,
01:11:14.340
is that in New York City, they say that gender identity is defined as self-expression,
01:11:20.180
meaning the name you give yourself, the pronouns you use, and the clothing you wear,
01:11:25.440
Well, this literally means that an individual could dress up like a cowboy and call himself
01:11:30.900
But I don't think a judge is going to look at that and say, well, hold on there a gosh
01:11:37.900
So in the story I've told quite a bit, I talked to several human rights lawyers in New York
01:11:42.020
and asked them, if I dressed up in, say, a clown costume for my first day at work and
01:11:47.560
said I was clown gender, would they have to respect me dressed up like bozo?
01:11:54.700
The law clearly states in plain English, what I wear, what I call myself is my gender identity,
01:12:02.360
The response I got was a judge would laugh you out of the courtroom if you tried to pull
01:12:06.940
What ends up happening in places like Michigan, and I'm not saying it was specifically for
01:12:10.260
this story, is if you have an area that becomes 60, 70 percent of any culture, the
01:12:16.940
judges in that place will represent that culture.
01:12:19.880
When the question arises to a Christian moral traditionalist American, should we ban female
01:12:25.520
genital mutilation, they're going to say without a doubt, well, of course, you can't do that.
01:12:30.120
But what happens when you get a judge who this is part of their culture, and they call it
01:12:34.100
female circumcision, not mutilation, they're going to say, you can't ban that.
01:12:40.400
The judges interpret the law, and they will interpret as their culture and moral traditions
01:12:45.140
To my point, to wrap it all up, and we can go back to Dozier or whatever, when I mentioned
01:12:48.760
I don't know that we necessarily want more or less immigration.
01:12:51.920
The question is not just economics or unemployment, it's cultural displacement.
01:12:55.680
Do we want people to form communities where their judges interpret our laws in ways that
01:13:03.000
Like you were both rather shocked to find a judge in Detroit said that it is unconstitutional
01:13:09.360
Can I add one thing to that before we go back to Doge?
01:13:11.340
This is also another problem that I found out recently.
01:13:13.340
I saw New York was considering letting legal migrants start voting, which I'm not a fan
01:13:20.160
of in local elections, and I think California already does it.
01:13:23.300
That exacerbates the problem that you're talking about right there.
01:13:28.300
We're having people that are not even citizens voting.
01:13:34.420
If I decided, hey, I'm going to bring in a bunch of immigrants, and we're making the
01:13:37.540
local laws to where, hey, they could vote, well, they're just going to vote me into office,
01:13:42.260
and I'm going to never get out, because what's good for me is good for them.
01:13:45.860
Like, this is just a pathway to corruption that the Dems have been using, which is bringing
01:13:50.180
in immigrants and then a pathway to corruption.
01:13:57.400
If non-citizens can vote, there's no democracy.
01:13:57.860
No, yeah, it's an embarrassing argument you're making here.
01:14:00.240
So if non-citizens can vote, like they proposed in San Francisco and New York, and I believe in Connecticut,
01:14:10.680
Let's talk about Doge and how Doge is ending our democracy.
01:14:19.780
So the reason why I think that Doge is ending our democracy is specifically because it's
01:14:24.740
doing an end run around our own particular processes.
01:14:31.900
So the question we then came to was, this gentleman here voted for it, and Trump won
01:14:35.840
the popular vote, and now Trump isn't doing what he promised he'd do.
01:14:43.640
So there was a Reuters poll, right, talking about Americans are broadly supportive of the
01:14:49.280
idea of cutting the sides of the federal government, with 59% of respondents to our Reuters
01:14:53.420
slash Ipsos poll completed on Wednesday saying they supported that goal, right?
01:15:01.460
Well, it's important because we did a poll in November and found the majority of the
01:15:05.660
It said, hold on, it said 50, well, I'm saying, it said 59%.
01:15:20.420
We're going to talk about, like, what they voted for.
01:15:25.360
Well, then that's what I'm trying to get to, right?
01:15:26.660
So, 59% of respondents towards Ipsos poll that was completed this Wednesday said they
01:15:34.540
But, right, then they asked, right, so how about the way Trump is going about it, right?
01:15:41.360
In terms of firing tens of thousands of federal workers, right?
01:15:45.220
And then 59%, exactly what I said, they opposed the way that Trump is doing, right?
01:15:53.220
So, people, no, you're correct, that people voted for cutting government, right?
01:15:59.320
Like, 70 million or whatever the number is, right?
01:16:10.480
To address your point, Elon Musk for a year said, we will have doge, we will go in, we
01:16:19.700
Trump came out and campaigned on how they were going to do it, and people voted for him.
01:16:23.700
You can argue that the masses are ignorant and didn't pay attention.
01:16:26.180
Just to prime your point real quick before you go on, because this has been a point that
01:16:29.740
I've heard in the debate sphere, and it's mainly like a lot lately, right?
01:16:34.180
And it's that all these Republicans got bamboozled, they can't believe what they voted for,
01:16:40.480
And I'm sitting here going, who are these people?
01:16:43.500
Because I'm a Republican, I talk to Republicans daily in my real life, I talk to Republicans
01:16:48.000
in the online space, I talk to people, I haven't met a single Republican that is going, I hate
01:16:54.920
it, like, you know, there's some like me go, oh, I have some concerns about like what's
01:16:58.840
going to happen next with a new agency, and if like a DIM gets in charge, but like, because
01:17:04.000
But overall, I haven't met a single Republican that these DIMs are talking about, these are
01:17:09.520
phantom Republicans, that are going, oh no, lord and lordy, they're coming for us, like
01:17:14.820
It turns out within Gibbs' friend group, everyone seems to agree.
01:17:18.580
I mean, do you think my friend group leaves, right?
01:17:20.100
Right, yeah, it turns out within my Christian friend group, right, everyone really loves
01:17:30.580
Hold on, what does, okay, what does democracy mean?
01:17:37.480
Like, the average person says, it's so, that they're going to cut waste, fraud, and abuse,
01:17:42.500
That they're going to shrink the size of the federal government, and the federal government
01:17:45.660
being this big, unwieldy thing in people's minds, they say, sure, yes, actually, that's
01:17:50.520
Waste, fraud, and abuse, that's a very convenient tagline that we can just repeat over and over
01:17:54.860
But the details of that matter, of course, how do the details of the plan not actually matter?
01:18:02.760
I'm going to try and get this, to answer this question, how would you define democracy?
01:18:09.660
People voting for, people voting to, just people voting, that's actually democracy, just people,
01:18:23.220
If we're in a democratic republic, right, then we're voting for representatives.
01:18:28.660
If we're in a direct democracy, then we're voting directly for the policy.
01:18:33.500
So, we have a constitutional republic with democratically elected representatives.
01:18:41.740
Are you saying that within a representative democracy, that people never end up voting
01:18:47.320
for a representative who says they're going to do a thing, right?
01:18:49.680
And then they start doing that thing, but they didn't understand, they didn't understand
01:18:54.780
And so, like, what they're actually getting is not what they want.
01:19:06.020
You said how you were a big fan of the Green New Deal until you heard the details.
01:19:11.120
So, let's say you were a consensualist of AOC, right?
01:19:14.720
She says she's going to get the Green New Deal.
01:19:16.740
But then when she actually gets in office, she puts out a plan that you don't support.
01:19:20.140
Now, you're saying, well, that's just democracy.
01:19:23.880
But that doesn't necessarily, it captures exactly the will of you, the individual.
01:19:33.000
When AOC first got elected, and they're talking about a Green New Deal, the implication was
01:19:37.260
a public works program investing in green energy, rebuilding roads and bridges.
01:19:44.260
Of course, my position usually on this stuff is, we got to cut spending somewhere to pay
01:19:50.940
Let's stop spending money on Ukraine, Israel, insert country.
01:19:56.700
When AOC then released a resolution, it was diversity nonsense.
01:20:02.000
It was getting academic scholarships to minorities.
01:20:04.460
And I was like, I don't know what that's all about.
01:20:06.620
The question then is, if you believe that, or the issue, I suppose, is if you believe
01:20:11.180
that democracy is being threatened, and you believe and agree with an institution in which
01:20:16.740
you vote for a representative democratically, and they get an office, if your intention then
01:20:21.000
is to subvert the individual who was put into office, you are a threat to democracy.
01:20:28.100
Do you agree with the system we have where we vote for representatives?
01:20:38.800
It's not simply that we vote for them, and they do willy-nilly, right?
01:20:41.740
They simply exist in this thing called the government, and they do whatever they want, right?
01:21:06.540
The point of which you asked me is, we have a system in place.
01:21:13.220
People vote, hoping that the person will represent to the best of their abilities.
01:21:16.220
This is the system we have, and a lot of people on the left keep saying, our democracy, our
01:21:22.320
It's more of a liberal talking point than a conservative one, because conservatives say
01:21:26.820
If you would try to upend the administration that was elected by your own system, which
01:21:36.260
If that administration is upending the constitution, they're a threat to democracy.
01:21:44.360
No, because they're breaking those laws that I'm talking about.
01:21:47.480
So there is a mechanism by which you can remove Donald Trump.
01:21:52.060
If you are trying to obstruct and suspend the will of the democratic system, you're a
01:21:58.180
So right now, you can argue the people did not expect Elon to do this, that, or otherwise.
01:22:03.620
The appropriate process would be then, Congress impeaches.
01:22:07.100
Unfortunately, the people also elected a Republican majority, and the Republicans, looking at their
01:22:13.300
constituents and current polling, which they track all year round, are supporting Donald
01:22:17.420
Trump because they want to win again in two years.
01:22:19.600
The indications are there is no popularity in stopping what Trump is doing.
01:22:25.340
Well, I think, well, I think currently, certainly, well, it depends on where you go and depends,
01:22:41.440
Veterans make up about 30 percent, according to this article from The Independent.
01:22:48.600
Veterans make about 30 percent of the nation's federal workforce, right?
01:22:51.580
So they've been disproportionately affected by these firings.
01:23:05.800
I care that veterans come, like, are part of this workforce, are being valuable members
01:23:10.840
of the workforce, and they're suddenly being cut and being told that they're bloat necessarily,
01:23:15.800
And so veterans also are more likely to vote for Donald Trump.
01:23:19.140
Here is a collection of veterans who voted for Donald Trump, right?
01:23:25.220
So Nathan Hooven is a disabled Air Force veteran who voted for Donald Trump in November.
01:23:30.040
Uh, Barty, uh, sorry, barely three months later, he now, he's now unemployed and says he feels
01:23:36.060
betrayed by the president's dramatic downsizing the federal government that cost him.
01:23:39.840
Welcome to Finally Caught, a true crime podcast from the hit North American and UK television
01:23:46.140
I saw the one girl with her throat cut and her abdomen stabbed and slashed.
01:23:57.560
Each episode details a horrific murder and subsequent investigation in order to capture
01:24:03.480
The newly released first season of Finally Caught, available wherever you get your podcasts.
01:24:11.600
Uh, uh, James, uh, Stansel, a six-year-old army veteran who was fired last month from Miss
01:24:15.620
Job at a supply technician at the VA hospital in Milwaukee, said it felt like he'd been shot
01:24:24.820
For us to hear the story of veterans, first of all, if you know any veterans, they all
01:24:29.380
Two, we know the VA was spending federal money to have orgies.
01:24:34.280
That's literally a thing that came up recently.
01:24:41.060
So, like, why are we going to be spending money, like, on orgies?
01:24:47.620
Like, so when I go, when I'm sitting here hearing what you're saying, and you're saying,
01:24:50.900
oh, I can find an anecdotal example of one guy that got fired.
01:24:58.880
I'm sitting here and I'm talking about mass quantities, right?
01:25:07.020
So, when I'm sitting here going, I'm looking, you're finding one example of a guy that fired.
01:25:15.840
When I'm looking at America as a whole, right, I'm seeing, go, hey, what do you think that
01:25:28.500
He said, he's going to try to get out of Ukraine.
01:25:40.500
The Postmaster General said they could cut 10K jobs and become more efficient, and they've
01:25:45.680
been, like, barely able to stay afloat for a while now.
01:25:48.600
Whenever we're sitting here saying there's 10K jobs that can be cut, that is bloat.
01:26:08.020
This is a bit of a distraction, but I'm going to engage it just for a second, right?
01:26:11.400
The problem with the VA, right, is that – hold on.
01:26:16.660
And there's something that we should deal with.
01:26:18.940
I'm literally a tech veteran right now that says they hate the VA.
01:26:22.380
But the reason is they use a VA because when they actually get those services, they like
01:26:32.580
Because people would like their health care to be provided for.
01:26:35.140
I mean, I'm sure that I'd love to buy Snake and Lobster on an EBT card, too.
01:26:43.580
And you don't like a government that cares for its people and does that through health
01:26:53.540
My point is that when they get the actual services, yeah, they like the VA.
01:26:59.900
When they get them, after they've gotten fucked by the bureaucracy, that's the big threat to
01:27:04.100
So I think these stories of veterans are important, right?
01:27:06.300
So we have James Evan, a reservist therapist at the Salem VA.
01:27:10.700
It was fired in February, his eighth month as a probationary worker.
01:27:14.560
Evan said a patient had just told him how much he appreciated his work when he received
01:27:18.960
He had moved from California with his wife, three-year-old son, and a one-year-old daughter
01:27:24.460
Even Evan, a 36-year-old Army veteran, was the only one working in his family.
01:27:31.920
I cried, Evan said, about learning about his firing.
01:27:34.640
I haven't done that in a while because you're just kind of free-falling now.
01:27:38.220
You're in an area to where you're not really familiar with and you're just being left out
01:27:48.260
How long have the veterans felt left out with the bureaucracy?
01:27:51.100
Yeah, and so you're like, and the way to fix that is to fire them.
01:27:54.560
Yeah, because you fire the bad employees, you get better employees.
01:27:58.960
Well, so, you know, my view would be I don't see how a singular story of someone upset over
01:28:07.040
firings has a bearing on the entire system that is being challenged.
01:28:11.540
We have that famous story that just came out this week about this girl that said, literally,
01:28:15.380
I can't believe they fired me for poor performance.
01:28:19.200
But my point is there's a meme where it's a person crying and it's a little kid crying
01:28:31.100
What the meme attempts to exemplify is, look, you're not going to go to a conservative especially
01:28:36.340
or a parent and be like, the sad child warrants that you throw away your system.
01:28:41.800
So, a veteran going to the media and saying, something bad happened to me, it's like, okay,
01:28:51.100
Then we can also say that, well, just because people support-
01:28:55.020
Well, also, then it's also democracy if people decide that this isn't what they wanted, right?
01:29:01.700
If in 2026 they vote for Democrats in the House, Donald Trump gets impeached and then convicted
01:29:11.240
No one is saying that elections don't have consequences, right?
01:29:15.240
My point is largely just, right now we are existing in our democratic process, and if
01:29:21.500
there is subversive action taken to stop the current administration and what they're
01:29:25.980
doing, and I'm saying subversive, I'm not saying legal, standard, political stuff,
01:29:30.320
if I'm saying subversive stuff, that's a threat to our democracy.
01:29:32.980
So, for instance, right now what we have is a popular, a president who won the popular
01:29:36.940
vote, who won every swing state, specifically with one of his core projects, Doge, and the
01:29:42.300
firing of bureaucrats, and now we have people on the left protesting, which is fine, but
01:29:47.880
then we have people setting cars on fire, shooting at Tesla vehicles.
01:29:54.300
So, this is the biggest threat to our democracy we face, that when Trump was leading in the polls,
01:30:07.660
So, right now my point is, the perceived threat to our democracy that you see is the administration
01:30:15.260
The threat to democracy I see is terrorism from the left.
01:30:22.840
We agree that, hey, if you are causing violence and destruction, right, and not, like, you
01:30:28.260
know, illegal, peaceful protest, that you should be in jail, that you are, that's undermining
01:30:32.700
Okay, if that's your point, then I agree with that.
01:30:36.640
All right, but that doesn't undermine my point, though, right?
01:30:38.780
So, you're saying that that is a threat to democracy.
01:30:42.780
I wasn't saying that a doge is the threat to democracy, it's simply another threat to
01:30:48.700
But the paradox here is, people voted for it, and the process is playing out as they
01:30:59.140
What do you think, like, cleaned out the government?
01:31:11.920
Elon Musk formed those well before the election.
01:31:18.240
Saying that we are going to make the government more efficient without details of exactly
01:31:29.900
Drain the Swamp has been a slogan of the Trump campaign going back to 2015.
01:31:43.120
For 10 years, Donald Trump has campaigned on firing people and gutting the bureaucratic
01:31:49.420
But what do people actually think about when they consider these things?
01:31:57.020
It's speculation because these individuals say, yes, I want the bureaucrat.
01:32:01.280
The bureaucrat has been built up within conservative politics, right?
01:32:07.240
But what I don't want is the veteran that I know.
01:32:11.180
The point is, Donald Trump ran a campaign for a year.
01:32:17.080
Remember, Elon Musk and his doge are going to fire people.
01:32:28.180
Your argument is you believe that people don't like the way it's happening.
01:32:43.400
It's a poll run by a reputable source, Reuters.
01:32:54.440
The point I'm making is we had an election based on this promise to do a certain thing.
01:33:01.920
You are now arguing people do not like the way that thing is happening.
01:33:04.920
I'm saying we don't actually know that, poll or otherwise.
01:33:08.740
Can I just talk about the drain the swamp thing real quick, and then I'll turn it right over to you.
01:33:12.520
This is like—when I hear drain the swamp, and I envision—I don't expect Trump to go in there and try to do this.
01:33:18.040
And not to quote Alex Jones, but I will quote Alex Jones.
01:33:20.460
I know I look like a higher-tee version of him.
01:33:22.540
But he says, hey, I don't expect him to not get shit up to his ankles, right?
01:33:30.940
Like, when you're sitting here arguing these things, yeah, I don't like that veterans are having problems, right?
01:33:35.800
It sucks that a veteran got fired or this veteran got fired.
01:33:38.920
But when I hear clean the swamp, I go, hey, look, there's a VA.
01:33:44.380
We have documented examples of the VA using taxpayer dollars to host orgies.
01:33:53.680
And we're going to sit here and go, okay, that trolley should be cleared out.
01:33:58.480
So when we're downsizing and we're clearing people out, that's exactly what Americans voted for in masks.
01:34:06.100
Gibbs, if you're talking about people doing something improper at work, those people should get fired.
01:34:11.560
Like, if we find out, right, and I'm sure Tim runs a tight organization, right?
01:34:16.140
But we found out that one of his workers, maybe this guy right here.
01:34:20.680
But maybe if this guy was up to some shady shit, right, the response shouldn't be Tim shuts down his organization,
01:34:30.560
This guy was jerking off in the studio just before we came here, right?
01:34:38.880
The only way to fix this is to burn it all down or to fire half my employees, like the other guy who's, like, doing the coding, right?
01:34:44.200
He needs to get fired, too, because this guy's jerking off.
01:34:57.140
All right, so say Mr. Kellen here runs Mr. Poole's newsroom or whatever, right, or a different word, and Mr. Kellen has decided that we're going to have orgies every Friday, and we're going to do it on Tim Poole's dime.
01:35:10.060
And then, like, his employees, since this is the work culture, has gone along with it.
01:35:15.060
He is absolutely within his right to go, hey, we need to gut all of that and get rid of it.
01:35:21.620
When you're sitting here going, oh, these people didn't vote for this.
01:35:30.280
You're saying if one employee does a bad thing, we shouldn't shut everything down.
01:35:34.640
You're saying, yes, but if the work culture and they're all doing a bad thing, you should.
01:35:40.340
So the question is, to what degree were these agencies doing bad thing?
01:35:50.900
If you have a company of 50 people and one guy is doing something untoward, should you
01:36:06.040
Even if just a CEO is secretly doing something bad, you should.
01:36:16.420
If there was a company and literally 70% were doing something untoward, should you
01:36:23.920
Yeah, like, if the Catholic church has a multi-decade, probably multi-century track record of abusing
01:36:40.060
And when you do something like that, it's intentionally antagonistic and changes the subject.
01:36:44.880
We all agree that if a company has an overwhelming workforce of corruption, we want to, we're
01:36:50.480
We may have to just fire all those employees and then start from scratch or leave it a skeleton
01:36:55.220
And we all agree if one person's doing something wrong, then we just fire that person.
01:37:00.520
So the real question we're asking is, are the institutions or the offices, the departments
01:37:07.440
that are being gutted, are their whole workforces doing something wrong or is it a small bunch
01:37:19.980
So your view is the departments are largely broken and corrupt and your view is they're
01:37:26.560
Let's just take an organization like, I don't know, say we take the VA, right?
01:37:34.360
Sometimes you need to gut them and get out the poor performers and go to, like, it's
01:37:37.760
like, I'll use actually a better one, USPS, right?
01:37:41.340
The postmaster general just said he wants to cut 10K employees and he wants those to help
01:37:45.380
Now, in my mind, what happens is now you've cut all these employees.
01:37:50.100
What you can do is instead of rehiring them, you might replace them with more qualified
01:37:56.620
So you can pay the better people that can do twice the work in half the time and pay
01:38:01.640
them more and that's more efficient and that's going to be better.
01:38:04.940
And that's what the Doge is arguing they should be doing in a lot of these cases is cutting
01:38:10.100
These people couldn't even answer a five-question thing from Musk.
01:38:13.180
They're sitting here, sitting in, like, troll emails back going, oh, go fuck yourself.
01:38:19.940
Yeah, because they don't want to go around the tech billion who comes in.
01:38:24.300
You don't want to job with a performance review?
01:38:29.560
These individuals literally did have performance reviews.
01:38:32.100
They're being fired for bad performance reviews, but we had these individuals actually
01:38:35.140
show us their past performance reviews and they're excellent.
01:38:46.960
Is there a particular department or institution that you think is being wrongly gutted?
01:38:52.360
Let's talk about the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, right?
01:38:57.700
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that's important, right?
01:39:00.040
Consumer Financial Protection is actually working for you, the taxpayer, right?
01:39:03.720
It's working for individuals who are in contact with the financial landscape, right?
01:39:11.500
All these institutions in terms of banks, right?
01:39:13.200
In terms of non-bank entities that also deal with a lot of financial transactions.
01:39:19.640
And what this institution has done, it has returned over its lifetime $21 billion in fraudulent transactions, right?
01:39:28.420
From the big banks, individuals who don't have the resources to actually take these guys on, right?
01:39:34.260
These institutions like, for instance, the credit agencies, right?
01:39:42.360
You could have gone to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and they would have helped you out, right?
01:39:50.780
I mean, so, interesting you brought up the banks, but when was the last time that we had a balanced budget?
01:40:00.220
The idea here is to address his concerns over the threats to democracy and the issue we're bringing up is specific institutions that are being gutted that should not be.
01:40:12.800
The last person to do it was Andrew Jackson, right?
01:40:25.700
Okay, so then maybe I have incorrect information.
01:40:28.100
So, anyway, Andrew Jackson got rid of national debt in 1837, right?
01:40:40.440
Here's one that I wish Elon would clear out, like the ATF.
01:40:44.260
I think that would be a big fan, like all the conservatives.
01:40:46.920
When you're saying there's – yeah, are there organizations that maybe he's given a look at and, you know, maybe they are good?
01:40:54.700
That's a given when you have these, like, massive bureaucracies that have existed for 20, 30 years unchecked.
01:41:01.900
I'm not going to argue that there's not going to be hiccups.
01:41:04.880
But on the flip side, you can't sit here and go point at every little hiccup and be like, nothing good is coming from this.
01:41:15.740
The CFPB operates independently from Congress, getting its funding from the Federal Reserve instead of annual congressional appropriations.
01:41:22.900
This has led to lawsuits and accusations that it lacks oversight.
01:41:26.840
Critics claim that CFPB enforces regulations selectively, often targeting businesses and banks while ignoring fraud from politically favored groups.
01:41:33.560
Many believe CFPB imposes excessive and burdensome rules on financial institutions, hurting small business and limiting consumer choice.
01:41:40.220
The CFPB faced multiple scandals, including allegations of discrimination in hiring and wasteful spending on luxury office renovations.
01:41:46.500
However, progressives and consumer advocacy groups defend the CFPB, arguing it protects consumers from predatory financial practices.
01:41:52.740
The agency remains one of the most controversial in the federal government.
01:41:55.480
OK, let's see what the CFPB actually has been doing.
01:41:57.700
OK, CFPB closes overdraft loophole to save American billions and fees, right?
01:42:02.400
Like, like, banks overdrafting people to have, like, there's all kinds of ways that banks can increase their fees through overdraft.
01:42:13.160
They, like, Wells Fargo, for example, if you have, say I have a charge go through and they-
01:42:25.320
Yeah, so you- but it has to be for different charges.
01:42:27.140
So, like, if I, like, got a negative account, it would be $35, and then it would be the next one, say, like, a Twitch payment went through or something, then they would charge me another $30.
01:42:35.740
Or don't let a credit card clear if there's no money in the account.
01:42:43.040
Something else that they would do, right, is that, like, they would rearrange the numbers.
01:42:47.540
So, like, let's say if, like, at first, like, the first charge wouldn't overdraft, but the next one did, right, they would switch it.
01:42:55.540
So, the one that overdraft, like, the bigger charge would come in first, right, and then you would have two overdraft fees, right?
01:43:01.260
So, the other one that didn't overdraft at first, that switched.
01:43:04.500
So, now they get two cracks at you rather than one.
01:43:09.320
The CFPB actively, directly targeted that, right?
01:43:13.580
CFPB sues Experian for sham investigations of credit report errors, right?
01:43:17.840
So, people would go to Experian, right, a credit agency, and we know you need credit, the importance of that, right?
01:43:22.400
They would go and say, hey, I've got an error on my file, right?
01:43:27.780
The CFPB would say, oh, yeah, we're going to get right on it, right?
01:43:31.480
But it turns out they didn't actually do it, right?
01:43:33.360
And then, and they'd be gaslighting people, right?
01:43:38.200
The CFPB proposes a rule to ban contact clauses, or contract clauses to strip away fundamental freedoms.
01:43:46.940
So, there are, a rule would forbid fine print that seeks to censor speech or wipe away a try and write.
01:43:53.840
So, basically, like, if you're a bank, right, and you're saying that I want, I want to keep you from doing whatever, right?
01:44:01.460
You're just going to put some, like, bullshit clause in the contract, right?
01:44:05.060
It doesn't actually have to do with delivering the services.
01:44:08.780
CFPB finalizes a rule to remove medical bills from credit reports, right?
01:44:13.960
So, because medical bills, massive amount of the debt within our country, right?
01:44:20.140
So, having some sort of medical bill, a payment, doesn't destroy you in your ability to work or to find a place to work, right?
01:44:29.520
Is that a good thing that they're removing that from the credit reports?
01:44:33.580
I don't know if I agree that that's a dissimilar.
01:44:34.880
So, let's do this, because we do only have about 20 minutes.
01:44:40.760
CFPB, for the sake of argument, is the greatest organization we have in government.
01:45:06.200
Should the American government have gone in and—
01:45:11.580
You can say this, Prime, but if they were going to go in, they would have already done it.
01:45:20.340
So, these are U.S. government employees who went in.
01:45:24.940
But DOGE is doing that in an unconstitutional manner.
01:45:31.360
I don't believe the Constitution actually discusses—
01:45:37.900
I mean, the technicality of, like, whether or not Congress or there should be judicial
01:45:41.320
The technicality of a judicial review—or, sorry, you mean appointment.
01:45:47.620
Like, the Congress appointing a person to actually do this.
01:45:52.020
The point is, you said, they're going in unconstitutionally.
01:45:55.220
I don't believe the issue of interagency terminations and finance is an issue of the Constitution.
01:46:06.480
Tim, I've been trying to drive to this point for, like, an hour.
01:46:11.520
So, the Constitution says that Congress is in charge of the purse.
01:46:14.840
The Congress is in charge of distributing funds, right?
01:46:21.720
And so, what's happening is that this group of individuals goes in and they are making cuts, right?
01:46:29.920
But, as we're looking at how these things work previously, right, in terms of looking at the contracts and stuff, like, there are obligations, right, designed by Congress.
01:46:39.480
Congress says, we're going to spend this amount of money, right, to hire individuals, to make this infrastructure improvement, right?
01:46:46.020
The president does not have the ability to simply decide, I'm not going to do that, right?
01:46:52.780
Through the Impoundment Act, the Impoundment Act of 1974, right, there is a process to do that.
01:46:58.580
There is a process for the president to say, I'd like to delay or possibly cancel this money, right?
01:47:12.400
The challenge at hand over the constitutionality is that Article 2, Section 1 says the executive power shall be vested in the president of the United States.
01:47:18.480
He shall close his office, et cetera, et cetera.
01:47:23.280
We've had this strange phenomenon in this country.
01:47:25.240
So, one, USAID is operating under the executive branch, meaning Congress can apportion funding to USAID and the executive branch has control over what it does.
01:47:33.720
Meaning, you can put the funding there, Trump can say you're all fired.
01:47:36.380
The issue then with checks and balances would be the judiciary needs to step in to make a determination as to whether or not this is being operated correctly.
01:47:46.200
The check would be now if the courts agree or disagree.
01:48:00.620
You're simply stating that it's constitutional.
01:48:02.040
But we have actually legal experts saying that's not constitutional.
01:48:07.600
USAID operates under the executive branch for which the president has sole authority.
01:48:12.340
So that means the president has the constitutional authority as he oversees these departments as how they operate.
01:48:21.020
And then what is going to happen right now is the judiciary will engage in what's called a check on the executive branch to make a determination about whether or not –
01:48:31.080
Yeah, and they're literally doing that right now.
01:48:38.840
So, yes, they operate under the executive branch.
01:48:42.780
But that doesn't mean that, like, when Congress says you have to use this money for this thing and this thing doesn't get done, that that's okay, right?
01:48:50.860
That is impounding – that's violating the Impoundment Act.
01:48:56.280
Prod, do you agree the judicial system has to decide what's constitutional, though?
01:49:14.700
Congress has said that we have a certain amount of funds that we are going to be used for these processes to build this infrastructure.
01:49:21.200
You can't just close down this agency and say, that's what we're not going to do.
01:49:33.720
So, yes, he can fire those individuals, right, that you were saying before.
01:49:35.880
But then he has to somehow actually accomplish that task, right?
01:49:39.360
So the point is to have new safety upgrades to our planes, right?
01:49:42.860
Those safety upgrades have to happen unless he actually goes through the process.
01:49:46.660
And there is a process, right, a process he's used before in his first term where he can cancel those expenditures.
01:49:59.500
The president gets a one-fiscal-year delay of spending at his own discretion, and Congress can – unless Congress – yeah, the president can temporarily – it's called the deferral.
01:50:12.060
So the president cannot rescind fundings, but he can for one-fiscal-year defer payment for policy reasons.
01:50:19.280
So Prime keeps making the claim that it's unconstitutional, right?
01:50:26.600
But first, they argued that he couldn't get full-access data, so that wasn't cool.
01:50:30.900
They said that they were not allowed to exist at all.
01:50:33.800
Then they were – okay, Doge was formed as a reconstructed tent position to be disbanded by July 4, 2026, and reformed of the Obama agency, so it's allowed to operate.
01:50:45.200
Admin said that Doge has to be backed by Trump's opponent heads of each department on the left.
01:50:51.100
Doge also just lost the case because this agency that's supposed to be the most transparent agency we've ever had, right, also wants to be exempt from a FOIA request.
01:51:00.740
They just lost the case in terms of that, in terms of a judge saying, no, you are subject to that.
01:51:05.500
You have to actually respond to this FOIA request, right?
01:51:09.920
Before we get distracted with that, right, which doesn't actually fucking matter in terms of the point that I'm trying to make here, right,
01:51:14.920
in terms of having processes to defer, if it's a simple deferral, right, okay, but then what happens after?
01:51:22.940
Are we hiring – are we rehiring the CFPB, right?
01:51:28.480
One of the conditions of deferral is, quote, to achieve savings through efficiency.
01:51:32.520
If spending can be delayed to reduce costs to increase efficiency, the president can defer funds.
01:51:39.080
So this means what he's doing is allowed under the empowerment.
01:51:41.220
No, because there's a process to do this, right?
01:51:43.120
For instance, if he wants to cancel a payment, he has –
01:51:50.580
Bro, I'm just saying I looked up the law that you cited.
01:51:52.400
Yeah, you're not looking – I looked up – don't worry, because I looked up the law that I cited.
01:52:00.880
The president can legally withhold the funds for one fiscal year.
01:52:13.120
So there is a – like, for instance, there is a – to cancel those funds, it's a simple majority.
01:52:19.700
A simple majority that you can get through Congress.
01:52:28.700
So when I say it's unconstitutional, when I'm saying it's breaking the law, that means, hey, you're not following the law.
01:52:33.240
If you're going through another process you just made up, that would be breaking the law.
01:52:42.440
For deferral, the president sends a message to Congress for which they reject, modify, or approve.
01:52:50.080
I do think it's fair to say that Trump is not actually deferring anything.
01:52:52.500
And the issue then is we are in a, to be fair, constitutionally nebulous position of Trump firing people isn't legally rescission or deferral.
01:53:04.660
The argument would be that it is their argument that it's not.
01:53:09.140
Well, so let me just – I want to examine another portion of this because we've only got a few minutes left.
01:53:14.700
So Doge right now, which has said – and this has been controversial this last week.
01:53:20.320
It estimates that the government had 4.6 million credit cards and 90 million unique transactions in the fiscal year 2024.
01:53:26.520
All right, I've worked for several companies that have given me a company credit card, right?
01:53:30.740
And I've had to answer with a receipt every time I spent money on that card.
01:53:34.820
But you're telling me with 4.6 million credit cards issued that there is not potential for waste in there and then we need to go in there and look it up and see.
01:53:48.200
But say there's money that's been appointed for the credit cards and we find out they're spending it buying T-bone steaks every night with the misses.
01:53:57.260
Yeah, the money might have been in proportion for these credit cards, but it's being misused.
01:54:01.800
And it's not unconstitutional to reassess these things, which is what Doge is doing.
01:54:12.880
You just don't like that Trump and Elon are at the top.
01:54:17.940
Because they're the ones providing the oversight.
01:54:28.540
It doesn't matter if it's legal or it's constitutional.
01:54:31.740
So I don't give a fuck if Joe Biden or a Donald Trump happens to be on top.
01:54:40.940
Okay, so you're not actually even – you're literally not even listening, right?
01:54:45.660
Okay, you don't know – you don't – tell me about the Empowerment Act.
01:54:49.900
I mean, I often have to have it off the top of my head.
01:54:52.780
I mean, you didn't have the information for the other thing.
01:54:58.440
I mean, based off what he's just read, I mean, it sounds like he's doing fine.
01:55:01.640
No, he literally just said, hey, actually, there is a process here.
01:55:23.280
Trump decides as the head of the executive how those funds, once they're allocated for
01:55:33.020
Congress can allocate funds for a specific use.
01:55:35.940
Trump then determines how to go about that process.
01:55:41.360
Congress says, here's $100 million specifically to grow strawberries.
01:55:44.620
Trump can say, okay, we got to go strawberries.
01:55:52.120
So, Trump has discretion on how that money is spent to an extent, right?
01:55:57.760
So, when he's sitting here gutting an agency, there's no – especially when it could be
01:56:01.800
in the fiscal year still, there's no reason for me to go, oh, it's unconstitutional.
01:56:11.940
But, real quick, you made this point, and I think you're in agreement.
01:56:15.000
You said so long as what was apportioned by Congress gets done, right?
01:56:21.200
So, Trump has to find a way to do the thing Congress says that has to be done.
01:56:28.920
But right now, yes, we don't have a plan for that.
01:56:32.500
And he's saying he's going to close down the Department of Education, right?
01:56:39.540
And it takes an act of Congress to actually close that down anyway, Trey, right?
01:57:03.240
So of the things that Congress has mandated to be done, has Trump shut those things down?
01:57:07.080
If there's no workers to execute those things, then yes, they've been shut down.
01:57:13.660
So the Congress appropriates – like we're going to send this amount of aid to Nigeria or whatever, right?
01:57:23.660
And there's no workers to actually execute that.
01:57:30.240
The question was, has Trump actually shut any of these things down?
01:57:35.400
Are you talking about a contract or operations?
01:57:36.920
Anything that Congress has mandated to be done, has Trump ordered shut down completely?
01:58:01.680
Now, my follow-up question is, did Congress apportion funds for the specific task of CFPB
01:58:10.320
So the issue then is, one, was CFPB actually shut down?
01:58:15.940
A judge has blocked that, although it's fair to say Trump wants to.
01:58:20.320
A whistleblower is now testifying that they still want to do it.
01:58:24.940
That would be the – so the Unconstitutional Act would be –
01:58:28.960
He follows the court's decisions when they do it.
01:58:31.120
So if shutting it down would be the thing that's the problem that I'm against, if you're saying
01:58:36.440
that a court stopped him from doing the bad thing, well, then I agree with the court,
01:58:42.020
So it doesn't invalidate anything that I just said.
01:58:54.080
That's why I thought you said it wasn't a department because you were specifically
01:59:01.460
We were talking about the funding of the CFPB, right?
01:59:06.980
The funding method has been challenged because it's constitutional.
01:59:12.020
The banks that have been trying to be – have been regulated, right?
01:59:16.400
And so they've been challenging it on all grounds.
01:59:19.540
I'm trying to just – we're trying to get to the truth here.
01:59:21.880
So when I asked, and you said CFPB is an agency not a department,
01:59:24.600
I thought you were – the point you were trying to make contextually was
01:59:27.260
this one may be shut down but doesn't qualify because Congress didn't apportion funds for it.
01:59:34.440
If Congress says this money is for this thing, Trump must have that thing happen.
01:59:39.080
He controls how that thing does happen, but it has to happen.
01:59:42.680
CFPB is not given funds by Congress, which has been challenged, so it's nebulous.
01:59:51.540
I disagree that it's any different in terms of how our government actually works, but we
02:00:00.280
If USAID is getting its funds directly from Congress, then it counts for USAID, right?
02:00:09.420
But if you want to talk about the technicality because, again, yes, the CFPB is protected
02:00:13.160
because they didn't – when it was created, it was hit.
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02:00:47.020
It was structured in a way so it couldn't easily be shut down.
02:00:51.480
Well, if you go through an unconstitutional manner, of course, you can easily shut it
02:00:55.420
So if he totally guts USAID and puts like Trump aid in there instead or whatever, I'm
02:01:01.420
just making something up, and it does the exact same job, like wouldn't that fulfill
02:01:05.520
the obligation to spend the money on that thing?
02:01:19.960
So what you're telling me now is that now they're not going to shrink the government.
02:01:28.160
So it's not about replacing this with something else, right?
02:01:39.520
Largely, when we say things like if a department has one bad person, don't gut it.
02:01:43.500
If a department has a mass majority of corruption, gut it.
02:01:47.460
The issue is largely just how we see the world in these institutions.
02:01:51.300
And it's why I believe that there's not going to be reconciliation.
02:01:55.880
There's not going to be a coming together of either side.
02:01:58.020
And my view, especially reading now about CFPB, is I was – I'm learning a lot here as Doge does its thing.
02:02:06.840
Notably that Congress has created extra constitutionally agencies.
02:02:11.080
What I mean by extra – outside of the confines of the Constitution, they have created agencies that are independent of the government.
02:02:18.160
The excuse they made in the 70s when they started creating these things, not all of them but some of them, was that they should be free from political influence.
02:02:29.820
It operates outside of the executive branch and Congress, which is shockingly insane, as does the Federal Reserve.
02:02:38.320
Leave that for the inspector general's office, right?
02:02:40.040
We shouldn't have inspector generals who are independent from like –
02:02:53.340
Like the Supreme Court is supposed to be independent from politics, right?
02:03:06.800
The president of the executive branch will appoint and Congress must approve.
02:03:18.840
A president gets elected and most people actually vote solely on the Supreme Court justices.
02:03:27.300
So the Supreme Court justices are free from the electoral process, but they are politically
02:03:35.160
The reason why we do it this way, the Supreme Court gets a lifetime appointment so that
02:03:49.660
This country, in my opinion, has become a hodgepodge of duct tape in many ways, notably
02:03:54.820
with agencies operating outside of the confines of government.
02:04:03.460
But no, those other things were outside the government.
02:04:11.000
One of the big questions right now that sparked a lot of controversy was Donald Trump asserting
02:04:15.140
executive authority over departments that were told – or were said to be independent
02:04:20.940
One of these is CFPB, which is operating outside of the executive branch and Congress.
02:04:27.440
This is, in my view, insanely unconstitutional.
02:04:30.800
The purpose of a political process is quite literally.
02:04:36.080
We can fundamentally alter agencies that we believe are doing wrong or doing right or just
02:04:50.120
And who can – and so who gets to fire employees that are bad?
02:04:54.940
The president can, but that's different from shutting down the agency or whatever.
02:05:02.740
Right now, it is largely Democrats resisting executive authority over what should be branches
02:05:09.060
Trump has sole executive authority as the president.
02:05:17.520
He can't do anything he wants under executive – he can't torture members of his branch,
02:05:26.040
If he's not doing that now, then that's the issue.
02:05:28.980
I don't think you're familiar with the NDAA signed by Obama in 2012.
02:05:33.880
Donald Trump can literally take anybody he wants and torture them offshore.
02:05:41.200
Over a long period of time, this country has become a hodgepodge of duct tape with insane
02:05:45.160
Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act Indefinite Detention Provision,
02:05:49.900
which allows a president with sole executive authority to rendition literally anyone in
02:05:59.760
We're going to find some agreement here, right?
02:06:01.320
Okay, the thing that I was trying to drive to, that I never got to, is the point of doge,
02:06:06.880
Because like you just saw, there is a process to do exactly what he's talking about, but
02:06:17.020
Trump has not engaged in rescission or deferral.
02:06:23.380
Deferral is specifically if Trump said the funding appropriate to Congress shall be deferred one year,
02:06:34.400
The Impoundment Act has nothing to do with what Doge is doing.
02:06:36.420
No, I'm saying that Doge is the end run around the Impoundment Act.
02:06:46.080
So the issue then is you are saying perhaps there should be new—
02:06:49.600
First, there should be judicial review of what he's doing to see if it violates the Impoundment Act.
02:06:53.540
Because he's not issued deferral or rescission.
02:06:55.500
He has quite literally not frozen funds or rescinded the funds.
02:06:59.060
Then we would need new legislation to specifically state here the parameters by which—
02:07:06.160
So far right now, the argument is purely political, stating in the future we should operate like this, not what you're doing right now should be stopped.
02:07:25.680
Donald Trump—okay, you keep signing the Impoundment Act.
02:07:30.140
The president says, I hereby rescind these funds.
02:07:35.640
The president says, I hereby put a stay on these funds for one year so we can review based on these criteria.
02:07:45.800
Which means the legal confines of the Impoundment Act do not apply to determinations.
02:07:50.120
Of course it does because the Impoundment Act is to say that, you know, the Impoundment Act, the president can't do that unilaterally, right?
02:08:01.160
Firing an employee is not a declaration of deferral of funding.
02:08:04.540
If the acts of Congress don't actually get done—
02:08:09.060
So in one year we will revisit that conversation.
02:08:14.700
And then you can argue Trump did not handle it.
02:08:20.220
I think this is an act of the unitary executive theory.
02:08:26.900
It basically means that under the president, right, they have complete control of the executive, right?
02:08:38.260
I'm saying the Constitution—you have a check and a balance.
02:08:40.680
The judiciary reviews the actions of the executive.
02:08:46.660
No, I'm saying that under the unitary executive theory, right, the point is to undermine those checks and balances.
02:08:54.640
The doge is one of the processes they're using to undermine them.
02:08:59.260
They go through Congress, right, and they have a Republican Congress that will actually do these things.
02:09:02.860
They have said, we want to cut these things, but they're not doing it.
02:09:07.340
They don't want to cut Social Security, right, so they'll have doge do it instead.
02:09:13.960
So this is part of the whole thing why people in my camp voted for Trump is, all right, it's clear that we can get shit done, right?
02:09:32.140
And so when I look at this, we're only six weeks in or seven weeks now, and Trump has already done so much stuff.
02:09:38.240
We're at, like, arguably $105 billion saved or $65 billion or whatever.
02:09:46.440
Like, they're sitting here, and when we see this, it's clear that the bureaucracy has been holding us back.
02:09:54.840
Another way for the bureaucracy are the things that people voted for.
02:09:58.520
Didn't we vote for all that other stuff before?
02:10:00.840
You talked about democracy and what people voted for.
02:10:02.760
People voted to have the Department of Education.
02:10:06.500
They voted for all these—the Veterans Affairs Office.
02:10:12.720
I think—okay, so we do have to wrap up because we're going a little long.
02:10:16.660
But I do think you made a really great point when I asked which laws were broken.
02:10:21.160
The issue, of course, being that to the letter of the law, Trump didn't break that law.
02:10:24.440
However, you choose to interpret it that way because your opinion is that Trump firing people is an end run around the Impoundment Act because he is eliminating employees that should be able to get the job done.
02:10:33.780
And thus, effectively deferring the funding because now it's not going to be utilized properly.
02:10:39.140
This is why my final thoughts on this are the left over the past 15, 20 years has engaged in the ethos of there is no truth but power.
02:10:47.940
This was the words of the late David Graeber, not me, that the left has adopted the fascistic ethos.
02:10:59.340
He was a professor and he was a prominent progressive and one of the organizers of Occupy Wall Street.
02:11:03.940
He passed away a few years ago, but before he died, he had this long thread on Twitter.
02:11:08.160
It was Twitter at the time that the left has adopted fascistic ethos, namely there is no truth but power.
02:11:13.680
And so what we've been seeing is, for instance, with Donald Trump's documents case, his home was raided.
02:11:23.160
And he was they tried to prosecute him under this.
02:11:26.060
Joe Biden, however, there was his ghostwriter explicitly stated on the record.
02:11:30.360
Biden was recorded saying he had illegally retained national security documents as vice president for the purpose of writing a book to make money.
02:11:39.820
The statement that Donald Trump violated the Impoundment Act, I do believe rather exemplifies the crisis we're having in this country in that to the letter of law, Donald Trump did not.
02:11:48.860
He did not publicly declare a deferral of funds or a rescission of funds.
02:11:55.400
The interpretation for you and many on the left would be, you see, he's is breaking the law.
02:12:00.820
We we deem it so by our interpretation, by the spirit of the law.
02:12:06.500
So the challenge we then have is the left is there is no truth but power.
02:12:10.900
We will interpret the law and we will enforce it as we see it, not what the law actually states.
02:12:15.460
Donald Trump is doing an end run, whereas the right has continually played this.
02:12:19.920
Yeah, we're not going to do that because we can't.
02:12:21.560
And several examples of that are the summer of love riots where the White House was firebombed.
02:12:29.760
There was no investigation into the hundred plus people who were throwing the firebombs and setting fire to churches.
02:12:34.660
The mass riots that resulted in 30 plus deaths, all of it ignored.
02:12:39.700
The right does not engage in these no truth but power games for the most part, though sometimes they do.
02:12:46.860
My ultimate point is there's not going to be an agreement as to whether or not what Trump is doing fits or does not fit within the confines,
02:12:52.680
because we fully expect the liberal establishment and whatever's left of it.
02:12:56.640
There's no Democratic Party leader to utilize the law however they see fit to make sure that their political enemies are destroyed.
02:13:02.620
For instance, the racketeering charges against Jenna Ellis in Georgia for simply representing Donald Trump.
02:13:07.960
She was charged with two counts of racketeering.
02:13:10.000
All she did was provide legal advice to a man who hired her to do so.
02:13:15.320
And in Georgia, they tried putting her in prison, to which she cried on TV and apologized for doing so.
02:13:19.200
They did this in, I believe it was Wisconsin as well, targeting the lawyers, the legal representation of a sitting president.
02:13:25.020
We have seen two left-aligned individuals try to assassinate the man, not to mention the Iranian plot, but that's here nor there.
02:13:33.000
I perceive this as Republicans are going to continually be weak, however, and the left will continually either obfuscate, defend, engage in extra legal practices, target lawyers, shut down speech.
02:13:46.460
The censorship wave of major corporations throughout the 2010s and big tech with left-aligned individuals working with federal intelligence agencies, shutting down largely conservative personalities was denied by the corporate press, finally admitted to by now Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and the whole lot of them.
02:14:00.740
They now acknowledge, yeah, they actually did that.
02:14:03.060
We have evidence from actually left-leaning publications in which the intelligence agencies had back doors into Facebook.
02:14:08.220
This is from The Intercept and X to submit for review things they wanted taken down.
02:14:13.500
It is now a known fact several years on that, yes, these institutions actually were censoring opinions, largely the conservative side.
02:14:20.360
You then have the Summer of Love riots, the Antifa riots, the 90-plus days of firebombing of federal buildings by far leftists to which Kamala Harris and Joe Biden solicited funding to help these individuals get out of jail.
02:14:31.660
Then you have January 6th, the one time that we have of great merit, not the only time I'm saying, the firebombing of the White House in St. John's Church should have resulted in a mass committee hearings and mass arrests.
02:14:47.200
The lopsidedness of enforcement and aggression in this country is apparent to anybody who follows the news.
02:14:55.100
Joe Biden said illegally to a president of a foreign nation, this one's for you.
02:14:59.040
Congress approved federal loan guarantees to Ukraine, and Joe Biden flew there and told the president, I am going to block that as vice president unless you do, unless you make a political move that I demand.
02:15:11.760
The firing of a state prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who is currently investigating, among other things, Mikhail Zodchevsky, the founder of the Burisma Energy Company, for which Joe Biden's son was on the board.
02:15:22.920
At the bare minimum, it was a conflict of interest.
02:15:24.720
When Donald Trump called the president and said, what is this all about?
02:15:30.060
He was impeached for it and accused of a quid pro quo.
02:15:36.480
But for some reason, enforcement only went in one direction.
02:15:39.120
What we have today is for the first time that I have seen in 20 years, the right, the Republican side has said it is time to wield power.
02:15:49.480
And the reaction from the left is it's a threat to our democracy.
02:15:56.400
OK, the reason I think Donald Trump won is because nobody liked the summer of love riots.
02:16:03.280
Nobody liked the firebombing of the White House.
02:16:06.900
Nobody likes that they're paying taxes at all, regardless of whether they're good or bad.
02:16:12.740
The Democrats have become the party of the military industrial complex in at the top level, not not the progressives in their support for Israel.
02:16:21.280
As party wide, their support for Ukraine, including the progressives.
02:16:24.860
OK, that is that is the largest funding right now of the military industrial complex.
02:16:30.320
The right has become what I would call the horde in reference to World of Warcraft, a hodgepodge of various groups of only aligned against the, quote unquote, alliance of established power structures.
02:16:45.780
Lots of evangelicals are power based, like it supports Israel, of course.
02:16:48.760
Both the left and the right have their anti-Israel faction.
02:16:51.780
And absolutely, Donald Trump will give Israel whatever they want.
02:16:55.240
However, the side that has the larger anti-war sentiment and element is, of course, the Republican side.
02:17:01.720
So what we see right now is the principal positions of the right.
02:17:07.860
There are some people on the left who want that, though.
02:17:09.680
So RF Kennedy Jr. was rejected by every single Democrat when he was up for appointment.
02:17:19.160
And they called him an anti-vaxxer and they called him all these other things.
02:17:21.620
And then he puts on an op ed saying, please get the vaccine, which is insane.
02:17:25.000
It's insane that people criticized him for that when he was never active.
02:17:27.400
And that's what I mean. RFK Jr. represents the let's get healthy, which used to be a left Democrat position.
02:17:33.920
It was the big corporations aligned with libertarian billionaires that didn't care that we had chemicals.
02:17:40.880
You've got Tulsi Gabbard, a large anti-war personality, critical of U.S. spending in foreign policy and the bombings in Syria, etc.
02:17:47.400
And they called her pro-Russia for it because she was critical of us engaging in regime change wars across the Middle East.
02:17:52.680
So you've got the anti-war element, the health element, and you've got the make America, the reduce the size of government element.
02:18:00.680
On the Democrat side, you have, I would call it also additionally a strange hodgepodge, but you have support overtly for the military-industrial complex at the highest levels.
02:18:10.060
Broad support for the military-industrial complex at the progressive to large levels, which is Ukraine, which received more, Ukraine received more funding than Israel has in 70 years.
02:18:19.320
So if you're talking about the principal funding, the largest recipient of military-industrial complex support is Ukraine.
02:18:29.660
Israel has, right now, after 70 years, has already been surpassed by Ukraine in two, which is nuts.
02:18:36.780
The Democrats largely supported mass corporations.
02:18:42.360
They oppose the health operations, and they support bureaucratic institutions, which most people can't understand what's currently going on.
02:18:49.800
My view here is, now I'm ranting, but I'll just finish by saying this.
02:18:54.560
When you've got prominent punk rock bands that used to be anti-war, now pro-Ukraine, it appears that the Democratic institution has crumbled for a reason,
02:19:06.120
and that is, it is hypocritical and doesn't seem to be at all representing any core ideology.
02:19:12.260
The ultimate point I'm trying to make is, no one's going to agree.
02:19:17.260
The Democrats are going to continue to say, might makes right, and the right is going to continue to say, but we're literally watching these things happen.
02:19:24.700
The difference now is, through the collapse of the corporate narrative machine and the rise of podcasts, Donald Trump was able to win.
02:19:31.580
And now you actually have people who want actions to happen, happening, and of course, the Democrats still maintain, might makes right, so we'll do what we want.
02:19:41.360
Yeah, I'll just give you my final thought, right?
02:19:46.140
You know, there's the age-old expression when you look at organized crime, is that they get more violent and they get louder the closer you get to hitting their money.
02:19:54.920
And it seems to me, it's crazy that the reaction to Doge by the left in general has been, like terror attacks on Tesla, has been outrage over all the stuff that's been going down.
02:20:06.740
And to me, it seems like it's because they're hitting the money and there's some kind of nasty onion that we need to pull back the layers.
02:20:12.460
And, you know, I just, the visceral, just hatred, and they're sitting here, they're calling him President Musk, they're calling him, you know, a Nazi, they're calling him all these different things.
02:20:21.380
And I'm just going, you know, well, there's got to be something up.
02:20:24.660
And every time he goes and clears something out, it's just, no matter what he does, it's, like, it's bad, even if it's not bad.
02:20:34.860
I believe it was Ezra Klein who said, something to the effect of the fact that Democrats can't give Trump one good day, effectively, like, disproves their, like, I'll paraphrase, but the fact that Trump couldn't get one good day at all for killing a man who was kidnapping young girls and raping them and leading a terror organization,
02:20:51.280
in the Middle East, something that even Obama spoke out against, shows there is no ethos or ideology behind their actions.
02:20:58.060
Oh, yeah, when he turned General Salami into Salami, you know, I mean, a big fan of that, he, you know, crippled Iran's terror organizations with the, through the, what is it, the Revolutionary Guard?
02:21:08.060
Like, crippled them, and nobody ever wanted to give him credit for that.
02:21:10.260
But these are things the Democrats, based on their positions today, should have supported.
02:21:17.380
Donald Trump takes out the, quote-unquote, austere scholar in ISIS, and he was still heavily criticized for it.
02:21:23.300
He takes out the leader of terror operations in the Middle East.
02:21:27.860
If I'm remembering with the General Salami thing, it happened in Iraq.
02:21:31.480
That was, if I remember correctly, and it's been a long time, right, that was the issue.
02:21:35.840
Not that he took him out because we, like, attack Iran all the time, right, but that we took him out on Iraqi territory.
02:21:53.160
And where, where is the outrage over what Biden was doing and what Obama was doing?
02:22:00.100
I 100% agree with you in terms of their support of Israel, right?
02:22:02.880
Like, it's been completely undermining anything they've talked about.
02:22:05.760
And let me pause you, because my point is, when Democrats defended and cheered for Obama murdering people, children in Yemen.
02:22:18.380
That is supposed to be the other side of this conflict are mad at Trump for killing Soleimani while celebrating or defending Barack Obama for murdering literal children in countries we are not at war with.
02:22:30.460
And that is, that is the, the, the principal issue.
02:22:34.680
It is, it is, that's why I said they're, uh, the, I'll tell you one of the problems I have with the progressives is their support for Ukraine, which makes literally no sense.
02:22:46.100
Uh, instead of me interrupting and ranting like I should, we should wind things down.
02:22:48.960
So if you guys, if you guys want to take the final thoughts.
02:22:51.700
Uh, uh, okay, um, uh, Doge is a disaster in terms of constitutionality.
02:22:58.700
Um, it violates, uh, the, uh, uh, Congress's ability to decide where funds go, um, uh, and, uh, it undermines various other laws and regulations.
02:23:09.780
They're going to be, uh, we're going to figure this out, uh, in court.
02:23:13.440
Um, I think that we, there's lots of things that we didn't get to, right?
02:23:16.700
Because we got distracted by immigration, unfortunately, but we didn't get to Elon Musk, like endless conflict of interest.
02:23:22.180
Like for instance, um, uh, like undermining other companies' contracts, right?
02:23:26.560
So he starts firing people in the FAA and then he decides, oh, the FAA is using this system, is deciding to, um, go to Verizon to get this, uh, communication system.
02:23:34.260
I'm going to get that contract canceled or it's going to mysteriously cancel itself.
02:23:38.280
And then Starlink instead is going to take that contract.
02:23:42.040
Um, uh, I think the Doge does a bad job in giving Trump the information, right?
02:23:47.040
So if, if, if, if Doge is just an advisory board, right?
02:23:51.960
But if it's just an advisory board and it's giving Trump information to then act, then it's doing a bad job.
02:23:57.300
We can see that with the Social Security, uh, administration, right?
02:23:59.700
Talking about those tens of millions of people, right?
02:24:09.440
They didn't understand exactly how those government databases worked, right?
02:24:14.800
Um, uh, but we see this all the time in terms of errors.
02:24:17.420
So it's not efficient and that it makes mistakes all the goddamn time.
02:24:20.400
It requires other people, uh, to, um, uh, to error check it, right?
02:24:25.280
It has, um, tried to, uh, ensconce itself in secrecy in terms of, uh, like hiding from
02:24:30.840
FOIA requests, pretending it's not an agency, but then pretending it is an agency.
02:24:34.220
Donald Trump saying that, uh, Elon Musk is in charge of, uh, Doge, but then not in charge
02:24:40.120
And so is this Amy Gleason person who's never, no one's ever heard of, right?
02:24:43.220
This is a whole process to undermine our democracy rather than going through, uh, Congress, rather
02:24:49.820
than going through the normal process that we have set up, we have Doge, right?
02:24:53.900
And you can say it's getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, right?
02:24:56.500
But one, Doge is deciding what is waste, fraud, and abuse.
02:24:59.380
Something that we can't agree with, and there's a lot of it that we can't, right?
02:25:02.420
But it should be, uh, handled through our, uh, legislative process.
02:25:10.020
This is an act of the unitary executive theory, right?
02:25:12.280
This is to undermine, um, uh, uh, the checks and balances so that, uh, the executive has
02:25:22.080
Uh, the, uh, who's, uh, part, who's now the head of, uh, Office of Budget and Management,
02:25:26.560
Um, he, uh, is another person who's been pushing unitary executive theory, right?
02:25:31.280
Uh, uh, so, um, there is, and his, uh, uh, uh, attorney general, general Barr, right,
02:25:38.700
from his first, uh, term, right, actively talked about the unitary executive theory.
02:25:45.700
He's critical to actually accomplishing this plan.
02:25:50.540
The checks and balances that, uh, Tim apparently says that he still values.
02:25:57.020
I appreciate you, Tim, for inviting me on the chat.
02:26:01.160
Uh, well, first, yeah, I, uh, big fan of, uh, everything Trump's done.
02:26:10.340
I just can't even keep track, uh, Elon, if you, uh, happen to watch this, hey, why
02:26:17.160
Uh, you know, uh, as far as I know, not, nobody likes the ATF, but, uh, moving on.
02:26:31.260
I think the fact that we're getting this visceral reaction from the Dems is indicative that there
02:26:35.380
is corruption, uh, I, I think that we're going to find more and more, uh, it's, it's just
02:26:41.060
Uh, but yeah, shout out to Prime for helping set this up.
02:26:46.760
I wouldn't be streaming and doing any of this without them.
02:26:49.760
Oh, uh, you can find me every day, Monday through Thursday at 7.30 p.m.
02:26:53.360
Central, uh, as Admiral Gibbs on pretty much, uh, every platform.
02:26:57.460
Uh, you can find me on Twitch.tv and youtube.com at PrimeKai, P-R-I-M-E-C-A-Y-E-S.
02:27:05.240
We do stream on Mondays and Thursdays, but we're expanding our streams, right?
02:27:14.280
We argue all the time and I prove them wrong all the time.
02:27:18.500
They call me the political prophet because I'm always right.
02:27:23.940
You know, I wish we had more time, but, uh, in the future,
02:27:26.280
we're planning on doing these live with an audience and bringing up people on
02:27:30.980
And, um, in about, uh, let's see a month and a half, we're playing our first
02:27:34.740
show and we're trying to figure out what we're going to do.
02:27:37.680
And hopefully you guys as members may actually come up and sit at the table
02:27:41.340
and yell at one of these two fine gentlemen, or, you know, depending,
02:27:46.340
The idea is for those that are members of the Timcast discord,
02:27:49.140
we want to have about 40 seats in the audience and, uh, members of the audience
02:27:52.900
submit their debate talking point on the core issue.
02:27:54.960
So we'd present them doge pro for or against, then we're going to try and do
02:27:58.940
split between half four, half against people present their arguments.
02:28:04.220
And if they're not very good, then we're going to be like, okay,
02:28:06.680
we're not gonna be this person, but we're not going to be mean.
02:28:08.240
But then we want to bring people up and have them sit down in the chair and
02:28:14.920
I've been doing like a formal debates where there's like a winner and loser and
02:28:18.500
And, uh, I think that there's definitely space in, in this industry for what
02:28:23.120
I think the issue is, um, we want to decentralize the ability for people to be
02:28:27.000
loud and, uh, there's probably a lot of people we've never heard of who are
02:28:30.960
smarter than all of us combined and they're just not marketing people.
02:28:34.500
They're intelligent philosophers and researchers.
02:28:36.820
And they could sit here and explain to all of us why we're all wrong and then
02:28:44.240
Uh, we're gonna be back tonight at Timcast IRL 8 PM with a bunch of news.
02:28:51.000
Thanks for hanging out and we'll see y'all then.
02:29:02.860
Welcome to finally caught a true crime podcast from the hit North American and
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I saw the one girl with her throat cut and her abdomen stabbed.
02:29:20.780
Each episode details a horrific murder and subsequent investigation in order to
02:29:26.400
The newly released first season of finally caught available wherever you get your