Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - DOGE Keeps Digging as Dems Keep Deceiving, Live with Lawyer Paul Moore & Entrepreneur Barry Habib | Triggered Ep. 216

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:06:26.000 Things are moving as fast as ever, myself included.

00:06:29.000 Every day the news is happening so rapidly it can be hard to even keep up.

00:06:34.000 But that's why we're here, to tell you all you need to know and break down all of the biggest stories.

00:06:40.000 And today we actually have two first-time guests.

00:06:43.000 First, we'll get into all things DOJ, DOJ, Department of Education, with former chief of investigations for the Education Department and former senior counsel at the Justice Department, Paul Moore.

00:06:57.000 We'll also reveal even more explosive revelations about how our universities are selling out to adversaries like China.

00:07:08.000 Then we'll get into all things DOJ, DOJ, Department of Education, We'll have CEO of MBS Highway, entrepreneur and housing expert Barry Habib, to give you an inside look at the economy and what to expect next.

00:07:20.000 So make sure you guys are liking, sharing, subscribing, so you never miss one of these major episodes.

00:07:25.000 Remember, you can get Triggered on Spotify, you can get it on Apple Podcasts.

00:07:29.000 If you missed the show here on Rumble, check it out there.

00:07:32.000 If your friends get their podcasts that way.

00:07:34.000 Make sure they know about it.

00:07:35.000 And for all of the top headlines that we'll spotlight here on the show, go over to my news app, MXM News, where you can get the mainstream news without the mainstream bias.

00:07:44.000 And of course, support our sponsors for supporting programming like this.

00:07:50.000 That takes guts.

00:07:51.000 Prepare for the future and diversify your savings with the Birch Gold Group.

00:07:55.000 Look, in the new year with my father back in office, you're going to have a lot more money in your paycheck.

00:08:00.000 And that means you're going to have a lot more opportunity to plan for the years and the decades ahead.

00:08:05.000 One way you can do that is by diversifying your portfolio into gold.

00:08:09.000 For over 20 years, Birch Gold Group has helped thousands of Americans protect their savings by converting an IRA or a 401k into an IRA in physical gold.

00:08:18.000 You can do that tax and penalty free, which is a big deal.

00:08:21.000 So to learn more, text Don Jr., D-O-N-J-R, to the number 989898 and claim you are free.

00:08:29.000 no obligation, info kit on gold.

00:08:32.000 That's Don Jr. to the number 98 98 98.

00:08:36.000 What do you have to lose?

00:08:37.000 Educate yourself.

00:08:38.000 Check it out.

00:08:39.000 And now let's take a look at the top headlines.

00:08:42.000 Yesterday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that DOJ is filing a lawsuit against the state of New York, Governor Kathy Hochul and the state attorney general Letitia James for harboring illegal aliens, protecting violent criminals and defying federal protecting violent criminals and defying federal immigration law.

00:09:02.000 Obviously, that's what's happening.

00:09:04.000 We've seen it.

00:09:05.000 This is nothing new.

00:09:06.000 But finally, someone's doing something about it.

00:09:08.000 Here's a clip from the announcement yesterday where Attorney General Bondi made it clear that if you violate the laws, it ain't going to work out so well for you.

00:09:17.000 And that's why President Trump has directed this to stop.

00:09:21.000 And if you don't comply with federal law, we will hold you accountable.

00:09:25.000 We did it to Illinois.

00:09:27.000 Strike one.

00:09:28.000 Strike two is New York.

00:09:30.000 And if you are a state not complying with federal law, you're next.

00:09:34.000 Get ready.

00:09:35.000 And the great men and women of law enforcement are standing behind me today.

00:09:39.000 We have FBI, DEA, ATF agents.

00:09:43.000 They put their lives on the line every single day to protect us.

00:09:49.000 And what New York has, they have green light laws.

00:09:53.000 Meaning they're giving a green light to any illegal alien in New York where law enforcement officers cannot check their identity if they pull them over.

00:10:04.000 Law enforcement officers do not have access to their background.

00:10:08.000 And if these great men and women...

00:10:10.000 Pull over someone and don't have access to their background.

00:10:14.000 They have no idea who they're dealing with.

00:10:16.000 And it puts their lives on the line every single day.

00:10:20.000 Violent criminals, gang members, drug traffickers, human smugglers will no longer terrorize the American people.

00:10:28.000 And that is why we are here today.

00:10:30.000 You will be held accountable if you do not follow federal law.

00:10:35.000 It's over, it ends, and we're coming after you.

00:10:38.000 And those remarks came around the same time that we learned that, yes, we were right all along.

00:10:44.000 As usual, every conspiracy theory ends up being fact.

00:10:49.000 It's just a matter of how long it takes to get there.

00:10:52.000 FEMA was, in fact, dishing out funds to house illegal aliens, even as residents in North Carolina were being left behind after the hurricane back in October.

00:11:05.000 Remember, they got that $700 check.

00:11:08.000 According to DHS, $59 million was sent under Biden to New York City to put illegals in luxury hotels while Americans were suffering.

00:11:22.000 $59 million for illegals if you lost your home, a loved one, your business.

00:11:28.000 In North Carolina, you got like a $700 check.

00:11:31.000 Okay, just so we're clear where you stand relative to the Democrat mentality and their prior administration.

00:11:39.000 Here's my father reacting to the findings yesterday.

00:11:43.000 This is a massive fraud that's taken place.

00:11:46.000 And then you have judges that are activists, and they sit there and they say, oh, as an example, $59 million going to a little small group in New York City.

00:11:57.000 You get nothing going to North Carolina to help.

00:12:00.000 Nothing.

00:12:00.000 They say, we don't have any money because they've given it away on the border.

00:12:04.000 But you have nothing.

00:12:05.000 What they did to North Carolina is a shame.

00:12:08.000 And then they sent $59 million to New York City for a hotel for a little bit of what they've done.

00:12:16.000 A hotel that was not luxury, that's getting luxury rates for migrants, where they're making a fortune. 1.00

00:12:23.000 And we catch them.

00:12:25.000 We catch them.

00:12:26.000 But a judge says, well, even though it may be a fraud, you have to send the money in anyway.

00:12:32.000 Send the money.

00:12:33.000 I said, wait a minute.

00:12:34.000 We have money that shouldn't go because we caught it before it was sent out.

00:12:38.000 But they want the money to go anyway.

00:12:41.000 And I think you're going to have a lot of things to look at, Pam.

00:12:46.000 I really do.

00:12:47.000 What's going on with this whole thing?

00:12:48.000 And this is just one group.

00:12:50.000 Now, under the Trump DHS, that 59 million has been clawed back.

00:12:57.000 But we need a full investigation into just what possible criminal conduct occurred and who all benefited from it.

00:13:06.000 It's, of course, yet another reason why we need Doge to root out all of this corruption, all of the waste, all of the fraud, and all of the abuse.

00:13:18.000 It's why the Democrats are losing their mind.

00:13:20.000 Who wouldn't want to know what's going on?

00:13:23.000 Unless, of course, you're indirectly benefiting it when you're not supposed to.

00:13:27.000 But rogue judges, shockingly all Democrat appointees, in liberal places, are doing everything they can to try to stand in the way.

00:13:38.000 The judge who issued an injunction to block the spending freeze, Judge John McConnell Jr., is basically a far-left activist.

00:13:47.000 He's on tape claiming that a middle-class, white-privileged male person needs to understand criminals who are women, black, or transgender.

00:13:57.000 Again, I gotta put it all in quotes so that it doesn't get mixed up.

00:14:00.000 And claims that the trans community needs special sentencing treatment. 0.84

00:14:05.000 Again, like all things trans, they don't want to be equal. 1.00

00:14:07.000 They want to be a lot more.

00:14:09.000 Certainly the activists.

00:14:11.000 Don't believe me?

00:14:12.000 Here's the tape, folks.

00:14:15.000 Government actions, when you're sentencing someone, when we talk about sentencing, that you have to take a moment and realize that this, you know, middle-class, white, male, privileged person needs to understand the human being that comes before us, that may be a woman, it may be Black, it may be transgender, it may be poor, it may be rich, it may be whatever, may have experiences that aren't yours, and you have to...

00:14:43.000 You have to walk in their shoes and understand that the law applies to them where they are, and then you have to apply the law accordingly.

00:14:53.000 Now, when issuing the injunction, the judge did admit that the administration has the right to limit access to federal funds on the basis of the applicable authorizing statutes, regulation, and terms.

00:15:06.000 I'm shocked he believes any of the law, which, you know, again, they've been known to totally ignore.

00:15:12.000 But that sets the stage for further litigation, maybe at the appellate level and maybe even at the Supreme Court.

00:15:19.000 The good news is, on the issue of the deferred resignation program for federal workers, a different federal judge yesterday did rule in favor of the Trump administration, clearing the way to clean out the rot in the federal bureaucracy, at least for now.

00:15:37.000 And if you're wondering just how bad the waste...

00:15:40.000 An inefficiency really is.

00:15:42.000 Just look what Elon posted yesterday.

00:15:45.000 Federal employee retirements are processed using paper files by hand in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania.

00:15:57.000 Literally 700 mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process 10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes.

00:16:10.000 The retirement process takes multiple months.

00:16:14.000 You can't make it up.

00:16:17.000 I mean, they don't want us mining anything else, but, you know, if we can use it to store retirement papers in possibly the most inefficient way imaginable, that's obviously OK, folks.

00:16:27.000 But like I've been saying, this is yet another reason why we need Congress to actually pass legislation to codify some of these executive actions into law.

00:16:38.000 We don't.

00:16:40.000 We can't have anti-Trump federal judges doing everything.

00:16:43.000 We can't have that.

00:16:44.000 They're doing everything in their power to stand in the way.

00:16:47.000 We need to put it into law, and we need Congress to help do that, and we can fully clean house. 0.54

00:16:55.000 And now Doge is now setting its sights on overhauling the Department of Education.

00:17:02.000 We spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, but we're ranked...

00:17:08.000 40th.

00:17:09.000 Think of that.

00:17:10.000 America.

00:17:10.000 Like, America, with everything we've done, we're 40th in the world, spending more per capita than any other country.

00:17:17.000 It's ridiculous.

00:17:19.000 Here's my father discussing the next steps from the Oval Office. 0.98

00:17:24.000 Look, the Department of Education is a big con job.

00:17:28.000 We're ranked, so they rank the top 40 countries in the world.

00:17:31.000 We're ranked number 40th.

00:17:33.000 But we're ranked number one in one department, cost per pupil.

00:17:37.000 So we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, but we're ranked number 40. We've been between 38 and 40. The last time I looked, it was 38, and then I looked two days ago, it came out the new list.

00:17:49.000 It came out at number 40, so we're ranked 40. Norway, Denmark, Sweden, I hate to say it, China, as big as it is, it's ranked in the top five, and that's a primary competitor. 0.82

00:18:03.000 We're ranked number 40. So if we're ranked number 40, that means something's really wrong, right?

00:18:08.000 And I say send it back to Iowa, to Idaho, to Colorado.

00:18:13.000 Send it back to places that, and there are a lot of Indiana.

00:18:18.000 You have a great new governor.

00:18:19.000 You have a great senator that Jim Banks just got elected.

00:18:24.000 You got great people.

00:18:25.000 I'll tell you what, Indiana's going to be fantastic.

00:18:27.000 We probably have 35, maybe 37 states that will do as well as...

00:18:34.000 Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden.

00:18:39.000 They'll be just as good.

00:18:40.000 Then you have the ones that we all know about.

00:18:44.000 It'll be the same story.

00:18:45.000 But you know what?

00:18:46.000 Even they will be good.

00:18:47.000 Because you look at New York.

00:18:48.000 You give it to Westchester County.

00:18:50.000 You give it to Long Island.

00:18:51.000 You give it to Nassau County.

00:18:52.000 You give it to Suffolk County.

00:18:54.000 Same thing.

00:18:54.000 You go out to and you give it to upstate New York.

00:18:57.000 So you'd have four or five sections.

00:18:59.000 You give it to Manhattan.

00:19:00.000 Manhattan's a little bit tougher for some reason.

00:19:03.000 I don't know why it would be tougher, but it is.

00:19:05.000 You give to California and you go to various areas outside of Los Angeles, and you might have six or seven different subgroups.

00:19:15.000 But generally, like if you go to Iowa, you give it to Iowa.

00:19:18.000 You don't have subgroups.

00:19:19.000 You have Iowa and other places that do a good job.

00:19:23.000 If they do a good job, they're going to do a great job in education.

00:19:26.000 And meanwhile, yesterday...

00:19:29.000 Tulsi Gabbard was confirmed as the next director of national intelligence, getting us one more confirmation closer to getting the cabinet that you all voted for confirmed.

00:19:42.000 But who did McConnell side with?

00:19:45.000 Cocaine Mitch, who did he side with?

00:19:48.000 He sided with the Democrats.

00:19:50.000 He voted with them as always, opposing yet another Trump pick.

00:19:55.000 The swamp runs deep.

00:19:58.000 But we're still winning bigger and better anyway.

00:20:02.000 I think when Mitch is up in two years and he's out of there, anyone he's endorsing, you should probably vote against, Kentucky. 0.98

00:20:10.000 No more of this crap in the Senate. 0.98

00:20:13.000 Enough is enough. 1.00

00:20:14.000 With Republicans like Mitch McConnell, you might as well have Democrats.

00:20:18.000 And if you're wondering if the media has learned anything since January 20th, the answer is clearly no.

00:20:28.000 But on CNN, Scott Jennings just keeps delivering one reality check after another.

00:20:35.000 Check this out.

00:20:38.000 That you have these partisan hack Democrat attorney generals.

00:20:42.000 They get together.

00:20:42.000 And the only thing they know how to do is try to nullify the results of the last election by venue shopping these district court judges.

00:20:48.000 They find the most lunatic liberals they can.

00:20:50.000 They file lawsuits knowing full well they're going to try to usurp the president's authority, tie this up in court for years. 0.84

00:20:56.000 That stuff is sacrosanct.

00:20:58.000 And you've got people going in there who don't know anything about that system.

00:21:03.000 But these are also just restraining orders.

00:21:05.000 He knows nothing about it.

00:21:07.000 What you just said is so profound.

00:21:09.000 You said these people don't know anything and they don't know what they're doing.

00:21:13.000 That's right.

00:21:14.000 I understand.

00:21:16.000 But they are appointees of the duly elected president.

00:21:19.000 So your view, you're here as our legal expert, but your view is because you don't personally believe they know enough that the duly elected president who appointed a treasury secretary and will appoint special appointees like Elon Musk shouldn't be able to act as the president because...

00:21:33.000 You don't personally believe they know enough?

00:21:36.000 Is that how it works?

00:21:37.000 Or do elections mean anything to you?

00:21:39.000 Well, it's got nothing to do with elections.

00:21:41.000 Of course it does.

00:21:42.000 He's doing exactly what we thought.

00:21:43.000 The truth was told.

00:21:46.000 And perhaps the only ones more out of touch than the media are the Democrats themselves.

00:21:52.000 Here's Congressional Democrat John C. Lashowski suggesting that the word manufacturing, manufacturing, folks, is, wait for it, Drumroll.

00:22:06.000 Manufacturing, the word, is sexist because it has the word man in it. 0.99

00:22:17.000 Honestly, guys, every time I think the Democrats can't get any more freaking stupid, they do this. 0.99

00:22:24.000 And, like, literally, I have no words. 1.00

00:22:26.000 It's literally hard to believe how dumb these people are. 1.00

00:22:31.000 You know, how many words do you know? 1.00

00:22:33.000 Can you come up with the top of your head that have man in it?

00:22:36.000 Are we just going to ban all of those?

00:22:37.000 Are we going to get rid of any of those?

00:22:40.000 I mean, it's nuts.

00:22:41.000 What about Manhattan?

00:22:42.000 I mean, you know, that's a pretty liberal stronghold.

00:22:45.000 Are we going to change the name of Manhattan because it has the word man in it?

00:22:49.000 Does it mean that there's no women in Manhattan?

00:22:51.000 You know, New York City?

00:22:53.000 I mean, I can't believe this is real.

00:22:56.000 But it is.

00:22:58.000 Yesterday, I met with a manufacturing company, but they also are engaged in getting young people more engaged in manufacturing.

00:23:11.000 So I asked them, so how many of those students that are signing up and want to do this, how many are women? 0.96

00:23:21.000 And they said, well...

00:23:24.000 I know there's at least 13% or something.

00:23:29.000 It was a low number.

00:23:31.000 And you had mentioned trying to engage more women in manufacturing. 1.00

00:23:37.000 I'm just wondering if just the name, manufacturing, sounds like a guy.

00:23:44.000 Guys.

00:23:45.000 These are the same people claiming your country is in crisis because we want to root out government waste.

00:23:51.000 Think about it.

00:23:52.000 The geniuses that gave you manufacturing is sexist because it has the word man in it.

00:23:57.000 Want to make sure we don't look at government waste.

00:24:02.000 We don't do anything about it, and we certainly can't expose it to the American public, the taxpayer, the people who pay for everything.

00:24:11.000 Because it's not a government-funded program.

00:24:13.000 There are no government-funded programs.

00:24:15.000 There are only taxpayer-funded programs, and they want to make sure you don't know where your money is going.

00:24:22.000 And lastly, guys, this week, we brought home...

00:24:26.000 Yet another American-held prisoner abroad.

00:24:30.000 Mark Vogel was a Pennsylvania teacher locked up in a Russian prison since 2021 for carrying medical marijuana.

00:24:40.000 His mother met my father at a rally and he promised he'd bring him back home.

00:24:45.000 Yet another promise made and a promise kept.

00:25:15.000 Guys, one more thing to point out.

00:25:25.000 Mark Vogel, we didn't have to trade the merchant of death to get him back.

00:25:32.000 We just got him back.

00:25:34.000 Because strength and resolve in America gets people to do things that we want.

00:25:40.000 That's how it works.

00:25:41.000 Remember when Biden, for Brittany Griner, he had to trade the merchant of death, literally a terrorist arms dealer who's apparently back in action, probably using it against either our allies or Americans abroad, whatever it may be.

00:25:54.000 We just got people back with strength and resolve.

00:25:58.000 Isn't it nice to be strong again?

00:26:00.000 Isn't it nice to have America first again? 0.56

00:26:04.000 Don't forget to check out some of our incredibly brave sponsors who have the guts to support a show like this.

00:26:11.000 Guys, we're going to be talking about making America healthy again.

00:26:16.000 Did you know that 45% of the coffee you drink could be loaded with mold toxins?

00:26:20.000 And even after roasting, these toxins can still be there.

00:26:24.000 That's where 1775 Coffee comes in.

00:26:27.000 1775 coffee is brewed to perfection, crafted with precision, and built on patriotism.

00:26:33.000 All the beans are ethically and exclusively single source.

00:26:36.000 That means...

00:26:37.000 You're getting quality coffee without the harmful toxins that you might find in other big corporate coffee chains.

00:26:44.000 So visit 1775coffee.com.

00:26:47.000 Use code TRIGGERED, just like the name of the show.

00:26:51.000 Get 15% off your order.

00:26:53.000 That's 1775coffee.com, promo code TRIGGERED. Okay, guys, joining me now, former chief of investigations in the first Trump.

00:27:05.000 This is a big one, giving everything that's going on.

00:27:07.000 Former DOJ Senior Counsel Attorney Paul Moore.

00:27:11.000 Paul, how are you, man?

00:27:12.000 I'm good.

00:27:13.000 How are you, Don?

00:27:14.000 I'm doing okay.

00:27:15.000 It's been a long day.

00:27:17.000 Red eyes and no sleep and all of that, but we've got to keep fighting and keep working.

00:27:22.000 You were Chief of Investigations at the Education Department, so you've seen everything.

00:27:28.000 That Doge is talking about right now up close and personal.

00:27:32.000 What do you think stands out most to you about how the Democrats have weaponized that entire department to the detriment of students?

00:27:43.000 Well, there's so many things.

00:27:44.000 It's, you know, where do you begin?

00:27:45.000 You know, the first thing I would say is, at my age, I have to have a colonoscopy every five years.

00:27:51.000 And I kind of speak up close and personal.

00:27:53.000 And they don't.

00:27:56.000 And, you know, it was 1982 when Ronald Reagan had the Grace Commission look into ways to federal agencies.

00:28:03.000 And he was actually the first to kind of make popular drain the swamp.

00:28:07.000 And so we got to do it, folks.

00:28:08.000 And nothing happened.

00:28:09.000 All that happened was slowed the rate of growth for some of these agencies for a few years.

00:28:13.000 You know, what's going on?

00:28:14.000 we've got this department that's out of control that's been on the front line of of uh of uh using the nbi and doj to terrorize parents actually classify them as domestic terrorists if they dare to speak up in an unfortunate way at a pta meeting things like that oh yeah we talk about that one all it's disgusting.

00:28:31.000 No, it is. 0.64

00:28:32.000 They've redefined sex. 0.88

00:28:34.000 You know, they've given away $400 billion in taxpayer money from hardworking people to graduates who promise to pay off their student loans.

00:28:42.000 You know, they've quit investigating China's money at our universities, at our research universities.

00:28:49.000 I mean, there's so many things that they've done.

00:28:52.000 And in my opinion, they've disqualified themselves from continuing.

00:28:55.000 I mean, if you have a doctor that abuses their patients, you say you can't practice medicine anymore.

00:28:59.000 I mean, that's really where we are.

00:29:01.000 We found out where Cardona and Biden were going to go in the first year of the administration, December 2021. They had this thing called the Civil Rights Data Collection.

00:29:12.000 And so they actually ordered that elementary schools and secondary schools had to ask, one of the questions was, are you male, female, or non-binary?

00:29:21.000 You know, so you're asking kindergarteners, first graders, etc.

00:29:24.000 You know, if they're non-binary, you're introducing the whole thing, you know, it's the gender madness, we can't start too early. 1.00

00:29:30.000 And I'm sure they do it.

00:29:31.000 Let's make sure they start thinking about that right now, just to create confusion in already, you know, impressionable minds.

00:29:38.000 Yeah, totally.

00:29:39.000 Also, you've got all these teachers who, you know, really aren't trained or equipped to be addressing that matter.

00:29:44.000 Some people might be old-fashioned and say, hey, that's the parent's job, and, you know, let's just keep the, you know, education industry out of it, but not this department.

00:29:52.000 And they actually, they required, I mean, you know, if you're a tiny town in Missouri, you've got to, where I'm from, you've got to ask these questions.

00:30:00.000 You have no choice.

00:30:00.000 If you don't, you're going to lose your federal funding.

00:30:02.000 And so, you know, it's just...

00:30:04.000 There's been such an abuse of the authority that was granted to the department, and then the excessive use of that authority, which is just unconstitutional, illegal.

00:30:13.000 And they didn't rein themselves in.

00:30:15.000 They should have, and they need to go.

00:30:17.000 And beyond that, it's not like we're overperforming, right?

00:30:20.000 I mean, we spend more per capita on students than any nation in the world, and I believe we're like 28th or 29th in education.

00:30:27.000 I mean, there's literally third-world countries that are educating their children.

00:30:31.000 Four pennies on the dollar relative to what we spend and doing a better job of it than we have.

00:30:36.000 So it's not like they're banking on any kind of actual success, are they?

00:30:42.000 No, they're not.

00:30:42.000 And I mean, we've got, you know, we're in a situation, if money was the solution, we would be number one.

00:30:47.000 I mean, we have thrown so much money.

00:30:48.000 We're number one out of 40 in throwing money at the problem.

00:30:51.000 We're now 40. A couple of years ago, I think last year, actually, we were 38 out of 40. Now we're number 40 in terms of results.

00:30:58.000 I mean, here's the situation we've got.

00:31:00.000 Two-thirds of eighth graders in Detroit can't read at a basic level.

00:31:04.000 70% nationwide of fourth graders can't read at a basic level.

00:31:08.000 Baltimore, 71% of eighth graders can't read at a basic level.

00:31:11.000 They're basically illiterate.

00:31:12.000 You can't read, you can't learn.

00:31:14.000 We're setting these kids up for failure, and actually it's the worst in the solid blue cities run by progressives.

00:31:20.000 You would think they'd be the ones saying, hey, we've got to change this.

00:31:23.000 It's not working.

00:31:24.000 So it's absolutely horrible.

00:31:26.000 We need to stop and back up, and what are we doing?

00:31:30.000 Stop what we're doing.

00:31:31.000 Well, I know you've also testified on Capitol Hill about how much our universities have gotten away with in terms of shady foreign donations from China.

00:31:39.000 They've even funded Chinese research that ends up being used against us. 0.62

00:31:43.000 How much, you know, is it beyond elementary education?

00:31:46.000 How much are colleges a part of the whole story here?

00:31:49.000 Well, you have to think about higher ed colleges and universities as big business.

00:31:54.000 And so we call them nonprofits.

00:31:56.000 They call themselves nonprofits.

00:31:57.000 And they're kind of treated with kid gloves, if at all.

00:32:00.000 But in fact, they're the ones who are running the Department of Education's policies that are supposed to be regulating them.

00:32:06.000 So we have regulatory capture by the regulated industry, and that's higher ed.

00:32:11.000 These are international conglomerates.

00:32:13.000 And so, you know, where is Elizabeth Warren when you need her to beat up on a big business, right? 1.00

00:32:18.000 She ought to be beating up on these international conglomerates that call themselves nonprofits, get preferential tax treatment. 1.00

00:32:24.000 And are just doing horrible things in this country.

00:32:27.000 And they've also, I mean, we're billions of dollars they've accepted from China.

00:32:30.000 You know, UPenn is particularly famous for having received, I think it was $61 million in the run-up to Joe Biden becoming president.

00:32:39.000 Once he launched the UPenn Biden Center, all of a sudden the money starts rolling in.

00:32:43.000 The president of UPenn was the one who was, you know.

00:32:49.000 I think it was Amy Gutman at the time, because that's my alma mater, so it's sort of embarrassing to see what happened there.

00:32:55.000 Well, it is, right.

00:32:56.000 And of course, she was rewarded with becoming ambassador to Germany.

00:33:00.000 And, you know, but I mean, you just, and there were, I think, 12 senior members of the Biden administration that were working at the Penn Biden Center.

00:33:09.000 And so they were essentially on the payroll of the CCP. You just can't make it up.

00:33:14.000 And I mean, you look at other universities, I mean, Stanford, Yale, Harvard.

00:33:18.000 Hundreds of millions of dollars from these universities.

00:33:21.000 TAMU, something like $493 million in contracts.

00:33:25.000 They finally decided they're going to get out of some of their Chinese operations. 0.95

00:33:29.000 But what we're doing is handing over our research product to the Chinese, who aren't stupid. 1.00

00:33:34.000 As your father often says, you know, we're the dumb ones. 0.99

00:33:37.000 Yeah, there are many things. 0.99

00:33:38.000 They're not dumb.

00:33:39.000 I'm not saying they're good. 0.96

00:33:40.000 That's not being an apologist for them.

00:33:42.000 But if you're playing in a war game, they are playing a much better game than us.

00:33:47.000 And there's no question to me that they're at war with us.

00:33:50.000 Absolutely right.

00:33:51.000 And, I mean, just recently, I think a few months ago, the House Select Committee on CCP issued a report called CCP on the Quad.

00:33:58.000 It revealed...

00:33:59.000 Our Department of Defense funded more than 2,000 scientific research collaborations with Chinese scientists who are working on emerging technologies, hypersonic and fourth-grade generation nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, advanced lasers, high-performance explosives, and rocket fuels.

00:34:16.000 I mean, this is our Department of Defense.

00:34:18.000 Our new secretary has his hands full.

00:34:20.000 And by the way, where was the IG at the Department of Defense when this was happening?

00:34:23.000 You know, this is extraordinary.

00:34:24.000 Same thing's happening with NASA. NASA's prohibited from using any of its funds in scientific collaborations with China, Chinese universities, Chinese scientists.

00:34:33.000 And yet there's evidence that's happening at many of our top universities around the country, research universities.

00:34:38.000 Incredible.

00:34:39.000 So, you know, with all these problems in the schools, given all of what we're talking about now, and, you know, obviously there's so much more, just how far has this set back our students at both the kind of K-12 level and as well as the college level?

00:34:53.000 I mean, I see these...

00:34:54.000 Elite universities, they're graduating all these people with gender studies degrees. 1.00

00:34:58.000 They're happy to rack up $300,000 worth of debt, but no possible way of paying it back because there's no market for that skill, if it's even a skill.

00:35:09.000 And, you know, how much worse was it made during the Biden administration with all this stuff?

00:35:13.000 You started talking about sort of paying off the student debt, having a plumber pay off, again, some Ph.D., because the plumber is actually far better off than the Ph.D., but the Ph.D. racked up probably half a million dollars in debt.

00:35:26.000 It seems like a huge transfer of wealth from the alleged elite from the working class of America who made better decisions and didn't make irresponsible ones. 0.67

00:35:38.000 Yeah, you're right.

00:35:39.000 And I mean, I think the problem goes really deep because we're not just looking at reversing four years of Biden.

00:35:44.000 We're looking at the eight years of Obama.

00:35:46.000 That's when all this really started and was serious.

00:35:49.000 So during Trump 45, we put the brakes on it.

00:35:51.000 And it took a long time to put the brakes on things.

00:35:54.000 We did it right, but there wasn't any kind of radical.

00:35:57.000 We didn't have a colonoscopy, which is what we need now.

00:35:59.000 And by the way, your father, you probably remember this, he actually proposed eliminating the Department of Education in 2018. We have a bunch of its responsibilities to other federal agencies.

00:36:08.000 And that's what happens to happen.

00:36:09.000 But I mean, these students who are graduating in their 20s and later with worthless degrees, advanced degrees from these paper mills that produce diplomas, no wonder they're resentful.

00:36:21.000 No wonder they're angry.

00:36:22.000 No wonder they're on drugs. 0.70

00:36:24.000 I mean, they have a right to be angry.

00:36:25.000 The system is failing them.

00:36:27.000 They're getting these worthless degrees.

00:36:29.000 And then they owe all this money, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

00:36:31.000 It's like, of course, they're radicalized.

00:36:33.000 And so we're really top to bottom.

00:36:36.000 We've got to re-examine the system.

00:36:37.000 And what we're doing, because it's not education.

00:36:39.000 It's indoctrination.

00:36:40.000 We need new professors.

00:36:42.000 We need, you know, the other thing, too, is there are program participation agreements with all these universities.

00:36:48.000 And so, in other words, for them to be able to access federal student loan money and grants for their students, even private universities, they've got to enter into these program participation agreements.

00:36:57.000 And that's the tool that the Department of Education has, even if it's in its limited lifetime expectancy, to yank that string and say, You're doing things that are wrong, so I'm doing this stuff, teaching that stuff, you know, indoctrinating and all the gender madness. 0.67

00:37:12.000 So, I mean, you know, there's a great opportunity using those program participation agreements to immediately reach deep down, you know, because the tentacles of the Department of Education doing it's kind of evil over the last few years.

00:37:23.000 They're really deep.

00:37:24.000 And one other thing I should point out, there are only 4,400 employees.

00:37:28.000 It's still a lot at the Department of Education.

00:37:29.000 But the Department of Education actually funds about 48,000 employees at state agencies around the country.

00:37:35.000 So technically state employees, they're being funded by money from the Department of Education.

00:37:40.000 Even if you eliminate every Department of Education employee tomorrow, you've still got all these people that are, you know, they're kind of shock troops out there, in a lot of cases carrying out the same programs.

00:37:50.000 You need to go deep into those folks, figure out who they are, what they're doing, you know, really cut off that money or open it up so it's examined by their states.

00:37:59.000 So, you know, it seems like, obviously, you're of the opinion that the Department of Education should be abolished.

00:38:05.000 My father's obviously been talking about that as recently as, like, yesterday.

00:38:09.000 But, you know, what would that look like?

00:38:11.000 What would the sequence of events to make it happen be?

00:38:14.000 You know, how does that work, you know, in practice?

00:38:17.000 Because you're right, I'd rather go to the states and have their responsibilities.

00:38:19.000 But if 4,000 people are funding 48,000 people throughout the states, that's, you know, plus a little less than 1,000 people a state.

00:38:28.000 How do you get that rot out of there as well?

00:38:31.000 Because if you just transfer it to the States, but it's the same people just with different funding mechanisms, how do you make that happen to effectuate actual change?

00:38:40.000 Well, I think the way it's happening right now is executive orders is a great start.

00:38:43.000 You've got to start there.

00:38:44.000 And that's been happening rapidly since day one, which is wonderful.

00:38:48.000 It's amazing.

00:38:49.000 Not wasting any time.

00:38:51.000 So, I mean, you begin there.

00:38:52.000 Ultimately, it's got to go to Congress.

00:38:54.000 Congress needs to do something.

00:38:55.000 But here's what I would do.

00:38:57.000 I would transfer, like, the $1.7 million student loan portfolio that's backstopped by the Department of Education.

00:39:03.000 You know, the Department of Education, financial aid, they have no expertise in handling money.

00:39:09.000 All they do, they write checks.

00:39:10.000 That's their job.

00:39:11.000 They write checks.

00:39:11.000 So get it out of their hands.

00:39:13.000 They don't have the expertise.

00:39:14.000 Move it to Treasury or somewhere or private sector.

00:39:17.000 I mean, at least have that portfolio overseen by people that are trained to handle money and know how to track money and know how to look at qualifications.

00:39:25.000 I mean, the rollout of the FFSA, which happened a year and a half or so ago by the department, is a perfect example of departments in competency when it comes to handling financial.

00:39:38.000 That's the application that was supposed to be simplified from 100 questions to 18 questions.

00:39:44.000 For people who want to go to college to apply to the department to see if they qualify for student aid, financial aid.

00:39:50.000 And they completely bungled that.

00:39:52.000 There was a GAO study of it.

00:39:54.000 I mean, they rejected incorrectly about 500,000 applicants who then couldn't proceed with their college plans.

00:40:02.000 It may be a good thing.

00:40:03.000 They have done them a favor.

00:40:04.000 Who knows?

00:40:05.000 But I mean, you know, just the ability this department handled, that's about half of what the department does.

00:40:09.000 So get rid of that. 0.76

00:40:10.000 Move into the treasury.

00:40:11.000 There's some important things that do happen.

00:40:14.000 I think DOGE needs to have the council of people who say, look, this is actually something important the department does.

00:40:20.000 Let's get it to somewhere where it can be done effectively and competently.

00:40:23.000 And if there are good people working around that, move them with it so that the institutional knowledge isn't lost.

00:40:28.000 But, I mean, that's a very small handful of people.

00:40:31.000 So, you know, move things out, get them to the right places, and then have Congress pass a law that says we're done with the Department of Education.

00:40:38.000 It has abused its trust and no more.

00:40:40.000 So what do you do about what's going on with the student loan forgiveness, so to speak?

00:40:45.000 Biden did it.

00:40:47.000 It was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

00:40:49.000 He did it again.

00:40:50.000 It didn't matter.

00:40:51.000 It was pretty clear he was just trying to buy votes.

00:40:55.000 Where does that sit right now?

00:40:58.000 Has it been actually forgiven?

00:40:59.000 Is it on a pause?

00:41:01.000 Is it racking up more interest that the person with an underwater basket-weaving degree is still not going to be able to pay off?

00:41:08.000 How does that work?

00:41:10.000 Yeah, well, that's, I think, you know, from everything I understand, that's one thing that they did competently.

00:41:14.000 They give away other people's money very well.

00:41:16.000 And they, you know, even though, frankly, they mangled that a few times, but they, because they were rushing it for it to be done right before elections.

00:41:23.000 And by the way, they had contracts to have calling people, like, right before the election, weeks before the election, they had automated calls going out saying, President Biden has canceled your student loan.

00:41:34.000 Did you know that?

00:41:35.000 Make sure you go to the polls in a few weeks.

00:41:37.000 I mean, it's just extraordinary that these things were happening.

00:41:40.000 But I think that most of that $400 billion has already been granted.

00:41:46.000 I don't know if you claw that back somehow from the people that no longer have to make the payments.

00:41:52.000 I can't imagine how you do it.

00:41:54.000 But I mean, it needs to be exposed very thoroughly.

00:41:56.000 And by the way, the people that came in the Biden administration, largely from Massachusetts and Senator Warren's sphere.

00:42:03.000 They had promised to do exactly what they did.

00:42:05.000 And also, one of their big purposes has been to destroy for-profit educational institutions.

00:42:12.000 So there's no competition.

00:42:13.000 So the other thing that they've done incredibly well is protect the NEA, the American Federation of Teachers.

00:42:19.000 It's like, if you want to know where the department excels, it's in protecting those organizations, not the students.

00:42:25.000 Yeah.

00:42:26.000 Well, you saw that with the whole teachers union during COVID, you know, well, we don't want to teach because it's not safe.

00:42:31.000 Well, we don't want to do remote learning because we don't really like it.

00:42:34.000 We do want to get paid no matter what.

00:42:36.000 You know, it was sort of it was so disgusting to me to to watch that, you know, and every time it's always a fight for more vacation.

00:42:44.000 I'm like, I don't know anyone who has more vacation time than teachers that get paid for a full year.

00:42:48.000 It's sort of wild.

00:42:49.000 I'm not saying it's an easy job or, you know, there's not great teachers out there, but the teachers' union itself has weaponized all of these things so badly to the detriment of our students.

00:42:58.000 And again, it's not like we're overperforming.

00:43:00.000 So, I mean, I do feel like something has to be done about that one.

00:43:04.000 The other thing, too, is there was $190 billion thrown at elementary and secondary schools, you know, under the guise of COVID. And so, you know, in that crazy year 2020...

00:43:15.000 That was passed by Congress, but most of it was then, you know, doled out during the Biden administration.

00:43:20.000 So one of the first things the Biden administration did is said states and localities, if you did the school districts, if you want any of this money, you have to submit an equity plan to the prior education.

00:43:29.000 Otherwise, we won't even consider it.

00:43:31.000 So DEI was so infused from day one, you know, tied to any kind of money, these agencies.

00:43:37.000 That any grant could be awarded.

00:43:40.000 So, I mean, it was, you know, this is how abusive and disgusting they've been.

00:43:45.000 The DEI was a way to channel money to their friends and to hold it back from people that they didn't like, probably mainly in red states.

00:43:53.000 But they basically, you know, they got four years of everyone, you know, local school districts on up through state agencies marching between their drummer.

00:44:02.000 And so it's like the executive orders that are coming out now have been wonderful.

00:44:06.000 And keep going down, down, down to remove, you know, the last, you know, vestiges of cancer.

00:44:11.000 I mean, you've got to keep treating this patient until it's all gone, every state, every local school district.

00:44:17.000 So you've also worked at the DOJ. You know, talk about what you think Pam Bondi's top priority should be. 1.00

00:44:25.000 You know, as she sort of, you know, really gets rolling.

00:44:28.000 Is it to stop the lawfare and restore credibility?

00:44:30.000 Is it, you know, deeper than that?

00:44:34.000 And what can we do to stop those abuses from the Office of Civil Rights and others?

00:44:40.000 You know, civil rights, except for those they disagree with.

00:44:43.000 Those people don't get any civil rights. 0.98

00:44:45.000 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:44:46.000 And again, this is something where...

00:44:48.000 We're really decades.

00:44:49.000 This isn't following up on four years of lawfare.

00:44:52.000 We're decades into lawfare.

00:44:53.000 And I was at DOJ for most of your father's previous administration.

00:44:56.000 And, you know, the open sabotage by high-ranking department officials, by the deputy attorney general, others there, was just extraordinary.

00:45:07.000 And it's, you know, completely beyond their mission.

00:45:14.000 It's an agency, too, that has grown tremendously.

00:45:19.000 If you pare it back, all of a sudden they'll have to focus on the things that actually matter.

00:45:23.000 To me, what I've seen the new Attorney General doing, really good stuff, focusing, going after these cities and saying, you're not going to get any more funding if you're going to be a sanctuary city, if you're going to be a sanctuary state.

00:45:35.000 We're going to come after you because you're actively passing these laws.

00:45:39.000 And enforcing them to prevent the federal government from doing its job on immigration and other things.

00:45:44.000 So, I mean, I think she's off to a great start.

00:45:47.000 And, you know, that's what the American people expect.

00:45:50.000 So, you know, it's finally being delivered.

00:45:52.000 I think there's a lot of shock right now because, you know, a lot of Republican presidents and presidential candidates have talked about it.

00:45:57.000 No one's ever done it.

00:45:58.000 So it's absolutely shocking.

00:45:59.000 The left will be hysterical.

00:46:01.000 That's what they do the best at.

00:46:02.000 And so we can expect the hysteria.

00:46:04.000 But I think it's great how they're going at things.

00:46:08.000 And get the FBI back in the business of investigating and not counterintelligence, not missing its tools to go after its political opponents or to go after school parents that express a different viewpoint.

00:46:20.000 I mean, it's just extraordinary.

00:46:21.000 So again, the tentacles of what's been done, this has been a disease really from the left.

00:46:26.000 There's got to be a lot of active work to pull out.

00:46:28.000 To have Elon Musk You know, I mean, the Twitter files with Matt Taibbi, I think one of the best things that's happened in this country, to have that man leading the effort now to expose what's been happening at different agencies, I think it's terrific.

00:46:39.000 No one better.

00:46:41.000 Well, Paul, I really appreciate it.

00:46:43.000 Thank you so much for your time.

00:46:44.000 A lot of work to be done.

00:46:46.000 Hopefully they call you for some other tips if they're not on it already.

00:46:50.000 Otherwise, we'll have to just make it very vocal in the Twitter sphere.

00:46:55.000 Absolutely.

00:46:55.000 Happy to help.

00:46:56.000 Thank you, Don.

00:46:56.000 Appreciate it, man.

00:46:57.000 Thanks a lot.

00:46:57.000 Have a great day.

00:46:59.000 And guys, Are you overwhelmed with back taxes or unfiled returns?

00:47:10.000 If you're worried about IRS collection tactics, you don't have to face them alone.

00:47:15.000 Tax Network USA is here to help.

00:47:18.000 Tax Network USA is the nation's premier tax relief firm and has negotiated over $1 billion in tax relief for their clients.

00:47:27.000 Their services include penalty forgiveness, hardship programs, and compromise solutions for lump sum settlements.

00:47:34.000 So whether you owe $10,000 or $10 million, their experts are ready to assist you.

00:47:40.000 To schedule a complimentary consultation, visit TNUSA.com slash DonJr.

00:47:46.000 That's TN, like tax network, TNUSA.com slash D-O-N-J-R. Don't face the IRS alone. 0.96

00:47:54.000 Check them out.

00:47:56.000 Joining me now, CEO of MBS Highway, entrepreneur and housing expert, and a good friend, Barry Habib.

00:48:03.000 Barry, great to have you, man.

00:48:04.000 How are you?

00:48:05.000 I'm great.

00:48:06.000 Thanks for having me.

00:48:07.000 So, first, I want to get to sort of January's inflation numbers.

00:48:10.000 They were worse than expected, which tells us that the Biden administration did, in fact, leave us with a mess.

00:48:18.000 We knew it was building up.

00:48:19.000 You saw all the waste, fraud, abuse that they were throwing in the last weeks after the election.

00:48:23.000 Is it even worse than we anticipated?

00:48:26.000 We knew some of it was going on.

00:48:27.000 How much were we perhaps missing?

00:48:30.000 So, yeah, the inflation numbers certainly were hotter than expected.

00:48:36.000 You look at inflation in two ways.

00:48:37.000 The way that an economist looks at it, they look at the rate of change.

00:48:40.000 The way that a customer or consumer or just everyday person looks at it is, how much does this cost him at the grocery store, which is a cumulative effect.

00:48:47.000 So even saying the rate of change came down, which it did to some extent over the last year, it still is adding to the inflation that the consumer is feeling.

00:48:57.000 So it's just a little bit of a different way to gauge the inflation numbers.

00:49:01.000 So look, I think that inflation, while...

00:49:04.000 And I know that President Trump would like.

00:49:28.000 Interest rates to come down.

00:49:29.000 But a key function of this is seeing the correct information on inflation going forward.

00:49:35.000 Yeah, it feels like they're always moving the goalposts.

00:49:37.000 You're right.

00:49:37.000 The rate of change, that was the metric that they used to say.

00:49:40.000 Inflation's coming down.

00:49:41.000 It's like, no, no, no.

00:49:42.000 Inflation's still here.

00:49:43.000 It's still going up.

00:49:45.000 It's just not going up as fast.

00:49:47.000 So they tried to say it's coming down when it's actually going up.

00:49:50.000 And for someone who's not an economist and isn't dealing with it every day, they're telling me it's going down.

00:49:55.000 But if you look at the groceries, That ain't the case.

00:49:59.000 What can you talk about in terms of what drives up this cost that is essentially entirely self-flicted, specifically in housing?

00:50:09.000 You have illegal immigrants overwhelming the country. 1.00

00:50:12.000 Then there's also a mass influx of foreign ownership, especially in high-end markets.

00:50:17.000 I mean, just how hard is it to buy a house for, let's call them, common-sense, middle-class Americans these days relative to what you would have seen five or six years ago?

00:50:27.000 Well, it's a challenge.

00:50:28.000 It's a challenge, especially if you're a first-time homebuyer.

00:50:30.000 Even people that own a home, they say, well, I couldn't afford to buy my own home today.

00:50:34.000 Part of that's good.

00:50:35.000 They've gained equity in their home because the value has gone up.

00:50:37.000 But the other is that mortgage costs have gone up rather significantly.

00:50:40.000 Again, that goes back to the inflation issue because in order to get a real rate of return, an investor is going to lend money and say, well, I'm going to...

00:50:47.000 Blend it out at this rate, but inflation is going to erode this amount, so I've got to preserve this real rate of return.

00:50:53.000 So as inflation goes up, it drives interest rates higher.

00:50:56.000 So what we need is we need to see inflation come down.

00:50:59.000 Now, fortunately, the way that this is computed is it's interesting, Don, in that what we have to look at is the biggest component in, let's say, the consumer price index that we got yesterday.

00:51:11.000 It's called shelter.

00:51:12.000 Now, people think of shelter as a roof over their head.

00:51:14.000 The way that the government looks at this is very antiquated.

00:51:17.000 They don't look at mortgage payments.

00:51:18.000 They don't look at what the value of the home is.

00:51:20.000 They simply convert it into rent.

00:51:23.000 So they look at housing as a service, and it's either rent or the equivalent rent that if you own a house that you could charge.

00:51:29.000 Now, if you were looking at these numbers, the problem with the way the government looks at it is it's antiquated.

00:51:35.000 They look at this...

00:51:37.000 In dividing the country up into panels because they're understaffed, meaning that they look at one-sixth of the country every month.

00:51:43.000 So that means if you look at an area of the country in January, the next time you're going to revisit it is in July.

00:51:48.000 As things change, you could see big influxes.

00:51:52.000 The problem with that is that you are not going to capture what's actually happening, and the result is this.

00:51:57.000 Right now, the government's telling us that rents are going up on an annualized basis at 4.5% a year.

00:52:02.000 That's 46% of CPI. If you take a peek at what they're really going up, it's only 1.5% by all the real-time data we have, whether it's Zillow, CoreLogic, Realtor.com, ApartmentList, Redbit.

00:52:14.000 The metrics that you have available that were not available 50 years ago when they came up with these could be used.

00:52:20.000 It's like adding instant replay to football.

00:52:22.000 So if you were to simply make this change, inflation would be at the Fed's target of 2%.

00:52:28.000 Again, still adding to inflation, but we could actually see 2% inflation.

00:52:33.000 You'd see mortgage rates come down and you'd see housing become a lot more affordable because rates should really be at 6%, not 7% right now.

00:52:41.000 That would help those people buying a home because currently they're under a lot of pain in trying to make that move out of a rental where they get no equity and into a home where they could really make a lot of wealth for themselves for the future.

00:52:54.000 Yeah, I mean, that's a big one.

00:52:55.000 I mean, just the notion of that home ownership being there.

00:52:58.000 But you're right.

00:52:59.000 They utilize metrics to sort of suit their needs.

00:53:03.000 I remember it was, I guess, 18 months ago or something.

00:53:06.000 I always talk about Paul Krugman.

00:53:08.000 He wrote this thing.

00:53:09.000 Inflation is great.

00:53:09.000 It's totally under control.

00:53:10.000 And then you look at the bar graph.

00:53:11.000 He's a Nobel laureate economist.

00:53:13.000 He won the Nobel Prize in economics.

00:53:16.000 It's clearly just a liberal shill functioning as the arm of the Democrat Party.

00:53:22.000 Because you look at the chart and it goes, asterisk, if you exclude housing, food, transportation, and energy.

00:53:32.000 And I'm like, wait a minute.

00:53:34.000 For the average American, maybe there's some niceties that you could have in there, but in the grand scheme of your life, what...

00:53:42.000 It's like 90% of your life is housing, food, transportation, and energy.

00:53:46.000 So that's all a disaster.

00:53:48.000 But if you exclude that, the inflation numbers look great.

00:53:51.000 I mean, it's wild.

00:53:52.000 And they'll gaslight you, and then everyone else never gets past the headline.

00:53:56.000 They don't bother to check out what the asterisk says.

00:53:58.000 And so they just lie to your face.

00:54:00.000 Who would do that?

00:54:01.000 Just like with CPI, when they exclude gas prices.

00:54:04.000 It's like, I don't know.

00:54:05.000 It's used in every other aspect of CPI. I mean, it should be a big part of that, but they cut it out to conveniently sell a narrative.

00:54:12.000 Well, to your point, I've had a few dinners with Krugman, and the way he's thinking is bizarre.

00:54:18.000 Let's leave it at that, okay?

00:54:20.000 And he just has an agenda in the way he thinks.

00:54:22.000 But really, the problem does come not just in the inflation numbers, Don, and it is the way that the BLS reports the employment numbers.

00:54:29.000 They have made several errors, and let's put it this way.

00:54:33.000 It is at least questionable.

00:54:36.000 What they did near the election.

00:54:38.000 Well, they did it every time, Barry.

00:54:41.000 They put up a great number.

00:54:43.000 Oh, the jobs report is looking great.

00:54:45.000 Two months later, it gets revised down to literally what would be disaster-level numbers.

00:54:49.000 And they did it each and every time.

00:54:51.000 And they certainly did it right before the election.

00:54:53.000 But when they revised it and corrected it to a bad number from a glowing number, that's on page 12. No one ever sees it.

00:55:04.000 No one ever reports on it.

00:55:05.000 So, I mean, it is sort of this mafia of people gathered together to sell you misinformation.

00:55:12.000 You don't get it wrong every time.

00:55:13.000 And by the way, if they do get it wrong every time and they have to adjust it all, shouldn't there be a consequence there?

00:55:19.000 Shouldn't those people get changed?

00:55:20.000 Shouldn't there be other objective people looking at it and doing a peer review to say this is actually accurate, not weaponized politics?

00:55:28.000 It is reviewed.

00:55:29.000 It's reviewed by the QCW, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.

00:55:34.000 And what they found was that although the Bureau of Labor Statistics said...

00:55:38.000 After they themselves revised the numbers lower, there wasn't 2.5 million jobs created.

00:55:43.000 There was 1.25 million jobs created.

00:55:46.000 So essentially, 100,000 jobs a month was a BS number.

00:55:50.000 And look, it's a Herculean effort to do this.

00:55:53.000 But you have to be curious, especially around the liberties that they took with something called a seasonal adjustment.

00:55:59.000 Now, seasonal adjustment, Don, is meant to say, look, during the...

00:56:02.000 Holiday shopping season, you get all of these hires.

00:56:04.000 It doesn't mean the economy is going gangbusters.

00:56:06.000 And when they're let go in January, it doesn't mean the economy is falling off a cliff.

00:56:10.000 The same with teachers in June and September.

00:56:12.000 So they use a seasonal adjustment to smooth it.

00:56:15.000 But the last time they did this before the election, they did something they hadn't done in 49 years and gave the most generous seasonal adjustment to make the numbers look as pretty as possible right before the election.

00:56:27.000 Now, again, I have to say it's at least...

00:56:33.000 and the timing of why they did it.

00:56:35.000 And we know these folks did not want to go back to work, which they have to do now.

00:56:38.000 We know that the heads were Obama appointees.

00:56:41.000 We know that.

00:56:42.000 So you have to at least go in with eyes wide open and say, is there a bias there? - Yeah.

00:56:49.000 I'm going to go out there and say they definitely did this.

00:56:53.000 There's almost zero question in my mind that they did this because it was pretty consistent throughout.

00:56:59.000 You know where they stand.

00:56:59.000 You know what they want to do.

00:57:01.000 What do you expect right now as far as a possible rate cut from the Fed?

00:57:06.000 You touched on it a little bit before, but what does that look like to you?

00:57:11.000 How do we get to that point?

00:57:13.000 Will some of the savings on Doge, if we're not racking up the extra debt that we don't need to be doing, if Elon's able to cut a trillion dollars out of the budget?

00:57:22.000 You know, you're still running a deficit, but it's not racking up as much.

00:57:25.000 You know, what does all of that look like to you?

00:57:27.000 Because I mean, I feel like if we can get to a place where interest rates go down, you know, that's going to be when people start investing.

00:57:33.000 That's when people are going to start trying to buy homes.

00:57:34.000 That's when it's going to be affordable for other people who aren't already in a home to buy a home.

00:57:40.000 Well, again, as we mentioned, the accurate information on where the rate of change on inflation is will be critical.

00:57:47.000 But in addition to that, I do believe that the labor market is not as strong.

00:57:51.000 When you look at more...

00:57:52.000 Indicative numbers.

00:57:53.000 Job openings, which is the leading indicator, has precipitously fallen. 0.99

00:57:57.000 And the Wall Street Journal said that one out of five job postings is bullshit. 0.95

00:58:00.000 In addition to that, you also have the fact that there's double counting. 0.99

00:58:04.000 Nobody thinks about this.

00:58:05.000 On job postings years ago, if I wanted to hire somebody, I had to post it locally.

00:58:10.000 But with work from anywhere, I can post it in every state, and each one of those states counts the same job opening as it gets aggregated.

00:58:17.000 So these are grossly overstated, making the job market look better than it is.

00:58:26.000 So there's a lot of moving parts here that lead me to believe that the job market is not as strong.

00:58:32.000 If the job market slows, which I think it will, if inflation comes down, which I do think it will as well, that means rates will come down.

00:58:40.000 And it also means that the Fed...

00:58:42.000 Who can quickly change their mind, maybe talking very tough now about less rate hikes or even less rate cuts or even potentially would they do a rate hike?

00:58:50.000 They can quickly change their mind if they see the data change.

00:58:54.000 They give us their summary of economic projections.

00:58:56.000 And I think if we get the unemployment rate to 4.4%, 14 of the 19 Fed members are going to say, oh my gosh, we got this wrong.

00:59:03.000 We got to get aggressive with rate cuts.

00:59:04.000 So that's kind of the magic number for everybody to look at.

00:59:08.000 4.4% unemployment rate.

00:59:10.000 And watch the inflation rate of change come down closer to 2.3% from its current level of 2.8%.

00:59:17.000 Those are the magic numbers that will help interest rates come down.

00:59:20.000 And by the way, Don, housing is at a point right now where people think, well, it's overvalued.

00:59:25.000 Housing has continued to be very resilient.

00:59:28.000 And I think that when you just look at the sheer numbers of the laws of economic supply and demand, You get interest rates a little bit lower, and real estate may be one of the best investments out there because I do see a lot more price appreciation.

00:59:39.000 Yeah, no, that's interesting.

00:59:41.000 So I had no idea about that on the job postings, that each time it's in a newspaper or a different state, it counts as a new job posting.

00:59:48.000 I mean, how do you...

00:59:50.000 Two audits, I guess you ask.

00:59:51.000 How do you audit that?

00:59:53.000 Where does that have to take place?

00:59:54.000 How do you get that right so that the Fed is actually looking at objective numbers or actual numbers?

01:00:00.000 Or, again, I saw in the original job numbers a lot of people, well, if you took on a second part-time job because you needed it to make ends meet, that was two jobs in the job market, but it's one person just struggling to get by.

01:00:13.000 Not exactly the image.

01:00:15.000 That they're putting out.

01:00:16.000 And then you have Elon now talking about auditing the Fed.

01:00:19.000 Is that feasible?

01:00:20.000 What needs to be done?

01:00:24.000 There's a lot of good information right there and a lot of good questions.

01:00:27.000 So starting with the data itself, yes, it is a Herculean effort to do it.

01:00:30.000 So I understand that.

01:00:32.000 However, just like we talked about earlier, you made...

01:00:37.000 We need to be taking these steps.

01:00:41.000 You need to be taking the data that is readily available and accessible and using and implementing the data that's there instead of going back to these things.

01:00:50.000 As far as the Fed goes, you've got to remember, Don, that you've got Fed members, people like Michelle Bowman, even our Fed chair, Jerome Powell.

01:00:57.000 These are not economists.

01:00:58.000 These are lawyers.

01:01:01.000 There's a big difference between understanding economic conditions and being an attorney.

01:01:06.000 I believe that these are things that need to be looked at as far as who is voting on the most important price in the world, the price of money.

01:01:15.000 The U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency, and you've got 19 people determining the value of that.

01:01:21.000 Are these 19 people really qualified in order to make those decisions?

01:01:26.000 When it comes to what the Fed will do going forward, as I mentioned, I think that the Fed definitely should be looking at these numbers much more objectively and looking a little deeper.

01:01:37.000 They aren't looking at the numbers other than, for the most part, just on the surface what the headline is, but you have to look under the hood.

01:01:44.000 For example, the same thing we talked about with the delay, that lag in the shelter numbers, it made the Fed complicit.

01:01:50.000 In adding to the inflation problem, you had the Biden budget buster of $1.9 trillion that we did not need, and that definitely added a lot of issues.

01:02:00.000 Plus, you had a lot of the fraud that occurred with the spending that went on, which of course Doge is uncovering.

01:02:08.000 This is something that created a lot of the inflation.

01:02:11.000 But remember, the Fed continued with QE. They continued with zero interest rate policy.

01:02:16.000 Why?

01:02:16.000 Because they were looking at inflation numbers that were lagging because of the same shelter component.

01:02:21.000 And while rents in real time were going up and the inflation numbers were going up because of the lag, they said, oh, we're okay to keep QE. Oh, we're okay to keep interest rates at zero because what we're looking at in the data, remember they keep saying data dependent, shows that inflation is under control.

01:02:36.000 When in real time, how they had looked at that, they could have responded more quickly and at least to some degree contained that level of inflation.

01:02:43.000 They're making the same mistakes today in the opposite direction.

01:02:46.000 So, I mean, would you abolish the Fed?

01:02:49.000 Does it even serve a purpose anymore?

01:02:52.000 Obviously, that's a big thing for a lot of people on my side of the political spectrum, but I'm sure there is some purpose.

01:03:01.000 What would your ideal scenario be, whether it's abolished, whether it's sort of...

01:03:06.000 Extreme modification to make sure that there aren't just lawyers making economic decisions just because they get appointed to a prestigious position that probably they have no business being in.

01:03:18.000 So the latter point is excellent.

01:03:20.000 You need to have vetted, qualified individuals in this really critical position.

01:03:25.000 I do think an independent Fed can be a good thing because, look, whoever is in control, whoever it is, to have the ability...

01:03:35.000 To set interest rate policy, you'd have to think that there's potential conflicts there that could occur.

01:03:42.000 So if you truly have an independent Fed that is truly qualified, it's probably a good thing.

01:03:47.000 That's probably a good idea.

01:03:49.000 And in many cases, it does work well.

01:03:51.000 This particular Fed has bungled things.

01:03:55.000 Again, I believe it's because the way that they've looked at the data.

01:03:57.000 Look, when you have points where things are relatively stable, Lagging data doesn't really matter.

01:04:03.000 But in points of inflection, and we certainly have seen that after the COVID disturbances and what it caused in the economy, looking at lagging data can be very, very painful and the wrong thing to do.

01:04:13.000 And having people who aren't vetted, who aren't sharp, who are bureaucrats instead of sharp economists, that will cause the pain.

01:04:21.000 All of us have gone through.

01:04:23.000 I mean, inflation affects everyone.

01:04:25.000 These changes in interest rates affects everyone.

01:04:28.000 Stealing the ability for somebody to purchase a home creates an enormous issue for them generationally.

01:04:35.000 Just think about this, Don.

01:04:36.000 You have currently in the housing market, right?

01:04:38.000 You have 136 million households in the United States.

01:04:42.000 Of those 136 million, you have about 45 million that are renters.

01:04:47.000 They have zero equity.

01:04:49.000 Zero equity.

01:04:50.000 The 91 million of them have $37 trillion in equity.

01:04:58.000 They average $571,000 per household versus zero. 0.76

01:05:02.000 We want to help people.

01:05:03.000 You've got to get people into homes.

01:05:05.000 That's how you create generational wealth for them.

01:05:08.000 And also, it's the best hedge against inflation.

01:05:11.000 Well, Barry, I really appreciate it, man.

01:05:13.000 There's so much to go here.

01:05:14.000 As we discover more stuff, I'll definitely have to get you back on and let you do the full thing with the charts and the graphs because it's fascinating.

01:05:21.000 And there's just a lot of nuance there that I think a lot of people miss that they should be informed about because we're all about getting that information out there.

01:05:27.000 So great seeing you, man.

01:05:28.000 I appreciate the time and I look forward to seeing you again soon.

01:05:31.000 Thank you, brother.

01:05:32.000 Guys, thank you so much for tuning in.

01:05:35.000 Remember to like, share, subscribe.

01:05:38.000 That's how we get the message out there.

01:05:41.000 If we do that, you're going to help spread the word.

01:05:45.000 We're going to be able to fight back more aggressively.

01:05:47.000 So make sure you never miss one of these episodes and make sure your friends don't either.

01:05:52.000 Make sure to check out our great sponsors below in all of the ads.

01:05:56.000 It takes guts to support programming like this.

01:05:58.000 So check them out.

01:05:59.000 Click the links.

01:06:01.000 Like, share, subscribe.

01:06:02.000 Get after it.

01:06:03.000 Send it to your friends.

Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - February 13, 2025

DOGE Keeps Digging as Dems Keep Deceiving, Live with Lawyer Paul Moore & Entrepreneur Barry Habib | Triggered Ep. 216

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript