Verdict with Ted Cruz - February 05, 2025


Mexico & Canada CAVE, Trump Stands up to Iran & DOGE Halts Shocking Government Waste


Episode Stats


Length

31 minutes

Words per minute

163.08968

Word count

5,142

Sentence count

410

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

19

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ted Cruz and Ben Fergusons discuss the lifting of the 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, Prime Minister Netanyahu's meeting with President Trump, and Elon Musk and Doge's new plan to take on waste and abuse within the government.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.060 Well, welcome.
00:00:06.140 It is The Verdict with Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:09.300 And Senator, I got to say you were right,
00:00:11.780 but you were kind of like a really long, you know,
00:00:15.420 big cast that you said of Annette over the time frame.
00:00:19.660 You said that Canada and Mexico would cave in 36 days
00:00:25.460 and it was only 36 hours.
00:00:27.780 Like, I need you to narrow that window down next time.
00:00:30.940 Well, it was a stunning victory, a victory for the United States, 0.63
00:00:34.000 a victory for President Trump.
00:00:35.360 We predicted on Monday's podcast that the tariffs that had been announced
00:00:39.300 against Mexico and against Canada, that they would be lifted.
00:00:42.080 And we predicted the reason they would be lifted is that both Mexico and Canada
00:00:45.440 would cave to President Trump's demands and would lean in vigorously
00:00:50.460 to help us secure our borders.
00:00:52.500 You're right.
00:00:53.320 We got the time frame wrong.
00:00:54.480 I said that within 36 days, the tariffs would be lifted.
00:00:58.200 It was, as you noted, 36 hours.
00:01:00.320 They immediately said, no, we can't take these tariffs.
00:01:04.160 We'll do whatever you want to secure the border.
00:01:06.680 It is a huge victory for keeping America safe.
00:01:10.020 Secondly, this week, we had Prime Minister Netanyahu from Israel
00:01:13.160 in the United States meeting with President Trump.
00:01:16.700 President Trump directly made major news on multiple fronts,
00:01:20.300 including announcing that the United States is withdrawing
00:01:23.800 from the UN Human Rights Council, is cutting off funding for UNRWA.
00:01:28.640 And President Trump addressed the threats of Iran to try to assassinate him.
00:01:34.800 It was powerful, and it demonstrated real strength.
00:01:39.220 And finally, Doge, Elon Musk and Doge.
00:01:42.620 I got to say, I'm excited about Doge.
00:01:44.400 I'm excited about what they're doing.
00:01:45.760 They're already highlighting and going after incredible waste,
00:01:49.920 incredible abuse throughout our government system.
00:01:53.480 And I got to say, the Democrats are lighting their hair on fire.
00:01:57.220 They're running around in absolute terror.
00:01:59.840 We're going to break that all down for you.
00:02:01.780 I tell you, the pace that they are getting things done is one that is amazing.
00:02:08.160 It's why we love doing this show.
00:02:10.100 So I will remind you, make sure you hit that subscribe or auto-download button
00:02:14.180 because there is so much that's breaking.
00:02:16.440 We don't want you to miss a single episode.
00:02:18.600 So hit that subscribe or auto-download button
00:02:20.820 wherever you are listening to this podcast right now
00:02:23.440 because we will be doing, I have a feeling, a lot of, quote,
00:02:26.300 emergency pods when there is really big breaking news on other days
00:02:30.620 that are not our normal days, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that we do this show.
00:02:33.680 Let me take a moment and tell you about what's happening in Israel.
00:02:36.920 And after more than a year of war, terror, and pain in Israel,
00:02:40.300 there is still a great demand for basic humanitarian aid.
00:02:44.140 The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has supported
00:02:47.560 and continues to support those in the Holy Land
00:02:50.080 still facing the lingering horrors of war
00:02:52.900 and those who are desperate for your help right now.
00:02:57.560 Your gift today will provide critically needed aid
00:03:01.180 to communities in North and the South devastated by this ongoing war.
00:03:05.620 Your generous donation will help deliver help to those in need,
00:03:09.280 including evacuees and refugees from the war-torn areas,
00:03:13.360 first responders and volunteers, and wounded soldiers,
00:03:17.240 elderly Holocaust survivors,
00:03:19.900 families who have lost loved ones and lost all of their belongings.
00:03:24.140 And that is where you can give hope during this time of incredible uncertainty.
00:03:28.340 So to give a gift to bless Israel and her people,
00:03:32.300 you can do that by visiting supportifcj.org.
00:03:37.200 That is one word, supportifcj.org.
00:03:42.380 You can also call them 888-488-IFCJ.
00:03:47.680 That's 888-488-IFCJ.
00:03:52.500 888-488-4325 or supportifcj.org.
00:03:58.320 So Senator, we talked about this and you said it spot on.
00:04:02.780 Donald Trump knew what he was doing with the tariffs.
00:04:05.940 He knew not a 5% or 10% or 12% tariff was probably not going to get it done.
00:04:11.320 He needed to go heavy-handed.
00:04:12.440 He went 25% on Mexico, 25% on Canada, and he didn't flinch.
00:04:17.840 He signed the executive order and said,
00:04:19.600 you know, your move, Canada, your move, Mexico.
00:04:22.300 And both countries, not only did they flinch,
00:04:25.100 but they said, let us help you secure the border
00:04:27.260 and stop the flow of fentanyl at the same time.
00:04:29.900 Well, and one of the things to understand,
00:04:32.120 we talked about this at length in Monday's podcast.
00:04:35.180 I think there's a real difference between the tariffs
00:04:37.620 President Trump announced on Mexico and Canada
00:04:40.080 and the tariffs he announced on China.
00:04:43.180 The tariffs on Mexico and Canada,
00:04:45.440 President Trump uses tariffs as leverage
00:04:48.640 to get concessions on other issues that matter to America.
00:04:52.440 And I think with Mexico and Canada, that's what he was doing.
00:04:55.680 Separately, President Trump also believes in tariffs.
00:04:58.200 He believes in them as a source of revenue
00:05:00.500 for the federal government,
00:05:01.440 and he believes in them in terms of supporting
00:05:04.820 U.S. manufacturing and production.
00:05:06.620 And what we said on Monday's podcast is the Chinese tariffs,
00:05:11.760 the 10% tariffs, I believe will continue the entire Trump presidency.
00:05:15.820 They may even go higher.
00:05:17.460 That's an additional 10% on Chinese goods
00:05:19.840 above and beyond the existing tariffs.
00:05:22.480 That I expect to be longstanding Trump policy.
00:05:27.080 The Mexican and Canadian tariffs, and it was 25% on all Mexican goods,
00:05:31.480 25% on all Canadian goods, except for energy exports.
00:05:35.480 And energy exports from Canada, it was just 10%.
00:05:38.400 That was designed, as I said on Monday,
00:05:42.000 to bring Canada and Mexico to the bargaining table
00:05:46.940 and to force them to make real concessions.
00:05:50.600 And what I predicted is they would do that,
00:05:52.640 and in particular, that Mexico would deploy thousands of troops
00:05:56.600 to the border to help us secure the border.
00:05:58.340 Well, within hours, on Monday, President Claudia Scheinbaum,
00:06:03.000 the president of Mexico, announced that she'd struck a deal with Trump
00:06:06.160 to pause the tariffs only for a month.
00:06:09.000 So he hasn't eliminated them from a possibility,
00:06:11.560 but he's paused them for a month in exchange for her promise
00:06:14.940 to, number one, deploy 10,000 Mexican troops to secure the border.
00:06:21.020 And number two, to tighten cooperation on drugs and weaponry trafficking.
00:06:24.880 And number three, to further negotiations on border security and trade.
00:06:28.620 And so that was the concession that Mexico made.
00:06:31.960 Canada made similar concessions.
00:06:34.040 Canada said, likewise, that they were going to lean in
00:06:36.640 and assist on stopping illegal immigration across our northern border.
00:06:41.820 They were going to lean in and join us in fighting against fentanyl trafficking.
00:06:47.580 And Canada did the same thing.
00:06:49.600 Canada put out an announcement that they were implementing
00:06:51.660 a $1.3 billion border plan with new choppers, technology personnel.
00:06:58.440 And they said that they're also deploying 10,000 frontline personnel
00:07:05.500 working on protecting the border.
00:07:08.300 And beyond that, Canada's prime minister said that he's going to appoint
00:07:12.540 a fentanyl czar to lead the fight against fentanyl.
00:07:18.060 And Canada also designated the Mexican drug cartels as terrorists.
00:07:22.040 And a Canada-U.S. joint strike force was launched to fight organized crime and fentanyl and money laundering.
00:07:31.200 What happened with both Mexico and Canada is exactly what the president anticipated.
00:07:37.460 Now, to be clear, the president delayed these tariffs only for a month.
00:07:41.980 I think that is very much embodying Reagan's old adage of trust but verify.
00:07:46.160 Okay, they've committed to lean in and help.
00:07:48.780 Now they need to do it.
00:07:49.700 If they don't want these tariffs to go into effect.
00:07:52.300 And look, the tariffs, if they went into effect, they would hurt U.S. consumers,
00:07:57.160 but they'd hurt Canada and Mexico much more.
00:08:00.000 Because their trade with us is a much, much bigger percentage of their economy
00:08:04.400 than it is the other way around.
00:08:06.400 And that's why Trump's threat produced such rapid action.
00:08:10.280 You talk about a trend, and in government, we see a lot of what I refer to as kind of BS,
00:08:17.560 fluff, press releases of bipartisan this, or we're going to get this done.
00:08:22.380 And we see a lot of that happen, certainly for the last four years in the Biden-Harris administration,
00:08:26.580 where you name things like, you know, that you're going to do and fix,
00:08:30.440 and everything's going to be amazing, and nothing comes of it.
00:08:32.820 But these announcements that are happening, I mean, you want to talk about significant,
00:08:40.020 real changes happening with these countries and what we're doing.
00:08:44.500 Just looking at the aspect of, hey, we're going to help you stop fentanyl coming into your country,
00:08:50.420 and we're going to work with you, and we're going to do all of these things,
00:08:53.660 and we're going to put money and resources.
00:08:56.040 This is a significant win for keeping people safe in this country from the drugs as well.
00:09:01.220 It is, and, you know, today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, we had a hearing on the fentanyl crisis,
00:09:08.300 and over 100,000 Americans died last year of drug overdoses.
00:09:13.280 It is an enormous crisis, and we've got to stop it.
00:09:17.140 The vast majority of it is coming across our southern border.
00:09:20.380 It's coming from China.
00:09:21.540 It's coming from Mexican drug cartels.
00:09:23.680 A significant part of it is coming from Canada as well.
00:09:26.300 And so I think what the president is doing is he's acting on the mandate from the voters.
00:09:32.440 The voters want a secure border, and he's acting on it.
00:09:34.980 And I've got to say, a lot of the pundits, they got very upset at these threatened tariffs.
00:09:41.380 I'll note this is exactly the strategy President Trump employed in his first term.
00:09:45.860 In his first term, when he threatened 25% tariffs against Mexico,
00:09:49.800 I expressed real concerns that if he implemented those tariffs, it would hurt Texas and hurt America, and it would.
00:09:56.520 But what we saw is that Mexico blinked, that in the face of the threat, it proved to be leveraged.
00:10:03.380 So this time around, I was not dismayed by the threat because we'd seen that it produced success,
00:10:08.860 and it produced success again, although this time it produced success even faster than you and I had predicted.
00:10:15.260 One other question on this, and that is moving forward, what message does this send to other countries that we may be going into negotiations with?
00:10:26.080 Things are changing quickly.
00:10:28.020 This isn't just a success on the standpoint of our northern-southern border.
00:10:33.240 This is going to have huge ramifications for other countries that think they can mess with us.
00:10:38.680 Yeah, look, there is a credibility of deterrence.
00:10:41.700 One of the real differences, when Joe Biden was president, our enemies were not afraid of him.
00:10:47.220 They didn't fear him.
00:10:48.140 Our allies didn't trust him.
00:10:49.740 Nobody thought he was a credible threat.
00:10:52.180 And that's one of the reasons why our enemies walked all over us, all over the country,
00:10:56.040 that when you have weakness in the commander-in-chief, it makes America at much greater peril.
00:11:01.880 With Donald Trump, our enemies are terrified of him.
00:11:04.540 And even our friends and allies, they understand that when he makes a threat, he'll follow through on that threat.
00:11:12.580 And that credibility is incredibly valuable.
00:11:16.960 If America is going to be fighting and negotiating to advance American interest,
00:11:21.900 it is important for other countries to understand that the president will follow through on what he says he will.
00:11:27.960 And I think this past week really underscores it.
00:11:31.380 And you put it on top of what happened last week with Colombia, where Colombia said,
00:11:35.880 we're not going to take illegal aliens that are coming back to Colombia from America.
00:11:40.960 And Trump immediately did the same thing.
00:11:43.440 He announced 25 percent tariffs.
00:11:44.980 He said he'd ratchet it up to 50 percent shortly thereafter.
00:11:48.800 And Colombia caved within eight hours.
00:11:51.180 That credibility, the next time we're in a showdown with a foreign country, 0.99
00:11:55.920 they're going to understand that President Trump is not bluffing.
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00:12:30.740 And this brings us back to national security and an international issue.
00:12:34.880 And it deals with Iran.
00:12:36.940 And I want to move to that because Donald Trump says that he was asked in the Oval Office.
00:12:43.080 In fact, I just want to play it about these real threats from Iran on his life. 1.00
00:12:48.120 And this is what he said in response.
00:12:50.560 And why is it you're unhappy to sign it if it's Iran and their proxies who threaten to retaliate against you
00:12:58.880 and your team by killing you guys or taking out Soleimani?
00:13:03.140 Well, they haven't done that. 0.95
00:13:04.840 And that would be a terrible thing for them to do.
00:13:09.140 Not because of me. 0.56
00:13:10.140 If they did that, they would be obliterated. 0.96
00:13:13.040 That would be the end.
00:13:13.880 I've left instructions.
00:13:15.760 If they do it, they get obliterated.
00:13:18.340 There won't be anything left.
00:13:20.600 And they shouldn't be able to do it.
00:13:22.340 And Biden should have said that, but he never did.
00:13:24.480 I don't know why.
00:13:25.160 Lack of intelligence, perhaps.
00:13:27.040 But he never said it.
00:13:28.260 If that happens to a leader or close to a leader, frankly, if you had other people involved also,
00:13:38.140 you would call for total obliteration of a state that did it.
00:13:41.560 That would include Iran.
00:13:43.140 So I'm signing this.
00:13:44.280 And it's a very powerful document.
00:13:46.020 But hopefully we're not going to have to use it.
00:13:48.960 That was a pretty interesting and I would also say historic moment in this presidency, the second term.
00:13:56.760 He's making it very clear.
00:13:58.680 Not only can we block Iranian oil sales, as he was talking about, and ratcheting that up,
00:14:02.920 but if they come after me or my people, like, first of all, they take me out, their whole country's gone.
00:14:09.140 Yeah, look, and I think that was exactly the right thing to say.
00:14:12.640 But I think it's also important to understand, you know, as we start this second Trump term,
00:14:17.940 there are a lot of people that are trying to read their own policy agendas onto the Trump administration.
00:14:23.420 When it comes to foreign policy, you and I on this podcast have talked a lot
00:14:26.900 about how Republican foreign policy is divided really into two camps.
00:14:31.640 You have the isolationists who want to withdraw back behind our borders and ignore the rest of the world.
00:14:38.860 And you have the interventionists who I think have never seen a country they didn't want to invade.
00:14:44.620 And a lot of people, when they think of Republican foreign policy, they think in a very binary term.
00:14:49.060 You're either an isolationist or you're an interventionist.
00:14:53.020 Now, I've long rejected both of those camps.
00:14:55.800 I think both of them are wrong.
00:14:57.160 I describe myself as a non-interventionist hawk.
00:15:02.180 What that means is I think we should be exceptionally reluctant to use U.S. military force.
00:15:07.060 I don't want to send our sons and daughters into combat unless absolutely necessary.
00:15:12.340 The only reason to do so should be to protect the vital national security interests of the United States to keep Americans safe.
00:15:19.500 That means we should be incredibly reluctant to invade other countries.
00:15:24.200 It's worth noting in eight years the biggest country Ronald Reagan ever invaded was Grenada.
00:15:30.040 Yeah.
00:15:30.220 But there are some people who have been saying in the second Trump term that Trump's foreign policy is isolationist, that he's just withdrawing from everything.
00:15:39.600 And it's worth noting that was not Trump's policy the first term.
00:15:42.760 He killed General Soleimani, the leader in Iran who was responsible for murdering over 600 American servicemen and women.
00:15:50.000 Killing General Soleimani was exactly the right thing to do.
00:15:53.440 And I've got to say, President Trump's foreign policy the first term very much was the coterminous with my philosophy of being a non-interventionist hawk.
00:16:05.980 And that's not entirely an accident.
00:16:07.980 I spent thousands of hours talking with President Trump and urging him to make the foreign policy decisions that he did.
00:16:15.680 He said, this is exactly right.
00:16:17.520 When it comes to Iran, a nuclear Iran, I think, is an existential threat to Israel. 0.99
00:16:22.840 I think it is a enormous threat to America.
00:16:26.620 And an Iran threatening to murder the president of the United States, Trump is right. 1.00
00:16:31.560 The way you respond to that is with absolute credible deterrence that they will be obliterated.
00:16:38.200 And for everyone that wants to read isolationism onto President Trump, I think today illustrates that is not where he is.
00:16:45.560 Yeah, it's a great point.
00:16:46.860 And we talked about this.
00:16:48.920 And let's go back to this kind of American first policy and looking at where our dollars are going.
00:16:53.440 If there's anything that we're seeing a trend and a theme coming out of the first two weeks of the Trump administration,
00:16:58.620 is that they're saying we're going to stand up for your tax dollars.
00:17:02.140 We're going to make sure they're not being abused or sent to people that are actively working against the United States of America.
00:17:07.240 If you're new to this show, we really did a lot on deep dives on the money that goes to UNRWA.
00:17:16.520 And where this money was going, not just against our interests, but we're going towards people that were clearly terrorists.
00:17:24.760 We talked about it.
00:17:25.900 We exposed it on this show.
00:17:27.660 I would encourage people to go back and find those episodes and listen to them.
00:17:30.840 If you haven't subscribed to the show, this is when you hit that button right now.
00:17:34.160 Because this is some things we talk about way in advance.
00:17:36.660 And now, months after we talked about it, President Trump has signed an executive order withdrawing from anti-American U.N. organizations.
00:17:46.000 This is incredible.
00:17:47.240 Well, this is a president and a commander in chief who is standing up for America and standing up to anti-American institutions.
00:17:53.880 The U.N. Human Rights Council has been viciously anti-American, viciously anti-Israel.
00:17:58.820 So UNRWA, UNRWA, look, was was complicit in funding Hamas terrorists.
00:18:03.840 In fact, they had actual Hamas terrorists on their payroll.
00:18:07.180 And so the president rightly withdrew America from the U.N. Human Rights Council, but also cut off funding, American funding for UNRWA.
00:18:14.400 That was exactly the right thing to do.
00:18:16.660 He was asked about that today at the White House.
00:18:18.600 And listen to what President Trump said on this.
00:18:21.460 In light of numerous actions taken by a number of bodies of the United Nations, which exhibited deep anti-American bias,
00:18:29.800 we have an executive order prepared for your attention that would withdraw the United States from the U.N.
00:18:35.680 Human Rights Council would withdraw the United States from the U.N.
00:18:39.540 RWA, which is a refugee organization and would also review American involvement in in UNESCO, which is also exhibited anti-American bias.
00:18:51.080 More generally, the executive order calls for a review of American involvement and funding in the U.N.
00:18:57.820 in light of the wild disparities in levels of funding among different countries that, as you've expressed previously, as deeply unfair to the United States.
00:19:08.440 So I've always felt that the U.N. has tremendous potential.
00:19:12.440 It's not living up to that potential right now.
00:19:15.240 It really isn't.
00:19:16.040 It hasn't for a long time.
00:19:17.820 It has.
00:19:18.720 There are great hopes for it, but it's not being well run, to be honest.
00:19:25.820 And they're not doing the job.
00:19:28.220 A lot of these conflicts that we're working on should be settled, or at least we should have some help in settling them.
00:19:34.040 We never seem to get help.
00:19:35.500 That should be the primary purpose of the U.N., the United Nations.
00:19:38.840 And again, it's got great potential.
00:19:41.660 And based on the potential, we'll continue to go along with it.
00:19:44.320 But we've got to get their act together.
00:19:52.200 What would they need to do, sir, to get their act together?
00:19:54.220 Well, they've got to be fair to countries that deserve fairness.
00:19:58.400 They have some countries, as you know, that are outliers, that are very bad.
00:20:04.180 And they're being almost preferred as countries to those that do their job and are doing a good job.
00:20:11.360 And they have to really – they're going to end up losing a lot of countries.
00:20:15.220 They're going to end up losing their credibility like other organizations.
00:20:17.940 And then they're going to be nothing.
00:20:19.500 The potential of the United Nations – and not everybody agrees with me on this – the potential of the United Nations is fantastic.
00:20:27.500 If properly run.
00:20:29.240 So we'll see what happens.
00:20:30.580 I mean, you hear him. 0.68
00:20:32.760 He's telling the world, you mess with us, you screw with us, and you have organizations that are corrupt like this.
00:20:39.840 Don't expect America to stay involved, no matter what the president has been beforehand.
00:20:44.500 Yeah, look, we're not going to foot the bill.
00:20:46.260 We're not going to write the checks to fund people that are actively undermining Americans, that are undermining our allies.
00:20:52.020 And this is creating an incentive.
00:20:54.900 It's creating an incentive, number one, for our allies to stand with America, that there's upside to standing with the United States.
00:21:01.160 But at number two, it's creating real disincentives for our enemies to move against us because there are real consequences, negative consequences.
00:21:08.860 And that's what a president should do.
00:21:11.560 And I've got to note, Ben, every single thing Donald Trump is doing is 180 degrees the opposite of what Joe Biden did.
00:21:19.760 Joe Biden undermined our allies and showed weakness and appeasement to our enemies.
00:21:24.880 And it's why the foreign policy and national security scene became such an utter mess, utter chaos, wars across the globe, because weakness doesn't work.
00:21:36.140 And this is President Trump demonstrating strength.
00:21:39.300 That's what we want and expect in our president.
00:21:42.020 Well, we may have won this election.
00:21:43.680 The fight to restore our great nation is only beginning.
00:21:46.220 And now is the time to take a stand.
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00:23:16.160 Finally, this one was a big one, Senator, and it got a lot of attention.
00:23:22.780 I'm glad that it got a lot of attention.
00:23:25.100 People that listen to the show and conservatives out there said,
00:23:28.060 okay, let's let everybody know where your tax dollars is going after Elon Musk and Doge, yet again, blowing the whistle.
00:23:36.380 They're going to, I mean, they've got to be exhausted because they're finding so much waste, fraud, and abuse in our government.
00:23:43.920 And a perfect example of this is USAID.
00:23:47.540 And some of the abuse that they found, walk us through it.
00:23:50.720 Well, I've got to say, Elon Musk is doing a fantastic job.
00:23:54.320 He is working around the clock at Doge and really focused on reining in government spending and reining in the absolute abuse,
00:24:02.660 the abuse that you would never see in a private company.
00:24:06.040 But yet in government is commonplace and is a result of politicians funding their own political hobby horse, their own political pet project.
00:24:16.540 Right. And so I've got to say, one of the areas that Doge and the new White House has done is freeze funding at USAID.
00:24:25.680 And Democrats in the media have been losing their minds over this, have been lighting their hair on fire.
00:24:31.200 In fact, a bunch of Democrats went to the USAID offices to storm the offices this week, which was really pretty ridiculous.
00:24:38.800 But they're really, they're very, very upset about it.
00:24:41.700 They're not upset, by the way, about the abuse of the money and the fraud at all.
00:24:44.900 They're just, they're just upset that they've lost their power, right?
00:24:47.840 Well, they're upset that the abuse is stopping.
00:24:51.580 But, you know, when reporters have asked me about it, I've said, listen, the president got a mandate from the American people.
00:24:58.800 And part of the mandate is to stop the out of control spending and debt.
00:25:01.900 And USAID engages in all sorts of abuse.
00:25:04.800 Let me give you some of the examples.
00:25:06.940 USAID spent $1.5 million for advancing DEI in Serbia's workplaces.
00:25:14.900 They spent $2 million for sex changes in Guatemala.
00:25:21.660 They spent $6 million for tourism in Egypt.
00:25:26.500 They paid for, quote, hundreds of thousands of meals that went to Al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria.
00:25:35.500 They gave funding for the production of opium, the primary ingredient in heroin, in Afghanistan, which benefited the Taliban.
00:25:47.040 Yeah.
00:25:47.160 They spent $1 million to help disabled people in Tajikistan become, quote, climate leaders.
00:25:57.820 They spent $1 million for Hamas-linked charity.
00:26:02.660 And they spent $15 million for contraceptives and condoms in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
00:26:12.440 This is all nonsense. 0.90
00:26:14.680 This is a waste. 0.78
00:26:15.920 And there's a reason Elon Musk is going after it.
00:26:18.420 There's a reason President Trump is going after it.
00:26:20.540 And there's a reason Democrats in the press are horrified that this gravy train is stopping.
00:26:26.980 It is a gravy train.
00:26:28.500 And it's a very, very big one that's costing taxpayers massive amounts of money.
00:26:32.680 Elon Musk said early on that he thought there was probably like 10 percent waste in our government.
00:26:38.540 He's now changing those numbers.
00:26:40.620 I want to get your reaction.
00:26:41.540 He's saying it could be well above 20 percent.
00:26:44.900 Yeah, there's massive waste.
00:26:47.140 And it is by design.
00:26:48.660 Understand, it's not just that they picked things out of a hat.
00:26:52.060 These are all ideological.
00:26:53.720 This is this is the agenda of the radical left.
00:26:56.260 They're funding the agenda of the radical left.
00:26:58.920 But it shouldn't be the taxpayers paying for this nonsense.
00:27:01.840 And let me give you an example of one of the ones that I found, frankly, funniest.
00:27:06.100 AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, went off on Elon Musk this week.
00:27:13.340 And listen to what she says. 0.98
00:27:16.280 Her argument is that Elon Musk is a dummy. 0.98
00:27:19.620 Give a listen. 0.99
00:27:20.880 This dude is probably one of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met or seen or witnessed,
00:27:31.280 which, you know, you can probably even glean that from watching these people on TV.
00:27:36.100 Anyways, all of that is to say is that they don't do their homework.
00:27:41.100 Clearly, like, they're putting 19-year-olds in at the Treasury. 0.98
00:27:45.980 This dude is not smart.
00:27:48.420 And the danger in the lack of intelligence and the lack of expertise that Elon has. 0.73
00:27:58.240 I mean, this guy is one of the most morally vacant, but also just least knowledgeable about these systems that we really know of.
00:28:12.740 But the point is, is that what that means is that they're going to hit a button inevitably.
00:28:22.300 They are going to hit a button and things can go sideways.
00:28:25.620 I mean, this is one of those moments where you actually get to watch the you-know-what, the sausage being made in her brain.
00:28:35.000 She's making it up and pausing as she goes to try to figure out a way to hit a guy that's having massive success at saving taxpayers' dollars.
00:28:43.200 Look, I got to say, I laughed out loud when I listened to that and watched that.
00:28:50.760 It should be a Saturday Night Live skit.
00:28:53.200 Of course, Saturday Night Live wouldn't actually make fun of liberals, so they wouldn't show it.
00:28:57.060 But, listen, you can criticize Elon Musk on all sorts of fronts. 0.97
00:29:01.720 But the one front you can't criticize him on is being a dummy.
00:29:06.180 I've spent a ton of time with Elon.
00:29:07.800 Elon, listen, I've been blessed, Ben.
00:29:10.160 I have known a lot of brilliant people.
00:29:12.860 I've known Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
00:29:18.960 I have known brilliant, brilliant scientists and world leaders.
00:29:24.180 And I believe Elon Musk, this is without exaggeration, is the most brilliant man I've ever met.
00:29:29.900 I've spent a lot of time with Elon.
00:29:31.320 If you think about the distribution of intelligence, you assume roughly 8 billion people on planet Earth.
00:29:38.720 Intelligence is distributed along a bell curve.
00:29:41.260 Someone is at the bleeding edge of that bell curve, and I think Elon Musk is that person.
00:29:46.740 And, I mean, I've sat with him for two, three, three and a half hours talking with him,
00:29:50.560 and it's fascinating watching his brain work because the guy, it's not even that he thinks outside the box.
00:29:57.140 He doesn't know there is a box.
00:30:00.260 And so listening to AOC say he's unintelligent, I've got to say, it reminded me of a scene from my favorite movie.
00:30:09.620 Oh, I know where we're going with this one.
00:30:11.760 And so give a listen to what AOC was saying, and she was really, she was channeling Vecini.
00:30:18.760 Give a listen.
00:30:20.140 You're that smart.
00:30:21.300 Let me put it this way.
00:30:22.280 Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? 1.00
00:30:25.220 Yes, morons. 1.00
00:30:27.760 Really? 1.00
00:30:28.580 So that's AOC.
00:30:30.800 Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Elon Musk. 1.00
00:30:36.160 Morons. 1.00
00:30:37.520 AOC. 1.00
00:30:38.860 She knows what's right.
00:30:40.380 There you go.
00:30:41.180 Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
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