Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream,
my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron,
go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your
smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for
your support. Couple of items and messages here. Just to
clean up from the last hour. Regarding Kamala Harris certifying
the electoral college victory for Donald Trump, Eric says, did
you notice that Kamala Harris secured fewer electoral votes than
Hillary Clinton did?
Speaker 2: Lol? She was really a terrible candidate. It's true. That's true.
Speaker 1: Bound by Duty says, Welcome back, Pete from your well
deserved time off. My lunchtime ritual is back in order.
My ride home on forty five helps complete my information
based enjoyment using your podcast. Lots of things have happened
since you've been out, no shortage of topics. In my opinion,
that is true, even though I explicitly said do not
break anything while I was gone, lots of stuff got
broken by many people. It's almost like they don't listen
to me. Sean Davis from The Federalist. He says, the
only thing Democrats got in exchange for screeching about monsurriction
for four years was being bullied into accepting a Republican
as president for the first time in forever. Like, that's right,
because this is the first time in this century that
Congressional Democrats have not objected to the certification of a
Republican president, first time in the twenty first century, because
they couldn't very well do it now, right after complaining
about Mott Rose and the insurrection and all of this,
they could not get out there today and object to
the certification of the results.
Speaker 2: So there's that.
Speaker 1: I got a message also from Bob who asked regarding
George Soros getting one of the Medals of Freedom from Biden.
There was a list of nineteen people. I was going
through some of them in the last hour real quick.
Joe Biden gave the Medal of Freedom, which is the
highest civilian honor in the nation. Gave it to Hillary Clinton,
George Soros, Bono from the band You Two, Michael J.
Fox from Back to the Future, Magic Johnson, the basketball legend,
Ralph Lauren, fashion guy, soccer player, Lionel Messi, Denzel Washington
and a Win Tour, the editor in chief of Vogue magazine.
Bill Nye, the science guy who doesn't even have a
degree in science. If I recall correctly, rfk not junior,
but the slain former New York Senator and US Attorney
General from You've Got Murdered by Sir Hann Sirhin fifty
years ago. Jane Goodall, who hung out with all the
apes you know. David Rubinstein, the billionaire co founder of
the Carlisle Group. Donor sorry, jose Andres, the celebrity chef
and founder of the World Central Kitchen charity group. That's
a good one. I feel like that that's a pretty
good medal to give. Ashton Baldwin Carter, former Defense Secretary,
Tim Gill, an entrepreneur whose work has advanced LGBT rights,
George Romney mid Romney's dad got one. George Stevens junior
and author and playwright. And Fanny Lou Hamer, the late
civil rights leader and founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
So that those were the nineteen that got the medals,
and I was I truth be told, I was, I was.
I was dragging George Soros a little bit in the
last hour.
Speaker 2: I don't regret it. Not a fan.
Speaker 1: And Bob wanted to know, how does Soros benefit from anarchy?
Because Soros has been funding these district attorney races to
put into office these far left, you know, criminal justice
reform activists who have not been holding people accountable for crimes.
They don't prosecute, They cut all sorts of deals, and
their jurisdictions have turned into war zones or hellholes or both.
And Bob wants to know how does Soros benefit from that?
He says, I don't understand his motivation, hatred for American culture.
How to entrepreneurs justify damaging systems from which they're wealth arows, so.
Speaker 2: Sorrows.
Speaker 1: You got to remember, like, this is a currency manipulator guy.
He's a currency trader and investor guy, right, So he's
not like an entrepreneur. He's not going out there trying
to create a product that people want. See, that's the
beauty of the free market is that if you create
a product or a service that actually has value for people,
then people will want it, and so you are then
making their lives better in some small or large way. Right,
They're choosing voluntarily to buy your product because they believe
it gives them benefit, and you're helping. So an entrepreneur
is helping people and the economy and usually the society.
That's the beauty of the free market. Is it perfect? No,
But it's the it's us. The free market is you.
The free market is me. Right, that's what the free
market is. And commies like to, you know, throw the
word capitalist around like it's a slur. I'm not offended
by it. But if you want to call me a capitalist, fine,
I am a free marketeer. I believe in the free
market because it represents billions of factors made at any
give in point. It's the only way that you could
do it. It's such a complex system because we are
all individual people with different needs and wants that change
minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. Right now,
I may not be willing to pay, you know, fifty
dollars for your product, but you put it on sale,
and now you give it to me for forty Now, okay,
now I will why I don't know, maybe forty dollars
was my limit. Maybe I feel like I'm getting a deal.
Maybe I've got fomo fear of missing out. Maybe I
need the thing now. That's one of the things about like,
for example, advertising, A lot of products that are advertised,
not just on the radio or on podcast, TV wherever.
A lot of products that are advertised are not products
that you're going to buy over and over and over
and over again. So what is the point of advertising
over and over and over again, right for years and
years and years for the same product. Well, yes, it's
to find new people that may need that service, but
it's also to create in somebody's mind a memory of
a product or a service, of the name of a website,
a phone number, whatever, a brand. It's so they remember
it for when they do need it. So how do
you measure that, Like, how do you capture all of
those decision points, all of those factors at the point
of purchase. There's no other way to do it more
efficiently than the free market, because everybody decides on their
own and if a business is able to meet the demand,
they will then adjust to what those demand levels are
with the commensurates supply. It's a beautiful system. Like when
you think about what it actually measures is freedom. It's
our ability to engage in free exercise of commerce. It's beautiful,
and I think that's why some people hate it. Some
people hate beautiful things. And I also think that there's
a lot of ignorance as to the beauty of this
system and what it really is. That's why I keep
talking about the free market being you and me our decisions. Hey,
you know what, I could really go for a Pepperoni.
Speaker 2: Pizza right now.
Speaker 1: Why, I don't know. I want a pizza. I love
Pepperoni pizza. I haven't had Pepperoni pizza. Whatever the decision is,
whatever the factor is in that, rather than the government
coming in and saying like they do in the K
twelve government schools, today is Pepperoni Pizza Day, whether you
like it or not. Right, that's not a free market.
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Speaker 2: I did not finish the answer.
Speaker 1: Ummmm, Bob wanted to know what's in it for sous,
Why would you fund all of these district attorneys to
then implement these soft on crime policies, these approaches to
offer plea bargains and dismissals and such. Oh, by the way,
they just dismissed all of the cases I think against
the unc tenttifada crowd up there in Chapel Hill.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, that's what you get, right.
Speaker 1: Non enforcement of law, which then, of course sends the
signal to people who wish to break more laws. They
can continue to break more laws with impunity because there
aren't going to be any repercussions to them. It also
sends signals to the law abiding people that they are
fools because they're following these laws. Because while some people
may be motivated to follow the law because I'm a
good person and I like to follow all the rules,
spoiler alert, you're not following all of the rules.
Speaker 2: Nobody can.
Speaker 1: There are too many.
Speaker 2: Show me the man, I'll show you the crime. Right.
Speaker 1: The vast majority of people follow the laws because they
are afraid of the penalties for not doing so. How
many people would be speeding more? How many more people
would be speeding at higher rates if there were no
speed limit, and that speed limit was not enforced with
any kind of punishment. Right, that's the point. And so
when you strip away the punishments, now you are going
to encourage more of the thing that is not being
punished because the people who were following the rules because
they were afraid of the punishment now are not afraid
of any punishment. People who don't care about punishment are
not deterred by the punishments.
Speaker 2: Obviously, So why would Soros do this? What's the motivation
for doing this?
Speaker 1: Why would he want these das to be in office
and have this breakdown of the society. Well, it's much
like all of the reasons. Why what I call temporary
anarchists because they're not really anarchists, They just want chaos
for a little while, just for a bit. You create
conditions that are so terrible that people will then clamor
for a crackdown to restore order. That is the natural response.
Happens throughout human history. In every society, things get too
out of control, somebody comes in and promises to restore order.
They get power and they If Vladimir Putin did it
blew up an apartment building allegedly right blamed it on
some terrorists or something, and they were like, oh my gosh,
everybody's freaking out, so let's have a restore order campaign.
I mean the creation of the TSA right.
Speaker 2: You have all these.
Speaker 1: Reactions to chaotic incidents, and it's all the same that
we're going to institute, implement order, and then people yield
freedom for security, because that's the natural tendency. The natural
tendency of government is to grow, is to take more
and more liberty from its citizens, and the natural tendency
of the citizenry is to give it up, is to
trade it in for a perception of security, a belief
that they are more secure. And the Faustian bargain always
ends the same. It ends with people intents in western
North Carolina that can't get FEMA trailers. It always ends
the same way. Because government can never deliver on the
promises of the security that they made. You end up
with New Orleans, you end up with an open southern border,
You end up with a subway system in New York
City that is just riddled with with crime and stabbings
and such. So, but people keep making that, they keep
making the choice, they keep making that that uh, that
Faustian deal. So if you are the one who creates
the chaos, are you in it just to create the chaos?
I would submit, No, you are actually in it. I
mean aside from like being the actual stabber on the
subway car, like they're in it for the chaos. But
if you're at the Soros level, you're not in it
to create chaos for chaos's sake. You're in it to
create chaos so you can be part of the solution,
so you can be part of the restoration of order.
Why do you think he donates all the money to
politicians that don't have anything to do with.
Speaker 2: Law and order.
Speaker 1: DA's plea agreements and that sort of thing. It's to
write the laws to give himself the advantage. The quote
elites the positions of power, the influence, or as Einran
called it, the politics of pull.
Speaker 2: How much pull do you have?
Speaker 1: And so when you pay a lot of money into
campaign coffers and you get a bunch of das elected
that rip apart the fabric of a high trust society,
you then get people clamoring for a restoration of law
and order. Well, look at that. I just happened to
know some people that could pass some laws that would
help alleviate these problems.
Speaker 2: Which nobody could ever have expected.
Speaker 1: And now you're in right now, you're part of the solution,
and you get to now be part of that two
tiered system, which he already is. I mean, you've got
a two tier system as it is, right, the Democrat
Party called the Elysium Party.
Speaker 2: You got the uber rich and you get the activists poor.
That's so you have that. That's what that party is now.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if they can speak a language
that will be attractive to anybody outside of that elite crowd.
I think they're gonna start, uh, they're gonna start bleeding
the lower end of their demographic in their in their base.
They're gonna have the activists. They're gonna have the college educated, right, Okay,
that's kind of redundant activists too, right. So they're gonna
have the the really wealthy elites, the taste makers, the
trendsetters and such because they don't have to live. But
they don't have to they're not right in the subways, right,
And then you get the Marxist activist crowd.
Speaker 2: So he's in it. So, so the purpose is.
Speaker 1: To be in the lab when you make the the
virus and the antidote, and then you can be the
one to provide the antidote because that gives you the control.
Speaker 2: That's what it's about. All right.
Speaker 1: I hope you had a happy holiday season. But tell
me if something like this happened at your house. Your
family and friends are gathered around. Maybe y'all are in
the living room, You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing, and then
somebody says, hey, Dad, remember those old VHS tapes? Did
you ever get them transferred? And then the room gets
all quiet. All eyes are on Dad, who says, oh,
you know, well, I've been meaning to but I just
having gotten around to it. Look, don't let those priceless
memories sit in a box for another year.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Create a Video has been helping families in the Charlotte
area preserve their history since nineteen ninety seven. Simply bring
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Trust the experts at Creative Video, conveniently located in mint
Hill right off five five and online at create a
video dot Com. Russ says, Pete, welcome back. You detailing
your time off got me thinking. Winter Book comes back
and tells us about the great time that he had
with listeners on a cruise. And you come back and
we hear about ripping your iTunes catalog again. Future promo
idea for you. You need to organize some kind of a
listener meetup or a getaway. You could invite listeners to
watch as you organize your sock drawer or something. There
are no bad ideas under the cone of creativity.
Speaker 2: It's true. That is true. I like it well.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're always telling us like you need to
welcome people into your life and show them behind.
Speaker 2: The scenes stuff.
Speaker 1: So all right, I'll do maybe I'll do a video.
Maybe I'll do a video on when I organize the
sock drawer.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: It is about time for me to do that because
I bought those dividers. Those things never work, right, I
take it back, I did buy one product that did
work correctly. But it was only front to back. When
you start getting into different dimensions, like if you're starting
to go horizontal and vertical divisions, it's that stuff never works.
I don't feel like and uh universal not not universal.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, this will fit any drawer. No it won't.
It did not.
Speaker 1: You start putting different pressure points on the little show
on the little dividers. So this is this is how
I stay in touch with the everyday person.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Did you have to do a bunch of iTunes ripping
at some point too? No, you probably spaced it out
like a normal person would do. But I just put
off all of this stuff. I put it off. I
put it off because I have more important things to do,
like Twitter.
Speaker 2: So I just put it off and put it off.
Speaker 1: And then I had I wrote a to do list.
It was a full page to do list of all
the things I had to get done.
Speaker 2: I put up a bird house.
Speaker 1: Don't tell the hoa. I put up a bird house
and I got it for Christmas. And so I was
going to rehab a table table that had been painted
over a bunch of times and stuff, and we bought
it at one of those consignment Is that what it's
called consignment place where they got like the different little
areas and it's had like a warehouse and people rent
the booths and whatever. Anyway, we picked up one of
these things and it's a little table. It's got wheels
on it, so it goes in the little laundry room
and so you can move it around and take it
out if you needed to, which we actually haven't ever
needed to take it out, but whatever. So the idea
was to paint it. But then I got the bird house.
And it's not just any bird house. This thing's got
a camera in it so I can watch when the
birds make a nest in the bird house. Okay, if
the birds make a nest, I'm not certain they're going to.
I'm really not certain that they're going to.
Speaker 2: I don't, I don't.
Speaker 1: I will say, I'll keep you posted. I keep looking
at it, and you know, open up the camera. It's
got a little solar panel on it so I don't
have to recharge it all the time. It's a pretty
I mean, it's neat. It's a great idea, and I
hope I get some birds that live in there. I'd
love to be able to just like snoop on them.
And then watches some snake like goes and eats the eggs.
I'm sure at some point, but I mean I'll be sad.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: So yeah, maybe I'll shoot a video of the of
the installation of some shelves in the toilet room. Anyway,
let me get to a more important thing. The State
Department has crafted plans to distribute staffers from the GECK.
Do you remember the GEK. I know, there's a lot
of acronyms GEC. It's the Global Engagement Center. It's where
everybody goes before they propose to get married. And no,
it's this is the operation. I mentioned this during the
the Kramibus, remember when they put together the funding package,
the continuing resolution with the you know, the deadline before Christmas.
And one of the things, one of the provisions that
was buried in that Kramnibus was the perpetuation of the GEK,
the Global Engagement Center, which was a censorship tool, and
it was housed inside the State Department, and they tried
to to not let its sun set last month. So
when the cram nebus failed and then they did the
stripped down clean CRS and all that, the GEK was
one of the casualties. But don't worry everybody. They have
found a way. They have found a way to preserve
the people that were in the GEK, and they've moved
him around. They've done some shuffling, okay, and same with
the money. Fifty one employees, a twenty nine million dollar budget,
and the GEK.
Speaker 2: To do. Where is it?
Speaker 1: The office that Republicans accused of working with groups aimed
at demonetizing right leaning media outlets in the US is
shut down last month upon lawmakers agreeing to no longer
fund it, well because it was sunset it. However, in
a non public letter to members of Congress on December sixth,
the State Department outlined its plans to realign more than
fifty GEK officials and tens of millions of dollars in
funding to a hub. So we are going from the
GEK to a hub purporting to counter foreign interference.
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, I should do this foreign interference the Russians? Okay.
Speaker 1: The plans, which have not been reported on until now
at The Washington Examiner by Gabe Kaminski, will likely lead
to investigations from Republicans into the State Department's handling of
the gek's closure. That's because, according to senior GOP staffers
who reviewed them, they appear to indicate that the Biden
administration is merely rebranding the GEK under a different name,
forming a new body that could be poised to engage
in work very similar to the work that landed the
GEK in hot water over the last two years. Now, look,
there there is a perfectly logical reason why this just
looks like a rebrand. Okay, because it's a rebrand, right,
That's why it looks like that.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this show, you know I try
to keep up with all sorts of current events, and
I know you do too, And you've probably heard me
say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because
it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've
been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and
it's a website, and it combines news from around the
world in one place so you can compare coverage and
verify information.
Speaker 2: You can check it out at check.
Speaker 1: Dot ground dot news slash pete. I put the link
in the podcast description too. I started using ground News
a few months ago and more recently chose to work
with them as an affiliate because it lets me see
clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind
spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the
left and the right.
Speaker 2: See for yourself.
Speaker 1: Check dot org, ground dot News slash Pete. Subscribe through
that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription.
I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to
every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast,
but it also supports Ground News as they make the
media landscape more transparent.
Speaker 2: Jan says.
Speaker 1: It isn't that we are not listening when you say,
don't break anything while I'm gone. It's just that as guys,
we automatically think challenge accepted.
Speaker 2: That's fair. No, that's fair.
Speaker 1: Bill Nye, the science guy has a degree in mechanical engineering,
which means he is very valuable if you need help
assembling something you got at Ikea, anything else actually science related,
he is pretty useless. See I knew he didn't have
an He wasn't like a climatologist orney, but.
Speaker 2: Mechanical engineering degree. All right.
Speaker 1: So the Washington Examiner headline State Department to route GEK
funding to hub. From the GEK to the hub, the GEC,
the Global Engagement Center. Formed in twenty sixteen. The GEC
claimed to only counter foreign disinformation, but it came under
intense criticism for backing the Global Disinformation Index or the
GDI and other groups that were pressuring advertisers to stop
buying ads on media outlets in America that the left
didn't like, and they said, we're peddling disinformation and misinformation
things that turned out to actually be true. In the
congressional notification, the State Department identified the HUB. This newly
formed body, it is called the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation
and Interference Hub, the CFIMIH, or the.
Speaker 2: KUFFEME as I like to call it.
Speaker 1: The HUB will report to the State Department's undersecretary, which
is always a hilarious name. Under Secretary.
Speaker 2: I don't know why.
Speaker 1: It just reminds me of like underwear and underdog. Anyway,
Undersecretary of State for public diplomacy. So they got so
this this is what the state agency got defunded. Okay,
State Department GEK gets defunded. They put and this is
why there should always be sunsets for all of these
types of programs. If it's working, I'm just kidding, it's
a government program. But if it was working, it was
sufficiently not like being abused, or it wasn't being abused
a lot, right, it was like I had a low
abuse factor. Anyway, you could then have it automatically sunset.
If it was doing a decent job, you could then say, Okay,
we're going to re up it. But it takes an
affirmative vote to re up. That's the way I think
all these programs need to be. You don't get to
set stuff up and just have it last in perpetuity,
because that is also the natural tendency of all of
these government programs. You create the program and it just
never dies, it never goes away. This one got sunseted,
but spoiler, it just now got reorganized. When they sunset
the thing because it did abuse, they then just move
the people around and reallocate the money and create another
entity that is going to basically do the same thing,
but it's only going to look at the foreign interference everybody. No,
no targeting of American conservatives, I mean, at least initially.
According to one senior GEO, gex planned shift to the
Hub demonstrates that the federal government won't give up its
stake in the domestic disinformation fighting industry without a fight.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: This is according to a senior GOP eight. Donald Trump
and Marco Rubio are going to have to track every
single office down to every single staffer if they want
to end the weaponization of the federal government against conservatives.
The State Department is filled with resistance Democrats who think
they got through the first Trump administration and will get
through the second the same way. Right, They are sand
in the gears. They talked about this back in twenty sixteen,
twenty seventeen, when Trump won. They were people inside the
government were talking about and they would talk to media outlets,
I mean all anonymously. Of course, they posted about this
stuff saying that they know how to jam up the works.
They can grind all of this stuff down to a halt,
and they can out last to you because you're only
there for four years. In Trump's case, that's a hard
four years. Right, He's gone in four So all they
need to do is slow stuff down, prevent new things
from happening, and then Trump will be gone and they
can resume their practice. Meanwhile, uh oh, hang on, let
me skip the paragraph. The source familiar with the matter
said the planned hub would not have the grant making
power that GEK did, so they don't get to spread
around the money to all of these you know, left
wing nonprofits that then organize the boycott campaigns and pressure
campaigns against advertisers, and the point of that obviously is
to starve conservative outlets of revenue so they fold. This
is just shut up ery in a different form. Once
you see shut uppery as the prevalent line of attack
from the left, it explains so many things. You see
it everywhere. It's just shut up. Andrew Claven's famous episode
that he did I don't know, probably twenty years ago
now on shut up Ory. They do not want the debate,
they don't want a discussion. They just want you to
shut up or preferably agree with them and back their
play on everything. So they're not going to have grant
making power. At the same time, besides awarding grants to
groups accused of censoring conservatives, the GEK was also involved
with other initiatives that earned the ire of lawmakers concerned
about the First Amendment and violations of it. Top GEK
staffers have already resurfaced to work for the most high
ranking officials at the State Department, such as James P.
Speaker 2: Rubin.
Speaker 1: He is now a senior advisor to Blincoln. The Secretary
of State Leah Bray she was the former acting coordinator.
She's now over at the She's the chief of staff
to Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. Daniel Kimmage was
the principal deputy coordinator for the GEK. He is now
the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy's team. Given the evidence
shows the GEK has long ignored its congressional mandate to
focus solely on foreign disinformation, its continuation under a so
called hub is extremely troubling, said Margo Cleveland, an attorney
for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. That legal nonprofit group
is representing conservative media outlets like The Daily Wire and
the Federalists, the Federalist dot Com, which joined the State
of Texas in a lawsuit accusing GHEK of facilitating quote,
one of the most egregious government operations to censor the
American press in the history of the nation. All right,
that'll do it for this episode.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: I could not do the show without your support and
the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.
So if you'd like Please support them too and tell
them you heard it here. You can also become a
patron at my Patreon page or go to dpecleanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.