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,
I Daily Show prep with all the links, become a patron,
go to dpeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. We are doing the deep dive into the
deep state, as it were. USAID that has been the focus.
The stuff that has come out about this organization and
the funding that it has been pushing out the door
taxpayer dollars to the tune of forty billion annually. It
shocks the conscience the stuff that they have been funding
that we know of, that we know of, and that
they have tried to keep hidden from any kind of
oversight for years. Played the sound bite yesterday Marco Rubio
talking about how like they would try to get stuff
from USAID and they would just refuse. They would refuse,
so they're like, we don't have to give that to you.
We'll respond to you know, the I guess the president
or something, but then the president asked for it and
they say no to them too, So like it's some
sort of an unaccountable agency that's just pushing money out
the door, and surprise, surprise, corrupted by bureaucrats. And you know,
predominantly Democrats. They give like the USAID employees give like
ninety seven percent of their contributions to Democrats. So it
is a predominantly Democrat leftist problem here. But there are Republicans.
I mentioned yesterday also Bill Crystal. He has gotten money
through these grants, this elaborate network. When you look at
the way the money gets sent out and dispersed, it
looks like a money luandering operation. If you're trying to
mask where the money goes and where it's coming from,
who's writing what grants, and all of that, I'm not
sure you could devise a better way to try to
mask that than with the USAID and had drawn Donald
Trump not won and Elon Musk not started here and
not moved in on USID, we would not know this
right but for Trump's election, but for Elon Musk's participation
in this effort, and he's he's getting a lot of crap.
By the way they just the left is running with
a story right now that oh, USAID was investigating Musk
and Grant that hit one of his companies. It's behind
it Paywell so I can't see it, but one of
his companies, and they were investigating that. Yeah, that's not
a surprise. You know why, when Musk came out for Trump,
all of the agencies in the federal administration were weaponized
against him to try to dig up anything they could
against him. That's how they roll. That's what Trump is
trying to dismantle. If he does nothing else, I will
be happy. I said, Look, remember what I said at
the very beginning, when Trump had won and I was
warning people. I said, He's only got a limited amount
of time to get stuff done. He has to hit
the ground running. I did not even contemplate this pace.
I thought he was going to have to get selling.
He was going to This week is infrastructure week, and
this week is you know, USAID week or whatever like.
This is a frenetic pace. I don't know if they
keep it up. I don't know for how long they
can keep it up. But it is just one thing
after another. You've heard the term drinking from a fire hose.
And like I keep saying it, I don't know if
I've said it this many times in a shorter period,
but I am impressed with what they have been doing.
Now Here come the legal challenges. We knew that was
going to happen. But that's why I said, you gotta
do it first. You got to do it soon. This
stuff has to You got to get out of the gate,
and you got to get this stuff rolling because after
about twelve to eighteen months, you're going to get a
lot of You're going to get a lot of hesitancy
from spineless Republicans, and they're not going to be willing
to stand with you because you're you're term limited. So
this is it. Democrats are very mad at what is
happening with USAID. They are very very mad that their
shadow government is being dismantled. And when you need somebody
to lead the troops of anger, right, and you need
to direct the mob's outrage, you call on the one
and only, wait, Chuck Schumer.
Speaker 2: And we cannot, we cannot allow Elon Musk and a
small group of people too secretly behind closed doors, take
away our privacy, take away our dollars, take away everything
we have.
Speaker 1: We are gonna fight this fight.
Speaker 2: I am gonna stand with.
Speaker 1: You in this fight, and we will win. We will win.
Speaker 2: We will win.
Speaker 1: We will wait wait wait wait we wan No, no.
Speaker 2: We will We won't rest, Yes, we will rest.
Speaker 1: We won't rest. Yes, we won't rest. Far better oh yeah,
especially delivered in the croaking throat of septagenarian, because we
all know they don't like the rest. Oh I kid,
I kid, but I really, I mean. I bet he's
good for at least one nap a day. Look, I
look forward to being of age where I could have
at least one nap a day. That would be amazing.
I don't even know what I would do with all
that extra energy. No, I probably wouldn't. I wouldn't have
extra energy. That's why I'm resting. Actually, never mind. Okay.
So Chuck Schumer, the face of the resistance, we mentioned
this yesterday talking about the problems that the Democrat Party has.
They are leaderless. They don't have somebody right at the
head of the party to motivate and rally the troops
and direct their anger towards you know, various downtown areas
to burn, loot and pillage, and so Chuck Schumer, it
just kind of falls to him de facto leader there,
but there are people inside the Democrat Party that want
him to step aside. You know, they want like they
want to be able to have somebody else be the face.
And so you're seeing some jockeying going on, which I
find to be comical. Please make it AOC, Please make
it AOC. AOC. Yeah, she did Instagram video the other
day yesterday, I think, and said Elon Musk is stupid.
The dude is literally a rocket scientist. Okay, hello, Dunning Krueger.
So this is how worried the quote unquote deep state
or the administrative state, the shadow government, and I keep
calling it that because that is to me pretty obvious
what it is. When you have all of these people
that move from a Democrat administration, they go into you know,
agency work or nonprofit work that's funded by the usai D,
then it's pretty clear like it's just you're just moving
them over. They keep drawing their their big paychecks and benefits,
and then as soon as they are needed again when
a Democrat wins back the White House, then you just
move them back into position, right, and they don't miss
a beat. That's why they staff up very very quickly.
They never stopped doing quote the work, you know, although
I don't really think they do a lot of work
with the nonprofits. It's much like the gigs that Democrats
always seemed to land at universities, right, Bev Perdue got one,
remember that up at Harvard John Edwards, remember UNC Chapel
Hill created an entire center for Work and Poverty or
something like that for him, which was basically just a
placeholder gig where he could make taxpayer money. Or maybe
it was donor driven, I don't remember, but it was
a place for him to quote work while he actually
was building his presidential campaign. That's what he did after
he first ran, and then he ran again, ended up
as the is it the VP the second time? I forget,
But it's a place that they parked themselves, drawing the
large out of the system. And then you remember what
happened when Pat McCrory tried to do that. Remember a
college had offered him. I think it may have been Davidson,
but I forget. Some college offered him a professorship of
some kind. You know, it's not like a full blown professorship.
It's like you come in and you do like one
or two sessions. I don't even remember the terms of
the deal. But Pat McCrory got offered something like this,
and the students were like, I can't he's HB two governor.
I can't even And then they were like, okay, fine, Pat,
you're out, and they yanked it from him. Right. They
never do that for leftists. They never do that for democrats. Right.
This is why call it the shadow government. It's just
they move them into these other positions and then they
pick them up and bring them back in when they
retain power. And they always thought they were going to
hold the White House because demographics is destiny in their
blue wall. They had this thing sewn up. We don't
have to listen to you. We're free now to do
whatever we want. M you might have jumped the gun
a little bit. Here's a great idea. How about making
an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in
western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain
and cabins of Ashville. Is your connection. Whether you're celebrating
an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a
memorable proposal or get family and friends together for a
big old reunion. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot
for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones
and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breath
taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest, their
cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the
Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Asheville and the entrance
of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's the perfect
balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local attractions
with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi, grills,
outdoor tables and your own private covered porch. Choose from
thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge
with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the
ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have
pet friendly accommodations. Call her text eight two eight, three
six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there
is to offer at Cabins Ofashville dot com and make
memories that'll last a lifetime. All Right, So, how scared
are the shadow government deep staters? Pretty scared? So scared?
I would submit that they have deployed Samantha Power. Remember
heard she was actually okay, yeah, all right, right, she
was actually the former head of us AID, and she
went on Stephen Colbert, this is something a lot of
work for. Oh no, that's elive, no, no, no care.
Speaker 3: Established it is Stephen idea in nineteen sixty one, which
you know this this was a product of the Cold War.
Speaker 1: USAID.
Speaker 3: What was its mission and why is that mission still
vital now the Cold War's over? Why do we still
need it?
Speaker 4: Well, the Cold War, of course, Kennedy was thinking about
the battle for hearts and minds and what would win
America the affections of global publics. So this is an
investment in our stability, in our security, in our alliances.
And that is what USA IT has done since Kennedy
created it. Helped eradicate smallpox, on the verge of eradicating
polio again and again. USA it is on the front
lines of some of the hardest challenges that our country
faces and that some of the most vulnerable people in
the world face.
Speaker 1: So right, like the Dei musical in Ireland, for example,
it's like wiping out polio people. It's a premier example.
Listen to the CEO's bark and clap.
Speaker 3: It's like a prime example of people call soft power
in the world, influencing the rest of the world through
the way we help them.
Speaker 1: Right like sex changes in Guatemala.
Speaker 3: Is that what's actually going on at the agency right now.
It's kind of confusing what the status is.
Speaker 4: It's confusing in some respects, but the core fact is
programs that were running that people were depending on, in
some cases for life saving medicine, like medicine if you
have HIV that keeps you alive quite literally. Or if
you're in Sudan and you have a child who's wasting away.
Speaker 1: Because of an alnutrition, here's the mod miracle.
Speaker 4: Paste, a peanut paste that USA provides brings that kid
back from the brink of death. All of those programs
are shuttered, and immediately they were shuttered from the minute
the executive order went out and it didn't say, hey,
let's review programs going forward. They said stop everything you
are doing globally right now, stop it, no matter the
human consequences.
Speaker 3: Regardless if you were in the middle of distributing food.
Speaker 4: We have stories of kids who are going in for
their TV medicine and the first three kids in a long,
long line waiting out in the hot sun got the
TV medicine. Everybody else told to go home.
Speaker 3: So let's say Trump, you know, gets what he wants
and the US stops providing forty billion dollars in aid
around the world.
Speaker 1: Yes please, let's yeah. Sorry, you have to spend millions
on EcoHealth Alliance and the research on bats and coronaviruses
in Wuhan at the WIV at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
You have to do that, or else the starving kid
doesn't get the miracle paced right. See how that works.
This is the same ploy that GOVC does when they
are trying to extract more money for themselves from you.
They do this all the time. And the perfect example
of it at the local level is the shuddering of
firehouses right or police stations. Oh well, you know, we
can't do that thing that everybody expects us to do.
The thing the actual service that people want government to do,
won't be done unless you give us millions and millions
of dollars for all this other garbage that we want
to do but you don't want to do. And so
it's a hostage situation. They are holding hostage the good
stuff so we don't ask questions about all the bad stuff.
It's the same old playbook.
Speaker 5: 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. All right.
Create a Video has been helping family in the Charlotte
area preserve their history since nineteen ninety seven. Simply bring
in your old camquarder tapes and Creative Video will transfer
them to a USB flash drive for just fourteen ninety
five per tape. You have a big collection. They've got
a discount for you. And next year, instead of talking
about those memories, imagine gathering the family to watch them together.
Talk about a memorable gift. So do what I did,
Trust the experts at Creative Video, conveniently located in Mint
Hill right off I four eighty five, and online at
create avideo dot com. I have a message from Russ.
Russ says the great thing about going after USAID first
is that the waste, fraud and abuse is easily understood.
The left is forced to scream that these are critical programs.
They also say that it's such a small fraction of
government spending. But I think everybody who hears the list
of spending see stupid programs that are close to their
tax liability or total income, and wonder why the heck
do they need my money if this is the kind
of crap they spend it. On to that point here,
Dennis writes in and says nothing is more entertaining to
me than watching the liberal Democrats gathering today to scream
like stuck pigs when they get caught with their hands
in the cookie jar. I like them best when they
use the bullhorns rather than microphones. Elon didn't waste any
time finding wasting corruption. And this is just the first month. Yeah.
Did you notice also in that Chuck Schumer quote when
he was screaming at the microphone that they're gonna take
away odd dollars. We're not gonna let them take away
everything we have, like whoa, whoa, dude, Probably not a
great idea to use that kind of framing here, taking
away our dollars, taking away everything we have, like you're
kind of getting close to owning it, you know, all right?
So I mentioned Samantha Power. She appeared before a Senate
committee in April of twelve, twenty three, Okay, and Rand Paul.
Senator Rand Paul raised these very questions of secrecy and
inappropriate funding at that time. Power was in charge of
USAID at the time.
Speaker 6: Now, the question is did you fund coronavirus research in Wuhan, China?
Speaker 4: Before my time? There was the PREDICT program with which
you're familiar, which ended in China in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 6: This is a two hundred million dollar program, and the
GAO has also identified that some of these grants went
directly to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where there is
a suspicion that the lab league began that began the pandemic.
Has USAID awarded funds to the Academy of Military Medical Sciences.
Speaker 4: In China, not to my knowledge, but I have to get.
Speaker 6: I think the answer is once again yes. JO has
found that there have been sub awards of NIH money
as probably as well as USAID money that went to
the Academy of not just medical research, military medical rep
research in China. Now part of the unknowns here is
we can't get the records to look at this. So
I've been asking for months and months for records. In
September of last year, I wrote Mispowers the USAID a
request asking for records from the PREDICT program. These are
not classified, these are simply records of scientific research, and
we want to read the grants to find out what
they were doing and whether the research was dangerous or not.
The response I got from your agency was USAID will
not be providing any documents at this time. They're just
unwilling to give documents on scientific grant reposal.
Speaker 1: We're paying for it.
Speaker 6: They're asking for seven hundred and forty five million dollars
more in money, and we get no response. So two
weeks ago the ranking Member Rish, myself and twenty five
other Republican centers, unfortunately no Democrats signed a letter. Once again,
it's still no response. We're not asking for classified information,
we're not asking for anything unusual. Twenty million people dita
where ond the world? Just supposed to be an agency
that cares about the death of people around the world.
We you know, talk about starvation and famine and twenty
million people died from a virus. And you won't give
us the basic information about what grants you're funding around
the world and who you're funding. Should we be funding
the Academy of Military Medical Research in China? They're now
off limits, but did we fund them? And who was
making the decision? You know, who ran the PREDICT program?
Speaker 1: You see Davis.
Speaker 6: Have you had any conversations with UC Davis about research
in China and whether it was advisable?
Speaker 4: So again, to set the records straight. First of all,
the PREDICT program ended in twenty nineteen. We have people, and.
Speaker 6: Yet it goes on in other forums and other names.
Speaker 4: That's USA program.
Speaker 6: You have a program called Emergency Pandemic Threats Program.
Speaker 1: Still don't you.
Speaker 4: If I could just just finish in response to the
first set of allegations, we have provided hundreds and hundreds
of pages of documents related to the PREDICT program for
the very reason that you say, because we are not
to us, we are again as I know, you had
an exchange with Secretary Blinkn as well, consistent with long
standing practice not going to give them in to us,
responsive to the committees of.
Speaker 6: Jurisdiction, not going to You've been consistent and not giving
us information.
Speaker 4: That what we've We've hundreds of pages in response to secure
ranking to the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee,
for example, we've had We've.
Speaker 1: Been requested, and gotten none of it. I'm on that
committee as well.
Speaker 6: The thing is is what we get from you and
from the State Department at large, is that if Senator
Menendez signs it, you'll give it documents. Until then, you'll
give us nothing, and.
Speaker 1: We have gotten nothing zero.
Speaker 6: You said will not be providing any documents. I now,
if twenty five senators have sent you a letter and
you aren't responding, we don't. We want we want to
see the scientific grants. We give you the money, the
tax players give you the money. We deserve to know
where the money went, whether it happened. Look, you're right,
it ended in twenty nineteen. When did the virus come about?
In about twenty nineteen. Some of the research proposals that
came about in twenty eighteen were Wuhan Institute of Virology
asking for money to create a virus with a furrein
cleavage site in a coronavirus, a stars like virus with
a furrein cleavage site. That's exactly what COVID turned out
to be. They wanted money to create such a virus.
So we want to know are there other research proposals
that you either granted or denied that were on the
same veins of creating viruses that could have become COVID nineteen.
We can't tell because you won't give us information.
Speaker 4: Again, we are consistent with long standing practice. We are
providing extensive documentation. We have a whole that's just that.
Speaker 6: Is not it is that is not true. Everything we
have asked we have not gotten. I have not seen
one document on the predict program.
Speaker 4: I understand that, again, consistent with common practice.
Speaker 1: You're not going to give it. I don't know.
Speaker 4: We're providing all of the kinds of documentation that you.
Speaker 1: Are not dishonest. You're being dishonest.
Speaker 6: We haven't gotten one scrap of paper from you, not one.
Speaker 4: Committees of jurisdiction. We are providing all of the paperwork.
You are not in quested by the other committee.
Speaker 6: I'm the ranking member on the other committee, and I
haven't seen a scrap of paper from that committee either.
Speaker 4: Well, that is here's what the America.
Speaker 1: The America.
Speaker 4: Actually, I can't tell you what American.
Speaker 6: People think this that because you won't respond, because you
respond with a non response, that you have something to hide.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have anything to hide or not.
I want to.
Speaker 6: See every grant proposal that had to do with coronaviruses
that went to China from the US government, from all
facets of the US government, and every bit of the
Biden administration is stonewalling us and will not give us
the information. It makes us think and makes us suspicious
that you're hiding something and it wasn't he you, this
was the previous administration. We go back two or three administrations.
We just want to see the information.
Speaker 1: And yet you sit there and you say we will do.
Speaker 6: Something, we are doing something, which is absolutely the.
Speaker 1: Opposite the truth. You are not being honest. Gosh, if
only there was a sign that USAID wasn't disclosing all
of its expenditures. I don't know, all right, 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. You could
check it out at check 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. See for
yourself check dot 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. Ininez Stepman from the Claremont Institute
says this is nothing short of simply defunding the professional left.
The leftist institutional infrastructure has relied for decades on basically
being paid by the taxpayer. It's like if a thousand
Heritage foundations were being funded by the government. And that's
just the way it was until now, and that's not
being included in the reporting. Everything is framed through Donald
Trump Elon Musk. He's a billionaire boogdi boogodee. And USAID
is a humanitarian agency and all they do is save lives.
That's all they do. And that's not all they do,
all right, As this is Jorge Bonia at NewsBusters dot org.
He says, the reports do not air all of the
other stuff that USAID notoriously funds, from transgender opera in
Colombia to gain a function bat coronavirus research at the
Wuhan Virology Institute, to soros DA candidates in the US.
They never mentioned those things. Here's an ABC report. This
is comical. I'll tell you why. In a second ABC
report by Jonathan Carl who just happens to get a
hold of an employee at us AID.
Speaker 7: But Elon Musk's influences sweep throughout the administration. It was
late last week that the Doge team showed up at
USAID offices in Washington and demanded access. USAID employee Christina
Dry described the scene.
Speaker 5: Doge was in the building. We started, We took down
our pride flags, we took down I took out any
books I thought would be incriminating.
Speaker 1: No one was talking.
Speaker 5: We heard they started taking transcripts automatically of all of
our Google beats. They'd unplugged the news in the little
kitchen galleys. It didn't feel good. And then Saturday all
the websites went down, and then I lost complete access
to my computer.
Speaker 1: All right, So a couple things of note here. First,
she says, we found out Doge was in the building,
and so what did they immediately scrambled to do take
down all the Pride flags that are hanging up in
their offices. Gee, I wonder if that has any impact
on why they keep giving all these grants to LGBT
issues all around the globe. There may be a connection
there people. I'm not so sure though. But so they
scramble to start taking down our pride flags. And then
she says she took out of her office any books
I felt would be incriminating. Why would books be incriminating?
What are those books? What books do you have on
your office shelf? There? That might raise some suspicions like
how to launder money through NGOs for dummies or something
like what kind of books do you have? But here's
the big thing. Do you know who Christina Dry is?
Why would you? Nobody knows who she is. ABC didn't
tell us and maybe they didn't know either. But if
you track down who she is, she's the speech writer
for Samantha Power. She's she's the one who would write
the speeches for the woman that you just heard with
Senator rand Paul, the head of USAID. So the speech
writer has incriminating books and pride flags all over the office.
That's the speech writer for Samantha Power. Okay. Over at CNN,
Republicans they're gonna tell us, They're going to tell it
to a street. They're going to give us all the
background we need to know about USAID. Okay, And they
say Republicans typically push to give the State Department, which
provides overall foreign policy guidance to USAID. So State gives guidance,
but USAID pushes the money out the door to all
of the NGOs and the United Nations and all other
types of operations. Just like the breadth and scope of
what they fund, it knows no bounds. It's everything they're funding.
They got a little bit of money going everywhere, but
it's all driven by one political philosophy. So Republicans typically
push to give the State Department more control of its
policy and funding. Democrats typically promote USAID autonomy and authority.
In other words, they don't even want state to be
in control. They don't want the State Department to hold
USAID accountable for any of their spending. That is a
recipe for graft. Remember hearing about the teapot dome scandal.
This thing, this scandal will dwarf that. CNN goes on
to say funding for UN agencies, including peacekeeping, human rights,
and refugee agencies, have been traditional targets for Republican administrations
to cut. The first Trump administration moved to reduce foreign
aid spending, suspending payments to various UN agencies, including the
UN Population Fund and funding to the Palestinian Authority. So
here's the question, and you know me, I am a
why guy. My question is why do Republicans do that?
It's because there is a level of unaccountability when you
start pushing these grants out and then you do what
it's called sub awards. USAID gets the chunk of money,
then they issue the grants, and then those recipients issue
other grants, and you have no idea where the money
is going, and when you ask, you get stonewalled. And
that's the problem. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. 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 thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so
much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.