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 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. So this wisdom comes to us from Jarvis
on the Twitter machine, Jarvis Best, who says, in the
old days, see we used to have something called the
spoils system, the spoils system to the victor go the
spoils right. The spoil system where the president would appoint
party loyalists to government jobs. So a Republican president would
appoint Republicans to run the government, and then if a
Democrat won, the Democrat would appoint Democrats to run the government.
And this was considered inefficient because you had to change
all of the government jobs whenever there was a new
party in charge. So in the late eighteen hundreds they
replaced the spoils system with the career civil servant system,
which ensured that no matter which party was in the
White House, the federal government would always be run by Democrats. See,
so that's what's going on here. Yes, that encapsulates all
the guff that we are seeing surrounding Doge and Elon Musk.
And I watched the well on the way home. Actually,
I was driving home and I was listening to Brett
Winterble and he was joining live in progress the press
availability that Elon Musk and Donald Trump held in the
Old Office, and I was listening with great interest. And
then I went home. Well, first I had a commitment.
I went to do that, and then I went home
after that. So at like eight thirty, I fire up
the old C SPAN machine and I watched the press availability.
I don't really call it. It wasn't really a news conference,
although they did take a couple of questions. Sometimes they
call this a gaggle where a bunch of reporters they
just you know, bring them all into the room and
they throw a bunch of questions and stuff. And I
got to tell you, just watching that availability, that that event,
it really is amazing. If you just stop and think
for a moment and look at the individuals, you know,
set aside, the orange man bead, set aside the rock
Man bad right, Set all that suff aside. Whatever you
think about the individuals and just see them for you know,
these two business guys that are in the Oval office
and are telling you that they are applying basic accounting
protocols to the government books and they have uncovered what
could very well be somewhere in the neighborhood of a
trillion dollars in waste, fraud and abuse by simply coding,
by putting codes in the general ledger in the GL
right using gl codes. This is something that every business knows.
This is something that most people who do their home
budgets know. You got to know what the expense is for.
You have to have a category for it, so that
allows you to track where the money is going. Most
banks offer this type of categorization so you can run
a report on your credit card, on your debit card,
you're checking account, savings, account, whatever it may be. Most
banks offer this for free, okay, like you can, and
they have little graphics pie chart stuff, so you can
follow your money and what you are doing when you
are balancing a checkbook, reconciling records, when you're doing that
kind of stuff that's essentially kind of like a little
bit of an audit. You're auditing your finances to make
sure that there aren't any kind of crazy expenditures going
out the door. Right, I didn't approve this purchase, What
is this expense for? Why am I in debt this month?
That's how you identify those things, and we're not even
doing those things at the government level. It's astounding. And
you see these two guys up there, coming out of
the world of business. They understand how this stuff is
supposed to look, and they're shocked at how little of
it is actually done. So we also had this morning
there was a House Oversight subcommittee on the DOGE, the
Department of Government Efficiency DOGE. And have we determined whether
the G is a sound? Are we going with DOGE
or are we going with DOGE? Is it more of
a harder like a J sound? Is it like a
GZ or J? I don't know, DOGE or DOGE? I
kind of like DOGE or Dodge. It could be that
it could be Dodge and then that works in like
a whole bunch of like soundbites from the Dodgeball movie,
which could be fun. But I digress. So they have
this committee meeting and I caught a little bit of it.
I didn't get to watch the whole thing, and you know,
I'm gonna be honest, I'm probably not gonna go back
and watch the whole thing, although I kind of feel
like I should. It only ran about two hours, so
maybe I will. Maybe I'll watch some of it. But
I caught the final comments that were made here by
Brandon Gill and Brandon Gill is a Republican out of Florida,
and he spoke last before they did their closing comments,
the ranking member Democrat and the chairs Marjorie Taylor Green.
I did not get to hear her final comments, but
he kind of gave a summation of what the arguments
have been from the Democrats so far, and he says,
it's all about Elon Musk. And this has been my
observation as well. These attacks about what DOGE is doing
is about Elon Musk and his lack of accountability and
who he's an unelected bureaucrat. He's okay, Well, all of
the people that Elon Musk is identifying in these agencies,
they're all unelected bureaucrats too. He called them the fourth
branch of government. It's an unelected, unaccountable, bureaucratic branch of government.
And he is exactly right. And by the way, for
non conservatives, you may not be aware, but conservatives have
been identifying this problem for a very long time. I've
been talking about it for twenty years. They've been called
all sorts of things, from the you know, the managerial class,
the administrative state, the deep state, the new state. There's
all these different terms. From the new state came out
of the Soviet Union, that's what they called them, or
the new class, I should say, the new class. So
you hire in all of these bureaucrat technocrats whatever. They're
not elected, you can't get rid of them. And over
time they've become more and more empowered to essentially write
law via regulation, via the regulatory regimes that presidents put
in place. Little of this stuff is governed anymore by
congressional action, because Congress realized a long time ago that hey,
we could get paid and not really do anything except
make speeches that go viral, like that's a way easier gig.
We're basically social media influencers at this point, and they
don't have to do the hard work of legislating. They
don't have to go to all the committee meetings. And
you see it. You saw it today in this Doge
oversight meeting, where a Democrat would walk in, make a
speech for five minutes, and then leave. They have no
interest in actually hearing any of the testimony from the
witnesses that were there. And so they've allowed this to occur.
They have allowed the expansion of the executive branch and
living underneath that, this bureaucratic branch. And that's what Musk
and Trump are getting at. I am very excited. I'm
very happy. As one who is not a fan of
Donald Trump in his first run, I am very happy
with this approach, with this focus. It's necessary. It is
costing US hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and
if we can get this under control, we could see
a massive amount of economic benefit. 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 can
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. So the Houseoverside Committee, it's a
subcommittee of that Oversight Committee looking into doge do Doggee.
And at the very end, this fellow Brandon Gill gave
a sort of wrap up of what we have seen
over the course of the two hours. And I did
catch this as it was occurring live, and so I
paused it on the c span page and we'll see
if it loads up, and if it does, I think
you'll be very interested to hear it. Otherwise it's going
to be kind of awkward while I search for it.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Maschair, and thank you for hosting this committee.
If we've learned anything so far, it's that Republicans want
to cut waste, fraud, and abuse from our federal government
and save taxpayer dollars and Democrats want a grandstand and
play politics. We can see right now even of the
six Democrats on this committee, only one can even be
bothered to stay for the duration of this hearing. All
we've heard about for most of this hearing from the
other side of the aisle is elon Musk, Elon Musk,
Elon Musk, unelected bureaucrat. And I'd like to ask if
Democrats really care about unelected bureaucrats making decisions over our lives.
Where were they whenever their god Anthony Fauci was forcing
vaccine and mask mandates on the American people for four
years during the excuse me for during the COVID crisis.
Where were they whenever unelected Aleandro Mayorcis was facilitating the
invasion of our country by illegal aliens who were murdering
and raping and pillaging our people. Where were they whenever?
The Secretary of Education unelected Cardona targeted states and schools
and people who were disagreed with his view of the
radical lefts transgender ideology. Where were they whenever? Gary Gensler,
former chairman of the SEC, also unelected, was lawlessly thwarting
the development of financial market, particularly in the crypto space,
by lawlessly pursuing regulation via enforcement. They were nowhere to
be seen because they don't care, because all of those
things benefited their side of the aisle at the expense
of hours. And perhaps that's also why they don't seem
to be very interested in rooting out improper payments from
our federal government. If you wonder why so many people
are cynical about American politics, this is it. This is
exactly why. The reality is that Elon Musk serves as
an employee of the president, and we were given a
massive mandate to carry out what he's been doing. His
job is to carry out the will of the American
people as expressed through the executive That's exactly how the
Constitution is supposed to work. The Constitution did not create
an unelected, unaccountable fourth branch of government in the administrative state.
The American people know this. My colleague Brian Jack discussed
him of the opinion polls recently. We are doing and
President Trump is doing exactly what he was elected to do,
and that's why he's polling at a fifty three percent
approval rating, higher than he was at any point during
his first administration. Even Elon Musk and his Doze efforts
now are polling at a forty nine percent approval rating,
which just to point out, is sixteen points higher than
President Biden was polling out whenever he finished his term
in office. Oof. The Democrat Party has for decades systematically
grown and weaponized the administrative state against the American people,
and the American people have had enough of it. Right now,
we're talking about two point seven trillion dollars an improper
payment since two thousand and three, we're uncovering what could
be the biggest money laundering scandal in American history. And
the other side of the aisle could care less. They
have no concern about where this money went to, what
entities it went to, what governments to, what people are groups?
Nothing all they want to talk about is Elon Musk incessantly.
So it does make me wonder if they don't care
about where it's going, do they have an idea? Because
what we've uncovered so far is that so much of
the waste, fraud and abuse of our federal government is
actually funding their side of the aisle. It's funding media
outlets that are running cover for Democrats routinely, the NPR, PBS,
the BBC Politico. It's going to fund left wing NGOs
that are facilitating the invasion of our country. It's going
to fund left wing transgender activism and sex changes all
over the globe. This is money that's being used, taken
from the American people and used against their interests. If
you care about rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, we
should be serious about this. I'm very excited to be
on this committee. I'm excited to expose what's being going on.
Thank you, madam chairing. With that, I yield, all right.
Speaker 1: So that was Brandon Gill calling out the Democrats for
what is obvious to all right that they they do
not care about rooting out the waste, fraud and abuse.
They care about trying to protect this fourth branch of government.
That the Left has created over the course of decades.
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 re union,
Cabins of Asheville 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 Ashville 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 or
text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight
or check out all there is to offer at cabins
Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime.
There was a subcommittee meeting on the DOGE and the
ranking member of this subcommittee is Melanie Stansbury, who, as
I understand it, like is known for solving a lot
of murders in her tiny little town up in like
the northeast. I think, No, I'm kidding. She's a Democrat
from New Mexico. She's the ranking member on this subcommittee.
So you just heard Brandon Gill kind of outline the
way this hearing has has gone and the larger issues
at play. And by the way, I agree with Congressman
Gill on this, in case that wasn't clear, in case
you're just joining in for the first time. I've been,
you know, ripping through all of this DOGE stuff and
what they've been uncovering, because to me, like this is
a massive scandal that might even be bigger than the
covering up of a mentally incapacitated press for four years. Right,
so this is huge and I'm still waiting for sort
of the legacy media outlets, the people that care about
the hardware that they want to win all the time.
The pulletz are this and you know National Journalist that, well,
this is fertile ground. Fertile ground you can actually oh
look out, you can actually take down. Is everybody okay
over there? We're good? Oh no, you're fine. All right.
I thought somebody take a keyboard, tried to make an escape.
Now I forgot what I was saying. This happens with
my wife all the time. I mean with me to
my wife. Uh sorry. So Brandon Gill he lays this
out that this has been a massive money laundering operation basically,
and then you've got the ranking member Melanie Stansbury. And
listen to what she speaks about at this hearing to
wrap it up right, what she decides to use her
time to talk about in summation.
Speaker 3: I never thought so many conspiracy theories and wild accusations
could be wound into one five minute speech. But I
appreciate my friends across the aisle. First of all, let's.
Speaker 1: So that's a slam on gil who was saying that
you guys have been using this fourth branch of government,
this unelected bureaucracy, to essentially launder taxpayer money into your
own pockets and the pockets of your allies, all in
service of your leftist agenda. And when you look at
the way this has been operating, that is quite obviously true.
The NGOs that are getting all of this funding, they
are not some these are not right wing organizations. Well
that's because right wingers don't care about that stuff. That
not true. The right funds their church and they don't
do it through federal grants. And that's why, you know,
and by the way, could you imagine if you tried
to use federal grant money to espouse conservative political ideology.
Of course not, But that's why nobody is surprised when
they see Guatemalan drag shows and sex change operations and
you know, transgender dance performances and operas and comic books
in Peru, Like nobody is surprised to see this stuff.
It's never from the right. All this stuff is the
left with the pushing out of their political philosophy, and
they've been getting government grants to do so. You imagine
if the Heritage Foundation was listed as an award or
a sub award on any of these grants. Imagine, imagine
for a moment the amount of blood run through the
streets due to all of the exploded lefty brains. It
would be blood. There's going to be very little brain
matter after this. I kid, I could come on now.
All right, So here she is.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about this massive mandate that supposedly brought Donald
Trump into office.
Speaker 1: Okay, hang on a second. It is supposed ed lee
not supposed doublee. There's no b in that word. It's
supposed ed lee, supposed lee, supposedly not supposed bly not
a word. Oh my gosh, I'm so sick of this.
And there's a member of Congress that just said it.
But now she's going to she's going to use her
time to close out the hearing to argue about whether
or not Donald Trump had a mandate or not.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump did not run on putting an unelected billionaire
in charge of dismantling the federal government. He ran on
lowering prices for Americans.
Speaker 1: And I think it, hang on a second, Okay, false
and true false in that Donald Trump did in fact
do that. The plans for DOGE were We've known about
that for months before the election. Elon Musk was on
the stage. They were talking about this stuff in the
campaign rallies. Now, you guys never watched any of those rallies, right,
You put yourself in your little echo chamber and your
little insulated bubble, so you never had to listen to
any of those things. But Elon Musk and Donald Trump
have been promising this very thing, that the creation of
the DOGE was done before Donald Trump won the election.
This was he What did he say? I am your retribution.
That's what he said. That's what Donald Trump said talking
about the deep state? Like, what the hell do you
think he meant by the deep state. It's not just
the intelligence community, it's the entire swap that goes back
eight years. The guy's been talking about draining the swamp again.
What did you think he was talking about you? He's
talking about you, Stansbury, He's talking about you.
Speaker 3: It's interesting though.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry. The true part was that he also did
talk about lowering the prices of in the cost of
living for Americans. He did talk about that too.
Speaker 3: While we're sitting here this morning, the top of the
New York Times is reporting that inflation has risen unexpectedly
as food and energy prices have soared. What's going on, guys,
I thought you were going to tackle inflation and food
and energy prices.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, in three weeks. Lady, are you an idiot? Okay, yes,
she's probably an idiot. Holy smokes. This is what you're doing.
You're relitigating campaign messaging. That's what you're saying. You said
you were going to be blowing a rig price. You
didn't lower them yet, that's what she's saying. All right,
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 families 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 a video dot Com. Let me jump over and
get a quick call in here from Marty. Hello Marty,
Welcome to the program.
Speaker 4: Hello Pete, Hey, how are you pretty good? I was
gonna comment a little bit on the dose. You know,
you watch these little demonstrations are having. I guess it's
in front of the Capitol building where the Democrats is
out and uh, you know, just almost at the point
of you know, promoting insurrection or something themselves, you know,
trying to you know, put people in a streets fight
and such things as that is what they're saying. But
there's an old saying that you know, if you throw
a rock and a pack of dogs. The one that
yeps is probably the guilty one and they're yepping like
crazy air pete. But I'm wondering, are they not trying
to write on versus what Trump and Musk is doing.
Are they not trying to write a scaredy narrative to truth?
I mean, you know, truth is that ye need to
cut these things back, and they're trying to create a
scary narrative that has nothing to do with truth. They're
just trying to make people think that things are going
to crumble and fall, yes, based on what Musk is doing.
Speaker 1: Correct, That is that's the that's the strategy. I went
over this, I think yesterday. You can call it the
poster child approach, where it's like, oh my gosh, look
at here's the starving child in Africa, and that's what
this program is doing. And yet way more money is
going out the door to fund, you know, the transgender
plays in Morocco. Like, well wait a minute, if that's
the thing you're highlighting as the thing that we need
to fund and fix and help, then why is more
money getting spent on this other stuff? Right? So, like
that's or the Mott and Bailey approach, which is highlight
the good things, saying this is what we're funding, and
you're going to get rid of it, and everything's going
to collapse if you keep doing this, and all these
people are going to die. But in fact you're using
the money for something else that's less defensible. Yeah, I
think that's exactly what's going on, Marty. I appreciate the call.
I want to get to the rest of this audio
clip from Melanie Stansbury, who, by the way, just made
a comment there about inflation and how come you're not
doing anything about inflation. Well, inflation isn't something that just
happened in the last two and a half weeks or
three weeks that Trump has been in office. Banchie writer
over at Red State, points out that this latest inflation
news and the fact that inflation was still humming along
since summer of twenty twenty four. He says there should
be an investigation into why the Federal Reserve lowered interest
rates right before the election, because that's not what you
would do. That's why they lowered the rates because they
said inflation was cooling. Well, now it's not you you
cut the rates. Inflation isn't, So did you do to
help Democrats win the election. The other thing this is
from oil field Rando, who actually has a website where
he comes through all these grants and stuff called Randoland.
He says, a ton of the insane Biden administration funding
was passed in a reconciliation bill, the preposterously named Inflation
Reduction Act, which was the Inflation Creation Act. Actually, there's
no excuse for the GOP not using a reconciliation bill
to cut it all. Any Republican who isn't on board
is wetting their beak with the spending, in other words,
taking advantage of it. Ron DeSantis then weighs in on
that tweet and says anything Biden enacted via reconciliation, which
only required fifty Senate votes, can be repealed via reconciliation.
Republicans have fifty three senators. They can save trillions of
dollars by repealing Biden's profligate spending. There are no excuses.
Back to stands, isn't that what.
Speaker 3: The executive orders we're supposed to do?
Speaker 1: Oh? Wait?
Speaker 3: Or is dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion and our federal
agencies and putting an ideological agenda and trying to fire
the federal workforce your actual agenda. Have you been too
busy trying to actually address the fiscal health of this country.
Speaker 1: Because it's all of the above, lady, all of the
above doing it all. It's not in either or. That
is a false choice she is offering me.
Speaker 3: The numbers are telling us that you have so let's
be real about what's going on here. I also want
to point out that, literally, while we've been sitting here
for the last almost two hours getting lectured fiscal responsibility, literally,
the Republicans just released their plan to raise the debt
limit while we were sitting here, and they want to
raise it by four trillion dollars. Okay, guys, Like literally,
I'm just like, without words, Oh, then you're in.
Speaker 1: The wrong line of work. Oh my gosh, that's not
an argument. Republicans just unveiled a plan for a debt
sealing increase of four trillion dollars. Like I'm a god like, really,
that's not an argument. Not an argument. Here's an argument.
The debt limit is to fund the things that have
already been approved. See. So when you guys were in
charge and you went on this tear and you spent
all of this money, trillions of dollars that we didn't have,
that you borrowed right against future obligations. That's why you
have to raise the debt limit, because you cannot afford
to pay the bills that you've already committed to. So
Republicans generally are not in favor of raising the debt limit.
In fact, a lot of the shutdown fights have been
over this very thing. It's been the Democrats that want
to raise the debt limit because they want to keep
spend and if you don't do it, then you're going
to shut down the government. That's their argument. That has
been their argument. But now their argument has to be
the complete opposite of what it was because Orange Man
Bad and Elon a billionaire, where this is what they
are reduced to because they cannot argue the merits, the
merits of these spending obligations, these programs and grants, this waste,
fraud and abuse. They can't defend it, but they know
that they're benefiting, and they know it's a loser of
an argument for them, so they're going to talk about
anything else they can. 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 dpetekaalanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.