Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Parker Thayer, investigative researcher at nonprofit
tracker Capital Research Center. Let's have a discussion about DOGE files,
donor advised funds and the unchecked mess at usaid. It
is the Malstrom. It is all happening right here and
right now. And Parker, thank you so much for joining
us for a little bit of perspective and clarity.
Speaker 2: Oh it's great to be back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good to have you, and it's good to
get an expert on these things. You folks at the
Capital Research Center have been doing a lot of work
on this front and it is hitting all at one time.
If you wouldn't mind give me a little overview of
the work that you're doing, particularly with as you call
it the Doge Files.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the Doge Files. It's a really neat project
we launched recently. We have years and years of experience
investigating the activities and a lot of people like to
call them NGOs when they get government funding, but I'll
just call them nonprofits for broad purposes. Sure, we do
a lot of research on political nonprofits that are trying
to insert themselves into the public policy space and try
and dictate what you can and can't do, what laws say,
what regulations say, and and to direct where government money goes.
And over the last four years particularly, we've observed that
those nonprofits that we've been studying for years have gotten
more and more government funding with each passing year. And
when the the announcement of those the Department of Government
Efficiency came out, we realized that we had a lot
of really good information ready made to provide to anyone
who wanted to clean up federal spending rules and try
and kind of cut back on the spending and cut
back on the insanity. There's there's a lot of you know,
a lot of left wing insanity fund by nonprofits that
get government grants, and we had we were very well
qualified to document it and and it takes a lot
of expertise to do these things, so we thought we
kind of have to jump in here. So that's where
the project came from. And gosh it has been There's
has been a lot that we've found.
Speaker 1: So far, no doubt about it. And you know, you
folks have been doing this for a long time. Influence
Watch is book market if you want to know where
the money is coming from, where it is going in
terms of NGOs, nonprofits, so called charities. Your organization has
a site influencewatch dot com and it is an absolute
go to to track these things. And I mean it
goes on. It's a good thing we have the Internet
because you have infinite space to do this. It seems
like you need every inch of that infinite space.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and you know this the I kind of
like to call it the doge. I don't know if
you can really call it a revolution, but the awakening
of the average American to what the government is actually
spending money on. There been a lot of developments on
that in the past few days. Influence Watch it was
kind of our original attempt to track all the spending
and it's been getting a lot more traffic because people
are so interested to know which nonprofits are getting federal
money nowadays. So yeah, highly recommend influenced. Will you guys
shoud all check it out? But the DOGE files is
kind of a new project and there's a lot going on.
Speaker 1: There, absolutely and DOGE, of course, if you're trying to follow,
and it's it's difficult sometimes because you know, this is
an administration that was prepared to hit the ground running,
and they certainly did. And one of the biggest features
and obviously one of the more controversial features of the
first few weeks of the Trump administration the second Trump administration,
is the Department of Government Efficiency aka DOGE. And the
guy who leads up this entity, of course, is Elon Musk,
who is Do you find it funny that this guy
was the darling of the left a decade ago? And my,
how things change. But within that, there's an interesting idea
that's coming out with you know, the Democrats, the leftist
all fighting this thing. They're all concerned and they make this,
you know, these nefarious, sinister sounding claims about special government
employee category, when in fact, you know as well as
I do, Parker, that you know that has been a
term that's used has been used forever in the government
to denote that there is a person who works part
time within the government. They have some, but not all,
of the kinds of big government union protections that we're
also talking about here in the DOGE. But it is
interesting now where the battle lines are going. Your project,
I think will help shine some very important light for
the taxpayer and just for the general American.
Speaker 3: Now it is interesting the about face of the left
on Elon Musk. I'm well, I guess, I guess I
am old enough to remember when Elon Musk was making
cameos in the Ironman movies produced by Marvel and Disney.
Speaker 2: He used to to be their favorite.
Speaker 1: Oh the good days for the left, Park, are the good,
the old, the old nostalgic days for the left?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you mentioned the battle lines for me, and
nowhere is that more clear than over the last two
days of the discussion we've seen about us AID, which,
as part of our dough House project, we've been trying
to wade into that conversation on both sides. The left
is saying that the right is making unsubstantiated claims about
what USAID is spending or is spending money on, and
the right is making claims about things that USAID is
spending money on, but also things that are more conspiratorially minded.
One of my colleague, Mike Watson, put out a blog
post yesterday trying to explain the reason we started this
dose project is because these things are so nuanced. Reading
USA spending dot org, which is a website if I
mentioned influence Watch earlier, USA spending dot org, if you're
tracking government funding. It is run by the government. It's
basically the government's checkbook. You can find pretty much everything
in there if you know what you're doing, but.
Speaker 2: It's very hard to use.
Speaker 3: Possibly by design it is very hard to use, but
we have been trying to It is very important as
we go through and try and cut government spending to
bat one thousand percent, we have to be accurate because
if you are even the smallest bit inaccurate, the mainstream
media will run along with the headline saying your entire
story is fake. For example, there was a story about
how there is a I Think a way House spokesperson
came out and said that there was a USA grant
for a funding a transgender opera performance in Columbia and
the mainstream media headline about that is they're lying USA
never funded that. Now of course the truth is they
you know, the government did fund that. It was the
State Department, not USA. But that's you know, that's how
these these headlines will be twisted if you're even the
smallest percent inaccurate. So I'd love to urge people. I
see lots of stuff on social media. It's very exciting
digging into the world the governments spending, but sometimes a
little bit of expertise can go a long way.
Speaker 2: Turned to influenced.
Speaker 3: Watch look at the dose files, you know, see what
conservative reporters are saying. Because these things it is an
information trap. There's so much information that it gets hard
to sift through all of it.
Speaker 1: Well, one of those areas kind of ties together. I
wanted to get your take on, you know, the fire
the flood of information that came out about corporate media
outlets like Politico, New York Times and others getting funding
from us AID, when in fact, what it turned out
to be was they were we had government agencies, a
lot of them paying for subscriptions to these corporate media outlets,
but they were paying thousands and thousands, tens of thousands,
millions of dollars. So there is a story to be
told here. It has to be in perspective too as well.
Speaker 3: Huh exactly, And it's it is. It is a testament
to how like, like I mentioned, being one thousand percent
accurate on these things is so important because instead of
government is spending eight million dollars on Politico subscriptions, the
headlines have been Conservatives make up conspiracy about Politico. And
of course we knew this was coming. If you know,
they even if we were one hundred percent accurate, they
probably still would have found a way to make up
headlines about that. But you know, the the spending is
out of control. People are realizing this for the first time.
They're getting very excited about it, and that is good.
But you've got you've got to maintain a little bit
of a critical thinking cap when you look at this stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you can. You can be critical and smart,
you know, at the same time, and then also ask yourself,
what the hell is going on here? Why is politically
First of all, how does Politico exist if it charges
ten thousand dollars or whatever the outlandish prices for its
premium product? I mean, you want to pay for that,
as you know as a news consumer, that's fine. Why
is the state Department Treasury paying for it? Those are
the kinds of invY. Yeah, and I think a lot
of Americans would say, no, you shouldn't be paying for that.
And also, what do you get for that? Have we
been able to track what's the value of that? For
these state agencies?
Speaker 3: You know, political pro we don't even pay for it
because it's so absurdly expensive. And we are a professional,
you know, we research public policy for a living. Here,
we don't pay for it because it's so absurdly expensive.
I cannot believe that. Basically every government office seems to
have at least thirty subscriptions to it.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Why why don't they even Why don't they share a subscription?
Why do thirty people in that agency? Why do they
need to pay whatever it is, three hundred thousand dollars
for this subscription?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Politico is doing its very best to extract
all the money they can from the government.
Speaker 2: That is for sure.
Speaker 3: I don't think in any reasonable world they would be
able to charge ten thousand dollars per subscription if it
weren't for the nearly inelastic demand of the government and
government employees who aren't spending their own money, so they
don't care how much it costs.
Speaker 1: That raises the question, though, Parker, do these entities, these
corporate leftist media entities, do they exist anymore. We've heard
about Politico having some problems paying the bills, you know,
cutting checks for employees. If this stuff goes away, does
Politico go away?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, with some back of the napkin, Matt.
The New York Times has a report suggesting that Politico's
revenues are somewhere around about two hundred million dollars per
year and the government contracts or the at least the
obligations if they were fully paid out, and that is
a big if, but you know, they're probably getting around
eight million dollars per year from the federal government at Politico,
which would put the federal government at about five percent
of all Politico's business. Imagine if Walmart was five percent
of their business overnight, I mean, that would be an enormous,
enormous blow to their to their bottom line. So, yeah,
you got there's something, there's something there. You know that
these the mainstream outlets definitely are being propped up a
little bit by this kind of willful throwing away of
taxpayer funds.
Speaker 1: And do you write today in the dose files, Parker,
one of the many things wrapped in the voluminous packaging
of the so called Inflation Reduction Act nineteen point five
billion dollars for Climate smart agriculture. What prey tell is
climate my smart agriculture.
Speaker 3: Climate smart agriculture is the most one of the most
infuriating things I've ever written about. It's the it's a
Department of Agriculture program. And this was of course stuffed
inside the omnibus IRAC that did nothing to reduce inflation.
But that's neither here nor there. What isn't there is
the crops. The crops aren't there anymore because the Climate
Smart Farming program is entirely based upon paying people to
not farm, because that is what is smart for the climate. Apparently,
the Climate star program is offering subsidy. It doesn't give
government subsidies out directly, No, that would be too efficient. Instead,
what they do is they give enormous contracts in the
tens of millions or grants rather not contracts to NGOs
nonprofits that are they're named you know, observed things like
the US Soybean Association, or there are lots of trade groups,
lots of agricultural groups, basically all of the interest groups
that democrats profess to hate. They give them lots and
lots and lots of money, and then those nonprofits from
there can distribute that as they see fit to farmers
on a per acre basis. When they use what is
called cover crops. If you're familiar with agriculture, you probably
just rolled your eyes a little bit. Cover crops is
essentially just planting grass on your field and not farming it.
And it does have minor benefits for the soil because
you know, as you know, growing pretty much anything on
soil will have some sort of benefit, and the grasses
are a lot less harsh on the soil quality and
the nutrients in the soil. But essentially it is they're
paying them up to twenty five dollars an acre in
some cases to not farm their farms at a time
when food prices are going through the roof. And what
this has caused is, you know, a decrease in the
quality and production of food, an increase in prices, and
very little benefits for the climate, if any at all.
I would guess there are none, and of course, being
a government program, I did some basic math on I
just picked one grantee at random and found them that
they were. They were eight years behind schedule and massively
over budget for achieving their stated goal. I think it
was something like getting a million acres of farmland to
be not farmed anymore.
Speaker 1: And that's not surprise.
Speaker 3: That's just the Department of Agriculture. We've found this in
this level insanity exists throughout every single department that we've
looked at so far. The USA, for example, yesterday there
was a lot of discussion about that we found four
billion dollars under the bid Administration granted to organizations listed
as miscellaneous foreign wordies. Now what that means is the
names were redacted. They don't want to tell us where
the money went. And you know, the argument is that
if terrorists found out where the money was going, that
organization would be targeted. But I don't think there's any
reasonable way you can say four billion dollars needed to
be redacted because of that reason that I don't buy it.
I don't think people should buy that for a second.
Speaker 1: But they are. Here's the thing that I do not understand.
I think if the real story is told and you
know the files and DOGE itself being transparent and getting
this information out the Trump administration and honest news organizations
you know who are not being paid by the federal
government to operate, for instance, the Federalist, if the word
gets out there, and I think that is why you
have the left pushing back so hard. This is a
bad look once again for the left, for Democrats fighting
for government inefficiency, waste and abuse, fighting for you know,
some of these payments in organizations that they would normally
fight against. But here's the other part of that. This
is where we have the potential to see the UNA
party in full force. Because, let's face, the swamp is
filled with all kinds of things, but at its very core,
it is filled with money. And these politicians have done
very well by making sure certain pots of money are stirred,
are sent to here or there to help them keep
their jobs, to help keep their power. So I guess,
before we go further into some of these insane programs
that you're highlighting, can DOGE survive? We've seen all the
court challenges. Now can this very important effort survive the swamp?
Speaker 2: I think it can. It will only survive, though it
will have to.
Speaker 3: It will only survive if it can keep the will
of the people on its side. If it is if
DOSEE is, you know, making false claims getting debunked over
and over again, that won't work. So far, Dog has
been very good the and honestly, most of what doge
is at this point, it really has only just started working.
Speaker 2: Most of what it is is.
Speaker 3: Just a you know, particularly and conservative media, but also
just outside of the media, so on social media.
Speaker 2: It's it's just been an uprising, a.
Speaker 3: Sudden realization of what the government is spending money on,
and a sudden.
Speaker 2: Desire to know that information.
Speaker 3: It's been there for years, you know, all this all
this data that you're seeing now, this is not new.
This is not something that DOGE exposed. It's been there
the whole time on these publicly available databases. But people
are waking up to it now, which is fantastic. And
I think, you know, we have a Supreme Court that is,
thank goodness, has some justices with some common sense on it.
It may take time, and there will be lots of
court battles in the lower courts, but I think that
ultimately common sense will prevail here. I do think that
Doge has a chance.
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Speaker 1: The Doge files. Of course, you have all kinds of
different areas. You know, I'm looking at the Department of Education.
No surprise here, but DEI Diversity, equity inclusion. They've been
such a big part of you know this the first
couple of weeks, a few weeks of the Trump administration,
and rightly so, you know, we found we've we've been
reporting for some time. We're getting a full now analysis,
a full report on just how much these divisive and
you know, race racist programs are really at the end
of the day, you profile you look at the Center
for Leadership and Educational Equity or CLEE. They got the
Department of Education awarded nearly nineteen point two million dollars
to this group. And there are all of this, like
millions of dollars here, millions of dollars that we know that.
But this, this is an organization that believes that our
educational system is designed to main systemic inequities and that
pervasive institutional racism requires white teachers to examine the supposed
classroom impacts of their whiteness. Come on, America, America in
in great numbers voted against that sort of nonsense in November.
How how is anybody defending this kind of money going
to a program or an entity like this.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, that's that's a great question. I think
what a lot of it goes back to is they
are fighting tooth and nail to try and keep DEI
when they know it's a losing issue. When people are explained,
you know, when you explain to a person what DEI
does in practice, you know overwhelmingly people don't like it,
they don't support it. But one of the important tactics
of the left, and they're they're very clever. They rely
upon dividing people into interest groups, into particularly along the
lines of race or identity or whatever it might be.
They have to divide people to keep them from thinking
critically about the policies that the left is promoting. I mean,
you don't get thirty seven trillion dollars in debt by
have been the everybody is unified and happy party.
Speaker 2: You get there by making sure.
Speaker 3: That everyone is constantly trying to fight against one another,
and everyone is concerned about identity politics that just don't matter.
And the only way you make those things matter is
by essentially using the HR department. Everyone has had a
bad encounter with HR, you know, saying some insane thing
de I related often, and the federal government is not
only no different, it is the center of you know,
it's the ire of Sauron of DEI. It is, and
we're seeing the money for it now. It's evaporating. And
the employees, all of the DEI employees, all the people
who are trying to enforce you know, absolutely barbaric racial
quotas and standards and racist teachings are all They're all
going to disappear. And once that happens, I think we're
gonna you know, the government will get a it'll get
a lot more efficient, it'll spend a lot less, but
b will attract top grade talent again. You know, the
American bureaucracy might have a chance of being what it
once was in the days of say, you know, World
War two, when we had a very efic you know,
it was one of the most efficient parts of the
entire American American economy, was the bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: Well, it's been disgraced. It's been a long time since
we've seen anything like that. It's been a leviathan. And
of course, as we know, it has been a monster
in the making for over a century now, but it
has exploded obviously and really over the last four years
with these kinds of programs. Our guest today is Parker Thayer,
investigative researcher at nonprofit tracker Capital Research Center. We're talking
about the Capital Research Center's new doge files, donor advisor funds,
donor advice funds, they should say, coming up momentarily, and
of course the unchecked mess at us AID, us AID
as it is referred to. Let's talk about some more
of these projects, because I think it's important we have
conservative politicians rightly shining a light on some of these
horrible things that we've seen through us AID. USAID House
Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast pointed to well, let's
talk about some of them. Fifteen million dollars for condoms
to the Taliban through us AID, four hundred and forty
six thousand, seven hundred dollars to promote the expansion of
atheism in the Pall through the State Department. Why on
earth would we be doing that. Our founders would just
be they're turning over right now. I imagine one million
dollars to boost French speaking lgb EQ groups in West
and Central Africa through the State Department, because that's what
we need more of. We need more French speaking to
reach the LGBTQ movement in West and Central Africa. I mean,
the list goes on and on. Twenty thousand dollars for
a drag show in Ecuador through the State Department. It's
kind of what you talked about before, first and foremost,
as you've you know, these are some of the more
egregious ones. Are you finding these as well, and are
they correct? I mean, I want to make sure that
these are indeed.
Speaker 2: Happening.
Speaker 3: Well, the first one, I don't know if. I don't
know if we made it grant directly to the Taliban.
I think Bryan mass might be a little over his
skis on that one. Oh can do fund an absurd
number of sexual health education classes of HIV prevention there
is There is simply no chance the money is actually
making it to the destinations that it is supposed to
be making it too. That is one of the biggest
problems with USA. I don't believe for a moment that
even let's say seventy percent, at least thirty percent of
it is being skimmed off the top somewhere. There's no
chance that we spent all this money and the outcomes
have not improved that drama.
Speaker 1: Hold on a minute, Perker, because I you know, when
I think about the Taliban, I think about their interest
in safe sex. Nothing nothing says nothing says the Taliban
like condoms. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, so, first.
Speaker 1: And foremost, he may he may be right that the
fifteen million dollars is going to the Taliban.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I believe that entirely.
Speaker 3: I think that there is it is a very long
history of USA funding being appropriated by all kinds of
horrible people all over the world because we send it
out with so little oversight, with so little care for.
Speaker 2: What happens to it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, we've we've been finding stuff like that
all over the place. I'll read let's see, I'll just
pick two random ones from my Twitter feed. Lately, the
State Department looks like in twenty twenty four October first,
twenty twenty four, issued a two point four million dollar
grant to the Nature Conservancy, which is located in Virginia,
to reduce the emissions of methane from cows in Brazil.
Oh my god, that is the real thing we actually
spend money on that. It looks like we have allocated
several hundred thousand dollars of that grant so far. Hopefully
they'll be able to claw back the remaining sum. That's
one of the nice things about all these grants we've
been finding is that while a lot of the funds
are what we call obligated funds, they are not outlaid funds.
Obligated meats that the funds have been promised by you know,
some bureaucratic official or you know, maybe even legislation. Most
of the time, not legislation. It's just a bureaucrat doing
what they want. But a lot of the money hasn't
actually been sent yet, and so there's hope that these founds,
those funds can do what's called impounded and reclaimed, and
we could save ourselves billions and billions of dollars with that.
Another grant two hundred and thirty thousand dollars to a
redacted recipient whose address is a house in Atlanta, and
the grant description says it is for an E sports
club in China. What doesn't add up to me? But
you know, maybe there's some world in which that makes sense.
I don't know of that world, but maybe it exists somewhere.
Speaker 1: An E sports club in China, first and foremost aren't
they our number one adversary? Why are we funding E
sports clubs in communist China?
Speaker 2: For the love, I couldn't tell you I would love.
Speaker 3: One of my most sincere wishes is that one day
I'll be allowed to accompany a doge raid of one
of these departments, and I'll be able to go in
and meet the people who are who sign off on
these grants, who write them. They astound me one more
just for fun. This one is too, from the State
Department to the af CD Foundation. I don't know what
that is, couldn't really figure it out. It is for
an address in Morocco for the study of rural youth migration.
One point one million dollars for that. I don't know
what rural youth migration means. Do rural youth migrate like birds?
Is there is there a problem where they do they
have seasonal rotations of where they live that Do they
chase the wild herds.
Speaker 2: Or they hunter gather?
Speaker 3: I don't know, but apparently we had to spend a
million dollars to study it or there would be dire
consequences for the entire world in the fate of humankind,
I guess now.
Speaker 1: I tell you what you know. It's hard to find
enjoyment in this complicated world anymore. But there's nothing that
I enjoy more Parker than they were turning migrating rural
youth to Capistrano every spring. It just it, really it delights.
Speaker 3: To get out there and watch them with binoculars like
they're flocks of flamingos going by.
Speaker 1: Apparently I do look at I look at those rural
migrants they're coming to Capistrano, like, you can't believe it.
This is we laugh, but I mean, this is what
the tax payer is on the hook for. It's just
it's just absolute insanity. And what is insane to me?
Just to go back for a moment, you know, to
the politicos of the world, the New York Times, the
you know, the the alphabet letters in news organizations now,
you know, vehemently defending these and pushing stories like what
will we do without these things?
Speaker 3: It's it's so utterly demeaning because there's there are two
responses when you point out government waste right now, which
is happening on an unprecedented s go right now. When
you pointed out, I've encountered two responses from the left.
One is to say that these things are vital. That's
you know, that's a lot of the more mainstream media line.
But the more smug a lot of politicians will do this,
a lot of you know, the more smug online personalities
on the left will do this. The respond well, that
grant that you're talking about for and this is a
real grant, by the way, let's see one point seven
million dollars to the ball and Children's Hospital for studying
why trans kids keep getting blood clocks.
Speaker 2: That's a real grant.
Speaker 3: That's only a drop in the bucket of federal spending,
you know, that's that's basically nothing. The federal budget is
seven trillion dollars. That's why are you worried about that?
And it's so utterly demeaning because for some for most people,
actually one point what was the one point seven million
dollars is something near their entire lifetimes some of tax dollars.
That is all the taxes you will ever pay in
your entire life. And it's going to fund one study
that you would I mean that it's basically just a
man made horror beyond your comprehension.
Speaker 1: It is absurd, It's absurd and infuriating. No, it's the
same kind of argument that I hear. You know, I
just just wrote a piece about a father who lost
his daughter in a drunk driving collision. The driver was,
according to police, drunk and an illegal immigrant, and he
was told by several people, you know, do make this political.
Drunk driving accidents happen all the time. Minute. You know,
we don't have you know, numbers showing us that it
happens more in the illegal immigrant community than elsewhere. And
you know what, yes, it wouldn't happen if the illegal
immigrant wasn't here. Certainly wouldn't have happened if he wasn't
drunk and behind the wheel of the car at the
same time, but it wouldn't have happened a guy who
was reportedly deported already. I mean, that's the same kind
of argument we're getting now from the left and their
corporate media accomplice media allies. It's insane.
Speaker 3: It's incredible mental gymnastics from them, which you know, we've
known that they're good at mental gymnastics for a long time.
But to be able to say, on the one hand,
we hate corporations that turn people into statistics and care
about profits over people, and then on the other hand,
when something like that happens, or when you point out
that federal tax dollars shouldn't be going to this sort
of thing, they say, well, it's just people are just statistics.
Speaker 2: You know, they switch in their brain. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: You know, it's almost hard to win arguments with people
like that because they're not interested in arguing. They're just
interested in power, or they're maintaining their ideological worldview with
no critical thinking at all.
Speaker 1: No doubt about it. We don't have much time left,
but I did want to get into the sole notion
of donor advised funds, because they're a key part of
all of this. Your colleague, I think wrote a very
good piece kind of laying all of this language out,
because I don't think the average person knows about donor
advised funds. We know all about them on the elections
coverage team because they play such an essential role in
our elections. They certainly play an essential role in the
operation of our government, and the question is should they
But let's begin with a definition and kind of go
from there.
Speaker 3: A donor advice fund, you can kind of think about
it like a bank for philanthropy. People can show up
to a donor advice fund. Let's say you want to
donate one hundred thousand dollars to a charity, but you
don't know where you want to send it yet, and
you're doing some more research. You can go to a
donor revised fund and part the one hundred thousand dollars
right inside the donor advised fund and it will sit
there you'll get your tax exemption for it, and it
will sit there until you direct the funds on where
to go.
Speaker 2: It's like a bank.
Speaker 3: Now, there was kind of an erroneous notion going around
that a political commentator who I have absolutely no love for,
by the name of Billy Crystal, had received USA funding
because his organization received the grant from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.
This is one of those things I was casting people earlier,
we have to bat a thousand percent if we're going
to stop government waste. They will take every chance they
can to try and debunk you and discard your whole argument.
Billy Crystal did not receive funds from USAID. He received
funds from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, which does receive funds from USAID,
But saying that those funds were directly for Billy Crystal
is just untrue. The funds were marked from USAID for
specific projects of Rockefeller for Lanthy Advisors for doing it
was dumb wasteful things, which I don't support, but it
was definitely not or Billy Crystal, who's also a dumb
wasteful thing.
Speaker 1: Anyway, now you're calling him Billy Crystal, which I love,
is are we talking about the Bill Crystal who is
supposed to be a conservative, But yeah, that guy but
in name long contest, Yeah, exactly the same guy who's
behind every Lincoln project you know, if you will, Lincoln
project esque, you know, the guy who has absolutely been
against Donald Trump in no small part because he's actually
doing what Bill Crystal and his fellow former conservatives over
at the Bulwark have wanted out of this government for
a long time, to cut the waste and abuse and spending.
Speaker 3: Well, Bill Bill Cristal wanted to talk about, he didn't
actually want to see it done. Oh my goodness, that
would be horrifying indeed. But yeah, we do have to
rush to the defense of Bill Crystal. Unfortunately at times
when the truth is indebted by a lie. Saying that
he received funding from USA would be like saying that
because two people use the same bank, they fund each other.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't make sense.
Speaker 3: You know, if Mark Cuban deposits in I don't know,
Bank of America and then Trump withdraws from Bank of America,
Mark Cuban did not fund Trump in the same way
that USA did not fund Bill Crystal.
Speaker 1: Sure, now it makes makes absolute sense, and you know what,
let's stick with the facts.
Speaker 2: Because the facts are notwhelmingly in our favor.
Speaker 3: We don't need to conspiracy theorize all all of the
blatant basically theft of tax dollars is sitting right there
on public databases. In our view, we don't need to
conspiracy theorize. We've got them, we've got him dead to rights.
Just stick with the truth and we'll.
Speaker 2: Win, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: But speaking of donor advised funds, I mean, we do
have donor advised funds that are very key to USAID,
to abusive spending and spending Quite frankly, what have you
been able to track in terms of donor advised funds
involved in USAID for instance.
Speaker 2: Hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: Yes, But in terms of programs that are actually that
run counter to the security and prosperity of America.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: TIDES Foundation is you know, a very openly left wing organization.
Speaker 2: They funded all.
Speaker 3: Kinds of bad things along with the you know, SOROSDA,
soft un crime prosecution, general, left wing get out the
vote activities, climate change activists that throw paint on things,
the whole nine yards. If they were funding good things
with USAID money. Good things can be good things. But
imagine that the same program was being done by the
Heritage Foundation. Do you think maybe MSNBC might take issue
with with the Heritage Foundation being given millions of dollars
in USA grants even if they were going to do
good things. I think they would. And that's the same
reason that there should be objections to all these donor
advice funds getting USAID money. Is it is bad these
organizations are funding all kinds of left wing things. They
are staffed by left wingers. You know, they're not They
shouldn't be trusted with federal funds in this way. Even
if they are, Even if they aren't funding all of
the things that people may think they're funding, they still
shouldn't be getting the money in the first place. And
we can stick with that and win on that. You know,
if we want to have that argument, we'll win that
argument ten times out of ten indeed.
Speaker 1: And that raises a good question is there money? And
if there is, what is the makeup of the money
going to conservative versus liberal organizations?
Speaker 3: I will answer that with alluding back to our Politico,
New York Times and Associated Press discussion earlier, There is
about as much money going into conservative donor advised funds
as there is going into daily wire subscriptions. It's there's none.
The left is more than willing to make sure that
all of the left wingers's media outlets, donor advice funds,
all of them have a good little overhead cushion to
keep their keep their doors open, make sure that all
of their employees can stay paid. There are no no
one is even dreaming of using conservative donor advised funds
or dark money organizations to try and accomplish USAID goals
because USAID is staffed mostly by lefto bureaucrats, but also
because the media would have a fit about it.
Speaker 1: This is just awful. I mean, it is awful at
so many levels it and it is in so many
levels of the federal government. Now this would require I know,
we're just really you know, the front lines of learning
about this. We're just the beginning. Yeah, But I mean,
how much money could we ultimately be talking about here?
There's so many different programs, so many different government agencies
that a lot of Americans don't know about to begin with,
and then they have so many initiatives and operations operating
within those.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I would not be shocked based on
the numbers I've seen so far from you know, Doja's
kind of sort of keeping track of how much money,
they says, it's kind of hard to keep track of
what you're not spending, you know, But it looks like
we're on track to save up to a trillion dollars,
maybe even in just the first year, which would be fantastic,
you know, now one one out of thirty seven trillion.
But yeah, you know, that's still enormous progress.
Speaker 1: But isn't that about fifteen percent of the overall annual
budget of the United States. I mean that that's a
lot of money. And when you hear people again you
put it very well. When you hear people say, well,
what's one point seven million dollars? This a drop in
the bucket of all we spend. That should that should
anger the hell out of the average American.
Speaker 3: And if you want, if you want to drive home
the point when people bring up that objection to you
very reasonably pointing out that the government is wasting money,
make sure to put it in terms of real things.
For example, like one point seven million dollars that's the
annual salary of an entire platoon of marines, like forty
two marines. That is a lot of money. That's real consequences,
the things that that could have been funding that opportunity
cost is enormous, or it could just stay in your
pocket as a taxpayer.
Speaker 1: That too, that as well said, I think we'll leave
it there. I think there's much more obviously to accomplish
on this front. I know you folks to Capital Research
Center will continue that with the Doge files and your
other initiatives and projects. It's so valuable. You can find
it all at Capital Research Center. You find them online.
Influence Watch, as I alluded to before, is a must
a go to for anybody who wants to track these NGOs,
these nonprofits, these charities. But this we're just a few
weeks in. This is going to heat up already. It's
like trying to put out a you know, a grease
fire with Greece. So it is amazing. But I really
do appreciate your time and your perspective on all of this.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Our guest today once again is Parker Thayer, Investigative Research
at the nonprofit tracker Capital Research Center. Again. You can
find all of their great work online and They are
doing great work every day to expose the kinds of
awful spending your tax dollars being spent on all of
these kinds of things where you just scratch your head.
You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of
freedom and anxious for the friend heard the fas reason
and then away