Speaker 1: What's going on?
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Speaker 1: I did not do anything today.
Speaker 2: I don't think to warrant both Don and Tony calling
in in the last hour.
Speaker 1: But who am I to look a gift horse?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: See, here's the thing.
Speaker 2: If you didn't hear, we had a call from Don
and then a call from Tony, and at the very
end there Tony was saying something like uh. And this
is a common tactic where they like, calm down, stop
getting upset, whatever, and they do that in order to
troll a It's a deflection tactic. He does not he
does not know how to argue, he doesn't know how
to debate, and so he just he That's why I
kept dragging him back and kept correcting him. You know,
kind of like you know, popping the dog on the nose,
you know, every time like to try to like correct him,
to say like that you're not making a Like if
you're going to make an argument, you make an assertion.
You stayed a premise, right, you offer some evidence. You
don't start off by asking me a question.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: I don't ever get upset in these debates. I will
raise my voice when someone's trying to fill a buster,
I will raise my voice. But it's always been kind
of comical to me when people say, oh, you're you know,
you're upset or whatever, and like that's just absurd, Like
does a cat get upset at the.
Speaker 1: Ball of yarn.
Speaker 2: That it's playing with? No, Like it's ridiculous. They enjoy it.
I enjoy it. It's fun for me. I'm not worried
about Tony. I'm not worried about Don. I'm not like,
there's no reason for me to be worried when I
have discussions and debates with those two gentlemen, because my
track record is pretty clear at this point. I know
what I'm talking about on these matters. And by the way,
if they raise something like I did with Don, I
have not heard this.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: I told him that that's because I won't make these
assertions if I don't know anything about the topic. Unlike them,
they will make assertions about things that they don't know.
And that's very easy rhetorically in an argument to dismantle.
As you heard in the last hour, it's very easy
to dismantle it. You just have to recognize what they
are doing when they are doing it. All of their attempts.
Not so much Don but Tony's attempts to insult his
way out of the corner that he put himself into.
That may work in whatever circle he runs in, I
don't know, but it doesn't work with me. I've been
doing this a while. I've heard the tactic for over
a decade. It doesn't work. So you're the insults. I
just kind of feed off of them. Actually it's a gift.
Speaker 1: What can I say. Let me go over and talk
to Gail. Hello, Gail, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hi, good afternoon. I wanted to call in because well,
everybody's talking about mister Trump and this to Elon Musk,
and I am very excited about both of them. Because
I am a poet, I'm writing porn so I have
a book just coming out. Call me sat in my world?
Speaker 2: All right, Gail, Gail, are you hang on, Gail? Are
you on a speakerphone?
Speaker 3: Oh? Let me turn it in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, please do because it's like getting a bad echo
and I can't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't make out what you were saying. That's all right,
that's all right, okay.
Speaker 3: The reason I was sends because I'll tell everybody this
around theason, and you know, as I passed, I'm excited
about both of them because I read about them. And
I like the story about Elon Musk because he told
about the time when lived off of one dollar a day.
I don't really believe that, but he and his mother
came on and so now they have a lot of
articles on Facebook about his mother, May Musk, and now
she's an older woman and she talks about when they
were poor. And so in this poem that I was
writing about look at them now, there was a pitchure
on Facebook of mister Elon Musk, of mister Mark Zuckenberg
and mister Jeff Beaso, and they were all dressed in
puxed was going to mister Trump's in Awkwad, and I
began to look at them. And I looked at them,
and I said, I started writing the poem called look
at Them Now. I don't know this is going to
be great, but I write about the people and it says,
oh yes, they've had many restless nights when sleep refused
to fall. Oh yes, they say, look at us now,
then woke all night, but the sunrise gives them another
reason to get up and keep going. Oh yes, look
at them now. So what they're all saying is that
we all have to realize where these men come from.
They were possibly not ever born in poverty, but they
were not born rich, But they say, look at them
now from poverty. They may not have ever come, but
they have once known about how to be poor. So
everybody tells their story. Even with Jeff, they so he
tells his mother was a sixteen year old pregnant girl
and she had him and he's very happy that she
then have bought him. Even that story is very relating.
We can relate to Barack Obama. These women at the
time when they were having these children. Sometimes they may
have thought that, but they didn't do it, and look
what they had. So this is what I write. I
write these things look I've even cut down on my food.
I was so excited about looking at the man who
has so much money, saying he can live off a
dollar a day. Sometimes I'll eat maybe a sandwich. I
try to see how what is the least I can eat.
I just say they are very smart people. And I.
Speaker 2: Was gonna say they're inspirational. I mean, they inspired you
to write a poem. But but their story.
Speaker 3: Is called inside in my World, and three publishers are writing.
Speaker 2: Oh, good for you, congratulations. No, that's great, congratulations. But
I think but their their stories are and should serve
as I think inspirations for other people to say, well,
if they could do it, I could do it too.
Speaker 1: And why you know, why why not me? If them right?
Speaker 2: And that's and that's what I think we should be
encouraging people to do.
Speaker 1: I think Gail is going all right, Gail. I appreciate
the call.
Speaker 2: No, it's great, it's awesome about your book, and I
liked your poem as well. Look at them now, yeah,
I mean the the people who have become successful. It's
one of the things I learned a long time ago
when I would over the course of you know, my career,
inter viewing people who have become successful.
Speaker 1: I never met any one of them.
Speaker 2: And maybe that's just you know, sample size or something
that they don't want to talk to media or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but.
Speaker 2: The people that I have met that have been really
successful always want to share how they became successful. They
want that for other people too. Why do you think
they start all these foundations? I guess the cynic would say, oh,
they do that, you know, to rehab their image or whatever.
And sure, that's part of it, you know, tax write offs. Okay, fine,
But when you talk to these individuals, they usually start
talking about the hardest times they had and the lessons
that they learned in the hardest times that then led
to their success later because they would not have been
successful had they not had the hard times and the
failures at the beginning, and so they learned from them
and then go on to correct the failure, improve the
product or the service or the management approach or whatever
they learned they adapted, and then they tell people this
is here's a couple real quick rule for rule for life.
This is how to be successful. I have found this
to be true in my own life. I have recommended
it to others and it has worked for them as well,
Which is have a goal.
Speaker 1: Have a goal, and then tell people and you will.
Speaker 2: Be amazed how many people can help you achieve that goal.
You can make the goal, give yourself a timeline, whether
it's a year or five years whatever. Make it a
reasonable goal, right, But it focuses your mind, and then
you tell people what you want to do. This is
what you want to be, where you want to go
or live or whatever. You tell people that goal, and
you be amazed how many people are in a position
to help you achieve that goal. And they want to
help you, but they never if you don't tell them,
they have no idea what you actually want. So have
the goal and tell other people what the goal is.
My goal is to have a billion listeners.
Speaker 1: No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 2: It's got to be a reasonable, realistic goal. And I
don't even know if I would want that, Actually I know,
I don't. I Like, the more famous you get, the
more of a bunker you have to live in, because
like you got to you got to hire security, you
got to have like all of this this bubble operation
working around you, because there are a lot of crazies
out there.
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's just a piece.
Speaker 2: Of advice I would offer to you that I received
from somebody else, and it actually works 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 im press 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
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only helps my podcast, but It also supports ground news
as they make the media landscape more transparent. I have
a lot of messages here regarding the Don and Tony
damassery show of the last hour, so let me just
kind of run through these real quick. I do want
to get to though, the North Carolina connection to the
executive order blocks that these leftists and their organizations have
been getting in the district courts around the country to
stop Trump from trying to root out corruption, waste, and fraud.
There is a North Carolina connection. Besides Mark Elias, there's
another one. Gary says Don and his leftist nutjob friends
have crafted in their minds that Elon Musk is the
new Great Satan and controls Trump. Funny how Trump has
former Democrats Elon Toulcy Rfk, and they hate them all
more now than Trump. It's all a political power game,
and Don is the idiot along for the leftist power
game ride.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of those things.
Speaker 2: Where you know you can't be the idiot and the
mastermind at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing I said during the George W.
George W.
Speaker 2: Bush years that they were constantly lampooning him as a
complete moron. But some how also this diabolical mastermind, and
also just not for nothing. I've done a lot of
research on Donald Trump over the years. I was against
his nomination in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, so I did
a lot of the reading up on him at the time.
And there was one story where he said he was
he was talking about how he would whenever he goes
to like one of these events where they have a
table set up with you know, like a like a fundraiser,
and you know, different peoples, they put them at the
same table. You know, it's like ten people at a
round table at some event, and he would always make
sure and he said this, he said he'd never wanted
to be at a table with anybody that was more
successful than he, because he wanted people to talk to
him about how successful he was. He said that, so
you could never put somebody at the table that was
worth more or is a bigger celebrity or whatever than
he was. That's what he said. So do I think
that he's bowing the need to elon Musk No, I
most certainly do not.
Speaker 1: He is the leader of the free world.
Speaker 2: I think that that box has been checked sufficiently for him.
He is the most powerful person at any table he
sits at. And they also share a common mission, a
common vision. They want the same thing. How it will end,
I don't know, but Don and Tony projecting onto these
guys' thoughts that Don nor Tony have any idea what
they actually are thinking. It's just it's preposterous, and it's lunacy.
People lunacy, get some help, okay, because you don't know
the thing that you think you know, and that is
a sign of trouble mentally speaking. All right, I hope
you had a happy holiday season. But tell me if
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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
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meaning to but I just having gotten around to it. Look,
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So Charlotte Observer ran a story by Avi Bojpie and
Lexi Solomon, and they were localizing this national story about
how the judge had blocked DOGE staffers from accessing federal
payment systems. All right, and so the judge, this was
Judge paul A. Engelmeyer, and I got more on him,
but he issued this temporary restraining order to block Elon
Musk from accessing federal payment systems that hold millions of
Americans sensitive personal data and financial information. North Carolina had
joined eighteen other states ensuing the Trump administration for granting
the so called It's not a so called Department of
Government Efficiency. It is the Department of Government Efficiency. They
renamed an existing agency, so it's not a so called
it is DOGE. United States District Judge paul A. Engelmeyer Schmidt,
I'm sorry, just Engelmeyer wrote that his firm assessment was
that allowing DOGE staffers such access could cause irreparable harm,
could cause Engelmeyer uh set the hearing before US District
Judge Jenet Vargas in New York, and that's going to
be tomorrow. In a statement, here's the North Carolina connection.
Because our Attorney General Jeff Jackson aka Baby Jesus, so
he signed on with these other Democrat states to sue.
And I don't know if that's actually mentioned in the
McClatchy newspaper article that it was all Democrats that that
sued over this, but apparently like they don't want to
know about waste, fraud and abuse. So Jackson said that
Engelmeyer had recognized the administration's move to hand DOGE access
to the Treasury Department was a violation of federal law
and a threat to people's privacy and security.
Speaker 1: Either that or he's a leftist hack, which.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for now, DOJE can't access the Treasury system and
the data it holds. He said, We're going to keep
fighting this case to uphold the long standing federal protections
of Americans confidential financial data. The Bureau, the Treasury Department's
Bureau of Fiscal Services, is responsible for dispersing funds from
many essential federal programs. This is, according to their lawsuit,
including medicaid, disaster relief funds from FEMA, grant program funding
for law enforcement and criminal justice programs, social Security benefits,
veterans benefits, childcare, tax credits, federal employee wages, and federal
tax refunds. According to their complaint, the Bureau handles one
point two billion transactions a year and sends out ninety
percent of all federal payments.
Speaker 1: So you can't look at those God forbid.
Speaker 2: But we already know some of the stuff that they
have found, like regarding social Security stuff. The lawsuit says
that until recently, only a limited number of career civil
servants with necessary security clearances had access to the bureau's
payment systems. Beginning on February second, the Treasury Department started
implementing a new policy granting access to political appointees and
special government employees who are staffing Doge, and so this
is an attempt to just gum.
Speaker 1: Up the works. You can't look at any of this stuff.
Speaker 2: And here's a reason, and if that reason doesn't hold,
by the way, they will come up with another reason.
That's the playbook. The states argue that the new policy
grants expanded access and that poses huge cybersecurity risks. This
is the third lawsuit North Carolina joined against the Trump administration.
The other two multi state suits Jackson joined seek to
block Trump's executive order that attempted to end right citizenship,
as well as the executive order to freeze certain federal
grants another funding while a review of spending is conducted.
So these are the things that again he is or
the well Democrats with bylines, but the reporters have not Yeah,
they did not say that these were all Democrats. State
attorneys general. Now, Judge Engelmeyer, apparently there was a report
that his wife is linked to an NGNGO that is
funded by USAID. I feel like that's a conflict of interest.
She works for the New York Association for New Americans
and they have gotten USAID grant money. Governor Josh Stein
then set down for an interview with Brian Gordon.
Speaker 1: As governor. Josh Stein, Democrat, says he's concerned by what
he called musks move fast and break things mindset. Now.
Speaker 2: Musk also says, by the way that yes, we're moving fast,
and if we break anything, then we fix it, and
we do so quickly.
Speaker 1: That's the point.
Speaker 2: But he says this mindset and what policies rooted in
this approach might mean for North Carolina. He's very concerned.
The state rank sixth in the nation for NIH funding
and is home to two of the biggest NIH grant
recipients in Duke University. In unc Chapel, hill Stein says,
I believe in going fast, but people need to understand
the consequences that if you go too fast you can
create real harm to Democrats' long march through the institutions.
I'm just kidding, I added that last part. He then says,
we should always look for efficiency, but if spending or
and if spending is not delivering a return, we shouldn't
do it. But research on basic medicine through our university
system and nonprofit partners is not waste. It's how we
advance medicine, it's how we save lives. Does this sound familiar. Right,
This is the poster Child argument or the Mott and
Bailey fallacy.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: He highlights these things that have general agreement on, These
are non controversial things, in order to avoid discussing the
controversial and indefensible things that we're spending money on. He's
doing it too. I know that's a shock.
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More from this interview now with Josh Stein, the Raleigh
News and Observer, Charlotte Observer, Pairent Company, McClatchy How to
sit Down News an observer how to sit down, And
they ask them a bunch of these questions about you know,
the USAID stuff, mainly about you know, Trump's executive orders.
Speaker 1: And the question is.
Speaker 2: I've heard from a lot of Yeah, I've heard from
a lot of people in the past few weeks who
have felt shaken by some of these proposed cuts to USAID,
NIH and the EPA. What can the state do or
what is the state doing to counter these policies.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm glad for the Q and A.
Speaker 2: I'm glad for this transcript because that question assumes a position.
That question assumes that the policies should be continued. Right,
what can the state do to counter these policies? Well,
what are the policies? What is it Trump is trying
to do? What is the DOGE people? What are they
trying to do? They're trying to root out fraudulent payments
and wasteful programs. Why would that need to be countered?
Speaker 1: See?
Speaker 2: But by asking the question the way they asked it,
it assumes the position that surprise, surprise. Coincidentally, the Democrat
agrees with Stein says, well, the Attorney General's brought actions
to put a stop to the policies where it's contrary
to law, and that work will continue. And I've talked
to you know, Senators Tom Tillis and Ted budd to
express my real concerns about these drastic NIH cuts.
Speaker 1: See.
Speaker 2: So he's now just focusing on the NIH National Institute's health.
He's focusing on only that. And this is a pattern
throughout this entire interview. He says, reaching out to our
federal representatives to urge them to use their power as
the Congress to ensure the will of the Congress is
respected by the president. Yeah, unless they roll all of
these things in once identified. See, once they get the
list of all of the problems, then they just roll
that into a funding bill, into the continuing resolution, and
they just ram it through under reconciliation. And then all
of your court challenges are moot, not mute, mootot.
Speaker 1: There's a difference. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Then there's this part you wrote in a letter Monday
to President Trump. You support cutting government waste where it exists.
From your time as Attorney general and in your time
as governor, do you see areas of waste in the
state that would be worth trying to make more efficient?
And Stein's response is, well, let's continue this conversation because
I'm going through the state budget as we speak, going
through it with a fine tooth comb. So the answer
there is no, he has not identified anything yet at
the state level waste, fraud, and abuse. He hasn't identified
anything yet. Although if I'm a bit and man, I'm
saying I bet he identifies school vouchers. That is, that
is what they always point to as wasteful spending. It's
the one thing so well in the military, right, I'm
sure they could also he could also identify that, but
but that's not at a state level. So he then
concludes the interview. He says, go fast and break things
seems to be the mo of mister Musk, and I
believe in going fast, but people need to understand the
consequences that if you go too fast you can create
real harm. And if you can get to the same
place that you wanted to go in terms of changing
the structure of a program or reducing expenses without causing
harm to people's lives, that's the better way to go. Okay,
first off, causing harm to people's lives, does that include
firing anybody? Because I could, like, if you leave it
that undefined, it could also mean that, right, in which
case then you can never get rid of these programs.
By the way, somebody mentioned I forget who it was,
and maybe don early in the last hour, you know
who pointed to what Elon Musk did at Twitter where
he fired eighty percent of the workforce when he took over,
and everybody said he's going to ruin Twitter. It's going
to go out of business, and it needs all these
people and whatever. You don't hear that anymore, Like he
fired eighty percent of the workforce, and there hasn't been
any difference that I have seen from a user end.
So what does that tell you? The natural tendency of
these organizations is to get larger, especially government. Who are
the people here that you're worried about causing harm to?
Is it the starving children in Africa? Or is it
the bureaucrats. Also note there is no attempt here to
play the defend and disavow game with the Democrat because
that's a game solely reserved for Republicans. Right. There is
no bringing forward like, well, here's some Guatemalan sex changes.
That's a specific expense paid for with taxpayer dollars through USAID?
Is that an appropriate expenditure? Would you consider that to
be waste, fraud or abuse? Like these things are out there.
They can ask democrats do you support this program? This program,
this program. They can go through and do that, but
they're not doing it. The media is not asking democrats.
They are either uninterested in doing so, it never crosses
their mind, or they know that that putting that question
to a Democrat is going to jam them up and
so they don't do it, defend and disavow. It's only
a game that Republicans are ever forced to play with
the media.
Speaker 1: All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening.
Speaker 2: 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 the Pete
Callner show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening,
and don't break anything while I'm gone.