Jay Weber Show transcript 2-4-25
Folks- the members of DOGE - are being hunted by the left, now.
I suppose we had to expect this, given how immoral and slimy today’s activist democrats are-
But now that it’s apparent Elon Musk and his doge effort are a -serious- effort to root out the deep state and end wasteful and fraudulent spending-
-now that it’s apparent that much of this effort is going to be breaking the stranglehold that the democrat party and the American left have put on government-
To be used and abused for its own purposes-
The knives are quickly out for musk and his team- as democrat leaders and their left-wing activist horde try to come up with ways to stop it.
As Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jefferies and Tammy Baldwin and marc Pocan do their normal squealing and spreading of misinformation- they’re unleashing their activist class to identify and destroy anyone helping musk in this effort.
‘wired’ is a leftist media outlet-and yesterday-doxed the engineers who are helping musk root out the leftist cheating that they have spent decades injecting into every corner of our federal government.
Doxxing-for those who don’t know- is basically ‘outing’ and ‘exposing’ individuals to the ‘online’ community who you want targeted for destruction.
It’s posting a photo and saying, this is Joe Smith. He’s an engineer at X who is helping Elon shut down our us-aid programs. He lives at this address. Here are the links to his social media. His wife and kids are...etc.
The unspoken-but overt message- is: now harass, intimidate and ruin this person. Make their life miserable.
Well-this is what wired, and the activist class are starting to do on ‘blue sky’ which is, ironically, supposed to be the new, kinder, gentler, Twitter.
Remember?
Remember at the end of last year when all of America’s lefties said they were leaving ‘X’ and moving over to BlueSky-because ‘X’ was so mean and toxic.
Well- if you are the toxic people, it’s hard to escape yourselves- and so- BlueSky is now said to be as full as venom and hate as they claimed other social media sites were, and the activists over there on BlueSky are outing and targeting anyone who musk has recruited to help him in this effort to reform government.
Because-gee- ‘reforming government’ means peeling away a lot of layers of corruption and misdirection that the leftists layered in long ago. Over decades.
Like the fight over this USAID agency.
As both Elon musk and Marco Rubio said yesterday: we suspended the work of this agency because we intended to just make sure the 45 billion in taxpayer money that they’re doling out to other agencies is in line with Trump’s pro-America agenda-
But what we found is- the entire agency is rotten to the core. A leftist money laundering machine.
So, as of yesterday, the Trump team is saying USAID, as an agency, is ‘shut down’ and it will be reviewed, reformed, downsized and tucked under the wing of the state department, eventually.
And yes, the left is pitching a fit and threatening legal action-and it probably will take a court case or two to validate that trump can do what he’s doing- and whether he needs the help of congress-
But the bottom line that the dems and activist left is trying to hide is: this is supposed to be sort of a ‘foreign aid’ and ‘ally-building agency’, globally, but instead it has become a nest of powerful political interests and groups who are enriching themselves and forwarding their political globes using taxpayer dollars. Unbeknownst to us.
Yes-some- of the aide goes toward clean water and nation-building and good causes- but many of it-according to Musk and Rubio- gets funneled to ‘foundations and NGO’s and businesses that were set up basically as shell companies so they could get this money and funnel it to their causes.
It's the engine behind a very powerful leftist racket- and one that has literally helped keep the dem party in power and forcing its radical activism on us.
That’s’ what this US aid is.
Marco Rubio, who Trump put in charge of this agency, said yesterday....
It's a completely unresponsive agency.
It's supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department, and it refuses to do so.
The functions of USAID—there are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue, that are going to be part of American foreign policy -- but it has to be aligned with American foreign policy.
I said very clearly during my confirmation hearing that every dollar we spend and every program we fund will be aligned with the national interest of the United States. USAID has a history of ignoring that and deciding that it's somehow a global charity separate from the national interest.
These are taxpayer dollars. I am very troubled by these reports that they have been unwilling to cooperate with people who are asking simple questions about what these programs do, who gets the money, who our contractors are, and who is funded. That level of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct a mature and serious review that I think our foreign policy, writ large, should have.
We are spending taxpayer money here. These are not donor dollars. These are taxpayer dollars, and we owe the American people the assurance that every dollar we are spending abroad is being spent on something that furthers our national interest. So far, a lot of the people that work at USAID have simply refused to cooperate.
REPORTER: Are you currently in charge of USAID?
RUBIO: I am the acting director of USAID.
I've delegated that authority to someone, but I stay in touch with him. Again, our goal was to go in and align our foreign aid to the national interest.
But if you go to mission after mission and embassy after embassy around the world, you will often find that, in many cases, USAID is involved in programs that run counter to what we're trying to do in our national strategy with that country or with that region.
That cannot continue.
USAID is not an independent, non-governmental entity. It is an entity that spends taxpayer money, and it needs to spend it—as the statute says—in alignment with the policy directives that come from the Secretary of State, the National Security Council, and the President.
For 20 or 30 years, people have tried to reform it, and it refuses to reform. It refuses to cooperate.
When we were in Congress, we couldn't even get answers to basic questions about programs. That’s not going to continue. I've articulated my challenges with it, and they go back to my time in Congress.
We would ask them questions: "Who does this program fund? Who gets the money?"
"We won't tell you."
"We don't need to tell you."
"We're apolitical."
American foreign policy isn't apolitical. American foreign policy is about furthering the interests of the United States.
If someone wants to spend apolitical dollars, they should spend private dollars. Go start a charity, and you can fund anyone you want.
But if you're going to spend taxpayer money, then you need to spend it furthering the national interest of the United States. That's exactly what I said at my confirmation hearing, and this is not just my frustration. This has been a frustration for almost a quarter-century, spanning multiple administrations. It's going to stop and it is going to end.
REPORTER: A lot of the money USAID spends that is being criticized as "charitable," you used that word, or welfare for poor countries. Defenders of USAID and some members of Congress say it is America's national interest and promotes stability or buys America goodwill overseas. What is you reaction to that? Do you think USAID does good work and you have issues with some of the specifics spending?
RUBIO: My issue, as I said, is that there are things USAID does that we should continue to do, and we will continue to do. But everything they do has to be in alignment with the national interest and the foreign policy of the United States.
The attitude that USAID has adopted over the years is, “No, we are independent of the national interest. We fund programs irrespective of whether they align with foreign policy.” That’s ridiculous. These are taxpayer dollars. Every penny that we spend in foreign aid needs to be in furtherance of and aligned with the national interest and foreign policy of the United States.
So, this is not about ending USAID programs. There are things it does that are good, and there are things it does that raise strong questions. It’s about the way it operates. They’re supposed to take direction from the State Department on policy. They do not take policy direction. They are uncooperative when you ask questions.
When you try to find out basic information, their attitude is, “We don’t have to answer to you because we are independent. We answer to no one.”
That is not true, and that will no longer be the case.
That was only part of what Sect Rubio had to say-and i want you to hear it all-because this is incredibly important stuff-and most Americans probably will not hear it, nor understand what’s really going on, here.
Rubio says- for 25 years-and across administrations- the leaders of this USAID agency have refused to say what they are doing. Refused to cooperate with congress. They won’t reveal their mission, etc. This is-not new- and it’s highly dishonest.
And so, when you hear Schumer and Shatz, and squats talk about-
(man, that sounded bad...... I mean senator Brian Schatz, who was railing against this yesterday...and squats with unions...my nickname for Liz Warren. But that sounded terrible, sorry)
When you hear these people...claim trump and musk are creating all sorts of global misery by blocking some of this funding-and millions will die...etc. Ignore it. They’re doing the typical fearmongering and lying that they always do- when their grifts are exposed.
And this USAID agency has been one, massive, never-ending grift. Hopefully musk and trump can bring it to an end-and permanently.
I know musk is talking like it’s already dead-but we’ve still got lawsuits to be fought-and won-etc.
Either way- the incredible waste of taxpayer dollars-and what it’s being wasted on- will be exposed.
And there is-no more important effort than this- (aside from maybe killing off DEI)- that trump and musk have taken on, so far.
If we on the right-really can- kill off most of the ways that the democrats and the activist left have been enriching themselves and funding the bulk of their activist movement – this is going to be huge. A genuine political earthquake.
Think of the democrat party as a money-laundering operation that funds itself using-our-tax dollars.
Think of them also using billions of our tax dollars-every year- to also fund the agendas of the global elite.
Because this is what’s going on-and in ‘so many ways’ this secretive USAID agency was the money-laundering funnel.
president trump’s strategy is to cut off the flow of funding that has become the lifeblood of the US and global left.
And it’s all our tax dollars which makes it infuriating.
And so – if the White House, Elon Musk, and dc republicans can explain this accurately to the American people- this is a major scandal for the left and there is-no way-
No way- that their efforts to spin this as ‘harming the global poor’ becomes a political narrative that most voters buy.
But-it’s up to Trump and Musk, etc., to explain it properly. And so far? Just over the last few days? They really haven’t been.
I’ve talked about how Donald Trump is -not- a good ‘explainer’.
I don’t know if he assumes most of us-across the country- know what he knows’- or know how most of this stuff works- but we don’t.
The intricacies of dc insider govt need to be explained to the American people. Musk normally does a pretty good job of explaining things-but even he’s not making it clear: why. Why. This USAID agency is so fraudulent and virtually none of the 50 billion being spent on it each year was really going to help poor people, globally.
Republicans need to explain that. Use real examples of the corruption: our tax dollars were diverted to.... the Clinton foundation to be used as the Clinton’s saw fit. Or use on themselves. Funds were diverted to- Bill Kristol’s bogus front group (as we learned yesterday)
This is money going to pay the salaries and fund the activism of these leftist and never-trump organizations. It (largely) wasn’t being used to better the plight of the poor. And it needs to stop.
photo credit: Getty Images
story credit: RealClearPolitics
audio version of the segment here > USAID exposed