Feb. 26, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
56:54
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
|
unidentified
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Pray for our enemies. | |
| Because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
|
unidentified
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The people have had a belly full of it. | |
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big line? | ||
|
unidentified
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MAGA Media. | |
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
|
unidentified
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | |
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
| War Room. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's your host, Stephen K. Bass. | |
| It's Wednesday, 26 February, Year of the Lord 2025. President Trump's first cabinet meeting about to start. | ||
| There's a pool camera and some pool reporters. | ||
| We'll go there as soon as we've got Brian Glens up on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Marjorie Taylor Greene's subcommittee on Doge. | ||
| Getting to these cuts. | ||
| Waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| But I want to get Terry Schilling. | ||
| We're going to go to either when they start. | ||
| I want to go to Terry Schilling first. | ||
| Terry... | ||
| And I had Mike Benz on last night, but I want to do a follow-up on this. | ||
| We want to stay on this story, which is not something we normally cover, except for the fact this is so deeply disturbing about senior people in the U.S. government, and particularly in the deep state, and not just that, in two of the most sensitive areas of our government, NSA and the CIA. Can you tell us what's going on and how disturbing this is and what's being done about it? | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| Thanks for having me on, Steve. | ||
| I've got all the receipts. | ||
| I've been pouring over it since last night when it first came out. | ||
| NSA and CIA employees have these chat threads, okay? | ||
| And it's been uncovered and declassified that they've been talking about things that really should never be talked about at work, right? | ||
| There are human resources rules where you're not allowed to talk about things of any sexual nature at work because it makes people feel uncomfortable. | ||
| And you're definitely not allowed to use company resources to do this. | ||
| And they've been using these chat threads. | ||
| But, Steve, it's not all just like weird stuff. | ||
| It's – I'm sorry, disgusting stuff. | ||
| A lot of it's just weird. | ||
| Rufo uncovered this actually. | ||
| And he uncovered there's these threads where they're talking about ethical – Terry, hang on one second. | ||
| I just want to go live to MTG. You stay right there and come back and get all this. | ||
| Let's go to the Doge subcommittee. | ||
| Return with Terry Schilling in a moment. | ||
| In 2023 alone, Americans privately donated over $557 billion of their own money. | ||
| Corporations donated over $37 billion. | ||
| Foundations donated over $103 billion. | ||
| That is incredible, incredible of the American people. | ||
| In 2023, nearly 76 million Americans, almost 30% of Americans, formally volunteered through in an organization. | ||
| Volunteered. | ||
| The government did not make them do that. | ||
| They did this on their own. | ||
| Donating and volunteering time is what supports schools and shelters, hospitals and hotlines, food banks, and more across only our country. | ||
| Not only our country, but across the world. | ||
| Ask anyone in Western North Carolina. | ||
| Whether it be individuals, churches, or businesses, the American people are the most generous people in the entire world. | ||
| And I'm so proud of that. | ||
| They should be the ones who decide where their money goes. | ||
| They can choose if they want to donate to a charity, a school, a church, or a non-profit. | ||
| They can choose if they want to privately donate to a transgender salon in Mumbai. | ||
| They can choose if they want to privately donate to the British Broadcasting Corporation. | ||
| They can choose if they want to privately donate to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth Alliance, or to electric vehicles in Vietnam, or to changing the national census in Bangladesh to be more gender inclusive. | ||
| That is something they should be able to choose. | ||
| That is something they should never be forced to do by our government. | ||
| The Democrat-run USAID should not get to use our federal government, our U.S. taxpayer dollars, as their party piggy bank to push their radical agenda in countries that we have no business giving money to. | ||
| 96% of all political contributions from USAID employees go to Democrat Party candidates, or PACs. | ||
| That's 96%. | ||
| Not only is USAID giving $70,000 for a DEI musical in Ireland or $50,000 for transgender opera in Colombia or to entrench their left-wing ideology across the globe, USAID... has been transformed into an America Last foreign aid slush fund to prop up extremist groups, | ||
| implement censorship campaigns, and interfere in foreign elections to force regime change around the world. | ||
| That is the dark truth about USAID. That is the story the American people deserve to know. | ||
| Not only was USAID never designed to be what it has morphed into, but these things should never have been funded in the first place. | ||
| In fiscal year 2023, USAID dispersed roughly $44 billion of aid across 160 countries and regions around the world. | ||
| During the four years of the Biden administration, 181 countries received approximately $240 billion in U.S. development aid. | ||
| With Ukraine being the top recipient. | ||
| Other top recipients include Ethiopia, Jordan, Israel and Somalia. | ||
| So after hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have been distributed throughout the world, has the world become safer? | ||
| No. | ||
| Has the world become more stable? | ||
| No. | ||
| Is the perception of the United States around the globe any better? | ||
| No. | ||
| But have some of the most anti-democratic principles like censorship and the canceling of elections been funded through USAID because of opposition to the ruling regimes? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Has money through USAID been funneled to terrorists? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Foreign aid from USAID to the UN, particularly the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees in the Near East, is directly funding Hamas terrorists. | ||
| Humanitarian relief intended for the Afghan people was diverted to the Taliban. | ||
| Money intended to support democracy is being used as a slush fund for liberal propaganda supporting terrorist, gender ideology, diversity, equity, and inclusion, climate activism, censorship, and regime change. | ||
| Do you think this is what the American people think of when they think of foreign aid? | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| Taxpayer funds have literally been used to undermine U.S. interests and counter American foreign policy goals under the guise of foreign aid. | ||
| This is unacceptable, and the American people agree. | ||
| Thankfully, President Trump has taken action to address these issues. | ||
| The election of President Trump was a clear mandate by the American people that they will no longer tolerate this. | ||
| He is putting an end to the Foreign Aid Slush Fund, ensuring the hard-working American taxpayers' dollars are supporting America First policies, and taking care of our own people at home. | ||
| And we will do the same. | ||
| With that, I now recognize Ranking Member Stansbury for the purpose of making an opening statement. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right, well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Elon Musk Chainsaw Massacre, except for this remake of a classic is terrible because it's hurting real people, and its lead character, Mr. Musk, hasn't shown up in front and its lead character, Mr. Musk, hasn't shown up in front of this committee or Congress at We also, of course, call this the Subcommittee on Doge, or Project 2025, as we'll see here during the Q&A. So today... | |
| In this hearing on foreign aid, which the GOP has called, you're going to hear all kinds of wild conspiracy theories, accusations, and unfounded data. | ||
| It's designed to confuse and provide cover for Donald Trump and Elon Musk in their reckless gutting of our foreign aid and our reordering under the Trump administration of international affairs. | ||
| But before we dive into the details, I want to zoom out and provide some critical context here about why this is happening. | ||
| So first of all, let's talk about what happened over the last two weeks as the administration took an abrupt about face in international relations after 64 years of USAID and supporting our allies in Europe. | ||
| turning its back on long-standing allies and now suddenly embracing and enabling U.S. foreign adversaries. | ||
| Let's do a little oversight here. | ||
| Last week, the administration shocked The world, as the vice president, took to the global stage and addressed European leaders and informed them that the Trump administration believes that the greatest threat to Europe is not the autocratic leader who invaded our Western ally three years ago and committed war crimes and atrocities against the Ukrainian people and threatened Western democracy. | ||
| But instead, the VP said it was, quote, a threat from within. | ||
| He then snubbed Our German allies, and in an unprecedented move, tacitly endorsed and then met with a far-right candidate from the German parliament, who Elon Musk has spent months backing. | ||
| This is a party that is so extreme that even conservatives in Germany will not form a government with them. | ||
| Then, over the weekend, Donald Trump went on a wild rant on social media embracing Vladimir Putin and repeating Russian propaganda trying to rewrite history and falsely claim that Ukraine started a war against its own people. | ||
| Then, on Monday, Trump had the United States of America vote against Russia, vote with Russia, North Korea, and China as... | ||
| Four of the only eight countries in the world voting in the UN against a resolution supporting Ukraine and affirming Ukraine's sovereignty. | ||
| When you think about what this means in the context of American history, it's truly astonishing. | ||
| That same day... | ||
| Which was only two days ago. | ||
| The administration announced that they would proceed with firing another 2,000 USAID workers, even as a court ruled that the administration's dismantling of the aid organization is illegal. | ||
| And interestingly, one of the main opponents of USAID programs is Donald Trump's buddy, Vladimir Putin. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because among the programs that the U.S. was funding before the funding was frozen was aid to Ukraine. | ||
| Including safe houses on the front lines, a free and open press to help keep people informed what was happening in the war, not to mention refugee resettlement in the United States. | ||
| USAID was also engaged in democracy building in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, especially with the fall of the USSR. Of course, Mr. Putin didn't like that either. | ||
| And these investments have been totally decimated over the last several weeks. | ||
| Over the last five years, USAID has funded international aid to 212 countries around the world to promote international peace and security, to help maintain stability, and ensure that we are making good on America's promises. | ||
| These investments are a fraction of the cost of weapons and defense, and the U.S. in the process is able to help promote national security, stop global pandemics, So when we hear conservative allies of Donald Trump repeat wild and unfounded claims about international aid, | ||
| and we see a coordinated attack by conservative media, think tanks like those who are here today, members of Congress, the administration, we have to ask ourselves What is really going on here, folks? | ||
| Why the hell are they so hell-bent on dismantling an organization that has been so vital to American interests and Western democracy for so long? | ||
| Over the last several days, they have fired thousands of federal employees. | ||
| It really does make you wonder, doesn't it? | ||
| And by the way, while they've been doing that, China has actually moved in already to places in South Asia that had their funding cut and is beginning to replace American diplomacy and aid in those places. | ||
| So as we listen to this hearing today and hear from our witnesses, which I look forward to, I hope that we can get to the bottom of what is actually going on here today. | ||
| And with that... | ||
| I look forward to hearing the testimony. | ||
| January 24th, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave an order that came with a waiver for emergency food assistance, which was broadened even further several days later for life-saving services. | ||
| Secretary Rubio has stated very clearly, we have a blanket waiver, and anybody who tells you they don't understand it, let me repeat it in very simple words. | ||
| If it saves lives, if it's emergency life-saving aid, food, medicine, Whatever. | ||
| They have a waiver. | ||
| I don't know how much clearer we can be. | ||
| And if we're not applying it, then maybe we're not a very good organization and maybe they shouldn't be getting any money at all. | ||
| Additionally, in-kind food assistance purchased from U.S. farmers is continuing. | ||
| I'm pleased to introduce our witnesses today. | ||
| We're going to get back to some of the witnesses. | ||
| We're going to dip in and out of this. | ||
| Particularly, as you know, we will focus somewhat on the Democrats asking cheap shot questions because you see the angle of attack they're coming at, the information warfare. | ||
| I know the audience loved the Congresswoman's tee-up right there. | ||
| I could hear heads blowing up as it went. | ||
| But you see, this is what half the country hears every day, is that. | ||
| That's what we have to combat. | ||
| I want to go to Schilling for a second. | ||
| Terry's back with us. | ||
| Terry, and this story's not getting the amount of coverage it should get. | ||
| So let's hit rewind quickly. | ||
| I don't think the cabinet meeting's going to start to the bottom of the hour. | ||
| We're going to dip back in and out of some of the explosive testimony and questions from the Democrats in the Doge hearing. | ||
| But there was, I guess, a chat room or some sort of digital space where people at... | ||
| The National Security Agency, NSA, which is the Fort Meade, the spook of all spooks, right? | ||
| And coupled with CIA personnel was a chat room with what? | ||
| Affinity Group, LGBTQ++? What was it? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| No, that's right. | ||
| So basically, these were NSA and CIA employees and even DIA. Navy employees on here that were all communicating. | ||
| Steve, the group chats got leaked, right? | ||
| This is like the nightmare for every young man out there. | ||
| The group chats got leaked. | ||
| But they're talking about weird things. | ||
| There's a lot of disgusting things. | ||
| There's this whole section where they're talking about their identities, but they're talking about getting trans surgeries. | ||
| I want to read some of this to you because I think it's important so that you guys know. | ||
| Who is in charge of our National Security Administration? | ||
| They say here, and this is all during the work hours, by the way. | ||
| This was at 3.57 p.m. | ||
| Someone from the U.S. Navy says, right, that's the big thing for me, was being able to wear leggings or bikinis without having to wear a gaff underneath it. | ||
| And someone just shortly after this says, also, one of the weirdest things that gives me euphoria is when I pee. | ||
| I don't have to push anything down to make sure it aims straight. | ||
| Steve, I can't read some of this stuff. | ||
| Without laughing or vomiting. | ||
| Another one says, I mean, honestly, the rest is nice too. | ||
| Wearing panties without worrying about showing, seeing my reflection in the mirror, wearing leggings, but the pee thing is something I never thought of, but it's really nice. | ||
| These are people that are talking, they're government employees doing this on... | ||
| On work hours, on government property, this is all sexual harassment. | ||
| In the workplace, in normal workplaces, you're not allowed to talk about things of a sexual nature. | ||
| There's one person in here that's fantasizing about the idea of having a hermaphrodite child so that they could truly raise them as a true non-binary baby. | ||
| There's whole sections about promoting ethical non-monogamy. | ||
| They're using words. | ||
| See, I've been coming on this show for so long. | ||
| You know how in the weeds I am on all this sexual left stuff. | ||
| There are terms here I've never even heard before. | ||
| A polycule, and they explain it here. | ||
| A polycule is a polyamorous group. | ||
| So this is a group of people that are all... | ||
| Screwing around on their partner, but they're doing it ethically and with their partner's consent. | ||
| I'm going to read this paragraph because maybe the War Room Posse can explain it to me. | ||
| And by the way, this is at 4.40 p.m. | ||
| in the afternoon on a workday. | ||
| So mine looks like a triple bond with P2, double bonds with P3 and P4, who have triple bond between each other. | ||
| Double bonds with P5 and P6 who have a triple bond. | ||
| I think this is like, so there's a big group of people, like six people that are all, or sorry, it's a total of eight people in this group. | ||
| They're all sleeping around with each other, and then they have, they don't all sleep around with each other in the group. | ||
| They only, it's crazy, Steve. | ||
| This is all being done by government employees at the National Security Administration. | ||
| But here's the question. | ||
| But this is what I'm missing. | ||
| These people have... | ||
| Super high security. | ||
| This is not like confidential secret, top secret. | ||
| These people have the highest security clearances by the most secretive agencies in our government that have the most sensitive material that one could argue. | ||
| And I'm a big believer in declassifying most of this stuff. | ||
| But if you had to have certain stuff that was classified for national security, these would be the places that have it. | ||
| That's what's... | ||
| This is not like some, you know, affinity group out there, you know, that's a group of activists. | ||
| There's not some corporate, you know, corporation that has this as part of a DEI initiative. | ||
| These are people with incredibly high that have been deemed by our country and by the apparatus, the national security and intelligence apparatus. | ||
| That oversees the deep state and supposedly oversees the security of the country. | ||
| These people have been deemed guardians of our republic and the biggest state secrets. | ||
| State secrets of our republic. | ||
| Are they not? | ||
| No, that's what is so enraging about this, Steve. | ||
| These are the watchmen. | ||
| These are people that should be like... | ||
| Daily mask hours, people that are constantly praying. | ||
| These are people that should have the cleanest reputations, nothing weird in their background, totally normal, very boring people. | ||
| These should be like autists, basically, who just process numbers and process data. | ||
| They don't have emotions. | ||
| They aren't distracted by all this crazy sexual stuff. | ||
| But these are the watchmen. | ||
| And here's where I think it gets really interesting, Steve, is that I think there's- I think these people have no shame. | ||
| They're so lost. | ||
| They're so in this disordered world that they don't even realize how offensive this is to a factory worker or to a plumber or to people out there slaving away, making this country actually run. | ||
| They don't realize how disordered their lives are, that they're just openly talking about it. | ||
| These are things that are shameful. | ||
| These are things that anyone should be embarrassed if it got leaked. | ||
| But I think that the people at the top- Here's the thing, Steve. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| This is just a lot. | ||
| The NSA and the CIA, the intelligence agencies, they didn't know about these threads going on. | ||
| Their superiors either weren't paying attention or don't. | ||
| Or worse, Steve, they weren't paying attention or they don't think it's bad. | ||
| And I think that that's worse because if you don't think this stuff is bad, what do you think is bad? | ||
|
unidentified
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The answer is they think going to church is bad. | |
| Yeah, they can listen to all your phone calls. | ||
| They knew this was going on. | ||
| I want to connect a dot, too, back to the CNN lead on, I think it was Sunday. | ||
| They're saying that the Doge effort are reducing this reduction in force, the RIF, particularly where it hits something, and they use the CIA specifically when it hits Langley, that you're going to cause a national security problem because you have all these people that have these very high security clearances that are now going to be cut loose, and that could be a breeding ground. | ||
| For foreign intelligence services like the Chinese Communist Party or the Persians or the Russians, whoever, to basically scoop these people up and get their secrets. | ||
| Well, right here, these guys knew this was going on. | ||
| It's impossible that senior authorities, because I'm sure there's a couple of three senior authorities in the chat room itself. | ||
| It's impossible they didn't know this was going on, and you see the level of depravity. | ||
| And the opportunity, not just for blackmail, but if these people were let go, which to me they should be terminated immediately and prosecuted, they could flip with the highest state secrets we have and or methods and processes, right, and turn it over to Foreign Intelligence Services. | ||
| Terry Schilling. | ||
| No, that's exactly right. | ||
| Steve, if Chris Rufo was able to get this... | ||
| The CCP have it. | ||
| They've had it for a long time. | ||
| The Russians have it. | ||
| All of our enemies have it. | ||
| If Chris Rufo and you and I are talking about this on TV right now, these guys had it years ago probably. | ||
| And I actually think this might explain a lot of the crazy decisions that Biden made in his White House. | ||
| And I think also, I've always wondered why Mark Milley Thought it was a good idea to call the Chinese and tip them off that he was gonna stop anything that Donald Trump might be doing out the door. | ||
| He called a foreign adversary and let them know he would let them know about any attacks potentially coming. | ||
| Why would he do that unless they had some compromising information on it? | ||
| I mean, I think this brings a lot to light. | ||
| These agencies are completely compromised at this point. | ||
| Who else do we have information on? | ||
| This is just what's public. | ||
| And when it gets to me, it's not- I think this is very dangerous and we need a completely clean house. | ||
| We are in serious danger and our national security is in peril right now, I think. | ||
| Terry, where did we go? | ||
| You're breaking all types of stories like this and working on making sure this mess gets cleaned up as others. | ||
| Because Tulsi Gabbard has put down the word that she's doing a major investigation on this right now. | ||
| I'm sure it's going to be a topic in the cabinet. | ||
| This is going to take place here momentarily. | ||
|
unidentified
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Where do people go to get you for additional information? | |
| The best thing, the quickest breaking way to get information out there right now, Steve, is on X. So follow me on X at shilling1776. | ||
| I'm on every platform, though, so it's all just shilling1776. | ||
| As you see it, this is one of the driving factors in President Trump's election, and it's... | ||
| It's getting worse. | ||
| President Trump is taking action, like Tulsi Gabbard's taking action. | ||
| But the resistance on this is not going away. | ||
| In fact, I actually think they're digging in harder. | ||
| First off, am I correct in that, or that's just my perception, number one? | ||
| And number two, do you see this rolling out and even playing a part in the Virginia governor's race, which is probably the most important political race we have this year, sir? | ||
| Well, don't sleep on New Jersey, Steve, because I think we got a shot to win both in Virginia and New Jersey. | ||
| And these culture war topics are gonna be front and center. | ||
| No, the resistance isn't going away. | ||
| In fact, it's just changing battlefields. | ||
| So you're right. | ||
| Trump is winning on the culture war, especially on the gender identity stuff, cleaning up girls' sports and protecting our kids. | ||
| And if you look at the polling on this, it's insane. | ||
| Trump is talking about this publicly. | ||
| He's saying it's a 90% approval. | ||
| He's right. | ||
| He talks a good game sometimes, talks a lot of trash, but he's actually right. | ||
| The numbers are like 86, 87% approval on the gender identity stuff he's doing. | ||
| But here's where they're moving the battlefield to is the courts, right? | ||
| I talked to Mike Dave after our conversation. | ||
| Last week I talked to Mike Davis about this, about these temporary restraining orders that these nationwide injunctions that these judges are doing. | ||
| So next step is for the Trump administration to challenge those temporary restraining orders. | ||
| But here's where it gets interesting and very good for us, Steve. | ||
| The Supreme Court has made it very clear over the past few months that they are growing tired of these nationwide injunctions because they're being abused. | ||
| So the longer we need to keep fighting on this gender identity. | ||
| Because if the judges at the lower levels, the districts and the appeal courts keep messing around, they're going to find out because the Supreme Court is going to take away their ability to do these garbage nationwide injunctions. | ||
| So keep fighting on the gender identity stuff because the left can't back away from it. | ||
| Force them to do these nationwide injunctions, and then we can get rid of them entirely because the Supreme Court will restrict the lower court's ability to continue to do these nationwide injunctions. | ||
| We just need to keep fighting. | ||
| It's a great opening for us. | ||
| Last point on this. | ||
| When Natalie Winters talks about embeds, this is what she's talking about. | ||
| You have in these two and a half, three million government employees, right, these bureaucrats, the people that run the administrative state and the deep state. | ||
| You have these types of people. | ||
| These are Trump haters, and these people are depraved. | ||
| There's nothing they won't do to destroy MAGA. This is where it gets to be a spiritual war. | ||
| And I strongly recommend, and it's going to be quite distasteful because it was, like I said, this is not my line of country. | ||
| Man, it was rough reading, but Chris Ruffo has done a tremendous public service by putting this stuff up. | ||
| And Terry, as you know, Because we talked about how can we even put it up on the show, and much less how we can put it on the morning part of the show, right? | ||
| Where there's so many homeschoolers. | ||
| But this has to be addressed. | ||
| And this is what Natalie means by embeds. | ||
| Your government's replete, maybe not in this topic, but analogous, other chat rooms doing other things, right? | ||
| Maybe not quite so depraved. | ||
| But the government's full of this. | ||
| And this is what President Trump has to fight every day. | ||
| It's like being Saigon in 1967. Terry Schilling, one more time, where are they going to get you? | ||
| It's just Schilling 1776. Steve, one more thing if I could. | ||
| There's a whole section in here where these government employees at the NSA and CIA, where they're talking about how they had to fly over to Thailand to get their sex change procedures. | ||
| Steve, I don't have any money to pay. | ||
| Where are these guys getting all this money? | ||
| They're getting paid off or something. | ||
| They're getting paid way too much money. | ||
| It's so corrupt. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| Sick. | ||
| Thank you so much, sir. | ||
| Appreciate you. | ||
| Thanks, Steve. | ||
| One of the things we do here is make sure you get full access to senior people. | ||
| Phillip Patrick's going to be on tonight, but you can get him 24-7 or his team, birchgold.com. | ||
| Make sure you go to the site, check it out, get all the information. | ||
| It's tons of information. | ||
| They have the instrumentality of 401ks, IRAs, everything you can do, tax deferred, to actually get enrolled into gold today. | ||
| Or, go to the app, Bannon, just text Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N, 989898. Get the brochure, Investing in Gold in the Era of Trump, the Ultimate Guy. | ||
| Short break, back. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I now recognize myself for five minutes of questions. | ||
| And I will inform this committee and the public watching that if... | ||
| Pardon? | ||
| Oh, sorry. | ||
| I'm sorry, Mr. Unger. | ||
| Apologize. | ||
| I didn't mean to skip over you. | ||
| I now recognize Mr. Unger for five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
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Madam Chair, Ranking Member Stansbury, distinguished members of the subcommittee. | |
| I am honored to share my views with you. | ||
| They are my own and not those of my current or former employers. | ||
| I have served at USAID and the State Department in multiple roles and in non-governmental positions focused on U.S. foreign aid reform and global development. | ||
| My government service took place during the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. | ||
| Every U.S. administration since World War II has wanted to shape foreign aid in line with its goals, but strangling the system into extinction is akin to unilaterally disarming at a time of mounting geopolitical competition for partnerships globally. | ||
| Throwing away our toolbox does not make us safer or well-positioned to influence the world. | ||
| Our set of foreign aid tools reflects enlightened self-interest. | ||
| With it, the US countered communism and enhanced the education, farming productivity, and health of people around the world while also saving lives. | ||
| Our international AIDS and malaria programs have collectively saved more than 35 million lives over the past couple decades. | ||
| US assistance has also built partnerships and economic growth, so much so that 11 of America's 15 biggest trading partners were former recipients of US foreign assistance. | ||
| We are now in a period of renewed geostrategic competition. | ||
| China has been vying with the US for partnerships across the global south. | ||
| Inking deals where it can. | ||
| China can and will fill soft power voids left by the U.S. Other potential threats to our security are also connected to developing countries and fragile states. | ||
| From the potential resurgence of ISIS in the Middle East to the spreading influence of Islamist militants and Russian mercenaries across the Sahel. | ||
| On the eastern edge of Europe, Russian aggression may continue to grow unchecked. | ||
| And in Colombia, the strife from neighboring Venezuela is spilling over to yield the worst violence in a generation. | ||
| With that backdrop, the administration has abruptly and collectively disabled U.S. tools of foreign assistance. | ||
| The White House has said it is cutting programs that do not benefit Americans. | ||
| But their approach is dismantling many programs that help Americans, thereby cutting off our nose to spite our face. | ||
| This is evident in many ways. | ||
| First, The government has purchased more than $2 billion in food aid annually from American farmers, and American farms supply more than 40% of the food aid USAID sends around the world. | ||
| But with the foreign aid freeze and stop work order, rice, wheat, and soybeans are going to waste in transit and in ports. | ||
| In Houston alone, hundreds of tons of American-grown wheat have been stranded. | ||
| The recklessness of the current approach is evident in health efforts, too. | ||
| We need our foreign aid to prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases from spreading before reaching our shores. | ||
| But U.S.-funded early detection and treatment for deadly diseases like Ebola have sputtered to a standstill. | ||
| Even where very few waivers have been issued for some life-assisted. | ||
| There will be cross-examination of him. | ||
| What I appreciate, and of course the Democrats get to put up some, but MTG is running pretty even-handed. | ||
| Right there you have a counter, right, to saying, hey, this is done too quickly, without thought, that these programs in the past have helped win the Cold War, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| I think the reality is that they became way off track. | ||
| National Review, in fact, I'll address it this afternoon, talk about, I think, the Endowment for Democracy, the Fund for Democracy, which was a big item during the Cold War, but these get way off track, as you're not just awoke and weaponized, but you have a totally different mindset. | ||
| That particularly hates, and this is one of the reasons that the post-war international rules-based order turned on the American people, turned on working class people as the enemy. | ||
| First, they gutted the factories, the lords of easy money on Wall Street, the private equity funds, the hedge funds, shipped the jobs to make money overseas. | ||
| So they gutted, this is the economic distress, this is why so many working class people. | ||
| Have to have, I don't know, they call it economic security or food security. | ||
| The big SNAP programs, food stamp programs, plus Medicaid. | ||
| It's the economic distress of the working class and the middle class put on by an economic model that didn't put citizens first. | ||
| It didn't put citizens first. | ||
| What it did was... | ||
| Was ravage the rawest and most corrupt form of state in crony capitalism. | ||
| So that they took, they socialized all the risk and they kept unlimited upside for themselves. | ||
| What do I mean by that? | ||
| Whether you have bank failure in 2008 or a bank failure in Silicon Valley Bank or you have right now And I've got this fascinating book from Alexander Karp called The Technological Republic, and he's the head of Palantir. | ||
| And of all the oligarchs, he's probably the one least on the spectrum. | ||
| But he makes an argument for another Marshall Plan or Mercury Space Plan to essentially bail out the oligarchs because they haven't hit their marks. | ||
| On this Faustian bargain that we made with them, that the Obama administration and Biden made with them to let them become oligarchs so they could control the commanding heights of the algorithmic age. | ||
| They failed in that flat out. | ||
| This is what this whole USAID is, and that's only one thing. | ||
| I hope today's hearing, I think a lot of it's going to be USAID. I know they have the guy from Rob Bluey's Daily Signal. | ||
| That wrote the book Woketopus, which is quite fascinating. | ||
| He kind of ties it all together, not just a woke agenda, but also how it was executed. | ||
| And USAID has been one that we've been on for a long time. | ||
| You know, playing by the rules, and that's what people were doing. | ||
| The House continued to override, one, what President Trump wanted to do, but then its own members, Matt Gaetz, MTG, Lauren Boebert, Eli Crane, Andy Biggs, Gosar. | ||
| Thomas Massey. | ||
| Names sound familiar? | ||
| That tried to gut USAID and were overridden by Republican votes. | ||
| So the committee hearing, we'll dip back in. | ||
| What I'd like to do is I'd like to go back in when the Democrats, and I think this worked well in the confirmation hearing, because you see how they're playing ball. | ||
| We need you, you're information warriors. | ||
| The reason we've had so many victories is because of you and because you're well-armed and focused. | ||
| Let me say, at CPAC, I was amazing. | ||
| Once again, when the posse gets together, I'm able to do these meet and greets, and we'll do one this Friday in Tarrant County. | ||
| I hear what you're working on, and it amazes me the sharp focus that you have on those items of the day that most interest you. | ||
| The hardest thing we have for this show is to keep ahead of the audience. | ||
| The hardest thing now is actually to find time to do everything we want to do, particularly with the live coverage we want to give of activities, particularly in the White House. | ||
| Because this is historic. | ||
| You're seeing history being made, and I've talked to my production team and Grace and Mo and others, and of course the folks at Real America's Voice. | ||
| And because we have access now... | ||
| With Natalie and Amanda Head and Brian at the White House, you're seeing history being made there every day. | ||
| I mean, these are, President Trump is using and moving the big muscles. | ||
| This is not marginalia. | ||
| Let's go back to the, you know, the Clintons. | ||
| Everybody says, the Clintons included, they feel they're wasted their presidency playing small ball, in hindsight. | ||
| You know, school uniforms. | ||
| Clinton doesn't have any real, now he sits and goes, well, You know, it's decades, nothing happens, and there are weeks in which decades happen. | ||
| I would argue differently. | ||
| You had the Berlin Wall in 89, but then you had the whole situation in Russia. | ||
| It was mishandled by Clinton. | ||
| And you had plenty of opportunities with the Chinese Communist Party, yet you gave them World Trade Organization, you gave them Most Fair of the Nation, all in Clinton. | ||
| I know this is totally unrelated to Chinese generals walking through the White House with bags of cash, but they blew it. | ||
| Trump's not blowing it. | ||
| Every day in the Trump White House is like a term in the Clinton White House. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| I can tell you when we go through and I look at night of what is planned the next day in the White House, what they've done, it's so monumental in so many different areas. | ||
| That's why the first cabinet meeting has not started yet. | ||
| It's tentatively scheduled for 11, then I think they push at 11.30. | ||
| What will happen many times, just to give you how it's run, People start congregating and they'll get into the Oval. | ||
| And President Trump's holding court. | ||
| I mean, he's getting feedback. | ||
| He's a people person. | ||
| He's a guy that he takes a lot of meetings, took a lot of meetings when he ran a Trump organization. | ||
| He would say, he would tell me all the time, he didn't come in because he's not a corporate guy. | ||
| He doesn't come in with a set agenda and people briefing and everything like that. | ||
| He's, in golf, we call it a field player. | ||
| It's about the feel. | ||
| They don't have a manufactured classic swing. | ||
| They're a field player. | ||
| And that's what he is in business. | ||
| He sits there. | ||
| And the other thing people don't understand, he's a listener. | ||
| Now, when he's got the press in there, he's dropping bombs and driving things. | ||
| What do we got? | ||
| Oh, the cabinet meeting is about to start. | ||
| Let's go live to the White House. | ||
| Let's go ahead. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| We appreciate you being here. | ||
| And we've put together a great cabinet. | ||
| And we've had tremendous success. | ||
| We've been given a lot of credit for having a very successful first month. | ||
| And we want to make that many months and years, actually. | ||
| But we're going to have many good months and we're going to have many good years, I hope. | ||
| And we're going to solve a lot of problems. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're doing very well with Russia and Ukraine. | |
| President Zelenskyy is going to be coming on Friday. | ||
| That's now confirmed. | ||
| And we're going to be signing an agreement, which will be a very big agreement. | ||
| And I want to thank Howard and Scott for the job you guys did in putting it together. | ||
| Really did an amazing job. | ||
| And that'll be on Rare Earth and other things. | ||
| And as you know, we're in for probably $350 billion. | ||
| Europe is in for $100 billion. | ||
| And that's a big difference. | ||
| So we're in for probably three times as much, and yet... | ||
| It's very important to everybody, but Europe's very close. | ||
| We have a big ocean separating us, so it's very important for Europe, and they hopefully will step up and do maybe more than they're doing, and maybe a lot more. | ||
| The previous administration put us in a very bad position, but we've been able to make a deal where we're going to get our money back, and we're going to get a lot of money in the future, and I think that's appropriate because we have taxpayers that shouldn't be footing the bill. | ||
| And they shouldn't be putting the bill at more than the Europeans are paying. | ||
| So it's all been worked out. | ||
| We're happy about it. | ||
| And I think that, very importantly, we're going to be able to make a deal. | ||
| Most importantly, by far, we're going to make a deal with Russia and Ukraine to stop killing people. | ||
| They'll stop killing young Russian soldiers and young Ukrainian soldiers and other people, in addition, in the towns and cities. | ||
| And we will consider that a very important thing and a big accomplishment because it was going nowhere until this administration came in. | ||
| They hadn't spoken to President Putin in two years. | ||
| And so we'll keep you advised. | ||
| Before we begin the Cabinet, I'd like to have Scott and a couple of people say a few things. | ||
| But most importantly, where are you? | ||
| This is a gentleman who's going places, the head of HUD, and he's going to say... | ||
| You all know him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you're going to say grace, and then we'll have our meeting, right? | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. President. | ||
| Let's pray. | ||
| Father, we thank you for this awesome privilege, Father, to be in your presence. | ||
| God, thank you that you've allowed us to see this day. | ||
| The Bible says that your mercies are new every morning. | ||
| And, Father, God, we give you the glory and the honor. | ||
| Thank you, God, for President Trump, Father, for appointing us. | ||
| Father God, thank you for anointing us to do this job. | ||
| Father, we pray you'll give the president, the vice president, wisdom. | ||
| Father God, as they lead. | ||
| Father, I pray for all of my colleagues that are here around the table and in this room. | ||
| Lord God, we pray that we would lead with a righteous clarity. | ||
| Father God, as we serve the people of this country in every prospective agency, every job that we have, Father, we would humble ourselves before you. | ||
| And we will lead in the manner that you've called us to lead and to serve. | ||
| Father, the Bible says, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. | ||
| Well, Father, we today honor you. | ||
| And in your rightful place, Father, thank you for giving us this opportunity to restore faith in this country and be a blessing to the people of America. | ||
| And Lord God, today in our meeting, we pray that you will be glorified in our conversation. | ||
| In Jesus' name, amen. | ||
| Scott, that was a very good job you did. | ||
| You've done that before, haven't you? | ||
| So, Scott Turner is a terrific young guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's heading up HUD, and he's going to make us all very proud, right? | |
| Thank you, Mr. President. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Great job. | ||
| In just over one month, illegal voter crossings have plummeted by numbers that nobody's actually ever seen before. | ||
| It's much more than 100 percent. | ||
| And we've unleashed... | ||
| American energy at levels that will soon be reported, but we think we're going to get it going very quickly. | ||
| We have incredible people on the energy front. | ||
| I think we have really great people on every front. | ||
| I'll let you know if they're not good, but I think they really are. | ||
| And we're fighting every day to get the prices down. | ||
| The inflation is stopping slowly, but part of the reason it's stopping is because of high interest rates and other problems that we inherited. | ||
| But we have to get the prices down, not the inflation down, the prices of eggs and various other things. | ||
| Eggs are a disaster. | ||
| The Secretary of Agriculture is going to be showing you a chart that's actually mind-boggling what's happened, how low they were with us and how high they are now. | ||
| But I think we can do something about it, Madam Secretary, and I think you're going to do a fantastic job in that position. | ||
| One of the most important initiatives is DOGE. And we have cut billions and billions and billions of dollars. | ||
| We're looking to get it maybe to a trillion dollars. | ||
| If we can do that, we're going to start getting to be at a point where we can think in terms of balancing budgets, believe it or not. | ||
| Something you haven't heard in many, many years. | ||
| Decades, actually. | ||
| And it's a big, whether it's this year or next year, I think we'll be very close to balancing budgets. | ||
| And the Doge is very important. | ||
| And Elon is here to give you a summary of what's happening. | ||
| Some of the things they found. | ||
| Some of the horrible things they found. | ||
| Some of the theft and fraud. | ||
| And we call it waste and abuse. | ||
| But a lot of fraud. | ||
| And probably some fraud that we're not going to be able to prove is fraud. | ||
| But when you hear the names and the places where this money is going, it's a disgrace. | ||
| But we've requested that... | ||
| A lot of people, we want to make sure that the people are working. | ||
| So letters were sent out, and I think everyone at this table is very much behind it. | ||
| And if they are, I'd want them to speak up, but they're very much behind it. | ||
| Letters were sent out to people just to find out if the people exist. | ||
| Do they work? | ||
| Who do they work for? | ||
| Where are they? | ||
| You know, where have they been working? | ||
| Have they been working for other companies or other entities at all? | ||
| Being paid by the government, so they have two jobs, but they're supposed to have one. | ||
| And the letter asks some simple questions like, what have you done lately? | ||
| And if they can answer that, because I can, I can tell you everything I've done for the last long period of time, a lot more than a week. | ||
| And in many cases, we haven't gotten responses. | ||
| Usually that means that maybe that person doesn't exist or that person doesn't want to say they're working for another company while being paid by the United States government. | ||
| There's a lot of interesting things. | ||
| It's very unique. | ||
| But we have a very unique situation because we have a lot of people that were scamming our country. | ||
| We have a lot of dishonest people. | ||
| We have a lot of people that took advantage of a lot of different situations. | ||
| And we're not going to let that happen. | ||
| So I'm going to ask if it's possible to have Elon get up first and talk about Doge because it seems to be of great interest to everyone. | ||
| I will say that there is a large A group of people in this country that have such admiration for what we're doing. | ||
| I got elected with a tremendous vote, winning every swing state, winning the popular vote, winning the counties by thousands of counties. | ||
| I think it was 2,800 to 500. 2,800 counties to 500 counties. | ||
| Think of that. | ||
| And so we have a mandate to do this, and this is part of the reason I got elected. | ||
| I got elected based on He's been a tremendously successful guy. | ||
| He's really working so hard, and he's got businesses to run. | ||
| And in many ways, they say, how do you do this? | ||
| You know, he's sacrificing a lot. | ||
| And getting a lot of praise, I'll tell you. | ||
| But he's also getting hit. | ||
| And we would expect that. | ||
| And that's the way it works. | ||
| So I'd like to have Elon Musk, please, say a few words. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Elon. | |
| Thank you, Mr. President. | ||
| Well, I actually just call myself a humble tech support here because this is actually, as crazy as it sounds, that that is... | ||
| Almost a literal description of the work that the Doge team is doing is helping fix the government computer systems. | ||
| Many of these systems are extremely old. | ||
| They don't communicate. | ||
| There are a lot of mistakes in the systems. | ||
| The software doesn't work. | ||
| So we are actually taxable. | ||
| It's ironic, but it's true. | ||
| The overall goal here with the Doge team is to help address the enormous deficit. | ||
| We simply cannot sustain, as a country, Two trillion dollar deficits. | ||
| Just the interest on the national debt now exceeds the Defense Department's spending. | ||
| We spend a lot on the Defense Department, but we're spending over a trillion dollars on interest. | ||
| If this continues, the country will become de facto bankrupt. | ||
| It's not an optional thing, it is an essential thing. | ||
| That's the reason I'm here. | ||
| And taking a lot of plaque and getting a lot of death threats, by the way. | ||
| I'd like to stack them up, you know. | ||
| But if we don't do this, America will go bankrupt. | ||
| That's why it has to be done. | ||
| And I'm confident at this point, knock on wood, you know, knock on my wooden head, that we can actually find a trillion dollars in savings. | ||
| That would be roughly 15% of the $7 trillion budget. | ||
| And obviously that can only be done with the support of everyone in this room. | ||
| And I'd like to thank everyone for your support. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| This can only be done with your support. | ||
| So this is really the urgency of support function for the President and for the agencies and departments to help achieve those savings and to effectively find 15% in reduction in corn and waste. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we bring the receipts. | |
| Some people say, well, is this real? | ||
| Just go to doge.gov. | ||
| We line item by line item. | ||
| We specify each item. | ||
| And I should say, also, we will make mistakes. | ||
| We won't be perfect. | ||
| But when we make mistakes, we'll fix it very quickly. | ||
| So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally cancelled very briefly was Ebola. | ||
| Ebola prevention. | ||
| I think we all want Ebola prevention. | ||
| So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately. | ||
| And there was no interruption. | ||
| But we do need to move quickly if we're to achieve a trillion-dollar deficit reduction in financial year 2026. It requires saving $4 billion per day, every day, from now through the end of September. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But we can do it, and we will do it. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Would you have any questions of Elon while we're on the subject of those? | ||
| Because we'll finish off with that. | ||
| If you would have any questions, please ask. | ||
| You could ask me or Ilan. | ||
| Go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. President. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Musk. | ||
| I just wanted to ask you that President Trump put out a Truth Social today, saying that everybody in the Cabinet was happy with you. | ||
| I just wondered if that — if you had heard otherwise, and if you had heard anything about members of the Cabinet who weren't happy with the way things were going. | ||
| And if so, what are you doing to address those — any dissatisfaction? | ||
| Hey, Elon, let the Cabinet speak just for a second. | ||
| Is anybody unhappy with Elon? | ||
| If you are, we'll throw him out of here. | ||
| We have a lot of respect for Elon and that he's doing this. | ||
| And some disagree a little bit, but I will tell you, for the most part, I think everyone's not only happy, they're thrilled. | ||
| So, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm grateful. | |
| And President Trump has put together, I think, the best cabinet ever. | ||
| Literally. | ||
| So, and I do not give false praise. | ||
| This is an incredible group of people. | ||
| I don't think that such a talented team has actually ever been assembled. | ||
| I think it's literally the best cabinet that the country has ever had. | ||
| And I think the company should be incredibly appreciative of the people in this room. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Mr. President, thank you. | ||
| Mr. Musk. | ||
| About half of the government employees so far appear to have responded to your request for what they've been doing over the past week. | ||
| Is there a timeline in place for next moves for people being fired and bunking in there? | ||
| Do people expect to see results of that? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, to be clear, like the... | ||
| I think that email perhaps was best interpreted as a performance review, but actually it was a pulse check review. | ||
| Do you have a pulse? | ||
| Do you have a pulse and two neurons? | ||
| If you have a pulse and two neurons, you can reply to an email. | ||
| This is, you know, I think not a high bar, is what I'm saying. | ||
| This is, should we, anyone can accomplish this? | ||
| But what we are trying to get to the bottom of is, we think there are a number of people Some people who are dead, which is probably why they can't respond. | ||
| And some people who are not real people, they're literally fictional individuals that are collecting paychecks. | ||
| Well, somebody's collecting paychecks on a fictional individual, so we're literally trying to figure out, are these people real? | ||
| Are they alive? | ||
| And can they write an email? | ||
| Which I think is a reasonable expectation for the American public. | ||
| The American public would have at least that expectation of someone in the public sector. | ||
| Mr. Mas, roughly a million employees have responded so far to this email. | ||
| Does that mean that the remaining 1 million or so federal employees now risk being terminated? | ||
| And is it your understanding and expectation when you post a directive on X that the cabinet secretaries will follow that order? | ||
| Because several agencies have instructed employees that this is voluntary or not to respond. | ||
| I guess it was, like last week, the President encouraged me by a true social, and also by a phone call, to be more aggressive. | ||
| And I was like, okay, you know, yes sir, Mr. President, we'll indeed do that. | ||
| The President is the Commander-in-Chief. | ||
| I do what the President asks. | ||
| So, and I said, can we send out an email to everyone just saying what did you get done last week? | ||
| And the President said yes, so it did that. | ||
| And, you know, we've got a partial response. | ||
| We're going to send another email. | ||
| Our goal is not to be capricious or unfair. | ||
| We want to give people every opportunity to send an email. | ||
| And the email could simply be, what I'm working on is too sensitive or classified to describe. | ||
| Like, literally, that would be sufficient. | ||
| You know, I think this is just common sense. | ||
| And what is your target number for how many workers, employees you're looking to cut total? | ||
| We wish to keep everyone who is doing a job that is essential and doing that job well. | ||
| But if the job is not essential or they're not doing the job well... | ||
| Okay, Stephen K. Bannon in one room. | ||
| We're passing on to Charlie Kirk. | ||
| We're going to continue live in the Cabinet meeting. | ||
| We will be back here at 5 p.m. | ||
| Eastern Standard Time to wrap it all up for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
See you then. | |
| ...people that haven't responded, though, Elon. | ||
| They are on the bubble. | ||
| You know, I wouldn't say that we're thrilled about it. | ||
| They haven't responded. | ||
| Now, maybe they don't exist. | ||
| Maybe we're paying people that don't exist. |
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