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Feb. 4, 2025 - Louder with Crowder
01:02:37
USAID Exposed: Everything You Need to Know Featuring Mike Benz
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Time Text
*music* Our technological advancement as a society has outpaced our system for handling finite resources because now we are approaching infinite resources.
Nailed it.
I'm like really good at this stuff.
I run this board.
I'm the boss.
What if I ran for president?
I'd be like a super genius president.
I'd be like one of those baby geniuses from the movie President.
I wonder if there's a sale of Forever 21. Click Rumble Premium and join now for $99 annually or $9.99 a month to get the entirely ad-free experience and exclusive content from Lotter with Crowder, Nick DiPaolo, Mr. Guns and Gear, Donald Trump Jr., and an ever-expanding roster of content,
creators and free speech music
plays music plays There's a hair on it.
Oh, sorry about that.
Speaking of neck injuries, how are you feeling, Gerald?
I'm okay.
Good.
I know you've been walking around all day.
It was my mustache hair.
Did you ever get that when you have your beard?
You get a mustache hair or something?
Oh, yeah.
Put your beard on this!
That's true on mid-food.
You just grab one on accident, you gotta trim it.
Clarence Thomas!
That's right, that was considered sexual harassment back in the day.
Hey, we have a lot to get to today.
We do have on the show special guest Mike Benz.
He is the, this is a very long title, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Technology.
And he is currently the executive director for the Foundation for Freedom Online, and he is the expert on USAID and the fraud that has been taking place and the money being funneled to things that you have known.
We are so far beyond the scope of the legitimate role of government.
I would imagine that every single libertarian has had a seizure in the last 24 hours.
And rightfully so.
Yes.
Rightfully so.
On this we agree.
So today we'll be talking about that.
USAID specifically, and laying out the case as to where your tax dollars are going and why this is completely under the legitimate purview of the President of the United States.
We'll be talking about how passports now, you can no longer label X. It's M or F or D or P or P or V. I believe.
I'm not sure.
What are you looking at?
Were you looking at pictures of P? You're looking at pictures of the D? No, no, no, no, no, no.
El Salvador is offering to take in illegals and U.S. citizens.
Not a big fan of that.
But there could be a deal to be struck.
And, yeah, you know, since yesterday, things have changed on tariffs.
So if at some point today you see this on YouTube, head on over to Rumble.
It's a live show, weekdays, 10 a.m.
Eastern.
Let me ask you, what is the worst foreign aid program that the United States has sponsored?
I would say the one where we knowingly gave South Americans gonorrhea.
It was pretty bad.
We've talked about that.
I know it sounds like a conspiracy, but Hillary Clinton officially apologized for it.
No whoops.
There was no whoops.
No, there was no whoops.
Absolutely on purpose, but the list is so long now that that won't even make the top ten winners.
That was not a whoops.
That was Hillary Clinton saying, let it burn.
They hired penis scrapers.
Yes, they did.
They actually did.
Somehow I don't want to mention that.
So, Captain Morgan, Josh Feierstein, February 7th and 8th, Spokane Comedy Club.
Yeah, this weekend.
Good to be here.
Let's go on to this, just so you know.
You need to separate the internet from real life.
So there has been more coping and there has been a worse meltdown, I will say, online in reaction to Trump from the leftists.
Probably the worst I've ever seen.
But in real life, not so much.
There really isn't nearly as much enthusiasm as it was his first term as it relates to the protesters.
That being said, there are still some people who are incredibly performative and this gentle thing wants to remind you that everything Is...
Okay, but it seems like it's not.
Everything's okay.
It's okay.
It's okay.
Everything's okay.
I don't think it is.
Guys, guys, don't worry, though.
The story has a happy ending.
He was immediately rebuked by his father and gang-beaten without mercy.
That's a happy ending.
That lady's mustache is coming in pretty good.
The hormones are working.
I think they're low on testosterone.
And this is something that actually happened, I believe, in New York.
They're protesting that hospitals now are not offering puberty blockers to children.
That's a real thing.
This is the civil rights cause du jour.
Puberty blockers for children.
Here is a black trans protester letting you know that trans people will not be separated from the LGBT umbrella, but I'm not entirely sure what this person is saying because it makes no sense and it's revolting.
Shut this entire city down!
Even Chipotle?
Tyler, scary.
Very nice.
Because what they will try to do, they will try to separate us.
They will kick the trans people off the bus.
They're kicking the indigenous people off the bus.
They're kicking our intersex community off the bus.
Our two-sphere plus family, they're kicking them off the bus.
They just want a membership LGBT bus.
Well, guess what, babe?
That LGBT bus, it's not going to have any gas.
It won't have any tires.
Y'all not going any far.
Or audio guys.
Because we are a community that is made and has been woven with the fire and the spirit of revolution!
Revolution!
Revolution!
Can we deport them?
Revolution.
So the people that are not here with us, we will take note.
Sirens.
First off, it's not a community.
That's in orbit.
Second.
Anyone else notice that they had the Palestine flags right next to the trans flag?
Okay, see how that...
To this day, this is an open offer.
Anyone there at that protest, I will pay for your ticket and all expenses paid for you to go to Palestine for two weeks and set up a protest.
Two days!
And you don't even have to take a bus.
I will pay for it.
Stephen will send you on a plane.
Right here.
Rumble Premium.
This is what you guys support.
We will pay for the trip.
For a group of you.
It'll cost us a pretty penny.
Please do it.
Please take me up on it.
You have to sign a waiver, though.
I am tired of the winning.
Because this is what's happening right now.
There's so much winning that people like that, they don't even know what they're saying.
Something about a bus?
Something about a bus.
And something about needing to redo the shocks.
They kicked off the gay bus.
They wanted to get on the gay bus, but the gay bus won't let them.
So they're going to take their tires or something.
And siphon their gas.
But look, the winning...
Just continues.
I don't know if you saw all this.
I'm sure you did see this.
With Canada yesterday, we were talking about tariffs.
So Mexico capitulated.
You kind of called it.
My prediction here, you see this with Mexico, I would be willing to bet that Canada...
Falls in line by end of the week.
Two seconds later.
With just hours to go before U.S. tariffs were set to take effect at midnight, news of a last-minute deal to delay a potential trade war for at least one month.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump spoke twice by phone today.
Trudeau says proposed tariffs will be paused for at least 30 days while we work together.
He says Canada is implementing a $1.3 billion border plan with a list of specific measures to improve border security.
And I'm not even Bill Kristol, and I got it right.
What does he do, Bill Kristol?
He's the editor-at-large of Bulwark.
Oh, that's right.
He also works there?
He worked for the W... I don't know.
He's one of those people who is entirely useless.
Timmy.
By the way, the exact same monologue from Colbert, from Jon Stewart, from Jimmy Kimmel.
Every single one of them said that Donald Trump caved before the end of the day, and he's taking off the tariffs.
Not one of them mentioned that Canada offered up billions of dollars in enhanced border security, which was the exact demand.
This is how you know they're not just uninformed.
They are deliberately misinforming you.
We're going to put together a supercut.
The exact same jokes, exact same sources, down to the one Wall Street Journal article yesterday about Donald Trump's tariffs.
Kimmel, Stewart, Colbert.
Same jokes about guacamole.
Be better.
Guacamole?
Same jokes last week about Jamba Juice, RFK. We're going to put together a supercut.
But not a single one of them informed their audience that Canada did exactly what we asked of them.
They hate you, the American people.
Are you getting the picture?
Okay, let's go to another win.
El Salvadorian president.
I'm not going to try and pronounce the name.
Agreed to a pretty unique arrangement as it relates to housing illegal aliens with the United States.
Here's Rubio, who I think has an unreceding hairline.
The president, in an act of extraordinary friendship to our country, knowing the challenges we face in the U.S., has agreed to the most unprecedented and extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world.
He has agreed to accept for deportation any illegal alien in the United States who is a criminal from any nationality, be they MS-13 or Tren d'Aragua, and house them in his jails.
That's pretty epic.
Yes, and it's actually this massive terrorism confinement center.
It can hold 40,000 people.
Oh, I thought we had a picture there.
Bekele even said that he would take in American citizens writing this on X. We are willing to take in only convicted.
There you go.
Only convicted criminals, including convicted U.S. citizens, into our mega prison in exchange for a fee.
Well, that's the fine print.
Not a big fan of, you know, American citizens because you can't deport American citizens.
But I understand the point.
By the way, health insurance lobbyists have offered to pay double to accept Luigi Mangione.
Luigi not happy.
They know how to deal with their gangs down there.
Yes.
Every single illegal alien not from El Salvador is like, please, no!
No!
No city of El Salvador, no!
Yeah, it's rated the least fun prison.
One star.
Most gang raped prison, though.
I mean, so there are trade-offs.
No, you can't even do that.
I don't think they can.
I think there's no time for gang rape.
They took all the fun out of prison.
They took gang rape out of prison?
Yeah.
Well, they do.
Well, because, you know, they want to demoralize you first.
They elephant-walk you from cell to cell.
Yes.
The gang rape at least builds some camaraderie.
Yeah, you find love, connections, none of that.
They don't even allow spooning.
Well, there's a lot of spooning.
Well, there was.
They're not allowed to enjoy it.
They're not allowed to enjoy it.
The second there's a boner, tased.
Tased, afuera!
They just have electrodes in case there's movement.
Hey, that guard looks...
This prison is no fun.
Now, my question to you is, how fast do you think the United States is going to be filling...
That prison with illegals.
I have no problem with...
Hey, if it's more cost-effective, send the illegal aliens here.
Again, the ones who are criminals.
Criminals.
The ones who are violent criminals.
We'll send them back to their own country.
I say right away, John Oliver complained that the process would take too long.
Not here.
What process?
Your wish is our command.
El Salvadorian prison.
They got an airstrip.
What?
No!
That's not what I meant!
We didn't like Guantanamo, so we went south.
It's the whole monkey paw thing.
You wished!
Comparing Guantanamo to El Salvador's terrorist prisons, it's night and day, dude.
It's night and day.
It's crazy.
I've seen the prisons.
I would stay in Guantanamo Bay for a weekend.
That's true.
You have.
I have.
I was right across.
I wasn't that far from the prisons, and we pretty much had the same quarters.
Let's go on.
This one is a lot of fun, too.
Donald Trump, President Trump, has made it very clear with this administration, and now it extends to passports, that there are only two genders.
And again, there will be a time in history when people look back and say, from like 2015 to like 2024, there was like 57 genders, I guess.
And then it went back to two.
It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.
Confusion and anxiety for the LGBTQ plus community when it comes to the Trump administration's policies around gender identification.
The president declared there were only two genders recognized by the federal government, and those identities are determined at birth.
And now we are seeing changes to the U.S. passport application process.
I just got my new passport in the mail, and they changed the gender to male because of Donald Trump.
Man, baby!
So, yes, now there will be two genders on your passport, male or female, with one exception.
If you're Mr. Bill Kristol, your gender will be listed as Mr. McPenisface.
So that's an official policy.
We do make some exceptions.
There were a series of less childish installments as jokes, but we chose that.
Now, the Washington Post, this is one of those things, talk about finding common ground.
They're only allowing us to list two genders on the passport.
Now, when you're saying the same thing, just a...
Different tone?
There's no common ground.
We're saying, they're only allowing you to have two genders on your passport now!
We're not going to find common ground if you think that fact is horrifying, and I find it heartwarming.
In the Washington Post, published an editorial by Ms. Frizzle and Pierre Poiliev love child, Darren Rosenblum, and they wrote this, why the X on my passport matters.
It doesn't.
Agents know what to expect when I show my ID, and that's exactly what they get.
This person wrote, I lived with the M for over 50 years.
When in 2021, it became possible to change it, I didn't flinch.
Brave.
As a U.S. citizen teaching at a Canadian university, I crossed the border a lot, and an X not only felt more me, it made travel easier.
Lost the carry-on.
If it's even necessary to have a sex marker, X provides clarity for everyone.
It provides clarity for no one.
It's literally like, I don't know.
It reflects how people see me.
Research has shown that we all use shortcuts when identifying others.
With X on my passport, I pass through borders without any problems.
It's quick.
Not when traveling to Saudi Arabia, mind you.
Border agents know what to expect when I walk up, and that's exactly what they get.
X is efficient.
X marks the spot.
In this case, I guess X marks the spot.
But you don't want that treasure.
Oh, I hope it's not written on the back of the Constitution.
Just a little lemon juice.
There'll be no plundering from me.
You're safe.
For those on audio, that bit made no sense, but I make no apologies.
You can just watch, of course, on Rumble Premium.
And Gerald, didn't you say that you were actually having trouble getting your passport?
What's happening with it.
Down in the city of broken schemes Where banks prey on our heartbroken dreams But I found a light so pure and clean
American financing gave me a chance to be seen No hidden fees, no hidden fees
lines to find Just honest words That ease my mind In a world of shocks Where shadows lurk They gave me hope They did the work They saved my hope Just
one clear goal To bring the dream To every heart A place to live A brand new start USAID!
USAID! Not to be confused with you said.
No, I said.
No, Gerald said.
I've said many times.
We've said.
Gerald said that wouldn't work.
Because the way they write it, they don't put in the dots.
They don't.
They don't put in the dots.
It's very easy to say you said.
You said.
Yes.
But then it just becomes hearsay.
But it's USAID. So.
It's a childish program today.
Every day.
What?
Really quickly.
So it looks like RFK Jr. approved in a party line vote by committee?
Is that the final, final vote?
Oh!
He's in committee!
I imagine it's just he's out of committee.
Can we get an update on that?
No.
What?
It's committee.
Okay, that's what I said.
No, what?
I'm reading.
Thanks for the update.
I'm reading.
It says no, it's committee.
I said it's just out of committee.
Not that he, you know, is official.
Anyway, USH. Can I admonish your own?
No, I didn't.
I would appreciate it, personally, because people's on a roll.
Keep buying time until we have Mr. Benz on.
Thanks, Daddy.
What?
What was that?
All right.
So, look, this has been the top trend for the last, really, day and a half.
USH. Okay.
I'm going to, and we're going to have Mr. Mike Benz on the show here in just a little bit, who's really an expert in this, and he's broken a lot of these stories.
What you're hearing from the media is that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are trying to, I guess, tyrannically take over data.
No, what's happening is we are looking for fraud in government.
We are looking for inefficiencies.
And people's work computers, the stations where they work, those offices that may be engaging in said fraud or wasteful activity, Should be examined and should not be wiped before people can go in.
Let me, before we get into USA, okay?
We can find no common ground if we don't all agree that it's a problem, irrefutably, that the government, the federal government, loses $233 billion to $521 billion a year in fraud.
That's not just wasteful spending, that's...
No idea what's happened to it.
Half a trillion dollars a year in fraud.
Even if you're a big government democrat, I would imagine you don't believe it's the government's job to engage in fraud.
But if we can't even start examining that, well then we end up with a demagoguery that you see with USAID. So, half a trillion dollars annually in fraud.
Alright, let's start with that.
Then 97% Of all donations from USAID employees went directly to Democrats.
Have I set the stage?
Are you starting to get the picture?
Okay.
You may not have been super familiar with USAID until this weekend, but I would imagine you've heard of it by now.
It is the essential programs that USAID provided that kept my family and I fed.
As we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms.
AID is an essential instrument of U.S. foreign policy and U.S. national security policy.
This is a real bureaucratic mess, the USAID.
The money is being spent and shoveled to countries all over the world, countries that hate us, for programs that, I mean, you have countries where people are starving and they're focusing on, you know, DEI.
At the point at which you don't merely, like, if you've got an apple and it's got a worm, you can take the worm out.
But if you've got actually just a ball of worms, it's hopeless.
Okay.
Elon puts a fine point on this.
Yes, he does.
Really quickly, Elon Musk actually tweeted something out this morning, guys, if you can look at it, either last night or this morning, where he said he thinks the number's actually higher than the $521 billion.
I think he said it's as high as like 10%, which I think came out to about $700 billion.
And then he put another one plus trillion on waste on top of that.
On top of the fraud.
These numbers, I think, are going to grow the more we get into it.
Yes.
It's worse.
Absolutely.
And before we get to the specifics, where we can give you some examples of...
USAID. USAID is the perfect example.
It's the poster boy for fraud, waste, and government inefficiency.
And really, money laundering.
An entire organization that has no business existing.
You think Washington, Jefferson, Madison, you think they would have stood for this crap?
Wait till I get to the examples.
But as a quick refresher, let's look at the timeline.
And what USAID is?
Okay, so USAID is the United States Agency for International Development.
Their yearly budget is like $40 billion.
It was founded in 1961. It was supposed to be an independent agency.
Gets their guidance from Secretary of State.
According to its now defunct website, that part I like, here's the part I don't like, the description.
Tell me if you think this is overly broad.
We work together with individuals and communities, well that's everything, and countries globally to improve everyday Lives.
What?
Imagine that on Shark Tank.
Well, what are you doing?
We're improving lives.
Where?
How?
With individuals.
Okay, in communities.
All right.
In countries.
Yeah.
Improving their lives.
What do you do?
And we'll get to what they consider...
I know military people and veterans right now are watching this going, oh, that was on my evaluation report.
My NCOER, my OER. That's what got me a promotion, was that description right there.
There's a fear of accountability from the left.
And so if you set up the premise so broad that no one can call you on it, hey, guess what?
Start examining that, you're going to find some fraud.
And we have.
So here is, by the way, USAID's 2023 year-in-review video hosted by Fraggle Rock Elizabeth Warren.
As this year comes to a close, I want to share some of the progress we have made with partners around the globe to build a more equitable, resilient, and humane world.
Earthworm Jane.
This year, we rushed aid to tens of millions of people in 76 emergencies, including the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, the conflict in Sudan, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
We built coalitions to support countries experiencing democratic openings.
Drawing in $110 million from private sector and philanthropic partners to bolster reform efforts.
What about the other $39 billion?
We support Ukrainian businesses, farmers, and tech to help Ukraine's economy return to growth, even amidst Putin's brutal war.
On behalf of all of us here at USAID, thank you for supporting our mission to extend the reach of human dignity across the planet.
I wish you peace and joy this holiday season.
You know, nuggets, peace and joy this holiday season, humanity, dignity, a haircut like that.
You can guess 97% of USA donations going to Democrats.
What do you think that includes?
Do you think that includes actual human rights, freedom of speech, second?
No, no, no, it does not.
It includes gender identity and every single woke new cause du jour that you can insert.
Let me give you the timeline here because the left is trying, they're really hell-bent on telling you that Donald Trump is a tyrant.
Okay.
This is not an example of something being shut down.
This is an example of blatant insubordination when you have a government looking to save taxpayers dollars.
Let me give you the timeline.
Monday, January 20th, Donald Trump signed an executive order to pause foreign aid for 90 days.
Totally reasonable.
Monday, January 27th, nearly 60 USAID employees were placed on leave for directly circumventing Trump's executive order.
60 employees?
In other words, it was an executive order.
At that point, pause.
And he had 60 employees saying, no.
That's a mutiny, just to be clear.
According to Elon Musk on X, again, he's biased, he said, all Doge did was check to see which federal organizations were violating the president's executive orders the most.
Turned out to be USAID, so that became our focus.
Keep that overlay up really quickly.
I want you to see what he's responding to, right?
So he says, this person is supposed to have, there's like a thread of this, friends inside the Democrat Party.
This is very, very telling.
He says, talk to a friend who has connections within the Democratic Party, and he said the level of panic over Trump and Elon shutting down the USAID is unlike anything he's ever seen.
That's what Elon is responding to, and it's like, Democrats are freaking out.
They didn't freak out about LGBTQ stuff.
They didn't freak out about anything like they're freaking out about this.
Pay attention to who is freaking out.
That is going to matter.
And Elon's like, We just simply were looking for the place that was doing the most, and it turns out it's USAID! Right.
And by the way, this is an organization.
We're not even talking about just citizens.
We are talking about the organism that is government and its function.
When people say, oh, tyranny, if I were to come in, and I do, on the weekend, right, I'll go to a moment, hey, where's this sketch that we were working?
I want to look through it.
I'm not going through your private stuff and asking for your private computer at home.
It's a work computer!
That's where the sketch is!
That's where the script exists, right?
Almost like you own it.
Yeah, it's almost like, hey, hold on a second.
Taxpayers, we own it.
Donald Trump said, hey, I want to see what it is that you're working on.
And by God, this is where they make their stand against a tyrant.
In my office of business.
Might as well have ended that review video with, don't worry about the rest.
Yes, exactly.
It's none of your business.
What else we did?
So then on Saturday, February 1st, yeah, February 1st, this Saturday.
The USA Director of Security was placed on leave for refusing access to Doge employees.
Think about that.
So Doge comes in and says, okay, we're going to look at what you guys are working on and see if it's efficient, see if there's any waste.
I will not!
Wait.
What?
No, you kind of have to.
You can do that?
Again, this is how disconnected they are from reality.
I'm imagining you're watching right now, listening.
You probably work in the private sector.
Do you get to tell your employer, I will not show up for my performance review.
Well, you're fired.
Yeah, easy peasy.
That's the review.
You're gone.
We need go no further.
Monday, February 3rd, Donald Trump addressed the situation directly.
And we'll get to the waste here in a second from the Oval Office.
The first term, though, USAID was something that you liked in some respects.
I love the concept of it.
Yeah, sure.
I love the concept, but they turn out to be radical left lunatics.
And the concept of it is good, but it's all about the people.
I love that he doesn't mince words.
Could you have a more clear example of, I've always been bothered by this, public servants.
Yeah.
These are public servants.
Their stand is against you.
Do you, hey, the government has the right to audit you, but you don't have the right to audit the government in any capacity, 500 billion, half a trillion in fraud.
You realize the government, it is no longer, it's nothing.
If not an abusive relationship, if the government can audit you, whatever it wants, and it can never be audited.
These public servants Are taking a stand against you because they believe they are above you.
You work in the private sector.
You have to deal with accountability.
We don't.
Who cares if there's half a trillion in fraud?
Pull it up.
Pull it up the quote from Elon Musk.
The tweet that I was talking about.
He's getting to the bottom.
700. He's like $700 billion a year.
Waste is at least 15%.
So another trillion plus dollars.
Yes.
If Musk is right, he's basically getting $2 trillion.
Out of our deficit.
We had a $2 trillion deficit or close to it last year.
There you go.
Balance the budget.
Done.
People said it can never be done.
It can never be done.
You could also never deport people.
Well, here you are.
You could also never go back to two genders.
Well, here you are.
This is the first stone they turned over.
I know!
I know!
It's like me with my yard and the rocks and the wolf spiders.
I'm like, the first one!
You little prick!
And they sent six young tech nerds.
To go and do this.
It wasn't like they sent in the Gestapo to go in.
Yeah, that's how they act.
They act like guys came in with AR-15s or M4s.
These kids are like, I think from like 22 to 27 years old.
There's six of them.
They got doxxed and now they're pissed off.
They're like, I can't believe they sent these guys in and Elon Musk's an idiot.
I don't know.
He's sending rockets to space and catching them.
Maybe he knows a thing or two about something.
He sends some tech geniuses in there.
They go in and they're like, you can't do it.
Here are their names.
Maybe we should make their lives miserable.
Right.
That's the left's reaction.
It's, I think, it's the first stone they turned over.
The very first.
The very first one, and we will get to all of the crystal clear examples, and you can come and let me know if you think it's a legitimate role of government as we get to them.
But of course, the left has been in an absolute meltdown ever since they have faced any kind of accountability here.
Whoever is here at AID, or at least witness firsthand, What is happening with this Elon Musk attempted takeover which will not stand?
This is something that's just going to make our country less safe and really shows the undermining of rule of law in our nation.
There are people right now who have HIV who are alive only because the United States is making sure of that.
Donald Trump says we don't care.
You go die.
We also know this is just the beginning.
If Doge attacks USAID today, then you can be sure they'll move on to another target tomorrow.
Good!
Who knows?
Maybe it'll be the Postal Service or the IRS.
You promise?
I already support it!
We cannot find common ground if we're saying the exact same thing with an entirely different visceral reaction.
He, Chuck Schumer, is saying if they go after an audit The USAID, USAID, they could possibly look at auditing with the IRS or the Post Service.
And I'm going, hey, maybe we can audit the Postal Service or IRS. Think about how much they hate you.
The IRS audits you!
You, bitch!
It audits you!
And they're terrified that you, your dollars could be used to audit them!
Is anyone else...
You cut the clip short, he went on to say, and who knows, they might even look into Senate spending.
They might want to know what we're doing in the Senate House.
They might go in the waxing maze and find out it's just corn.
Yes, yes, I think the agency that has audited Americans needlessly and just welcomed 78,000, sorry, not agents, employees, I think that one audit of the auditing agency is entirely reasonable.
You don't hate the left enough.
You understand this.
Let's go through the claims that have been made about this, and it's so asinine.
And by the way, you guys can click right there.
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I'm sorry for losing my mind, but I guess I'm the only...
Don't be.
Can you imagine auditing the auditors?
No.
All right.
Here's a claim.
That they are making.
That it's illegal for President Trump to shut down USAID. As my colleague said, it's not only a gift to our adversaries, but trying to shut down the Agency for International Development by executive order is plain illegal.
It is illegal.
Here's the truth.
No, it's not.
And he's not trying to shut...
What he's doing is not shutting down U.S. aid.
No.
They're trying to roll U.S. aid under the State Department, cut funding in the workforce if there are inefficiencies, if there is some kind of waste, which we know there is, and for it to remain pretty much exclusively a humanitarian agency.
What he is saying is illegal.
What he means to say is you can never downsize any government organization ever.
That's illegal.
That's his argument, okay?
And they didn't try to shut it down.
Remember the timeline.
They basically did some executive orders, then went in to try to do some auditing, and USAID said no.
They're like, oh, there must be so much fraud here.
None of you can come.
10,000 people were told to stay home from work on Monday because, you know, I don't know, bleach, whatever the Hillary Clinton thing did to the servers.
We don't want you going in there when we're investigating you and deleting everything.
So that's all that's happened right now.
Here's exactly what happened with USAID. If you have a child, okay, and you said, you ever gone through this situation?
Clean up your room.
You go in, you go, oh, everything put where it's supposed to be?
And your son or daughter says yes.
And you say, open the closet.
And they say, no.
Did you put everything in the closet?
Don't look.
No.
Did you just stuff everything in the closet?
If you open that up, is everything going to come tumbling down?
Mm-mm.
So open it.
USAID refuses to open the closet, only we know there's likely fraud and potential sex trafficking in there.
So, Marco Rubio, who was now named acting director of USAID, confirmed this very fact from El Salvador.
Can it be reformed or does it need to die?
Well, that was always the goal, was to reform it.
But now we have rank in subordination.
Now we have basically an active effort.
Their basic attitude is we don't work for anyone.
We work for ourselves.
No agency of government can tell us what to do.
So the president made me the acting administrator.
I've delegated that power to someone who's there full time.
And we're going to go through the same process at USAID as we're going through now at the State Department.
I think there are some...
This is not about getting rid of foreign aid.
There are things that we do through USAID. Completely reasonable.
Humanity.
And I still don't know if it's USAID or USAID. I don't care.
I think USAID makes it sound like they don't do anything wrong.
Right.
They want it to be that.
USAID, but you said USAID. Yeah, I prefer those.
You guys can comment what you prefer, what you use.
Here's another claim.
That the left is making.
And this is the virtue signaling.
Is that USAID, they're doing God's work.
Come on, guys.
This is noble work.
So Amy Klobuchar posted this on X. She said, Shutting down USAID is not about efficiency.
It's about undermining America's global leadership.
USAID counters extremism.
Fights diseases and creates more markets for United States exports.
Hold on a second.
Those shouldn't all fall under one umbrella.
No.
It's like, you know, you're jack of all trades, master of none.
I don't know, but it seems to me that if you are really good at countering terrorism extremism, probably not a specialist in fighting diseases and opening up export markets for commodities.
You can't do all of this.
Oh, that's right.
Fraud.
She says this is reckless and dangerous.
Here's the truth.
She's an idiot.
She doesn't want you to find what's under the very first rock that we have turned over.
Like Toolman said, the department has become this rogue actor, to be clear, working against, not only being inefficient, but actively against American interests.
As Marco Rubio, most improved player, I would say, this last year, he laid it out quite clearly.
I mean, my frustration with USAID goes back to my time in Congress.
It's a completely unresponsive agency.
It's supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department, and it refuses to do so.
USAID has a history of sort of ignoring that and deciding that they're somehow a global charity separate from the national interest.
These are taxpayer dollars.
I'm very troubled by these reports that they've been unwilling to cooperate with people who are asking simple questions about what does this program do?
Who gets the money?
Who are our contractors?
Who's funded?
And that sort of level of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct the sort of mature and serious review that I think Fournier writ large should have.
Let me be clear.
President Trump asked for an itemized receipt and USAID said no.
Okay?
That's what's happening.
Rubio also posted this, I believe from the White House website.
He said, For decades, the United States Agency for International Development has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous and, in many cases, malicious pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats with next to no oversight.
And now that we see what's going on, it makes sense that they changed their original logo.
That was them letting us know.
Well, well, well.
Sam, you gotta be quiet about this.
Yes, and this isn't just hearsay, okay?
We're going to go through some examples, but Caroline Levitt did a great job.
She did a great job laying out just a cursory list of ridiculous USAID funding projects.
And here's the reason why Elon Musk and others have been taking a look, because if you look at the waste and abuse that has run...
Through USAID over the past several years, these are some of the insane priorities that that organization has been spending money on.
$1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia's workplaces.
$70,000 for a production of a DEI musical in Ireland.
$47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia.
$32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru.
I don't know about you, but as an American taxpayer, I don't want my dollars going towards this crap, and I know the American people don't either, and that's exactly what Elon Musk has been tasked by President Trump to do, to get the fraud, waste, and abuse out of our federal government.
Let me give you a few other line items that they may not want you to know about, and all references are available.
Link in the description.
$11 million.
For a Sesame Street workshop in Iraq.
They beheaded Elmo.
There's only a one show, so...
John B. Elmo.
$2 million for sex changes in Guatemala.
Which way?
$6 million for tourism in Egypt.
Hold on.
Time out.
Time out.
You have the pyramids.
Yes.
And you need help getting people there?
Yeah.
We can't help you.
Six million dollars.
Pyramids.
This way.
There's the Sphinx.
You want to come or you don't.
Smells like shit.
That's the Nile.
We don't advertise it, but there it is.
Wait, where are the pyramids?
Is it those giant things that you can see from space?
They also gave an undisclosed amount.
To Nina Jankiewicz, remember?
The censorship czar, the misinformation czar.
USA helped fund Jankiewicz's censorship efforts at UK Center for Information Resilience.
You can go read anything that this broad writes.
I wish I loved anything as much as she loves silencing free speech.
Also, pretty interesting, at least a million dollars to Wuhan gain-of-function research.
Wait a minute.
Now you'll hear the left say, no, no, no, that didn't happen, that's a myth.
Okay, let me just sort of show you how this funnel works.
The money was funneled from...
Taxpayer, to USAID, to UC Davis, to the EcoHealth Alliance, to the Wuhan University and Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Do me a favor, because you said at least.
I've seen another number floating around.
It may not be accurate, so I trust our guys.
But there was a number, I think, around $50 to $53 million.
We weren't able to confirm it.
Keep in mind, this is without us being able to do an audit, because they said no.
So, your guess is as good as mine.
As far as how bad the fraud is.
And you know what's so interesting, too?
This is a guy who I just really can't stand because he does the whole, I used to be a Republican butt thing, and I don't understand what purpose he serves.
And I don't want to question God's judgment in creating a human being, but...
Bill Kristol...
He was the guy animating that comic book down in South America, Gash Girl.
Bill Kristol tweeted this out or posted this.
He said, the deep state is preferable to the Trump state.
Now, that may be because...
I've seen nothing that has reassured me or that has changed my mind that he shouldn't have been president.
I don't know how that happened, but...
We've got to have better security.
We do have to have better security.
We found out $2 million, so the deep state is preferable to the Trump state.
Bill Kristol.
Not the one who does impressions.
Not the Oscar host.
Bill Kristol, the professional talking head.
Well, now we know that $2 million in U.S. aid funds went directly to his Defending Democracy Together Institute.
He is the director there, Mr. Bill Kristol.
So what you mean is that, okay, the deep state that funnels you money for being useless...
It's back.
It's taking over the executive branch, which is bad.
Okay, that's enough.
Oh, finally.
Thank you, Mr. Yeah, I think he's...
I think he's talking to you, Mr. Crystal.
I think...
And if you get raped by a pack of n****s, it'll be your fault.
And by the way, it's indirectly going to Defending Democracy Together Institute.
Indirectly, not directly.
Admonish me, because I had a lot to navigate there.
Indirectly.
Indirectly.
You had a lot of heads in your space.
That only pisses me off more.
It is a little bit more.
It's almost like they're trying to hide it.
It's money indirectly.
It indirectly went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
And how could Fauci legally sit before Congress and say, no, we're not funding any research?
That's how.
How about this?
My opinion, you can comment if you think that this is too hardline, is that whether directly or indirectly, no taxpayer dollars should go to Bill Kristol in any capacity.
Yes!
Some?
None.
That's my opinion.
But that's me, Mr. Fascist Hardliner.
And here's something else that's pretty interesting.
Let's go to Bangladesh.
In August of 2024, USA-funded activists to topple the Bangladeshi Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina.
And this person was replaced by Clinton Global Initiatives' Muhammad Yunus.
It just seems odd to me, and it's kind of odd when you go, all right, so there was basically some kind of a coup, and I see the Clinton name, and Bill Kristol's making money off of the same organization.
All right, and they won't let us get an audit in.
They won't let us see an itemized receipt.
So former State Department official Mike Benz talked about this at length, and we're going to have him on.
But the USAID program.
IRI poured State Department U.S. taxpayer funds into transgender dance festivals, into a whole slew of, you know, sort of woke identity events around minority rights and funding minority rappers sort of woke identity events around minority rights and funding minority rappers
ultimately culminating in throngs of street protests that forced the democratically elected prime minister to flee the country in a helicopter.
As a Clinton Global Initiative fellow, was named the new president, and they've canceled elections.
Ooh, it's the canceling elections part, really.
That seems to happen a lot.
I'm going to rule and not let you guys decide if that's a good thing or not.
Well, you know, they put that money into DEI in Serbia, and then in Serbia, I believe they elected their first lesbian official.
Oh, it worked, apparently.
Yeah, it's like 85% orthodox or something in Serbia.
I'm very surprised.
Wait, there was election?
There was election?
Wait!
When was there election?
Wait, gay?
Oh, no!
Wait, so this lady likes snatch?
We did not vote for that.
Wow, she's just like me.
Yes.
She speaks my language.
We are the same.
So this is what we're dealing with.
And it's not just USAID. Like we said, it's the first stone that we turned over.
It is a government entity that should not exist, need not exist.
Their mission is overly broad.
They aren't actually effectively carrying out said mission, and they aren't allowing an audit to be performed, and they're refusing to provide itemized receipts.
And all of this is because they are taking their moral stand.
But let's be clear, it's not against President Donald Trump.
They're taking their stand against you.
right now.
So for USAID, I want you to know all eyes are on you.
Yeah, they throw our money straight in the septic tank, but time to clean the house, you see.
Doja's ending USAID.
Yeah, Doja's ending USAID.
Yeah, it's basically a money laundering think tank.
Clean it up and close it now.
Doja's ending all of that doo-doo.
Yeah, Doja's making them all cry.
There's the zag.
Now, we do, I believe we have our guest on the line.
I just want to be clear because his titles are long.
It is.
But he's been diving into all things USAID. If you've been actually following the story, you may not know this is...
The originator of a lot of this information.
So this man was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Technology for the State Department.
And he was appointed by Donald Trump.
This was during the first term.
He negotiated U.S. policy on Internet diplomacy issues.
And then after that, he founded the Foundation for Freedom Online.
It's a watchdog group.
Largely dedicated to free speech and an open internet, and he has been doing a lot of the digging here.
Let's welcome to the show Mr. Mike Benz.
Mr. Benz, can you hear me, see me, sir?
Welcome to be here.
Well, sorry.
Hold on.
Let me redo this.
Glad to have you here.
I meant to say welcome or glad to have you, and I screwed it up.
Glad to be had.
Okay, there you go.
Well, careful.
Don't threaten me with a good time.
So, you've been talking about this at length.
Let me ask you, what spurred you looking into USAID? I mean, I know, obviously, you were in the Trump administration, but you have been like a dog on a bone on this.
Do you think this is even the most egregious example in government, or just one that is going to be pretty easy to prove?
I do think it's actually the most egregious, or certainly in the top two or three in government.
But we're still at the very tip of the iceberg as to why, I think, as this onion gets peeled more and more.
What you're going to see is something that's actually central to almost all rogue aspects of the way American foreign policy has been run and the way that the foreign policy establishment has been weaponized against domestic politics.
The big no-no is that there's supposed to be a firewall between what the CIA does abroad and what it does at home.
This is the thing the CIA got in trouble for in the 60s and 70s.
The Pentagon is not supposed to be doing stuff at home.
The State Department is not supposed to be doing stuff at home.
And USAID is not supposed to be doing stuff at home.
Can I ask you about that specifically?
Because some people didn't fully understand.
I want you to make it really clear.
When you posted on X that USAID is how the CIA gets shit done.
Can you explain that to people who may not be initiated here?
Yes.
The CIA liaises with assets of the U.S. government that are capacity-built in order to instrumentalize them for one of two purposes, to advance U.S. national security interests or to advance U.S. national interest.
Basically, you can think of that like keeping us safe or making us wealthier.
For example, if we need the oil in a country, we might do it out of national interest.
If we need to topple a government to install a military base there because the prime minister is recalcitrant, then we would say that would be for national security purposes.
But the point is that the CIA operates under a plausible deniability cloak.
It was originally supposed to be parked at the State Department directly in 1948 when this was all being constructed.
George Kennan's idea was to have, rather than a CIA operations division, have a State Department Bureau of Political Warfare.
But that did not sync well with the UN Declaration on Human Rights, and so they made it a spy agency.
And then the CIA started getting in trouble in the 1960s and 70s with all the scandals of what they were doing, and it moved a substantial amount of its operations into USAID, the humanitarian group.
It was a sort of NGO plausible deniability layer for the intelligence world.
And USAID is a swing player because it's an independent agency, so what it does is it capacity builds the assets that the CIA then works with.
So you think of it as three stools when it comes to advancing U.S. national interests abroad.
State Department sets the policy.
The CIA will do the operations of telling our assets on the ground what to do and working with them.
But none of that works unless those assets are capacity built, meaning they're given money.
They're given resources.
They're able to beef up their staff.
What we do whenever we go into a country is we do what's called a baseline assessment.
We look at all of our assets on the ground.
We look at how that syncs with our intended foreign policy in the region.
We say, okay, what do we have versus what do we need?
And USAID plays the lion's share role in plunging that gap to provide those...
For example, if we have...
14 NGOs in the area, and they only have a little bit of money.
USAID will find ways to funnel money so that we, if the State Department says we need 50, or if the CIA says we need 50, USAID will find a way to multiply those institutions, and it will run the money to them.
And so they really are, you know, you can't have operations without financing for it.
And so USAID plays that role for DOD, for CIA, and for state.
And that's why they've become, Really the most important institution.
You know, in American foreign policy.
My follow-up question is, and I know this isn't obviously your framing or fault, you say independent organization.
I don't think that means what people think it means at this point.
Like, we use this term NGO, and I know people will try and factor me where I say this has no legitimate role in government.
Well, it's not a government organization.
It gets its funding from taxpayers.
Can we be clear about this?
This is the problem that we face.
This is the swamp, right?
Oh, yeah, they don't mean independent from the government.
They mean independent from us.
Right, yes.
You know, it's an unauditable black hole.
This is the sort of thing that our former Trump-1 attorney general made his bones doing.
When Bill Barr started his career in the CIA and then was put by the CIA through Knight Law School and then worked there for seven years, his marquee job was the CIA's liaison to Congress.
In order to block congressional oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.
And it was heralded by the CIA for blocking Congress's ability to oversee the agency.
And that is what you see today inside of USAID. And one of the reasons that it's so impossible to get to what they do.
And they run an unbelievable web of money laundering and shell companies.
I've mentioned this.
But, you know, just take one example of USAID's building of the fake social media website called Zunzanillo, which was at a time when Cuba, and look, I hate that I'm not a fan of the Cuban, you know, the Cuban government.
Of course not.
But there's a question of what level of dirty tricks do you go to in order to topple something that's authoritarian.
But at the time in 2014, Cuba had banned U.S. social media.
So Twitter was not allowed.
And the U.S. foreign policy establishment was gassed up over the success of the Arab Spring and the ability of the CIA and State Department to use Facebook and Twitter to angry up populations and get them to form smart mobs and take to the streets and overthrow governments.
So they wanted to do a Cuban Spring, but the problem was they had no social media there.
So U.S. aid was tasked with creating a...
A fake Cuban version of Twitter.
And so they took, in order to do this, they took humanitarian funds that were earmarked for Pakistan and redirected them through a web of shell companies and outside contractors to two Cuban businessmen so it would look like it was coming directly from Cuba.
And in the internal documents that were leaked at USAID, the explicit plan was to lure people in using algorithms favoring Sports, music, and hurricane updates.
And then once they hit a critical mass of subscribers to the site, they would switch the algorithm to favor anti-government sentiment, street revolutions, and the forming of so-called smart mobs to take to the streets.
At the same time, USAID was paying rap groups, one in particular called the San Isidro movement, was taking direct money from USAID, who was paying them to write anthems about how to overthrow the government so it could be played.
to the youth movement.
Meanwhile, USAID's kissing cousin, the National Endowment for Democracy, was writing white papers in the background, doing their baseline assessment of the ethnic composition of Cuba, and what it figured out in a 2009 memo that USAID then carried over was that the Afro-Cuban community was underrepresented in the Cuban government, so they could be And also, they're not very good at it.
If they were trying to lure people to Cuban social media, they did sports hurricane updates.
They should have just shown them the women.
They have a natural resource there.
We've seen them here.
We've all seen Eva Mendes, correct?
And this is the situation, too.
People will say, I'm an extremist, where I say, look, the policy on Cuba should be either the United States goes in and liberates these people, or not.
People who will say that's an extremist fear, I'm not saying that we do, I'm saying we need to be clear in our position, will at the same time defend what is obfuscated and what is opaque, which is effectively, like you're talking about, a soft coup and trying to foment, basically, racial hatred at that point, which wouldn't be the right way for them to go about it anyway.
And no one in this office is hated more than Che Guevara.
We were banned for a shirt, making fun of him.
I know Gerald does have a question, and I know you have a hard out.
I wanted to get to Brazil here because we have a lot of people watching, but Gerald, you had a question for Mr. Benz.
Yeah, Mike, so I've seen a lot of people talking about different programs within USAID, and I'm not sure which programs.
People that are posting are necessarily saying stuff that's true or if they're making some incorrect connections.
But you mentioned money laundering.
And one of the connections that I've seen people trying to make is basically back through from U.S. taxes to U.S. aid to NGOs and then somehow finding its way back into campaigns, PACs, and Dems.
Is there a connection there?
And is that the biggest money laundering kind of example you can give us?
Or is there something else?
Oh, there's a huge connection there.
Yeah, this is one of the ways that the foreign policy establishment manipulates domestic politics, is they take the huge glut of money that we have to manage the American empire abroad, but then if a domestic candidate or domestic political movement is threatening to change U.S. foreign policy, like Donald Trump has been and currently is, They redirect those funds almost like white blood cells in an immune system to descend on the internal.
They call these the domestic drivers of foreign policy in order to root those out.
So just a few examples off the top, you have the Tide Center.
The Tide Center is basically the clearinghouse for Black Lives Matter.
It's also the fiscal sponsor.
of the group that controls the, quote, Soros prosecutors.
You know how Soros has paid for the campaigns of 30% now of America's prosecutors.
And so basically everyone who lives in a big metropolitan city is under a Soros prosecutor.
Well, Soros also funds the...
The group that not just the campaign, but the actual management of the prosecutors once they're in office, make sure they're in sync with the donor demands, including this group tells them who to prosecute, who not to prosecute, how to structure it, gives them the social media messages, writes their press releases, basically manages them like a talent agency.
And that group's fiscal sponsor is the Tide Center.
USA gave the Tide Center $27 million.
And some of these grants are incredible.
For example, USA deputizes the Tide Center to, quote, secure concrete commitments from foreign governments on behalf of the U.S. government.
So they are pumping up domestic political institutions and then deputizing them to act as a long arm of the U.S. government to actually negotiate U.S. foreign policy abroad, Economic empires abroad.
For example, Soros Inc.
is not just the Open Society Foundation, but it's the web of private portfolio companies that profit From the energy resources and economic engine in foreign countries.
And all the while we have been told the danger of Donald Trump is he's sowing mistrust in institutions.
I almost think it's the fault of the institutions.
Also, I'm very confused.
I'm not saying how any of this helps people with AIDS in Africa.
But maybe we can answer that more.
We're going to continue this honorable premium.
People can click that.
Of course, Mr. Mike Benz.
I have a question for you from a Brazilian friend of ours, a journalist, Alan DeSantos.
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