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cover of episode Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

Ep. 2131 - Trump and Musk Bring The CHAINSAW

2025/2/4
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The Ben Shapiro Show

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A
Atul Gawande
B
Ben Shapiro
E
Elon Musk
以长期主义为指导,推动太空探索、电动汽车和可再生能源革命的企业家和创新者。
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Marco Rubio
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Ben Shapiro: 我认为特朗普政府正在以惊人的速度推进各项政策,从对加拿大的贸易谈判到对美国国内机构的改革,都展现出其效率和决心。他对美国国际开发署(USAID)的改革,以及对教育部和消费者金融保护局(CFPB)的潜在裁撤,都反映出其削减政府开支和限制左翼势力扩张的意图。虽然民主党人对此强烈反对,但我认为这些举措是必要的,因为USAID等机构已被左翼势力严重腐蚀,其资金被用于与美国利益相悖的项目。 我认为,特朗普政府的策略是快速行动,先打破现有体系,再重建。这在马斯克对X平台的改造中可见一斑。虽然这种方式可能会带来一些混乱,但最终目标是提高效率和减少浪费。 民主党人的反对并非出于对美国国际利益的真正关切,而是因为这些机构是他们长期以来依赖的‘摇钱树’,为其盟友提供资金和职位。他们对特朗普政府的改革感到愤怒,是因为他们失去了对这些机构的控制。 Elon Musk: 美国国际开发署(USAID)已经腐败不堪,无法挽救,应该彻底关闭。我们对USAID的调查发现,该机构充斥着浪费和滥用行为,其资金被用于与美国利益相悖的项目。因此,我们建议将其关闭,以节省纳税人的钱财,并确保政府资源被用于更重要的领域。 Marco Rubio: 作为美国国际开发署(USAID)的代理负责人,我将确保该机构的优先事项与政府政策一致。我们将审查该机构的各项活动和运作,取消那些与国家利益相悖的项目,并确保纳税人的钱财被用于支持美国的国家战略。 Atul Gawande: 我认为特朗普政府对美国国际开发署(USAID)的改革将对美国的国际形象和公共卫生工作造成损害。USAID在全球公共卫生领域发挥着重要作用,其裁撤将使我们难以应对疾病疫情,并为我们的敌人和竞争对手创造机会。 Ilhan Omar: 我强烈反对特朗普政府对美国国际开发署(USAID)的改革。这是一个危险的先例,它表明特朗普政府正在试图削弱政府机构,并破坏美国的国际形象。 Johnny Olszewski: 如果特朗普政府继续削减政府开支,那么下一个目标可能是医疗保健、社会保障甚至我们的自由。我们必须团结起来,反对特朗普政府的政策。 Chuck Schumer: 如果特朗普政府关闭美国国税局(IRS),那将是灾难性的。 Chris Murphy: 特朗普政府对美国国际开发署(USAID)的改革是一场宪法危机。我们必须利用一切手段来阻止特朗普政府的行动。 Andy Kim: 特朗普政府对美国国际开发署(USAID)的改革是非法的,也是不可接受的。我们必须采取行动,保护美国国际开发署(USAID)的员工和项目。 Elizabeth Warren: 如果特朗普政府试图摧毁消费者金融保护局(CFPB),我们将坚决反击。 Ted Cruz: 我将推动一项提案,以完全削减消费者金融保护局(CFPB)的资金,从而有效地关闭该机构。 Adam Carolla: 加利福尼亚州的野火灾害是州政府长期以来不作为和管理不善的结果。州政府的官僚主义和对环保主义者的纵容导致了灾难的发生。许多人开始意识到州政府的失败,并可能改变他们的政治立场。

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Well, President Trump's leverage play continues to work. Canada has now caved. President Trump tried to push a 25% tariff against Canada. Canada immediately suggested that they were going to tariff American goods. That would have been much worse for them than for us in any trade war between the United States and Canada. Canada is going to lose. Instead, Justin Trudeau has bent the knee to President Trump. He announced...

that Canada would appoint a fentanyl czar, list cartels as terrorists, and launch a joint strike force with the United States to combat organized crime, fentanyl trafficking, and money laundering. Also announced that he would be deploying 10,000 personnel to the northern border as well. So yesterday, as we talked about, Mexico gave and said that they would send 10,000 National Guard troops to America's southern border to police for fentanyl and to police for illegal immigration. And now Canada is doing the same instead.

The sweeping tariffs that Trump was proposing have been put on hold for 30 days, presumably to reach a further agreement. Meanwhile, Beijing is attempting to figure out how to end around the tariffs that President Trump just put on them. He put a 10% tariff on Chinese goods. Beijing is hitting back by announcing a quote-unquote broad package of economic measures targeting the United States. The fresh duties were announced by China's Ministry of Finance. They levy a 15% tax on

on certain types of coal and liquefied natural gas and a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery, large displacement cars, and pickup trucks. Now, the problem with all of that is that China is not a massive consumer, for example, of American crude oil. We have plenty of markets all over the world that are perfectly willing to take our liquefied natural gas.

the ministry of commerce and china's customs administration also announced new export controls immediately effective on more than two dozen metal products and related technologies including for example tungsten a mineral typically used in industrial and defense applications as well as tellurium which can be used to make solar cells this is according to cnn now here is the thing again the united states if we need those sorts of materials can go elsewhere for those sorts of materials there's not a lot of sting in these chinese retaliatory measures so the notion that

that this is going to radically alter the American economy in any way is unlikely. Prices will go up in certain areas of the American economy, but unlike tariffs on say Mexico or Canada, where Mexico and Canada, Canada is an ally and Mexico is at least titularly an ally, China is an actual geopolitical enemy of the United States. And so actually having a trade war with China, even if it does some economic damage to the United States, will do much worse economic damage to China. So,

Will President Trump get some sort of concessions that allow him to walk back the tariffs? We'll find out, but they're going to have to be some pretty significant concessions.

And President Trump is moving faster than any president of my lifetime to do things. It is astonishing. Astonishing. I've never seen an administration move this quickly to do as many different things as the Trump administration is doing right now. Whether you're talking about walking back support for the UNRWA, whether you're talking about ending support nationwide for the transing of the children, whether you are talking about ending DEI initiatives all over the country.

Whether you're talking about reconstituting the Defense Department, by the way, recruitment immediately has skyrocketed since the appointment of Pete Hegseth to Secretary of Defense. We're talking about getting wins at the Panama Canal, where the Panamanian government has now announced it is not going to take place in the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative anymore.

This administration is pushing so hard, so fast on so many fronts that it's very, very difficult for any opposition to truly form around any one issue. The best the Democrats have done so far is trying to mobilize around the end of USAID. Now, USAID...

is an agency that was originally brought into being by foreign aid initiatives of Congress and then put into power by an executive order by JFK all the way back during the middle of the Cold War. And USAID, which is designed originally, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was designed essentially as a way of spreading America's foreign policy tentacles all over the world. I mean, that was the explicit purpose. It wasn't just to do nice things. It was to do nice things and also to support international

in various countries that were going to be a bulwark against communism. That's what USAID was for. And since the end of the Cold War, USAID has been transformed into trans pride flags in Africa. USAID has been turned into boondoggle projects that are designed to pay millions or billions of dollars to left-wing NGOs, both in the United States and outside the United States, and keep up an entire employment line for people who are out of power. So when Republicans are in power, USAID is still paying a bunch of

blue organizations to keep the trains running on time and to make sure that the money continues to flow to various organizations abroad that are willing to spread social leftism, not just anti-Chinese or anti-Russian or anti-America's enemies moves, as you might expect if you were pursuing actual hard-nosed American foreign policy. Again, soft power can be a very good thing. The idea of USAID is not wrong. The idea that you want to find non-governmental organizations in, for example, countries that

that are teetering between China and the United States and support those non-governmental organizations to make that country more pro-America. That's not a bad idea. The problem is that the USAID infrastructure has been hijacked by the radical left. This is a point that President Trump made yesterday, slamming USAID and saying, listen, it didn't have to become a cutout for left-wing ideology, but it did. And that's not my fault. That's your fault.

The first term that USAID was something that you liked in some respects. I love the concept. Yeah, sure. I love the concept, but they turned out to be radical left lunatics. And the concept of it is good, but it's all about the people. So he is right about that. Again, the fact is that what the left has done with so many institutions and USAID is just one of them is taken the original purpose of the institution and then gutted it and worn the face around like Hannibal Lecter.

That is exactly what they have done with the university systems in the United States. They did it with the objective press in the United States, and they did it with USAID. USAID has been participating in so much waste and fraud over the course of time. As Daniel Greenfield of the David Horowitz Freedom Center points out, USAID has sent $9.3 billion to Islamic terror states collectively responsible for killing over 3,000 American soldiers.

There's an enormous number of terrible organizations supported by USAID. That was a point that was being made by Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary. Here she was yesterday talking about examples of waste and abuse inside USAID.

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.

Of course, she is totally right about all of that. Now, I will say that there is a wing of the Republican Party that wishes to use the fact that these institutions have been so thoroughly corrupted to basically go totally isolationist, which again, as I said yesterday, is a mistake. Two things can be true at once. USAID has become a totally corrupted institution. Also, that doesn't mean that the best strategy for the United States is to retreat from the world permanently.

and simply grant that vacuum to, for example, the Chinese or the Russians or the Iranians. With that said, Elon Musk, who had basically been put in temporary charge of the USAID, he said yesterday that there basically is nothing left at USAID that's worth saving.

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. There is no apple. You've just got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It's beyond repair. So really none of this could be done without the full support of the president. I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down. Okay.

actually checked with him a few times to go, are you sure? I'm like, yes. So we're shutting it down. So the budget of USAID is somewhere between 40 and $50 billion. It is a very, very large governmental program. So when people say things like, well, it's only 1% of the American budget, that's true, but that's just because our budget is way, way, way too large. That doesn't mean we should be wasting tons of money on interests that are antithetical to American interests abroad. Again, the spreading of social leftism in America

Zimbabwe should not be the goal of American foreign policy. Flying pride progress flags outside the Vatican should not be a goal of American foreign policy, and neither should supporting left-wing NGOs that are also supported by people like George Soros abroad. That is a bad use of taxpayer dollars.

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For a complimentary consultation, call today 1-800-958-1000 or visit their website at tnusa.com slash Shapiro. That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro today. Don't let the IRS take advantage of you. Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. So what exactly happened here? Well, the president deployed Elon Musk and Doge, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, to go into the headquarters over at USAID and begin digging through the personnel files and trying

and trying to figure out who was a waste of money, where was all the money going. And the acting heads of USAID tried to resist, so President Trump fired them. Now, a bunch of people on the left are very, very upset about all of this. They're upset for a couple of reasons. One, they're upset because they actually like the Pride Progress flag being flown in far-flung African nations.

with American taxpayer dollars. They want America funding abortion abroad. It's this sort of stuff that they are interested in. So number one, on an ideological level, they support precisely the things the American taxpayers don't want to do. But there's something else going on too. And that is USAID, like so many other federal government programs, is an absolute gravy train for Democratic allies. That's

That's what it is. It is a bunch of money that is being spent on various constituencies that Democrats cultivate and then use as the incoming State Department officials, for example, if Democrats win office.

It is not a coincidence that so many Democrats, both elected and unelected, worked at places like USAID or places funded by USAID. This giant grab bag of cash, which has essentially become a handout mechanism for the left wing. Of course, they're angry that it is going away or at least being radically minimized. So what happened apparently on Sunday?

Two senior USAID officials were suspended for blocking Doge officials from a restricted area as after the agency's website went offline and Elon Musk posted to X that USAID was beyond repair and needed to be shut down. This is according to the UK Guardian, which of course is a very left-wing source from Great Britain.

Well, now Marco Rubio has said that he is now the acting head of USAID, which of course makes sense. One of the kind of points that the Democrats were making is Elon Musk has never been appointed to a government position. He's sort of operating as an outside government advisor. He doesn't take a salary from the government. He doesn't work for the government. We don't know if he has a security clearance. So instead, Secretary of State Rubio, who was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate, and of course has passed every security clearance and used to sit in the Senate, he says, listen, I'm the acting head of USAID.

USAID now. And we're going to go through and we're going to make sure that all of the priorities of this administration are aligned with the spending at USAID. I'm the acting director of USAID. I've delegated that authority to someone, but I stay in touch with him. And again, our goal was to go in and align our foreign...

aid to the national interest. But if you go to mission after mission and embassy after embassy around the world, you will often find that in many cases USAID is involved in programs that run counter to what we're trying to do in our national strategy with our country or with our region. That cannot continue. USAID is not an independent, non-governmental entity.

It is an entity that spends taxpayer dollars and it needs to spend it, as the statute says, in alignment with the policy directives that they get from the secretary of state, the National Security Council and the president. OK, this is all perfectly obvious. And basically what President Trump did is he used Doge as the crowbar to pry open USAID. And then once all of the rot was spilling out into the hallway, then he said to Rubio, OK, you go in and you take all the rot and clean it out.

So what Democrats are claiming is that USAID is going to be completely shut down. Of course, Musk had said that you don't have to shut down the agency in violation of statute in order to achieve the same purpose. You can simply clean it out and that would be the best thing to do. Again, the strategy seems to be from the administration, move fast and break things. Basically, all of these cuts are

All of these attempts to bring a chainsaw to the party. That's exactly how Musk ran, for example, X. When Musk took over X, he fired pretty much everybody in the building. He called in everybody, he fired them. And that broke a bunch of the systems.

And then he rebuilt and fixed the systems. And that's precisely what he's doing. He's actually running places like USAID the same way that he actually ran X. So, for example, he brought in with him when Doge went into USAID, he brought in with him, according to Wired, six young men between the ages of 19 and 24 who, quote, have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Doge.

Tasked by executive order with modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and progress. The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within Doge, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer. Now, this, of course, is an issue of supposed consternation to the left. Oh, my God. All these young people, young, brilliant people who are highly technologically qualified making cuts.

And checking the work? No. Now, of course, if these people were on the left, it would be an unmitigated good. It would be the next generation taking over, getting involved in public service. But when it's people who are on the right, then, of course, they're evil nerds in the back closet, probably incels or something. Even though what you're really seeing is a bunch of very effective young people who are doing a bunch of scut work that other people aren't willing to do. The six men, according to Wired, are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions.

Already, Musk's lackeys, including senior staff from XAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company, have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management and General Services Administration and have gained access to the Treasury Department's payment system. So what exactly is the problem? There seems to be a kind of missing link here in democratic logic. And the missing link is this. All of these people, all of them work for the presidents of the United States.

Trump can fire Elon Musk at any time. He can fire any of the people who are working for Elon Musk at any time. He can simply stop granting them access to any of the government buildings. He's the president of the United States. President Trump can appoint Secretary Rubio, the head of USAID. These are executive branch agencies. The way an executive branch agency works is everyone serves at the pleasure of the president of the United States.

That doesn't mean the president can violate statute, but he's not violating statute when he puts his own people in place at these agencies to ensure that his priorities are enacted via the statute. Now, if you don't like that, there's a way that this could have been avoided. And that would have been not to create a massive administrative bureaucracy since the beginning of the 20th century.

The Democrats, in other words, centralized extraordinary power over the course of a century and a half in the executive branch. And now they're just mad that the person in charge of the executive branch is using that power to carve away all of their permanent substructures.

What we are watching is a sea change in the way that government is done. Not because Donald Trump is, quote unquote, dictatorial or authoritarian, but because he is using precisely the same power every Democrat has used in order to carve away the permanent root of the Democratic Party.

Again, all these programs at USAID, not all, most of these programs at USAID are boondoggles that are designed to help out Democratic allies and promote Democrat blue priorities, even when they're not in the government. You want to look at something that's deep. That is the definition of the deep state, a continuing, never changing bureaucracy that consistently floods taxpayer money to a bunch of allies of the Democratic Party.

And Trump is saying, no, we are not going to do that. Here's President Trump backing Elon Musk's program here and saying, listen, he's good at cutting things. That's why he's there. He's a very talented guy from the standpoint of management and costs. Elon can't do and won't do anything without our approval. And we'll give him the approval where appropriate. We're not appropriate. We won't. But he reports in and he approves.

It's it's something that he feels very strongly about. And I'm impressed because he's running, obviously, a big company has nothing to do. There's a conflict that we won't let him get near it. But he does have a good natural instinct. He's got a team of very talented people. We're trying to shrink government and he can probably shrink it as well as anybody else, if not better. Again, notice some of the things that Trump is saying there. He's saying, listen, if Musk proposes a cut and we don't want to do it, we just won't do it.

If we think that Musk is conflicted out on a particular issue, he won't be involved, right? He's saying Musk works for me. I'm the president. Musk is not the president. And he works for me. And he's doing good work. And he's cutting. And if that means some things get broken that we then have to patch back up, then that's what it will be. Marco Rubio put out a note to senior Republican and Democratic lawmakers saying, quote, the Department of State and other pertinent entities will be consulting with Congress and the appropriate committees to reorganize and absorb certain bureaus, offices, and missions of the USAID.

The White House put out a statement saying, quote, under President Trump, the waste, fraud and abuse ends right now. Now, again, Rubio has put in charge a person named Peter Morocco, who's the head of the State Department's Foreign Assistance Office, and also an unnamed person expected to be the USAID's deputy administrator to review agency activities and operations. The review could eliminate certain aid programs or lead to the closure of certain missions around the world. But many of these programs will indeed remain.

In fact, some of the humanitarian programs are already being preserved by the Trump administration. So this idea that all of this is simply going away is not true. Many of the programs are going to remain if they are useful to the United States. But there are many things that are not useful to the United States, and there is no reason we should be funding them. So the turmoil, in other words, you cannot shrink an agency that is a permanent part of the political substructure without turmoil. That's just the way this is going to work. Now, Democrats are freaking out about all of this.

Atul Gawande, who, of course, is an American surgeon, writer, and sort of a famous Harvard professor,

and who has worked pretty closely with USAID. He put out a statement via Jen Griffin over at Fox News saying, quote, this is a gift to our enemies and competitors. This pause is not a pause. It's a destruction of the agency. Two weeks ago, I was combating diseases. We had 21 serious outbreaks at the time worldwide. Three are serious now. An Ebola outbreak in the capital of Uganda. Bird flu has broken out in 49 countries. Our efforts to contain them have all been shut down.

We were on the verge of ending HIV, TB, and malaria. That has all ended with this pause. It is a gift to our enemies and competitors. We're funding demining operations in Vietnam to allow farmers to get back to their fields so people can farm. Now, here's the thing. Do you think that all of these things are going to go away? Do you think Marco Rubio wants headlines or Trump wants headlines about how AIDS spikes in Africa because USAID funding has ended?

I have a feeling that Trump doesn't actually want those headlines. So what is this going to be in the end? It's going to be the same as all the other Trump programs. It's going to be designed to achieve victories and to minimize defeats and costs. He is utilitarian. Everyone seems to be making the mistake at every aspect of this administration that Donald Trump is some sort of ideologue, that he's going to do tariffs, not because he actually wants to pry concessions out of America's opponents or out of America's erstwhile allies.

But that he's doing tariffs because he's ideologically wedded to tariffs and he will ride that bomb all the way down into the ground like Rip Torn in Dr. Strangelove. Well, that's not the way he works. And the same thing is true of USAID and the same thing is true of everything else. President Trump is seeking victories and he's seeking to minimize defeats.

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from the left is not about the loss of HIV programs in Africa. That is not what this is about. It is about the fact that the plaything of the permanent Democratic Party, the administrative bureaucracy they built and have lavished with trillions of dollars over the course of decades is now being redone by the Trump administration. And they are freaking out about it. And I got to tell you, when some of the worst people freak out about a thing, I tend to like the thing. So for example, Representative Ilhan Omar

She was out there yesterday complaining about the cuts to USAID. And all I can say is, Vilihan Omar is against it. I'm for it. A billionaire that hasn't been vetted, has not gone through confirmation, has not been elected by the American people, who we still do not understand what in the world he's doing, should not be telling American employees that they cannot access

the building they work at. What kind of country is this man turning our country into? What kind of country are we becoming? It is embarrassing to read the headlines about free America.

Where one man is walking around like he is the boss of all of us. And we don't know who put him in charge. Well, you know who put Donald Trump in charge of the executive branch of the government? We had an election and Trump won. And now a bunch of people who work for Trump are doing the things that Trump wants them to do inside the executive branch of government. You know who USAID does not actually work for is Ilhan Omar. Ilhan Omar is part of the legislative branch. That legislative branch approves budgets.

And then when it comes to the actual spending on these particular projects, that happens in the executive branch where the president and secretary of state have enormous authority because Marco Rubio was confirmed and Donald Trump was elected. Ripping on Elon for being Trump's hatchet man is just a way of avoiding the reality, which is you lost the election.

You lost. And the reason you're really angry is not, of course, because Donald Trump is making cuts to USAID. What you're really angry about is that the thing you guys have counted on forever, an endless funnel, fire hose, gushing, damn breaking river of money is now being stopped from going to your friends while you are out of power. That's why you're really, really angry. Democratic Representative Johnny Olszewski of Maryland said,

He's trying to make the claim. It's hilarious. They know that most Americans don't actually want to spend the money that USAID is talking about spending, and they don't like these projects. So what is he saying? He's saying, well, actually, if they come after USAID, what will they come after next? They're going to come after your freedom. I'm going to need a logic here that connects cuts to USAID to quote unquote your freedoms.

We will do all that we can in Congress, but we need you, America, to listen and to act because today it's USAID. Tomorrow it's our health care. It's Social Security. It's our livelihoods. It's our freedoms. So stand up for USAID today, USAID today, so that we can stand up for all of our freedoms in the days ahead. OK, first of all, I do love the fact that Democrats

label Social Security a freedom when it is actually an entitlement. Second of all, Donald Trump is not touching entitlements. He has said this over and over and over again. In fact, he's trying to save money abroad so he can spend the money at home. Chuck Schumer had, I think, the funniest take. He's like, oh no, what if they shut down the IRS?

I don't know. What if they shut down the IRS, Chuck? I mean, obviously the American people do love the IRS. If there's one agency of the American government that the people just adore, it is the Internal Revenue Service that audits their restaurant receipts. 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.

Who knows? Maybe it'll be the Postal Service or the IRS or even the Social Security Administration. They could be next. Or maybe our national security agencies. Not ours. Not, not the IRS. No, that would be terrible. Meanwhile, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. I do love when Democrats scream and cry about constitutional crises after they literally located all power in the executive branch and cheered as Joe Biden violated the Constitution repeatedly. Now they're very upset about the Constitution.

So we will use every power that we have in our disposal in the United States Senate. My colleagues will do the same thing in the House. This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today. Let's call it what it is.

The people get to decide how we defend the United States of America. The people get to decide how their taxpayer money is spent. Elon Musk does not get to decide. Again, Elon Musk works for, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, the president of the United States who was elected. He was elected.

And he actually has pretty significant plenary power over the defense of the United States. That is one of the things that is most located inside the executive branch, Chris Murphy. Meanwhile, Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey doing the same routine. So outraged, so outraged. He said, I wanted to get in the USAID building and I couldn't. They wouldn't let me in. Well, I have a question. Do you work for the executive branch? Because I noticed that you are a senator.

I certainly hope Congress takes action because what is happening here is illegal. It is unacceptable to have a president try through executive power be able to reorganize or remove USAID. The fact that these employees are being demonized

You know, the fact that they're being called, you know, it's a criminal organization from Elon Musk. You know, the fact that they're being told not to show up, that the federal aid is being frozen. I mean, it's just such disrespect. They deserve better. They are public servants. They swear an oath to serve this country. And right now they are being treated as if they're the criminals. Well, I mean, they actually work inside the executive branch. If your boss doesn't want you there, you don't work there anymore.

The real reason for this, the gravy train has stopped flowing. Now, meanwhile, hilariously, the federal government, as we know, put out a notice, an email to federal employees, millions of federal employees saying to them, listen, if you want to come into work, you want to work for the president's agenda, you want to be a member of the executive branch, great. We'd love to have you. If not, here's a buyout offer that pays you until September. Apparently, according to Axios, about 20,000 federal workers have taken the buyout offer.

That is about 1% of the federal workforce. The White House is targeting 5% to 10%. The offer is open through Thursday. So it could rise despite the unions attempting to sort of cudgel everybody to stay. The official, according to Axios, says, quote, we expect more to come. If you see what's happening at USAID, it's just one piece of the puzzle. In other words, many of these people are going to lose their jobs anyway. So either take the buyout or you may find yourself on the breadline regardless.

The buyout offer entitles federal employees to stop working immediately and continue to be paid through September 30th. The federal workforce's normal attrition rate is about 6% a year. So perhaps some of those people were meaning to leave anyway. But again, people are quitting because they are seeing that the cuts are coming with the chainsaw. Speaking of which...

According to Politico, President Trump is about to finalize an executive order to shutter the Department of Education, which has been a longtime Republican goal. Again, one of the things about Trump that is truly an amazing, amazing thing. There's so many promises that various politicians have made for decades. Ronald Reagan pledged to shut down the Department of Education in the 1980s, like about the time I was a baby. And Donald Trump is actually trying to do it. He's actually taking seriously the promises that he made to the American people.

According to Politico, the Trump administration is finalizing plans to dismantle the education department through an executive order that would build on the president's campaign promise to hammer the longtime conservative target. The order was expected to lay out a two-part strategy for shuttering the agency, according to two people familiar with the plans. It would direct the department to craft a plan to wind down its functions using its existing administrative authority. But the order was also expected to call for the agency to inventory a complex set of laws needed to delegate the department's powers to other agencies and then shut down the department.

So in other words, many of the functions of the DOE would move outside the DOE, but the department itself would be shut down. That would require some sort of legislative help, presumably. According to a third person granted anonymity, representatives from Doge are already working at the Education Department headquarters and seeking access to agency records. So again, right now, Linda McMahon is up for Secretary of Education.

There'll be a Senate confirmation hearing. One of the sort of open strategy questions here is whether it would have been better to wait until she was confirmed in order to actually do this sort of thing. With that said, the fact that Trump is taking this so seriously is yet another indicator that he was serious about the things that he was promising. What exactly does the Department of Education do? Well, it's number one spending priority in fiscal year 2024, according to USAFacts.org.

The U.S. Department of Education spent about $161 billion on federal student aid. So that would be, you know, like Pell Grants and paying for people to get their degrees in lesbian dance theory and all the rest. Another $83 billion was spent on elementary and secondary education, which are basically block grants that are given to various states. Now, education should be a local consideration.

Education should be controlled by the state, by localities, by local school board. Ideally, we'd have vouchers so people can actually, you know, go to the school that they want to go to. There is no question the Department of Education is yet another gravy train for the left. One of the biggest gravy trains in America. The university system is a giant apparatchik for the left producing machine. It is a giant machine.

machine designed to churn out left-wingers with worthless diplomas unless you're in the STEM fields. That is what it is designed to do. And by the way, if you're in the STEM fields, you can certainly get a private loan to study engineering at MIT. The reality that the reason Democrats are very, very in love with these agencies is, again, because they are permanent structures that are designed to pay all of their friends. Some of the biggest graft agencies in the history of mankind are happening via the Department of Education.

Speaking of the education, higher education, by the way, a group representing white and Asian high school and college students filed a complaint Monday in federal court against the University of California, claiming that nine of its campuses are still using racial preferences and admissions in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws.

And that is almost certainly true. Many of these universities have vowed that they would essentially do affirmative action under another name. And now the lawsuits are coming fast and furious. The best way to stop all of that is to make Linda McMahon the secretary of education and allow her to go to work and to unleash Harmeet Dhillon over at the civil rights division of the DOJ to go after all of these universities that are acting in violation of law. I have no doubt that all of that is going to happen. All right, coming up.

The cuts don't stop there. It's February, which means the usual crowd is claiming we don't do anything for Black History Month, which

which is complete nonsense. We literally have the number one documentary of the decade covering race in America. It's called M.I. Racist. It was the surprise box office hit of the year. And shocker, it's not exactly what the left was looking for. Now, exclusively on Daily Wire Plus, we're pulling back the curtain with the making of M.I. Racist, where Matt Walsh, director Justin Folk, and the team show how it all came together. Watch it now at dailywire.com. And meanwhile, the cuts don't just stop at the Department of Education or USAID. Scott Besant,

who is the new Treasury Secretary, is ordering a freeze at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was always Elizabeth Warren's baby. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is basically just a way of blackmailing various businesses with regulatory oversight. That's what it always was. It is independently funded, so it actually does not even come from the legislature. The legislature does not appoint separate funding. This is actually the subject of the Supreme Court case.

The question was whether it violated the separation of powers for Congress to set up a mechanism that was then funded directly from the Federal Reserve, which is how the CFPB works. Well, the only problem, again, Democrats, if you put all the power in the executive branch, what happens if people you don't like take over the executive branch? Well, now you're finding out

You did all of this in the assumption that even if a Republican was elected, the Republican would never touch your precious. Well, it turns out the Republicans are touching all of the things that you built and they are taking control of those levers and using them in ways you didn't like. And this is the story of Lord of the Rings. If you don't want somebody you don't like controlling the ring, don't create the ring in the first place. But Democrats created it and now they're very upset that the powers of the ring are being used by people they don't particularly like.

Well, now Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has ordered a freeze to work at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.

In an internal email on Monday, Besson's office directed CFPB staff to cease much of the bureau's work, including enforcement actions and decisions about active litigation. The email directs staff to suspend the effective dates for rules that had been completed but aren't yet in effect. Besson's appointment is the beginning of what is expected to be a rollback of many of the agency's actions under the Biden administration, which included rules capping overdraft fees and banning the use of medical debt by credit reporting companies.

Biden appointee Rohit Chopra was ousted on Friday. Trump hasn't named a candidate to lead the CFPB on a permanent basis yet. But Besant is looking forward to getting rid of the dead wood at the CFPB, which again has become a left-wing organization designed to hinder business in the United States. Senator Ted Cruz said last week that he would advance a proposal to cut the CFPB's funding entirely, which would effectively kill the bureau.

Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who built this thing, this is her legacy, aside from her legacy of wigwams and teepees, she said, quote, if President Trump and the Republicans decide they're just going to bend the knee to Wall Street billionaires and try to destroy that agency, they're going to have a fight on their hands. Well, they don't have to have a fight on their hands. Remember, Elizabeth, you're the one who set it up so it's independently funded outside the legislature. All that has to happen is Scott Bessing comes in and just freezes everything. Congrats to you.

genius level stuff happening over at the Congress of the United States. And again, because Trump is moving so fast, it is very, very difficult for Democrats to consolidate around any one line of argumentation. And meanwhile, President Trump welcomed his first foreign leader to the White House yesterday. That first foreign leader is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There are all sorts of outstanding issues that the United States and Israel are working through. Those include the currently ongoing hostage deal with Hamas that eventually is going to come to an end. There is no way that Hamas can be allowed to run the Gaza Strip. That is not me saying that, that is Secretary of State Rubio, that is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, that is National Security Advisor Mike Walz. The entire leadership of the United States knows that this is not a real possibility, which means Israel will, in fact, have to go back in

Other outstanding issues obviously include the possibility of a Saudi deal and what happens with Iran. New information suggests that Iran, of course, is trying to race toward a bomb, figuring that they're on their last legs at that regime and that the Trump administration is not going to be handing them pallets of cash worth billions of dollars, unlike the Biden or Obama administrations.

They're rushing toward a cheaper, uglier form of the nuclear bomb. According to the New York Times, new intelligence about Iran's nuclear program has convinced American officials a secret team of the country's scientists is exploring a faster, if cruder, approach to developing an atomic weapon if Tehran's leadership decides to race for a bomb. The intelligence was collected in the last months of the Biden administration and relayed to President Trump's national security team during the transition of power. Now, the reality, again, is that

effectively a single sortie of airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities would end their nuclear program for the moment, for a significant period of time. They have no air defenses. It turns out that all of their proxies are unbelievably weak. Israel completely destroyed Hezbollah's capacity to make forward war at minimum cost to itself. Israel hit Hezbollah so hard that its ally Assad fell in Syria. Hamas is no longer an offensive powerhouse. The Houthis have been largely quieted.

Israel is doing heavy work in Judea and Samaria to shut down Iranian proxies in places like Jenin and Ablus. And so what that means is that Iran is uniquely vulnerable to things like an airstrike right now. All that the United States really has to do is give Israel the weaponry and get out of the way. And that would basically end the threat of an Iranian nuclear program for the moment.

As the New York Times points out, Iran has never been weaker than it is today in the view of American and Israeli officials. Hamas and Hezbollah have lost their leadership and their ability to strike Israel. Syria's leader Bashar al-Assad has fled to Moscow. His country is no longer an easy route for Iranian weaponry.

Apparently, Trump is indicating he's in no hurry to get into a direct conflict with Iran and is open to a negotiation. But the question is going to be what that negotiation looks like. I don't believe that President Trump is going to give away the store the same way that Biden and Obama were going to. And what verification measures could actually be taken to keep Iran from diving for a nuclear weapon? The Saudis certainly don't want it. And the Saudis are another American ally, aside from Israel, that the Trump administration is quite close with.

It seems like the precondition for any sort of actual Abraham Accord deal between the Saudis and the Israelis is largely dependent on a forward move against the Iranian nuclear facilities. It'll be interesting to see where this goes. President Trump yesterday gave a nice little geographic disquisition on the state of the Middle East. Here he was. It certainly is a small, it's a small country in terms of land. I take, see this pen, this wonderful pen?

My desk is the Middle East and this pen, the top of the pen, that's Israel. That's not good, right? You know, that's a pretty big difference. I use that as an analogy. It's pretty accurate, actually. It's a pretty small piece of land. And it's amazing that they've been able to do what they've been able to do. When you think about it, there's a lot of good, smart brainpower

But it is a very small piece of land, no question about it. He's right about that, obviously. President Trump told reporters, I have no assurances that the Gaza truce will hold. I have no guarantees the peace is going to hold, which, of course, is exactly correct. It is not America's job to ensure that, quote unquote, the peace holds. It's America's job to ensure that American hostages get out. It's America's job to ensure that its allies have the wherewithal to destroy Gaza.

terror threats. That's all good for the United States. And President Trump, I believe, is going to do all of those things and more. Okay. Meanwhile, the catastrophic fallout continues in California from those devastating wildfires, the most damaging wildfires in American history. I had the opportunity to sit down with my friend Adam Carolla to talk about all of that. Here's what it sounds like.

All right. Well, Adam, you escaped California, but only after half the state burned down. I mean, you can't say that you weren't mourned since I did warn you many, many times that this was going to happen. And not that I'm a prophet or anything, but plagues were unleashed upon the state of California. But it's a pretty serious topic. Obviously, you've been really vocal about the failings of the California state government. First of all, what's it like on the ground over there right now?

Uh, it's charred on the ground. Uh, I lived in Malibu. I fled, uh, evacuated. Um, I cannot go back. Uh, my place made it. Most of the places around me did not make it. Um,

all the way down PCH, which is weird for people who don't know the topography. You see people up on the hill burn like a brush fire, but you've never heard of an ocean fire because they don't have them on the other side of Pacific Coast Highway. But it's very rare. Well, I'll tell you how rare it is. Many of those buildings weren't from the 50s, some from the 40s. The structures on the ocean side of PCH, and they're all gone.

And most the places up on the Hill are gone. I somehow got spared, but I can't go back because there's no power and no electricity. Sorry, no, no plumbing and no gas, nothing, no utility. Well, what's been the reaction of people in California? This I mean, they voted for this. I mean, not for the fire, but for all the policies that lead to the exacerbation of fire, to the failures of the local government and failures of the state government. Has there been any sort of great awakening happening in California over this?

I think there has been, and I think you can chart it all through Bill Maher. So, and the reason I'll say Bill Maher is not exactly for the reasons you're thinking, but obviously he's come over to our side incrementally over the past maybe five years, eight years, he's been sort of moving. He seems to move further toward a conservative point of view in like the last three years, even more so.

Um, so I used to be a contractor. I used to be a builder and I had to deal with the city and I had to pull permits and I had to deal with that bureaucracy plan, check regulation my whole life. Cause that was my job before I got into show business. And, um,

I would say to everyone all the time, you don't get who these people are and everyone would go, oh, who cares? And I would say, you live in a rent control apartment in Santa Monica and you don't care, but wait till you buy property and try to build something. And then you have to deal with the city and the bureaucracy. You will start thinking like me and Bill Maher tried to put solar up and

at his place about three or four years ago and ran headlong right into the bureaucracy. And he started looking around going, why is it taking two years to get a permit for a solar shack? And a guy had to come out and inspect my garage door. What do I need an inspection for my garage? And

He tried to pull a permit, he saw firsthand, and now he knows. And that's what turned Bill Maher. That's why he started coming our direction. And what the fire is gonna do is turn a bunch of people into Bill Maher. So these are Malibu, progressive blue leftist, Palisades, progressive blue left, Santa Monica. Santa Monica, this is some of the bluest cities in America.

And they're going to start going with me and Bill now because they're going to start dealing with the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy that got their house burnt down. That's one mismanagement. Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass, the house is down because of the bureaucracy and mismanagement. But now they're trying to pull a permit to rebuild the

And they're going to run right into it. Yeah, well, I think that's one of the great ironies is suddenly Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass are turning into Republicans, apparently. Emergency waivers. Now you don't have to wait. We have to build as fast as possible. And the question is, well, why? I mean, if it was good policy in the first place, what made a bad policy all of a sudden? And the answer is there was always bad policy. Yeah, it's just there was no cost of bad policy because they were

actually helping a small coterie of environmental activists at the expense of everybody else. And everybody else was basically complacent enough to let them get away with it. Yeah. Well, all right. A bunch of thoughts. One is, yeah, they, they did. Well,

Well, that's what happened with COVID. It's like people just didn't want to get into trouble. And, you know, the day Gavin Newsom shut the beach, we all should have rushed the beach that day. But instead, we went one at a time and got picked off. So we all should have rushed the guard tower at once. Some are going to get hit by the machine gun bullets, but we'll get out. You know what I mean? So, yes, people are complacent. Newsom and Karen Bass, it's always funny when they go,

we cut all the red tape. We're going to cut all the red tapes. And I'm like, who put all the red tape? Why is there so much red tape? And so if there wasn't a fire and we're just individually trying to put a deck on your house in the Palisades, let's just say no fire.

then you got to deal with the red tape or you wanted to do something in Malibu, then you have to deal with the red tape. It's a lot. I'll tell you what it is when you go. They sound like Republicans, by the way, they sound like Republicans. That's like dressing up as a Republican for Halloween for them. They're coming right back to their Birkenstocks the next day. Believe me, they're kicking off the wingtips and putting on the Birkenstocks, the following month. But here's what it is. It's like

they had a lot of productions flee Los Angeles, right? So Hollywood, Los Angeles, production capital of the world, right? Then they start with the red tape. Then they start with the money. Then they start with the taxes. Then they start with all what they do, right? And so what happens? All the productions, Canada, Atlanta, Prague, gone, right? They all leave. And then at some point,

The people in power noticed that there's nothing coming in because they chased off all the productions, runaway production. So what do they do? Then they make an announcement. Hey, fellas, guess what? We decided to make a few alterations on some of our big ass, lower it down, sound like a Republican and see if we can get you guys to come on back and do a little work here in town. And it's the same thing with the building and the rebuilding. It's like, oh, I'll

Oh, maybe a little too much red tape. We're going to sound a little like this and see if we can't lure you back. On a personal level, how long do you have to be out of your house? Because it's not obviously just a problem for people whose houses were lost. The entire area, as you say, now charred.

Yeah, well, they don't have clear answers on that. The power is not back up yet. Utilities need to come back on. And then the question of the bureaucracy, because is a site contaminated? Is it a hazmat? You know,

you set a futon on fire, it's going to leave behind some sort of chemical footprint and everything turns out causes cancer in California. So there's a sticker on every gas pump. There's a sticker on every window of every liquor store about what you enter this seven 11, you will get cancers basically what the, now everyone ignores it because you have to pump your own gas. And so what, but, uh,

technically there's some benzene in the soil. You know, they will find one part per billion benzene particles in the soil. And then they'll say, you need to have a hazmat team and remediation team and blah, blah, blah. So that's how they do it. They, they, they could tie everybody up and say, you can't just get a Bobcat in here and start scooping this stuff into a dumpster and truck it off to a landfill because there's dangerous levels of benzene. Well,

They decide what the dangerous levels of benzene are. They're always dangerous levels. They're always going to be higher than what's acceptable to the Coastal Commission. And so they could tie this stuff up for years if they wanted, you know, a small thing that like people don't think about. But as a builder, I was like, oh, yeah, all everything's on septic in Malibu.

And all the places along the ocean are on septic. Now, these are $20 million homes and maybe 12 million on the low end and maybe 80 on the high that are gone. But a lot of these places are from the 60s, 50s, 70s. They're on an old septic system.

The city's not going to let them just rebuild and use the old septic system. They need a new septic system. And their septic system was from 1963. It's 2025 now. That is a different septic system. They have to build a seawall.

so that the water won't, you know, the ocean won't erode the septic. But you could be millions of dollars into the septic system before you pull out your first two by four and start framing. How many people are actually going to end up going back? I mean, because it's there's gonna be a lot of people. Number one, many of the actual insured values of the homes are not up to par with the actual value of the homes. I mean, people lost not just their homes. Many of these people, you know, what are you talking about? The richest people or many who are not nearly as rich lost

Pretty much everything. And the fire insurance situation in California is a disaster area. So a lot of these people just don't have the money to rebuild. Many of them are going to say, why do I want to take five, 10 years to rebuild in Malibu? And I can just take my money and go somewhere else. How many of these people do you think just leave? Well, you know, Suzanne Summers and Alan Hamill, you know, a famous couple of 50 years or so. Suzanne is a friend. Alan's still a friend. Susan passed recently.

I, they would come back to Malibu all the time from Palm Springs. And, uh, we'd go out to dinner with them and they'd tell, Oh man, we love Malibu. We used to live in Malibu. We love Malibu so much, but now they live in Palm desert, you know? And I'd go, well, why'd you ever leave Malibu if you love it so much? And Alan,

And Susan would say to me, oh, we had this beautiful spread, like three acre, three lots wide, right down on the ocean. And it burnt to the ground. Oh, yeah. And said after about year seven of dealing with the Coastal Commission, it said, screw it. We're too old. We packed it up and we just moved, moved to Palm Springs. And there's going to be.

like life is too short. A lot of people like, you know, a lot of these people, first off, these are 22 year old new couples that are living on PCH and Malibu in a $17 million house. This is some of these people are old and it's old money. And you know, when you're 71 years old, do you have 11 years to rebuild your house or do you just move to Nashville? Yeah. So it seems to me that you have two choices.

I mean, you have your house there, which you may never go back to, depending on what the California Coastal Commission has to say. So you either have to run for mayor of L.A. yourself or you have to leave. These seem to me the two most obvious options. Which one is it, Adam? I don't know. I think...

Obviously, Karen Bass has to has to go because, you know, she's just there. We do like ceremonial mayors, but we don't do actual people who do stuff. We just we like the idea of a black woman in this position. It's like we cast them like they cast a judge.

in a crime show. You know what I mean? Like the judge should be a black woman. Why? It's just better. Does she know anything about law? It's just a show. She doesn't need to know anything about law. Just make sure she gets the gown right. We did that with the Supreme Court as it turns out, but yeah. Yes. We're doing a lot of just casting and movies now. You know, Rick Caruso is a developer, is a commercial. I mean, Rick Caruso is basically Trump in that

especially big project commercial developers, and that's Trump. And I know it because it used to be my business. These guys are always in a hurry. They're like, why is it taking so long? What's going on? And then they're going, well, we got to get the guys come in and form and pour the concrete slabs. Like, why is it taking so long? Well, because in their world,

The foundation has to be poured and then the framers can come in and start framing. And when the framers are done, then the drywallers can come in. When the drywallers are done, the roofers can come in. And so everything's like, what's taking so long? You know, like they're in a hurry. And you saw in that press conference, like Mayor Bass is like, you know, we want to rebuild, but say we want to do it safely. When you hear safely, right?

It's that just means more paperwork. Yeah. We wanted to go through COVID, but safely. That's why they locked the schools down for a year and a half. That's why they locked the beaches. Why they shut down outdoor dining. That's why you got screwed in the workplace. Cause say when you hear safety, that means you're about to get screwed hard for a long time, but it sounds good, right? Like safety. Oh yeah. Who's not for it. So she's sitting there going, we got to rebuild, but we got to do it safely. And he's like,

Two days is too long. Get it going. I know guys who'll be up there with a flathead shovel right now, scooping ash into a can right now. And so Trump's like, hurry, hurry, hurry. And she's like, slower down, slower down. So if we could get a Rick Caruso who has the commercial building and developing behind him, all those guys are just going to be like,

you know, our problem is, is we take people who've never been in business and we put them in charge of policy and their career bureaucrats and they don't have a metronome. That's like, well, come on, let's go. And there's no precision. You know, like you need a background of like commercial airline pilot or developer or engineer, like guys like that are like, let's go, let's do it. We take a bunch of people, you

you know, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Karen Bass, Gavin Newsom, just pie in the sky idiots who sit around and pontificate, but nothing comes out the other end. Well, Adam, it's great to see you. I'm sorry it's under these circumstances that you're in Florida. But, you know, when when you return to the blighted land of my former home, then, you know, I hope that things are better for you there. I think between you and Dave Rubin's shame,

That'll expedite my process of leaving California because I get a lot of it from both of you. Yeah, and as well you should. Well, good to see you. Alrighty, guys, coming up, New York is fighting back against President Trump in a unique way. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.