Defending Free Speech across the Globe plus DOGE Finds $4.7 Trillion in Unaccountable Government Spending
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Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. And Senator, the state of free speech is something that has not been talked about a lot lately because we had this big victory here with Donald Trump and conservatives in charge. But we are seeing an insane crackdown on free speech in Europe right now. And it is a very concerning moment. It is indeed. And let me say, free speech is a fundamental liberty. There is a reason it is protected in the First Amendment to

to the Constitution. And on this podcast, we have covered the assault on free speech in the United Kingdom. Sadly, it is not just the UK. It is all of Europe. It is the United States. It is a global assault on free speech. But tonight, we're going to break down, number one, J.D. Vance. He gave an incredible speech in Europe that I think really was important. It was calling out Europe and

for its abandonment of the values of free speech and how much of Europe has given up on those values. Secondly, we're going to talk about Doge, Elon Musk, diving into the incredible waste and abuse we see in our federal government, and in particular over France.

trillion in federal payments that are unaccountable, that we cannot figure out where they went. We're going to break that down as well. Yeah, they were absolutely lying, and we've got the receipts for that story. I want to talk to you real quick about the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. After more than a year of war, terror, and pain in Israel, there is still a great demand for basic humanitarian aid.

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That's 888-488-IFCJ. 888-488-4325. So there's a lot of people that are listening and they're going to say, why are we talking about free speech in Europe? Let's talk about America. This is a, I think, a flashpoint and a warning point that

that we could be where Europe is if it wasn't for one election. And this last one is the one I'm talking about. And that was part of the reason why I think J.D. Vance was so blunt in his speech in Europe about what they're doing to crack down on people just expressing their opinions. Well, listen, often Europe and the United States,

flow on similar trend lines. You look at in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan became president, Margaret Thatcher became president. You look at after that, you had George Herbert Walker Bush, and then you had John Major. You look at Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. There are similar trend lines between the United States and Europe. And those trend lines are...

interwoven. When it comes to fundamental liberties under the United States Constitution, the First Amendment, you've got religious liberty and free speech. And those are the two fundamental rights upon which all of our other liberties are built. And one of the most distressing things, you look back even five, ten years ago, the left defended free speech. The left believed in free speech. As I look at today's Democrats,

One of the things that scares me the most is the left has abandoned free speech. They've decided if you don't say what we agree with, we will silence you. We will cancel you. We will use big tech to muzzle you. We will use the power of government to fire you, to oppress you, and even to incarcerate you. Now, the last piece may seem extreme. You might say, okay, look,

We don't live in a world where you get locked up for what you say. Well, you know what? Much like the canary in the coal mine, Europe is a precursor to where America is heading. And if you look at Europe, we have seen an assault on free speech that is terrifying. Now, in this podcast, you and I have talked about, in the United Kingdom in particular, the exodus.

efforts to prosecute those who tweet things that are deemed unacceptable, those who speak out, those who speak out against the epidemic of child rape. Child rape we see from Pakistani Muslims engaged in rape gangs, raping not just hundreds but thousands of children.

And yet in the UK for years, for decades, there was a culture of repression and the unwillingness of the political environment to talk about it. Now, I will say we saw J.D. Vance, my friend, the vice president, go to Europe this past week and give a speech that I think is really important. It shocked Europe. Yes.

He was at the Munich Security Conference, which I've been to before. It's a conference that many of the nations of Europe go to, the United States go to. There are typically roughly a dozen to 20 U.S. senators that go to.

And he gave a speech, normally a government official is supposed to give a speech about how America and Europe were on the same side, we're all standing together, rah, rah, rah. J.D., I'm proud of him, the speech he gave. He called out Europe for their willingness to violate free speech. I want you to give a listen to this excerpt from J.D.'s speech. And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War's winners.

I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they've judged to be "hateful content."

Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of "combating misogyny on the internet, a day of action." I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Koran burnings that resulted in his friend's murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted,

Sweden's laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant, and I'm quoting, a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief. And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs.

A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes. Not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for,

Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person's decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.

Now I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish Government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.

Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime. In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.

I mean, not only did he just call them out to their face, he told the world what each one of these countries did. Yes, yes, yes, amen. Listen, when it comes to what fundamentally matters if we want to stay free, religious liberty is fundamental and free speech is fundamental. J.D. talked about how in the United Kingdom, silently praying has now been deemed a criminal offense. It

It is difficult to find a more staggering affront to individual liberty than that. And listen, I think we have an obligation to stand up and speak out.

You know, Ben, I've talked about how Heidi and I, we're a mixed marriage. What do I mean by that? Heidi is a Francophile. I'm an Anglophile. Heidi loves Paris. It's her favorite city on planet Earth. I love the Brits. I love the United Kingdom. I love the incredible innovation, the incredible leadership of the Brits. So we're different. And I appreciate it. I appreciate the French. But the beauty of a marriage is you combine both. It breaks my heart.

to see the Brits abandoning free speech. And the Brits are not alone. It's all of Europe. I want you to listen to this. This is from 60 Minutes this past Sunday. This is a group of German prosecutors

discussing German law about free speech. I got to say, this clip horrified me fundamentally. Give a listen. Is it a crime to insult somebody in public? Yes. And it's a crime to insult them online as well? Yes. The fine could be even higher if you insult someone in the Internet. Why? Because in Internet, it stays there.

If we are talking face to face, you insult me, I insult you, okay, finish. But if you're in the internet, if I insult you or a politician... That sticks around forever. Yeah. The prosecutors explain German law also prohibits the spread of malicious gossip, violent threats and fake quotes. If somebody posts something that's not true...

and then somebody else reposts it or likes it. Are they committing a crime? In the case of reposting, it is a crime as well because the reader can't distinguish whether you just invented this or just reposted it. That's the same for us.

The punishment for breaking hate speech laws can include jail time for repeat offenders. I mean, I love how they say if you post something and notice the question there from 60 Minutes about politicians. So you're on the other side, right? It's a divided country. You post something about somebody that you disagree with. They can now use that to lock you up is what they're saying. And the prosecutor's like, yes, yes, that's exactly what we're going to do. Yeah.

Now, this is the government saying, if you dare say something we disagree with, we will lock you up. So I sent two tweets in the last 24 hours. One retweeting this exchange. I said, this is not the first time the Germans have threatened to arrest you if you say something that the government doesn't like.

And then number two, I retweeted the same exchange. But I said, so if someone called these guys, quote, goose stepping Nazis for gleefully enforcing totalitarian speech codes, that would be deemed a crime.

in Germany. I got to say on both of those, and by the way, I literally wondered when I'm typing in these tweets, listen, I'm a sitting senator from the great state of Texas in the U.S. Senate. As I'm typing in these tweets, I wondered, gosh, if I visit Germany a year from now, will these bastards try to arrest me? Because I sent a tweet. And you know what? Fine. If

If they do it, let's go. But let me say, how messed up is that? That if I'm sitting on my phone saying, you're threatening to lock people up for saying things your government doesn't like, and people are afraid, okay, I cannot disagree with the totalitarian government. That's frightening. What has happened to Europe when free speech is speech that terrifying to the European governments?

that they're willing to imprison you for disagreeing with the orthodoxy of their beliefs. Yeah, Adolf Hitler would be proud, let's be honest, because this is exactly what he did to people that disagreed with him. He would lock them up. By the way, if you travel to Germany and you get arrested, I'm going to send you a cake.

With a file in it to chisel through the bars. I knew you had my back. But listen, what you said, Adolf Hitler would be proud. Germany has a little bit of PTSD coming out of World War II. And listen, the Germans, they don't like being the bad guys of history. And I get, listen, I'm not German, but I get if you're a modern German and you're kind of like, wait, our people were like,

We're literally the Nazis. I get that. That would be traumatizing. That would make you upset. Be like, wait, you know, when's the last time you saw a movie where the Nazis were the good guys? They're incredibly nervous about that. But they've swung so far to the other direction. You know, I remember, I think it was in high school, I wrote a paper on how left and right in politics is not a straight line. It's not

left on one side, right on the other. It's rather a circle where the extreme left and the extreme right intersect. They're both willing to interfere with individual liberty because of their radical ideology. This is a great example. I get if you're a German, you don't want to

recreate the path of the Nazis. But you know what? If your government is willing to arrest someone for saying something you disagree with, guess what? You're recreating the path of the Nazis.

Yeah, it's a sad point, but it's a valuable point to make. And good on Vice President Vance for going over there and getting in their face. While we may have won this last election, the fight to restore our great nation is only beginning. And now is the time to take a stand. And Patriot Mobile is leading that charge as America's only Christian conservative wireless provider.

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mind-blowing at this point how much money is being uncovered that is involved in waste fraud and abuse within our government and then there's this new headline that came out of the white house and that is a bombshell that there has been 4.7 trillion dollars

that has been spent that is untraceable in the way that the payments went out from the Treasury Department. Explain that to America. Well, let me read from an article in Fox News.

Doge says it found nearly untraceable budget line items responsible for $4.7 trillion in payments. The Trump administration's Doge discovered an identification code linking U.S. Treasury payments to a budget line item which accounts for nearly $4.7 trillion in payments.

which was oftentimes left blank. The Treasury Access Symbol, TAS, is an identification code linking a Treasury payment to a budget line item, standard financial process, Doge wrote in Post-O-Nex. In the federal government,

The TAS field was optional for $4.7 trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible. As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going.

So understand, $4.7 trillion. Listen, a million dollars is a lot of money. A billion dollars is a crap ton more. It's actually a thousand times more. A trillion dollars is a thousand, thousand times more than a million dollars. And $4.7 trillion...

even in federal government spending a massive amount. The point here is the money that has been coming from the federal government has been massively wasted and there has been no accountability and the entire governmental system is reacting in pain and horror and agony that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are bringing finally accountability to it. You

You look at the $4.7 trillion. Is this done on purpose for this exact reason? If you don't know where the money's going, you can't trace the money, then you can't ask questions. Oh, look, yes and no. I had an old boss of mine, my very first boss, who said this was actually quite profound. He said, never blame on malice what can be explained with incompetence. Look, that explains a lot of government.

There is massive waste. There is massive politicization and weaponization. If you're spending your own money, you care about it. Ben, you care about your own money. If you're spending someone else's money, you don't care about it. And that problem in government is there's a culture of endemic waste that is enormously problematic. And you combine that with the politicization that there's

a it doesn't matter. I'm spending someone else's money. I don't care. And I'm going to spend it to promote transgender witches in some far off country.

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You talk about what all they're exposing outside the $4.7 trillion in payments that we can't trace. Let's talk about illegal immigrants receiving benefits. And the media, by the way, they're going to defend everything they can, even if it's indefensible. A great example of that. Ben, let me ask you this. Is there one Democrat you know who has criticized one single example

example of massive waste abuse and fraud and and by the way by one democrat i don't mean james carver we talked about that two days ago i don't mean a consultant i mean one elected democrat i can tell you in the u.s senate i don't know of a single one do you no i not a single one and you would think at some point they could they would come out go yeah this is good for americans it's good for my district it's good for the taxpayers i represent that we're not going to spend money on x y or z

None of these egregious items that we've listed on the show and we've done a really good job of keeping people up to date. We're where the money's going. None of them have been criticized by the Democrats and the media. Again, they are just hell bent on saying Donald Trump bad. Elon Musk bad. Doge bad. Here's a great example. Listen to this exchange with Stephen Miller because it is hysterical. By the way.

Tonight, I saw Stephen. I was at a party. So Howard Luttnick was just confirmed as Commerce Secretary. He had a party at his house. I saw Stephen this evening and I told him, great job on CNN. Listen to this exchange because she really is. It's nutty. And I got to say, CNN has become a clown show. It's not even it's not even real journalism. It's just silly. But listen to this back and forth. You mentioned yesterday and you mentioned again here.

illegal immigrants who are getting child tax credits. Are you looking for that information in the IRS data? Anytime a crime is committed, of course there should be an investigation.

Is it your position that if somebody who is here criminally is stealing taxpayer dollars, the federal government will find every illegal alien who is stealing American taxpayer dollars? And that's what Americans expect to happen. I don't even fathom the premise of your question. It's a simple question.

question. Will you find that information in the IRS data and share that with law enforcement? If IRS investigators find illegal aliens stealing taxpayer money, of course they'll be referred to ICE. Of course they'll be referred to Homeland Security investigations. Of course they will be. Surely your position is not that we should let illegal aliens steal taxpayer dollars.

Again, you want to talk about something to be upset about, that's it. What do you think? The millions of illegal aliens who have also stolen Social Security. Illegal aliens, en masse, have fake Social Security numbers. They have fake identities. Those are felonies. Why should there be an entire class in this country that is immunized from criminal prosecution and arrest for committing felonies? Felony theft of taxpayer information? Felony theft?

of social security felony theft of identity these are all crimes and yes they'll be investigated yes they'll be prosecuted and yes you will be deported and you know what happens when those deportations occur just very quickly is that americans will get jobs americans will get benefits americans will get houses even if they got a child if they got a credit

a child tax credit and they will be referred, you're saying, to ICE for that and you would expect deported for that? Is that the position of the administration? If it is found that a crime has been committed, they'll be referred. If it is

justifies the prosecution, they'll be prosecuted. If it justifies the deportation, they will be deported. This will be based on existing IRS protocols and procedures for criminal investigation and fraud. The difference is that no one is given immunity anymore. No one is given permission to break the law anymore. Because this is not a country, this is not a sovereign territory, if illegal aliens can freely steal billions.

with a B, billions of taxpayer dollars. And I would have to imagine that CNN, which has endlessly talked about the importance of democracy and the rule of law, would say that no class in this country should be above the law, least of all illegal aliens who have trespassed on our territory. Stephen, I'm just...

asking i wanted to get your position on some things this we're not taking a position here we wanted to get some answers to some questions there are so many questions that need to be answered like you are in fact indifferent or unbiased on these questions but thank you stephen miller uh thank you so much for your time really appreciate it and we'll be right back thank you it's amazing is it just like oh we don't take positions here and i love how he grins he grins and laughs in her face like are you kidding me everybody watching right now knows exactly what you're doing

And you're trying to act like we're doing something wrong when in fact we're saving taxpayers dollars. What Miller is saying is exactly right. The federal government should enforce the law. If you have illegal aliens who are stealing from the taxpayers, they should be prosecuted. And the bizarre position CNN is taking is,

Well, if the IRS knows that you're illegally stealing from the taxpayers, the IRS shouldn't tell that to the rest of the federal government. You should protect the illegal aliens who are stealing from the taxpayers. That's a weird proposition. Why is the IRS separate from DOJ, separate from DHS, separate from ICE, separate from all of the different federal agencies? And CNN is so vested in saying, why?

We want millions of illegal aliens here, and we want there to be no consequences to their continuing to engage in fraud, to work illegally, to draw Social Security payments, to draw government payments fraudulently. That is CNN's position. And I got to say, I'm going to credit Stephen Miller for calling out CNN for they're not engaged in news. They have a position on this. They're not engaged in news.

They don't want the law enforcement. I got to say, I think the American people do. Yeah, no doubt about it. We're going to keep covering this issue and watch the money for you, because these are the moments that we have to just say, hey, here's the choice. Do you want illegal immigrants?

Having all this money, or do you want to save this money when they're breaking the law? Don't forget we do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Hit that subscribe or auto-download button. Grab my show, The Ben Ferguson Show, on those in-between days. I'll keep you updated on the latest breaking news. And the Senator and I will see you back here Friday morning.

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