Transcription
I want to share this. Just listen to this, listen to this, and tell me this isn't the epitome, the absolute personification of common sense.
I want to try to put in perspective what many of my Democratic friends have been talking about today. They're very, very, very upset at President Trump, and they're very, very, very upset at Elon Musk.
President Trump ran for president on a number of issues. One of the issues he ran on, he said it almost every day: he said, "If you elect me president, I'm going to go through the entire budget and review all the spending line by line." I heard, if I heard him say that once, I heard him say it a thousand times. And that's what he's been doing.
He went out and appointed, through an executive order, Elon Musk, who, um, people—some people like him, some don't—but he's not a dummy. He's a very, very successful business person. He's got a top secret security clearance. President Trump issued an executive order, and he turned to Mr. Musk and he said, "Mr. Musk, I want you to do for me what I said I was going to do in the election. I want you to go through all the spending line by line."
Now let me ask you something, Mr. President: how are you going to review the spending without reviewing the spending? How are you going to audit the spending by an agency without auditing the agency? That's what I mean when I say common sense is illegal in Washington, D.C.
That's what Mr. Musk is doing. He's put together a Cracker Jack team, and they're going through everybody's spending line by line, item by item. And my Democratic colleagues are very, very, very upset. They've been very eloquent. They've talked about the process, and President Trump's executive order supposedly violates the Constitution.
They've accused Mr. Musk of having conflicts of interest, and I've heard people say he's sitting over there with a notepad, copying down everybody's social security number, and he's going to go use it to make money. I mean, people in this town—not just my Democratic colleagues—they're really upset. They've never seen anybody question their spending, but that's what Mr. Musk is doing.
But you know, I've listened. This has been going on for a week. People have been screaming like they're part of a prison riot. "Oh my God, look at what Musk is doing! He's looking at the spending!"
And I've listened to people talk about the process and debate whether it's constitutional and discuss how many lawyers can dance on the head of a pen. But you know what? I haven't heard one single person who's upset with President Trump or Mr. Musk talk about what he's found.
They don't want to talk about the spending, the spending porn, the waste of taxpayer money that he's found. I mean, that's the point of all this. I tell you who is interested: the American people. The people in America who get up every day and go to work, obey the law, pay their taxes, try to educate their kids, and try to do the right thing by their kids.
They try to save a little money for retirement and have had to live through 20% inflation under President Biden. They understand what Musk is doing. They understand spending porn and wasting taxpayer money.
Now, Mr. Musk started with the USAID that handles a lot of foreign aid for America. American people are very generous. In our country, you know, when you're homeless, we'll house you. When you're hungry, we'll feed you. In our country, when you're too poor to be sick, we'll pay for your doctor.
And we send a lot of money overseas to help our world's neighbors, and the USAID is in charge, in large part, of that. But I'll tell you what Mr. Musk discovered. I find it—he discovered that the American taxpayers are giving money to Afghanistan. He found that we are giving money to Yemen. He found that we are giving money to Syria.
I didn't know that some of our foreign aid is going to Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria. He found that the USAID has 10,000 employees, and every year they give away $40 billion. Mr. Musk also found—and I'm not saying that all of this money is wasteful. I'm not. Some of this money, I'm sure, does some good.
That's why Secretary Rubio is going to revamp the department to separate the good from the bad. But this is the kind of stuff Mr. Musk found. He found that the USAID gave money to support electric vehicles in Vietnam—our money, taxpayer money.
He found that the USAID gave money to a transgender clinic in India. I didn't know that. I bet the American people didn't know that. He found that the USAID gave $1.5 million to a Serbian LGBTQ group called Groupa. I probably mispronounced that; my apologies. Anyway, they got $1.5 million to "advance diversity, equity, inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business community."
What else did Mr. Musk find that my colleagues don't want to talk about? Well, he reviewed a study and then went and checked it. The study was done by the Middle East Forum. They found that USAID spent $164 million to support radical organizations around the world.
We're not talking Cub Scout troops here; we're talking about radical organizations around the world. They gave $122 million of that to groups aligned with foreign terrorist organizations. Our taxpayer money, according to this reporting, Mr. Musk, the USAID has given millions of dollars to "organizations in Gaza controlled by Hamas."
Why? Why? Why aren't my colleagues talking about that? Recipients of the money have "called for their lands to be cleansed from the impurity of Jews." That's what we're getting for aid.
What else? I'm not going to spend my whole time talking about this, but nobody else is talking about it. They're just talking about the process and Mr. Musk, and he's a mean guy, and he shouldn't be looking at our spending. Well, he is, and I kind of find what he's found out interesting.
He found that we gave $2 million—USAID did—for sex changes in Guatemala. He found that we gave $20 million to produce a new Sesame Street show in Iraq. He found that we gave $4.5 million of taxpayer money to combat misinformation in Kazakhstan.
He found that we gave $10 million—USAID did—of meals to an Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group called the NRA Front. Mr. Musk found that we gave $7.9 million of taxpayer money to a project that would teach Sri Lankan journalists to avoid binary gendered language.
We took the USAID, took $8 million bucks, and gave it to a bunch of journalists in Sri Lanka to teach them how to avoid binary gendered language. I don't know what the hell binary gendered language is. I think I do. Do you think most taxpayers would support that?
Why are we talking about that? The USAID gave $1.5 million to promote LGBT advocacy in Jamaica. They gave $1.5 million to rebuild the Cuban media ecosystem. They gave $1.5 million for "art for inclusion of people with disabilities in Belarus."
Another $3.9 million for LGBT causes in Macedonia. $8.3 million for equity and inclusion education in Nepal. I could go all night, and many of my colleagues are upset. They're really mad at Mr. Musk.
Hell, I think we ought to give him a medal. All he's doing is what President Trump said he was going to do. President Trump said he's going to audit the spending, so Trump goes and hires Musk, a guy with a top secret security clearance. Nobody can quibble with his intelligence.
You know the guy's as smart as Einstein's cousin. He's a very successful businessman. Some say he's the richest guy in the world, and he's doing the auditing. And man, he's finding a lot of stuff. I call it spending porn.
Now, I'm not saying everything that USAID does is wasted, but I'm saying a lot of it is—a hell of a lot of it is. And we ought to be on the floor of this United States Senate thanking Mr. Musk, and we ought to be asking him to go through every agency and look at everybody's budget—everybody's budget.
That's what the American people want. They don't want to talk about process. They don't want to continue with the Washington way. They want to save some money.
And let me tell you what's really going on here too, Mr. President. For four years under President Biden and for, what, eight years under President Obama, I have all the respect in the world for President Biden and President Obama. Tough job.
But between them, they spent 12 years in Washington, and presidents set the tone. They control the questions that are asked. And here's the question that President Obama and President Biden asked for eight years. I heard it every single day: "Who needs to pay more in taxes? Is it you? Is it you? Who needs to pay more in taxes? We need more money. Who needs to pony up more?"
That was the issue. But that's not the issue today. We have a new president. You know what the issue is today? "What the hell happened to all the money?" What the hell happened to all the money? And that's what Mr. Musk is finding out.
That's all this is about. And I'm just shocked that my colleagues have decided that this is a hill they're going to die on. How can you look the American people in the eye and support this kind of waste, support this kind of spending porn?
I mean, the election, to me, made at least one thing clear: the American people are sick and tired of people in Washington denying reality. The last administration tried to convince us that we were living in a crime-free world, where inflation was temporary and the border was secure. And the American people didn't bite.
You know why? Because it wasn't true. The last administration tried to argue that the economy was making our lives better, but the American people knew differently. They understood the economy to be, "I get to spend more to live worse." And they voted.
Now, I mean, the American people were poorer under the last administration, but they didn't become stupid. They could see that government was creating a problem, not trying to fix it. And they noticed the national debt too.
Put up that first chart for me. You know what our national debt is, Mr. President? $36 trillion. Do not—million, not billion—$36 trillion. It takes my breath away.
How? It's ever been over 100% of our gross domestic product. Our debt's growing faster than our economy. And we toss around these numbers—a trillion, a billion, a million. Since 2019, America's population has grown 2%. We're not having babies—2%. And that's after massive immigration.
You know how much our budget has grown? 55%. 55%. Yeah, we've had inflation. We've had 55% worth of inflation. That's how we got to this $36 trillion in debt.
Put up the next chart for me. Now, some of this money we had to spend during the pandemic, and it was a bipartisan effort. During the pandemic, Republicans voted for it, and Democrats voted for it because we had no choice.
I was there. I saw it from the inside. We came this close to losing the American economy. And you know who helped a lot? Doesn't get enough credit—Jay Powell at the Federal Reserve. I watched it. The whole world wanted to go into a cave and retreat back in the Great Recession.
I remember all the other countries in the world who look to us. They may hate us, but they know we're the greatest country in all of human history. They look to America. And you know what? Back in the Great Recession, all the other countries wanted our treasuries—treasury notes, treasury bonds. Not this time.
They were so scared, they didn't want treasuries; they wanted dollars—cash dollars. So, Jay Powell, thank the Lord, he goes over to the Federal Reserve. He opens what's called a currency swap line, and he told every country, "You want dollars? I'll trade you dollars for your currency." And everything calmed down.
He didn't get any credit for that, but it was a gutsy thing to do. But on top of that, to save the American economy—that wasn't helping the American economy. We had to keep the economy going. We spent a lot of money.
But then COVID ended, and what we should have done was go back to pre-COVID spending. But we didn't do that. President Biden, after the shutdowns and the coronavirus, the pandemic was over, passed the American Rescue Plan. COVID was over; he spent $1.9 trillion.
"Never let a good crisis go to waste." I didn't vote for it. Then he came back and passed what he called an infrastructure bill. It was really just the Green New Deal. I know what's in that bill. That was another $1.2 trillion.
And then he passed the Inflation Reduction Act. I didn't vote for it, but that was another $1 trillion. And then he passed the Chips Act. This is really special. He said, "Big semiconductor companies need our money. They need taxpayer money; they're not making enough money."
And he gave them money. He didn't give hardware stores money. President Biden didn't give the healthcare industry money. He said, "I want to help big tech." And boy, they sucked it up like a Hoover Deluxe.
We spent $280 billion subsidizing big tech. And you add it all up, and that's $4.3—almost $4.5 trillion. And that's how we got $36 trillion in debt. And that's why Donald Trump said, "I'm going to look at every single line item of our spending."
And that's why he gave the job to Elon Musk. And that's why Musk is auditing these accounts. But nobody wants to talk about what he's finding. Nobody wants to talk about the spending porn except the American people. They get it, Mr. President. They get it.
And I hope Mr. Musk continues. My colleague and friend—we had a little discussion in banking today. Senator Warner makes a good point. He wants Mr. Musk to come over and talk to Congress about how he's doing this. I'm all for that.
I am all for that. I would love to have him come over and walk us through what he's doing and how he's discovering all this spending porn. We need all the help we can get on reducing our spending because we can't continue at this pace.
I just wanted to spend a few minutes putting all this in perspective, Mr. President. The world's not going to spin off its axis, folks. Every business that I know of goes through an audit. Now we're being audited, but we're being audited by—um, not by the usual auditors, but we're being audited by a person appointed by the President of the United States.
And I'm betting you when he's through—and he's going to go to all these agencies. He's starting on the Department of Education next. I think he'll end up finding that some of our money is being well spent, but he's also going to find that some of our money is being stolen and it's being wasted.
And that's an insult to every taxpayer in this country. So I'm going to say, I'm going to end like I began: we ought to give Mr. Musk a medal. We ought to be thanking him.
Maybe nobody else wants to hear about this spending porn, but I can't wait to read the book. I hope he finds all of it and compiles it. I hope Marco Rubio, a new Secretary of State, takes USAID and shakes them by the shoulder and lifts up the good people there and fires the bad people—the people that wasted taxpayer money like this, giving money to terrorist organizations, giving money to organizations that support Hamas.
I hope he gets rid of every single one of them. And I think if we listen to Mr. Musk, we can save a lot of money. And I hope he does come over and explain what he's doing.
When I was teaching, you know, my communications, digital literacy, public speaking, I used to teach at the university. One of the things that I used to say, as one of the kind of pillars of my teachings, was: don't ever sacrifice clarity for complicated, highfalutin language.
The most important thing when it comes to communicating anything—personally, professionally, in any context, any circumstance—the most important thing is clarity. Human beings want to be understood. That is a natural, universal, ubiquitous desire.
Human beings yearn for understanding. And you know in your hearts when you're misunderstood. Somebody takes what you say the wrong way and does something with that misunderstanding. It's the worst feeling in the world.
Human beings want clarity. What Senator Kennedy just did right there was clarify what Elon Musk is doing. This is a guy who's literally one of the greatest minds that ever lived. This is a guy who is an innovator, a genius.
He's disrupted vertical after vertical. He's created the most lasting creations and innovations that are going to be talked about thousands and thousands of years from now. And now he's sleeping on a government office floor, working for nothing because he loves America.
And like Senator Kennedy said, he's going to find some good stuff. He'll find some things that are being spent wisely, but the stuff that's not being spent wisely—$25 million for Sesame Street for Iraq, millions and millions of dollars for terrorists' college tuition—this is absurd.
It's beyond absurd. It's Kafkaesque. It's living in an alternate reality—a strange, distorted, psychologically terrifying reality. And imagine how long this has been going on.
So the next time you see these hypocrites fleeing the ship that's sinking and ranting and raving and coming up with cringeworthy songs, remember Senator Joe Kennedy. He just put everything in beautiful perspective and clarified what Elon Musk is doing—a service that not only deserves a medal, but like I've said many times, deserves so many medals bestowed upon him that he can barely lift his neck.
I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Let me know what you think in the comments down below. I love you guys so, so much. I can't wait to read your comments. What do you think of what Joe Kennedy just said about Elon Musk? Let me know down below.