Welcome.
It is verdict with center, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you and Senator it is a victory dance. It's got some meat and potatoes with it. Donald Trump putting together his cabinet and it is well making the media light their hair on fire. And a lot of conservatives have voted for Donald Trump are liking the payoff. There's consequences when you win and when you lose, especially if you're a Democrat.
Today, well, change is on the way and the change is coming. As Trump would say, Bigley, we are seeing major nominations for cabinet members, for senior officials in the White House. We're going to go through all of those, give you a sense of where the new administration is coming out, give you a sense of what to expect in the next two months, and then in January when the new Congress is sworn in, and then when the
new president is sworn in. We're also going to tell you particularly I just think funny story about how utterly corrupt today's Democrat Party is, about how they paid millions and millions of dollars for their celebrity quote endorsers. That Kamala was basically in the business of purchasing fake endorsements.
And I got to say, the fake endorsements they didn't work, but they sure did spend a lot of money giving Hollywood celebrities cash to pretend they had political views and to hope that that would move voters' votes.
Yeah, there was a lot of cash and donors aren't happy about it. We're going to break that down as well. I want to tell you about Patriot Mobile. If you have a cell phone, and ninety nine percent of you listening right now do how would you like to know that every time you make a call, every time you send a text, you're actually making a difference in standing up for your conservative Christian values.
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I were talking before the show. We actually know these people. I know several of them very well. You know them well as also. And I actually want to start with a really important post, and that is the ambassador to Israel and former governor of Arkansas. Mike Cuckabee is getting that position. That that one made me grin from ear to ear.
Well, Mike Kakabi will do a terrific job in that regard. Huckabee obviously was governor of Arkansas, but also was a Baptist pastor for many years. And Mike loves Israel. He loves the people of Israel, he loves the Jewish people. He has been an outspoken advocate for Israel, and I think it will be an appointment that he will enjoy profoundly. It will be markedly different from how things have been
under the last four years. And I think it shows just how important changing the page on the Biden Harris abandonment of Israel will be because Mike Huckabee will stand unshakably with the state of Israel. And that's going to be also President Trump's view is to stand unshakably with Israel. It's why under the Trump administration the first term, we
saw peace flower in the Middle East. It's why we saw peace a war break out in the Middle East because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris undermined is Real and sent billions of dollars to our enemies. It's a great appointment. And you know, as you're looking at the appointments that have come out, let's start with the White House. So the White House are the kind of core team right around the president. First appointment that was announced as the White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Now, who is
Susie Wiles. Susie Wiles is President Trump's campaign manager. She's been a political operative forever. She's going to become the first woman to serve as a White House Chief of staff. And Susie is someone who has worked for. She ran Rick Scott's campaign, we ran for governor, she ran Ronda santisus campaign, and in fact, if you go way back, she was deputy director during Reagan's nineteen eighty campaign. So she's a longtime political operative. I'll tell you, I know
Susie a little bit. I don't know her very well, but her reputation is someone who's very effective, who doesn't like the limelight, is not out seeking to be in front, is not looking for a bunch of glowing media profiles.
But his intern election night, when Donald Trump tried to get her to talk, and she would, and she would, she went she went to the back of the of the of the stage.
Is like, she walked up, said it low, and then left.
I mean that's have you ever seen that in all of politics? Have you ever seen that?
No, everybody's usually clamoring to get in front of a microphone and talk and have their moment in the sunshine.
And it was very clear there. I think her body language.
That night was We've got work to do, Like, yeah, we just won, but now the work begins. And that is her type of focus and also really her mo for her entire career.
Look Susie's reputation as a serious person who gets things done. That's a good thing, I will tell you, objectively speaking. Trump's twenty twenty four campaign was by far his best run campaign. It wasn't even close. It was much much better than how the twenty sixteen campaign was run. And it was much much better than how the twenty twenty campaign was run. There was greater organization, there was greater discipline, there was better execution. It just they played at a
different level. So that's a strong opening appointment. Now right behind it is the deputy chief of staff, the Deputy chief of staff for policy, and that's Steven Miller. Now Steven is someone I know very very well. Steven used to be a White Hill staffer. He was Jeff sessions top person on immigration policy when Sessions was a Senator, was a colleague of mine. Sessions was one of the leading immigration hawks in the Senate. And Steven is as
smart as hell. He knows the substance of immigration law exceedingly well. And I'm confident there's not going to be literally a single person in the administration more committed to securing the border than Steven Miller. He wakes up focused on that that is his priority. He is someone who he was in the first Trump White House, he was helping drive those policies, but from a lower profile position. Deputy chief of Staff for policy is a big deal.
I'm glad Steven is in that job. I think he'll do a very good job.
Well, let's talk about that when you expand out from there to some of the other positions Donald Trump is putting together. I think a team of people that he trusts, that he feels like is ready to go to work. Another example of that is the deep state. We know what the deep state has done to conservatives, we know what the deep state has done to Donald Trump and
the people around him. And someone that we both know well, a Texan, has been named CIA director and John Ratcliffe, former congressman from Texas.
In the Dallas area.
This is a big appointment, obviously an important one, but also someone that saw from within in those last administration just how corrupt the deep state could be.
Yeah, I'm very glad with this pick. John Ratcliffe is a good friend of mine. He's someone I know very well. He's someone who candidly I urged the Trump administration to appoint to this position. I think John is a good choice. You know, John was in the first Trump administration. He was he was a member of Congress, and then he was the Director of National Intelligence, and he really did an effective job taking on the deep state, and at a level that is exceptionally rare. It's hard to do.
And John showed a seriousness. He'd been a US attorney before the Department of Justice. He has demonstrated a courage to take on embedded bureaucrats who were fighting against the president, fighting against the agenda of the president, and I think really fighting against the national interest. And sadly, after years of Obama and now Biden, you have hardcore leftists who have burrowed into two senior positions and they don't view their roles those positions as carrying out the policy priorities
of the elected president. They don't view the role of those positions as following the instructions that they're given. Rather, they view their role as fighting against presidents they hate and policies they hate. And I think John is a serious guy who is going to be well positioned to try to turn that around. Look, turning CIA around is not easy, but I think John is a very, very good choice. As I said, he was one of the people that I've already leaned in and I urged the
transition team to make exactly this appointment. So I think it's the next excellent one.
Let's talk about DoD Traditionally it's been someone that's been a little bit older at the Department of Defense. It's so funny how quick these things happen and how things can change. You and I were at at the Republican Convention and the night of the acceptance speech.
That final night. Afterwards, I went on.
To host Fox Nation with the guy who's now been appointed, Pete Headseth as a Secretary of Defense, Jesse Waters and Fox tonight. They were just talking about how much they love this guy, how much, how well they know him, how he's an individual that has not only served as country in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he's also Ivy League educated, very smart guy, family man, actually lives in Tennessee and would go up to New York on the weekends to host Fox and Friends Weekend. And all of a sudden,
I think he shocked the world. Trump did when he said, Hey, I'm appointing Pete as Secretary of Defense, saying no one loves America more than Pete does.
And he understands war.
He understands how powerful it can be, how hard it can be, how disruptive it can be, and how it can hurt people's families and American soldiers as well. And this is a guy that says, I don't want to start wars, I want to end wars, referring to Trump. Pete's been war in both of these countries in our lifetime and seen a lot.
Well, that's right, and Pete's someone who's a friend to both of us. I like Pete personally. I consider him a friend. I think he does a great job. You know Pete's background. He was an infantry captain in the Army National Guard and he did tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and he ended up earning two Bronze Stars. He is currently one of the co hosts for Fox and Friends Weekend, and he has been since his military service.
He has been in the media world more than anything else, including writing an important book on taking on the woke do D culture. Look, this is a nomination that is going to get some pushback. The Democrats are going to fight against this one. I'm predicting a real battle because typically defense secretaries are people who spent thirty forty fifty years either in the military running major military operations or running major logistical corporations, running big institutions, and Pete does
not have that background. So I expect Democrats to attack him for that. That being said, I assume that Trump has nominated Pete because he is in particular focused on taking on the generals who were involved in the twenty twenty one Afghanistan withdraw that was utterly disastrous. He has also been really courageous and outspoken fighting to eliminate the
woke initiatives that have taken over the military. And so I think Pete at DoD will do something very similar to what Ratcliffe is going to do at CIA, which is he's going to come in with a real mission of clearing out the hardcore partisans who burrowed into senior career positions. I think that's a good thing, but I would also anti dissipate. At his confirmation hearings, I think
we'll see some fireworks. I think we'll see some Democrats going after Pete, and so'll that'll be a fight I expect in the.
Senate let's talk about arming this audience. And this is one of the reasons why I love this show is because we get to give people some of the talking points that they may not hear anywhere else. And you look at Pete in his nomination. You said there's gonna be fireworks. We've already seen a lot of this happen on social media over the last I don't know, six seven hours since this broke, and they're like, he's unqualified.
You look at Pete.
He graduated from Princeton, and then he has a graduate degree from Harvard. He's an Army COMA.
Wait, let me stop you, Ben. So you're saying, I just want to understand, as an old misgrad you're saying it is a good thing to have a degree from Princeton and Harvard. I just want to specify exactly the meets and bounds of what you're saying.
All Right, I feel like I'm on sitting now for a job in the administration. What I'm let me clarify to my remarks. So what I'm saying is it's not necessarily a bad thing to go to an ivy school, but obviously common sense and going to by the Way, and that Ben is phenomenal as well.
Be Ben, I didn't get a chance to compliment you on the record for the ass kicking that ole miss unleashed on Georgia.
Thank you. I was waiting for the text, I really was.
I thought for sure I was going to get a text from you about that game because it was unbelievable.
Like, holy cow, you got reason to be pretty proud.
I knew you were in that moment thinking, man, that would have been fun to go to that school. When you rush the field at the end, you pulled out a goals post. Have you'll ever done a goal post of the IVY school before? I'm serious?
See what, we don't actually score goals, so we don't have goalposts. That fair fair enough, So we go to we go to the fifty yard line and we play chess. It's it's a very different game. We do it in pads, so but it's it's chest. Nonetheless, you know they.
Say the biggest day at a football stadium high league school is graduation day. When you guys are actually getting graduated graduating, You know that, right, Like that's the most attended day there is, all right, So.
I will tell you when I was in college George Schultz was the Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan. And he's a Princeton grad. And the rumor which everyone acknowledges is that George Schultz had on his rear end a tattoo of a Princeton tiger. And so Schultz would come to Princeton football games, and if you went to the stadium, you would see the band would line up in the shape of Schultz's.
Ass, Are you serious?
And the mascot would go and lay down on one cheek. And I remember thinking, as a nineteen year old, all right, you have really made it in life when your rear end is on the fifty yard line of your alma mater.
At an Ivy League alma mater. At that's that's a valid point, valid valid point. You look at Pete.
He graduated Princeton and then graduate graduate degree from Harvard. The guy's an Army combat veteran who did tours. And again this is where I armed this audience with the facts. Guantanamo Bay, check that mark that box, Iraq and Afghanistan. And as you mentioned earlier, for his actions on the battlefield, he was decorated with not one, but two Bronze Stars as well as a combat infantryman's badge to boot now.
I tonight had an interesting text message from a warrior, a Sealed Team six member, who said, it's about blanking time that America has someone that went to war, understands modern warfare, understands PTSD, and advocates for those that are mentally wounded in our armed forces, like Pete has done for years. I don't care what anybody says. I'll re enlist and I will go back, and I would stand under this man. I think there's a lot of military veterans that have that mentality as well well.
And I'll say this, Pete does not have the traditional criterion that many prior DoD secretaries have of twenty thirty forty years experience running massive, multi thousand, hundred thousand person organizations and being dooda secretary is incredibly complicated because talk about like turning a battleship doesn't even begin that that analogy is not even close to how complicated it is.
That being said, what Pete brings in addition to being a combat veteran himself is he brings experience calling out the ideological rot that Barack Obama and Joe Biden put into our military, and so I think Pete. There's a reason I drew the analogy between Pete and John Radcliffe, which is I think both of them, the latter has shown and I think the former will show a willingness to take on the corruption that is damaging the institution
they've been sent to. That courage, that clarity, that is rare, and it's one of the reasons why I think the Left is going to attack him and attack him really hard.
Let me ask one another question about this.
Does this mean that there's a real chance And we haven't talked about this in a few months, I think it's a perfect time to go back and really talk about this. Is the reinstatement of men and women in our military that were kicked out because they refuse to get vaccinated with the Republican singer of the House, and that's official. We haven't actually gotten to mention that on the show. So let's just have that little moment of victory that Republicans retain the House, we have, the Senate,
we have the presidency. Is there a chance that those men and women that were kicked out of our military could actually come back in?
Is that an issue? You think will come up in January.
I hope and pray that it does. As you know, Ben, I am the author of the legislation that ended thexine, the vaccine mandate in the military. The Biden administration had thrown out thousands, if not tens of thousands of active duty military members, and I drafted the legislation that Congress passed into law that ended that COVID vaccine mandate. It made sense, we got it done. I tried very, very hard to make the end of the vaccine mandate retroactive.
In other words, there were some ten thousand servicemen and women who'd been thrown out. To say, look, if you're no longer requiring it, you ought to let back in the people you threw out, particularly when we've got a shortage of servicemen and women. These are very experienced. In some cases, you're talking about seal team members, Army rangers, very experienced, highly trained military men and women who were
thrown out unceremoniously. In many instances, is thrown out with a less than honorable discharge, so they received less in terms of pension and benefits. And I'll tell you when I've fought for that we have not been able to get that legislation to pass. Every single Democrat, all of them voted no. They voted no, We're not going to allow those who were thrown out of the military for not getting the COVID vaccine back into the military, even
though today the military doesn't require it anymore. And sadly, we had two Republicans who also voted no, which was really frustrating.
What was the reason behind that? Did they give it the time because I don't remember.
So the two Republicans were Mitt Romney, met will be gone and then Mike Rounds and I'm frustrated. I don't know why I disagreed with it. I really was arguing forcefully. I do have some real optimism going forward. We'll get this fixed. I think with a Republican House and Senate, I'm going to fight very hard to get that. In the next iteration of the NDAA, the NDAA is the National Defense Authorization Act. I also am going to press the Department of Defense if they can just to do
it unilatterally, I'm pretty sure they can. Although I say this, I have not studied the legal questions, so that is an instinct rather than the result of a studied analysis. But when Pete is confirmed as Defense Secretary, I'm going to urge Pete that he at the outset says, if you've been discharged for failure to get this vaccine, you are invited to be readmitted and returned to your old rank and your and your old position.
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Text the word America right now to eight seven to two two. That's the word America. Text it to eight seven two two two right now. Senator, there's an interesting and uh, I want to get your take on this because it went viral when it happened. Donald Trump has selected Elon Musk and the vic Ramaswami to lead the Department of Government Efficiency.
Now.
I was asked the question right after this broke on social media. Wait, is that even an actual department of the US government.
Or is this made up?
I laughed, Wait, there's a lot of people that actually want to know what is this, does it exists?
Is this something new?
And how big of a deal it is that Donald Trump picked the Tesla CEO and ex owner Elon Musk, and an entrepreneur and former Republican President of Canada, Vivic Gramuswati, to lead this Department of quote Government Efficiency.
Well, it is not currently a government agency. I don't think it's an accident that Department of Governmental Efficiency spells out Doge, since Elon is a very vocal supporter of the doge coin cryptocurrency. I think that was quite deliberate. Listen, I'm very glad that Elon is going to play a critical role in the administration, focusing on making government work more effectively and more efficiently. I'm glad Viveks too. He's a very smart guy. I know them both very well.
I'll tell you I spent thirty minutes on the phone with Elon this week talking about precisely this mission, how you make government operate more effectively, and Elon is dealing right now with There is a major difference between government agencies and the private sector. There are lots of differences, and you know, one of the things I pointed out, there's a fantastic economist man named Ludig von Misis, who was one of the founding fathers of the Austrian School
of economics. Brilliant man wrote a lot of different things, but he wrote a book called on Bureaucracy and von Mesis and on Bureaucracy, what he argued is that inevitably you have people who come from the private sector who come into government and they say, we're going to make government more efficient, We're going to make it operate like a business. And von Mesis argued that is always, always,
always doomed to failure. And he explained why. He said, Listen, government lacks the essential element of any private enterprise, and that is the profit motive. And the analogy he uses. He says, Okay, look, Ben, let's say you have a private company. You have, say a barbecue restaurant in Memphis. If you're running your barbecue restaurant in Memphis, every single employee at the restaurant is motivated by the profit incentive.
If the janitor, the guy who is sweeping up the spilled barbecue sauce in the restaurant, if he comes to you and says, mister ferguson, I've got an idea that can reduce our costs by ten percent and that can increase revenues by five percent. So my guess is a Ben you'd listen to him. You'd be like, Okay, I want to hear that idea. Yeah, my guess is number two. If his idea was right, that guy ain't going to
be sweeping floors any longer. He is immediately going to get a promotion because for him and everyone else at the restaurant, the incentive is the profit motive that that unified the incentives of everyone in the private sector. In contrast, and this is what von Misis argues in on bureaucracy, in government, there is no profit motive, and in fact,
the incentives are precisely the obverse. Let's say you're running a particular office and a government agency, and you've got a million people who are receiving ten billion dollars in benefits. Your incentives are not to reduce the number of people receiving those benefits. Your incentives are not to reduce the amount of benefits they're receiving. Instead, what are your incentives
in government? Your incentives and government are to increase the one million people to a million, five or two million. Your incentives are to increase the ten million dollars in benefits to fifteen billion or twenty million. Your incentives are to take your say, thousand people that were work for you and increase it to two thousand or three thousand. All of your incentives not only are they not aligned on the profit motive, they are exactly the opposite of
the profit motive. So I actually I recommended Elon he read the book. He did not know the book, and we spent about thirty minutes talking about how do you change this beast that is government. You're never going to make it quickened in. But I also talked about the fact that a huge problem with government is that you cannot fire government employees. Generally speaking, there are civil service protections in place that if you try to fire someone,
you have litigation. It's very difficult. And I pointed out to Elon, look, when you went into Twitter, you fired what sixty percent of the employees. That is a flexibility that you have and what it means. And I tried to lay this out to him as well. So I said, listen, at Teslas SpaceX, my guess is you have very very few employees who wake up every day with their mission and life being to stop you, to frustrate the objectives of the company, and to try to make them fail.
And if you did have any employees that were doing that, you'd fire them because they work for you, and that'd be it. In government, particularly with the deep state, there are literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of deep state employees who wake up every day with their objective, their mission being to stop everything Donald Trump is trying to accomplish. And so I'm really glad that Elon is doing this, and I think Vivek is very smart. I
think Vivek will add to that. We will get some good results out of it, but it is going to be an incredibly important and incredibly challenging endeavor. And I'll say Elon is as smart a person as I have ever encountered. And look, I've been blessed. I've actually run in some circles where I've known some freakishly smart people, including people like Chief Justice William Renquist and Anton Scalia, and and Elon is just another level in terms of brilliant. So I'm excited to see what he can do in
this role. But it is going to be I think his instinct is going to be to break some China and and we'll see how that plays out in the government world.
Yeah, and the government world is a key point there. Let's talk about one of the most important appointments, and that is Tom Homan. And there are so many conservatives that voted for Donald Trump, so many Americans that voted for Donald Trump because they want to secure border. He's the former Immigration and Custom Enforcement Director. He has now been named Trump's Borders are tasked with cracking down on immigration and overseeing the southern border the northern border as well.
And he said this on Fox yesterday.
Look, I've seen I've seen some of these democratic governors, and they're going to stand in the way. They're going they're going to make a heart for us. Well, you know a suggestion, if you're not going to help us, get the hell on the way when we're going to do it. So if we can't get assistance from New York City, and I may we may have to double the number of.
Raises we send in New York City because we're going to do the job. We're going to do the job without here or with you. It's very clear.
Democrats already gearing up to fight against the government and deportations. He has said their number one goal is what you and I mentioned on the show. I think it was even before election day. They're going to go after the criminals first. They're going to go after the people that have already had due process and have been told that they are to be deported from this country. And again, this is where I love doing the show. Let's remind
listeners and arm you guys with the facts. When when you hear the left say it's inhumane to deport people, do not forget Barack Obama deported more than three million illegal immigrants while he was president. So this idea that we're doing a million plus at or felons that have been convicted of crimes that have already had due process, don't fall for this because remind all of the people that say otherwise, Barack Obama deported more than three million illegal immigrants when he was president.
So Tom Homan is a serious guy. He cares passionately about defending this nation securing our borders. I am very very happy that Trump is named him borders are He also named Christy Nome, the governor South Dakota to be the Secretary of the Department Homeland Security. Homan and Nome will work hand in hand. I think that's going to be very effective. Tom Homan understands the border, he understands what is what it takes to secure the border, and I think he is going to be the point person
driving the agenda. As I've predicted before. But I want people to hear this. It's November. We are still facing an invasion at our southern border. We are going to secure the border, and it is not going to take a year at not even going to take six months. It will be done by January and February of next year. And in February, Ben, I want you to play this clip back and either we're going to say the results are in Cruz was right, or hold me to account
and say, Okay, it didn't happen. What went wrong. But either way, that's my prediction. And I think Tom Homan is going to be driving the effort to get that done, and I also think Stephen Miller, is Deputy Chief of Staff, will be driving it alongside him. I'm very optimistic about what we're going to get done on that front.
And finally, when we're talking, and there's more names are going to come out, and we will continue to let you know what we think about them and how exciting this moment is. But there's one of your colleagues in the Senate, someone you know very well. There was a lot of people that were on the short list. I say a lot, a lot that you and I knew that were floated for the shortlist for Secretary of State. I was paying very close attention to this one, as
I know you were. And and the nominee is going to be your colleague, the Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio.
Yeah, I think this is terrific. I think Marco is going to do a good job.
Uh.
He is focused on foreign policy quite a bit his entire time in the Senate. Marco is smart, He cares about foreign policy. He cares about standing up to communists, especially in Cuba. He cares about standing up to communist in China. Marco is more interventionist on foreign policy than I am. But that being said, he cares deeply about it, and and and so I think he is more interventionist on foreign policy than Trump is. And at the end of the day, Trump is going to make the decisions.
But I think Marco is someone who is diplomatic, He is articulate, he will be he will be a very effective diplomat for America. I think it's a great choice. I think it's a natural fit. I will tell you so. So I sent Marco a text tonight which I'll go ahead and and and and read to you what I send him. I sent Mark of the following text. Congrats, sir,
A big damn deal. You join an historic roster including John Jay Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy, Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Calhoun, William Jennings, Bryan Charles Evans, Hughes, Henry Stimpson, George Marshall, Dean Atchison, John Foster, Dulles, Dean Rusk, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, and James Baker. Truly rarefied air. Every Cuban is deeply proud.
And then I finished it with and I'm confident at least that you'll kick the ass of Hillary and John Kerry.
Yeah, well, Barr, but I couldn't agree with you more on that one. Right, It's I have no idea. I have no doubt I should say that Marco was going to laugh when he reads that last part of the text.
So he did laugh, and he responded, I will almost never out my colleagues text, but I think Marco would forgive me for this. His response was, he said, there is hope for the Cuban Caucus, and then he sends me a story from Latin Times. Social media users launch campaign to get pit Bull appointed to Marco Rubio's Senate seat. Ron de Santus has only one choice, and I could only respond to that spectacular.
You gotta love it.
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gift now, that's support IFCJ dot org. You can also call them to give it eight to eight for eight eight IFCJ that's eighty eight for eight eight IFCG or four to three.
Two five, Senator.
One other story is Donald Trump is getting his cabinet together and making appointments.
That has not gotten a lot of attention is the.
Take out the trash, everybody throwing everybody under the bus in the Biden camp, the Harris camp. We find out she blew through a billion dollars, she's upside down in debt. They're begging for money with text messages to liberals saying we need your help with accounting of the votes and give money.
Now.
I wish I was joking, but I'm not, and I don't know. Someone said eighteen twenty million upside down. And then we found out where a lot of the donations actually went. The donations were going to celebrities. Oprah's had to come out after there was a million dollar check given to her Quote production company for production of a one day sit down interview that we many people saw on TV with Oprah. It doesn't call it's a million dollars to produce that, but that was the price tag.
And then we found out that there were a lot of celebrities that were being paid to act like they loved Kamala Harris. And there are some Democratic donors that are livid right now over the price tag on this.
You know, there's a terrific article in the Spectator World entitled Kamala Harris ran the Fry Festival of Campaigns, and it points out that Trump's campaign spent roughly four hundred and eighty eight million dollars and Kamala spent more than a billion, so she outspent Trump. More than two to one, and Kamala's campaign ended up twenty million dollars in debt. Well, it turns out where did that money go. Well, one of the things that went to is they paid many
of the quote unquote celebrities who supported her. We were getting paid and getting paid significant sums. So for example, remember the Call Me Daddy podcast? Yeah, well apparently the campaign spent upwards of six figures to build a custom set for her appearance on the podcast, and the podcast netted only eight hundred thousand downloads, less than a million downloads. Look, Ben, you and I we have roughly a million unique listeners.
If she wanted eight hundred thousand downloads, I'll tell you, Kamala right now, even though you've lost Ben and I will invite you on Verdict right now. We will welcome you. We will not charge you to build a set, so you can save all your money. And you paid Oprah a million dollars for production costs, we will charge you for production costs on Verdict. What do you think fifty bucks?
Sure? I think I took a fair price. Fifty bucks.
Fifty bucks will get you a very nice coffee cup with some Jamaican blue Mountain coffee. That's what we'll spend the fifty bucks on and you can reach the same number of people. All right. By the way, she also turned down Joe so call me Daddy. Got eight hundred thousand downloads. How many do you think Joe Rogan's interview of Donald Trump got a lot more than that? Forty seven million?
Wow, that's a lot. Okay, that's a lot.
So there were also seven Swing state concerts with expensive performers, and it turns out every one of them they got a price. It is the world's oldest profession and they are charging for it. So who are the performers that got paid millions of dollars? Katie Perry, Lady Gaga, John bon Jovi, Ricky Martin.
Hold on, you're.
Telling me now of these people were like doing it for free because they were all in for Comma.
They wanted to get paid.
That show me the money. They ended up spending more than twenty million dollars on event production alone. Oprah, as you noted, charged a million dollars, and they went so far into debt that the campaign and allegedly had to scrap Alanis Morisset. They were planning to do a lot of Morisset and they said, no, okay, we can't afford her anymore. Nevermind. I mean it is truly stunning, and you've got to wonder, like I gotta say, I don't get paying millions of dollars for celebrities to fake endorse
someone she spent paid money to. What Beyonce.
Well, let's go over the big ones.
This is coming from Fox and I'm gonna play this this audio.
Take a listen.
This is again from Fox, as they were going through how much cash was spent.
I can't get over these numbers.
Ten million dollars for Beyonce to step up and back Kamala Harris publicly, five million for Megan the Stallion, three million for Lizzo, one point eight million for eminem was that.
Those numbers are unbelievable if you just look at them. And I was like, hold on a second, and I went back and watched that clip a couple of different times, because you look at them.
Ten million for Beyonce.
If you're a donor and you wrote a big check Meghan, this Stallion, five million, Lizzo three million and one point eight million, I called on, I just raised all this money for you and this is how you spent it.
Look, I gotta say I've run a bunch of campaigns. I ran my first campaign for Senate in twenty twelve. I ran my next campaign for president in twenty sixteen. We won twelve states all over the country. I ran my next campaign for Senate again in twenty eighteen, and I just finished running my most recent campaign for Senate reelect a third term in twenty twenty four. I can tell you, in the whole time, I've never paid any one a million dollars for anything. I don't think we
paid any entertainers. I don't know of any entertainers we paid. Maybe at some point we paid five or ten grand for someone performing at some party. I'm not aware of it. But I can tell you this. Look our stars now, to be clear, the stars we have at our events are our international, supermodeled, global talents like Ben Ferguson. And I gotta tell you.
What that ten million dollar payday once in my career like oh yeah, Beyondest say yeah, yeah, I'm all in for the cause, but I just need ten million to.
Make it happen.
Okay, Ben, To be clear, we don't pay you ten dollars, No that's Look, I'm a fiscal conservative. Dammit. If you want to be there and you believe in saving the country, stand up and save the country. And if not, get the hell out. But like, what is it with these lefties who ironically they want to put socialists in office who make it impossible for people to earn a living, and yet they're such capitalists that they're like, show me the money to do it. I mean, there is an intense hypocrisy on this.
I believe this.
And I'm not just saying this because this moment in this headline, but I'm being dead serious. This could be a huge problem for democratic canants moving forward, because when you see this type of abuse of campaign finance money from donors, those same donors, somebody's going to be asking them for money and four years or less than four years from now.
And I'm, by the way, the question the next time Beto O'Rourke, Collin all Red jumps on a stage with with Willie Nelson, Everyone's going to ask how much you pay him?
Yeah?
How much of my money did did I gave you? Did you just give him for that thirteen minutes of him singing? It's an question and.
It undermines the entire credibility that I'm here because I love America so much and you've got to vote for this candidate. Look, i'll give you an example in the presidential race. So one of the cooler people that I got to meet and spend time with was Phil Robertson, you know from Duck Dynasty.
Oh yeah, and here was I mean massive back in the day, like unbelievable star.
Huge star. And so so he invited me to Monroe, Louisiana to come stay at his place. And I went out duck hunting with Phil, which by the way, ranks among the coolest things I've ever gotten to do. And we went to the duck blind. We're there at four in the morning. Look, i'd like to hunt in Texas. I gotta be careful about what I say because there's so many really serious hunters that I can't overstate. I go hunting a couple times a year. I enjoy it,
but I'm not someone who lives and breathes it. Phil in that duck blind, I have never seen a person who is a better shot with a shotgun. He would drop birds at a distance that I wouldn't pick up my gun. They were too far away. I'm like, yeah, if the duck flies over here, I'll shoot it, but I can't shoot it way over there. And he would just boom and then the dogs would swim out and grab the duck and bring it back. And Phil, I'll tell you, So I went there and spent the day
when hunting with him. He recorded an ad for our campaign that we put out. It remains one of my favorite ads we've ever done. I'm all like wearing camo grease pain and I'm in the duck blind with Phil. It was really cool. But Phil, it was during the Iowa Caucuses and we asked, Phil, will you come to Iowa and campaign with me? And Phil, for something like forty years, had not missed a single day of duck season. He'd been out there every single day for four decades,
and we'd invited him to come. And that morning he went to the blind at four in the morning and he's sitting there in the blind, and I guess you know, it weighed on his heart. I can't do this today. I need to go fight to save America. And Phil left the blind and he went and hopped on a plane and he flew to Iowa and he did a big rally with me in Iowa, and I told him then, I'm like, Phil, I am beyond humboldt that you missed the first day of duck season in forty years to
be here in campaign alongside me. Now, I didn't writehim a damn check to do that.
I just said, if you gave him Beyonce money, you know you're like, oh, and by the way, here's ten million dollars.
No.
No, I just said, come help save America. And it meant a lot like for him to miss it. And that day we were literally touch and go. We didn't know who's gonna come, but it meant a big deal when he came. If you're paying Beyonce ten million dollars, I mean, my good I mean goodness. Who would she not endorse for ten million dollars? No, it's a very fair question.
And it's like, would any of these celebrities have showed up for her if she wasn't paying them? Not tens of thousands, not one hundred of thousands, but literally millions of dollars. I think it's gonna be a very interesting talking point in politics moving forward. It's like, is anyone that's actually endorsing these democrats or celebrities not on the take.
Is it all just a massive payday?
They get a chance out every four years, and it's gonna be interesting to see how that fold, how that is dealt with a couple of years from now, when Democrats are on stage again with a bunch of famous people and they're gonna have to now answer questions about it.
It's gonna be really fun.
Don't forget. We do this podcast Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I on those in between days grab my podcast. I'll keep you update on the latest breaking news on the cabinet positions as well. Download the Ben Ferguson podcast. There and Senator Cruz and I will see you back here on Friday morning.