Good Monday morning. It is Verdict with Center, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
Center.
It's nice as always to be chatting with you. And this was a very interesting week for the Democrats, whose secret weapon has always been use the media to Jedi mind trick. The American people seems to not be working, and they could also be losing their funding when it comes to MPR and their propaganda and PBS.
Well, the gravy train is over.
And I got to say, we're two and a half months into the Trump administration and we have never seen such a concerted onslaught on the entire wall of left wing control, the elites of left wing control, and in particular going after the money. What Doze is doing, what Trump is doing, what Elon is doing, is going after the billions and billions of funding, whether at USAID, whether at EPA, whether throughout the administration, that are funding the
entire apparat of the left wing. And that is proving incredibly effective. It is sorely needed, and it is causing absolute chaos and panic and terror. Not only that, we saw truly catastrophic testimony from the head of NPR before the House. NPR and PBS are both hard left propaganda networks funded by the taxpayers, and they're both on the chopping blocks. And the left is panicking because again the
gravy train is over. And what we're seeing among Democrats right now is chaos, is fear, is absolute disarray and panic, and the Democrats are scattering. We're going to break all of that down. And finally, the democrats big attempt, the media's big attempt to take down President Trump in these first couple of months was Signalgate. Signal Gate. They thought, okay, we've got them, we can take you down the entire national security team. It was breathlessly reported on every TV
station around the clock. Democrats called for resignations. Every one of them went out and bought pearls just so they could clutch those pearls. And yet the polling has come through now and the president's approval ratings remain historically strong. Signal gait has failed despite the Democrats and the media's full court press.
Yeah, it really is incredible, and we're going to dive into all of that as well. 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. The need for security essentials and support for first responders is still critical. Israel must be prepared for the next attack, wherever it may come from.
As Israel is surrounded by enemies on all sides. That is where the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has supported and will continue to support the people of Israel with life saving security essentials, and your gift today will help save lives by providing bomb shelters, armored security vehicles, armored ambulances, firefighting equipment, flat jackets and bulletproof vests and
so much more. Your generous donation today will help ensure the people of Israel are safe and secure in the days to come, as threats of tear remain imminent. So give a gift to bless Israel andenter people by visiting SUPPORTIFCJ dot org. That's one word, support IFCJ dot org. You can also call to give eight at eight four eight eight IFCJ that's eight at eight four eight eight if CJ eight eight eight four eight eight four three
two five or supportif CJ dot org. All right, so, Centater, let's start with something and again this goes back to money is power. The Democratic Party has figured this out. They've exploited to their advantage. And there was a very intering article that was written about the money and the shutting off of that valve by Bhi. Donald Trump, by government funded patronage networks, explain this to everybody listening.
Well, it's an article that was in the Daily Signal and it's entitled how Trump is decimating the Left's patriotage networks by Jarrett Stepman. I want to read the beginning of it because it's really, I think, quite powerful. President Donald Trump has launched a political counter revolution in the early days of his second presidency. One of the most profound ways he's doing this is by effectively cutting off
the left's massive government funded patronage networks. What's making Trump's move so effective is that many of these networks are based on government functions that long ago either waned in usefulness or have completely abandoned their purpose. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zelden appeared on One American News Wednesday and explained how the left has insidiously transformed the federal government
into a Democratic party funding apparatus. Zelden explained how the EPA under the bided administration was used as a slush fund to give money to activists. Quote the EPA was absolutely being used to push out this green slush fund to their friends, Zelden said. Quote by design, the director of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund leaves one of these NGOs, goes to work for the Biden administration to design this whole setup, and then sees his former employer get five
billion dollars. Zelden said the scheme applied to contracts large and small, to both green non governmental organization executives and to low level activists. The EPA has been acting as a conduit to transfer huge amounts of taxpayer money to the left's base. Quote are we providing clean air, land, and water? Zelden ast rhetorically, this wasn't money spent towards remediating environmental issue. This was money going through their friends.
Indeed it was.
Zelden has canceled hundreds of contracts worth one point five billion dollars that were tabbed to go essentially to left wing activist networks focused on quote environmental justice. Democrats are apoplectic about the move. Of course, big surprise, Zelden is going hard on other climate change initiatives too, where the big money is at stake for the less green client network.
This is only the tip of the iceberg.
One of the real misunderstandings about the modern administrative state was demolished in recent years is that it's operated by nonpartisan experts. Instead, it is now a funding stream. And this is me talking and not the article on it. It's a funding stream for the left. And understand what's gone on. Whether it was USAID, whether it was the EPA, whether it was every single department, the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, that Apartment of Justice, every cabinet agency.
What the left has done is taking these funding spigots and spent billions and billions of dollars funding all of their friends, funding all of the attack apparatus. If you wonder why things seem sometimes so skewed left and right, a big part of the reason is the left has been addicted to this funding. But Ben, that's what's so powerful about cutting it off. Listen the right. You know, when conservatives are in power, when Republicans are in power, we don't do this. We don't fund our buddies, And
I'm glad we don't. I don't want us to. But one strength of that is that means conservative organizations are not addicted to the government cash. We're not suckling at the teat of the federal government. The left right now, they don't know what to do because their entire ecosystem everybody, and understand this is from the big senior poohbas to the most junior, green haired left wing radical who dropped out of school. They're all dependent on the government money.
And it's why, you know, when you and I interviewed Elon Musk and he was saying, you know, I asked him, why do they hate you so much? And if you remember his answer, he said, well, I'm taking away their goodies. I'm taking away their money. This is what's fundamentally happening.
Well, and the way you said it is exactly the way he was. Just kind of like, look, they're in deep trouble because they don't know how to operate on their own without it, and if you take it away, then it can literally disappear, and also their reach disappears overnight.
That is so powerful.
Make it on your own, but not with my tax hour subsidizing your radical agenda.
That's exactly right. Let me read a little more of this Daily Signal article. Like many of the federal government's projects, USAID is in many ways a relic of a bygone era when the US aimed to stop the influence of communism around the globe. Sometime after the fall of the USSR, it became a vehicle to fund various leftist projects around
the globe with little relation to US national interest. In fact, many of these projects were downright loathed in countries that weren't too pleased with the US government funding pride parades in their capital city. The Trump administration is also pulling the plug on the unofficially established Church of the Left too.
They are withdrawing or threatening to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money directed at colleges and universities that failed to protect their students from anti semitism on campus. They are threatening schools with removing even more funds if they continue their illegal, racially discriminatory DEI programs too, and one might add that the problem goes far beyond anti
semitism and DEI. American universities, which have in many cases become hedge funds with schools attached, are increasingly failing to serve the public good. Much of what they call vital quote unquote research is bogus. In addition, there's no question that taxpayer funded research grants allow universities to fund their obnoxious humanities departments that are politically monolithic at nearly every school.
They are in the business of gatekeeping the American elite and turning out generations of activists who not only run the show on campus, but populate newsrooms, corporate boardrooms, and government institutions. Want to know what, Nearly everyone who runs an elite institution sounds the same, spouts the same dogmas, and went along with every insanity of the twenty twenty great awokening.
There's your source.
And this is fundamentally what is going on that Trump is targeting the power at the source.
He's targeting the money.
That is a big, big deal, which brings us to another aspect of this, and that was what happened in Congress last week with MPR CEO and PBS a CEO there in front of Congress having to deal with what DOGE is doing, which is cutting waste, fraud, and abuse, and it did not go very well for the CEOs.
It reminded me an awful lot center of when those the presidents of the Ivy League schools had to come and answer questions about anti Semitism on college campuses after the attacks on Israel, and people were just in shock how radical they were and how they were not stopping it.
That was very reminiscent of that.
With NPR CEO, very arrogant, pbsco very arrogant, like, this is what we do. We take your money, we put out propaganda, so sue us, That's what we've been doing forever.
Well, and Catherine Maher who's the CEO of NPR ist dripping the arrogant. She is hard left, and it was exactly like you're right. The president of Harvard, the president of Penn both of them lost their jobs over there, arrogant, out of touch testimony before the House. Where she is. Look,
she's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She worked for UNISEF, She worked for the National Democratic Institute, She worked for the World Bank in access Now, she worked for Wikimedia Wikimedia Foundation.
She joined the Atlantic Council.
She was part of the Department of States Foreign Affairs Policy Board. She is a hard leftist, but look don't take my word for it. Listen to it out of her own mouth. And I want you to listen in particular for this back and forth with Brandon gil Brandon Gill is a freshman House member from Texas. He's a good friend. I campaigned hard for Brandon. I endorsed him in the primary. Brandon is a rising star in the House.
And just listen of this back and forth as he questions her and and and and hangs her on her own petard with her own words. Give a listen.
Do you believe that America is addicted to white supremacy?
I believe that I tweeted that.
And as I've said earlier, I believe much of my thinking has evolved over the last half decade.
It is okay, stop stop, stop, stops.
I want you to notice something she says there, Much of my thinking has evolved over the last half decade, Ben, what's a half decade?
Five years?
That would be five years. Doesn't that half decades sound long?
I believe much of my thinking has evolved over the last half decade. Oh crap, what I said five years ago? Oh no, that's a real problem. Run away, run away, all right, go back to what he's playing with has evolved. I just like that that that that comment. Her idiocy only gets me laugh.
As soon as I heard, I was like, this is not going well. Keep listening, it gets evolved.
Why did you tweet that?
I don't recall the exact context, sir, so I wouldn't be able to say.
Okay, do you believe that America believes in black plunder in white democracy?
I don't believe that, sir.
You tweeted that.
It's reference to a book you were reading at the time, apparently The Case for Reparations.
I don't think I've ever read that book, Sir.
You tweeted about it.
You said you took a day off to fully read The Case for Reparations. You put that on Twitter in January twenty twenty.
I apologies.
I don't recall that I did okay, I'd no doubt that your tweet there is correct, but I don't recall.
Okay, do you believe that white people inherently feel superior to other races?
I do not.
You tweeted something to that effect. You said I grew up feeling superior. How wide of me? Why did you tweet that?
I think I was probably reflecting on what it was to be to grow up in an environment where I had lots of advantages.
It sounds like you're saying that white people feel superior.
I don't believe that anybody feels that way, sir. I was just reflecting on my own experiences.
Do you think that white people should pay rep I have never said that, sir. Yes you did. You said it in January of twenty twenty.
You tweeted, yes, the North, yes, all of us, Yes, America, Yes, our original collective sin and unpaid debt. Yes, reparations, yes on this day.
I don't believe that was a reference to fiscal reparations, sir.
What kind of reparations was it a reference to.
I think it was just a reference to the idea that we all owe much to the people who came before us.
That's a bizarre way to frame what you tweeted. Okay, many How much reparations have you personally paid?
Sir?
I don't believe that I've ever paid reparations.
Okay, just for everybody else, I'm not asking anyone. Seems to be what you're suggesting. Do you believe that looting is morally wrong?
I believe that looting is illegal, and I refer to it as counterproductive. I think it should be prosecuted.
Do you believe it's morally wrong though?
Of course?
Of course, then why did you refer to it as counter productive? Very different, very different way to describe it.
It is both morally wrong and counterproductive as well as.
Being you tweeted it's hard to be mad about protests in reference to the BLM protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression. You didn't condemn the looting. You said that it was counterproductive. NPR also promoted a book called Indefensive Looting. Do you think that that's an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars?
I'm unfamiliar with that book, sir, and I don't believe that was.
A tweeted that you read that book.
But I don't believe that I did read that book.
It's amazing she tweeted that she read the book. She's like, I don't believe that I ever read that book. So you're either lying now or you're lying. What a half half a decade ago is? She likes to describe it right, Senator.
Look, that is a crushingly effective cross examination. And if you look at at She is running away from everything she's ever said, everything she's ever believed, because it is indefensible when she said, as you know, she claimed on Twitter, she took an entire day off to read a book on reparations. It was so important that shed de voted a day of her and now she has no recollection. I'm sorry, I I you know this. This will be before you were watching TV. But but there was an
old series. You ever watch Hogan's Heroes? Yeah, gosh, yes, okay, well do you remember Sergeant Schultz. Yes, Sergeant Schultz, he would say.
I see nothing, I hear nothing.
That is that's that is Catherine Marr. She sees nothing, she hears nothing.
Uh.
And and yet this is someone charged with spending millions of taxpayer dollars running what is a left wing propaganda network. You know her statement, I've never called for reparations. I gotta say, Brandon, I think does a fabulous shop? Well yes you did, let me read you the tweet and she says reparations yes, oh oh well, well other than when I called for reparations. But I haven't called for it other than when I've called for it. But but
but no, no, it's not fiscal reparations. It's it's I mean, I mean, I mean pairing the tires on their cars. That's that that that those are the reparations.
I mean.
She has no answer, because her answer is she desperately wants to run away from everything she has ever said or done. But but let me actually let's actually go to something else that that that that she said and did, which is what do you think she has cited as the number one challenge?
Uh? That it that that.
Is facing uh that that is facing journalism right.
Now, knowing this woman have no idea.
Okay, Here here is a quote from her at a panel at the Atlantic Council Research Lab. Quote, the number one challenge that we see here is, of course the First Amendment in the United States.
It's it's so like, it's so on Brandford, that's almost unbelievable. Though, like a woman who says that she leaves in the public and radio and free speed says, that's the real problem is the First Amendment. In fact, Sedator, here's the MPR CEO in her own words, saying exactly that the.
Number one challenge here that we see is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States is a fairly robust protection of rights, and that is a protection of rights both for platforms, which I actually think is very important that platforms have those rights to be able to regulate what kind of content they want on their sites.
But it also means that it is a little bit trickically addressed some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from and sort of the influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.
I mean, you listen to her, and it's just amazing.
If we could just do what we want and get rid of everything we don't want and silence anybody that says something that is disagreeing with us, and everything would be fine in media and with our government, right, we could just control everybody and shut everybody down we don't like.
That is the NPR CEO saying it.
Look, the left believes in censorship, that they don't believe in journalism, they don't believe in media, they believe in propaganda. And you and I on this podcast covered last year a story that was written in The Free Press by Yuri Berliner, and it was in April of twenty four and it was entitled I've been at NPR for twenty
five years. Here's how we lost to America's trust. And I just want to read the beginning of it again because we did a good chunk of a podcast just on this story, but it really sets up the absolute disaster.
That is NPR today. How Uri Billinner began.
You know, the stereotype of the NPR lister, an ev driving, wordle playing, tote bag carrying, coastal elite. It doesn't precisely describe me, but it's not far off. I'm Sarah Lawrence, educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother. I drive a super room and Spotify says my listing habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.
I fit the NPR mold. I'll cop to that.
So when I got a job here twenty five years ago, I never looked back. As a senior editor on the business desk, where news is always breaking, We've covered up peeples in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media, and AI. It's true NPR always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open minded, curious culture prevailed.
We were nerdy, not knee jerk activists or scolding. In recent years, however, that has changed Today those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the US population. If you are a conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it's always been this way, but it hasn't.
For decades.
Since its founding in nineteen seventy, a wide swath of America turned into NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country, in the world radically different from our engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from
his or her tractor at sunrise. Back in twenty eleven, although NPR's audience is tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, twenty three percent as middle of the road, and thirty seven percent as liberal. By twenty twenty three, the picture was completely different. Only eleven percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative.
Twenty one percent as middle of the road, and sixty seven percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren't just losing conservatives, we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals. An open minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America.
So you see where we are with this.
It's very clear that she was exposed for what she believes and just how radical. You even had a Congressman, William Timmins, who is asking her a basic question about, Hey, you claim that you guys aren't biased, and he asked her about her editorial board. I want people to hear what she said about her editorial board members.
Listen, you're a rabid progressive, and do you not think it's a problem that your political leanings make it seem to the American people that you're not biased and you're not doing your job because you agree that your job is to have journalistic integrity.
Right, absolutely, But there is a strong firewall between the newsroom and anything that I.
Let's talk about the newsroom. You have eighty seven registered Democrats, not a single Republican in your editor boards. I mean, how does that work to give us the perception that you're doing your job of actually delivering unbiased information.
I would agree with you that that number is a concern if it is accurate. I do believe that we need to have journalists who represent the full breadth of the American society so that we can report well for all Americans.
Well, I think that you are failing. I realize you don't even there for a year, but I just really think that while it is a small portion of your budget, you very much should expect to restructure your revenue streams because I don't think that MPR is necessarily worth saving.
I love these I don't think MPR is necessarily worth saving the fact that their editorial board has eighty seven members, all of them registered Democrats. Center, there's not even independence. Are like non registered people on their board. You don't apparently become an editorial board member unless you are a card carrying Democrat. Even independence be damned, forget Republicans, you got zero. MPR is blatantly partisan in balance, that's obvious.
But then the question becomes, Okay, what happens next. We know it, we've confirmed it, We've witnessed it. We heard her testimony. I don't think she's going to lose her job over this, but will she actually lose our taxpayer dollars that are funding them.
Well, And the stat of the eighty seven registered Democrats actually comes from that that article Uriberliner wrote in the Free Press, and he wrote last year, he said, quote, concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom in DC, where NPR's headquarters and many of us live. I found eighty seven registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans.
None.
So, on May third, twenty twenty one, I presented the findings at an all hands editorial staff meeting. Now note this is a senior editor at NPR who's reporting this. Here's what he writes. The response was when I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of eighty seven Democrats and zero Republicans. The response wasn't hostile, it
was worse. I was met with profound indifference. A few messages from surprised, curious colleagues, but the messages were of the oh wow, that's weird variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random an anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity north Star. In a follow up email exchange, a top NPR News executive told me that she had been skewered for bringing up diversity of thought when she arrived at NPR, so she said, I want
to be careful how we discuss this publicly. Look, NPR is nothing but a left wing propaganda out let, PBS is the same. And the very best witness to demonstrate this is Katherine Marr, who is an absolute zealot. She's someone who, when Tim Waltz said let's put tampons in boys' bathrooms, I'm sure Katherine Marr said, oh you hero, you social
justice warrior. That's the world she's coming from. She's someone who I suspect only refers to latin X because Latinos and Latinos do not exist in her elite, left wing, blinkered, bizarre world. And you know what, Catherine Maher is entitled to her opinions. I will defend her right to spout innateities for the rest of her life. I just don't want to pay for him, and I don't think you should have to pay for him if she wants to spout idiocies. She needs to find some left wing billionaire
to pay for her. It shouldn't be the American taxpayers forced to subsidize her efforts at propaganda.
So will we actually have the funding of these two platforms?
What is your best guess now? After these hearings were so clear.
Look, I very much hope so that this gets to the sixty four thousand dollars question coming out of all of Doze, which is how much of what DOGE is doing right now will be memorialized in legislation that Congress can pass. And that is an open question right now, Ben, because anything that goes through what's called regular order in the Senate means that it takes sixty votes to pass,
which means that Democrats can block it. And so we will try to use exceptions to the filibuster rule, the most important of which is is reck budget reconciliation to do as much of that as possible. But I don't know if Congress will succeed on getting the job done. I certainly hope so, and I can tell you this, I'm fighting tooth and nail to make it happen.
Which center brings us to another story, and it may have been one of the biggest fails that we've seen a long time from the media. They grabbed onto what they described as signal gait. They were demanding that people resign or be fired by the president. That was never going to happen. But really what it was they were hoping that the American bee would turn on Donald Trump, it would tank as approval rating and stop the momentum
with doge and everything else. It turns out the American people actually care more about killing terrorists than they do about who's on a signal chat and CBS poll numbers are proving that to be true.
Well, you know, the left is not subtle. The Democrats in the media, they tell you exactly what they're doing, and they're all monolithic because they believe in censorship, they believe in propaganda. Every one of them says exactly the same thing one hundred percent of the time. And listen, it's clear they hate Donald Trump, they want to destroy him, they hate everything he's doing. And they looked at this
signal text thread as their big chance. This was going to be their Russia Russia, Russia, that they were going to use it to go after the President. To go after every one of his appointees. And so we've seen for the better part of a week breathless coverage in the media, every Democrat demanding investigations, demanding firings. You know, one of the funniest was Eric Swalwell, who even among
left wing nutcases, managed to really stand out. You know, he tweeted out every person on the signal thread should be fired. Yeah, okay, I'm sure that's the great idea there, the vice president, secretary of State, Secretary of Events, every national security official in the entire administration. Okay, sure, I know why you want that, I understand, but America's.
Not You didn't have the same guy that slept with a spy. I just want to make sure I get the connection here, right.
I don't know why you'd hold that against him.
Got it? Yeah, that's a little rich from that guy, But keep going.
Look everything they wanted to destroy Trump, and they were convinced this was their this was their opportunity. And look, you and I did a podcast to media after this broke where we pointed out, yeah, it was a screw up to include the editor of The Atlantic on it.
That was a mistake.
It was a pretty an embarrassing mistake, but the underlying substance of the text exchange was great. It was actually the president of the National Security Team taking out terrorists who were attacking Americans, who had been attacking American shipping lanes, who Biden had ignored and done nothing, and who had been driving up costs for American consumers because it was so expensive to get through the Sue Canal. And President Trump said, open up the shipping lanes, take out the
houthy radical Islamic terrorists. And they did, and it was an incredible success. So the substance of it was all strong and successful. But yet the media and the Democrats thought, Aha, we finally got through this mistake. The way to go after Trump well. On Sunday CBS poll CBS released a new poll, and it turns out their entire attack on Signal Gate failed. CBS polls shows fifty percent of Americans
approve of Donald Trump, fifty percent disapprove. In other words, their entire effort to take him down failed utterly.
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