Point of View February 11, 2025 – Hour 2 : Biden and Trump’s Pardons

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View, Kirby Anderson. Second hour today we're going to talk about those pardons which have been something that we've discussed before around the round table.

[00:00:25] Then we'll get back to some of the questions about the Department of Governmental Efficiency which some people are saying maybe should be called the Department of Governmental Accountability because that's a lot of what has been taking place so far. And we'll get into some other news items and then if we don't get to some of the other articles I've posted, well there's always of course tomorrow.

[00:00:47] One of those articles that is there for you is Biden's Pardons Raised Eyebrows but Trump's Insulted Justice Itself and it is written by Addison Hosner. He is a Florida and D.C. attorney, a proponent of individual liberties and rational political discourse, attended Florida Atlantic University. Of course we've talked with a number of individuals that are professors there, received his law degree.

[00:01:13] And then prior to joining Young Voices was a solo practitioner of litigation and a trial attorney individual. It brings a great deal of expertise to this and this particular article that he has written I think would give you some facts and figures and some numbers which we've alluded to sometimes in this whole discussion about pardons and the most recent ones. But maybe it's some new information that you would like to actually have access to and it's on our website at pointofview.net.

[00:01:43] Addison, thank you for joining us today here on Point of View. Hi Kirby, glad to be here. Thanks for the stellar introduction. I don't know how stellar it was, but we're going to get into this in some detail. And just for your benefit, when we've talked about pardons, we certainly have gone all the way back to George Bush or even before that, I guess we'd go to Gerald Ford.

[00:02:06] There have always been presidents that have given some pardons and Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon was a big one in my generation. But more recently, there have been questions that we've had around this table about some of the pardons that Bill Clinton has provided and bringing them up to, of course, Joe Biden and now, of course, Donald Trump. And so I tend to be an individual that thinks that pardons have been misused and abused. And I'd kind of like to get rid of some of them.

[00:02:35] But whether we do or not, you wrote this because right off the bat, after we've seen all these commutations and pardons from Joe Biden, you then had Donald Trump either commute or dismiss cases of about 1,500 of the individuals involved in the Capitol riots on January 6th, 2021.

[00:02:57] And so you wanted, I think, as I can understand your article, to bring to the fore some of the numbers and the facts that help us understand that a blanket pardon made absolutely no sense. Please continue. Yeah. And, you know, I try to always remain objective and nonpartisan with these type of issues because it's very easy to pick sides.

[00:03:22] And that's why we frame the piece with, you know, looking at Biden's pardons as he was walking out the door in the waning minutes, issuing preemptive pardons to members of his family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired General Mark Milley, and all the investigative committee members from the January 6th investigations. And, you know, I look at that as a dangerous precedent setting of walking out the door and pardoning friends and family.

[00:03:47] That is something that will likely continue with presidents moving forward down the line now. But Trump's pardons are the ones that really kind of rubbed a nerve with me, I think, being a man of justice and working in law. It spits in the face of everything that we do in trying to put forth cases and carrying out what I believe to be the backbone of our society, and that's our criminal justice system.

[00:04:10] It's what we all agree to as part of the social contract that we all tacitly are agreeing to without having to really worry about each other breaching it. But with pardons, especially of the sort for the January 6th, it struck me as a favor, a political favor. And the presidential pardon power was always put in place. It comes from the England common law when we first, you know, separated from the monarchy.

[00:04:38] And it comes from a place of mercy. It was meant for presidents to be able to issue a pardon and apply mercy in situations where they thought the law was upheld incorrectly or the sentencing might have been a statutory one and it was a little longer than it should have been. But it was never meant to be for connections or for those on the right side of the political aisle. And, you know, as you alluded to going back to many presidents, pardon, the pardon power has largely been used for personal and political benefit.

[00:05:08] It has not been used for the public welfare, which is what President Howard Taft, who some might know actually sat on the Supreme Court as chief justice at one point. He had a quote back then that, you know, the part of power, quote, shall not be exercised against the public interest. And so when looking at the Trump pardons, I have to ask myself, were these done for the public interest? Is this benefiting the public welfare? And my general conclusion was, no, they did not. And again, these are irrevocable.

[00:05:37] So, again, these last for a long period of time, basically the rest of that individual's life. And I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about the numbers, because yesterday when we were talking about the way the media covers the controversy right now with USAID, I said, OK, here's what you hear from a conservative side. Here's what you hear from a liberal side. Here's what maybe you had seen if you had watched Fox News. Here's what you might have seen if you went to the interview at CNN.

[00:06:07] Here is a piece of information that the other people didn't cover. And there's a sense in which right now there are certainly individuals that we've seen interviews with who maybe only walked into the Capitol or even were just in the general vicinity who found themselves, I think inappropriately even sentenced, much less anything else.

[00:06:29] But you also point out there were a significant number of individuals who, in one way or another, were charged with using a deadly weapon, charged with destruction of government property. And my argument has always been that if you attack a law enforcement officer, whether it's in Portland, Oregon or Seattle, Washington or Minneapolis, Minnesota, or in the capital of Washington, D.C., you do the time.

[00:06:57] And so in some respects, part of the problem was the blanket nature of that pardon. So since I'm coming up on a break, let me come back. Have you maybe give us some of those facts and figures and numbers, because that helps us understand that this broad blanket pardon makes no sense.

[00:07:16] Of course, we've already mentioned the fact that these preemptive pardons, which were done in some cases either for protection of an individual or because you had certain connections, don't make some sense. And then we can come back to talk about, well, can we make some changes?

[00:07:33] Because what at the point in the past was certainly provided for these maybe egregious cases of a sentence that went too long, an individual that was unduly punished for a crime that was not punished in the same way for other individuals. Certainly a pardon makes sense.

[00:07:57] And it's easy to look back and say, well, to actually remove from Chuck Colson, for example, the fact that he committed a felony so that he could vote again. Or Dinesh D'Souza pardoned because after going to having to go to jail, at least at night, being punished in a way that no one else that was engaged in any kind of campaign issue was punished. You might occasionally agree with those pardons.

[00:08:25] But the trend is getting to be worse and worse and worse. And is there something we can or should do to address these issues of pardons? So if you'd like to read the entire article, it is on our website at pointofview.net. We'll come back and give you some of the facts and figures that maybe you'll find nowhere else except here on Point of View. We'll be right back.

[00:08:58] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. Once President Trump was back in office, he ordered a pause on federal grants so that the incoming cabinet could evaluate what was being pushed through in the last few months of the Biden administration. As you might expect, the reaction from Democrats and the legacy press was over the top. Fortunately, the editors of the Wall Street Journal decided to address what they call the spending freeze panic, explaining that the pause on federal grants wasn't illegal and didn't even affect most spending.

[00:09:28] They remind us it's well within Mr. Trump's executive authority to pause disbursement of discretionary funds to ensure they comply with the law and his priorities. The editors did add that the White House didn't help itself with a lack of clarity on the details, and they pointed to a follow-up memo from the Trump administration that the pause would not affect financial assistance to individuals, such as food stamps, small business grants, aid to farmers, or even entitlement programs like Medicaid and children's nutrition.

[00:09:56] There's a good reason for this pause. Yesterday, I mentioned Trump's executive order on DEI programs. There were federal grants headed out the door that required diversity statements for government funding, even though the Supreme Court ruled against racial preferences in education. The editors of the Wall Street Journal also remind us of the EPA grant that went for climate justice to leftist groups who were calling for the abolition of Israel and immigration and customs enforcement. A spending pause is constitutional.

[00:10:26] The Impoundment Control Act, which might someday be declared unconstitutional by the current court, would only apply if the president refused to ever spend funds. The spending freeze panic was much ado about nothing. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view. For a free copy of Kirby's booklet, A Biblical View on Loneliness, go to viewpoints.info slash loneliness. That's viewpoints.info slash loneliness.

[00:10:58] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Talking about pardons, if you'd like to join the conversation, 1-800-351-1212. Edison Hosner with us. He is Chief Operating Officer for Young Voices. We have a link to Young Voices. As a matter of fact, you can just simply go to joinyv.org. It stands for Young Voices. Of course, we have that link on our website. You can also find out more about him as well.

[00:11:24] And most importantly, we've posted his article about these pardons. And we are talking about what happened on January 6th to be significant. We're talking about millions of dollars in damages, which sometimes isn't reported by some press outlets. And we're talking about, and it's hard to get your handle around this, hundreds of people that were charged with assaulting or obstructing law enforcement.

[00:11:52] And that, I think, is a fact or view of the facts that need to be reminded when we are talking about a blanket pardon, don't you think? Yeah. And, you know, that's something that I'm glad you brought that up. I think it's overlooked a lot. And I'd like to frame it for people if it, you know, I think the January 6th situation has been heavily politicized when, in reality,

[00:12:18] if you look at it from just simply a conduct perspective, punishments and the prosecutions that come with it are completely natural and normal and should be carried out. You mentioned the numbers. You know, there's 1,500 people who were pardoned. But of those, 600 were charged with assaulting or obstructing law enforcement. So let's just pause and think about that. If you or I were to go assault a police officer, we would expect to be prosecuted for that. We would expect to spend time behind bars.

[00:12:46] And so you have 600 folks who partook in that type of activity. And 170 of them were accused of using a deadly weapon, which can be anything as minor in the eyes of us as like a pair of scissors, but can be as hard, I mean, as large as like a pitchfork, which those did exist on January 6th. And, you know, obviously destruction of government property, there were about 80 of those. 60 were charged with theft of government property. And then, you know, there were six individuals who decided, well, destruction and theft aren't good enough on their own,

[00:13:15] so I might as well do both at the same time. But more so than even those figures, the one that I think gets lost in the message, and I wasn't able to include it in the article, is that 169 of those 1,500 actually pled guilty to assaulting police officers. This isn't you were charged with it and we're pressing, you know, the investigation to find out. No, this is I am telling you, I assaulted a police officer.

[00:13:41] And now those individuals are walking free today without any – if they served any time, well, they're not serving it now. And they're no longer going to have to worry about any of their rights that are going to be withheld from being convicted. And they get to walk among us now. And it's all because they so happen to take part in this riot and this breach on government property in the name of whatever political leanings they may have, whether it be just straight for Donald Trump or for something else.

[00:14:07] But I ask people to think about this, remove the context of the politics behind it. Let's just say that happened at your local city hall. Let's say that happened at your local state government building. Would you think it's okay then? If it was your community police officers who were involved, if it was your friends and family who had to deal with this threat from this mob of people. And that's, I think, something that is easy to get sensationalized with the news. But if you step back and look at it from a humanitarian perspective, these are human beings who are trying to do their job.

[00:14:36] And, unfortunately, one police officer, one Capitol Police officer, did lose his life that day due to injuries sustained. And that also, I think, goes vastly unreported. And, again, oftentimes what it's said is, well, yeah, but look what happened in Portland or Seattle. And that's why I mentioned, or Minnesota, wherever. And there were a lot of individuals that were engaged in other riots that were not charged. But that doesn't change the reality of what we have here.

[00:15:02] Because one thing that I think we all learned is that if you, indeed, give individuals a pardon for doing something that, let's just even focus on those who pled guilty, even if you argue that some of those other arguments about the number that were charged with assaulting or obstructing law enforcement were overcharged, those who pled guilty are now, as you said, walking among us.

[00:15:28] And does that not, I think, send a signal to whether it's, you know, let's take the right side, Oath Keepers and Proud Boys on one side, Antifa BLM on the other side, that if you got the right person in the office, you could probably be pardoned from actions that, in equal application of justice, would not be pardoned. Is that fair? I think that's completely fair.

[00:15:56] And it's one of the things that should be most concerning to each and every one of us. And I alluded to it earlier. You know, we live in a society that's based around the rule of law. And the whole point of law is to have a deterrent effect on behaviors that we find to be unacceptable. And law also is something that helps certain individuals who, without any other means, have personal accountability to their actions.

[00:16:22] For most people, you and I would never consider walking into a building and breaking the window and stealing something and walking out thinking we're not going to be punished. Yet here we have individuals who clearly believe that and feel that they were unfairly prosecuted for this, that it wasn't a crime. It was just a demonstration or how I've seen it labeled by Trump himself, as well as other commentators. They called them political hostages. They called them warriors. They called them victims.

[00:16:47] And I just have a very hard time wrapping my head around witnessing the actions of these individuals and saying that they are victims or that this behavior should not be accountable to law and justice. And you alluded to it earlier as well, $3 million in damage to the U.S. capital. And that money obviously will not get repaid. And where does that come out of the pockets of? It's taxpayers. So, you know, we all lose here. We lose from a societal perspective.

[00:17:17] We lose from a financial perspective. And I think overall it just begins to continue to chip away at the fabric of our society and our trust in one another to just simply do the right thing. What can we do about it? I get the sense from your particular piece. And, again, I would encourage people to read it. It's easy to print out. It only takes about two pages and gives you a lot of the facts and figures. We've only mentioned some, but there's enough there for you to read on your own. You seem to have kind of amend it rather than end it.

[00:17:46] I am becoming more and more skeptical about what we can do with these presidential pardons because I've seen how they've unfolded over the last couple of decades. And so, in some respects, we can all agree that these pardons have gone far beyond what was the original intent of the framers of the Constitution.

[00:18:09] But do you have any ideas on what we could do given the fact that this is beginning to be a very significant problem in American government? Yeah. You know, Kirby, in a perfect world, I would have it completely abolished. I think, you know, the fact that it comes from the English common law, the fact that it was a power that was granted to the king should tell you everything you need to know about the source of it.

[00:18:35] I don't think any one man or woman should have the power to override the criminal justice system. And also, just to clarify for anyone listening, that the pardon power from the president and the executive only applies to federal crimes. It does not apply to state crimes. And it also has one limitation. It does not – a pardon cannot be issued for impeachment. That's the only limitation on it. But, yeah, my general thoughts are because it's an enumerated power of the Constitution, the Supreme Court held back in 1974,

[00:19:05] that because of that, its limitations, if any, must be found in the text of the Constitution. So, based upon how the Supreme Court has looked at this in the past and based upon how we're talking about it now, I think abolishing it is unfortunately just not going to happen unless we can do a constitutional amendment. But if we're going to make any changes to it, that's the only way we're going to be able to address it. And my general thoughts would be there's actually a pardon application that can be submitted to the Department of Justice.

[00:19:35] It gets reviewed. And then the pardon attorney recommends it to the president to sign or not. That process maybe could be looked at as a way to play up some checks and balances in place to analyze the pardons that the president would like to give out. I think limiting the power of the executive in this particular situation to at least have a few safeguards in place wouldn't be a bad thing. I don't think that's overreach.

[00:19:58] I think it would be a good step to have to make sure situations don't unfold where political allies get rewarded for behavior or let off the hook. Every state has their own pardon process as well. Some governors have a pardon power very much like the executive where they can just, as one person, make the decision. But others have very interesting scenarios where there's actually a committee that reviews them and has approval authority and works with the governor.

[00:20:28] So there are multiple ways we could address this. It's going to take a constitutional amendment for us to get it done. But I definitely think there is some, you know, some good that has come out of pardons. If you look in the past, there are some few good examples. Unfortunately, it's just one of those things where I think the bad examples outweigh the good. Right. You mentioned, you know, Bill Clinton partying his brother back in the 90s. That was a big to do. And, you know, there's other issues. Sure. Quite a few.

[00:20:57] Of course, it's probably the most famous. Just before I let you go, I wanted to mention that we do have a link to JoinYV, which stands for Young Voices. That link is on the website. And, Addison, I appreciate you being with us. We've had other individuals from Young Voices, and I look forward to the next opportunity. So thank you for being with us today. Yes. Thank you very much, Kirby. Much appreciated. Good to take a break. And we have some phone calls. So I'll take some of those phone calls right after these important messages.

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[00:22:51] You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson. Final half hour if you'd like to join the conversation. 1-800-351-1212. Talked about pardons.

[00:23:18] We're going to get back to the whole issue of DOGE and USAID and a number of other things. But let's take a phone call or two. We'll go up to Alaska first of all. Sandra, thank you for joining us today here on Point of View. Oh, gosh, I love your show. You probably listen almost every day. Okay. Um, okay. So, I just want to stop. And, um, we still live in a two-tiered. And I think Trump is trying to fix the two-tiered.

[00:23:48] I don't know if all those pardons were legit. But, um, but we do know what is not legit is what happened to Portland, what happened to Minneapolis, what happened around our country.

[00:24:02] And that's why I brought those up, because I think, uh, the individuals that will oftentimes try to argue that these individuals should do hard time seem to have turned a blind eye to what's happened in some of our cities when we had some of those riots and protests and the rest. And, um, on the other hand, some, on the other hand, that say, look, we had some individuals that only were at the Capitol. They didn't break anything. They didn't hurt anybody. Okay, I understand. But there were others that did.

[00:24:31] So, I think there is a wisdom in understanding all of that. And if we don't hold people accountable, whether it's in Portland or Minneapolis or at the Capitol, then we do end up continuing having a two-tiered system. And I think a lot of Americans voted because they were hoping that we could get rid of that. Don't you think? Yeah.

[00:24:54] Well, Seattle, somebody let Seattle do their own thing for months on end until somebody died. Um, I grew up in Portland and sitting in Alaska watching what they did to Portland broke my heart. I understand that we could be in last days. Everybody screams we're in last days.

[00:25:23] But even in these days, we need to have more common sense. And I don't know what has happened into our leadership in the two-tiered. And I hope that Trump can fix this. But if we're not in prayer, what are we doing? Yeah. Well, I think you've really identified a key issue. So, if nothing else, I appreciate you starting us off. And I'm going to go now to South Carolina.

[00:25:51] And Scott on WAGP, thank you for joining us today. Hey, thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to point out a couple inaccuracies in your last guest's statement on the J-6 riots. First of all, there was not a cop that died as a result of injuries suffered in that riot. He had a stroke. No tying into the riot at all, number one.

[00:26:18] Number two, not everybody that went into the Capitol building was a violent rioter. Of course not. Many of them were waved in by Capitol Police. Yeah, we know that. I think that needs to be corrected in what he said. First of all, I let that go because they said this one individual died and died later of a stroke. But these individuals who died later or, in some cases, committed suicide, are always used by Joe Biden as saying,

[00:26:47] four people died that day. No, they did not. And so I think that is factually true that he didn't die that day. And he did not sustain the injuries that were reported that he was hit and all those kinds of things. But the stress perhaps caused it. So I sort of let that one go. And I think you've already heard me say on many occasions, including the interview we did with one of the J6ers, that some of those individuals were let in.

[00:27:13] Of course, later we had Tucker Carlson getting some of the videos where they're just literally walking around, opening doors and all sorts of other things. I think there was a real attempt to try to use that as a distraction from the questions that were going to legitimately be raised at the time about whether or not there were some kind of electoral misdeeds and those kinds of things. So, again, I appreciate you bringing that up.

[00:27:39] I think at the same time when I look at those numbers, I recognize that so often we tend to talk about, well, there were a lot of people that were just walking around and there were people praying and then they went to jail. And that seems like a miscarriage of justice. And I think those people deserve to be pardoned and have their sentences commuted. But then what about the individuals that indeed pled guilty or were accused of using deadly force? And I think that's one of the questions I think a lot of us have.

[00:28:08] A blanket pardon treated all of those people the same and their actions that day were very different, wouldn't you say? I would. I would say that. But one of the hallmarks of the American justice system is that it's better for nine guilty people to go free than one innocent person wrongly convicted. Isn't that right? Yeah, it's a good argument. And maybe that's one that we could use to counter some of the things he said.

[00:28:37] Because we certainly do believe in the presumption of innocence. Of course, if you've listened to the program, we've actually done an interview from an individual that was behind bars, one of the J6ers. Now that some of them are out from time to time, there probably will be some that will be available to tell their story. And we'll hear a little bit more. And I think we will realize that there has been a miscarriage of justice. And that's why Donald Trump wanted to just have a one and done.

[00:29:05] And so he pardoned everyone, all 1,500 of those individuals. So, Scott, I think you raise a good point there as well. And if you would like to join our conversation, that number is 1-800-351-1212. Well, let me get to a couple other issues that I thought might be important for you to know about. One of those is this. Migrants are turning around. I won't be spending much time this week talking about immigration, but if you've looked at these numbers, this comes from the Border Patrol Chief.

[00:29:35] That's Mike Banks, who has actually said that a growing number of individuals, migrants, illegal aliens, whatever phrase you want to use, are turning around and going south. And these individuals, again, Mike Banks says, cited the heavy security posture along the U.S.-Mexico border and Mexico's containment efforts as key reasons for them reversing course.

[00:30:03] He goes on to say that families in these groups made a life-saving decision avoiding the dangers of cartel-controlled territory where extortion and violence are rampant. And so, again, what you look at, again, I'll quote from him since he's the chief of Border Patrol. Our enforcement efforts are working. He said on Sunday the number of migrant encounters at the Texas border. You ready for this number? 300.

[00:30:31] Actually, it's 303. That used to be, again, since we're broadcasting here from Texas when I've been down to that border in Laredo, which is a little different than Eagle Pass, the average back not so long ago was 8,000 a day. Now it's down to 300. Are you thinking that maybe some of the statements and actions by the new president, Donald Trump, are making a difference? I think so.

[00:31:00] One other one I thought I'd just mention real quickly. I mentioned this a couple weeks ago. One of the most significant difficulties Mike Johnson has right now as Speaker of the House is that you have three individuals that are coming into the Trump administration, two from Florida, one from New York.

[00:31:16] And in New York, there was an attempt for a while by the Democrats to actually try to prevent an election to replace the seat being vacated by Representative Elise Stefanik, who has been nominated as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. It turns out now, again, that the decision has been not to try to bring about that change with any kind of legislation.

[00:31:44] The leader of the Assembly, who's a Republican, Will Barclay, said it was a terrible piece of legislation and policy and principle. Looks like the Democrats are not going to try to play politics in that regard. So just a couple of issues that pretty much are good news. So those are just a few items that I like to drop in from time to time. Just on the chance that maybe no one else in the media is covering.

[00:32:13] And we like to cover some of those here on Point of View. We come back, though. Jared Baker, I should say, says Democrats stand up to the bureaucrats against Doge. Was this really a good idea? And also one by Rui Tashira saying defending U.S. aid is a political suicide move for Democrats. So we have those articles. We'll get to those briefly, talk about a couple of other things we're learning now about U.S. aid,

[00:32:42] even a fact check that came out in the Washington Post, which will cause me, when we come back from the break, to maybe modify a few things we've said about that. The overall facts are accurate, but some of the technicalities are wrong, and I'm always willing to correct myself whenever we find out new information. So let's take a break. We'll come back and talk about this ongoing debate, not only about immigration,

[00:33:05] but now about foreign policy and sending money overseas abroad to, in many cases, countries that don't like us, or to actually fund programs that the American people don't want to fund. So we'll get a break and come back and get into some more of that. If you'd like to find those articles, those are the last two articles we posted on the website. I would encourage you to find them and maybe pass them on.

[00:33:34] Maybe post them on your Facebook page or your ex, because, again, these are facts that people need to know about, and maybe some of your friends and relatives don't know about them unless you post them. We'll be right back. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth.

[00:34:00] Back for just a few more minutes, and let me, again, talk about what is going to be happening tomorrow. We're going to be talking about media, Dead Sea Squirrels. Okay, everybody's smiling. Squirrels, well, it's kind of a play on Dead Sea Scrolls. And I think you will appreciate that animated feature, which, of course, will be an education for our kids about what some of the evidence we have for the authenticity and authority of Scripture and the accuracy and reliability and much, much more.

[00:34:28] And, of course, we'll kind of get into VeggieTales for a little bit. And then we'll also be talking about Unbreakable Boy, which is a new film out, which is very powerful as well. In between then, I've got a very good piece we've posted here by Rich Lowry about Trump's countermarch through the institutions. You might remember Herbert Marcuse talked about the long march through institutions that liberals have. Well, Donald Trump seems to be having a countermarch on that.

[00:34:55] We'll also be talking about some of the school choice debates taking place right now in some of the state legislatures and a variety of other issues. So, again, a packed program. I hope you'll join us tomorrow. But Gerard Baker says, you know, you couldn't invent a scene that better explains our current politics than one last week outside the Treasury in Washington, D.C.

[00:35:16] He says, some genius in the Democratic Party evidently thought it was a good idea, but some of the party's most prominent faces, most notably Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in front of the cameras to protest Elon Musk's efforts to get inside the books of the federal government. Picture this, the Democrats' one-time tributes of the people, fiercely defending government employees from the taxpayers, the party of the press putting it all on the line to protect federal bureaucrats from the people they're supposed to serve. Well said.

[00:35:45] Again, just look about this right now. Think of the things, as he says, the Democratic Party has chosen to actually defend. Illegal migrants over citizens, teachers' unions over parents and children, criminals over victims, men turned women over girls. Good luck with that. And talks about, is this really the best hill to die on?

[00:36:06] Well, then Gerard Baker goes on to say, look, so far, as much as Elon Musk has stirred up a lot of dust, it's not a lot of savings yet. The Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, might be better called DOGA, the Department of Government Accountability. So far, not a lot of savings. I'll get into that in just a minute. We have a federal budget of $6 trillion.

[00:36:33] We're getting a little bit upset about some money that the USAID sends to Politico pro subscriptions or depriving people, as he says, of Columbia of having a transgender representation opera. Those are really kind of small ball, and they are, and I don't disagree. But we, of course, now are just moving into, say, the Defense Department. There's an $800 billion defense budget there.

[00:37:02] Or how about the Health and Human Services budget, $1.8 trillion. So there may be more to come. So let's, you know, hold our actions and comments just a little bit longer there. But, again, he has some doubts as to whether or not this was going to significantly reduce the size of government. But, nevertheless, it's been a wonderful exercise in helping the political class realize they're not immune from popular accountability.

[00:37:31] And so that is certainly the case. It is, I think, worth mentioning that the other day the Washington Post actually looked at some of those claims about USAID. I thought I'd pick on two that I've mentioned. The claim that $47,000 was used for a transgender opera. The fact checker there, who, by the way, I happen to respect, said that's wrong only because the USAID didn't fund it.

[00:38:01] The State Department funded it. Okay. Technically, yes, USAID didn't fund it. State Department funded it. As a taxpayer, I almost don't care who funded it. But I don't think, again, a transgender opera in Colombia needs to be funded. The other one that I mentioned, $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru, again, argues that that one was actually not granted through USAID.

[00:38:29] But the actual grant technically was approved by the State Department for $32,000. But, again, a tailor-made comic book featuring a LGBTQ hero for Peru. Okay. I'll say when they keep saying that these were wildly inaccurate or completely wrong, I'm going, no. I mean, maybe the actual funding came from this department rather than that department. But it illustrates the point. But I did want to clear that up.

[00:38:56] Those two examples that I've used actually were funded by the State Department. And I think we are still outraged that our tax dollars went to them. And I'll leave it at that. Which brings me to my last piece for the few minutes we have left. But Roy Chishere actually said, if you want evidence that Democrats have learned nothing from the November 5th election, look at this video. The video is linked to the website.

[00:39:20] So if you want to go to this article, which is entitled Defending USAID as Political Suicide for Democrats, you can watch the video. But basically, I'll summarize it for you. It has Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland actually leading chants, hey, ho, ho, ho, Elon Musk has got to go, vowed to protect USAID and the courts by threatening all sorts of parliamentary maneuvers against President Trump's nominees.

[00:39:50] By the way, I did not know this until I read this article. Chris Van Hollen actually is a good example of an individual that was a son of a Foreign Service officer. Was born in Pakistan. Spent much of his childhood in Asia. Has degrees from Swarthmore and Harvard. Matter of fact, his first experience was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

[00:40:12] And even when he represents Congress, a lot of the people in the suburban House district where he was at the time, interestingly enough, were inhabited by people in the State Department and USAID officials. So, again, you can see that. But the point of this article is you are finding more and more individuals who are leaders in the Democratic Party saying, why have we chosen this to be a hill to die on? Don't take my word for it.

[00:40:42] You go down to about the fifth paragraph, quoting from Rahm Emanuel. Now, you might remember him as an individual that worked in the Clinton administration, later was the Democratic governor of the city of Chicago. And he said, you don't fight every fight. You don't swing at every pitch. And in my view, while I care about the USAID as a former ambassador, that's not the hill I'm going to die on.

[00:41:07] Then they start pointing out the fact that the latest poll shows that 69 percent of the most recent poll thought the government was spending too much on foreign aid. So, I think he can read the polls like anyone else. And he goes on to point out the fact that this is not going to be something you would recover from. If you go to the second page of this article, he quotes from David Axelrod, again, a very leading light,

[00:41:35] a leading voice in the Democratic Party, who said Democrats have become, in the minds of lots of voters, an elite party. And to lots of folks who are trying to scuffle out there and get along, there seems to be an elite passion. You can read the three pages, but one of the things that Roy has put together is kind of a three-point summary. This is the executive summary.

[00:41:59] Point number one, Democrats are unconditionally defending an obscure government institution at a time when even well-known and previously trusted institutions are regarded with intense suspicion. Number two, this particular obscure institution does one of America's voters' least favorite things, provide foreign aid. And three, finally, not only a Democrat's blanket defending an obscure institution that does something American voters don't politically want to,

[00:42:29] they are defending it without explaining their own priorities. Pretty good. Three pages, you can read it or just read the executive summary, but it is hard to explain, especially when you have some leaders in the Democratic Party saying, why is this a hill that everyone thinks is worth dying on when really we're against pretty much where most of the American voters are right now on that? Well, we have a lot more to cover, but we'll do that tomorrow.

[00:42:58] I want to thank Megan for help engineering the program. Steve, thank you for producing the program. We'll see you tomorrow right here on Point of View. It almost seems like we live in a different world from many people in positions of authority. They say men can be women and women men. People are prosecuted differently or not at all, depending on their politics.

[00:43:25] Criminals are more valued and rewarded than law-abiding citizens. It's so overwhelming, so demoralizing. You feel like giving up, but we can't. We shouldn't. We must not. As Winston Churchill said to Britain in the darkest days of World War II, never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never yield to force, never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

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