Point of View February 7, 2025 – Hour 1 : Weekend Edition

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View, Kirby Anderson. Thank you for joining me. It is a Friday weekend edition. In studio with me today are two individuals that have actually been sitting in this chair in the past and been a host of the program as well. Let me just mention that what we're going to be doing is going to look at a couple of issues in the news.

[00:00:33] We'll be hearing in about 15 minutes from Tim Wildman, head of American Family Association. They've decided to end their target boycott. I want to talk about that with him for just a few minutes and then move on to all sorts of other issues. Dr. Merle Matthews has a piece on Trump trade and tariffs, also one from him on the federal deficit.

[00:00:53] Lots of issues about Doge, which we're going to get into first, and then some pieces by Cal Thomas, as well as a fact we have a new attorney general wanting to do some very interesting things. Around the round table we have Liberty McCarter and also Dr. Merle Matthews. But I thought I'd start off with the fact that if you're watching the news right now, you saw that about 30 different House Democrats showed up at the entrance to the Department of Education building,

[00:01:20] and they wanted to meet with the acting education secretary, Denise Carter. Now, again, to give you some background here, about 96 members of Congress wrote a letter to Carter requesting a meeting. The department said, yes, we received your letter, but they didn't act on it right away, so they decided to just barge their way into, or try to barge their way into the Department of Education. And that just didn't go very well because they were stopped at the door.

[00:01:48] And, of course, a lot of it has to do with the whole issue of the department that is now working to try to trim the size and scope of the government. It's called the Department of Government Efficiency. We'll just simply refer to it as Doge. And so Liberty, if nothing else, a little bit of street protest over the last couple of days over Doge. And, of course, some people are now talking about, and here's this one article, the rise of Musk derangement syndrome.

[00:02:18] Apparently, the idea of Trump derangement syndrome is starting to fade a little bit, and in the vacuum has come Musk derangement syndrome. Well, yeah, and as I'm sure we'll get into throughout the show, there are some issues or reasons that maybe we should look carefully at some of those things. But, in general, trimming down the federal government, I think, is in the nation's interest, especially when the reports start coming out about what exactly the government has been funding.

[00:02:47] And I think even people who are suspicious of Musk and cutting federal spending in general might say, hmm, I wonder why that's not going to somebody in the United States who maybe needs that. And so, hopefully, we will focus on getting rid of that extraneous stuff that really isn't helping anybody. And this has been going on for a long time. You may remember Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma used to do the pig book every year. Yes.

[00:03:13] Where he'd have a list of all kinds of things that the federal government was spending money on. And you'd look at this and say, we're spending money on that. Senator Rand Paul has taken up that mantle doing a book that he calls Festivus, I believe. Yeah. And he highlights a number of these things. And you look at it and you're just stunned that we would spend money. And some of this, a fair amount of it, comes from USAID. And that's where they're trying to get in there to get a hold of some of these things.

[00:03:39] And we can talk a bit about the tactics of it, whether it's right or wrong, should be changed a bit. But I think the public will ultimately be very glad that we stopped this. I would think so. And I thought I'd hold this up for those of you watching online, because this is a book that was co-authored by Dr. Merrill Matthews. And I was telling Liberty, you know, before there was an Elon Musk, there was a Merrill Matthews. Before there was a Tom Coburn, there was a... And this one's, of course, about entitlements, which we'll get to. And, of course, let me come back to you for just a minute, Dr. Matthews,

[00:04:08] because even if you were to shut down USAID, and, of course, now it's being subsumed under the State Department, this is a fraction, well, maybe 1%, but a fraction of the budget. The real, as we'll talk about a little bit later, issues of the federal debt, and you talk about that in one of the commentaries we posted, is in what are called entitlements. And those are going to be some issues. But I brought it up because now you're seeing that Elon Musk wants to start looking at Medicaid,

[00:04:37] and that used to be, what do they call it, the third rail? You touch it and you die. But he's not an elected official and is not running for re-election, so he's willing to touch some of that. I think there's wide approval for doing something with Medicaid, especially among Republicans. And what they've been wanting to do for years is to block granite to the state. So you say to the state, here's your allotment for Medicaid. Medicaid, almost all the states have moved to using managed care for their Medicaid participants.

[00:05:06] And so they give the managed care company, they give them a set amount of money for each person in there. And then a number of states want to try to put a work requirement on that. I absolutely agree with that. For those people who are able to work, they should be able to work if they get the Medicaid. The rest of us who get health insurance through an employer have to work to do that. So it's not like we're asking a big task from them. So, yes, he wants to look at Medicaid. Medicaid is a lot of money.

[00:05:34] It had gone up after the pandemic to about 90, 91 million people in it. Now it's down in the 70. But in states like Texas, half of the births in Texas are paid for by Medicaid. Half of the births. In New Mexico, I think it's more like 70, 75 percent of the births. Richest country in the world. And half of the births, 75 percent, are paid for by Medicaid. And you have to ask the question, do all these people need the Medicaid services? Yes.

[00:06:03] So, again, we're going to get into that. But let me also talk about, as Liberty mentioned, the issue of process. Because right now you have people on the streets and in some of these protests saying that it's time to get Elon Musk arrested. I was surprised about that one. We're going to try to subpoena him. Some of the Doge team are made up of a bunch of 20-somethings. I don't want to always say 20-somethings. I don't know what they're talking about. Although I will talk about one that got himself in trouble.

[00:06:30] And it does seem to me that there is, as one individual said, always been this kind of long march through institutions. Rich Lowry said, well, he's actually having a short march or maybe even a sprint through the institutions. Maybe going too fast for the federal bureaucracy. Your thoughts? Oh, well, you know, with regard to 20-somethings, now that I'm in my 30s, I can say yes. Those 20-somethings, you know. Youngsters. Oh, yes.

[00:06:55] But, you know, there's also maybe not so much attachment to some of the spending that bureaucrats have gotten used to. And so I think it needs to be a balance. Again, there is a lot. There is enough extraneous spending to cut that will make a difference that should be focused on first, that that's what they should be targeting because it's not actually directly benefiting American citizens. And, you know, one of the fair things you can say is Elon Musk is not a federal employee. Trump's called him a special government employee.

[00:07:22] I'm actually a special government employee under the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. That means you have to go through some tests and take some courses and you don't get paid anything. Yeah. But, you know, he hasn't gone through the background checks and some of these things. And I'll just say this. We don't know yet whether or not he's doing the process correctly. I think we'll be talking about that for a while. But I will say, come 2028, if a Democratic president comes in and takes, say, George Soros and says,

[00:07:49] I'm bringing him here and he's getting a bunch of young people and they're going to go through these various departments, Department of Defense, and clean these things out, we'll be pushing back on that. So we want to make sure the process is done legally and appropriately. And so we'll be watching that because certainly the goal of that is reducing the size and scope of government is good, but sometimes the means by which we get there is going to be an issue. And we're going to come back and talk about more of that. I've got some other illustrations of that, but we need to take a break.

[00:08:17] When we come back, we're going to talk with our good friend, the president of the American Family Association, Tim Wildman. I think this is a very significant announcement that came from the American Family Association. I think it may be the longest boycott ever. And they've decided now to pull that back. And I figured you would like to know about that and hear his reasons for it. Then we'll get back into this because certainly Elon Musk has become controversial. Nobody's really surprised by that, but we'll keep talking about that right after this.

[00:08:58] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. It didn't take long before the media launched what John Nolte referred to as the hoax machine. He was referring to the way many in the media portrayed Elon Musk's arm movement as a Nazi salute. But, you know, later in his article, he provided a hoax list that included nearly 40 examples promoted by the mainstream media. Each hoax on the list has a link, so you can check it out for yourself. Now, many of them were the false claims about Donald Trump.

[00:09:26] A few examples are the very fine people hoax and Trump trashes troops hoax. Each of those have been debunked by knowledgeable people who were present at the time. And, of course, we cannot forget the many that were associated with Trump's first term, for example, like the Russia collusion hoax. Now, the pandemic brought many hoaxes. A few examples where the COVID lab leak theory is racist hoax and the COVID deaths are overcounted is a conspiracy theory hoax.

[00:09:54] Many of the hoaxes involved media correspondents rushing to really false conclusions or sometimes repeating false allegations. A few examples of those would be the Covington kids hoax as well as the hands-up, don't-shoot hoax. And there was the prominent hoax involving Jesse Smollett. Of course, his hoax gained national attention because of who he was and also what he claimed happened to him.

[00:10:17] In previous commentaries, I've listed on a regular basis the increasing number of fake hate crimes that misrepresent how Americans treat each other and waste law enforcement's time and money investigating them. So the lesson here is to be skeptical and discerning when you hear or read something reported in the news or repeated on social media. The story and the subsequent claims may merely be another hoax. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view. For a podcast, I'll see you next time.

[00:10:47] Free booklet on a biblical view on big data. Go to viewpoints.info slash data. That's viewpoints.info slash data. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again, weekend edition around the round table. We have Liberty McCarter as well as Dr. Merrill Matthews. And we now welcome to the microphone Tim Wildman, president of the American Family Association, of course, the host of American Family Radio.

[00:11:16] And Tim, we have been, of course, talking about a number of issues. And over the years, we've talked about how some of the woke ideology has made its way into the corporate boardrooms, but it also has made its way into the Target bathrooms. And for the last nine years, you have led a boycott of Target. And now you're going to end the boycott. Tell us more, if you might. Hey, Kirby. Good to be with you all this afternoon and your listeners across the country. Appreciate you having me on.

[00:11:45] The American Family Association, we made a decision to end the boycott of Target. You said after nine long years. We measured, you know, these things are sometimes subjective a little bit, but we measured what Target has done, and especially their recent announcement that they're no longer going to be participating in the Human Rights Campaign's LGBT Index. That's just the latest thing.

[00:12:14] That's a biggie by Target. They announced publicly that they no longer were going to, you know, try to please the Human Rights Campaigns again by doing everything that they want them to do with respect to the LGBTQ community and their political and social agenda. You know, so we've decided that and some other steps that Target has taken.

[00:12:41] They scale back their LGBT Pride Month products. They, you know, announced early on that they were going to have single occupancy restrooms. They were trying to respond to the furor and the backlash by Americans. They lost a lot of money in stock value, at least the first year after the boycott was initiated. So, you know, you can only put your time, energy, and effort towards so many projects and efforts.

[00:13:07] So we decided that they had done enough Target to satisfy us ending the official boycott. So people will decide on their own whether they want to shop with them anymore or not. But that was our decision. Tim, do you have any other companies that you're boycotting or any that you have boycotted and also decided to end? Well, boycotting a company is the last resort, okay? And it isn't guaranteed that it will work.

[00:13:37] So it's a very serious and, you know, sober undertaking, especially when you're talking about a behemoth like Target, for example. I think they're the second largest retailer in America behind Walmart. So, but at the time, there was such a national backlash against Target. I'll tell you another thing the boycott of Target succeeded in doing. It stopped all these other corporations from doing the same thing. They saw what Target did.

[00:14:06] They saw the reaction by American Family Association and others and just the general American public. I mean, that was the fastest petition we ever had. We got over a million people that signed our petition within like two weeks. And it was amazing. And so what it served the purpose of announcing the boycott served the purpose of keeping all these other companies who otherwise would have probably followed suit behind Target from doing the very same thing,

[00:14:34] which was, you know, saying that they were going to allow men in women's changing areas and bathrooms, which is completely and totally objectionable. And now also politically, the tide is turning because President Trump and the election mayor and his announcement that the federal government would only recognize two genders, which if you can believe we're even talking about this, like there is more than two, you know, are more than two.

[00:15:03] I'm not sure which the correct verb is there, but it's just, you know, everybody's looking at each other going, there's not more than two. We all know that, but the political left in this country has tried to make us pretend that there are many genders, that the governor in Minnesota put, you know, girls' women's sanitary products in men's boys' restrooms, trying to pretend like that's a reality. Yeah, no wonder they lost.

[00:15:31] No wonder they lost with that nuttiness like that. So there's a tide. You know, President Trump also announced that when the Olympics come to Los Angeles in the two years, the United States will not recognize athletes. They'll only recognize athletes by their birth and gender. So, which we're all going, that's common sense. And so the tide is turning and we're pleased about it.

[00:15:57] Speaking of common sense, Liberty, I thought I'd come to you because we're talking about women and girls don't have to worry about men or boys coming in their bathrooms, changing areas. But women's sports, one of the articles we have here, not only has, of course, the president talked about the fact that men should not compete in women's sports. Now you have the NCAA talking about that. Yeah, I think we are seeing a resurgence of common sense. And I think the root of this issue, whether it was the situation with public restrooms or on sports,

[00:16:27] is really are women able to feel safe in our nation? And, you know, when it comes to going shopping at a store and knowing that there is a policy where men can walk into your restroom, you know, that's concerning, as it should be for women. But when it comes to sports, you know, women have made a lot of progress in this country being able to have equal opportunity.

[00:16:52] But when you are forced to play or compete against somebody who is just biologically different, regardless of the skill that you have worked hard to hone, then, again, that's not equal opportunity. And so, again, you can look at the statistics, almost 70 percent of Americans, maybe even more, actually support that policy of keeping men's and women's sports separate as they should.

[00:17:21] Yeah, and, you know, the irony, too, here is that's a very good point you made there. Liberty, right? Yes. I won't do liberty, liberty, liberty. I won't do that to you. Oh, it's okay. So don't worry about that. Not that that's ever happened to you, right? Yes. When I was a boy, they used to call me Tiny Tim. But Kirby would remember that reference, but nobody, but a millennial wouldn't.

[00:17:44] But what I was going to say was that with respect, the political left in this country has always prided themselves on being for the women's movement, right? Yeah. That's what they say. Yeah. And here they can't even protect women's, you know, restroom, showering, and athletic competition. So they're making a mockery of that. So, you know, as I said, another individual that deserves a lot of credit is Riley Gaines. Yes.

[00:18:14] You've probably interviewed her. Everybody's heard about her. She was very brave, a young lady to, you know, in her early to mid-20s to take this on nationally as an issue. She was at the tip of the spear for this. She was the all-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky who was forced to compete against the guy, six-foot-two guy, you know.

[00:18:40] And so she was outspoken, and she took a lot of heat for that because some, not all, but some of the people in the transgender movement can be very aggressive. Yes. And they can try to cancel you. They'll show up at your events. They did at some of Riley Gaines' events that she spoke at. They would try to intimidate her. And so she deserves a lot of credit. But, yeah, the election, just the political climate in this country has changed.

[00:19:09] Tim, what's the next steps? Do you have more to do? Well, according to the Bible, it's never ending, right? Well, there will be an end one day, but as long as we're on planet Earth, there's going to be good versus evil. And right versus wrong and immoral versus moral.

[00:19:29] And so we as Christians need to stand up, you know, individually and corporately to stand up for God and for biblical morality and for truth. And we're going to, you know, you've got to be wise about that sometimes. You've got to be strategic, especially when you're an organization like ours. You know, you've only got so many resources you can put into any one particular effort.

[00:19:52] But right now we are, you know, one of our efforts, I know Kirby talks about this too, and so it's so important is who the federal judges are going to be in this country for the next four years, including Supreme Court justices should any retire. Because so much of our lives and laws are determined on who sits on the federal bench.

[00:20:16] And so that's another good reason why, you know, that's another reason why it's good that President Trump won the election because he will now be appointing federal judges for the next four years. Very good. Of course, we'll have Kelly Shackelford probably next Friday. But let me just mention before we go to a break that we do have a link to AFA.net, and we have this update from AFA President Tim Wildman.

[00:20:41] It gives you the five reasons that have changed since the start of the boycott. It also talks about their film, which I would highly recommend, In His Image, Delighting in God's Plan for Gender and Sexuality. So all of that is available. You can go to our website, pointofview.net, and it's right underneath his picture and bio. So, Tim, I appreciate you joining us, and I figured our listeners would want to know that if they want to go back to Target, they can do so. So thank you for joining us today. Yeah. Thank you, Kirby. Appreciate you getting the word out.

[00:21:10] We are going to take a break, and when we come back, I think we're back to Doge and a few other things. We already mentioned one of the articles we posted about the NCAA barring men from competing in women's sports. Common sense is breaking out all over the place. We'll be right back. At Point of View, we believe there is power in prayer, and that is why we have relaunched our Pray for America campaign,

[00:21:39] a series of weekly emails to unite Americans in prayer for our nation. Imagine if hundreds of thousands of Americans started praying intentionally together on a weekly basis. You can help make that a reality by subscribing to our Pray for America emails. Just go to pointofview.net and click on the Pray for America banner that's right there on the homepage.

[00:22:09] Each week you'll receive a brief news update, a specific prayer guide, and a free resource to equip you in further action. We encourage you to not only pray with us each week, but to share these prayers and the resources with others in your life. Join the movement today. Visit pointofview.net and click on the banner, Pray for America, right there at the top.

[00:22:37] That's pointofview.net. Let's pray together for God to make a difference in our land. Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View.

[00:23:02] 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. By the way, if you'd like to join the conversation, 1-800-351-1212. Of course, it's the number to call. And, of course, we have in studio with us today Liberty and Merrill. And we certainly do welcome your calls, especially as we get into some of the controversial issues surrounding DOGE,

[00:23:28] the Department of Government Efficiency, and Elon Musk. Now, I want to right off the bat say, when you hear people say certain things about Elon Musk and some of the people that are upset about the possibility of any part of the federal government being cut, and they want to arrest him, subpoena him, say he's guilty of breaches of national security, maybe you just need to take a deep breath. On the other hand, there are going to be times when I think we will honestly have to say

[00:23:58] he may have violated something or he had been moving too fast. This column that's about the Elon Musk derangement syndrome does point out that Elon Musk and some of his crew would be well advised to take account of potential legal obstacles and move less quickly. So I want you to recognize that don't believe everything you hear, but don't discount it either. And here's a good example.

[00:24:26] And then we'll get into the whole issue of trade and tariffs and this. The other day, I saw that there were people complaining about the fact that Elon Musk wanted to get a Wall Street Journal journalist fired. And then, of course, you see the post so much for free speech. But I thought there might be a little bit more to the story. Well, it turns out the story actually starts with an individual you probably have heard about by now if you're out in the news.

[00:24:52] There is one individual that has been working with Elon Musk, 25-year-old, since everybody knows his name now, Marco Elez. He's 25 years of age. He said some things that he shouldn't have said about the idea of repealing the Civil Rights Act, backing a eugenic immigration policy, a couple of things like that. Okay, that's enough. And so he was given his walking papers.

[00:25:18] But the other part of that is that the Wall Street Journal reporter, Catherine Long, actually went out and doxed him. Now, you know what that means. I'm going to give out his phone number. I'm going to give out his address, all of the rest. And that doesn't end there because it turns out that Catherine Long actually used to work for USAID and actually was part of the projects of Central Asia.

[00:25:44] And so in some respects, there are stories behind the stories. And so if you don't take the time to kind of dig and you just look at a headline or a Twitter post, you can come to all sorts of conclusions. And we've been around, I think, Dr. Merrill Matthews long enough to know how just one little rumor gets started. And now in social media, it goes all the way around the world before you can even counter it. Absolutely.

[00:26:10] And then trying to counter it becomes a real struggle because that doesn't usually pick up quite the same coverage. And, you know, some of the things I think we're going to find out because you mentioned Musk maybe opening himself up to legal liability on some of these things. And we just don't know right now. Does he have a clearance to be able to go into some of these places?

[00:26:34] And he and his followers, I don't know if they're employees or what, but those others working for Doge, do they have the right to be able to go into some of the databases and other things? And we just don't know that this is going to be, I guess, looked at through the courts. We've seen courts already stopping Donald Trump on his birthright citizenship aspect, putting a pause on that, whether rightly or wrongly. They're doing that.

[00:27:00] So they may come back and we may find out later on that that they were going through all the correct processes. And they did have access, a legitimate legal access to these, or they may not have. And we just don't we just don't know right now. And some of these are at the highest level. You have Hillary Clinton arguing against Sean Duffy, who is a very nice individual. I think you've met him before. Is that Hillary Clinton who had the server in the bathroom?

[00:27:25] And Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, and actually arguing that the reason we've had these plane crashes because of Donald Trump. You know, he's been in office all of two and a half weeks. And that these 25-year-old kids are wandering around. And this is going to destroy Federal Aviation Administration and on and on and on.

[00:27:43] So there gets to be a point in time where and reason that came up is because Sean Duffy was certainly willing to allow Elon Musk to look through the Department of Transportation and see if some of the things that Pete Buttigieg might have wanted to allocate funds for, whether that's really in keeping with the federal government and all the rest. And so this this is going to get really ugly, really fast. And I guess the question really was in the back of my mind.

[00:28:09] And I'm not the only one, because there are other even leading Democrats saying, is the hill to die on USAID? USAID. And it turns out that there are some people now saying, well, maybe some of that's tied into Donald Trump's impeachment and Ukraine and all those kinds of things. Of course, today now is the Department of Education is again. Is that the hill to die on?

[00:28:30] And apparently it is, because any time you talk about cutting any government program, you actually are going to have a whole constituency that's going to fight against it, aren't they? Oh, yes. And so, you know, I would just say, wow.

[00:28:48] When it comes to the Department of Government efficiency, one to Dr. Matthew's point, efficiency with our spending is a good thing because we should make sure that spending is in our national interest, not extraneous. But we do have checks and balances. So if the goal for efficiency, according to Elon Musk and others, is to make things go super fast, then, you know, maybe we do need some of those processes and checks and balances in there.

[00:29:14] When it comes to spending again, yeah, you know, do we really need these? Is the goal to further our national interest, to help American citizens when necessary? That should be the lens that we're looking through. But it's very reactionary. You say something, I don't like you, I don't like your policies, I'm going to react against it, instead of actually looking at the idea on merits. And just to give our listeners something to look at here, you can go to the government website, foreignassistance.gov.

[00:29:42] And that's where they list, they have a map there, and you can click on each of the various countries to see how much money we give to various. And this is the government's own website here. And so I'm looking at Afghanistan, we gave them last year $886 million, that's the Taliban.

[00:30:01] And even though they will say, well, this is going to NGOs and others there, but if you're in Afghanistan and the Taliban is ruling, nothing goes into Afghanistan without the Taliban taking its share. There you go. I will said. But Iran gets zero, but Russia gets like $100,000, China gets some money in there. And so I... Yemen, you had on Yemen, that's all the way down to Biden. Oh yeah, Yemen has... I mean, who are we giving that? Yemen gets $733 million.

[00:30:30] $733 million. Yes, okay, so... In one year. Yeah, there we go. And so I look at these and I'm trying... It's a fair question. Is this all fair and appropriate? I don't know, because the federal government gives humanitarian aid, military aid, economic aid. There's a range of different aids that we give. And then, of course, sometimes there's covert aid going in there. So it's hard to know, but it does raise the question of why are we giving so much money to these countries?

[00:30:57] And it's time to look at it and see if this is appropriate spending, even if it's not that much compared to the whole budget. It's part of it, and then next year, if you're cutting that spending now, it doesn't roll over into next year. Yes, and again, the only thing that comes close to eternity is a government program, if I can paraphrase Ronald Reagan. And I remember, this is like going back two studios ago, so this goes back maybe two decades.

[00:31:24] We had an open line one time, and I asked our listeners, can you think of any government program that has ever been canceled? And, you know, because you still have the Tennessee Valley Authority. As a matter of fact, the highest paid person in the government is the head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is a little something that surprised me the other day. And so finally somebody said, well, maybe the draft. And I said, no, we still have that technically there as well. It is hard to find any government program that is ever completely closed down.

[00:31:53] And even here, USAID, which is now going to be subsumed under Marco Rubio in the State Department, still exists. And, of course, it may be doing some good. Every government program has to be doing some good. Otherwise, it really would be easy to close it down. But there are just too many people that said, you know, I really don't want a transgender cartoon book or comic book in Peru.

[00:32:19] And I don't want all these DEI operas in all sorts of places. Which is why some of the spending was poor, apparently. Yes, that's where it was going. And so it seems to me that you come back and, first of all, we're going to talk in the second hour about if we really want to have some significant cuts, it's not going to be here. But at the same time, I think we, and this back to what Liberty said just a minute ago, I don't want any tax dollars going to some of these woke ideas that are not going to advance the interest of the American people.

[00:32:48] And in many cases, just promote an ideology that we have some questions about. So that's where the break is. And I think if you have some comments, I've seen some people wanting to call in. 800-351-1212. And if that's not enough, when we come back, we have posted a piece by Dr. Merrill Matthews, Trump's astonishingly wrongheaded notions about trade and tariffs.

[00:33:10] I will give credit to the fact that some of the tariff threats have worked in places like Canada and Mexico and Colombia and Venezuela. But if those tariffs continue, there are some real concerns. And there's a couple of statements that he's made that just I think we can factually disprove. So we're going to come back, get a chance to hear from Dr. Merrill Matthews. But we'd love to hear from you as well. If you'd like to join the conversation, 1-800-351-1212. We'll be right back.

[00:33:42] A presidential transition always involves firing federal bureaucrats that populated the previous administration. The Trump team entered office motivated and prepared for this work.

[00:34:04] The Neapolitan Institute, an organization founded by pollster Scott Rasmussen, recently released a poll of Washington, D.C.-based federal bureaucrats. 64% of those who voted for Kamala Harris for president said they would not follow a lawful order from President Trump if they disagreed with it. 42% of federal government managers with annual salaries of $75,000 or more said they plan to politically oppose the administration.

[00:34:30] Senator Rand Paul told the Daily Signal that any government employee who refuses a lawful order by the president should be fired for a cause immediately. The trouble is that there are career bureaucrats, often lifelong federal employees, who are protected from termination because they are not classified as policymaking executive branch employees. Some of these employees do influence policy. During his first term, President Trump experienced intense opposition from certain progressive bureaucrats.

[00:34:58] So he issued an executive order creating a new category of federal employee, Schedule F. These are previously protected employees whose jobs do entail making certain decisions that impact policy. Under the Trump order, these employees would no longer be shielded from termination for perceived disloyalty to the president and his agenda. President Biden repealed the Trump order upon entering office. And he implemented a rule that prevents the firing of career civil servants.

[00:35:25] Federal employees that have policymaking and policy influencing roles can form part of the deep state that plagues incoming presidents when they try to implement conservative policies. That's why President Trump is restoring Schedule F. Congress should now consider enshrining it into federal law. As Senator Katie Britt of Alabama put it, civil servants must serve our nation, not their political party. For Point of View, I'm Penna Dexter.

[00:35:54] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Okay, kind of economics 101 or tariffs 101, either way you want to look at this. Earlier in the week, I talked about some of the problems with tariffs. They distort free market signals. They have all sorts of inefficiencies. And, well, in some respects, they privilege one domestic industry over another. But I thought Dr. Matthews in this piece, and Liberty, as we were reading through this, I think he educated us on.

[00:36:22] First of all, the issue is Donald Trump makes it seem like trade deficits are the end of the world as we know it. That it doesn't matter because tariffs are going to be paid by foreign countries, not by individuals. And, actually, if we get enough tariffs, we won't have to have the income tax. And, Dr. Merrill Matthews, you take on all three, so you have the floor. Yeah, so with the trade imbalance, when the countries buy from us, we buy from other countries.

[00:36:48] And we have had a trade imbalance, a negative trade balance, for decades because we have so much wealth that we buy from other countries. And the point I – Trump sees this as a profit and loss statement. If we buy X from China and they don't buy the same amount, we lose and they win. But I try to point out that trade imbalances are like us in our household. You may have a trade imbalance with your grocery store, your pharmacy, the gasoline station. You give them money. They never give you money back.

[00:37:17] But as long as you are making enough income, i.e. wealth, to be able to pay these, it's fine. And if you make more income, you're liable to spend even more. So the trade balances, the deficits go up. The one thing trade deficits do tell us is, is there a balance going on here? And in some cases, like with China, when you look at it, you find out China's doing all kinds of things to keep their prices low and other things. Right, there's the problem.

[00:37:41] And that certainly encourages you to say, all right, we want to make sure the government isn't subsidizing these things, though we subsidize things as well. I mean, part of the – Green energy. The green energy and other things. We spend a lot of money subsidizing various companies. So that's one thing. The second thing is Americans pay the tariffs. When you buy something from overseas, it comes to customs. If there's a tariff on it, the customs charges the American company or the American individual that tariff.

[00:38:08] So it's not other countries paying the tariffs. And I don't know why Trump keeps saying this. I assume he knows better because I know he's got people around there who tell him better. But he keeps saying we're making all this money from other countries and we aren't. And the third thing is he's suggested that we may want to go from an internal revenue service to an external revenue service because we'd be getting all this money from other countries. But we don't get the money from other countries. We get the money from Americans.

[00:38:35] Even so, last year the trade – the money we took in from customs, $77 billion from Americans, mostly from Americans. But our budget was $6 trillion. Yeah, $6.75 trillion.

[00:38:53] And so it's only – the Congressional Research Service says that in any given year, and this has been true for years, the trade – the money we get in tariffs is roughly 1.5% to 2% of the total budget. It's at least the total revenue that we get in. So you would have to get a lot of tariffs in to go from 2% to nearly 100%. So it's just – it's not something that's realistic.

[00:39:22] You could conceivably get some more, but you're not going to be able to get rid of the income tax because there we get something like $4 trillion in from that, $3 trillion. Well, you know, I encourage anybody to go to pointofview.net and click on this article and read it in full because it educated me. This isn't something that I know a whole lot about. But I know that dissatisfaction with the economy is one reason a lot of people voted for Trump.

[00:39:49] Obviously, new policies he implements aren't going to necessarily make a difference overnight, but hopefully he won't implement policies that make things worse down the road. We've talked about this breakneck speed that he's going at, and I know he wants to see America win, win, win, and rack things up where he can say, look, we're winning. But this is something where Americans put a lot of trust in the new administration to say, can you help fix our economy? And this seems like the opposite. So two more things I'd say about the tariffs.

[00:40:20] When tariffs are put upon imported items, the companies in America that make those usually end up raising their prices. Because now if I have to pay much more for the foreign product, the U.S. company says, ah, then we can raise our prices. Let's keep them equal with what the tariff price would be or maybe a little less and you don't have to pay shipping or something like that. So U.S. companies do that. And I've got a piece from the Wall Street Journal here on steel because they were going to put it in that 25% tariff on steel.

[00:40:48] And I'm reading from the journal, the duties are expected to strengthen U.S. steelmakers' pricing power by effectively raising prices for foreign steel and enabling domestic companies to raise their own prices too. So you end up paying more, and that's why people are concerned about the impact on inflation. But the second thing is, and here's the irony in this.

[00:41:09] If you're putting on tariffs to try to get money from other countries, then maybe that works. But the other side is we're trying to protect U.S. companies from these other countries. So if we protect U.S. companies and they raise their prices and they start making more sales and we're paying less in tariffs. So is the purpose to protect U.S. companies or to raise revenue for the federal government?

[00:41:37] If it's to raise revenue for the federal government, then when people start buying more American rather than from foreign, you don't raise those tariffs. On the other hand, if we're trying to protect companies, U.S. companies, good, but then you don't get the tariffs or you don't protect companies. And, again, one of the reasons, again, I want to give him credit because the goal is he's been seeing how we've hollowed out the middle of the United States.

[00:42:01] And just go to the Rust Belt areas of America where you have lots of deaths of despair and the opioid crisis. And we've hollowed out the middle class in manufacturing. So there are two ways to do that. Tariffs could be part, but I think lowering regulations and making it a much more attractive place. As maybe turmoil surfaces all over the world, it might be better for some of these companies to come to the United States, which is stable and protected,

[00:42:31] maybe lower some of the regulations, which he's talking about, and really doing it to maybe, and nothing else, if not a carrot, a stick. We'd rather use the carrot than the stick. But either way, to bring some companies to this country so that we can provide good jobs for Americans. Through the 1990s and 2000s, companies were outsourcing a lot of their work. And that actually sort of created some just spiraled down places in the United States.

[00:42:59] Having said that, the tax bill, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, that helped by lowering the corporate tax rate down to 21%. Trump is now proposing to lower the corporate rate to 15%. You do that, and you will see companies coming to the United States. And so you don't have to go to a lot of trouble to try to get companies here. This is the best place in the world to be able to manufacture and produce products. You just want to have lower taxes and light regulation, and all the companies come here.

[00:43:29] I think you can do some of it without the tariffs. But, again, I'll give him credit. You know, it was the threat of terrorists that had Colombia saying, you know, we're not going to allow military aircraft to land those individuals from Colombia. And within hours, they said, not only will we let them land, but we'll even send one of our aircraft. Of course, you see, Marco Rubio went to Panama and pledged to end the deal with China. And, of course, 10,000 troops from President Claudia Shinbaum in Mexico to the southern border.

[00:43:57] And, I guess, 10,000 troops from Pierre Trudeau to the northern border. So the threat of tariffs. And it's not because Colombia would have to pay more taxes to the U.S. It's because as you raise the tariffs on Colombian products, Americans would buy other products and not Colombian products. Yeah, so that is the case. We have a lot more to cover, but I just wanted you to do a little bit of education. That one on tariffs was pretty good, wasn't it? Very good.

[00:44:21] And, again, I wanted to just let you know that as much as we would like to actually go to what happened before 1913 when we had an income tax and actually have all of the federal income coming from tariffs, the reality is that's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Unless Doge cuts a lot more than I think they could possibly cut. They got a good start, though. They certainly have. Speaking of good start, we've got a start, but we have another whole hour of really good material that we haven't even gotten to yet. So we will do that when we come back.

[00:44:50] But if you want to know more about some of the things we're talking about today, it's all available at our website, pointofview.net. We'll take a break. By the way, we'll take some phone calls, too. 1-800-351-1212. We'll be back right after this. It was not that long ago that censorship appeared to be almost inevitable. Free speech was being attacked and strangled in many places.

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