February 2, 2025 • 39 mins
Trump’s brilliant offer to federal employees. KY Sen. Rand Paul on the confirmation hearings and the disruptors shaking things up.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Team forty seven podcast is sponsored by Good.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Ranchers Making the American Farm Strong Again.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Team forty seven with Clay and Buck starts now.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So it is amazing to see how many great executive
orders are coming out of this White House right away.
It is a flurry. It is a fusillade. It is awesome,
and you got to keep up with it because just
when you think, oh, wow, have we gotten our fill
(00:34):
for this week, you get another one, or you get
another executive decision, you get another policy that comes out.
I thought this one and I hadn't heard anything about
this before it came out, so I was like, wow, okay,
this is interesting. There is now a move by the
White House to offer the two million federal employees that
(01:00):
there are two million federal government employees right now. There
are some exceptions this, by the way, we don't think
get anow. I think the post Office doesn't count under this.
There's a few others. Military is not a part of this. Yeah,
military and post Office there you go, and also immigration
and National security enforcement. So national security is not a
part of this one. But if you work for the
(01:20):
federal government in the civil service, the Trump White House
has come out with a proposal. Now, keep in mind
six percent. I didn't even know this until the Trump
team made this an issue, that six percent of federal
employees are actually in the office full time. That's astonishing
to me, because Clay, it would be illegal unless you
have a skiff in your home to do any CIA
(01:41):
work at home. So like that was never even a consideration.
You know, doesn't that number just make your jaw drop?
So people are taking like, if you work at the
Commerce Department, you're just work from home.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
You and I walked into what was it the National
Press Center to pick up some credentials for the inauguration.
And that area is just a couple of blocks from
the White House, and we walked into an office building
there and NERD alert. I when we stay in Washington,
d C AM always looking for places where I can
(02:13):
go buy newspapers. And what did I say to you
when we walked in there? I was like, Oh, I
might be able to get my newspapers here. That place
was closed. It looks like a abandoned you know, the
abandoned malls out there that basically are shut down like
that are just sad to look at. You'll see some
of the videos that have gone viral, of places that
(02:35):
used to go in the nineteen eighties that now are
just completely empty.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
That's what Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Looks like.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
And I was reading there's actually a front page article.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
You know who.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Agrees with Trump on this maybe the only thing they
agree on, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, Because you can't run
a business anywhere where federal employees used to work in
offices because there's no one there. Buck you got a
coffee company, they said that every coffee company in the
federal universe there closes by three o'clock cause there's like
(03:09):
they can't even if you wanted to go out and get.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
A cup of coffee.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Everything closes down because of this point the six percent
federal workers. Okay, so to build on that, which shouldn't happen,
you should have to go in. This is I think
a brilliant move by Trump.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So here's here's the proposal. Eight month severance. Essentially you
get paid through September thirtieth, but you have to quit
by February six So this has got to happen fast.
You don't have weeks and weeks to sit on this.
And there's a lot going on here. One is that
the expected savings of this. The Trump white House, according
to Access reporting on this things, five to ten percent
of the federal employees offered this. Remember non military, non
(03:48):
national security, non immigration, and not the post office. The
Trump White House, though, thinks that five to ten percent
will take it. I think ten percents high, but we'll see.
I could be wrong. This is their plan, they know
more than me. But it's also in to see what
the political dynamics of this are because the Democrats are
very upset. Why the Democrats upset? Stephen Miller was talking
to CNN's Jake Tapper. This is cut one about this
(04:09):
federal buyout offer, eight month severance and you can walk
away clean right now? Democrats Tapper very unhappy. Play clip one.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
There's two million employees in the federal government. Overwhelmingly the
career federal service in this country is far left left wing.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I don't know that to be a fact.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
Well, I'll give you a great example. We looked at
USAID as an example. Ninety eight percent of the workforce
either donated to Kamala Harris, another left wing Canada just
as an example. Okay, but an entire workforce is having
a plaint.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Wait, wait, whoa, who WHOA?
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Did you just say that saying someone voted for Kamala
Harris is demonizing them? No, so courting your suggestion is
that there's a bias, but you use the word demonizing.
You just said that I'm demonizing somebody by saying.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
They voted for Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Let's get back on that.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I just I am on track. Let me stay on track.
What I'm saying to you is this, there are two
million employees in the federal government, right, they're overwhelmingly left
of center. The American people. I gotta finish the sentence. Okay,
I gotta finish the sentence. The American people voted for
dramatic change implemented by Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Clay the Tapper knows, even though he's pretending to fight
on this, that ever knows. The federal civil service has
become it's almost like a teachers' union or something. They're
just you have to assume they're all Democrats.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Well, also, Stephen Miller, what we're seeing here is Trump
has now got an elite cadre of communicators that are
actually far better at television communication, which does matter than
many people who make a living talking on television, and
I think that is significant. Here's the thing, though, why
would this be again? I come back to leave a
(05:49):
side Trump because there is a reflectively anti Trump reaction
among forty five percent of the American public. But let
me just take have you take a step back. Why
is giving federal employees the option to get paid nine
months basically eight months, however you want to classify it
(06:09):
till September your full salary and be able to leave
and take another job if you don't want to show
up and work in the office a bad thing?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Buck?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
What percentage of our audience right now, some of them,
maybe some of these federal employees that got this email
sent to them, How many of you out there right
now would gladly leave the job that you have right
now if you got eight months of your salary paid
and could go on like a six month vacation.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I mean, that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Like, I don't know, I could think of I could
think of a few jobs that I would have left
happily if I could have gotten eight months severance.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I love the.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Jobs that we have now, They're the only jobs that
I wouldn't have left, probably to get eight months of
my job paid. I mean, so, how is this about?
And some of you out there are gonna say, Okay,
why does he do that? Because it's almost impossible to
fire someone who is a federal employee because of their
union protections, so you need them to voluntarily agree to leave.
(07:14):
And yes, does this have some short term cost, Yes,
you have to continue to pay people who might not
be working, but in the long range it saves tens
of billions of dollars of our tax payer money.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Well, also, the implication here is that you're gonna stop
paying them in eight months to do and you're gonna
pay them for eight months to do nothing and then
you stop, Whereas without this, you're paying them to do
nothing for decades, basically for decades.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
So I mean again, I bet a lot of people
out there listening to us right now, especially Buck. Let's
be honest it. Let's say you're sixty two and you've
been in a federal employee for a long time and
you're ready to retire. How many of you would like
this opportunity? I just I think it's I think I
(08:01):
hope that it leads to around ten percent of the
workforce federal government deciding to take the buyouts, and then
in the years ahead, our expensive for federal government employees
actually go down. I think I saw that Biden increase
the number of federal employees by seven percent during his
tenure as President of the United States. I don't remember
(08:22):
the last time that we would have had a president
who declined the number of federal employees. I'm talking about
in a time of non war, right like after World
War II, a lot of people were in the service,
they leave. I'm sure that Truman and Eisenhower the number
of federal employees probably declined as a result of that.
But I'm talking about someone in a time of peace
(08:44):
who came in and ten percent of the federal employees left.
And again, this is something that actually DC's mayors in
favor of because they want everybody back in the office too.
It's not the part is the decision. It's a good one.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Well, she wants them back for very clear economic reasons
for her own city, right. It's not that she's all
of a sudden against government spending. I get it.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
But my point is, if you just look at this,
is it is it unacceptable if you're a private employee,
if you work at Ford, or you work at Walmart
and you got an email offering you nine months of
pay to decide to leave and take another job. Would
you be like, this is an unbelievable outrage. That's what
they're trying to say.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Well, the mentality, I've said this before to you, Clay,
when I was at the CIA, the State Department joke
was that presidents come and go, but the department, meaning
the State depressent, is forever. That is very much the
mentality within the civil service that it is a job
at is job, a job for life, and they make
(09:46):
it so that there's very little that you have to
actually do in order to keep those jobs. It's in fact,
I used to say at the CIA, there's a lot
of things I could talk with this all day. CIA.
You know the eighty twenty rule of which is that
eighty percent of the work is done by twenty percent
of the people. Excellence is suspicious or excellence is suspect,
(10:07):
meaning if you try to do more or better, if
you try to go beyond what your time in grade allows,
you aren't encourage. You're told to sort of sit down,
shut up, and wait your turn. This is the culture
of these places, and when you look at someone like
RFK Junior. I mean he's going to be if he
gets confirmed, which I think we all believe he will,
he's gonna be taking over AGHS Health and Human Services.
(10:29):
Clay Health in Human Services has over eighty thousand employees.
It's crazy. Are they all doing now? Somebody might have
an answer for that. Oh, they're administering Medicare and Medicaid
and all these different Okay, but do we really need
eight thousand people doing this? Are they doing it well?
Does anybody even know? Could anyone even tell me off
(10:50):
the top of their head, what the biggest non military
employer in the federal government is? I mean, you start
to think about this stuff. The Leviathan is so big
we can't even see the head of the tail.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Remember Elon Musk fired seventy five or eighty percent of Twitter.
That's a for profit company, buck, and it actually seems
to work just as efficiently, if not better than it
was before. I really do believe if we fired seventy
five percent of all federal employees and we doubled the
wages of the twenty five percent remaining, which would save
(11:26):
us right about half uh, I don't think we would
see any difference at all in the overall effectiveness of
the federal government.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
You know, it's it's remarkable. You see some of the
where these people are are employed, right you know, Agriculture, HHS, Treasure, Treasury, Defense,
And then you speak to somebody if the VA, the
VA is huge, you speak to somebody who, by the way,
it's basically socialized medicine but only for members of the
(11:55):
military and the VA. I'll be honest, I've heard and
I don't want to get into this right now because
our phones will be lit up for three hours. You know.
Some veterans say it's okay sometimes and there's some good
care that gotten. Other veterans tell me it's absolutely nightmare. So,
you know, like any large system, I think there are
people that have differing opinions on it, but overall it
needs to be a lot better than it is. Clay,
(12:15):
the size of this is astonished. Size of all of
this is astonishing. And the the other part of it
is to have federal employees at these agencies who don't
have much to do if they decide they want to
do something, you know what, A lot of it is
harassing the American people. This is the problem because a
lot of these federal agencies have binding regulatory authority which goes,
(12:40):
you know, beyond the constitutional congressionally pass statutes, So it's
all of a sudden if you work at like you know,
the the Environmental Protection Agency, or you know, you work
at agriculture or something, you can say, well, now we
need to come up with something to do, and we
have more rules we need to pass.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I would also say this, I bet if you told
a federal government employee, if you finish every bit of
work you need to do this week as rapidly as
you can, I bet every single one of them could
have Wednesday, Thursday, Friday off and do everything that they
actually needed to do as part of their job Monday
(13:18):
and Tuesday. Right, Like this idea that they are grinding
away in any kind of efficient or effective manner. What
how many hours day do you think they're actually working
at home?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Two? Maybe?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Maybe?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
I mean it's just it's just probably some zoom meetings
and emails. Zoom meetings and emails. I mean that is
sort of the modern bureaucrats, you know, meet and potatoes,
zoom and emails. And you know I generally hate zoom meetings,
so you know, I hate by the way I hate
I hate meetings. Actually, I hate meetings. Do I agree
with that? I'm that's one of the big Thing's one
of the reason why I couldn't stay in the CIA.
(13:52):
Oh got it, guys, I'm having flashbacks. You need to
have a meeting about the meeting that we had at
the last meeting. I mean, this is the kind of
stuff that goes on in the federal government. You don't like.
This is why I could never have been a governing boy.
People think my condo board is inefficient. Oh no, it
is a Swiss watch compared to the CIA. Let me
tell you.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
You're listening to Team forty seven with Clay and Buck.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
I don't want to take flew it away from anybody.
If you like a cheesebag, McDonald's, cheezberg die coke, which
my boss was, you should be able to get them.
If you want to eat hostest Twinkies, you should be
able to do that. But you should know what the
impacts are on your family and on your health.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Do you want a cheeseburger and a diet coke? RFK
Junior says, no problem, as long as you know what's
going on with it. We're joined now by doctor and
Senator Rand Paul from the great State of Kentucky. Senator
Paul aways appreciate you making the time for us. What
were your biggest takeaways today from the RFK hearings.
Speaker 6 (14:58):
Well, you know, there's something profound in cheeseburger. You know,
you want to choose where you can have it. And
at first glance you might miss this, but public health
used to be about information and persuasion, and let's way
it at somebody ought to tell you, you know, you
eat too many cheeseburgers. It's a problem. You know, you
eat too many tries. It's a problem. You eat too
many calories. It's a problem. Maybe there's a problem with
(15:19):
microprocessed food. But give us information. It's not so much
about mandates. What we got along, you know, probably decades ago,
is the Anthony Faucies of the world, the scolds who
came along and said, you have to do what we
tell you and no leeway for opinion in a free country. Yeah,
but your money. You have a right to buy a cheeseburger.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Now.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
What we ought to readdress though, is if it's government's money,
and or really the taxpayer's money, should the taxpayers buyings
for people should the taxes by twinkies and cheeseburgers. So
I think there really ought to be some restrictions on
the government money. But outside of that, I think the
notion that public health should be about advice is one
well taken.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
You and I and Buck also are all pretty open
First Amendment guys. We talked about that with TikTok. There's
a variety of perspectives there. Buck and I were just
discussing one of OURFK Junior's prominent ideas.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Which is that.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Prescribed pharmaceuticals, that is, drugs shouldn't be able to advertise
on American media television in particular radio to be fair
as well, and I believe it's true that only the
United States and New Zealand allow that. You're a doctor,
you may have had people come in and ask for prescriptions.
What's your perspective on that. Would it make more sense
(16:38):
to restrict those in your mind than not? Or do
you think the prescription drug companies should be able to
advertise as much within their rights as any other product.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
You know, I have no love loss for big pharma,
for a lot of the things that are peddling and
for some of the information frankly not being accurate or truthful.
But at the same time, I respect the First Amendment
enough that people who disagree with me, people who want
to publish something and sell something, unless they're committing fraud,
I'd let them do it. That being said, I think
(17:09):
there needs to be some pushback on how we over
medicate our country, and some of that's going to be
through more information out less so I wouldn't ban them
from advertising. I think it is unseemly that every other
ad on TV is pushing some drug on you, and
we ought to ask as a country, should we all
be on twenty drugs or should we go out and
get on the treadmill for thirty minutes a day and
(17:31):
maybe eat less food. So there's a lot of things
that can happen, and nobody's been pushing back on sort
of the world we live in, the big farmer world
we live in. The flip side of that is there
are people, you know, when I started medical school, people
had rheumatory with arthritis for more than five or ten years,
off had gnarled hands, who could barely use their hands.
Now you almost never meet anybody, and it is the
(17:53):
miracle of some drugs that came from big pharmaceutical companies,
these anti inflammatory compounds that it really allowed people toobtard
authortities to live fairly normalized. So there's a it's a
double edged sword. But I think we get tired of
them involved in the regulatory process. So I don't want
big pharma deciding what the rules are and creating the
(18:13):
rules just to keep out competition. I'm offended by Pfizer
and Maderna giving one point two trillion dollars directly to NIH.
I think it makes it impossible for NIH to be
objective when they get so much money in royalties over
the m RNA vaccine. So there are many areas where
I crossover and join Robert Kennedy with on the banning advertising.
(18:34):
I probably wouldn't go there.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Senator are you are you a yes vote? And for
anybody who has any concerns over OURFK Junior, what what
makes you confident one way or the other and what
are the most important things that you think he could
pursue at AHHS.
Speaker 6 (18:52):
I'm a definite yes. A big fan of his doesn't
mean we agree on everything, but I am a big
fan of his, will vote for him. I think we
need something disruptive. I mean, if you look at and
this is this shouldn't be counterintuitive, but to some people
it still is. Our problem in our country is not
a lack of food. Our problem in our country is
too much food. And drawing attention to the chronic health
(19:14):
problems of too many calories of obesity is something, frankly,
we should do. I've talked with him about I think
it was actually his uncle who started the presidential fitness program.
We need stuff like that again in the school. Maybe
we could have them put down their phones for a
few minutes and have kids exercise, you know, touch the
grass as they say. So, I think there are a
(19:35):
lot of things that could come, and I think he
will be a disruptor. The enormous inertia and mass of HHS,
a trillion dollar agency, is it's hard to shove it
one way or another. But I think he'll bring back
respectability to science and trust in government if he would
just be honest and transparent with the studies. People on
(19:56):
the left have misdiagnosed this. They say, oh, it's all
the right wing people in the vaccine skeptics that have
created this vaccine hecedency and it's not true at all.
The vaccine hesitancy is coming from government being dishonest. They
need to be honest about it. I mean with the
COVID vaccine in twenty twenty, I think there was evidence
that in twenty twenty one the disease was dangerous enough
(20:17):
for certain age categories, older age and overweight that the vaccine.
I think the benefits greatly outweighed the risk for certain ages,
but for kids, the science that have never been there.
In fact, I think the science is the opposite, and
it is definitely the opposite. Now the virus has become
less potent that the risks of the vaccine for children
actually outweigh the benefit. And yet the government still tells
(20:38):
you you should give three vaccines to your six month old.
I think that's malpractice, and by them, I think giving
us misinformation from the government that made us distrustful of
all the other information they give. That made us distrust
all the other advice we've gotten for decades, because they're
not being honest on the COVID vaccine.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
We're talking to Senator Ran Paul. You said you're a
vote yes for our junior. How optimistic are he? Are
you that he will get confirmed.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
And also as a.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Secondary part of that, how crazy is it that Democrats
are so vociferously opposed to him, considering that until about
six months ago, for seventy plus years of his life,
he was a card caring Democrat. Same thing true for
Tulca Gabbert to a large extent. Take us into these
confirmation battles and whether you think there will be much
(21:25):
cross party support or is this basically a republican or
bust strategy for these guys and gals.
Speaker 6 (21:32):
I think Bobby Kennedy will hopefully get a few Democrat votes.
It is disappointing that they seem to have left out
a thirty year life span in his a thirty year
span in his life where he fought against polluting the
Hudson River, where he fought for a cleaner environment, and
he actually fought for it in the way that I
(21:52):
think is actually the most libertarian way. Is that if
you dump chemicals in the river, you ought to have
to pay, and it's a liability thing. And so libertarians
aren't opposed to liability. If you put something on my land,
or if a creek runs through my property in yours
and you dump old cans of talluine and paint center
in a sink hall on your property. I expect you
(22:13):
to pay, really probably go to jail for it, frankly,
but that's a liability system that RFK was a big
part of, and in cleaning up the Hutson River, which
everybody acknowledged as much clean as it was when he started,
and yet they give him no credit for that. I
think it's because the left loves mandates. They love government
so much that they want to force you to obey it.
That any kind of advocacy for medical freedom or choice, well,
(22:37):
that's right. They are for choice. I forgot the Left
was for choice except for when it comes to medicines
or vaccines you want to.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Take Senator Paul, are you expecting that all Republicans are
going to go forward with this RFK nomination or could
you see any hold?
Speaker 6 (22:52):
Does you know? I think there's a possibility of losing
two or three, kind of like on the Hexceth nomination
that happens, you know, the vice president can break the tie.
But I'm actually hoping if you lose two or three
Republicans that we gain two or three Democrats. So I'm
still hopeful that we can. I mean a lot of
what he's talking about, you know, there's been no voice
(23:13):
for this, There's been no voice for talking about chronic
health and chronic illness and what are the things we
can do to get people healthier? And a lot of
these things don't involve mandates. It's persuasion. Convince people that
there are bad things in the food system, Convince people
that are a risk to being sedentary and not exercising.
(23:34):
I can't see why the left would be opposed to that.
I actually have a bill to actually change the formulay
for food stamps to disallow sugar sodas and disallow twinkies
and ding dongs from taxpayer funds. I can't find one
Democrat on it, because they love so much the idea
of free stuff coming from the government that they can't
imagine that the taxpayer would place any kind of, you know,
(23:56):
rules or conditions on it. And so the way I
look at it it is I think high sugar and
fat food is up there, frankly with cigarettes and alcohol.
I wouldn't ban them or tax them, but I think
you ought to be informed if you're going to eat,
you know, drink ten full strength sodas a day. What
that would be, It's like fifteen sixteen hundred calories just
(24:17):
in Coca Cola, and there are people out there drinking
eight to ten cokes in a day, Cokes or Pepsi's
I just means generic.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
We're talking to Senator Ran Paul.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
I know that you are probably the foremost almost on
Capitol Hill in terms of trying to rein in federal
budgets and spending. What do you think about Trump's perspective
on the federal government workforce of He just said, I
don't know if you've seen it, but it's similar to
things he said in the past that if you're not
in the office by February sixth, for every day that.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
He's going to fire you.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
He also offered basically a payout to anyone who wanted
to continue to work from home, but that they're largess
I guess from the federal government would run out in September.
How do you analyze this? What sort of success do
you think he might meet with on this perspective this idea, the.
Speaker 6 (25:10):
More the better. I mean, we have a two trillion
dollar institutional deficit and nobody's budget it. We've got to
make government smaller. So everything he can do, you have
to realize for anybody who thinks he might have overstepped
in this, that the Biden administration on the way out
did extraordinary things to try to prevent federal government workers
from working. They wrote in five year union contracts to
(25:32):
try to exceed his term in office, to try to
say you don't have to work in person. The problem
with government workers not working in person is there's no
way to measure their work. You know, if you're selling
for me and I have a stock company, and you're
on the phone all day and you work from home.
One they listen to your phone calls. Two, they measure
your output, how many phone calls you take each hour.
(25:52):
And they measure if you're in a sales position, your sales.
So private businesses know how to measure profit and know
if you're working from home is is worthwhile government there's
no way to police them. And my favorite story was
the guy that was at the EPA. He was the
second in charge of the EPA and for years he'd
missed six months of work every year, but he told
them he was at the EPA, But he told them
(26:13):
he worked for the CIA. On the sly and nobody
questioned it. He did this for a dozen years. They
finally caught him one day because someone had the wherewithal
to call the CIA and said, do you know Joe Smith?
And they're like, no, never heard of him. But no
one had ever called to check up on this Kocamane
story that he worked for the CIA and the part time.
But this goes on throughout government. There are people sitting
(26:34):
at home. There are people sitting in a chase lounge
at a pool drinking a beer as we speak, who
are collecting government checks. I promise you.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
What percentage is just a last question for you on
the way out. What percentage of government employees do you
think could not be employed by the government? And the
average American would see no decline in overall efficiency if.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
You eliminated the Department of Education. Tell you, but there's
got to be thousands of people over there. You wouldn't
know it. You would have no idea, and in fact,
scores might go up because scores have not been improved
over the years at all, since we compare ourselves internationally,
since we got the Department of Education. There are no
teachers over there. There are a bunch of bureaucrats, and
(27:17):
a lot of them are just DEEI bureaucrats. So I
commended the God the President for trying to get rid
of all the deibs that we've got throughout government too.
But thousands and thousands of government workers could be gone
and you'd never know they were missing. They don't produce anything.
Most government workers are in place to hamper the economy
and hamper transactions. And so what they are is there
(27:40):
are a compliance costs, and so when you remove government workers,
if you remove the regulations, what you'd have is a
booming private economy that would quickly absorb their numbers and
would lead to an area where you wouldn't even know
that anybody had lost their job because there'd be so
many new jobs created in the private.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Market, no doubt he sent it ran Paul fantastic. As always, Senator,
we appreciate you and we'll talk to you again soon.
Speaker 6 (28:05):
Thanks guys.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
The Team forty seven podcast is sponsored by Good Ranchers
Making the American Farm Strong Again.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
You're listening to Team forty seven with Clay and Buck.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
A lot going on on Capitol Hill, a variety of
different hearings simultaneously all occurring as we certainly are grappling
with the awful news that has come out of the
Wichita plane crash that occurred in DC, which has overshadowed
much of these hearings. But we want to play some
(28:39):
of the cuts to give you a sense for what
has actually been taking place. Cut thirty Here, RFK Junior
has directly called out Bernie Sanders by saying.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Hey, this is really all about you.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Just taking more money from big pharma companies than anyone.
Things got spicy here.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
Listen, I'm going to make America healthier than other countries
in the world right now, will you guarantee do what
every other major country. That's a simple question. And by
the way, Bernie, you know, the problem of corruption is
not just in the federal AGS, is in Congress to
almost all the members of this panel are accepting, including yourself,
(29:23):
are accepting millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry protecting
their interests.
Speaker 6 (29:30):
Oh I thought that that would no.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
I ran for president like you.
Speaker 7 (29:35):
I got millions, millions of contributions.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
They did not come from.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
The executives, not one nickel of pack money from the
pharmaceutical that they came twenty twenty. In twenty twenty, you
were the single largest because I receiver minations from.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Workers all over this country.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
Workers, you were this not a nickel from corporate You
as the single largest acceptor of armaceutical dollars from work
is in five million, Yeah, out of two hundred million.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Maybe Bernie was going to be a communist with four houses,
you know, given all that, it's really funny.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
But I do think buck this is the essence of
the opposition to RFK Junior. Big Pharma is threatened by
his challenge of their corporate hegemony, and they have bought
off a lot of major politicians, including Bernie Sanders, who
claims that he is above reproach in respected things like this.
(30:35):
All right, so that was some drama from RFK Junior,
who seems to be headed towards approval. Here is Cash
Patel John Kennedy, Republican Senator from Louisiana, questioning him. I
think you guys are going to enjoy this. This is
a positive testimony from John Kennedy, Very funny in Louisiana.
Speaker 7 (30:56):
Enjoy My colleague and friend Schunicker Derby and called you
a conspiracy theorists. You remember that I do Senator, you
were instrumental in revealing that the Trump Russia election collusion
hoax was a hoax, weren't you?
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Yes, sir, was a lead investigator.
Speaker 7 (31:22):
Sounds to me like we need to get some new
conspiracy theories because all the old ones turned out to
be true. Facts matter, Senator, Yeah, I mean, conspiracy theorists
are up something like thirty seven and nothing.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
All right, So I thought that was pretty funny, And
I mean, I think that's one reason Cash is the nominee.
And then last, Tulsi gabbird Buck, these are all things
that happened today. Tulsi Gabberd, testifying on Capitol Hill, called
out the fifty one intelligence agents who claimed that Hunter
Biden's laptop had all the hallmarks of disinformation.
Speaker 8 (32:00):
And here's that the American people elected Donald Trump as
their president not once, but twice, and yet the FBI
and intelligence agencies were politicized by his opponents to undermine
his presidency and falsely portray him as a puppet of Putin.
Title Ie Offiza was used illegally to obtain a warrant
to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page using a
(32:20):
Clinton campaign funded false dossier as their so called evidence.
Biden campaign advisor Tony Blinken was the impetus for the
fifty one former senior intelligence officials letter dismissing Hunter Biden's
laptop as disinformation, specifically to help Biden win the election.
Former d and I James Clapper lied to this committee
(32:41):
in twenty thirteen denying the existence of programs that facilitated
the mass collection of millions of Americans' phone and Internet records,
yet was never held accountable. Under John Brennan's leadership, the
CIA abused its power to spy on Congress to dodge oversight,
lied about doing it until he was caught, and yet
has never been held responsible. Under Biden, the FBI have
(33:02):
used its power for political reasons to try to surveil
Catholics to attend traditional Latin mass labeling them as quote
unquote radical traditionalist Catholics. Personally, just twenty four hours after
Chrisize Kamala Harris and her nomination, I was placed on
a secret domestic terror watch list called Quiet Skies. Sadly,
there are more examples. The bottom line is this, this
(33:25):
must end.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
So Buck, what I would say about all three of
those clips that we just played in all three of
the individuals testifying today RFK, Junior, Cash, Betel, Tulsi Gabbard,
they are outsiders that are not in the traditional power
dynamic of Washington, disruptors, and they're being attacked by people
who want, to a large degree preserved.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
The status quo.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Is that an accurate take from your perspective.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yeah, And I think that what upsets so many of
the people within the system about Tulsi is that she
doesn't have this allegiance that comes from being within this
community for such a long period of time, which generally
I think has been a precondition for getting one of
these jobs. It's a management job. It's a leadership and
(34:12):
management job to be the DNI. And James Clapper was
the DNI before, who is a buffoon and a partisan hack.
So I don't care what his resume is. He showed
who he was in that role as the Director of
National Intelligence. He was absolutely, absolutely horrible for the country.
And same thing with Brennan, who was a career intel
(34:33):
guy and had been Obama's counter terrorisms are in the
White House and had come from the intelligence community before then.
I agree with those who said they don't like the
name intelligence community makes it sound like we sit around
or just you know, bobbing our tea bags and talking
about what's going on. You know, Oh, or's some people
having noisy parties lately, like the ICE whatever. I don't.
(34:55):
I think that it's gotten way too First of all,
it's way too large, it's far too bureaucratic, it is
far too slow, it underperforms, it underdelivers, it's incredibly expensive,
and now it has become a threat to the republic
itself because it has been used as a weapon repeatedly
against a one half of the country's political wishes, with
(35:17):
the Trump administration and the Trump and the Trump first
term and second term. So I think that Tulsi pointing
out the fifty one intelligence officers, I mean that was, hey, guys,
you can trust us. We're telling you the truth. And
they all lied and they knew they were lying, and
there should be consequences to that for the broader bureaucracy.
(35:38):
But also I think those individuals should all hang their
heads in shame. Of course, the Democrats liked them because
they serve their purposes in twenty twenty, but it's interesting
to see people Clay propose that Tulsi Gabbard would be
incapable of doing this or not the right person to
do this in state of yourself. What evidence is there
(36:00):
that the people have had this job before under both
the Biden and Obama administrations, should have been in charge
of anything at all, and they got confirmed. So I
don't see this as an issue. Look, she's gonna have
some challenges because she doesn't know. I mean, I have
five or six more years in the intelligence community than
Telsey does, right so, and I'm a radio host. She
(36:21):
doesn't know what she's getting into with that at some level,
because you can't know till you're there, and she's going
to be a total novice in that respect. But she
was in the military. She's been in the military for decades.
I mean, she has an understanding of large bureaucracy, and
I think that she also to anybody who's being fair
in minded, you can come at this with the perspective
(36:42):
of someone who has not been like an avowed trumper
or right winger or you know, hardcore conservative. She was
a Democrat running for president. What in twenty twenty, I mean.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
To be running against Trump in twenty twenty, That's what's
so staggering about all of this stuff is she he
ran for the nomination in twenty twenty. She could have
been the Democrat nominee to go against Trump. In theory,
this whole thing is an experiment to bringing until very
recently Democrats into your administration at a very high level.
It is Trump's decision to make and.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I back him on. You know, he just won this election.
He went through all that, he ran the gauntlet, won
this election, and has earned the right to have the
team that he wants. It is going to be interesting.
I mean, some of these picks are not the picks
that I think a lot of people who are lifelong
Conservatives would have necessarily gone to. But you want disruption,
(37:36):
you want to change the status quo, you want people
to shake things up. You need a different approach.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
How about the fact, Buck that if they get shot down,
it's going to be because two former Democrats in RFK
Junior and Tulca Gabbard were uniformly opposed by Democrats and
all of the Republicans didn't line up behind them. Like
this to me, when you just look at this, if
(38:02):
you're a totally rational human being and not just an
anti Trump zelot, how can there not be ten Democrats
that will support seventy four year Democrat RFK Junior and
all of our life. Basically Democrat Tulsi Gabbard like, I'm
not talking.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
About this is what I'm just a few this is
what I was getting at yesterday. I think that they
are particularly bitter at those that they view as having
been in the fold, inside the tent, who have now
gone to the other side. Right, So I think there
in some ways, I think Tulsi actually, in most ways,
(38:41):
I think Tulsi and Rfk's former democrat ness is nothing
but held against them by Democrats. Right. It's they're viewed.
They're not viewed as, oh, you're more reasonable because you've
agreed with By the way, I think RFK still agrees
with Democrats and a lot of things. Put that aside.
Don't yell at me, it's just the truth. But they
view as you switch teams entirely. Therefore you're a trader,
(39:03):
not oh I can see eye to eye with you
on some stuff, and you're not a dogmatic right winger.
Like for Democrats, it's all about power and they've gone
to help Trump. You're helping Trump, You're helping power to
the other side. Unacceptable. That's all they care about.
The Team forty seven podcast is sponsored by Good.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Ranchers Making the American Farm Strong Again.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Team forty seven with Clay and Buck starts now.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So it is amazing to see how many great executive
orders are coming out of this White House right away.
It is a flurry. It is a fusillade. It is awesome,
and you got to keep up with it because just
when you think, oh, wow, have we gotten our fill
(00:34):
for this week, you get another one, or you get
another executive decision, you get another policy that comes out.
I thought this one and I hadn't heard anything about
this before it came out, so I was like, wow, okay,
this is interesting. There is now a move by the
White House to offer the two million federal employees that
(01:00):
there are two million federal government employees right now. There
are some exceptions this, by the way, we don't think
get anow. I think the post Office doesn't count under this.
There's a few others. Military is not a part of this. Yeah,
military and post Office there you go, and also immigration
and National security enforcement. So national security is not a
part of this one. But if you work for the
(01:20):
federal government in the civil service, the Trump White House
has come out with a proposal. Now, keep in mind
six percent. I didn't even know this until the Trump
team made this an issue, that six percent of federal
employees are actually in the office full time. That's astonishing
to me, because Clay, it would be illegal unless you
have a skiff in your home to do any CIA
(01:41):
work at home. So like that was never even a consideration.
You know, doesn't that number just make your jaw drop?
So people are taking like, if you work at the
Commerce Department, you're just work from home.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
You and I walked into what was it the National
Press Center to pick up some credentials for the inauguration.
And that area is just a couple of blocks from
the White House, and we walked into an office building
there and NERD alert. I when we stay in Washington,
d C AM always looking for places where I can
(02:13):
go buy newspapers. And what did I say to you
when we walked in there? I was like, Oh, I
might be able to get my newspapers here. That place
was closed. It looks like a abandoned you know, the
abandoned malls out there that basically are shut down like
that are just sad to look at. You'll see some
of the videos that have gone viral, of places that
(02:35):
used to go in the nineteen eighties that now are
just completely empty.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
That's what Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Looks like.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
And I was reading there's actually a front page article.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
You know who.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Agrees with Trump on this maybe the only thing they
agree on, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, Because you can't run
a business anywhere where federal employees used to work in
offices because there's no one there. Buck you got a
coffee company, they said that every coffee company in the
federal universe there closes by three o'clock cause there's like
(03:09):
they can't even if you wanted to go out and get.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
A cup of coffee.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Everything closes down because of this point the six percent
federal workers. Okay, so to build on that, which shouldn't happen,
you should have to go in. This is I think
a brilliant move by Trump.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So here's here's the proposal. Eight month severance. Essentially you
get paid through September thirtieth, but you have to quit
by February six So this has got to happen fast.
You don't have weeks and weeks to sit on this.
And there's a lot going on here. One is that
the expected savings of this. The Trump white House, according
to Access reporting on this things, five to ten percent
of the federal employees offered this. Remember non military, non
(03:48):
national security, non immigration, and not the post office. The
Trump White House, though, thinks that five to ten percent
will take it. I think ten percents high, but we'll see.
I could be wrong. This is their plan, they know
more than me. But it's also in to see what
the political dynamics of this are because the Democrats are
very upset. Why the Democrats upset? Stephen Miller was talking
to CNN's Jake Tapper. This is cut one about this
(04:09):
federal buyout offer, eight month severance and you can walk
away clean right now? Democrats Tapper very unhappy. Play clip one.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
There's two million employees in the federal government. Overwhelmingly the
career federal service in this country is far left left wing.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I don't know that to be a fact.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
Well, I'll give you a great example. We looked at
USAID as an example. Ninety eight percent of the workforce
either donated to Kamala Harris, another left wing Canada just
as an example. Okay, but an entire workforce is having
a plaint.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Wait, wait, whoa, who WHOA?
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Did you just say that saying someone voted for Kamala
Harris is demonizing them? No, so courting your suggestion is
that there's a bias, but you use the word demonizing.
You just said that I'm demonizing somebody by saying.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
They voted for Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Let's get back on that.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I just I am on track. Let me stay on track.
What I'm saying to you is this, there are two
million employees in the federal government, right, they're overwhelmingly left
of center. The American people. I gotta finish the sentence. Okay,
I gotta finish the sentence. The American people voted for
dramatic change implemented by Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Clay the Tapper knows, even though he's pretending to fight
on this, that ever knows. The federal civil service has
become it's almost like a teachers' union or something. They're
just you have to assume they're all Democrats.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Well, also, Stephen Miller, what we're seeing here is Trump
has now got an elite cadre of communicators that are
actually far better at television communication, which does matter than
many people who make a living talking on television, and
I think that is significant. Here's the thing, though, why
would this be again? I come back to leave a
(05:49):
side Trump because there is a reflectively anti Trump reaction
among forty five percent of the American public. But let
me just take have you take a step back. Why
is giving federal employees the option to get paid nine
months basically eight months, however you want to classify it
(06:09):
till September your full salary and be able to leave
and take another job if you don't want to show
up and work in the office a bad thing?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Buck?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
What percentage of our audience right now, some of them,
maybe some of these federal employees that got this email
sent to them, How many of you out there right
now would gladly leave the job that you have right
now if you got eight months of your salary paid
and could go on like a six month vacation.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I mean, that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Like, I don't know, I could think of I could
think of a few jobs that I would have left
happily if I could have gotten eight months severance.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I love the.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Jobs that we have now, They're the only jobs that
I wouldn't have left, probably to get eight months of
my job paid. I mean, so, how is this about?
And some of you out there are gonna say, Okay,
why does he do that? Because it's almost impossible to
fire someone who is a federal employee because of their
union protections, so you need them to voluntarily agree to leave.
(07:14):
And yes, does this have some short term cost, Yes,
you have to continue to pay people who might not
be working, but in the long range it saves tens
of billions of dollars of our tax payer money.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Well, also, the implication here is that you're gonna stop
paying them in eight months to do and you're gonna
pay them for eight months to do nothing and then
you stop, Whereas without this, you're paying them to do
nothing for decades, basically for decades.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
So I mean again, I bet a lot of people
out there listening to us right now, especially Buck. Let's
be honest it. Let's say you're sixty two and you've
been in a federal employee for a long time and
you're ready to retire. How many of you would like
this opportunity? I just I think it's I think I
(08:01):
hope that it leads to around ten percent of the
workforce federal government deciding to take the buyouts, and then
in the years ahead, our expensive for federal government employees
actually go down. I think I saw that Biden increase
the number of federal employees by seven percent during his
tenure as President of the United States. I don't remember
(08:22):
the last time that we would have had a president
who declined the number of federal employees. I'm talking about
in a time of non war, right like after World
War II, a lot of people were in the service,
they leave. I'm sure that Truman and Eisenhower the number
of federal employees probably declined as a result of that.
But I'm talking about someone in a time of peace
(08:44):
who came in and ten percent of the federal employees left.
And again, this is something that actually DC's mayors in
favor of because they want everybody back in the office too.
It's not the part is the decision. It's a good one.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Well, she wants them back for very clear economic reasons
for her own city, right. It's not that she's all
of a sudden against government spending. I get it.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
But my point is, if you just look at this,
is it is it unacceptable if you're a private employee,
if you work at Ford, or you work at Walmart
and you got an email offering you nine months of
pay to decide to leave and take another job. Would
you be like, this is an unbelievable outrage. That's what
they're trying to say.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Well, the mentality, I've said this before to you, Clay,
when I was at the CIA, the State Department joke
was that presidents come and go, but the department, meaning
the State depressent, is forever. That is very much the
mentality within the civil service that it is a job
at is job, a job for life, and they make
(09:46):
it so that there's very little that you have to
actually do in order to keep those jobs. It's in fact,
I used to say at the CIA, there's a lot
of things I could talk with this all day. CIA.
You know the eighty twenty rule of which is that
eighty percent of the work is done by twenty percent
of the people. Excellence is suspicious or excellence is suspect,
(10:07):
meaning if you try to do more or better, if
you try to go beyond what your time in grade allows,
you aren't encourage. You're told to sort of sit down,
shut up, and wait your turn. This is the culture
of these places, and when you look at someone like
RFK Junior. I mean he's going to be if he
gets confirmed, which I think we all believe he will,
he's gonna be taking over AGHS Health and Human Services.
(10:29):
Clay Health in Human Services has over eighty thousand employees.
It's crazy. Are they all doing now? Somebody might have
an answer for that. Oh, they're administering Medicare and Medicaid
and all these different Okay, but do we really need
eight thousand people doing this? Are they doing it well?
Does anybody even know? Could anyone even tell me off
(10:50):
the top of their head, what the biggest non military
employer in the federal government is? I mean, you start
to think about this stuff. The Leviathan is so big
we can't even see the head of the tail.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Remember Elon Musk fired seventy five or eighty percent of Twitter.
That's a for profit company, buck, and it actually seems
to work just as efficiently, if not better than it
was before. I really do believe if we fired seventy
five percent of all federal employees and we doubled the
wages of the twenty five percent remaining, which would save
(11:26):
us right about half uh, I don't think we would
see any difference at all in the overall effectiveness of
the federal government.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
You know, it's it's remarkable. You see some of the
where these people are are employed, right you know, Agriculture, HHS, Treasure, Treasury, Defense,
And then you speak to somebody if the VA, the
VA is huge, you speak to somebody who, by the way,
it's basically socialized medicine but only for members of the
(11:55):
military and the VA. I'll be honest, I've heard and
I don't want to get into this right now because
our phones will be lit up for three hours. You know.
Some veterans say it's okay sometimes and there's some good
care that gotten. Other veterans tell me it's absolutely nightmare. So,
you know, like any large system, I think there are
people that have differing opinions on it, but overall it
needs to be a lot better than it is. Clay,
(12:15):
the size of this is astonished. Size of all of
this is astonishing. And the the other part of it
is to have federal employees at these agencies who don't
have much to do if they decide they want to
do something, you know what, A lot of it is
harassing the American people. This is the problem because a
lot of these federal agencies have binding regulatory authority which goes,
(12:40):
you know, beyond the constitutional congressionally pass statutes, So it's
all of a sudden if you work at like you know,
the the Environmental Protection Agency, or you know, you work
at agriculture or something, you can say, well, now we
need to come up with something to do, and we
have more rules we need to pass.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I would also say this, I bet if you told
a federal government employee, if you finish every bit of
work you need to do this week as rapidly as
you can, I bet every single one of them could
have Wednesday, Thursday, Friday off and do everything that they
actually needed to do as part of their job Monday
(13:18):
and Tuesday. Right, Like this idea that they are grinding
away in any kind of efficient or effective manner. What
how many hours day do you think they're actually working
at home?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Two? Maybe?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Maybe?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
I mean it's just it's just probably some zoom meetings
and emails. Zoom meetings and emails. I mean that is
sort of the modern bureaucrats, you know, meet and potatoes,
zoom and emails. And you know I generally hate zoom meetings,
so you know, I hate by the way I hate
I hate meetings. Actually, I hate meetings. Do I agree
with that? I'm that's one of the big Thing's one
of the reason why I couldn't stay in the CIA.
(13:52):
Oh got it, guys, I'm having flashbacks. You need to
have a meeting about the meeting that we had at
the last meeting. I mean, this is the kind of
stuff that goes on in the federal government. You don't like.
This is why I could never have been a governing boy.
People think my condo board is inefficient. Oh no, it
is a Swiss watch compared to the CIA. Let me
tell you.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
You're listening to Team forty seven with Clay and Buck.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
I don't want to take flew it away from anybody.
If you like a cheesebag, McDonald's, cheezberg die coke, which
my boss was, you should be able to get them.
If you want to eat hostest Twinkies, you should be
able to do that. But you should know what the
impacts are on your family and on your health.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Do you want a cheeseburger and a diet coke? RFK
Junior says, no problem, as long as you know what's
going on with it. We're joined now by doctor and
Senator Rand Paul from the great State of Kentucky. Senator
Paul aways appreciate you making the time for us. What
were your biggest takeaways today from the RFK hearings.
Speaker 6 (14:58):
Well, you know, there's something profound in cheeseburger. You know,
you want to choose where you can have it. And
at first glance you might miss this, but public health
used to be about information and persuasion, and let's way
it at somebody ought to tell you, you know, you
eat too many cheeseburgers. It's a problem. You know, you
eat too many tries. It's a problem. You eat too
many calories. It's a problem. Maybe there's a problem with
(15:19):
microprocessed food. But give us information. It's not so much
about mandates. What we got along, you know, probably decades ago,
is the Anthony Faucies of the world, the scolds who
came along and said, you have to do what we
tell you and no leeway for opinion in a free country. Yeah,
but your money. You have a right to buy a cheeseburger.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Now.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
What we ought to readdress though, is if it's government's money,
and or really the taxpayer's money, should the taxpayers buyings
for people should the taxes by twinkies and cheeseburgers. So
I think there really ought to be some restrictions on
the government money. But outside of that, I think the
notion that public health should be about advice is one
well taken.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
You and I and Buck also are all pretty open
First Amendment guys. We talked about that with TikTok. There's
a variety of perspectives there. Buck and I were just
discussing one of OURFK Junior's prominent ideas.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Which is that.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Prescribed pharmaceuticals, that is, drugs shouldn't be able to advertise
on American media television in particular radio to be fair
as well, and I believe it's true that only the
United States and New Zealand allow that. You're a doctor,
you may have had people come in and ask for prescriptions.
What's your perspective on that. Would it make more sense
(16:38):
to restrict those in your mind than not? Or do
you think the prescription drug companies should be able to
advertise as much within their rights as any other product.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
You know, I have no love loss for big pharma,
for a lot of the things that are peddling and
for some of the information frankly not being accurate or truthful.
But at the same time, I respect the First Amendment
enough that people who disagree with me, people who want
to publish something and sell something, unless they're committing fraud,
I'd let them do it. That being said, I think
(17:09):
there needs to be some pushback on how we over
medicate our country, and some of that's going to be
through more information out less so I wouldn't ban them
from advertising. I think it is unseemly that every other
ad on TV is pushing some drug on you, and
we ought to ask as a country, should we all
be on twenty drugs or should we go out and
get on the treadmill for thirty minutes a day and
(17:31):
maybe eat less food. So there's a lot of things
that can happen, and nobody's been pushing back on sort
of the world we live in, the big farmer world
we live in. The flip side of that is there
are people, you know, when I started medical school, people
had rheumatory with arthritis for more than five or ten years,
off had gnarled hands, who could barely use their hands.
Now you almost never meet anybody, and it is the
(17:53):
miracle of some drugs that came from big pharmaceutical companies,
these anti inflammatory compounds that it really allowed people toobtard
authortities to live fairly normalized. So there's a it's a
double edged sword. But I think we get tired of
them involved in the regulatory process. So I don't want
big pharma deciding what the rules are and creating the
(18:13):
rules just to keep out competition. I'm offended by Pfizer
and Maderna giving one point two trillion dollars directly to NIH.
I think it makes it impossible for NIH to be
objective when they get so much money in royalties over
the m RNA vaccine. So there are many areas where
I crossover and join Robert Kennedy with on the banning advertising.
(18:34):
I probably wouldn't go there.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Senator are you are you a yes vote? And for
anybody who has any concerns over OURFK Junior, what what
makes you confident one way or the other and what
are the most important things that you think he could
pursue at AHHS.
Speaker 6 (18:52):
I'm a definite yes. A big fan of his doesn't
mean we agree on everything, but I am a big
fan of his, will vote for him. I think we
need something disruptive. I mean, if you look at and
this is this shouldn't be counterintuitive, but to some people
it still is. Our problem in our country is not
a lack of food. Our problem in our country is
too much food. And drawing attention to the chronic health
(19:14):
problems of too many calories of obesity is something, frankly,
we should do. I've talked with him about I think
it was actually his uncle who started the presidential fitness program.
We need stuff like that again in the school. Maybe
we could have them put down their phones for a
few minutes and have kids exercise, you know, touch the
grass as they say. So, I think there are a
(19:35):
lot of things that could come, and I think he
will be a disruptor. The enormous inertia and mass of HHS,
a trillion dollar agency, is it's hard to shove it
one way or another. But I think he'll bring back
respectability to science and trust in government if he would
just be honest and transparent with the studies. People on
(19:56):
the left have misdiagnosed this. They say, oh, it's all
the right wing people in the vaccine skeptics that have
created this vaccine hecedency and it's not true at all.
The vaccine hesitancy is coming from government being dishonest. They
need to be honest about it. I mean with the
COVID vaccine in twenty twenty, I think there was evidence
that in twenty twenty one the disease was dangerous enough
(20:17):
for certain age categories, older age and overweight that the vaccine.
I think the benefits greatly outweighed the risk for certain ages,
but for kids, the science that have never been there.
In fact, I think the science is the opposite, and
it is definitely the opposite. Now the virus has become
less potent that the risks of the vaccine for children
actually outweigh the benefit. And yet the government still tells
(20:38):
you you should give three vaccines to your six month old.
I think that's malpractice, and by them, I think giving
us misinformation from the government that made us distrustful of
all the other information they give. That made us distrust
all the other advice we've gotten for decades, because they're
not being honest on the COVID vaccine.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
We're talking to Senator Ran Paul. You said you're a
vote yes for our junior. How optimistic are he? Are
you that he will get confirmed.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
And also as a.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Secondary part of that, how crazy is it that Democrats
are so vociferously opposed to him, considering that until about
six months ago, for seventy plus years of his life,
he was a card caring Democrat. Same thing true for
Tulca Gabbert to a large extent. Take us into these
confirmation battles and whether you think there will be much
(21:25):
cross party support or is this basically a republican or
bust strategy for these guys and gals.
Speaker 6 (21:32):
I think Bobby Kennedy will hopefully get a few Democrat votes.
It is disappointing that they seem to have left out
a thirty year life span in his a thirty year
span in his life where he fought against polluting the
Hudson River, where he fought for a cleaner environment, and
he actually fought for it in the way that I
(21:52):
think is actually the most libertarian way. Is that if
you dump chemicals in the river, you ought to have
to pay, and it's a liability thing. And so libertarians
aren't opposed to liability. If you put something on my land,
or if a creek runs through my property in yours
and you dump old cans of talluine and paint center
in a sink hall on your property. I expect you
(22:13):
to pay, really probably go to jail for it, frankly,
but that's a liability system that RFK was a big
part of, and in cleaning up the Hutson River, which
everybody acknowledged as much clean as it was when he started,
and yet they give him no credit for that. I
think it's because the left loves mandates. They love government
so much that they want to force you to obey it.
That any kind of advocacy for medical freedom or choice, well,
(22:37):
that's right. They are for choice. I forgot the Left
was for choice except for when it comes to medicines
or vaccines you want to.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Take Senator Paul, are you expecting that all Republicans are
going to go forward with this RFK nomination or could
you see any hold?
Speaker 6 (22:52):
Does you know? I think there's a possibility of losing
two or three, kind of like on the Hexceth nomination
that happens, you know, the vice president can break the tie.
But I'm actually hoping if you lose two or three
Republicans that we gain two or three Democrats. So I'm
still hopeful that we can. I mean a lot of
what he's talking about, you know, there's been no voice
(23:13):
for this, There's been no voice for talking about chronic
health and chronic illness and what are the things we
can do to get people healthier? And a lot of
these things don't involve mandates. It's persuasion. Convince people that
there are bad things in the food system, Convince people
that are a risk to being sedentary and not exercising.
(23:34):
I can't see why the left would be opposed to that.
I actually have a bill to actually change the formulay
for food stamps to disallow sugar sodas and disallow twinkies
and ding dongs from taxpayer funds. I can't find one
Democrat on it, because they love so much the idea
of free stuff coming from the government that they can't
imagine that the taxpayer would place any kind of, you know,
(23:56):
rules or conditions on it. And so the way I
look at it it is I think high sugar and
fat food is up there, frankly with cigarettes and alcohol.
I wouldn't ban them or tax them, but I think
you ought to be informed if you're going to eat,
you know, drink ten full strength sodas a day. What
that would be, It's like fifteen sixteen hundred calories just
(24:17):
in Coca Cola, and there are people out there drinking
eight to ten cokes in a day, Cokes or Pepsi's
I just means generic.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
We're talking to Senator Ran Paul.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
I know that you are probably the foremost almost on
Capitol Hill in terms of trying to rein in federal
budgets and spending. What do you think about Trump's perspective
on the federal government workforce of He just said, I
don't know if you've seen it, but it's similar to
things he said in the past that if you're not
in the office by February sixth, for every day that.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
He's going to fire you.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
He also offered basically a payout to anyone who wanted
to continue to work from home, but that they're largess
I guess from the federal government would run out in September.
How do you analyze this? What sort of success do
you think he might meet with on this perspective this idea, the.
Speaker 6 (25:10):
More the better. I mean, we have a two trillion
dollar institutional deficit and nobody's budget it. We've got to
make government smaller. So everything he can do, you have
to realize for anybody who thinks he might have overstepped
in this, that the Biden administration on the way out
did extraordinary things to try to prevent federal government workers
from working. They wrote in five year union contracts to
(25:32):
try to exceed his term in office, to try to
say you don't have to work in person. The problem
with government workers not working in person is there's no
way to measure their work. You know, if you're selling
for me and I have a stock company, and you're
on the phone all day and you work from home.
One they listen to your phone calls. Two, they measure
your output, how many phone calls you take each hour.
(25:52):
And they measure if you're in a sales position, your sales.
So private businesses know how to measure profit and know
if you're working from home is is worthwhile government there's
no way to police them. And my favorite story was
the guy that was at the EPA. He was the
second in charge of the EPA and for years he'd
missed six months of work every year, but he told
them he was at the EPA, But he told them
(26:13):
he worked for the CIA. On the sly and nobody
questioned it. He did this for a dozen years. They
finally caught him one day because someone had the wherewithal
to call the CIA and said, do you know Joe Smith?
And they're like, no, never heard of him. But no
one had ever called to check up on this Kocamane
story that he worked for the CIA and the part time.
But this goes on throughout government. There are people sitting
(26:34):
at home. There are people sitting in a chase lounge
at a pool drinking a beer as we speak, who
are collecting government checks. I promise you.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
What percentage is just a last question for you on
the way out. What percentage of government employees do you
think could not be employed by the government? And the
average American would see no decline in overall efficiency if.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
You eliminated the Department of Education. Tell you, but there's
got to be thousands of people over there. You wouldn't
know it. You would have no idea, and in fact,
scores might go up because scores have not been improved
over the years at all, since we compare ourselves internationally,
since we got the Department of Education. There are no
teachers over there. There are a bunch of bureaucrats, and
(27:17):
a lot of them are just DEEI bureaucrats. So I
commended the God the President for trying to get rid
of all the deibs that we've got throughout government too.
But thousands and thousands of government workers could be gone
and you'd never know they were missing. They don't produce anything.
Most government workers are in place to hamper the economy
and hamper transactions. And so what they are is there
(27:40):
are a compliance costs, and so when you remove government workers,
if you remove the regulations, what you'd have is a
booming private economy that would quickly absorb their numbers and
would lead to an area where you wouldn't even know
that anybody had lost their job because there'd be so
many new jobs created in the private.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Market, no doubt he sent it ran Paul fantastic. As always, Senator,
we appreciate you and we'll talk to you again soon.
Speaker 6 (28:05):
Thanks guys.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
The Team forty seven podcast is sponsored by Good Ranchers
Making the American Farm Strong Again.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
You're listening to Team forty seven with Clay and Buck.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
A lot going on on Capitol Hill, a variety of
different hearings simultaneously all occurring as we certainly are grappling
with the awful news that has come out of the
Wichita plane crash that occurred in DC, which has overshadowed
much of these hearings. But we want to play some
(28:39):
of the cuts to give you a sense for what
has actually been taking place. Cut thirty Here, RFK Junior
has directly called out Bernie Sanders by saying.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Hey, this is really all about you.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Just taking more money from big pharma companies than anyone.
Things got spicy here.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
Listen, I'm going to make America healthier than other countries
in the world right now, will you guarantee do what
every other major country. That's a simple question. And by
the way, Bernie, you know, the problem of corruption is
not just in the federal AGS, is in Congress to
almost all the members of this panel are accepting, including yourself,
(29:23):
are accepting millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry protecting
their interests.
Speaker 6 (29:30):
Oh I thought that that would no.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
I ran for president like you.
Speaker 7 (29:35):
I got millions, millions of contributions.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
They did not come from.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
The executives, not one nickel of pack money from the
pharmaceutical that they came twenty twenty. In twenty twenty, you
were the single largest because I receiver minations from.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Workers all over this country.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
Workers, you were this not a nickel from corporate You
as the single largest acceptor of armaceutical dollars from work
is in five million, Yeah, out of two hundred million.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Maybe Bernie was going to be a communist with four houses,
you know, given all that, it's really funny.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
But I do think buck this is the essence of
the opposition to RFK Junior. Big Pharma is threatened by
his challenge of their corporate hegemony, and they have bought
off a lot of major politicians, including Bernie Sanders, who
claims that he is above reproach in respected things like this.
(30:35):
All right, so that was some drama from RFK Junior,
who seems to be headed towards approval. Here is Cash
Patel John Kennedy, Republican Senator from Louisiana, questioning him. I
think you guys are going to enjoy this. This is
a positive testimony from John Kennedy, Very funny in Louisiana.
Speaker 7 (30:56):
Enjoy My colleague and friend Schunicker Derby and called you
a conspiracy theorists. You remember that I do Senator, you
were instrumental in revealing that the Trump Russia election collusion
hoax was a hoax, weren't you?
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Yes, sir, was a lead investigator.
Speaker 7 (31:22):
Sounds to me like we need to get some new
conspiracy theories because all the old ones turned out to
be true. Facts matter, Senator, Yeah, I mean, conspiracy theorists
are up something like thirty seven and nothing.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
All right, So I thought that was pretty funny, And
I mean, I think that's one reason Cash is the nominee.
And then last, Tulsi gabbird Buck, these are all things
that happened today. Tulsi Gabberd, testifying on Capitol Hill, called
out the fifty one intelligence agents who claimed that Hunter
Biden's laptop had all the hallmarks of disinformation.
Speaker 8 (32:00):
And here's that the American people elected Donald Trump as
their president not once, but twice, and yet the FBI
and intelligence agencies were politicized by his opponents to undermine
his presidency and falsely portray him as a puppet of Putin.
Title Ie Offiza was used illegally to obtain a warrant
to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page using a
(32:20):
Clinton campaign funded false dossier as their so called evidence.
Biden campaign advisor Tony Blinken was the impetus for the
fifty one former senior intelligence officials letter dismissing Hunter Biden's
laptop as disinformation, specifically to help Biden win the election.
Former d and I James Clapper lied to this committee
(32:41):
in twenty thirteen denying the existence of programs that facilitated
the mass collection of millions of Americans' phone and Internet records,
yet was never held accountable. Under John Brennan's leadership, the
CIA abused its power to spy on Congress to dodge oversight,
lied about doing it until he was caught, and yet
has never been held responsible. Under Biden, the FBI have
(33:02):
used its power for political reasons to try to surveil
Catholics to attend traditional Latin mass labeling them as quote
unquote radical traditionalist Catholics. Personally, just twenty four hours after
Chrisize Kamala Harris and her nomination, I was placed on
a secret domestic terror watch list called Quiet Skies. Sadly,
there are more examples. The bottom line is this, this
(33:25):
must end.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
So Buck, what I would say about all three of
those clips that we just played in all three of
the individuals testifying today RFK, Junior, Cash, Betel, Tulsi Gabbard,
they are outsiders that are not in the traditional power
dynamic of Washington, disruptors, and they're being attacked by people
who want, to a large degree preserved.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
The status quo.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Is that an accurate take from your perspective.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yeah, And I think that what upsets so many of
the people within the system about Tulsi is that she
doesn't have this allegiance that comes from being within this
community for such a long period of time, which generally
I think has been a precondition for getting one of
these jobs. It's a management job. It's a leadership and
(34:12):
management job to be the DNI. And James Clapper was
the DNI before, who is a buffoon and a partisan hack.
So I don't care what his resume is. He showed
who he was in that role as the Director of
National Intelligence. He was absolutely, absolutely horrible for the country.
And same thing with Brennan, who was a career intel
(34:33):
guy and had been Obama's counter terrorisms are in the
White House and had come from the intelligence community before then.
I agree with those who said they don't like the
name intelligence community makes it sound like we sit around
or just you know, bobbing our tea bags and talking
about what's going on. You know, Oh, or's some people
having noisy parties lately, like the ICE whatever. I don't.
(34:55):
I think that it's gotten way too First of all,
it's way too large, it's far too bureaucratic, it is
far too slow, it underperforms, it underdelivers, it's incredibly expensive,
and now it has become a threat to the republic
itself because it has been used as a weapon repeatedly
against a one half of the country's political wishes, with
(35:17):
the Trump administration and the Trump and the Trump first
term and second term. So I think that Tulsi pointing
out the fifty one intelligence officers, I mean that was, hey, guys,
you can trust us. We're telling you the truth. And
they all lied and they knew they were lying, and
there should be consequences to that for the broader bureaucracy.
(35:38):
But also I think those individuals should all hang their
heads in shame. Of course, the Democrats liked them because
they serve their purposes in twenty twenty, but it's interesting
to see people Clay propose that Tulsi Gabbard would be
incapable of doing this or not the right person to
do this in state of yourself. What evidence is there
(36:00):
that the people have had this job before under both
the Biden and Obama administrations, should have been in charge
of anything at all, and they got confirmed. So I
don't see this as an issue. Look, she's gonna have
some challenges because she doesn't know. I mean, I have
five or six more years in the intelligence community than
Telsey does, right so, and I'm a radio host. She
(36:21):
doesn't know what she's getting into with that at some level,
because you can't know till you're there, and she's going
to be a total novice in that respect. But she
was in the military. She's been in the military for decades.
I mean, she has an understanding of large bureaucracy, and
I think that she also to anybody who's being fair
in minded, you can come at this with the perspective
(36:42):
of someone who has not been like an avowed trumper
or right winger or you know, hardcore conservative. She was
a Democrat running for president. What in twenty twenty, I mean.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
To be running against Trump in twenty twenty, That's what's
so staggering about all of this stuff is she he
ran for the nomination in twenty twenty. She could have
been the Democrat nominee to go against Trump. In theory,
this whole thing is an experiment to bringing until very
recently Democrats into your administration at a very high level.
It is Trump's decision to make and.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I back him on. You know, he just won this election.
He went through all that, he ran the gauntlet, won
this election, and has earned the right to have the
team that he wants. It is going to be interesting.
I mean, some of these picks are not the picks
that I think a lot of people who are lifelong
Conservatives would have necessarily gone to. But you want disruption,
(37:36):
you want to change the status quo, you want people
to shake things up. You need a different approach.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
How about the fact, Buck that if they get shot down,
it's going to be because two former Democrats in RFK
Junior and Tulca Gabbard were uniformly opposed by Democrats and
all of the Republicans didn't line up behind them. Like
this to me, when you just look at this, if
(38:02):
you're a totally rational human being and not just an
anti Trump zelot, how can there not be ten Democrats
that will support seventy four year Democrat RFK Junior and
all of our life. Basically Democrat Tulsi Gabbard like, I'm
not talking.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
About this is what I'm just a few this is
what I was getting at yesterday. I think that they
are particularly bitter at those that they view as having
been in the fold, inside the tent, who have now
gone to the other side. Right, So I think there
in some ways, I think Tulsi actually, in most ways,
(38:41):
I think Tulsi and Rfk's former democrat ness is nothing
but held against them by Democrats. Right. It's they're viewed.
They're not viewed as, oh, you're more reasonable because you've
agreed with By the way, I think RFK still agrees
with Democrats and a lot of things. Put that aside.
Don't yell at me, it's just the truth. But they
view as you switch teams entirely. Therefore you're a trader,
(39:03):
not oh I can see eye to eye with you
on some stuff, and you're not a dogmatic right winger.
Like for Democrats, it's all about power and they've gone
to help Trump. You're helping Trump, You're helping power to
the other side. Unacceptable. That's all they care about.
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