Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
A government shutdown is now likely after Chuck Schumer says
that Senate Democrats will block a GOP funding bill. The
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson making it very clear
that the same Democrats who've always said we can never
shut down the government and it hurts Americans and poor
(00:22):
people and the world is going to end now that
Donald Trump is in charge, they've decided, Nah, I'm we'll
just throw that all out the window and go with
the government shutdown just to try to hurt Donald Trump.
Take a list, and to the Speaker in his own words.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
They're planning to vote down the simple bill. They are
going to try to shut the government down. Every House
Democrat will participate on this. It looks like that would
be a shame if it's true. I hope some of
them will have a moment of clarity themselves and do
the right thing. But it looks like they're going to
try to shut down the government. It's a striking new
posture for Democrats who have always said this has been
apoplectic about the prospect of government shutdowns.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
So just think for a second about what the Speaker
just said. It's very clear that Democrats are solely doing
this for political reasons, and they want America to suffer.
They want Americans to suffer because they want you to
blame Donald Trump for any inconvenience or real pain that
comes from a government shut down. You can also look
(01:21):
at it this way. They're advocating for tanking the American
economy because they don't actually care about Americans. In fact,
listen to the Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer in his
own words about why they're doing it.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, but Republicans
chose a partisan path, drafting their Continuing Resolution without any input,
any input from Congressional Democrats. Because of that, Republicans do
not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture
(01:56):
on the House. We are our caucus is unified on
a clean April eleventh cr that will keep the government
open and give Congress time to negotiate bi parties in
legislation that can pass. We should vote on that. I hope,
I hope our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid
(02:20):
a shutdown.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
On Friday. Translation, Chuck Schumer is saying, we the Democratic Party,
are holding Congress and the American people hostage because of that,
as he said, Republicans do not have the votes in
the Senate to vote quoture on the House Continuing the Resolution,
So now it is a government shutdown that will be
(02:42):
created solely by the Democrats, with Republicans holding a fifty
three to forty seven advantage in the Senate. Chuck Schumer
also understands that, guess what, you don't always work together
with the other side, because when the American people voted
in Donald Trump and gave the Senate back to the
Republicans and the House control in the hands of the Republicans,
(03:04):
they didn't ask Donald Trump to quote compromise with Democrats.
They said to Donald Trump, go to Washington, save us money,
and go with a mandate to do what we're sending
you there to do. Now, the question is how long
could this last? Only the Democrats can answer that question,
as they're holding all of us hostage now. Before Schumer's announcement,
(03:28):
the only Senate Democrat to openly back the House GOP
Continuing Resolution with Senator John Fetterman, Democrat from Pennsylvania, And
you also had Senator John Ossoff, a Democrat from Georgia,
and Agnes King, an independent from Maine, as well as
Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, and Reuben Gallio, a
Democrat from Arizona, had signaled openness to supporting the cr
(03:52):
in other words, actually working together. Liberal activists said no, no, no,
you're not going to do that. We want to shut
it all down, and the activists pointed out that the
current spending fight was the last big chance quote for
Democrats to extract concessions from Republicans until this fall when
(04:13):
the fiscal year twenty twenty six appropriations process begins. So yes,
there are Democrats that are demanding more pork burrel projects
in essence for them to give the vote seeded for
this to continue, in other words, for the government not
to shut down. AOC said this. Everyone needs to call
(04:33):
their Democratics center right now. They are starting to cave,
is what she said on x Now. Before the Senate
convened for Wednesday's business, Democrats uddled during a caucus lunch
to plot the next steps forward, and clearly the left
that has taken hardcore control of the Democratic Party prevailed
(04:54):
at lunch. Quote at least for now, I don't see
the votes based on my reading of the end of
the meeting, That is what Senator Chris Van Holland, a Democrat,
told reporters walking out of that lunch meeting. I don't
see the votes there right now for passing their House
Republican r also painting the bill as exclusively a Republican bill. Quote.
(05:17):
I've gone back and forth on this thing three times
because it is two horrible choices. That's what Senator John Hickenlooper,
a Democrat from Colorado, admitted to reporters before the lunch meeting.
If you shut down the government, the president is the
person who decides what is essential. He also said this,
(05:38):
he decides what part of the government stays open, So
you were actually giving him even more power. The Democrat
from Colorado went on to say. On the other side
of the argument, a senior Senate Democrat aide told The
New York Post that some members quote warrior shutdown leaves
Elon Musk alone in the candy store, referring to the
(05:59):
Department of Government Efficiencies cost cutting efforts. You know it,
as Doge. It wouldn't be your grandfather shut down, the
source added, following must aggressive action to reduce the federal
workforce and trim billions of dollars in wasteful spending programs.
They're now saying they're afraid this may be too big
(06:19):
of a gift for Elon Musk. Many Democrats, by the way,
on Capitol have privately hoped that House Republicans were going
to fail to pass their resolution Tuesday night and be
left in a position to take the political fall. Well,
guess what, Republicans united. It's amazing. I will say that
Democrats are actually realizing now that Republicans are together on
(06:44):
Donald Trump's agenda in plan, and every hour that passes
only puts them on an island where it is obvious
they have no plan, and the headlines are quote, will
Democrats shut down the government? That is what one senior
Senate Republican aid said to The New York Post. Another
(07:06):
GOP advisor contended that if the CR fails to clear
the Senate by late Friday, this will be a Democrat
engineered shutdown and everybody in the country will know it.
By the way, this is exactly why I tell you
to share this podcast so people understand the backstory that's
actually happening in DC. The CR that Republicans passed through
(07:26):
the House largely keeps government funding levels steady with a
slight six billion dollar boost to defense and a roughly
ten billion increase to immigration and Customs enforcement known as
ICE to offset the cost. By the way, the CR
cuts back on about thirteen billion in non defense discretionary spending.
Only one House Democrat Representative, Jared Golden, a Democrat from
(07:50):
Maine who holds one of the most fiercely competitive seats,
voted in favor of the CR when it came up
in the lower chamber. Quote the CR is not perfect,
the democrat said, but a shutdown would be worse. Even
a brief shutdown would introduce even more chaos and uncertainty
at a time when our country can ill afford it. Well,
(08:11):
that democrat is not being heard by anyone else, apparently
in his party in Washington. So what should you expect.
The reality is, there's a very good chance we're going
to have a government shutdown, and it could actually last
more than just twenty four or forty eight hours. Donald
Trump ran on a issue that actually saw incredible engagement
(08:33):
in the presidential election cycle. It was the issue of education.
American schools are failing. In fact, we are the lowest
in many categories, with the rest of the world in
reading and writing and arithmetic. There are quite a few
failing schools virtually everywhere you go in the country, and
public education has been a disaster. We've continued to throw
(08:57):
more money at it, and we've seen no increase on
test scores or a return on our investment where students
are getting better at the basics like reading, writing, and arithmetic.
The President has made it clear he believes that the
federal Department of Education is a disaster, something that you
cannot fix. Now, let's be clear, the President's not said
(09:19):
that we can't fix education and he believes it should
be going back to the States. Well, the President was
in an Oval Office meeting and the conversation came up
about education. And here's what the President said.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
They're not doing a good job. And if you take
a look at take a look at our education process,
and if you look at the charts, because they have
numerous charts where they do the top forty, we're at
number thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine, and forty. And
recently they hit during Biden's last few days, they hit less,
so they were number forty. And yet we're number one
(09:55):
in costs for people. So it's pretty bad, but we
have a we have a dream, and you know what
the dream is. We're going to move the Department of Education.
We're going to move education into the states so that
the states, instead of bureaucrats working in Washington, so that
the states can run education.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Now, this goes back to a basic promise that Donald
Trump had made during the campaign. He believes that on
the local and state level, they can run education in
a much more efficient way than the federal government can
with all of the corruption in Washington, d c. Which
brings me to something else. Linda McMahon, the Education Secretary,
has now come out and had a major round of layoffs,
(10:36):
gutting the Civil Rights Office as well. The Education department
Civil Rights branch is losing nearly half of its staff,
and the Trump administration's layoff round one effectively gutting an
office that already faced a backlog of thousands of complaints
from students and families, they say from across the nation.
Among a total of more than oney three hundred layoffice
(10:58):
that were announced this week, two and forty in the
Department's Office for Civil Rights were in that group that,
according to a LISS obtained and verified by the Associated Press.
Seven of the Civil Rights Agency's twelve regional offices were
entirely laid off, including Busy Hobbs in New York, Chicago,
(11:18):
and Dallas, despite assurances that the department's work will continue unaffected.
Huge numbers of cases Democrats now say appear to quote
unquote being limbo. Insert fearmongering right here. What democrats do
well now. The Trump administration has not said how it
will proceed with these cases being handled by its staff
(11:40):
and many of those around them that have been eliminated.
The cases will involve families trying to get school services
for students with disabilities, and that is something that Trump
administration has said is important. We also know, though, that
the entire Department of Education is well bloated, and it's
time to dismantle it piece by piece so that the
(12:01):
President of United States of America can then hand control
back to the States. It's exactly what he said about
Martin Luther King and his dream now, which is to
give every kid a quality education and an education they
can be proud of, and an education that has a
return on our investment, and an education that prepares kids
for college and the future. We have far too many
(12:23):
public schools in America, and the presidents made this clear
that are handing out basically worthless pieces of paper after
you quote graduate the twelfth grade, even though you're not
reading at that level, writing at that level, or doing
math and science at that level. So for Donald Trump,
this is another step in that promise from his campaign
(12:46):
and a step that many parents will be happy about
in states when they actually get back control of their
public school system. Now back to the fear mongering for
just a second. Some staffers who remain said there's no
way quote to pick up all of their fired colleagues
cases In the Civil Rights Division, many were already struggling
to keep pace with their own case loads. With fewer
(13:08):
than three hundred workers, families likely will be waiting on
resolutions for years to come. They said, quote, I fear
they won't get all their calls, answers, their complaints won't move.
That's what a senior civil rights attorney for the Office
for Civil Rights said, saying, quote I truly don't understand
how a handful of offices could handle the entire country
Department officials and says that the cuts will quote not
(13:30):
affect the Civil rights investigations. The reductions were quote strategic decisions,
is what the spokesperson, Madison Breiderman said in a statement.
By the way, this goes back to DOGE. Yes, you
can have an efficient government without all of the people
that actually have all of these ridiculous jobs. The layoffs,
by the way, are part of a dramatic downsizing directed
(13:53):
by President Donald Trump as he moves to reduce the footprint,
he says, of the overall federal government. Now, Trump is
pushed for a full shutdown of the Department of Education,
calling it well a con job and saying its power
should be turned over to the States. On Wednesday, he
told reporters many agency employees don't work at all. Responding
(14:19):
to the layoffs, he said his administration is keeping the
best ones and the ones that don't work well, you're fired.
After the cuts, the Office for Civil Rights will only
have workers in Washington and five regional offices, which traditionally
take the lead on investigating complaints and mediating resolutions with
schools and colleges. Buildings are being closed and staff is
(14:42):
being laid off in Dallas, Chicago, New York, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia,
and San Francisco, and many lawyers at the New York
City Office were juggling eighty or more cases. They now
claim in One staff member said, we're all in tears.
We can't believe this is actually happening now. So many
(15:05):
of these people that are losing their jobs are well,
of course, they're crying foul because they believe that they're
being persecuted because of their work in public education. The
Trump administration again making it very clear it's time to
get our public education system back to the States, and
if the federal government is in the way of kids
(15:26):
getting a good education, then we should get the hell
out of the way. One other thing that I think
is interesting about all of these layoffs is this, even
before the layoffs, the Civil Rights Office had been losing staff,
even as complaints rose to quote record levels. The workforce
had fallen below six hundred staffers even before Trump took office,
(15:49):
and they faced nearly twenty three thousand complaints filed last
year alone under Biden Harris. That is more than ever before.
Ask yourself, why were there so many complaints? Could it
be that now it's actually in the interest of anyone
who's disgruntled to just claim a civil rights complain and
see what you get out of it. Well, apparently that's
(16:11):
exactly what they were doing the final year of the
Biden and Harris administration. Now, Trump finally is also ordered
a freeze on most cases when they arrived at the
department adding quote Democrats say to the quote backlog. And
when the Education Secretary of Lena McMahon lifted the freeze
last week, there were more than twenty thousand pending cases.
(16:36):
So you look at what Donald Trump just did. He's saying,
you can fear mongrel you want, it doesn't really matter.
Welcome back and has the Ben Ferguson Show. It's nice
to have you with us. I want to take you
back to twenty sixteen. It was the very first time
that the media and Democrats used Russia to try to
attack Donald Trump. You may remember the Russian collusion, Russia Ussia,
(17:00):
Russia hoax, as Donald Trump has said countless times with
good reason. Well, now the Democratic Party is trying to
use Russia again to undermine Donald Trump and his popularity,
all because he wants to see a ridiculous war be
ended between Russia and Ukraine. They're trying to drive a
(17:20):
wedge between the president and the American people claiming that
Donald Trump favors Vladimir Putin and that there's some sort
of shady, corrupt business going on between the two men,
which we all know is obviously a massive lie, a
lie that's been orchestrated by the Democratic Party. Well, there's
a new story that you probably haven't heard about, and
(17:43):
I hope you'll take this show and share it everywhere,
because what I'm about to tell you is something that
literally no one is covering. Donald Trump has threatened devastating
financial penalties now for Russia. I didn't say Ukraine. I
said for Russia and Vladimir Putin. President Trump on Wednesday
(18:09):
threatened the quote devastating financial penalties for Russia if the
president Vladimir Putin does not agree to a ceasefire with
Ukraine that Ukraine has agreed to. Quote, there are things
that wouldn't be pleasant. In a financial sense, I can
do things financially that would be very bad for Russia.
(18:30):
I don't want to do that because I want to
get peace. That is what Donald Trump told reporters in
the Oval Office. Quote in a financial sense, yes, we
could do things that would be very bad for Russia.
That would be devastating for Russia. But I don't want
to do that because I want to see peace, and
(18:50):
we're getting close to maybe getting something done. We got
Ukraine done, and as you know, Ukraine might have been
the more difficult party here. You were here a week
ago when some interesting things happen. Referring to the Zolensky
meeting in the Oval Office, Trump went on to say,
I had somebody who didn't seem to want peace. Now
(19:14):
he's agreed to peace. Trump also said people are going
to Russia right now as we speak, and hopefully we
can get a ceasefire from Russia. If we do, I
think that would be eighty percent of the way to
getting this horrible bloodbath to end. So the question that
all of us should be looking at and asking now
(19:36):
is this, why is the media not reporting this story?
Number one and number two? A president is trying to
bring peace. Why aren't they celebrating this? Why is the
world media not celebrating this? And why is it that
this isn't the number one leading story on every news
(19:56):
channel right now that the President got Zelensky to agreeded
to peace after one week of him being in the
White House angry and yelling and arguing with Donald Trump.
And then the other question is this, why aren't democrats
if you really want to talk about Russian collusion? Why,
and this may be the most important part, why are
(20:19):
they not demanding peace from Vladimir Putin? Why are world
leaders not demanding peace from Vladimir Putin? Let's be clear,
there is now an official deal on the table. Why
is it that foreign leaders aren't walking out in front
of microphones and demanding the Vladimir Putin agreed to the
(20:39):
ceasefire deal which Zolensky and Ukraine have agreed to, And
why aren't any of them talking about how quickly this
deal was done by Donald Trump? Now, look, I expect
the media to hate Donald Trump. I expect many world
leaders to well be jealous of him. But this should
be bigger than that. This is a saving countless lives
(21:03):
and so many families that have been destroyed in Russia
and Ukraine in a senseless war from the very beginning.
This is what leaders do. They lead. And the sad
thing is apparently in this country right now with our media.
If his name is Donald Trump and he does something
incredible like work for a piece to deal, they will
(21:23):
at best say something negative about him, or maybe just
not tell you the story at all. When the radical
left tells you who they are, believe them. When the
radical left tells you what they believe in, believe them.
When the radical left shows up and does something that
seems absolutely psychotic and crazy, understand that that is actually
(21:47):
what they believe. For far too long, what we have
been seeing is that we try to apologize on behalf
of the crazies on the left. We try to apologize,
which I say, no, they didn't really mean that. We
let them get away with it. We're constantly trying to
say that what we're witnessing, what we're saying, is somehow
(22:08):
not real, because we say, there's no way that could
actually be real, Like there's no way that someone could
actually believe that. Which brings me to my bigger point,
and I've been saying this for quite some time. The
Democratic Party is dead. The Democratic Party is actually filled
with a bunch of socialists, a bunch of communists, and
(22:31):
a bunch of Marxists. That is exactly who the Democratic
Party is. Finally, some of them are actually telling the
truth about who they are. And I'm glad because I
have said that the Democratic Party is it is dead.
(22:54):
But they've had to lie and to see voters for
several years now because they knew that a may Erica
really wasn't ready for the Democratic Party to die and
for them to just go to the next phase, which
was to decide that you're a socialists and Marxists are
a communists. And so the Democratic Party is actually filled
with candidates that are those things. Now, let me be clear,
(23:17):
some of them believe in multiple different areas of socialism
and Marxism communism. Some are just straight up declared socialists,
others are just declared communists, others are just declared Marxists.
But the majority of the candidates right now in the
Democratic Party fall into those categories. You look at the
(23:38):
joint address to Congress the other night by Donald Trump,
and you look at the left and whether it's those
that were disrupting early on, whether it's those that had
their signs and their boards up, those aren't Democrats. The
Democratic Party has died. Those are socialists and Marxists running
as Democrats who got elected as Democrats because it's palatable. Well,
(24:01):
fast forward to twenty twenty five, and now we're getting closer,
I think to reality There's two things that I've learned
from this last election with Donald Trump that I think
really explain a lot. One of them is it is
very clear now that Democrats have not learned a damn
thing from their lost They just haven't. Okay, they've learned nothing,
(24:28):
absolutely nothing from the brutal beat down and the loss
that they took in this last election. That's point number one,
because if they did, they wouldn't be acting this way,
and if they did, they'd actually be going backwards and going, Okay,
we need to reassess. We've gotten way too crazy, we
(24:48):
are way too extreme, and it's time for us to
bring it back to being Democrats, not being socialist, Marxist
and communists. Now that has not happened. They have learned
nothing thing. Okay, like I'm gonna say that again, they
have learned nothing from this last election. So let's let's
(25:11):
be very very, very very clear about that second point.
There are some that are now just saying I'm gonna
admit who I am. I'm just gonna be good with it.
The example I'm gonna give you right now comes out
of New York City, Socialist New York City mayoral candidate
once to hike corporate taxes to pay for loads of freebies.
(25:34):
Now I'm glad he's admitting, like I'm not, I'm not
really a democrat. I'm a straight up socialist. Like that's
who I am. And this socialist mayoral candate, his name
is Zoran Mandandi Mondani excuse me, wants to raise corporate
taxes to pay for billions of dollars of freebies for
(25:54):
New York, he told The New York Post and exclusive
sit down interview. The Queen's state assemblyman is a thirty
three year old set. His plans for his socialist utopia
involves subsidizing free transit and free childcare. How's he going
to pay for it? With higher tax on corporations in
New York City and establishing city run food stores as well,
(26:17):
so the government will be in charge of your food
supply chain in New York City. That's not all he
wants to do. He also wants to hurt people that
own property. How we do that very simply by freezing rent.
He wants to freeze that rent for millions of New
Yorkers and create a new safety plan, as he describes it,
(26:39):
for the city. The out of nowhere candidate who has
been surging so pay attention in recent polls, said his
campaign has a quote relentless focus on making New York
City more affordable through a sizeable expansion of government. So
big government is back, which he says lies in direct
(27:00):
contrast to the competitor, a guy who you'll remember is
the former governor of New York who resigned in disgrace,
Andrew Cuomo. We have a north Star, referring to his
campaign's economic agenda that is all driven by the belief
that working class New Yorkers cannot afford to worry about
(27:21):
anything beyond costs, because it's cost that is pushing them
out of the city that they love, stating that one
in four New Yorkers lives now in poverty. Now, what
is this actually about. He's doing the math, and he's
understanding that there's a chance that he could win an
election solely based on the issue of class warfare. So
(27:42):
you get the people that are struggling in New York,
and you get them angry, and you tell them that
it's the rich people that are their problem and it's
all their fault. You get people that can't afford to
live in the city, and you tell them that it's
it's the fault of the rich landlords, that they can't
live there anymore and they're and that their rent should
be frozen indefinitely forever, and that the rent is You
(28:06):
may remember the candidate who ran one time in this country.
I think it was the one that the rent is
too damn high guy, And people loved it because he
was telling you, like, I'm going to help you stop
having to pay high prices. So it is a straight
up move, for lack of a better way of putting it,
(28:26):
it is a move to say, if you are poor,
vote for me, and I will take from the ridge.
This is a robin hood campaign. It's one of the
oldest campaign strategies in history. You find enough poor people
and you play off of them, and you tell them
that their life would be better if you just voted
(28:47):
for me, because I'm going to go to all those
evil rich people and I'm going to take what they
have and I'm going to make your life better by
going after them. Quote. That is all driven by the
belief that working class New Yorkers can not afford to
worry about anything beyond cost because it's costs. It's pushing
them out of the city that they love. So there
(29:07):
it is. If you are being left behind, it it's
not your fault, it's someone else's fault. And if you
vote for me, I'm going to steal from the rich
this Robinhood campaign and give to the poor. He's done
the math, folks. There's a hell of a lot of
people in New York that are in fact paycheck to paycheck.
There's no doubt about that quote. Whether it's the cost
of rent, childcare, or metro card groceries, New Yorkers are
(29:31):
on the brink. He says. I'm on a bashful that
I lean to the left, and I plan to advocate
and raise corporate tax rates as much as those surrounding states,
and I'm going to go after them because they deserve
to pay more. Not even fair, We're not even We're
past fair share. Okay, we're now saying everyone else's it's
(29:52):
everyone else's fault that you're not living the life that
you want to live. So vote for me. I'll steal
from the rich and I'll give it back to you.
Make sure you share this podcast wherever you can on
social media, and I will see you back here tomorrow.