NC AG helps to block Trump's effort to root out corruption (02-13-2025--Hour3)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] I did not do anything today, I don't think, to warrant both Don and Tony calling in in the last hour. But who am I to look a gift horse, right? See, here's the thing. If you didn't hear, we had a call from Don and then a call from Tony. And at the very end there, Tony was saying something like, and this is a common tactic where they're like, calm down, stop getting upset, whatever.

[00:00:54] And they do that in order to troll. It's a deflection tactic. Tony does not, he does not know how to argue. He does not know how to debate. And so he just, that's why I kept dragging him back and kept correcting him, you know, kind of like, you know, popping the dog on the nose, you know, every time.

[00:01:12] Like to try to, like, correct him to say, like, you're not making, like, if you're going to make an argument, you make an assertion, you state a premise, right? You offer some evidence. You don't start off by asking me a question. Okay. I don't ever get upset in these debates. I will raise my voice when someone's trying to filibuster. I will raise my voice.

[00:01:40] Um, but it's always been kind of comical to me when people say, oh, you're, you know, you're upset or whatever. And like, that's just absurd. Like, does a cat get upset at the ball of yarn that it's playing with? No, like that it's ridiculous. They enjoy it. I enjoy it. It's fun for me. I'm not worried about Tony. I'm not worried about Don.

[00:02:02] I'm not like, there's no reason for me to be worried when I have discussions and debates with those two gentlemen, because, um, my track record is pretty clear at this point. I know what I'm talking about on these matters. And by the way, if, if they raise something like I did with Don, like, I, I have not heard this. I don't know what you're talking about. I told him that that's because I won't make these assertions. If I don't know anything about the topic. Unlike them, they will make assertions about things that they don't know.

[00:02:31] And that's very easy rhetorically in an argument to dismantle. As you heard in the last hour, it's very easy to dismantle it. You just have to recognize what they are doing when they are doing it. All of their attention or not so much Don, but Tony's attempts to insult his way out of the corner that he put himself into.

[00:02:51] All right. That's, that may work in whatever circle he runs in. I don't know, but it doesn't work with me. I've been doing this a while. I've heard the tactic for over a decade. It doesn't work. So you're the, the, the insults. I just kind of feed off of them. Actually, it's a gift. What can I say? Let me go over and talk to Gail. Hello, Gail. Welcome to the show.

[00:03:18] Hi, good afternoon. I wanted to call in because, well, everybody's talking about Mr. Trump and Mr. Elon Musk. And I am very excited about both of them because I am a poet. You know, I'm a poet. I'm writing poems. I have a book just coming out called Miss Set My World. All right. Gail, Gail, are you, hang on, Gail, are you on a speakerphone? Oh, let me turn it down. Yeah, please do. Cause it's like getting a bad echo and I can't, I couldn't make out what you were saying. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's all right. That's all right.

[00:03:47] Okay. The reason I was saying is because I tell everybody that's around me and you know, as I pass, I'm excited about both of them because I read about them. And I like the story about Elon Musk because he told about the time when he lived off of $1 a day. I don't really believe that, but he and his mother came on. And so now they have a lot of articles on Facebook about his mother, May Musk, and now she's an older woman. And she talks about when they were poor.

[00:04:13] And so in this poem that I was writing about, look at them now, there was a picture on Facebook of Mr. Elon Musk, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg and Mr. Jeff Bezos, and they were all dressed in tuxedos going to Mr. Trump's in awkward. And I began to look at them and I looked at them and I said, I started writing the poem called Look At Them Now. I don't know if this is going to be great, but I write about the people and it says, Oh yes, they've had many restless nights when sleep refused to fall.

[00:04:41] Oh yes, they say, look at us now. They didn't work all night, but the sunrise gives them another reason to get up and keep going. Oh yes, look at them now. So what they're all saying is that we all have to realize where these men come from. They were possibly not ever born in poverty, but they were not born rich. But they say, look at them now. From poverty, they may not have ever come, but they have once known about how to be poor.

[00:05:11] So everybody tells their story, even with Jeff Bezos, he tells his mother was a 16-year-old pregnant girl and she had him. And he's very happy that she didn't abort him. Even that story is very related. We can relate to Barack Obama. These women at the time when they were having these children, sometimes they may have thought that, but they didn't do it. And look what they had. So this is what I write. I write these things.

[00:05:39] Look, I've even cut down on my food. I was so excited about looking at a man who has so much money saying he can live off a dollar a day. Sometimes I'll eat maybe a sandwich. I try to see what is the least I can eat. I just say they are very smart people. Yeah, and they're inspiring. So in this economy right now, people. I was going to say they're inspirational. I mean, they inspired you to write a poem, but their story is... Well, you have a book of poetry already.

[00:06:07] It's called Inside My World, and three publishers are writing that book. Oh, good for you. Congratulations. No, that's great. Congratulations. But I think their stories are and should serve as, I think, inspirations for other people to say, well, if they could do it, I could do it too. And why not me if them? Right? And that's what I think we should be encouraging people to do.

[00:06:39] I think Gail is going. All right. Gail, I appreciate the call. No, it's great. It's awesome about your book. And I liked your poem as well. Look at them now. Yeah, I mean, the people who have become successful, it's one of the things I learned a long time ago when I would, over the course of my career interviewing people who have become successful, I never met any one of them.

[00:07:05] And maybe that's just sample size or something that they don't want to talk to media or something. I don't know. But the people that I have met that have been really successful always want to share how they became successful. They want that for other people too. Why do you think they start all these foundations? I guess the cynic would say, oh, they do that, you know, to rehab their image or whatever. And sure, that's part of it. You know, tax write-offs. Okay, fine.

[00:07:31] But when you talk to these individuals, they usually start talking about the hardest times they had and the lessons that they learned in the hardest times that then led to their success later. Because they would not have been successful had they not had the hard times and the failures at the beginning.

[00:07:54] And so they learned from them and then go on to correct the failures, improve the product or the service or the management approach or whatever. They learned, they adapted, and then they tell people. This is, here's a couple, real quick rule for life. This is how to be successful. I have found this to be true in my own life. I have recommended it to others and it has worked for them as well.

[00:08:22] Which is, have a goal. Have a goal. And then tell people. And you will be amazed how many people can help you achieve that goal. You can make the goal, give yourself a timeline, whether it's a year or five years, whatever, make it a reasonable goal, right? But it focuses your mind and then you tell people what you want to do.

[00:08:47] This is what you want to be, where you want to go or live or whatever. You tell people that goal and you'd be amazed how many people are in a position to help you achieve that goal. And they want to help you. But they never, if you don't tell them, they have no idea what you actually want. So have the goal and tell other people what the goal is. My goal is to have a billion listeners. No, I'm kidding.

[00:09:15] It's got to be a reasonable, realistic goal. And I don't even know if I would want that. Actually, I know I don't. The more famous you get, the more of a bunker you have to live in. Because you've got to hire security. You've got to have all of this bubble operation working around you. Because there are a lot of crazies out there. So anyway, that's just a piece of advice I would offer to you that I receive from somebody else.

[00:09:44] And it actually works. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias. Which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app. And it's a website. And it combines news from around the world in one place. So you can compare coverage and verify information.

[00:10:09] You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The Blind Spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription.

[00:10:39] I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. I have a lot of messages here regarding the Don and Tony Dumbassery show of the last hour. So let me just kind of run through these real quick.

[00:10:58] I do want to get to, though, this the North Carolina connection to the executive order blocks that these leftists and their organizations have been getting in the district courts around the country to stop Trump from trying to root out corruption, waste and fraud. There is a North Carolina connection besides Mark Elias. There's another one.

[00:11:22] Gary says Don and his leftist nutjob friends have crafted in their minds that Elon Musk is the new great Satan and controls Trump. Funny how Trump has former Democrats, Elon, Tulsi, RFK, and they hate them all more now than Trump. It's all a political power game and Don is the idiot along for the leftist power game ride. Yeah, it's one of those things where, you know, you can't be the idiot and the mastermind at the same time.

[00:11:51] It's the same thing I said during the George W. Bush years, that they were constantly lampooning him as a complete moron, but somehow also this diabolical mastermind. And also, just not for nothing, I've done a lot of research on Donald Trump over the years. I was against his nomination in 2015, 2016, so I did a lot of the reading up on him at the time.

[00:12:14] And there was one story where he said, he was talking about how he would, whenever he goes to like one of these events where they have a table set up with, you know, like a fundraiser and, you know, different people, they put them at the same table, you know, it's like 10 people at a round table at some event. And he would always make sure, and he said this, he said he'd never wanted to be at a table with anybody that was more successful than he.

[00:12:43] Because he wanted people to talk to him about how successful he was. He said that. So you could never put somebody at the table that was worth more or is a bigger celebrity or whatever than he was. That's what he said. So do I think that he's bowing the knee to Elon Musk? No, I most certainly do not. He is the leader of the free world.

[00:13:09] I think that that box has been checked sufficiently for him. He is the most powerful person at any table he sits at. And they also share a common mission, a common vision. They want the same thing. How it will end, I don't know. But Don and Tony projecting onto these guys thoughts that Don nor Tony have any idea what they actually are thinking. It's just, it's preposterous.

[00:13:37] And it's lunacy, people. Lunacy. Get some help. Okay? Because you don't know the thing that you think you know. And that is a sign of trouble, mentally speaking. All right. I hope you had a happy holiday season. But tell me if something like this happened at your house. Your family and friends are gathered around. Maybe y'all are in the living room. You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing. And then somebody says, Hey, Dad, remember those old VHS tapes?

[00:14:07] Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room gets all quiet. All eyes are on Dad who says, Oh, you know, well I've been meaning to, but I just haven't gotten around to it. Look, don't let those priceless memories sit in a box for another year. All right. Create a Video has been helping families in the Charlotte area preserve their history since 1997. Simply bring in your old camcorder tapes and Create a Video will transfer them to a USB flash drive for just $14.95 per tape. You have a big collection?

[00:14:37] They've got a discount for you. And next year, instead of talking about those memories, imagine gathering the family to watch them together. Talk about a memorable gift. So do what I did. Trust the experts at Create a Video, conveniently located in Mint Hill, right off I-485, and online at createavideo.com. All right. So the Charlotte Observer ran a story by Avi Bajpai and Lexi Solomon.

[00:15:02] And they were localizing this national story about how the judge had blocked Doge staffers from accessing federal payment systems. All right. And so the judge, this was Judge Paul A. Engelmeyer. I got more on him.

[00:15:24] But he issued this temporary restraining order to block Elon Musk from accessing federal payment systems that hold millions of American sensitive personal data and financial information. North Carolina had joined 18 other states in suing the Trump administration for granting the so-called—it's not a so-called Department of Government Efficiency. It is the Department of Government Efficiency.

[00:15:53] They renamed an existing agency. So it's not a so-called. It is Doge. United States District Judge Paul A. Engelmeyer Schmidt—I'm sorry, just Engelmeyer—wrote that his firm assessment was that allowing Doge staffers such access could cause irreparable harm. Could cause.

[00:16:16] Because Engelmeyer set the hearing before U.S. District Judge Jeanette Vargas in New York, and that's going to be tomorrow. In a statement—here's the North Carolina connection—because our Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a.k.a. Baby Jesus, he signed on with these other Democrat states to sue.

[00:16:39] And I don't know if that's actually mentioned in the McClatchy newspaper article, that it was all Democrats that sued over this. But apparently, like, they don't want to know about waste, fraud, and abuse. So, Jackson said that Engelmeyer had recognized the administration's move to hand Doge access to the Treasury Department was a violation of federal law and a threat to people's privacy and security. Either that or he's a leftist hack. Which, yeah.

[00:17:10] For now, Doge can't access the Treasury system and the data it holds. He said, we're going to keep fighting this case to uphold the longstanding federal protections of Americans' confidential financial data. The Bureau—the Treasury Department's Bureau of Fiscal Services—is responsible for dispersing funds from many essential federal programs.

[00:17:32] This is according to their lawsuit, including Medicaid, disaster relief funds from FEMA, grant program funding for law enforcement and criminal justice programs, social security benefits, veterans benefits, child care tax credits, federal employee wages, and federal tax refunds. According to their complaint, the Bureau handles 1.2 billion transactions a year and sends out 90% of all federal payments. So you can't look at those. God forbid. Right?

[00:18:00] But we already know some of the stuff that they have found, like regarding Social Security stuff. The lawsuit says that until recently, only a limited number of career civil servants with necessary security clearances had access to the Bureau's payment systems. Beginning on February 2nd, the Treasury Department started implementing a new policy granting access to political appointees and special government employees who are staffing Doge.

[00:18:25] And so this is an attempt to just gum up the works. You can't look at any of this stuff. And here's a reason. And if that reason doesn't hold, by the way, they will come up with another reason. That's the playbook. The states argue that the new policy grants expanded access, and that poses huge cybersecurity risks. This is the third lawsuit North Carolina joined against the Trump administration.

[00:18:54] The other two multi-state suits Jackson joined seek to block Trump's executive order that attempted to end birthright citizenship, as well as the executive order to freeze certain federal grants and other funding while a review of spending is conducted.

[00:19:09] So these are the things that, again, he has the, well, Democrats with bylines, but the reporters have not, yeah, they did not say that these are all Democrats state attorneys general. Now, Judge Engelmeyer, apparently there was a report that his wife is linked to an NGO that is funded by USAID.

[00:19:41] I feel like that's a conflict of interest. She works for the New York Association for New Americans, and they have gotten USAID grant money. Governor Josh Stein then sat down for an interview with Brian Gordon. As governor, Josh Stein, Democrat, says he's concerned by what he called Musk's move fast and break things mindset.

[00:20:09] Now, Musk also says, by the way, that, yes, we're moving fast, and if we break anything, then we fix it, and we do so quickly. That's the point. But he says this mindset and what policies rooted in this approach might mean for North Carolina. He's very concerned. The state ranks sixth in the nation for NIH funding and is home to two of the biggest NIH grant recipients in Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill.

[00:20:34] Stein says, I believe in going fast, but people need to understand the consequences that if you go too fast, you can create real harm to Democrats' long march through the institutions. I'm just kidding. I added that last part. He then says, we should always look for efficiency, but if spending or end, if spending is not delivering a return, we shouldn't do it.

[00:20:59] But funding research on basic medicine through our university system and nonprofit partners is not waste. It's how we advance medicine. It's how we save lives. Does this sound familiar? Right. This is the poster child argument or the Mott and Bailey fallacy. Right. He highlights these things that have general agreement on the these are non-controversial things.

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[00:22:44] Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. More from this interview now with Josh Stein, the Raleigh News and Observer, Charlotte Observer, parent company McClatchy. How to sit down, News and Observer, how to sit down. And they ask him a bunch of these questions about the USAID stuff, mainly about Trump's executive orders.

[00:23:11] And the question is, I've heard from a lot of people in the past few weeks who have felt shaken by some of these proposed cuts to USAID, NIH, and the EPA. What can the state do, or what is the state doing, to counter these policies? I'm glad for the Q&A. I'm glad for this transcript. Because that question assumes a position.

[00:23:39] That question assumes that the policies should be continued. What can the state do to counter these policies? Well, what are the policies? What is it Trump is trying to do? What is the Doge people, what are they trying to do? They're trying to root out fraudulent payments and wasteful programs. Why would that need to be countered?

[00:24:10] See, but by asking the question the way they asked it, it assumes the position that, surprise, surprise, coincidentally, the Democrat agrees with. Stein says, well, the Attorney General's brought actions to put a stop to the policies where it's contrary to law, and that work will continue. And I've talked to, you know, Senators Tom Tillis and Ted Budd to express my real concerns about these drastic NIH cuts.

[00:24:36] See, so he's now just focusing on the NIH, National Institutes of Health. He's focusing on only that. And this is a pattern throughout this entire interview. He says, reaching out to our federal representatives to urge them to use their power as the Congress to ensure the will of the Congress is respected by the president. Yeah, unless they roll all of these things in once identified. See, once they get the list of all of the problems, then they just roll that into a funding bill,

[00:25:05] into the continuing resolution, and they just ram it through under reconciliation. And then all of your court challenges are moot. Not mute, moot. M-O-O-T. There's a difference. Anyway, then there's this part. You wrote in a letter Monday to President Trump, you support cutting government waste where it exists. From your time as Attorney General and in your time as governor, do you see areas of waste in the state

[00:25:33] that would be worth trying to make more efficient? And Stein's response is, well, let's continue this conversation because I'm going through the state budget as we speak, going through it with a fine-tooth comb. So the answer there is no. He has not identified anything yet at the state level. Waste, fraud, and abuse. He hasn't identified anything yet.

[00:25:58] Although, if I'm a betting man, I'm saying I bet he identifies school vouchers. That is what they always point to as wasteful spending. It's the one thing. So, well, and the military, right? I'm sure he could also identify that. But that's not at a state level. So he then concludes the interview.

[00:26:26] He says, go fast and break things seems to be the M.O. of Mr. Musk, and I believe in going fast, but people need to understand the consequences that if you go too fast, you can create real harm. And if you can get to the same place that you wanted to go in terms of changing the structure of a program or reducing expenses without causing harm to people's lives, that's the better way to go. Okay, first off, causing harm to people's lives, does that include firing anybody?

[00:26:54] Because I could, like, if you leave it that undefined, it could also mean that, right? In which case then you can never get rid of these programs. By the way, somebody mentioned, I forget who it was, maybe Don early in the last hour, you know, who pointed to what Elon Musk did at Twitter where he fired 80% of the workforce when he took over. And everybody said he's going to ruin Twitter. It's going to go out of business and it needs all these people and whatever. You don't hear that anymore.

[00:27:25] Like, he fired 80% of the workforce and there hasn't been any difference that I have seen from a user end. So what does that tell you? The natural tendency of these organizations is to get larger, especially government. Who are the people here that you're worried about causing harm to? Is it the starving children in Africa or is it the bureaucrats? Also note, there is no attempt here to play

[00:27:54] the defend and disavow game with the Democrat because that's a game solely reserved for Republicans, right? There is no bringing forward, like, well, here's some Guatemalan sex changes. Like, that's a specific expense paid for with taxpayer dollars through USAID. Is that an appropriate expenditure? Would you consider that to be waste, fraud, or abuse? Like, these things are out there. They can ask Democrats, do you support this program, this program, this program? They can go through and do that, but they're not doing it.

[00:28:23] The media is not asking Democrats. They are either uninterested in doing so, it never crosses their mind, or they know that putting that question to a Democrat is going to jam them up. And so they don't do it. Defend and disavow. It's only a game that Republicans are ever forced to play with the media. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

[00:28:52] So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepcalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone. Thank you.