Nick Craig In For Pete Kaliner (03-28-2025--Hour1)

[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] It's a busy Friday, not only across the world, but also the nation, of course, keeping an eye on that massive earthquake that took place in parts of Thailand in the very early morning hours here on the East Coast. Some of the pictures and stories coming out there. I'm looking at a headline right now. Thousands fear dead after that 7.7 magnitude earthquake. We'll check on that coming up here in a little bit.

[00:00:51] But I wanted to start off this afternoon with something that you are hearing echoed through the entire administration. And it ties in with a big interview that took place last night on Fox News. Brett Baer hosted Elon Musk and the Doge Boys, as we'll call them, of course, the Department of Government Efficiency and the works that are going on there.

[00:01:14] But really, it's not even just doge. If you look across all of the individuals that Trump has decided that he would want to work with, all of the various secretaries, the individuals, his cabinet, the people that have been confirmed by the Senate over the last couple of months, this is something that you are seeing across the board.

[00:01:34] And the news yesterday afternoon was over at HHS Health and Human Services. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is estimating that he's trying to cut more than 10,000 employees. And why is he trying to do so? He claims that HHS is currently not acting in a way that is efficient for government. Now, I found these numbers to be pretty eye-popping. Prior to the Trump administration getting in there,

[00:02:03] HHS had a total workforce of 82,000 individuals. 82,000 people working in HHS. Now, there's some big agencies under HHS. You've got the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Health, the old Anthony Fauci's outlet. So there's some major, major groups that are under HHS.

[00:02:28] And the question that I think is being asked now, and it's definitely being asked by the new secretary in RFK Jr., is can this work be done with less people? And that's really been the big trend of this administration. You know, if you look at some of the framing on this from the progressive left, you will be believed that the attempt by the administration is to essentially just shut down the government. Right? We just strip everything from the federal government.

[00:02:57] There's nothing left. Nobody has a job. Nobody gets any government services. It all just immediately goes to hell in a handbasket. But that's not what's being done at all. I mean, I've seen nothing from either Trump, Vice President Vance. You could look at Lee Zeldin. You can look at Hegseth, RFK Jr. From none of these secretary and none of these cabinet officials. I have seen nothing from them that indicates that they are trying to completely gut and get rid of their departments.

[00:03:25] Now, the only example that you can come up with is the Department of Education. But with the Department of Education, the discussion is, well, we're not going to stop providing these programs. We're just going to give the money directly to the states and allow them to administer them. Right? That's the discussion going on in the Department of Ed. But everywhere else, the key focus is efficiency and effectiveness.

[00:03:50] And that is a message that I think is very much hitting home with the American people. We don't interface with the federal government all that often. I mean, maybe if you're in, depending on what field you're in for work, maybe you're working with a government contractor. So some of you may, but for the vast majority of the American people, your interfacing with the federal government is incredibly limited.

[00:04:14] Now, if you are somebody that pays your taxes once a year as you're supposed to in April, there's an interface with the government. You deal with the IRS. Maybe, maybe not. You just file it through TurboTax or something and you're said and done. Maybe you have to go through and get a new passport, get that renewed. There's an interface with the federal government. If you're getting Social Security or some other federal program, okay, a little interface here and there. But for the most part, it's not something that happens all the time.

[00:04:40] It's not something that as you are going throughout your life each and every day, you are constantly interfacing with the federal government. And there's good reason for it. You'd lose your mind if you had to interface with the federal government every single day. Because things happen in such a slow manner in Washington, D.C. Things happen so slowly and so inefficiently. It really is remarkable.

[00:05:09] And you can look at any small, you know, sole proprietor, small business to your medium size to major business institution. You can look at all through the spectrum from one guy to tens of thousands of people working for a company. No way could this exist in the private enterprise. There is no business that could operate with the ineffective nature that the federal government does and not be completely out of business.

[00:05:36] Not have a mass group of their employees jumping ship and going and trying to work somewhere else because they can't stand working for that company. That's what would happen in the real private sector if we took government, cloned government and put it somewhere else. I mean, it would just be a disaster because there's no incentive. Right. In private business, there's incentive, which is what? Profit. Profit.

[00:06:03] Whether you're somebody that gets your paycheck based on profit or not, the business's goal is profit to make as much money as possible and spend as little as possible. And I know that that's a big sticking point for those on the left. That's the evil capitalist system that we live under here in America. Right. The woes of awful capitalism that has destroyed the world. Right. But that's the goal of business.

[00:06:29] Make as much money as possible with spending as little as possible. Now, that doesn't mean that you treat your employees poorly. That doesn't mean that you treat your customers like garbage. No, not at all. You should provide good support to your customers. You should give your employees a good place to work. A nice environment for them to do their job. Because guess what happens when those employees are taken care of? They work. They want to work.

[00:06:57] They want to continue to do things for the company that is employing them. So there's built-in incentives for those things to take place. None of that exists in the federal government. Tell me what the incentive is for somebody within HHS to do their job. Tell me what the incentive is for somebody in the IRS to stop giving you the runaround when you have an issue with your taxes and need to figure out why you're not getting your return.

[00:07:27] And I don't think it's because the people working there are bad people. This is something else that is being parroted by the left. Oh, you hate people that work for the government. I don't think that's the case at all. I mean, the individuals that are actually doing the work of these agencies are normal, decent, good people. But they're bogged down with so much bureaucracy. They're bogged down with so many procedures and standards and checklists.

[00:07:54] And I've got to jump through 19 hoops before I can get to the answer to your question. That they just can't do their job. They've been completely bogged down by the system. And the end result is they end providing poor service. This can't exist in private business. It just can't. You literally can't sustain it. You will go out of business. You will have no customers, no employees, and no money. Yet that's how the federal government has operated, at least now, for the modern age.

[00:08:23] And go back 50, 60, 70 years with the rise and the bloat and the increase in what is now the federal government. This didn't just happen overnight. Nobody flipped the light switch on and all of a sudden the federal government ballooned out of control. This was a slow, gradual increase of more and more temporary government programs and more temporary this and temporary that that have become permanent.

[00:08:52] And so when you look at Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his work over at Health and Human Services, and I'll get into some of his quotes coming up here in a minute. When you look at what he's doing, he is talking about cutting the inefficiencies within HHS. I mean, have you read the horror stories of trying to deal with the FDA when individuals are trying to get a new product to go through the FDA seal so it can be sold? It's a disaster.

[00:09:20] I mean, it's a complete and utter disaster. Things take a decade to get through FDA. And that's not because, oh, this is all rigorous testing. No, it's because there's bureaucracy bloat in red tape. And the end result in companies end up wasting hundreds of millions of dollars waiting on the process. The consumer doesn't get new products that they could use to help their lives. It's a mess for everybody, except government doesn't care. Government doesn't have any incentive.

[00:09:47] Government has no reason to do the job in a more efficient manner. 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.

[00:10:14] 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.

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[00:10:56] Talking a little bit about government efficiency this afternoon, this has been a major talking point, not just for Elon Musk, not just for the president and the boys over at Doge who we'll hear from a little bit later on in the program, but just literally across the entire administration.

[00:11:11] I mean, from Linda McMahon over at Department of Ed to Lee Zeldin at EPA to now the big story this this afternoon, Robert Kennedy over at HHS, where he has announced a program to cut 10,000 full time employees from HHS and save the federal government an estimated one point three billion dollars a year. One point three billion dollars.

[00:11:39] And Kennedy said this yesterday, quote, this will be a painful period for HHS. As we downsize, we're keenly focused on paring away excessive administrations while increasing the number of scientists and frontline health care providers that we can do a better job. And so he fully admits it and understands it. And he's right. This is going to be a painful process. It is not good when people lose their jobs.

[00:12:09] Nobody is cheering for individuals to lose their jobs. I'm not. I don't know anybody that is. But unfortunately, we have backed ourselves into this corner. We have decided that we were going to allow government to run out of control in its scope, scale and size. And the end result of that is the current debt situation that the United States is in. You're familiar with the U.S. Debt Clock website. I think it's the U.S.

[00:12:39] Debt Clock dot org or something like that. You look over there. We're like thirty six trillion dollars in debt. I mean, it's an absurd amount of money. And a lot of that comes from spending within the government. A lot of that comes from all of these federal agencies, all of these entities that are just too big in size. And to harp to something that Elon Musk proved to the American people was his purchase of X.

[00:13:07] He fired, what, 70 percent of the employees that worked at what was Twitter when he bought it? Yet the service still works. The service is operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah, it's got its little hiccups here and there. But so do all of the major social media platforms. YouTube goes down for a couple hours at a time. Facebook has a big outage. And WhatsApp, that stuff's down for a couple of hours. Nothing out of the ordinary for these major tech companies. It's unfortunately something that they all deal with.

[00:13:37] It happens a couple of times a year and there's a whole bunch of controversy and mayhem when you can't post what you're having for lunch on your Facebook for a couple of hours. People tend to lose their minds. But he completely gutted Twitter. Yet the service still runs. Yet it's still operational. And that was that to me proved that, OK, this can be done. Right. There is a track record.

[00:14:03] There is a way in which you can scale back a major institution, a major company, Twitter, one of the largest social media outlets in the world at the time when it was purchased by Elon Musk. It wasn't worth anything. It wasn't making any money. But it was one of the largest in the world. Everybody was using it. Hundreds of millions of active users a day across the world. And he was able to cut so many of the employees and still provide the service. That's not easy.

[00:14:31] There's a lot of people that are affected by that. There's families that are affected by that. It's a really tough situation. But unfortunately, and this is something that seems to be lost in politics a lot of the time, and it's something that I can talk about a lot and mention, is that actions have consequences. And when we talk about our political system, actions have consequences. You can't just do things and not expect there to be a result.

[00:15:00] And the action was that government was allowed to run out of control. Government was never told, no, you can't do this. No, you can't hire these people. No, you can't expand the size of your agency. No, you can't create a new department and hire hundreds, if not thousands of new individuals. Government was never told that. They were always told, yes. That's why the federal workforce has ballooned to where it is right now.

[00:15:29] That's why our government spending, our $2 trillion a year federal budget deficit exists. Because nobody was ever told, no. Would you like to have all of these departments? Yes. But then you get into the need versus want debate. Something that you and I deal with every single day. Plenty of things that we want. We don't get all those. But we make sure we have the needs. Government has never been in that position.

[00:15:59] And so going back to the actions versus consequences debate, there were actions that were taken to allow government to expand to the size that it was. And unfortunately, the consequence to that was out of control spending. And $36 plus trillion in debt. Right? There is an analog there. You can connect the dots very easily and show the problem that it created. And the reality is it's not sustainable.

[00:16:26] You can't operate a country long term with a $2 trillion a year annual deficit. A country cannot sustain itself financially at $36.5 trillion worth of national debt. It's over $100,000 per person. Person. Not taxpayer. Person. The second a child is born, $107,000 in debt that child has on its head.

[00:16:55] Is that sustainable to you? Is that a good system that we're operating in? It's completely unexplainable to me. It's completely ridiculous. The second that you, if you're having a child, the second your child's born, you're going to go out and take a loan against their name? Set them up for financial ruin by the time they turn 18 years old and borrow a bunch of money against them? You would never do that. Not only is it illegal and would you be thrown in jail,

[00:17:24] but why would you set up your child for that kind of failure? That's exactly what's happening at the federal level. We are robbing the current and future generations in terms of robbing them financially to pay for our out-of-control government that exists right now. We are robbing them blindly right now. And all of it is to continue the size and the scope of government,

[00:17:52] to continue to allow things to run and operate just in the status quo, the way that things have always been done. When you need something, when you want something within the federal government, when you want this new agency, when you want these new employees, you just get them. And all of that is coming to a screeching halt. It's being heard all over the map. So this move over at HHS,

[00:18:21] reducing the workforce size by 10,000, which is on top of 10,000 workers that already opted to leave the government on their own, is going to cut HHS's total workforce from 82,000 to 62,000. It's a remarkable reduction in employees. And with all of that, the question is being asked, well, can you continue to operate? Can you continue to provide the core services

[00:18:49] that these entities should be providing with these massive cuts? And I think the answer is yes. Part of the plan is to consolidate the current 28 divisions that exist under HHS, which you can guarantee have redundancy. There are the same people doing the same work, probably across a vast majority of these 28 divisions. Why would you have, and why would you be paying hundreds of people to do the exact same thing

[00:19:17] across these different divisions? All of it's under the umbrella of HHS. But you can guarantee that work is being duplicated. Those efforts are taking place simultaneously, almost in parallel in all of these agencies. And we're paying hundreds of full-time employees to do that. RFK Jr.'s plan is to take those 28 divisions and reduce them down to 15. And at the same time, introducing a new group, the Administration for a Healthy America,

[00:19:46] something that RFK Jr. had made as a major point of his presidential campaign when he was running. And since then talked about that as he was on the campaign trail with Trump, chatting from time to time and talking about stuff. Making America healthy again. So under this new division, there would be a group that was going to be dealing with mental health, workplace safety, substance abuse, and more. All of that being combined under this new administration for a healthy America.

[00:20:16] And with that, there's also plans to consolidate offices for things like human resources. There you go. There's your redundancy, procurement, policy, external affairs, and information technology. All of that duplicated over and over and over again throughout the entire entity. And also, by the way, they're cutting from five, they're cutting five of its current 10 regional offices. So cutting that number in half. Here's a great idea.

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[00:22:03] upwards of 10,000 employees at HHS and do an overall restructuring of the agency as a whole, combining what is now 28 different departments under HHS into just 15 and trying to make it more efficient. This is a direct quote from RFK Jr. quote, We are streamlining HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective.

[00:22:29] We will eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments while preserving their core functions by merging them into new organizations called the Administration for a Healthy America. And what is the objection to that? I mean, there is so much hand-wringing and pearl-clutching on the left over what's going on in Washington, D.C. right now with all of these changes, with all of these cuts. There's a direct quote from the guy.

[00:22:57] I mean, RFK Jr.'s in charge of HHS. He was confirmed by the United States Senate. And what do you object to in his statement right there? We're going to eliminate the alphabet soup while preserving their core functions by merging them into various different entities and groups under the umbrella, which is the Department of Health and Human Services. What is the objection? I mean, I'm seeing so much outrage over what's going on in the administration,

[00:23:26] all of these terrible, awful things that are happening under Trump and Elon Musk and all of these cabinet secretaries. And I'm just failing to wrap my head around why there is so much pushback. What did that statement do you objectly disagree with? You don't want HHS to be more efficient and more effective? You don't want the federal government to cut its waste, fraud, and abuse?

[00:23:53] Now, I guess maybe if you're an individual that's getting rich, skimming off the top of the federal government, you probably think this is terrifying. Because it looks like the spigot's about to be turned off and you're no longer going to be able to grift off the federal government. So if you're in that boat, I can understand your objection. But for everybody else that's on the left that's not grifting off the federal government and padding their own pockets, what do you not like about this?

[00:24:20] Do you want your government to be bloated and inefficient? I don't. That's not what I pay for when I have to go through and deal with my tax returns in April. I don't want to deal with that. I don't understand the objection. 704-570-1110. That's 704-570-1110. Let's head on over to line one. David's hanging on the line this afternoon. David, welcome to the Pete Callender Show. Go ahead. You just hit on my question for you.

[00:24:49] It was, who and why does this pushback happen? There's not that many. And it's all over the news that these people are pushing back on not saving money. They don't realize that they are footing the bill for these ridiculous programs.

[00:25:14] Why would you continue to fight for spending more money out of your own pocket? You know, you're spot on. And I can understand if I heard Stacey Abrams, for example, say, this is a disaster. We can't have this happening. I would understand it because she has enriched herself by the tunes of tens of millions of dollars at the hands of the federal government.

[00:25:43] She's gotten rich off of sucking off the government. I mean, she's done a phenomenal job at leeching onto that and sucking down tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to all of these various groups and organizations in the state of Georgia. So for her, David, I understand why she would be petrified by this. But for your average everyday progressive liberal that is just living their life, working in the private sector, working in the private business, and then decides that they're

[00:26:13] going to start parroting this, I truly don't understand. I don't know. I don't get it at all. Why would you be OK with your government having huge amounts of bloat, waste and inefficiencies? Maybe I'm just not smart enough to wrap my head around. I'm not too far left for it, I guess. I can't get my head wrapped around it. Most of these people that are complaining, at least the ones that I see online and on YouTube

[00:26:40] and TikTok and whatever, are seen to be regular, everyday people that go to work. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But as you spoke about the person in Georgia, that benefits one person. There, what is it, 270 million Americans? Yeah. I mean, and I think this comes down to the old orange man bad theory.

[00:27:06] And this really breaks down into it is just an attempt by the left, the individuals that are in fact getting rich, the individuals that are sucking the system dry, the individuals that are leeching off the federal government. Right. They are able to propagate this message through outlets like MSNBC, for example. They're able to go on there and cry and talk about how awful this is. And I guess people on the left who watch this kind of content and enjoy consuming this content

[00:27:35] decide they're just going to parrot it and just say, you know, just like a bunch of sheep, everybody buying along to the exact same thing. When the reality is these are people are the ones that are getting screwed by the government being inefficient. These are the people that are, as you noted, you're paying for this. When you deal with your, when you look at your pay stub every two weeks, you can see all of the money that you're spending on the federal government. What are you getting for those services?

[00:28:01] It's unbeknownst to me, David, thanks for the call this afternoon at 704-570-1110. That's 704-570-1110. And if somebody's got the answer out there this afternoon, I'd love to hear it. I really would love to know why you are in favor of inefficient government. I would really love to know why you think it's a bad thing when RFK Jr.

[00:28:25] says, quote, we are streamlining HHS to make our agency more efficient and more effective. We will eliminate the entire alphabet soup of departments while preserving their core functions by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for a Healthy America. Tell me why. Let me know why that is. All right. So spring is here, a time of renewal and celebrations.

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[00:29:47] Get all the details at createavideo.com. We're discussing the news out of HHS yesterday. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announcing that he plans on cutting about 10,000 positions overall. That agency will shrink from where it is right now. 82,000 full-time employees. That's not contractors, not any of the other groups they work with. 82,000 FTEs, full-time employees within HHS to 62,000 coming up.

[00:30:15] And there's so much outrage over this. There is so much pearl clutching over what's going on within the federal government right now. And I've yet to hear a salient argument from anybody as to why you are opposed to government being more efficient and more effective. It's not a catch-22. It's not a gotcha question. Why would you be opposed to government being better at what they do?

[00:30:41] Why would you be opposed to government providing better services to the people that pay for them? You and I. What is your opposition to that? 704-570-1110. Anne's hanging online, too. She knows why there's so much pushback. Anne, welcome to the Pete Callender Show with Nick Craig this afternoon. What's going on? Well, last night I had this conversation, or a couple days ago, I forget when it was.

[00:31:08] Someone that comes from another country and goes to a free clinic receives everything for free, right? And then they grow up with that thought. And then they come to hear, and they go, why is everything not free? And I said, well, who pays for this in that free clinic? Who pays for it? Couldn't answer me. Sure. Well, I'm sorry. The answer was the government.

[00:31:38] I said, who pays for it? The government. I said, who is the government? The government. So, I was like, oh my gosh, at least 25% of our population thinks like this, maybe. I think it's a very, I mean, and this is a, I guess, more of a civics issue than it is anything else, Anne,

[00:32:05] where you've got a whole group of individuals that don't truly understand that government doesn't really provide anything. Now, yes, they physically provide services, right? They do operate entities, but they're not adding to anything in regards to the economy. Yes, they're paying a bunch of people to work for them, but they're not creating any value.

[00:32:27] They're not, like the free market, like private business, they're not adding to the country as a whole in any meaningful way. Yes, some of the services are very important. I don't think all of those need to go away. That's not what I'm advocating for or saying should happen. But there's this idea that just, oh, well, the government does it. The government this, the government that. I guess, Anne, we've got to go back to school and get back to teaching civics to our youngest individuals. Get back? 45-year-olds don't know this.

[00:32:59] I hardly know it, and I'm almost 70. This is a problem with our education system. There's no idea. 50 years of I don't know. And I think my civics teacher really didn't know or care. I don't know. But I got straight A's the whole way through to college, everything. Graduated, taught the class in college.

[00:33:21] And still, all of this is very, you know, not something I can grab a hold of and understand. I have to study it now after 50. I have to actually study this. How do you get on the school board? Why do we have a school board? And who are they responsible for? Or two? No. They are sucked in as soon as they're taking off the ballot and whisked off to NEA training

[00:33:48] so that they can say yes to everybody because you don't want to be the only one on the board saying no. Yeah. And it's... You have to have training like that. And it's unfortunate because it exists in every level of government. Anne, I appreciate your call this afternoon at 704-570-1110. That's 704-570-1110. Anne, it's all over the place. And whether you're talking about something like a local school board in all 100 counties

[00:34:16] across the state or looking at agencies within the federal or within state government, whatever it might be, DMV is probably the greatest example of it. Have you had to go through the process of getting a license recently? I know the real ID deadline's coming up, what, two months from now, May, I think, or maybe it's next month, April, sometime in the next couple of months. You can't get a DMV appointment in any... Near any major metro area in the state for like six months.

[00:34:44] You gotta drive three hours to the middle of nowhere to get a new driver's license. But yet the same people that are freaking out and having conniptions over RFK Jr. announcing that he's decreasing the HHS workforce by 10,000 have nothing to say about the inefficiencies and have no comments about how slow and ineffective government is in places like North Carolina. Things that actually impact their life.

[00:35:13] Mom is the word for these individuals. And again, I'll ask. I'll throw that out there. What is the objection to the inefficiency? What is the objection to the cost cutting? I'm not in favor of people losing their jobs. I don't want people to lose their jobs. I don't know anybody that wants individuals to lose their jobs. But what I do want is to have a sustainable country going forward. What I do want is to have a country that is fiscally responsible.

[00:35:42] A country that can support itself and try and work itself and dig itself out of 36.5 trillion dollars in debt. I want a country that is not running a 2 plus trillion dollar a year budget deficit. These are the things that we want and need if our society is going to continue. You can't borrow forever. At some point, the lender is going to start calling.

[00:36:10] At some point, the people that we have borrowed this money from are going to come and ask for it. Eventually, programs are going to be insolvent. You've heard the discussions about things like Social Security. These programs are frankly running out of money. It's not sustainable.

[00:36:29] So if you're outraged over the HHS or any other agency that's making these cuts, if you're outraged over the Department of Government Efficiencies and the things that they have tried to do, and you're completely inabject to that, you want nothing to do with it, I don't know why I can't wrap my head around it at all. Let's head back to the phone lines at 704-570-1110. Paul, you're hanging on line one.

[00:36:56] Paul, good afternoon. Welcome to the Pete Calendar Show with Nick Craig. Go ahead. Thanks for taking my call, Nick. When we're talking about all these people's jobs being canceled, in 2023, Biden touted they added 850,000 jobs to the economy in 2024, and these are all those jobs. They just put people on the payroll so they can tout big numbers. Sure. So they're getting rid of all of that now. Yeah, that's exactly the case.

[00:37:26] And again, it comes back to this discussion that the federal government should not be in the employment field. I mean, when we look at a jobs report, we should not be patting ourselves on the back and saying, good job, we added 150,000 new people to the federal government. That is not a metric that should be good for everyday normal American people. That's not something that you want to strive for. You want private business that invests in their communities. It's not only is it not economical, it's just not practical.

[00:37:55] The federal government doesn't add to the GDP. The federal government doesn't gain any wealth for the country as a whole, doesn't provide anything to the overall status of the economy, except for literally giving people a paycheck and benefits. That's it. That's not good. Exactly. Yeah. It's not good at all. And you're right, Paul.

[00:38:15] Thanks for reminding me of the Biden job numbers, which, you know, by the way, every time those numbers came out, what ended up happening like three months later was they'd go back and go, um, there was a, uh, uh, like a rounding error, some, some math error. And we're, we're revising those numbers. We said we created a hundred thousand jobs, but it was actually like 30,000 jobs, right? That was a constant trick of the Biden administration coming out with a great jobs report.

[00:38:45] And then having to go back and revise the numbers three months later when at that point, who cares, right? The, the, the numbers are already out. The data is already out there. Nobody cares about the July jobs report when Christmas is rolling around, right? You can revise those numbers in, uh, in perpetuity going forward and nobody cares. It's not a story. Very disingenuous, very deceitful from the administration, but they did it literally the entire time. All right. That'll do it for this episode.

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