USAID: The poster child for waste and corruption (02-05-2025--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] Sorry, I was just checking to see why won't this subscription work for Politico? I feel like if my tax dollars are being used for the pro premium subscription, I don't know, I feel like I should be able to see their stuff now. That's weird. Oh, and the New York Times. And who else? The Associated Press, I think, is in here. Yeah. That's a lot of money.

[00:00:55] Man, I've been paying for subscriptions to the New York Times for a long time, but for some reason, I keep getting paywalled. I don't understand why. They keep blocking all of my stories. I go, this is your one free article of the month. And then, you know, Politico Magazine, they've got a bunch of money from me and I still can't access their site. I'm going to have to probably write tech support over the issue.

[00:01:20] But no, seriously, well, apparently we have been spending, you, me, all taxpayers have been paying for subscriptions for government personnel to have at various news organizations.

[00:01:38] Somewhere in the neighborhood of like eight million dollars for Politico, New York Times. I saw the Associated Press was in there. So a whole bunch of these media companies that have been getting millions of dollars in taxpayer funds for subscriptions past the paywall. And we've been paying for it. And I don't know if you're aware of this. So just I'll give you a little bit of a peek behind the curtain here.

[00:02:05] I rely on getting information from lots of news sources to do my job. It's true. No, I do. I for real. Like contrary to what some leftists accuse us, there is not a talking point memo that goes out every single morning and telling me what I have to talk about and what I should avoid talking about or whatever.

[00:02:28] I don't get that. So I have to read a lot of news publications. In fact, it's why I don't read a lot of books anymore. And I love reading books. I'm just read out by the time I get home. That's not true because then I start when I get home, I continue prepping. So, OK, that's not even true. But like, you know, if you owe him to curl up with a good book before I go to bed, I am so tired of all of the reading that I don't want to curl up with a good book, even though it's a good book.

[00:02:57] And I know I would enjoy reading it. And that's part of the problem. I have like I probably have about 30 books on my shelf right now that I have to read. And I just don't read them all because I read a lot of news. But I've never. Had my subscriptions paid for like I have never gotten. Well, I take it back one subscription. And it was like a it was like a company wide station wide thing.

[00:03:27] That's it. That's the only. It was one new local news outlet. I have paid for every subscription to every news organization that I have ever purchased. I am. I have always paid out of my own pocket for that. And I'm in the business. I. I like I rely on this stuff in order to help build my show content.

[00:03:53] Why on earth are we funding subscriptions for government employees? I don't get it. They should be paying for that themselves. Let them all go in together. Let people go in together and share a subscription. Right. Just do what everybody else does and just go incognito, man. Clear out your cash. But there are ways around this, people. OK, I've already said too much. I think there's also a Web site's called like 12 foot ladder or something like that.

[00:04:20] That you you can use to get around there, like archive pages and stuff. So there are ways to beat the paywalls depending on what browser you're using. I am not here to help you do that. There's also the reader version on the brave browser. But I'm just saying there are ways around the paywalls. So, yeah, no, I'm I'm not. I'm not a fan of this.

[00:04:47] But here's the here's the thing that chaps me the most, which is these are government entities that are paying for the subscriptions. Right. So even if you can make the argument that, well, Pete, you know, we work in the U.S. Department of DEI expansion. And so we need to know what's happening in the culture. We need to know if, you know, Politico is, you know, mispronouning, misgendering people.

[00:05:17] We need to know this stuff. Right. And so, therefore, we need to have as part of our business operation, we need to have a subscription to Politico or The New York Times. OK, I can understand that argument. But here's the thing. When the government is cutting the check to Politico or to The New York Times, those entities should be disclosing that they are getting money from government agencies.

[00:05:47] That's disclosure. Right. That is to alleviate the perception of influence or bias in your news product. Right. Because certainly if you're making tens of thousands of dollars off of a government agency. Renewed every year and, you know, basically a guaranteed source of income to basically fund a reporter and all funds are fungible,

[00:06:17] meaning it's the same pair of pants, just different pockets. But it's all still yours, you know, because you're wearing the pants, that kind of thing. It doesn't matter what pocket you move it around to. So these news organizations are, in fact, getting money from these agencies. And if they are reporting, I'm just kidding. They rarely I look. I am super shocked that all of a sudden. Media people and Democrats, but I repeat myself, have wake have awoken.

[00:06:45] They have woken up to this fact that government agencies exist and that they do stuff and that there's all this personnel and there's a bunch of grant money flowing through stuff. It's all of a sudden this new hyper focus on the work that government agencies do. And if we get nothing out of the doge experiment, we will have gotten that. And so I will take that as a win.

[00:07:12] There are a couple of I saw Brian Stelter, who's a potato, and I saw him tweet out that there were some publications that that do focus. They're very niche. Right. I don't think they get subscriptions from the government, though, but they cover these agencies. They cover like real like like wonky kind of stuff going on inside the federal government, you know, different agencies and bureaucracies and stuff.

[00:07:39] And they're now getting tons of of new traffic as people try to figure out what the heck is going on. Is this stuff really real? And by the way, yes, the stuff is real. And the poster child for the waste, fraud, abuse and I would say corruption and scandal. The poster child is USAID or USAID.

[00:08:08] This is the one that you're hearing the most about, because it's really the first one that Elon Musk and his band of, you know, what, 19 to 23 year old tech bros that he brought with him. And everybody's outraged. By the way, why is there so much outrage over a 19 year old whiz kid going in there and doing all of this data mining and stuff and trying to figure out where all the money's flowing to try to find waste, fraud and abuse?

[00:08:37] Like he's only 19. He's just out of high school and all this other stuff. But like but you say he's so he's not competent enough to run the computer coding and all of that stuff for this kind of an operation. But he is competent enough to to cut off his genitals like that's OK. I'm like I just I'm trying to figure out a consistent application of a standard. That's all. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in Western North Carolina?

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[00:10:21] She came out yesterday and held up a piece of paper with some of the items that were being funded under the USAID program. This is the Agency for International Development. And this is this is just a teensy weensy little bit of it. Through USAID over the past several years, these are some of the insane priorities that that organization has been spending money on.

[00:10:48] One point five million dollars to advance DEI in Serbia's workplaces. Seventy thousand for a production of a DEI musical in Ireland. Forty seven thousand for a transgender opera in Colombia. Thirty two thousand for a transgender comic book in Peru. I don't know about you, but as an American taxpayer, I don't want my dollars going towards this crap. And I know the American people don't either. And that's exactly what Elon Musk has been tasked by President Trump to do to get the fraud, waste and abuse out of our federal government.

[00:11:19] Thank you. All right. But wait, there's more. There is so much more. This is from the rapid response team of the White House. Because as Musk and his merry band of reformers have gotten into the books over there.

[00:11:39] And by the way, there are all sorts of freelancers that are also running searches and queries through government databases and pulling tons of these grants that the USAID has been funding with your tax dollar. Right. This is foreign, quote, aid. And the list just keeps getting longer and more and more outrageous. So here's the list that the rapid response.

[00:12:08] Forty seven is the Twitter handle of the White House's rapid response team. And rapid response is just a media deal. It's like, you know, they're the ones that like deploy immediately when something's going on and you have to, you know, get in front of something from a PR perspective. You employ a rapid response team to do that. So that's who these people are. So let's see what else.

[00:12:32] Seven point nine million to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid binary gendered language. 20 million for a new Sesame Street show in Iraq. 4.5 million to combat disinformation in Kazakhstan. I wouldn't even know what disinformation in Kazakhstan looks like.

[00:12:58] 1.5 million for art for inclusion of people with disabilities. 2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala. So Guatemalan sex changes. Hmm. 6 million to, quote, transform digital spaces to reflect feminist democratic principles.

[00:13:22] 2.1 million to help the BBC, which is literally state-run media, to help the BBC, quote, value the diversity of Libyan society. 10 million dollars worth of USAID funded meals, which went to an Al-Qaeda linked terrorist group. Well, you got to keep the Al-Qaeda jihadists fed. They get very angry. They get hangry. See, it's soft diplomacy here, people.

[00:13:53] 25 million dollars for Deloitte, which is a massive corporation. And they used it to promote green transportation in the country of Georgia. I don't know if, like, didn't Georgia get taken over by Russia? Or just part of Georgia, maybe. I don't remember. 6 million dollars for tourism in Egypt. 2.5 million to promote inclusion in Vietnam.

[00:14:22] 16.8 million for a separate inclusion group in Vietnam. Oh, and then there was, like, EV vehicles in Vietnam, too. 5 million to EcoHealth Alliance. Remember them? Yeah, one of the key NGOs or non-government organizations funding the bat virus research at the Wuhan lab. 20 million for a group related to a key player in the Russiagate impeachment hoax. I don't know what that's about.

[00:14:51] 1.1 million to an Armenian LGBT group. 1.2 million to help the African Methodist Episcopal Church Service and Development Agency in Washington, D.C. Build a state-of-the-art 440-seat auditorium. So no concerns there about church and state separation, I'm guessing, from the Democrats? Okay. 2 million to promote LGBT equality through entrepreneurship in Latin America.

[00:15:19] 1.5 million to rebuild the Cuban media ecosystem. 1.5 million to promote LGBT advocacy in Jamaica. 1.3 million to Arab and Jewish photographers. Half a million to solve sectarian violence in Israel, just 10 days before the October 7th attack, by the way. 2.3 million for artisanal, oh, God, and small-scale gold mining in the Amazon. It's no word.

[00:15:49] Artisanal gold mining. I have heard it all, man. I have heard it all. There's more. There's more. 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? Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room gets all quiet, all eyes are on Dad, who says,

[00:16:19] 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? They've got a discount for you.

[00:16:44] 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. Message from Melissa who says, The government doesn't need subscriptions to all of these media publications and websites. The government has been feeding the media information and talking points for decades.

[00:17:14] It's like, that's true. Like, why? Well, you just want to see your name in print sometimes. Or like, I leaked that story, and there it is on the web. Oh my gosh. I kind of kid, but like, up in D.C. and in Raleigh, you know, in politics, people get off on that stuff. They really do. There are people, they just love to be the source. It gives them, like, you know, some feeling of access and import, you know?

[00:17:44] Gary says, People need to learn there are repercussions to telling an autistic billionaire that he can't do something. And then he asks, Pete, are you tired of all the winning? I am not. No, I am not. At all.

[00:18:02] This is, honestly, this is, this is one of the most transformational things I have seen in regard to the, or with regard to the executive branch. Now, he's using all sorts of executive power, which, by the way, was appropriated into the White House by Democrats and Republicans, but really Democrats.

[00:18:28] This has been their project for a very long time, moving more and more power into the executive branch. Right? And before you lefties start talking to me about, oh, Donald Trump can't do this because, you know, executive overreach and all of that. I have two examples in my retort, which would be Obama and DACA and Biden with DEI. Okay?

[00:18:55] Those guys used executive orders to massively overreach and implement all sorts of policies and changes inside of the executive branch. Reinterpreting things as they saw fit. Right? Rewriting law, getting their bureaucrats to reinterpret things with which they disagreed rather than going through a legislative process. So I don't even want to hear it. I really, I don't even want to hear these arguments from you.

[00:19:25] I do not have a soft shoulder for you to cry on. That's mainly because I lost a bunch of weight. Now it's kind of bony up there. But anyway, what else did the USAID fund? Well, let's keep going. Um, we have $3.9 million for LGBT causes in the Western Balkans.

[00:19:47] By the way, have you noticed how often the DEI and LGBT stuff is showing up in these grants? Have you noticed that? Like they're spreading this stuff. Like that's what we're exporting. We as America, like that's what we've been exporting to other countries. 5.5 million for LGBT activism in Uganda.

[00:20:14] 6 million for advancing LGBT issues in quote, priority countries around the world. I don't know what those priority countries are. 6.3 million for men who have sex with men in South Africa. I don't know why it's called that. I guess you're not allowed to say those words or something in South Africa. I don't know. Or maybe it's not for the lesbians or the trans. It's just for the men. It's just for gay men. That's it.

[00:20:41] 8.3 million for USAID education, equity and inclusion. USAID's climate strategy outlined a $150 billion whole of agency approach to building quote, an equitable world with net zero greenhouse gas emissions. What else? $56 million to boost tourism in Egypt and Tunisia.

[00:21:10] 40 million to build schools in Jordan. 11 million to tell Vietnam to stop burning trash. Oh my gosh. Vietnam has made a ton of money off of us. I've lost track of how many millions of dollars. They're probably close to like 30 million right now. $27 million for reintegration gift bags.

[00:21:39] What is a reintegration gift bag? Good question. Glad you asked. A reintegration gift bag is given to all of the people that we deport back to Central America. $27 million worth of gift bag swag, which is amazing to me because I thought we weren't deporting anybody. Like that's the, I don't know who you give it.

[00:22:09] Like a lot of this stuff. Here's the thing. Well, okay. Let me just read a couple more and then I'll say, here's the thing. 2.5 million to promote DEI in Serbia, 70 grand for a DEI musical in Ireland, 47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia and $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru. Because we all need some Peruvian trans comics in our life. Look,

[00:22:39] here's the deal. Do I think that all of these funds actually went to all of these crazy things? I do not. I believe some of this stuff is simply a mask for what they really want to spend the money on, which is either like color revolutions to overthrow governments, destabilize countries and such, CIA covert operations, but also payroll. Payroll for the shadow government. Right?

[00:23:08] This is where people like Samantha Powers have been installed. And so she can bounce back and forth from, you know, a USAID supported, um, instant or NGO. And then you just pick them up and plug and play, put them right into your government because they were basically running these government things, you know, and some of these are like classified. Oh, and USAID has refused to cooperate with congressional oversight committees.

[00:23:37] And now we know why. 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.

[00:24:02] You can check it out at check.ground.news.com. 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.com.

[00:24:29] Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. 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. There is a fellow who posts, I forget his real name. He's a federal prosecutor. He goes by the Twitter handle Shipwrecked Crew, Shipwrecked Crew, and a 22-year federal prosecutor.

[00:24:58] He defended 91 J6 cases and was 91 and zero. So I kind of feel like he knows what he's talking about. And he says, It'll take a while, but you're going to find out that many family members of folks elected to Congress, as well as family members of folks who have populated senior positions in both Democrat and GOP administrations, have lucrative places within the industries funded by USAID.

[00:25:27] It's a $40 billion annual operation, by the way. This has long been the main source of nepo corruption, nepotism. It is much easier to enrich the families of politicians via public funds sent in their direction than it is to enrich the politicians themselves. There are many ways to do the latter, but simply creating government-funded organizations for one obscure purpose or another,

[00:25:52] which are then headed by members of the extended families of politicians with great benefits and perks, is time-tested and bipartisan. The pushback is going to be the same. And it's going to be nuts. That's why we saw, look, Democrats never came to Western North Carolina, but they made a freaking beeline down to the USAID office and the Treasury Department, which was weird because they were chanting in front of the Treasury Department to take over the Senate. I'm like, this is the Treasury Department?

[00:26:21] I don't know what you guys think you're doing. If you're going to take over the Senate, it's up there. It's a couple blocks that way. Ralph, welcome to the program. Hello, Ralph. Hey, Pete. Hey. Was there a line item on there for $550 million to Afghanistan for like diesel power generation? I mean, you know, probably big units that would power up a lot of homes and stuff like that.

[00:26:51] But then after they got the money and the diesel generators, the diesel fuel was too much. And so they quit using them. So I wonder if any of the Biden crime family or the DNC got any of that money. That's a big chunk of change. I don't know. I mean, that could very well just be chalked up to typical military, military poor purchasing, you know, they kind of have a history of that too. Wait till,

[00:27:20] wait till Elon Musk gets into the defense budget. It's going to be amazing. I'm sure. Um, but, uh, I did hear that story. It had something, and a lot of the generators ended up, uh, like they just like, they got siphoned, not siphoned, but they got diverted. And, uh, like the bad guys got ahold of them. And the, when they ended up in the places they were supposed to be, the people couldn't use them. Cause it took too long to get diesel fuel to get into the generators. And so then they just sold it back to the Taliban and stuff. Yeah. It's just,

[00:27:50] there's, it's just, it's just rampant. It's just rampant. And like, and this is, uh, what you are hearing in this stuff. And, and I don't know where the money for the, uh, the generators came from. I don't know if that was USA ID or if it was DOD. I don't know. Um, but you're hearing, a lot of like, well, the USA ID, they're just doing, uh, humanitarian aid, right? That's what they're all about. It's just about food and people are going to starve to death and not get their HIV meds and stuff. That is Mott and Bailey.

[00:28:20] That's a Mott and Bailey tactic. So, uh, Ralph, I appreciate the call. Mott and Bailey. That is the, um, it is a tactic where you take a controversial position. And when challenged, you retreat back to an easily defensible one. Okay. It's a, it is prevalent in philosophical, religious, political debates and such,

[00:28:46] where people will make a controversial claim or they'll do something controversial, enact a controversial policy. They'll, they'll, they'll push the envelope. And then when challenged, they fall back to a more easily defensible position. And it has to, it's named after, um, the, uh, the layout of medieval, uh, you know, castles and the villages around them. The Bailey being the wide open area,

[00:29:16] um, around the castle, uh, that is, it's harder to defend, right? But it's, it's farther away. So you're, you're pushing the envelope out, right? So you're going out there and then when you get attacked on the Bailey, you then retreat to the Mott, which is the, um, it's sort of the stronghold, right? And you go back to the easily defensible positions. And you see this all the time in political arguments. Um, you see it where it was really pronounced was in, um,

[00:29:47] DEI and transgender debates, right? Like, oh, you have to like, we, we should be transing four-year-olds, controversial. That's the Bailey. When, when attacked and said, and people say, you shouldn't do that. That's crazy. They then retreat back to, well, you want kids to die. Well, no, I, I, it's a more easily defensible position that you don't want kids to die. You don't want them to, to commit suicide, right?

[00:30:17] And it, it's stuff like that. And that's what this is. The Bailey is Peruvian trans comic books. And the Mott that they retreat back to is wheat and rice for starving people. Okay. So just be aware, uh, that tactic is being employed in this debate. Um, and it is a form, if I might say so, of, uh, gasoline. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.

[00:30:45] I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. 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 the Pete calendar show.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and, uh, don't break anything while I'm gone.