Latest / 3 Martini Lunch – Political Humor & Commentary / Socialist Streamer Hasan Piker Praised World's Most Murderous Dictator

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Socialist Streamer Hasan Piker Praised World's Most Murderous Dictator · 3 Martini Lunch – Political Humor & Commentary

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the three Martini Lunch.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Grab a stole next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: and Jim Garritty of National Review.
• 0:10
  Speaker 3: Free Martini's coming up, so much to get to today.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: Glad you're with us for the Tuesday three Martini Lunch
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: and a lot of moves made by socialists here that
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: we need to talk about a couple different times today.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: So let's start with the guy that we find revolting
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: but apparently is quite influential on the left, and that
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: is the podcaster Hassan Piker. He appeared in person to
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: support a Duelsied during his Michigan primary campaign. Who knows,
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: maybe he'll be back for the home stretch. Right now,
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Lsied is talking about how much he loves Jewish people
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: and Judaism, so I think he's been reading the polls
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: lately more than having a change of heart. But nonetheless,
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: we'll see how that goes. But we start with Hassan Piker.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: He is also just a big fan of socialists and communists.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: In fact, on his podcast he was extolling the greatness
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: as he sees it of Mao Zedong.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I got stopped by a cop who thought it was
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: like making fun of of Mao Zedong, which I never
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: would and never will. Maoseedong is a is a one
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: of the great leaders of this world. Okay, a man
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: who changed the entire universe, the entire planet.
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: Okay, for real, for real?
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, I mean there was a lot of excess is
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: let's be real. But the People's Republic of China would
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: not exist without Mao Zedong.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Well, not the communist version. Probably Chen Kai Shak would
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: have stayed in power. But I mean, this is the guy,
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: at least as far as we know Chim is responsible
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: for killing more people than anyone else in the history
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: of the planet. So I mean, this is not someone
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: we're supposed to lie in eyes. But nonetheless, he did
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: win the communist revolution in China, and for that he's
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: a hero in the eyes of Hassan Piker. Never Mind
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: the tens of millions who got slaughtered.
• 1:56
  Speaker 5: I was gonna say we're saying tens of millions, because
• 1:59
  Speaker 5: it's not clear. We're not talking twenty million, we're talking
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: fifty million, sixty seventy. Not great on record keepings during
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: the Cultural Revolution.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Or stuff like that.
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: One Like, I'm not going to pretend to be the
• 2:12
  Speaker 5: world's biggest epsur But I did read Maw the Unknown
• 2:15
  Speaker 5: Story by Jung Chang and John Holliday. I'm not going
• 2:19
  Speaker 5: to pretend that it's light reading. I'm not going to
• 2:21
  Speaker 5: say that it's not. You know, it can get extremely
• 2:23
  Speaker 5: dark and depressing. But when you hear somebody saying something
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: like this and it doesn't smell right, if it just
• 2:29
  Speaker 5: seems like, wait a minute, I did not hear about
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: people talking about him being a great guy with some
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: some excesses as they called it. That's maybe, like I'm
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: gonna call that the euphemism of the decade. I thought
• 2:42
  Speaker 5: about this yesterday when this, you know, came across on X.
• 2:45
  Speaker 5: You know this is not podcast bro rivalry. I'm sure
• 2:50
  Speaker 5: Hassan Piker is always going to have a bigger audience
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: than you and I do. Although somebody made a very
• 2:53
  Speaker 5: interesting observation, so he live streams all day long. Greg,
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: you and I do three martini lunch because that's the
• 3:00
  Speaker 5: out of time we have in our schedule to do
• 3:02
  Speaker 5: something for everyone's like, how did this podcast come together?
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: Because National Review and Radio America wanted to find something
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: we could do quickly and would not include mass about
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: That's why the show is twenty to thirty minutes. It's
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: not because Greg and I only have twenty to thirty
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: minutes' worth of stuff to say.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Who's watching him all afternoon long?
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: And is this really a very big and influential demographic
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: in American politics? I know he's got a big audience,
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: but does he have influence? And we could ask very
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: similar questions about Jennifer Welch, Candace Tucker, a whole bunch.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Of books like that.
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: But anyway, if you are getting your perspective on history
• 3:37
  Speaker 5: from Hassan Piker, please stop, please like this is not like,
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: oh this is disputed or oh this I think he's
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: telling the truth. I think he genuinely sees now as
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: a great leader for the causes he believes in, and
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: he really believes at killing anywhere from fifty to seventy
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: maybe even eighty million people. That was just some excesses.
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: He went a little too far. No no cesses is
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: what I usually do drinking on a Saturday night. Right,
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: That's how you can put his a category of excesses,
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: killing deads of millions of people in this effort to
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: take your country back to the Stone Age, executing all
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: the intellectual By the way, if Piker had been active
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: in China during the Cultural Revolution, do you think he'd
• 4:19
  Speaker 5: be the sort of person that the revolutionaries would be
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: cool with? Probably not, they'd execute you for looking at
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: you the wrong way back then. But anyway, so just
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: a illuminating state, like do Democrats really follow this guy
• 4:32
  Speaker 5: or is he just kind of some clown who they
• 4:33
  Speaker 5: find entertaining.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: If it's the latter, it's less harmful.
• 4:36
  Speaker 5: But even then, like saying you think Mao was a
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: good guy, I'd say it's a red flag.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: But China already has lots of red flags exactly.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: I think this is also an indictment to some extent
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: of our public education system, because every time somebody on
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: the left doesn't like someone, of course, they compare him
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: to Hitler, because I'm pretty sure that's the only historical
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: event that they're even remotely familiar with, And so everybody's
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: compared to Hitler. George W. Bush was Hitler, you know,
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: every Republican nomine Hitler. Trump of course is Hitler in
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: so many different ways in their warped mindset. And so
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: you should know about Hitler, and he was evil, but
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: you should also know about Stalin. You should also know
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: about Lenin. You should also know about Mao and how
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: horrible pollpot all these people, and how completely awful and
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: destructive they were, not only to their economy, not only
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: to their culture, but actually stacking up bodies that you
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: know probably goes north of one hundred million people in
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: less than a century. So we need to know more
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: about this. We've not done a good job of explaining
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: to people why communism is so bad, and that's one
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: of the reasons I think it's creeping back in a
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: little bit, but it's never too late, and so I
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: think responding to this is the right thing to do.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Greg.
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: I'm going to make one Everything you said is correct,
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: but I'm going to make one minute point that Piker
• 5:43
  Speaker 5: grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, so technically it's a failure
• 5:46
  Speaker 5: of the Turkish I say, not really a.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Public school system.
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: He was in his high school years he rode show
• 5:52
  Speaker 5: horses and you have me in a little dainty uniform
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: and all that stuff. So again I think it's probably
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: a failure of the Turkish private schools.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: By the way, he was grew up.
• 6:01
  Speaker 5: Part of his child eat in Ankara, which used to
• 6:03
  Speaker 5: be my stomping grounds from two thousand and five two
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: thousand and seven.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Never met the guy, so I do.
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: But it's conceivable that at some point back then he
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: and I are walking in opposite directions down the street
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: or something like that. So you get every US public
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: school teachers like, well, can't blame this one on me.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't me.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: Well, they're not responsible for Piker. But if you ask people,
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: you know, how much they know about Hitler in this
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: country compared to how much they know about Mao or Stalin,
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: I think it's a pretty big divide, especially if you
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: don't remember the Cold War at all. I mean, if
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: you look at our history books now, the threat of
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: communism doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should.
• 6:37
  Speaker 5: I suspect if you asked, you know, young Americans, you know,
• 6:40
  Speaker 5: to identify Mao, I probably like twenty percent would say
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: it's the sound that account.
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: Makes exactly right.
• 6:47
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• 7:58
  Speaker 3: long as we're talking about marks, let's talk about zorn Mamdani,
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: the mayor of New York City, and number of times
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: while he was running for mayor, he kept having this
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: fever dream of arresting Benjamin nettan Yahoo when Netanya, who
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: comes to New York City for the UN General Assembly
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: each year in September. Then it kind of went away
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: for a number of months, and I don't know if
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: it came back because Mamdani brought it up where it
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: was brought up by Lulu Garcia Navarro in this podcast
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: interview with The New York Times. But in any event,
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: the issue did come up, and Mam Donnie says, oh, yeah,
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: I'd love to because he's been indicted by the International
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: Criminal Court and so we're we're really really serious about
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: trying to get this guy arrested if he comes to
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: New York.
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: Here's what he said, he comes in September.
• 8:40
  Speaker 6: I believe that Prime Mister Netanyahu belongs in the Hague.
• 8:44
  Speaker 6: He's a war criminal who has been charged by the
• 8:48
  Speaker 6: International Criminal Court. And what you will find is that
• 8:52
  Speaker 6: as an opinion that is held by many purely because
• 8:55
  Speaker 6: of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.
• 8:59
  Speaker 6: I've also said that I will follow the laws that
• 9:02
  Speaker 6: we have here in New York City because I believe
• 9:04
  Speaker 6: that there's an importance in following the law as a
• 9:07
  Speaker 6: leader who presides over our city, and that's something that
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: I plan to do. Meaning I'm sorry, I don't understand
• 9:12
  Speaker 6: what that means, meaning that whatever the law allows me
• 9:15
  Speaker 6: to do in New York City, that's what we will do.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: But we won't be writing our own laws.
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: To that end.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: What does the law allow you to do?
• 9:21
  Speaker 6: That's an active conversation with our legal department in seeing
• 9:25
  Speaker 6: what the prospects are we have here in our municipality. However,
• 9:29
  Speaker 6: what we've seen at the national level as a desire
• 9:31
  Speaker 6: sometimes to write your own laws, to go outside of
• 9:33
  Speaker 6: the bounds of legality, that's not something we have an
• 9:35
  Speaker 6: interest in.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: Nothing, there's nothing he can do. He just can't say
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: that straight up, and good for Garcia avara Vi after that,
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: what are you talking about?
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: I have no idea what you just said.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: But he's if you haven't seen the video of this,
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: he's smiling the entire time. He's got this planned smile
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: that's been part of the campaign in the mayoral office
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: the entire time. So he's talking about this traconian move
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: from the International Criminal Court d States doesn't acknowledge that,
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: so of course there's no play for him to make here.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: President Trump firing back not surprising yesterday on truth Social
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: saying Benjamin Etanya, who will not be arrested in any way,
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: shape or form while in the United States of America
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: he's fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran. He talks
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: about the war a little bit, and he says, you know,
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: if anybody should be arrested, it's the people that led
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: ran into this unprecedented spiral of death and destruction, something
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: that should have been dealt with years ago.
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: So I think I guess.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Mamdanni's just posing and trying to look like a tough
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: guy here. I think Trump's dealing a Medosa reality. I
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: don't expect this to get too dramatic in September, but
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: you never know what he'll try to pull off your gym.
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: So what do you make of it?
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: We actually, you know, to use one of Mike fiches,
• 10:42
  Speaker 5: There is actually a lot to unpack here. First of all,
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: I assume that mom Donnie's advisors have told him that
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: if you're smiling, nothing you say can seem that wrong.
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: That menacing or that harmful to anyone. And therefore, if
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: you just smile a lot while you're saying it every
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: it will just seem like normal. Have just smile and
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: nod your head like a howdy doody doll. I'm assuming
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: that's the strategy. Otherwise, mayor Mom Dommy. Sadly people say
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: that New York City had one of its nicknames is Gotham.
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: Perhaps he ran into smiles guess desployed by the Joker
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: back in nineteen eighty nine. Uh, living him with that
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: that permanent smile that he cannot get off of his face.
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: So there's a question I would put to Mom Dommi
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: and anybody else who's like, nah, go arresto what law
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: of New York City did net nyah? Who break Maya?
• 11:30
  Speaker 5: So I unless he parks in the wrong place, I
• 11:33
  Speaker 5: don't even think he rooted for the Spurs right that
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: there's just nothing that Neau did that violates the laws
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: of New York City. Ergo, you know, the NYPD would
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: not have any basis to arrest him, even if heads
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: of state did not have immunity from arrest while attending
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: the UN General Assembly, Because like, if if that's the game,
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: we're gonna play. There's a whole bunch of people who
• 11:56
  Speaker 5: show up to the UN General Assembly with demon's resumes,
• 11:59
  Speaker 5: who we would love to arrest, but who we do
• 12:01
  Speaker 5: not have the jurisdictionary authority, and certainly the NYPD does
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: not have that, no matter what John McLain may want
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: to assert.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Back in nineteen ninety five.
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: The other thing I went back and I remember this phrase,
• 12:13
  Speaker 5: so I had to look it up. Boob bait for
• 12:16
  Speaker 5: Bubba's was what Senator Daniel moynihan Patrick moynihan called Bill
• 12:20
  Speaker 5: Clinton's push for welfare reform, which actually ended up being
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: pretty darn successful. But the idea was that this was
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: something that he if he thought was either never going
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: to happen or extremely unlikely to happen, but was very
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: popular to a let's just say, low information voters, and
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: that this was something that Clinton threw out there that
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: he didn't really mean. Talking about arresting Net and Yahoo
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: is boob bait for the bubbas. I'm sure everyone who's
• 12:42
  Speaker 5: anti Net yea who will resent being called a bubba,
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: but basically this is not something that's realistic. There's just
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: a lot of people who hate Net, Yahoo and just
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: as was it. Wilson said, Carl Rove was gonna be
• 12:55
  Speaker 5: frog marched out in in handcuffs, the lock her up
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: chance the twenty sixteen campaign, and then Trump got elected.
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: He's like, yeah, we're not gonna We're not gonna rescue her.
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: People with intense political passions love to imagine their political
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: foes getting arrested. It almost never happens, almost you know,
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: everyone's in a while, somebody does get arrested. Mom, Tommy
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: knows this is not gonna happen. Mom, Tommy knows that
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: as mayor, he doesn't have the authority to do this.
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: He's going to go through the motions. He's gonna hold
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: out this you know, shiny object for his base to
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: to appeal to, and that way people will be paying
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: too much attention to all the other real problems in
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: the city, because ah, we're.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Gonna get Net and Yahoo any day now.
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: You know the walls are closing in.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's good.
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: So what does he do when he doesn't arrest him
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: and doesn't even really put up a whimper. I don't
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: know how that pivot's gonna go. But here's the oath
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: of the mayor of New York City. I do solemnly
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: swear that I will support the Constitution of the United
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: States number one, the Constitution of the State of New York,
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: number two, and the Charter and Laws of the City
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: of New York, and that I will faithfully discharge the
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: duties of the office of which I've been elected. Or pointed, Jim,
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: I don't see the International Criminal Court anywhere in there,
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: and thank goodness.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: No it's not.
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: People, by the way, might be asking like, why do
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: we allow foreign heads of state to visit New York City?
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: Even if we because theoretically, you know, the Iyatola DuJour
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: could end up, you know, could address the UN General
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: Assembly in the fall, or any other foreign leader who
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: we don't like, And people, why did the US agree
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: to do this? Well sides the prestige besides the attention
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: of having the United Nations headquartered to New York City,
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: I would point out this result of this, Every country
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: has a consulate in New York City. And yes, none
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: of the ambassadors ever pay their parking tickets, and they
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: parking places they are not supposed to do, and it's
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: all really bad. But I would just point that the
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: US intelligence community, I suspect finds it really useful to
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: have a government outpost with a lot of communications going
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: back and forth. Do those consulates all the time? And oh,
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: you're going to have the foreign leader of a hostile
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: country come to New York City?
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Hmm?
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: Would that present any useful espionage or surveillance opportunities? So
• 14:59
  Speaker 5: as much as we might be ugh, you know, why
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: do we have these you know, dictators and you know
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: rogue state leaders and stuff, there are certain advantages to
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: having them come onto US soil and you know, eat
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: at restaurants and stuff like that.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: I mean there are many different tasks as to whether
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: somebody's a serious person, and one of them is do
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: you take the international criminal courts seriously?
• 15:17
  Speaker 6: You do?
• 15:20
  Speaker 5: You can move right all it's imaginary. It's like puff
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: the magic dragon or you know, or tinker belt. If
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: you believe hard enough, you think you can will it
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: into existence.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: But still waiting.
• 15:29
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• 16:54
  Speaker 3: All right, Jim, you and I get frustrated frequently when
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: it comes to the amount of excessive spending that happens
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: in our government, really at many different levels, but the
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: federal government especially, So every little bit that moves in
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: the opposite direction is not only a surprise, it's very welcome.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: And this in the larger scheme of things, is not
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: going to deal a lot with our debt, but it helps,
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: and people are trying, and we have to recognize that.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: I think New York Post the Treasury Department has blocked
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: nearly one hundred million dollars in taxpayer money from going
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: to dead people since implementing a government wide payment verification
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: process last year. The Department's Bureau of the Fiscal Service
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: discovered the money set to go to ghosts, as the
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: Post puts it, after review of an eye popping eight
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: hundred and eighty five million payments worth a total of
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: nearly two point seven trillion dollars since March twenty twenty five.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: The screening has identified more than forty nine hundred disbursements
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: worth approximately ninety nine million dollars associated with deceased payees. Now,
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: it says the ninety nine million dollar figure is a
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: tiny fraction. It's zero point zero zero three six percent
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: of the two point seven trillion dollars that AP and
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: reviewed as part of the Trump Administration's cracked down on waste,
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: fraud and abuse. But it is more than triple what
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: the Treasury Department discovered going to the deceased in the
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: days before President Trump took office. So they've definitely made
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: some progress. So Jim good start here from Treasure. I'd
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: love to see this happening everywhere else, especially when it
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: comes to the big Medicaid Medicare frauds that we've been
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: seeing in different states, and I'm sure it's happening all
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: over the country.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: So good start. We need more of it.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: Look, you know, first of all, the fact that they've
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: done this review and it's been such a relatively small percentage,
• 18:30
  Speaker 5: that's somewhat reassuring that so far it seems like it's
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: a relatively rare occurrence when you look at the overall system.
• 18:36
  Speaker 5: But also, and look, you can understand something where you know,
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: the government sends out the check, the person dies the
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: next day and they hadn't had chance to update their systems. Okay,
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: that's going to happen. The thing is when it's the
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: following month, in the month after that, in the month
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: after that, and the idea of how quickly are you
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: reviewing to see if this person is deceased? And you know,
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: it is always nice if the next of kin can
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: contact the government and let them know that, or perhaps
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: the local death certificate, local coroner, someone else can pass
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: along this information. Yes, it'd be really good to do
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: all that stuff, but sometimes things are going to fall
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: through the cracks when it comes to fighting the deficit
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: and debt. I am a very big fan of all
• 19:11
  Speaker 5: kinds of you know, initiatives, including a titled reform, which
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: is super unpopular. But at minimum, can we start with
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: the really basic low hanging fruit and stop sending checks
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: to dead people? Seems like a really really low it's
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: just sitting there. Just just reach out and pluck it
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: and look, look, all of a sudden you got, you know,
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: tens of millions of dollars in savings.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: That definitely works, breaking news, Jim. Also, those forty nine
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: hundred dead people all registered Democrats now.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Go figure a lot of in Chicago's I understand.
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: Yes's exactly right.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: So, I mean we haven't really done much in terms
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: of the bigger arc. In terms of spending, we're still
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: racking up was it close to two trillion a year?
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: Maybe even more than that in some cases. The big stuff,
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: the big hanging curveball here has to be entitlement reform,
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: but nobody wants to touch it. Nobody wants to be
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: blamed for any sorts of delays or or cuts and
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: benefits to keep it going. And now we're on this
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: what six year trajectory to be in big, big trouble
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: with Social Security payments, and so either you're looking at
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: cut benefits or additional bar in which is going to
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: drive the debt up even more.
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: So do you feel like this is.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: Going to lead to more attempts to get this right
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: and to try kind of trim the fat here or
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: is this probably not going to be for the long term?
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Well, I certainly hope so.
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: And the only demographics of voters who might object to
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: this greg are those who were collecting the checks on
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: behalf of their deceased person. So really probably committing fraud
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: in some way or again, you know, Democratic voters in
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: Chicago might be deeply offended by this, but other than.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: That, and if you're a Republican, you weren't going.
• 20:46
  Speaker 5: To get their votes anyway. So the fact that we're
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: seeing some not insignificant sums accumulated here is a sign that, yes,
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: you should do this. This strikes me as popular. You know,
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna say easy. I don't mean like easy, like
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: you got to go through them, you got to check
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: it against records and things like that. So like it's
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: not you know, necessarily a ZipZap, zoom, you know, a
• 21:06
  Speaker 5: piece of cake task. But what I think this is
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: something people just assume the government was doing in the
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: first place. They're kind of surprised that the sheer amount
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: of money that gets sent out to dead people.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And two, if you want anyone.
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: To sacrifice anything to deal with the death, to deal
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: with the debt, then first you have to take care
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: of the stuff that the government really shouldn't be spending
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: money on in the first place. And I'm sure if
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: somebody's you know, yelling at their screen, you know, six
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: hundred dollars toilet seats and all the other examples of
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: wasteful spending we've seen over the years. So again, take
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: care of that low hanging fruit first. Then it's easier
• 21:38
  Speaker 5: to have the discussion about the harder stuff because people
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: are understandably reluctant to make sacrifices. They're particularly reluctant to
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: make sacrifices when they feel like the government waste a
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: lot of money, and that that would be a better
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: place to start when it comes to getting our fhiscical
• 21:50
  Speaker 5: house in order.
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: No question about it.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: And we've seen much bigger numbers than one hundred million
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: suspected in Minnesota fraud and California fraud and beyond. We're
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: talking billions potentially with all of that. So keep an
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: eye on that good work by the people trying to
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: root out that fraud, because that's not necessarily easy either.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: So well, you talk about really expensive toilet seats and hammers,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: that kind of hearkens back to the nineteen eighties. That's
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: also where we're headed sort of in our chaser in
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: just a moment, Well, Jim, you're Reagan fan like me,
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: which of course you are, grew up in the Reagan years.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: The biggest scandal during that time, of course, was Iran Contra.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: The United States was supporting the Contras, the freedom fighters
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: against the Marxist Sandinista regime led by Daniel Ortega. Well,
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: that kind of got exposed. That was kind of a
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: problem for the Reagan administration in case you weren't around then.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: But also Daniel Ortega got voted out of office.
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: A few years after that.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: The things liberalized a little bit, and he was out
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: of office for quite a while. But he's back and
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: he's not a big fan of his political opposition. So
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: he's just decided, you know, we're just not going to
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: have elections anymore.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: Nicaragua's long serving president, Daniel Ortega, has said the country
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: will no longer further elections to prevent the opposition from
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: coming to power. The eighty year old authoritarian leader has
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: been in office since two thousand and seven. Also said
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: he would work with the Congress he controls to pass
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: new laws that would build a wall quote unquote against
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: the opposition. During the speech in front of thousands of
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: state employees, who, according to local media, had to be
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: coerced into attending. Big surprise, Ortega said, quote, there will
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: be no more elections here, so that they meaning the
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: opposition parties can try to seize the government, seize power
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: unquote Jim, winning elections is not seizing power. Forbidding elections
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: is seizing power. But what else is new from Daniel Ortego?
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: You know, if you said we could just get a
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: some sort of Latin American leader who's willing to agree
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: to build a wall, you need to be really more
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: specific in your wishes. Also breaking news on this story,
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: Daniel Ortega is still alive. For those of us from
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: memories from the nineteen eighties, a little bit surprised, But
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: I'm actually he's only eighty. I figured he had to
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: be older considering you and I remember him from coverage
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: of the Reagan administration. There's really nothing good about this guy.
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: We're not really surprised. I guess you could say he's
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: more of a garden variety authoritarian now than the Marxists
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: that he was then. But let's face it, the Sandaist
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: like National Liberation Front, they were always Marxist, they were
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: always cobby, they were always that. Also, you're going to saying, well,
• 24:23
  Speaker 5: if nothing else, at least the guy makes some good
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: taco shells. No, he's not connected to the Ortega taco
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: shells at all different ortagas.
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: Amazing. What's Alle North doing these days?
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: That's a good point, you know, How do we deal
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: with this?
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: Anyway?
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: I don't know if it's time to get the contrast
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: back together, but you.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: See him knocking on the door like the Bruce Brothers.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: We're getting the band back together.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: Exactly some former fashion. Although we're kind of busy in
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: other parts of the world right now. But hopefully something
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: can resist this ridiculous move by Ortega. Anyway, Jim, the
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: eighties are calling him. Unfortunately, the wrong people are still
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: around in some of these places. I'll see you tomorrow.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: See tomorrow, Jim Garretty, National Review. I'm Greg Corumbus of
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: Radio America. Thanks so much for being with us today.
• 25:05
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• 25:07
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• 25:09
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• 25:12
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