Speaker 1: We all know that the deep state, the bureaucratic state,
Speaker 1: these entrenched government officials are really the ones pulling the strings.
Speaker 1: They're the ones guiding government. They're the ones working to
Speaker 1: weaponize government against US conservatives for political reasons. But who
Speaker 1: exactly are these puppeteers? My friend Jason Schafitz previously House
Speaker 1: Oversight Chairman, a Fox News contributor. Now he's a friend
Speaker 1: and a colleague. He's at with a new book explaining
Speaker 1: who these puppeteers are, what they do, how they utilize
Speaker 1: and weaponized government against US conservatives in our interests, and
Speaker 1: also what we should do about it. We'll talk to
Speaker 1: him about his new book and what he learned in
Speaker 1: both working as a House Oversight Chairman and also in
Speaker 1: writing this book. Stay with us well, Jason, it's great
Speaker 1: to have you on the show. You're a friend and
Speaker 1: a colleague, so I'm happy to talk about this new book.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize you already have a bunch of best
Speaker 1: selling books.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I can't believe it either. I mean, my English teacher
Speaker 3: is way surprised. Yeah, this is my fourth book. It's
Speaker 3: called The Puppeteers. The People Who Control the people who
Speaker 3: control America. And it takes, you know, a couple of
Speaker 3: years to put this together. It's heavily researched, and it
Speaker 3: just feels back who the people are and tells the
Speaker 3: stories and shows the flow of money, which is really
Speaker 3: what you got to figure out in order to figure
Speaker 3: out who's really pulling the string.
Speaker 1: You call it the puppeteers. Who are the puppeteers?
Speaker 2: So not only are.
Speaker 3: They the administrative and bureaucratic you know morass that's out there,
Speaker 3: but there are also some very specific people like a
Speaker 3: Susan Rice or a Brian Deese or Randy Weingarten at
Speaker 3: the who's the head of the teachers union? You look
Speaker 3: at Blackrock and Larry Fink for instance. You know they
Speaker 3: control trillions of dollars and have said out loud they're
Speaker 3: very brazen about their objective to get in ESG and
Speaker 3: DEI into all facets of America. Not only do they
Speaker 3: pull their their their strings and in the political apparatus,
Speaker 3: but they do it in corporate America. And and give
Speaker 3: you an example, Larry Cudlow was the economic advisor for
Speaker 3: President Trump. He hit it decades of experience in growing
Speaker 3: economies and being an economist and but when Joe Biden
Speaker 3: came in, he brought in Brian Deese. Brian Deese is
Speaker 3: a black Rock employee before that, he worked in the
Speaker 3: Obama administration before that, and and he uh, he's a
Speaker 3: climate activist. He wasn't there to grow the economy. He
Speaker 3: was there to inject the Green New Deal, the DEI
Speaker 3: and ESG platforms into into the administration. So this is
Speaker 3: what we do. We peel it all back, and we
Speaker 3: show that and and it'll scare the living.
Speaker 2: Daylights at you.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sort of shows you too that like
Speaker 1: we don't really have a free market anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: corporate America and the government are hand in hand. They're
Speaker 1: sort of one of the same these days.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so in the puppeteers, that's a big part of
Speaker 3: what we're saying. You know, we just had a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago, we had this discussion about the debt ceiling.
Speaker 3: The debt ceiling, what do you I mean? The only
Speaker 3: argument was over less than ten percent of the budget.
Speaker 3: Most of it is mandatory programmatic spending, and not just Medicaid, Medicare,
Speaker 3: and Social Security, but it also has hundreds of other
Speaker 3: programs involved in it. They just run on autopilot. And
Speaker 3: then the whole objective here with the democratic machine is
Speaker 3: to put government on autopilot so that it never gets touched.
Speaker 3: And that is the problem because then the corporate folks
Speaker 3: get ingrained in that to enrich themselves and move a
Speaker 3: social agenda. And that's like, for instance, the Inflation Reduction Act. Right,
Speaker 3: it could never sell the Green New Deal, so they
Speaker 3: came up with the Inflation Reduction Act. Because it's a crisis,
Speaker 3: they're going to grab hold of that. It's set aside
Speaker 3: to three hundred and seventy billion dollars in a climate
Speaker 3: flash fund that is run by John Podesta. Who's John Podesta.
Speaker 3: He's Clinton's president, Clinton's chief of staff. He ran Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton's campaign. It's not as if he's an expert on
Speaker 3: climate change or something. He's a political person who's ingrained
Speaker 3: in and tied and tied in with the Larry Finx
Speaker 3: and the corporate America.
Speaker 2: That's who he is.
Speaker 1: You talk about how our pensions are paying for the
Speaker 1: lefts climate agenda, you know, talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the things we found and got our
Speaker 3: hands on. We have a really good state treasurer. There
Speaker 3: are some really good ones out there, But the Democratic
Speaker 3: Treasurers Association, it put out this twenty twenty two corporate
Speaker 3: Benefits Package. Nobody had really seen this document before, and
Speaker 3: I want to read something that they wrote in this.
Speaker 3: They said state treasurers have the power to exert force
Speaker 3: nationally because they oversee trillions of dollars and have a
Speaker 3: direct line to Wall Street, Main Street and into corporate boardrooms.
Speaker 3: State treasurer's power will endure no matter which party controls
Speaker 3: Congress and the White House. No matter what happens in November,
Speaker 3: we will have the ability to ensure that climate risk
Speaker 3: is addressed, racial inequality and gender biases confronted, and protect
Speaker 3: workers in small businesses. Well, they make the cases democratic treasurers.
Speaker 3: In some states they call it the comptroller chief financial officer.
Speaker 3: They control about two point five trillion dollars. So if
Speaker 3: you're a retiree, maybe you were a school teacher, maybe
Speaker 3: you work for the state of Illinois or California, maybe
Speaker 3: you were you have a four oh one K and
Speaker 3: it's managed by a Vanguard or.
Speaker 2: Blackrock.
Speaker 3: They're going to take that money, use the proxy voting
Speaker 3: to go into the corporate boardrooms and manipulate what these
Speaker 3: companies do. So you look around and say, wait, why
Speaker 3: are these companies all doing this crazy stuff?
Speaker 2: You know that in the S.
Speaker 3: And P five hundred, over ninety eight percent of the
Speaker 3: companies Blackrock owns at least a five percent stake, and
Speaker 3: so they have a control and manipulate by using your dollars.
Speaker 3: So if Lisa Booth has a four to oh one
Speaker 3: K or made some sort of investment, my guess is
Speaker 3: it's probably being ultimately managed by Blackrock and they're using
Speaker 3: that to push their green new deal. They're at their
Speaker 3: social agenda by using your dollars.
Speaker 1: Okay, how much control did politicians really have then if
Speaker 1: everyone behind the scenes are the ones, you know, pulling
Speaker 1: the strings.
Speaker 3: So here's the little story when I was in Congress,
Speaker 3: who's kind of legendary. A Member of Congress goes to
Speaker 3: meet with the cabinet secretary and the cabinet secretary wasn't there.
Speaker 3: It was just senior staff, and cabinet secretary wasn't intending
Speaker 3: to show up.
Speaker 2: So the Member of Congress got up to.
Speaker 3: Leave, and the senior staff said, no, no, no, we're here
Speaker 3: to meet with you. In the member of Congress says, look,
Speaker 3: I didn't come here to meet with the B team.
Speaker 3: I want to meet with the member via the Cabinet secretary.
Speaker 3: And finally the senior staff says, look, granted, we are
Speaker 3: the B team. We be here before you, we be
Speaker 3: here after you, and we be the ones to actually
Speaker 3: make the decisions. And I'm telling you, Lisa, that is
Speaker 3: so true. It is so true. This administrative bureaucratics state
Speaker 3: they're going to do what they want to do. And
Speaker 3: if you look statistically, it's something like ninety five plus
Speaker 3: percent of the donations coming out of some of these
Speaker 3: departments and agencies when they do make a political donation
Speaker 3: now go to Democrats. For some departments and agencies, it's
Speaker 3: one hundred percent. These two, I think, are puppeteers that
Speaker 3: are moving the thing forward. We have term limits on
Speaker 3: members of Congress, or at.
Speaker 2: Least we should, I should say, but we should also
Speaker 2: have them on the bureaucrats and the administrative state.
Speaker 1: How hard is it to fire certain bureaucrats?
Speaker 2: Oh impossible. It is.
Speaker 3: Literally you could probably on two hands count the number
Speaker 3: of times.
Speaker 2: That that happens.
Speaker 3: I had to actually run, sponsor and pass a bill
Speaker 3: that said when you move from one department or agency
Speaker 3: that your record goes with you, Because some people would
Speaker 3: be caught doing some very salacious or just downright illegal
Speaker 3: things and they would just transfer them to another department
Speaker 3: and their record wouldn't go with them. And the unions
Speaker 3: and what they've done to protect their own it's what
Speaker 3: drives me crazy. Inspector General Horowitz at the Department of
Speaker 3: Justice puts out a quarterly report. I still read these things.
Speaker 3: They make dozens upon dozens.
Speaker 2: Of criminal referrals.
Speaker 3: Not only do they not pursue and and you know,
Speaker 3: a criminal prosecution, these people don't even get a demotion
Speaker 3: or a demerit on their record. I mean, it's just
Speaker 3: it almost never happened.
Speaker 1: I don't think it would surprise anyone listening that we
Speaker 1: have a bunch of criminals running government.
Speaker 3: Well, there's some good decent people, but it's going to
Speaker 3: take a strong president to go in and blow out
Speaker 3: the political class, the ones who are the political appointees,
Speaker 3: and then has some major structural reform so that you
Speaker 3: can get in, serve your country, then get out the
Speaker 3: country you better served it. In the puppeteers, I advocate
Speaker 3: that we got to starve the beast if you keep
Speaker 3: feeding the beast with all this money, that is the power,
Speaker 3: and they know it and they keep doing it. That's
Speaker 3: what ex trillion dollars are. Federal government is spending. Almost
Speaker 3: one out of every four to five dollars in the
Speaker 3: entire country is spent by the federal government. It's absurd.
Speaker 1: Quick break more with Jason. I think the frustration for
Speaker 1: a lot of people is that it seems like neither
Speaker 1: party is really inclined to spend less. The fight seems
Speaker 1: to be more about what the money is spent on
Speaker 1: versus actually raining and the spending.
Speaker 3: I totally agree with you, and as I said earlier
Speaker 3: in the debt ceiling fight, we were arguing over less
Speaker 3: than ten percent of the budget, most of its mandatory
Speaker 3: programmatic spending. So if you're not willing to address the
Speaker 3: ninety percent of the budget that's driving forward, guess what
Speaker 3: you end up with a debt that's right now we're
Speaker 3: paying about two billion dollars a day just in interest
Speaker 3: on the debt. And then we have a bill that's
Speaker 3: out there where we say, oh, we're going to claw
Speaker 3: back one point nine billion dollars from the IRS, but
Speaker 3: they just got eighty billion and that doesn't even cover
Speaker 3: one day of interest payment. So don't tell me that
Speaker 3: we're moving the ball in the right direction. We're just
Speaker 3: getting the hole deeper and deeper.
Speaker 1: But then, of course the conundrum is that if you
Speaker 1: go after that mandatory spending, you get killed politically.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's right, and until America actually demands
Speaker 3: it probably won't happen. I believe that we need a
Speaker 3: balance budget amendment in order to ultimately get there. Let
Speaker 3: the states decide if we're actually going to balance our budgets.
Speaker 3: But my argument is that while while Medicaid, Medicare, and
Speaker 3: Social Security they have to have reform order to save them,
Speaker 3: what about all the hundreds and hundreds of other programs
Speaker 3: that are on autopilot. This is what I think, as
Speaker 3: I point out on the Puppeteer's book, this is.
Speaker 2: What the Democrats want.
Speaker 3: They want a permanency, They want government that isn't swayed
Speaker 3: by a particular election. And now it's nearly impossible once
Speaker 3: the program's in place. I think Ronald Reagan talked about
Speaker 3: this to actually kill it. And they know that they
Speaker 3: created when Obama was the president and they had the
Speaker 3: House to send in the Presidency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,
Speaker 3: and in puppeteers. I talk about this because it's funded
Speaker 3: not through Congress, not through appropriations by the American people.
Speaker 3: It was funded through the Federal Reserve. And that's scary
Speaker 3: because then there's zero accountability, nobody elected in that process.
Speaker 3: Now it's in the courts, we'll see how that plays out,
Speaker 3: but I think it's unconstitutional. But that's what the Democrats
Speaker 3: vision of the world is. Government runs without Congress overseeing it.
Speaker 1: Well, and it really underscores why our founding fathers and
Speaker 1: the founding generation wanted us to have a decentralized government
Speaker 1: to avoid the situation that we are in now.
Speaker 2: Totally. This is the problem.
Speaker 3: And when our as a percentage of our gross domestic product,
Speaker 3: when we're up at twenty two plus percent, those are
Speaker 3: absurd numbers that are unsustainable and the consequences, I mean,
Speaker 3: we're just headed towards financial ruin if we don't do that.
Speaker 3: But there are puppeteers that want to. They like it
Speaker 3: this way. They don't care, and they want power and
Speaker 3: they want money, and that's how they get it.
Speaker 1: What role did the federal government play in ballot harvesting?
Speaker 3: Well, this is one thing that the Puppeteers book also uncovers,
Speaker 3: it really exposes. And if there's one story in the
Speaker 3: book that you really want to have illuminated and understand it,
Speaker 3: you have to go back into March. After the President
Speaker 3: Biden has put in office and he issues Executive Order
Speaker 3: one for zero one point nine. He puts Susan Rice
Speaker 3: in charge of this and it directs all the departments,
Speaker 3: all the federals in like six hundred of them, departments
Speaker 3: and agencies to come up with the plan to get
Speaker 3: out the vote. Now, it wasn't a get out the
Speaker 3: vote effort for everybody. It was for and it literally
Speaker 3: the executive order says for approved non government organizations. And
Speaker 3: we would love to see what the president what these
Speaker 3: six hundred plans actually advocate, but they're protected because our
Speaker 3: President Biden is claiming executive privilege and there's a Freedom
Speaker 3: of Information Act request in the courts. He will not
Speaker 3: reveal what this is, but basically he wants to take
Speaker 3: all the federal departments, agencies, personnel, physical facilities to get
Speaker 3: out the vote. Well, when you have ninety five plus
Speaker 3: percent of certain departments and agencies donating to Democrats, guess what,
Speaker 3: it's a democratic machine, not open to Republicans or somebody
Speaker 3: other side of the aisle. How much money are they
Speaker 3: spending doing this? And why was Susan Rice in charge
Speaker 3: of this and so adamant that it happened. This is
Speaker 3: a very scary part of how these puppeteers work and
Speaker 3: are leveraging our own tax taxpayer dollars against us.
Speaker 1: I mean, Democrats are much better at weaponizing government and
Speaker 1: molding government to their interests and to fit their desires
Speaker 1: and narratives.
Speaker 3: Is where they worship. This is their altar, is what
Speaker 3: they believe in, and it's working for them. They just
Speaker 3: want more of it. They just don't want to live
Speaker 3: in a world where an election can destroy that.
Speaker 1: I mean, should Republicans then be better at doing the same,
Speaker 1: entrenching government with our own people, with our own desires,
Speaker 1: with the things that we want accomplished and done.
Speaker 3: What I argue in the in the book The Puppeteer's
Speaker 3: Book is that we have to starve the beast, that
Speaker 3: we need to have this discussion with the American people
Speaker 3: because I think issue wise, we're on the right side,
Speaker 3: and you've got to start somewhere. You got to start
Speaker 3: clipping the wings somewhere somehow or otherwise. It's going to
Speaker 3: be forced upon us because of the financial ruin that
Speaker 3: we will have In terms of elections. I look, I
Speaker 3: wish everybody would just vote on the same day with
Speaker 3: same information. Maybe it's two days show an identification. But
Speaker 3: you know, so much of this fight, Lisa, it's going
Speaker 3: to happen at the state level. Elections are administered at
Speaker 3: the state level. You got to fight this with your
Speaker 3: state legislature. As I articulated earlier, it's going to be
Speaker 3: these sleepy races like the treasurer's race or your attorney
Speaker 3: general race. It really is federalism that will kind of
Speaker 3: save the day. But people ask me all the time.
Speaker 3: They probably ask you all the time, you know, what
Speaker 3: can I do? I read this book and I get depressed,
Speaker 3: and I get mad, I get frustrated.
Speaker 2: What can I do? But we try to.
Speaker 3: Offer solutions the book too, by saying these are the
Speaker 3: races that you should get involved with and engage with.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a reason why the Department of Justice
Speaker 3: is going after parents because parents are suddenly showing up
Speaker 3: at school board meetings and it's like, wait, what you're
Speaker 3: going to try to take control of this away from us.
Speaker 3: Of course they're going to fight you on that.
Speaker 1: You know, but there's a school of thought then that
Speaker 1: we should respond in kind. You know, if they are
Speaker 1: going to target or people politically, then you know, perhaps
Speaker 1: they need to be on the receiving end of a
Speaker 1: department of justice that isn't aligned with them, or state
Speaker 1: attorneys or district attorneys in conservative areas going after democrats.
Speaker 1: Is it time to perhaps meet power with power.
Speaker 3: I would argue that if you have the purity of
Speaker 3: what you're trying to do to defang government, I want
Speaker 3: to fight with every tool, not one hand behind the back.
Speaker 3: But I think if we've got to build these coal
Speaker 3: in masks and go out and get the job done
Speaker 3: so that, for instance, school boards are actually administered with
Speaker 3: parents first and foremost in their minds, that kids and parents.
Speaker 3: We tell a story in the in the in the
Speaker 3: book on the Puppeteers about you know, this case where
Speaker 3: the school was working with a minor to go through
Speaker 3: the transition of you know, changing this person from one
Speaker 3: gender to another gender, but not telling the parents. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is how aggressive these people are. They really do
Speaker 3: believe this, you know, one thing I want people to
Speaker 3: be aware of. A new buzzword, if you will, that
Speaker 3: you got to be careful of.
Speaker 2: Is called community schools.
Speaker 3: Brandy Weingarten at the head of the Teachers Union, one
Speaker 3: of the big ones. She has some three hundred million
Speaker 3: dollars at her disposal. And Gavin Newsome has really helped
Speaker 3: lead the charge in California to develop community schools. Downs nice, right,
Speaker 3: a community school. Who's going to be against the community school?
Speaker 3: But they want the totality of the child, everything from
Speaker 3: their haircut to what they wear. They're going to give
Speaker 3: everybody a computer. Oh nice, they're going to give you
Speaker 3: a computer. But it's really a money making scheme form
Speaker 3: because they're going to take the data of everything that
Speaker 3: twelve year old or ten year old is doing and
Speaker 3: sell the data so that they can follow this person
Speaker 3: and send messages and teach them about their democratic heroes.
Speaker 3: Not a actual American history and certainly not one with balance.
Speaker 3: That's what they're trying to do. They're really making a
Speaker 3: concerted effort, first and foremost in California to change education.
Speaker 3: And Puppeteers spends a lot of time talking about these
Speaker 3: people they're they're grooming these kids and these parents to
Speaker 3: be an advocate for a community school, but it's a
Speaker 3: political ploy, Lisa to the endth degree.
Speaker 1: Quick commercial break. More on the puppeteers. I think we've
Speaker 1: sort of lost purity as a country, and so I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know. I think to some degree
Speaker 1: we might have to have a little bit more muscular
Speaker 1: conservatism given the environment that we live in. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got certain states that are essentially sanctuary
Speaker 1: states for transgender you know children, right, they're like where
Speaker 1: they're going to try to keep their parents away from
Speaker 1: the decision making. We're entering into a different era in
Speaker 1: my opinion politically, where you know, and even to your
Speaker 1: point about the federal government with the ballot harvesting, where
Speaker 1: even elections aren't really free and fair anymore, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the system is broken, and so I don't know if
Speaker 1: we have to, you know, kind of if we need
Speaker 1: to use new tactics in dealing with government and dealing
Speaker 1: with these people who who are evil my I mean,
Speaker 1: you're evil in my opinion if you want to encourage
Speaker 1: children to mutilate their bodies and the name of transgenderism,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's an evil person in my opinion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I agree with you and I the world
Speaker 3: is changing. You know, it used to be when I
Speaker 3: kind of first started doing the political thing, I thought
Speaker 3: we were all fighting for the same thing, but we
Speaker 3: had a different way of getting there. I don't think
Speaker 3: that's true anymore. I think, unfortunately that's changed. I mean,
Speaker 3: the idea that we had to have a national dialogue,
Speaker 3: but I think is still ongoing about should we stand
Speaker 3: for the flag and the national anthem. I mean, we
Speaker 3: just saw in the Capital students singing the national anthem
Speaker 3: and the Capitol Hill police coming over and telling them
Speaker 3: no because people would be offended. I mean, really, like,
Speaker 3: I never thought i'd see the day these types of things.
Speaker 3: So it is a scary world that way. I worry
Speaker 3: about my kids. I got grandkids. I'm enough out grandkids,
Speaker 3: and I worry about the world they're living in. And
Speaker 3: so yeah, I think you're right. I like the way
Speaker 3: you say that, a more muscular conservative conservativism that gets
Speaker 3: after it and says no, let's take these fights head
Speaker 3: on for what there is and say no, we're not
Speaker 3: going to do that. It's a radical idea to think
Speaker 3: you're going to have men compete in women's sports. Let's
Speaker 3: have that discussion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, you know, and it's crazy too because I
Speaker 1: know that we sort of have parallel lives in the
Speaker 1: sense of, you know, I live in Florida full time,
Speaker 1: but I'm up in New York quite frequently, and you're
Speaker 1: in Utah. And you've you know, had to live in
Speaker 1: DC for periodically when you were in Congress, and then
Speaker 1: also you're in New York quite a bit. So it's
Speaker 1: like you almost realize how different, you know, how we
Speaker 1: really do live in two different America is when you
Speaker 1: live in free states like we do, and then you
Speaker 1: go into these l it's just night and day, like
Speaker 1: just everything about it, right, Like you still have people
Speaker 1: walking around in masks, like you know, it's just a
Speaker 1: different world.
Speaker 3: I think there's a reason why, you know, in Gavin
Speaker 3: Newsom's California, I mean, it's tragic, right. You see the homelessness,
Speaker 3: You see this like zombie apocalypse that, you know, walking
Speaker 3: around the streets, and then people fleeing.
Speaker 2: They're losing a population.
Speaker 3: And they're going to like you did, You're going to Florida,
Speaker 3: you know, and they're going to Utah and Idaho and
Speaker 3: in more freedom loving free states. I just hope that
Speaker 3: they don't change along the way too much, that the
Speaker 3: attractant doesn't change because they've moved from something they grew
Speaker 3: up with into something that doesn't work, like New York
Speaker 3: or California.
Speaker 1: You cheered the House Oversight Committee. What did you learn
Speaker 1: in that experience? Was there anything that sort of shocked
Speaker 1: you about government or what did that kind of teach
Speaker 1: you about the way government works?
Speaker 3: I think first and foremost, and I think Trey Goudy
Speaker 3: was my colleague. I probably spent more time with Trey
Speaker 3: Goudy when I was there during my time than any
Speaker 3: other person. Here are other people like, you know, Tim
Speaker 3: Scott and John Ratcliffe, I spent a lot of time with,
Speaker 3: but Trey probably more than anything. And I kind of
Speaker 3: compared notes and said, you know, one of the biggest disappointments,
Speaker 3: and it was the lack of intellectual curiosity and honest
Speaker 3: reporting from the national media that these revered institutions of
Speaker 3: you know, the New York Times and the Washington Post
Speaker 3: had become political newsletters as opposed to an advocate, as
Speaker 3: opposed to calling balls and strikes and actually telling America
Speaker 3: what's really happening in the battles of Congress. I grew up,
Speaker 3: you know, watching you know, Woodward and Bernstein and all
Speaker 3: the president's men, saying, Oh, wouldn't that be great to
Speaker 3: be the person uncover that. And then I realized they
Speaker 3: are the problem. They are not the solution. And then
Speaker 3: the other thing is this unequal application of justice. It
Speaker 3: really does. It bothers me. It scares me. The weaponization
Speaker 3: of government to move a political agenda.
Speaker 2: I didn't think we would use that.
Speaker 3: Against a whole political movement and parties, that conservatives would
Speaker 3: be so aggressively targeted. You know, I was chairman of
Speaker 3: the Oversight Committee. I had a Secret Service, literally the
Speaker 3: number two person that's secret Service issued a statement saying
Speaker 3: it's time to even the fight, and they had forty
Speaker 3: Secret Service agents dive into my background trying to find
Speaker 3: dirt on me to publicly embarrass me. That when I
Speaker 3: got after the IRS and the lowest learner case and
Speaker 3: all that, and suddenly I have a hearing and I'm
Speaker 3: making inroads, obviously, and then I get an audit, you
Speaker 3: know a few days later. I just didn't think that
Speaker 3: happened in America, and it does, and I saw it firsthand,
Speaker 3: and it scares me.
Speaker 1: Well, I didn't know that they went after you personally.
Speaker 1: I mean I knew that, you know, obviously you're going
Speaker 1: to get criticized, but I didn't realize that they had
Speaker 1: actually used government in that way against you.
Speaker 3: Well, nobody reports it, That's the thing. The story comes
Speaker 3: out and then it barely gets a blip on the map, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: well of course you're a Republican.
Speaker 1: Have you ever noticed how anytime Democrats I had to
Speaker 1: do something wrong, the article is not about the wrong
Speaker 1: that they've done, the articles about how Republicans are pouncing.
Speaker 2: It's like, exactly, it's so true.
Speaker 3: It's like you know that they're taking political advantages and
Speaker 3: they're pouncing like they're the ones that that's wrong.
Speaker 1: It's not that Joe Biden is deeply corrupped. The story
Speaker 1: is that we're pouncing on it.
Speaker 2: It's exactly.
Speaker 3: Never mind that there's a highly credible source that the
Speaker 3: government has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to and
Speaker 3: that is documented that they had a conversation about bribery
Speaker 3: as the vice president of the United States. That's not
Speaker 3: a story worthy of our Washington Post.
Speaker 1: Come on, what shocked you? And right? I mean, because
Speaker 1: obviously you know a lot about government, you know, House
Speaker 1: oversight chairmen, you know, you were in Congress. You followed
Speaker 1: this stuff for a long time. In writing this book, specifically,
Speaker 1: what shocked.
Speaker 3: You how brazen they were and the Puppeteers, you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't go into it thinking that the state treasurers
Speaker 3: had trillions of dollars. I didn't know that Blackrock controls
Speaker 3: at least five percent of ninety eight percent of the
Speaker 3: S and P five hundred companies, and that they were
Speaker 3: going to not only inject their personnel into government, but
Speaker 3: they were going to fuse it together with their corporate objectives.
Speaker 3: Like I didn't know any of that, and now I
Speaker 3: look at it. One of the other illuminating things in
Speaker 3: the Puppeteers book that was there is this this whole
Speaker 3: idea that how you had the Department of Justice recently
Speaker 3: come out and say white supremacy is the number one
Speaker 3: threat to America. I had to really think about it, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: if there's if there's somebody misusing that, let's let's go
Speaker 3: after But is it really the number one threat to America?
Speaker 2: The number one really?
Speaker 3: And but you start to understand the political weaponization and
Speaker 3: why they need that in place in order to justify
Speaker 3: doing things that they would never be able to do otherwise,
Speaker 3: things like facial recognition and tracking you and following you,
Speaker 3: and ultimately to I think, have the goal of you know,
Speaker 3: issuing you a social score that they could put a
Speaker 3: stranglehold on the money, you could get loans, you could
Speaker 3: take places, you could travel. I mean, we illustrate that
Speaker 3: that's what they do they do in China, but I
Speaker 3: see them doing that here in the United States. And
Speaker 3: that's why again, if you're to go pick up the
Speaker 3: Puppeteers book, I want to say, go over to the
Speaker 3: horror section. But at the same time, I worry that
Speaker 3: a lot of people who care about their country and
Speaker 3: the flag and everything else, they're all fighting the wrong fights,
Speaker 3: Like these are the fights that we ought to be fighting.
Speaker 2: These are the things that.
Speaker 3: Are the bigger, broader problems.
Speaker 2: That's why I wrote the book.
Speaker 1: It's sad too, because I think, you know, sometimes obviously
Speaker 1: hindsight is everything. Look, a lot of the stuff that happened,
Speaker 1: like the Patriot Act and things Post nine to eleven
Speaker 1: sort of laid the groundwork for giving government a whole
Speaker 1: lot of power that they you know, government has now abused.
Speaker 3: They never let a crisis go to waste, right, they
Speaker 3: got to have something. That's why I think they're going
Speaker 3: after you know, white supremacy. And there's always something like,
Speaker 3: you know, we just had this this big smoke cloud
Speaker 3: come over the Northeast and it became all the news.
Speaker 2: We we do was deal with smoke out west all
Speaker 2: the time, with forest fires. But they want to use
Speaker 2: that to come up with new mandates.
Speaker 3: And you know in New York, you know you should
Speaker 3: should wear your mask, and we're going to have to
Speaker 3: fight climate change and oh, you were going to we
Speaker 3: have to do the Green New Deal.
Speaker 2: See this is an example.
Speaker 3: It's like they don't have a whole lot of respect
Speaker 3: for the competency and the thoughtfulness of the American people.
Speaker 3: They just think they can bulldoze right over them by
Speaker 3: taking every single thing and making it a political statement
Speaker 3: that ends up being more money, more taxes, and more control.
Speaker 2: That's what that's what they want. And they've been highly successful.
Speaker 2: You can make an argument been successful for them.
Speaker 1: Oh they've been really smart about it. Sadly, you know,
Speaker 1: we've kind of you know, Republicans are sort of been
Speaker 1: asleep at the wheel as they've sort of taken over
Speaker 1: the government and all these institutions, and now it's all
Speaker 1: sort of all the arrows are pointing in our direction,
Speaker 1: you know, Jason, before we go, lay out some solutions too,
Speaker 1: because I know you had mentioned that, you know, you
Speaker 1: worked on solutions in the book. What would you like
Speaker 1: to see done. What do you think could actually be
Speaker 1: effective in protecting Americans against some of this stuff.
Speaker 3: We have to illuminate the problem and understand where the
Speaker 3: fights are. Number Two, you've got to starve the beast.
Speaker 3: You have to get rid of that, and then you
Speaker 3: have to turn the tables on them. I conclude the
Speaker 3: book by talking about what Glenn Youngkin, the governor of
Speaker 3: Virginia did. He took diversity, equity and inclusion and he
Speaker 3: changed it.
Speaker 2: He said, oh, okay, we'll do that office.
Speaker 3: And then they changed the name city opportunity and inclusion,
Speaker 3: and opportunity for them met something totally different than equity.
Speaker 3: And now Democrats are on their heels having to argue
Speaker 3: why equity is better than opportunity. And you look at
Speaker 3: that example and you start to realize states governors, attorneys general,
Speaker 3: state treasurers. This is where the fight can and will
Speaker 3: be and will be more more successful. Pull it out
Speaker 3: of Washington d C. Don't let Washington d C control that.
Speaker 3: I illuminate another one where a Freedom of Information Act requests
Speaker 3: going way back to the Oklahoma City bombings was initiated
Speaker 3: in Utah as opposed to Washington d C. And guess what,
Speaker 3: Judge wattaps the federal judge there. That case is still
Speaker 3: open and the Freedom of Information Act because they aren't
Speaker 3: ingrained in the Washington d C bureaucracy. See that that
Speaker 3: does a lot to actually move the ball forward. So
Speaker 3: the fight is winable. It just we have to understand
Speaker 3: what it is and then a different way of fighting.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you lay that out. That's important. Anything
Speaker 1: else you want to leave us with before we.
Speaker 3: Go, Look the puppeteers, the people who control, the people
Speaker 3: who control. Why should America If you think Joe Biden
Speaker 3: and Kamala Harris are pulling the strings, no, it ain't happening.
Speaker 3: They can put in another group and these puppeteers are
Speaker 3: going to be as strong as ever. And I think
Speaker 3: people intuitively know it, they just haven't heard the stories.
Speaker 3: So I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it. But
Speaker 3: after years of research in my perch in Congress as
Speaker 3: the chairman of the Oversight Committee, I have some insight
Speaker 3: that maybe most haven't had, and I just hope people
Speaker 3: take it to heart and have a chance to either
Speaker 3: listen on the audiobook or download the electronic version or
Speaker 3: read the hard copy. And I list I appreciate the
Speaker 3: opportunity to talk about it.
Speaker 2: I really do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you've seen the corruption up close, your friend.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're going to have another successful book
Speaker 1: on your hands. I was state attorney general, That's what
Speaker 1: I was thinking, I said, state attorney. I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know when you I'm sure this happens to you
Speaker 1: when you're on TV and stuff. You think of something
Speaker 1: and you can't quite find the word, and then later
Speaker 1: you're like, ah, crab well, Jason, it's nice to have
Speaker 1: you on. I hope to see well. We'll be on
Speaker 1: our number together soon, so I'm looking forward to catch
Speaker 1: you up in person. Puppeteers, everyone go get it, Jason,
Speaker 1: talk to you soon, my friend.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'll see you soon.
Speaker 1: It was Jason Schaefitz, previously House Oversight Chairman, a Fox
Speaker 1: News contributor. He's a friend of mine, great guy. Him
Speaker 1: and his wife just a really amazing family. Appreciate him
Speaker 1: taking the time, joy and to come on the show.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you all at home for listening. O. Thank
Speaker 1: John Cassio and my producer for putting the show together
Speaker 1: every Monday and Thursday. You can listen throughout the week.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.