The Darrell McClain show
Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one Planet; nobody's leaving so let’s reason together!! Darrell, McClain is a Military veteran with an abnormal interest in politics, economics, religion, philosophy, science, and literature. He was born and raised in Jacksonville FL, and went to Edward H white High School where he wrestled Under Coach Jermy Smith and The Late Brian Gilbert. He was a team wrestling captain, District champion, and an NHSCA All-American in freestyle Wrestling. He received a wrestling scholarship from Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa. After a short period, he decided he no longer wanted to cut weight which effectively ended his college wrestling journey. Darrell Mcclain is an Ordained Pastor under The Universal Life Church and is still in good standing, he's a Believer in The Doctrines of Grace Also Known as Calvinism. He joined the United States Navy in 2008 and was A Master At Arms (military police officer) He was awarded several awards while on active duty including an expeditionary combat medal, a Global War on Terror medal, a National Defense Medal, a Korean defense medal, and multiple Navy achievement medals. While In the Navy he was also the assistant wrestling coach at Robert E Lee High School. He's a Brown Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under six six-degree black belt Gustavo Machado, Darrell Trains At Gustavo Machado Norfolk under the 3rd-degree black belt, and Former Marine Professor Mark Sausser. He went to school for psychology at American Military University and for criminal justice at ECPI University.
The Darrell McClain show
When 10,000 People Show Up, Power Listens
Bernie Sanders delivers a stark warning about America's democratic crisis while rallying unprecedented crowds across the Midwest. Speaking candidly with Pod Save America from Warren, Michigan, Sanders draws a staggering 10,000 attendees—an extraordinary turnout for a non-campaign event that signals growing resistance to what he describes as an oligarchic takeover.
"We're no longer moving toward an oligarchy, we are living in one," Sanders declares, pointing to Trump's inauguration ceremony where America's three wealthiest individuals sat prominently alongside thirteen billionaire cabinet nominees. This concentration of wealth and power, coupled with aggressive moves toward authoritarianism, represents what Sanders calls "the scariest times in my lifetime."
The conversation delves into the Republicans' proposed reconciliation bill, which would provide $1.1 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans while slashing Medicaid, nutrition programs, and education funding. Perhaps most shocking is the plan to eliminate 83,000 positions at the Veterans Administration—many held by veterans themselves. "I can't think of a less popular decision," Sanders notes.
Despite these challenges, Sanders finds hope in the massive crowds gathering at his rallies. He believes when constituents mobilize in overwhelming numbers, they can make lawmakers more afraid of voter backlash than they are of Elon Musk's financial threats. "When people stand up and talk, when your phone line bangs off the hook, when you see rallies...you know what, I'm going to think twice about it," he explains.
The conversation takes a surprisingly personal turn when Sanders reveals he's only tried marijuana twice in his life and "it didn't quite agree with me," politely declining the interviewer's suggestion to "get stoned" and discuss the future. This moment of levity underscores that while Sanders might be leading a movement against oligarchy, his approach remains firmly grounded in pragmatic political organizing.
Join the movement to protect American democracy from billionaire control. Stand up, speak out, and show politicians that the people's voice still matters more than Musk's billions.
In depth analysis of what’s happening in Israel—and why it matters everywhere.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Senator, welcome back to Ponce of America. Good to be with you. We were just talking about this. We're in Warren, Michigan. It is not election year. There are 10,000 people here.
Speaker 2:I have, needless to say, I've done a lot of rallies, and we've done rallies during the presidential campaign that were larger than this for sure. But the idea that in a non-campaign, coming here to Warren Michiganigan, that you have 10 000 people is totally insane. And what it tells me and we had tremendous turnouts in kenosha, we had wonderful turnouts in a small community in altuna, wisconsin and what it tells me is the american people are up in arms now. They are not going to let Trump and his friends turn this country into an oligarchy, they're not going to let him turn us into an authoritarian society and they're not going to allow him to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut the programs that working class people need.
Speaker 1:You said something yesterday in Wisconsin. You said we're no longer moving toward an oligarchy, we are living in one. Yeah, which I hadn't heard you say before.
Speaker 2:Well, look, I think the evidence is pretty clear. When you have a president get inaugurated and standing behind him, sitting behind him with the three wealthiest people in the country Mr Musk, mr Bezos, mr Zuckerberg and then, sitting scattered throughout the stage, 13 other billionaires who Trump nominated to head major agencies, secretary of treasury, etc. You tell me what you would call it. This is. I find it hard not to describe it as a government of the billionaires, and that is what Al-Aqaq is about.
Speaker 1:There's this you know, you made this video after like two weeks into Trump's term and it was really meaningful for me, just personally, because I found it very helpful to think about how to fight back. You talked about needing to define what's happening, needing to fight back in the short term and then needing to build a progressive movement and agenda in the long term.
Speaker 1:But, there was also like a, there was a gravity in your voice and a sense that in a way that I maybe hadn't heard before. I don't, I don't know if you agree with that look these are, you know, the scariest times in my lifetime.
Speaker 2:That's all I mean. I think that's objectively the truth. You know, it is not just. They want to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut programs for working people. Frankly, that's happened before. But you combine that with the power of the oligarchy in general. You combine that with mr musk owning twitter and able to send out his messages to hundreds of millions of people. You combine that with the fact that people like bezos, the second wealthiest person in the country, fired or got rid of most of his editorial staff and is going to convert them into a right wing thing. Combine that with the fact that Trump is suing major media outlets and is threatening to investigate PBS and NPR.
Speaker 2:So it's not only the power of money. It's also, combined with that, the movement toward authoritarianism. You know, when Trump unilaterally cuts federal funding that was passed by Congress, that is illegal, that is unconstitutional. When you have the vice president saying, well, in his judgment, the courts don't have the right to stop unconstitutional acts of the president man, that is authoritarian. That's what the courts are. He is now trying to end what the founding fathers were pretty smart about creating a form of government where there were checks and balances. You know a legislative body, an executive body, a judiciary, so he's moving aggressively in all of these areas. Yeah, there was gravity in my voice.
Speaker 1:This is a scary moment there is strange contradiction in fighting back, because, on the one hand, you have the kind of brazenness of what Trump is doing, as if he won't ever have to worry about democratic legitimacy at all, that they're not worried about being held accountable or they're not worried about people paying attention, they're not worried about what could happen. But then we're here in a district that a Republican won by a few points. Right, these people still care about their jobs, right? This is a place where normal politics just seems to still be possible to practice. And I'm just curious how you think about that, that on the one hand, we're facing this unprecedented, brazen power grab by the richest human beings in the history of planet Earth and, on the other, we got to knock on doors and turn people out to win by a few hundred, maybe a thousand votes in a district like this.
Speaker 2:Well, I think and this is what I believe. Maybe I'm wrong, but it is what I have always believed, and I am a politician, you know. And when people stand up and talk, when your phone line bangs off the hook, when you see rallies if I'm the congressman from this district and I see 9,000 people coming out who really do not want tax breaks for billionaires and cuts in Medicaid, you know what I'm going to think twice about it. Tax breaks for billionaires and cuts in Medicaid you know what I'm going to think twice about it. So I think what Trump and Musk hope is they can create a sense of powerlessness in people. Hey, what do you think? I got all the money, I got all the power, I own the media, I can buy elections. What do you think you can do? You can't stop me.
Speaker 2:And if people believe that we're going to lose, but if people understand that, when they stand up and fight back and that's why, at the end of these remarks, I talked about the history of this country, this is not the first time, you know I think back a slightly different thing. You know, in December of 1941, 1941, the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor. You know what we have to fight a war on two fronts complete. The military was not prepared to do that. Yet in two years the country came together. We were able to lay the groundwork for victory. We can do it.
Speaker 1:We can do it when people are mobilized and are prepared to stand up and fight back. So what does success to you look like in the short term?
Speaker 2:In the short term, it means a solid defeat of this outrageous reconciliation bill. It means a solid defeat of this outrageous reconciliation bill which should provide $1.1 trillion in tax breaks to the 1% and massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition and education programs. That's the immediate we win, that we got them on the defensive.
Speaker 1:And that's why I'm here in this district and why I was in Kenosha and Altoona earlier. What does that argue for doing even before we get to that reconciliation vote? Because right now they're trying to jam through this continuing resolution just to keep the government open, to give them time to negotiate with each other, to figure out their tax cuts and Medicaid cuts.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll be back in Washington on Monday and we'll be delving into that, but there's a lot of stuff that's flying on so I can't give you a good answer on that one.
Speaker 1:You know, I remember when the Bush tax cuts were on the table and they talked about starving the beast. Sure, you remember. But the reason they said that is they were kind of attenuating the connection between massive tax cuts for the richest people and inevitably what they would try to do next, which was privatizing social security, cutting health care. They understood that there was like a political risk in doing that. Can you remember a time when you have had, at the exact same moment, an active proposal to cut one trillion dollars worth of taxes for the richest people, to give people making over a million dollars an average of $70,000 just in cash money, while also firing eighty thousand people in the veterans affairs?
Speaker 2:no, this is unprecedented, uh, and it's why this is a scary moment. Look, musk is many things, but he is extraordinarily arrogant and extraordinarily aggressive, and they're going for it, they're going for it, they're going for it. I mean, it's just hard to keep up with what they are doing, and that's not an accident as well. But I tell you, I think that when you propose to cut, what is it? 83,000 positions at the Veterans Administration the American people are going to say you're not going to do that Because, no matter what your politics may be, there is respect for people who put their lives on the line to defend our country.
Speaker 2:And I've been talking to veterans all over this country and you know what. I don't think they're going to get away with that. I think the veterans community is going to stand up. I think you have seniors all over this country saying no, I can't get a phone call now because the Social Security Administration is understaffed. Some 30,000 people a year die, who have disabilities, because they don't get their benefits on time. This will only make it much worse.
Speaker 1:So there was a report out of the Times about basically a fight in the cabinet room or then a cabinet meeting between musk and rubio and duffy and trump and all these characters because they're feeling the the political consequences of the attention on long hold times, people just trying to find out what happened, their social security checks, or veterans being laid off. Most of the 25 of the people that work at va are veterans, so they are firing veterans who take care of veterans. I can't think of a less popular decision. Is there any hope in the pressure that's taking place inside of the Trump administration? I know we want to beat these people, but in the meantime we've got to figure out anything we can do to stop these decisions.
Speaker 2:I think not. I mean, I think the answer is going to be exactly what we're doing here today, and that is rally thousands of people all over this country. We'll be our next trip. We expect we'll probably be heading west, maybe to Colorado, nevada, arizona, whatever and just put pressure on these members of Congress. Now, in fairness to them, because of the corrupt campaign finance system, if some Republican today stands up and says you know what? I am not going to cut Medicaid in my district to give tax breaks to billionaires, you know what happens the next day. Musk says guess what fella? We're going to primary you. I got endless amounts of money. You're in trouble.
Speaker 2:These guys are scared to death. They're scared to death of Musk, but we're going to have to force them to make a choice. They could be scared to death of Musk or they could be scared to death of their own constituents. That's the choice we're going to give them.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you have any interest in talking about what Democrats are doing wrong if you cared about their outfits at the State of the Union, but we can skip it if you want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, democrats will. Do you want to talk about Democrats? I'll give you Chuck Schumer's number, hakeem Jeffries, you can talk to them. I'm here doing as you know. I'm an independent. I'm proudly longest standing independent in American congressional history. I'm doing what I do, democrats will do what they do, and that's that.
Speaker 1:So we talked to a bunch of people on the line that were excited to be here and one thing we heard was just people saying how much they believe in you. They're here because they want to do what you think is best and they they view you as like a moral leader of the movement. Um, but they also are feeling uh worried and nervous that you're a little bit out here alone and you know you said that you may not seek reelection. Uh, I didn't make that definitive. I said I didn't make it definitive, I am 38 years of age now.
Speaker 2:I am getting old.
Speaker 1:I'm not Listen, I think, there's a lot of ways to be 89. There's a lot of different versions of 89. You're Sprite, you're Sprite. Rolling Stones they're still touring, but do you think about a successor?
Speaker 2:No, I don't want to Look. All I will tell you is that one of the untold stories is that when I was in the House, I helped form the Progressive Caucus. You may know that and we had about five people at the time grew a little bit. Today there are somewhere around 100. And there are fantastic people. Many of them dozens of them young people, many of them are women, people of color, great people. So you know, that is one of the success stories that the progressive movement has had. We've elected people the likes of which, when I was in the House, you know, 18 years ago, they didn't exist. So we're making some real progress. We've got to do a lot more. Here's my last question for you.
Speaker 1:You want to talk about the future.
Speaker 2:Would you ever take an edible with me and sit down and just have a conversation about the future? Just get really stoned on marijuana. Really brainstorm. No, Well, I'm happy to talk to you.
Speaker 1:I don't need to do marijuana to talk. Okay, what happened? What happened to the radical? What happened to the Bernie of the 60s? Let's get stoned Are you serious?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's not who I am. As a matter of fact, I've done marijuana twice in my life Twice, yeah didn't quite agree with me.
Speaker 1:Do you want to end Daylight Saving Time?
Speaker 2:Doesn't matter. Okay, thank you very much. That's our show for today. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everybody then.
Speaker 4:Anyway, that was from Pod Save America. Bernie Sanders has been obviously going on this tour and has been breaking crowds. Words like conservative, liberal, socialist, anarchist, communist, marxist used to have real meaning. When you used to toss those words out, there was an ideological risk, because those words meant something. Now, when you hear words like that, it's kind of just a pejorative. Uh, people toss out people called kamala harris a marxist during the campaign, when kamala harris is not even materially a socialist. Uh, she's a laissez-faire, uh liberal for the most part, and an identitarian liberal at that. So one of the words that has now come to my attention is the word traitor, and if words mean nothing, I guess it would also end up hitting somebody like Elon Musk. So when Elon Musk writes you are a traitor, you could be absolutely certain that whoever Elon Musk accuses of being a traitor may be the exact opposite. Elon Musk would not dare to say you are a traitor to President Donald Trump. After Donald Trump became the first president in history to switch sides of a war and accuse the side the United States had been supporting in that war Ukraine of starting the war, even though the world watched live on television as Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian army to invade Ukraine, which, at the very start of Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine, donald Trump called genius. That was Donald Trump's word for genius. That was his word for the war criminal Vladimir Putin, who invaded Ukraine and began targeting hospitals with missile strikes in the first week of the war against Ukraine.
Speaker 4:Senator Mark Kelly was in Ukraine this past weekend visiting hospitals and other things and tweeted Just left Ukraine. What I saw proved to me we can't give up on the Ukrainian people. Everyone wants this border in, but an agreement has to protect Ukrainian security and it can't be given away to Putin. Let me tell you about my trip and why it's important we stay in Ukraine. Before bothering to read any more of the Senator Kelly threads about this trip to Ukraine. Elon Musk immediately said directly to the senator on Twitter you are a traitor. To which Mark Kelly, the former Navy pilot and astronaut, responded you are a traitor. An astronaut responded you are a traitor. Question, mark elon, if you do not understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes america great. It keeps us safe. Maybe you should leave it to those of us who do. And, of course, elon musk doesn't understand anything about the values of this country. He grew up with the values of the white South Africans and then moved to Canada and ended up in the United States, a country whose history he had never studied, whose values he does not share and who he proves almost daily with tweets like that. You are a traitor.
Speaker 4:Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, like all foreign leaders who visit the Oval Office, was playing to two audiences when he was talking to the President, donald Trump, in the Oval Office First, the audience at home and second, the American audience. President Zelensky apparently did very well with the audience back home in Ukraine. According to a recent poll in Ukraine it was reported by the New York Times showing that President Zelensky's approval rating, going from already a high of 57 percent far above a recorded approval rating than the current president, then it went up to 67 percent approval after President Zelensky's Oval Office visit. That's an approval rating that the president has never come close to this weekend. When asked if he's been tough on Russia, the president said this I've been very tough to Russia, tougher than anybody has ever been to Russia, if you think about it. First of all, we had this Russia, russia, russia hoax, which was a very bad thing. It could have led to a war.
Speaker 3:I think I've been very tough to Russia, tougher than anybody's ever been to Russia, If you think about it first of all we had the Russia, russia, russia hucks, which was a very bad thing. It could have led to a war and that was started by Schiff and all these lowlifes.
Speaker 4:I've been having a lot of interesting conversations and debates on this topic, to be honest, and my primary thing that I have been looking for is where is the accountability from Russia? I have heard people, not only online but even in the administration, whether it's the president, whether it's the Secretary of State, marco Rubio, whether it's Elon Musk, and they're all talking about how Ukraine is going to have to give up its territory, talking about how Ukraine is going to not becoming, to become a member of NATO and essentially undercutting them in every way. Support and we're supposed to somehow believe that it's just in that, um, that somehow this is tough on russia, and I don't think that anybody can actually believe this. Anybody could be this stupid. We can see with our own eyes what's going on. We can see that this is a sabotage of an ally, we can see that it is weakening the NATO alliance and I think it's going to be, when we look back at it, as one of the greatest blunders and betrayals in history.
Speaker 4:And if, as a result of this action, ukraine will lose the war, it will go down as completely the fault of the current administration who lost the war in Ukraine, and it will go down in history as one of the worst losses of the war for one of our allies, and I really do hope that it does not happen. So we will pay attention and see where this goes. A lot of the people who, speaking of transitions, a lot of people who voted for the president, have started to realize that when they talked about these federal workers, the drain on society, et cetera, et cetera, they didn't understand that that meant them. They didn't understand that that meant them.
Speaker 5:I'm sitting in the Commonwealth of Virginia and this has now hit the state next to us a bit, which is West Virginia. Jennifer Piggott voted for Trump in the November election. Then in February she was fired from her civil service job. Absolutely, I feel a little bit betrayed. She was among more than 125 people dismissed last month from the Treasury Department's Bureau of Fiscal Service in Parkersburg, West Virginia.
Speaker 6:There's always that back and forth conversation. Now it's like this was coming, but we didn't Like nobody that I've talked to understood the devastation that having this administration in office would do to our lives.
Speaker 4:This is somewhat shocking to me when I hear people say they didn't know. There was an article that actually came out in 2024 about this Project 2025. It was a lot of pages, of course. I actually personally refused to read it because of how much stuff was in it. So I just kind of read analysis about it.
Speaker 4:But one of the things that was widely distributed was this article came out of 2024 that the project 2025 proposal was they were going to cut what is called unelected bureaucrats. I don't know how you could be voting and be working for the federal government and not understand that unelected bureaucrats means you. In that Project 2025 summary that was in that article in 2024, it actually said the goal was to get rid of 1 million federal workers, or 1 million unelected bureaucrats. So, again, this I don't know stuff. I just kind of think it has hit that category of you didn't want to know, uh, because there were other reasons that, uh, you were supporting a particular belief system, but the information was obviously there and now we're at that stage where a lot of people are finding out. I think I did the story maybe a few shows ago the farmer who's at risk of losing his farm because he didn't understand that the program that his farm was benefiting from was a Biden policy that USAID was distributing, and so it's just one of these things where I've always somewhat believed that a lot of the knee-jerk reaction to the government and how government functions and how government doesn't function is primarily because whatever the government is doing at the time, most people are unaware of it. And we have these two problems, and they are real problems. We have a Democratic Party who likes the government, but they will not admit when the government is not working, so they have to defend something that people could see materially or isn't working for them. And then you have a particular part of the Republican Party who cannot admit when something in the government is working and is hell-bent on destroying government programs that do work. And then you have a populaceace, which is the normal part of the country, who cannot decide which part is which. Which part of the government is not working because it's inefficient, and which part of the government is not working because there are people in the government who don't want it to work, and this is done, um, somewhat purposely.
Speaker 4:I always famously tell the story of the Donald Rumsfeld lecture, where he talks about working for President, ronald Reagan and Rumsfeld was over this agency and it was humming along well. He thought he was doing great and President Reagan called him and basically read him the right act. And Donald Rumsfeld said you know, I don't know what you're talking about. The agency is running great. And President Reagan said yes, that's the problem we saw in a previous administration with the Environmental Protection Agency when they put Rick Perry over the Environmental Protection Agency. They didn't put Rick Perry over the Environmental Protection Agency to make sure it functioned correctly, they put him over it to stop it from functioning. In the same way, he saw this recent thing with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They didn't put the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect it in this go-around, they put the person there to make sure it is ineffective. This go around, they put the person there to make sure it is ineffective.
Speaker 4:So this, this is a small part of how you see these things play out. This, this, this person in west virginia, you know, works at the treasure department and didn't somehow think that her, her, that she was on the chopping board. Because when you imagine a unelected bureaucrat, most of the time when I think about an elected bureaucrat myself, I think about the federal judges, I think about the fbi, I think about the cia, I think about the atf, you know. I think about fps or something else where I used to work, and everybody kind of has the agencies that they know. But I don't think that people think when they think about a unelected whatever, they're thinking about the National Park Agency or you know something like that they're not thinking about the Treasury Department. Everybody may, in their head every now and then, think about the IRS when it's tax time, but they never think about the fact that that's just kind of a talking point, that behind that unelected bureaucrat is a actual person.
Speaker 4:That person has a job. That job puts money into the economy. That person has a job. That job puts money into the economy. That person has a family. That family probably lives at a house, so they have to pay a mortgage, etc. Etc. Etc. I think they think about how interconnected everything is until you see it hit them and then people say, oh, I didn't know it was coming. Well, this is the conversation that you should have been engaged in when you're dealing with something like an election and instead of having real conversations about what is going to affect you, you're having meta conversations about. You know I don't know everything else that won't affect you Trans athlete somewhere playing on a volleyball team. You'll get obsessed with stuff like that ginned up, go vote on culture issues and then end up not having a job.
Speaker 2:Tyrants no teams, no tyrants.
Speaker 5:The cuts have shaken up a community that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. He won West Virginia with 70% of the vote, one of his biggest victories. But the betrayal felt by Piggott, a church-going conservative and three-time Trump voter, comes as political analysts are examining early signs of a possible backlash in Republican strongholds like Parkersburg, where the government-slashing efforts of Trump and Doge are beginning to hit home.
Speaker 3:Elon Musk has basically taken over our government and has called the shots. Unfortunately, it seems to be.
Speaker 4:So when Elon Musk gave the $288 million to the Trump campaign, what exactly did you think he was giving them the money for? Now, on my bookshelf right now I have a book on Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, and in this book, which was actually very well done, it talks about the, the person that is Elon Musk, he and almost every company he takes over. Her works it in the book, blah, blah, blah. He breaks the company apart. He pretty much will go in, he'll fire everybody that he feels like he's not useful and then, if he thinks that he made a mistake, he'll do this clawing back, where he'll try to fire them back, them back in a business that may actually work because of businesses based on profits, and yada, yada, yada in the government, where the government is actually not a business, that it's not about profit making and actually it doesn't always work that well. Uh, we, we saw with the e cuts, et cetera, et cetera. So I've always told people this notion that a billionaire is there because they're trying to do something that benefits everyday people is going to be rare, if not non-existent, and it's unfortunate that people were very comfortable with this. Uh, we have they. They have their billionaires over there. Now we have our game and not understand that what they were actually trying to do in.
Speaker 4:Elon does not like regulations, like most uh inventors etc. Don't like regulations that there's constantly in this book where he's having to go at it with the air force, because the air force has a lot of regulations and elon sees regulations as suggestions and that's actually not how that works. So you, you would think that they would also think that you know, I don't know, cutting the Treasury Department so they can fleece the place may also kind of be some regulations that they don't like. And you see this with the crypto stuff. All of a sudden there's this massive we're going to do this with crypto and everybody that takes a real honest look at crypto knows most of it is kind of scam full of republican voters who lost their federal jobs, joined democrats at a recent anti doge protest near the bureau of fiscal service offices in parkersburg.
Speaker 5:But the federal job losses in the state could soon extend beyond the bfs building, says West Virginia University economics professor John Deskins.
Speaker 7:West Virginia is at the very top of the states in terms of the federal workforce as a share of total workforce in the state. So if the federal layoffs happen, if they hit West Virginia, we stand to suffer a disproportionate share. When those jobs disappear, when that income disappears, when that spending leaves the state economy.
Speaker 5:There's interviews with three dozen workers, business owners and politicians in Parkersburg. Nearly all said that Trump's focus on cutting government spending was a worthy Unfortunately, it seems to be. A handful of Republican voters who lost their federal jobs joined Democrats at a recent anti-Doge protest near the Bureau of Fiscal Service offices in Parkersburg. But the federal job losses in the state could soon extend beyond the BFS building, says West Virginia University economics professor John Deskins.
Speaker 7:West Virginia is at the very top of the states in terms of the federal workforce as a share of total workforce in the state. So if the federal layoffs happen, if they hit West Virginia, we stand to suffer a disproportionate share when those jobs disappear, when that income disappear.
Speaker 5:But in Reuters interviews with three dozen workers, business owners and politicians in Parkersburg, nearly all said that Trump's focus on cutting government spending was a worthy goal, and Reuters' Ipsos polling shows Americans' attitude toward Trump are so far essentially unchanged since he began firing federal workers in February. As of this week, his approval rating was holding steady at 44 percent.
Speaker 6:Costs and waste and fraud and and, and. We love that big picture. I love that big picture, my friends. You know we were excited about that because it is true. But again, I can't go. I can't help but go back to the fact that what is the decisions that you're making right now solving in the big picture? It's just so.
Speaker 4:So the concept of voting for that again, voting for elon musk, essentially to wreck people's lives, I can't do it so here's the problem, and then I feel for this, uh, young lady and I feel for the people of west virginia. Nobody, nobody, likes fraud, waste, and Everybody in general could say I want to get rid of government spending. What they don't think about on the other side of that statement is the jobs that come with said unsaid government spending. And what also doesn't happen, as evidenced in this matter, is people realizing wait a minute, is my job? A part of government spending? Is the job I'm doing subsidized by the government Because the government is so massive? The government is so massive but, believe it or not, when you look at the numbers you'd be surprised how big the government is now as opposed to how big it was, let's say, when Bill Clinton was president. For fun, you can go see which government was bigger the government we have now or the government we had when Bill Clinton came into office.
Speaker 4:And this also goes into the thinking that when they say we're going to make cuts, cuts, cuts, you don't think that means the stuff you want. When people say they want cuts, they're thinking about a program that did something somewhere that they don't like, but they're not thinking about all the programs that they do like. And no politician is going to specifically tell you yes, I'm going to cut SNAP, yes, I'm going to cut the program that gives free lunch to schools. Yes, I'm going to cut the program that ends Ebola. Yes, I'm going to cut the AIDS program. No politician is going to outright say that. So they'll say they're going to cut wasteful government spending because then they know your imagination will run wild and they don't have to be specific, because if they were specific you probably wouldn't vote for it.
Speaker 5:The economic impact of the mass dismissals across America may not be immediately felt. So far, 100,000 government workers have been fired or taken a buyout. Fired or taken a buyout. Parkersburg is bracing for another round of layoffs, with all government agencies ordered to make plans to cut career staff by March 13th.
Speaker 4:The quote of the day is going to come from Plato the price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. Oh yeah, yeah, back all 6,000 fire workers from the past month that they let go without pay and they hired all 6,000 back and gave them back pay. Of course, like I've said before, the cuts alleged cuts have not been targeted. It's not about anything more than ideological capture. It's not about efficiency. It's not about fraud, waste and abuse. It's not about government spending. It's just an ideology, and the ideology is government bad. And then they fire people and then they realize, oh my goodness, we needed those people, that government good.
Speaker 4:I've been listening to a lot of the war room with Steve Bannon, one of the architects, one of the brain trusts behind the populist movement of the right populist movement, I should say and he had to give a warning shot and say look, you know you have to watch for things like Medicare and Medicaid, social Security, because a lot of, as he said, magapatamians are on those programs. And I just kind of laughed and I said isn't that exactly how it works? You hate the government right up until you're using it, just like a president hates executive power right up until they have it. It's kind of the nature of how this game seems to work out.
Speaker 8:Started, as most things do in Trump 2.0, with Elon, who offered some significant cope on Twitter in response to a new projection from the Atlanta Fed that GDP was set to fall off a cliff. A more accurate measure of GDP would exclude government spending. But since Elon is our unelected CEO, dictator king, his random Twitter musings are now rapidly becoming government policy. Days later, commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took to Fox News to announce he was looking at changing how GDP is calculated in line with exactly what Elon just said. Since Republicans, led by Elon, are in the middle of destroying the government, mass firing workers and attacking Medicaid, they don't really want the numbers to accurately reflect the way that their austerity for you, socialism for the rich agenda is actually really bad for the entire economy. So instead they're just going to hide it.
Speaker 8:But that's not all. The Trump administration just announced they're completely disbanding two different committees that both assist in producing accurate economic statistics. This new scheme to cook the books on GDP also aligns with Elon's anarcho-capitalist ideology, which views all government activity as quote non-productive. Do we really believe that government spending and investment is meaningless and contributes nothing to the economy? We're talking about infrastructure, research, electricity generation, public schools all meant to be ignored as drivers of real, productive economic activity. It's insanity, it's stupidity. Elon and Trump, they are both masters at concocting alternative realities. They have hardcore cult followings who've proven willing to suspend reality in order to believe the pronouncements of their dear leaders. These manipulate economic statistics will be one weapon of gaslighting to feed their fabricated fantasy lands.
Speaker 4:I've been reading a lot of the Wall Street Journal lately just because I know it used to be the Republican Bible when it came to economics as well as Forbes Went ahead and got a yearly subscription to both to pay attention to the markets closely because I saw that there was talk about somewhat this manipulation of the numbers. And of course I think everybody heard me say multiple times I'm an economic existentialist, so a lot of the stuff they're going to try to hide it won't work. You'll feel it Just like the previous administration. You know they could say that the economy is doing great, and by the economy they mean the S&P 500. They mean the stock market, et cetera. But when the Wall Street is doing good, the Main Street is doing bad. People know very, very soon that something is up. So of course the attempting of playing with the numbers and cooking the books is I don't put it past them, I don't put it past anybody but I'll do my best to keep reporting the facts about the job numbers, about the stock market etc. And it's been tipsy-turvy, especially with the tariffs. The market does not like uncertainty, uncertainty, and as much as I make fun of the stock market, I think I used to say stock market is just a couple of old white people's feelings and uh, but. But uh, like, a lot of people measure the success of their administration based on what the stock market is doing, and uh, so I'm going to, I'm going to keep using that same analysis and looking at it as well as looking at what's happening every day as far as jobs, etc.
Speaker 4:I'm going to stick to this because the Department of Education is on the chopping board. It's always been kind of a Republican goal for years. Even George Bush, w Bush wanted to do this is on the chopping board. It's always been kind of a Republican goal for years. Even George Bush, w Bush wanted to do this ended up failing major backlash and had to come up with a no child left behind, type of thing. So Linda McMahon basically told the Department of Education staff to prepare for their final mission and is already prepared to try to cut half of the staff. So, uh, cuts, cuts, cuts, and we will. We'll keep abreast to what it's at what's happening big, big election coming up, big election coming up for federal judgeship next week it's actually sorry it's coming up in about 20 days and it's a big deal going out of Wisconsin, and so I'll tell you why that's a big deal on the next episode, see you.