Show Notes
“Big Balls,” Chris Coons and a “constitutional crisis.” For out-of-power Democrats and many in the press, the pace of Donald Trump’s new administration has them shouting, “It’s the end of the world as we know it!”
Drill Down host Peter Schweizer and co-host Eric Eggers feel fine, but as Elon Musk’s small posse of DoGE analysts, including a 19-year-old hacker who goes by the name of “Big Balls” online, continues to find large examples of fraud and wasteful spending in federal agency budgets, Eggers suggests another song by the band R.E.M. for angry Democrats: “Everybody Hurts.”
On the most recent episode of The Drill Down, the hosts review a clip of Sen. Chris Coons (D-RI) claiming an “impending constitutional crisis” by likening the spending freezes and lightning audits of government spending to surgery: “When the human body gets cut, it reacts the same way. Are you cut because of a violent attack, or because a surgeon is trying to repair something that has happened to your body?” Schweizer asks. “Surgery is good.”
The hysteria extends not just to agencies like the Agency for International Development (USAID) but to Trump’s border policies as well. His moves to strengthen the southern border by adding more border barriers and reinstituting the “remain in Mexico” policy for asylum claimants have drawn not just criticism but tearful celebrity meltdowns on social media.
Illegal immigration as an issue is tied up with the related questions around birthright citizenship. One of Trump’s newer efforts is to challenge by executive order the granting of birthright US citizenship to children born in the US to parents who immigrated illegally. This move, widely expected, has set off a flurry of court challenges which will ultimately end up at the US Supreme Court.
“Trump is not defying the Constitution. He plans to fight in the courts,” Schweizer says.
Birthright citizenship, it turns out, is a more widespread problem than simply Central Americans who sneak across the southern border and give birth to what some call “anchor babies.”
The Government Accountability Institute has been monitoring China’s participation in this. Stories have surfaced recently about Chinese people taking advantage of birthright citizenship. Last Fall, a jury convicted a Southern California couple of running a business that helped pregnant Chinese women travel to the United States without revealing their intentions to give birth to babies who would automatically have American citizenship.
“People from China are flying in [maybe as many as 50,000 per year], lying on their visas, with the explicit purpose of giving birth to their child in the United States so they become citizens,” Schweizer says. “Then they fly back to China, raise the kids in China, and those kids are citizens that can come to the United States and then sponsor their parents to arrive.”
“Remember, China has said it is at war with the United States,” Eggers adds. “They think in terms of dynasties, not years or months… These birth mills are companies that are set up in China. They have affiliates in the US, and they advertise to the Chinese elite. The people doing this are not dissidents.
These are military officers, members of the secret police… And the advertising in China says all the benefits, the government programs, the free education, the fact that your kid, when they become a citizen, can sponsor you and you can move to the United States and get retirement benefits,” he explains.
Returning to the topic of budget waste, the hosts mention several eye-popping expenses uncovered and cancelled by DoGE, including a $168,000 contract to create an exhibit dedicated to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
“When was the last time we saw this much happening in Washington, DC?” Schweizer asks. “I’ll give Trump some credit here because he’s actually doing the things Republicans have said they wanted to do for years… And you know it’s real because they’re talking about defense budget too.”
