← The Charlie Kirk Show
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- [00:04]
Charlie Kirk
My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro American student organization in the country, fighting for the future of our republic. My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're gonna end up miserable. But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You gotta stop sending your kids to college. You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Go start a Turning Point USA College chapter. Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter. Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign up and become an activist. I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade. Most important decision I ever made in my life. And I encourage you to do the same. Here I am, Lord.
- [00:47]
Maya Tusi
Use me.
- [00:48]
Charlie Kirk
Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. The Charlie Kirk show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends and viewers.
- [01:09]
Andrew
All right, welcome. Hour two of the Charlie Kirk show is underway, and we are turning our sights on Iran. There has been, I would say, divergent.
- [01:19]
Blake
Will he or won't he?
- [01:20]
Charlie Kirk
Will he?
- [01:20]
Andrew
Yeah. Will he or won't he? Is. And we're talking obviously about whether or not Trump is going to take kinetic military action, fully support economic, moral support of the Iranian people, all that stuff. There's a huge question about military action to help us unpack. This is Maya Tusi. I hope I got that approximately correct. Founder of Tusi tv, based out of London. He's Iranian. Welcome to the show.
- [01:45]
Maya Tusi
Thank you for having me, guys. Thank you.
- [01:47]
Andrew
Yeah, absolutely. So there's multiple questions swirling right now about the Iranian question, if you're an American. Right. Will President Trump take action militarily to support the independence movement that is obviously pouring over into the streets? But there's also a question about how brutal has the regime crackdown on protesters really become? I've seen some reports, quote, a number of 2500 dead, which is already extraordinary, by the way. I've seen other reports that it's 12,000. Do you have any insight on what the accurate figure is?
- [02:18]
Maya Tusi
Yeah. So you can't really take any of these because in the past, we've had a lot of uprisings and crackdowns, have had hundreds and hundreds, sometimes over a thousand when it comes to massacres. But obviously, the official figures that the mainstream media keep going with is, you know, a thousand, sometimes 600 on the ground. All the information that we have from the hospitals and the whistleblowers obviously goes to the idea that it's thousands. There was a leak from the inner circle of Ali Khameneid, Supreme Leader, a few days ago, and the documents signed by him, the direct order, and they believe, they themselves, that it was about 12,000. Now, there are also unofficial figures that's come out that is closer to 20,000. But as President Trump said, even one is enough. And that is the main argument right now. The mainstream media want to get into the debate of, well, if it's 2000 instead of 4000, then is it really our business? That's the problem.
- [03:16]
Andrew
Right. There is sort of a. It's a weird math you have to contemplate if you're going to consider military action. Is there a threshold? Is there a. Is there a. I mean, it's an awkward question to ask, but certainly when you're dealing with Iran that has a history of squashing uprisings, often violently, with lethal force, this is not necessarily something new, but this is new because of the scale and the scope and just how widespread these protests have become in Iran. Why don't you take us into that psychology about what is driving these protests? Why is this unique, why is this new? And why does this maybe portend an actual change in. In leadership in Iran?
- [03:58]
Maya Tusi
Yeah, so, firstly, when it comes to any potential action by the US and President Trump, it's not really just about the scale of the uprising, which I'll get into. It's also about how dangerous the Islamic Republic has become to the world, including to President Trump directly, because they tried to assassinate him a couple of times over the last couple of years. The reality of the situation is that this uprising was obviously building up for a very long time. They have had attempts of uprisings, and of course there's been massive crackdowns because the regime, or as the Iranians would call them, the Islamic occupation regime, don't really care. They would just kill everybody. But this time round, the regime is extremely weak. The trigger point was when the currency in Iran collapsed, and that was over two weeks ago, almost three weeks ago. And of course, there is no. There's the lack of water, lack of electricity, lack of money, lack of jobs and lack of recognition on the international stage. And people said, enough is enough. This time around, it wasn't just anger. They are very, very motivated and they know they've got nothing else to lose. Usually in the past, when you kill a few hundred people, people would go home, they get scared. But after thousands who've been massacred, people continue to stay out because they Also finally have a unifying leader in the Crown Princess of Pahlavi. And President Trump, until now, has had their backs, which has really helped people on the ground, but they definitely need support as soon as possible.
- [05:25]
Blake
So is there an ideological platform that, you know, unites these people other than wanting to overthrow the current government? Like, do we have. Let's just be right. Are there. Are there Islamists who also oppose the government? Are there? And also, are there steps the government could take to try to mollify this short of regime change, short of total collapse, like, I guess, apparently, I learned recently there actually is a council of clerics that could, for lack of a better term, fire the Ayatollah and say.
- [05:52]
Charlie Kirk
Here'S a new one.
- [05:53]
Blake
Could something like that happen?
- [05:55]
Maya Tusi
No. No. So people keep comparing it to Gorbachev and Soviet Union. It's very, very different because this is a cult of personality behind one figurehead. And the reality is they basically pretended to do what you just said, like reforming from within, things like that. Over the last few uprisings, people know that this is an occupation. Since 1979, there was a paramilitary coup occupation that basically resulted thanks to Jimmy Carter, US Democrats, M said, the fifth Republic in France that basically decided, let's get behind the Ayatollahs because they were scared that the Soviet Union in the middle of Cold War are going to take over Iran in the 70s. So they thought, let's back these guys. They seem to be stupid enough that they can be controlled as puppets. That backfired because the next day the Islamists went on and chanted, death to America. Right now, your question about in terms of power vacuum or who is involved? Well, Iran is very different to countries like Libya or Iraq or Syria. There are no extremist groups in that state. Sense that there is no vacuum because people finally are behind, united behind one concept, even if not necessarily the Crown Prince, which it is true. They are all united behind the original flag of Iran, the history, the heritage. They simply want their country back. It's more similar to the situation in Poland after the National Socialists in Germany got kicked out, and then again after the Communists from Soviet Union got kicked out. Poland said, we just got our country back. That's basically the fight. It's not necessarily like Iraq or Syria. There are no really extremist groups. There is a tiny group called Mujahideen Mek and there are about 13 of them. They're smaller than the Green Party. Nobody cares about them. But that's the main goal that, you know, people don't really care about those guys. They are basically a Marxist Islamic group. They used to be with the IRGC in the 70s against the king, but then they split. They basically had a fight. And now they also want to bring down the regime because they want to have a different version of communist Islamic Republic. That is the biggest problem.
- [07:55]
Blake
Well, what about another concern I know we've seen is America's repeatedly had some involvement in the Middle east where you topple a government and then our own government is surprised to learn, oh wait, there's, there's a lot of ethnic grievances in this society. This happened in Iraq, notoriously. President Bush apparently didn't quite get the Sunni, Shia split before we actually intervened. We've seen it of course, in Syria. Lebanon is basically defined by those splits. I know in Iran there's Azeris as well as historical Iranians. There's other smaller groups. Is there any risk of a crack up along those lines if there's a power vacuum?
- [08:32]
Maya Tusi
So this was a worry a couple of decades ago, in fact, under the Islamic Republic, these different ethnic groups and regional groups were essentially being divided. But over the last few years, the movement against Islamic Republic has actually united them. You now have you got the Persian, Iranian. So that's my ethnicity city. We've got the Kurdish, Iranians, Azaris and all the others. Even the Kurds in Iran compared to the Kurds in Turkey or other places. They are actually calling for a united Iran and they're calling for the Crown Prince to return. So all these other ethnic groups and other religious groups are getting together. So ironically the IRGC have united them. But again, as I mentioned, it's very different to the situation in Iraq. But it's the liberal mainstream media that are not helping the situation. They continue to spread this propaganda. And for example, CNN and many others have been calling it economic protests when it's an actual uprising. They're literally calling for the overthrow of the regime, but at least they're calling it something compared to certain other people, the self appointed queens of expertise like Candace Owens who are saying that there are no protests, there is no uprising, it's just a style by the Jews. She literally said that yesterday and that is embarrassing. There are millions of people in Iran who are currently under occupation. Tens of thousands have been killed. At least thousands have been killed. And apparently it's just the Jews. But right now people in Iran have called for the support of both the Crown Prince as their leader and the President of the United States. It's different to 10 years ago. If you had told me five years ago, 10 years ago, would you like the US to get involved? I would have said probably not. Because you need the consent of the public. You need that consensus. And they know. They don't really want boots on the ground. They don't want to put US Soldiers at risk. You simply need to have a strategic, precise, targeted attack similar to when recently they picked up Maduro. That's why.
- [10:25]
Andrew
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- [12:27]
Blake
A lot more questions for our guests. And we were talking a lot about the Shah going in. You're saying, you were saying that there's large, there's actually almost unanimous support for the shot. But I guess my first question is, what does that actually mean? Because my understanding is that Reza Pahlavi has basically just said, I'm willing to be a constitutional monarch. And so then what would that mean? Could we get Islamist parties running in the election who would then act on his behalf? Or is there any, is there a platform that exists other than reinstall this old monarch?
- [13:03]
Maya Tusi
Well, that's a very good question, actually, because their propaganda has been for decades and especially recently that, oh, you can't bring back the king because that's absolute monarchy, that's dictatorship. Not really. This is the 21st century. It works in Britain, more modern Britain, technically a constitutional monarchy and actually having parliamentary democracy. And it's going to work in Iran because these two countries have had the history and the heritage. If I were to create a new country from scratch, I'll probably create more of an American model with the constitution and everything else, because the republican America has the good checks and balances. But in those cultures, constitutional monarchy works. And your question is actually very important because what is the limits? Because the Crown Prince, his values are liberal democracy and, of course, freedom and free speech. Does that have to be a line when it comes to certain groups or ideologies being restricted, or do you just allow it to happen? So my personal opinion is that it's a very gray area because, yes, my instinct would say, yeah, probably ban the radical communists and ban Islamists, radical Islamists from having a party. But then doesn't that create a bigger problem in terms of underground movements? But I don't really think there's any problem overall in the cultures like Iran, they don't really have Islamist problems and they don't really have communist problems. They are socialists like any other country. And generally speaking, the culture, obviously around third degree of Iran are Muslim, practicing Muslim, and they're all Shia. They're not necessarily isis, Al Qaeda, apologies for the connection, by the way. And so I'm not really afraid of that. But I think if you're going to go with liberal democracy, you're just going to have to allow people to have the freedom to set up their parties and basically have the checks and balances to ensure that the monarch prevents anybody from becoming a tyrant.
- [14:49]
Andrew
So Mayra Tusi FOUNDER OF TUSI TV thank you again, this has been a fascinating discussion. I have a kind of a pointed question. I'm just going to preface at the top. So we had Elika Laban on, another Iranian, perhaps you know her. And she stated to us that the protests will be successful only with outside intervention. It felt like a direct pitch for American intervention. I, you know, am American, I'm born here, raised here, probably gonna die here. My kids are born here. I care about America. Okay? And forgive me if I have not heard this story before. And it feels like we perhaps there is a propaganda or a messaging campaign going on that wants to sort of lead us down the path of another foreign intervention. Now I've heard you say that this is different. This is not like Libya, this is not like Iraq. And I actually do believe you and I actually am convinced of that, that Iran is different. I support economic warfare to bring down the regime. I support moral support from afar. How am I to interpret these signals though that we are perhaps getting dog walked into another foreign conflict in the Middle east when we have our own problems here at home? And what would your ask of the United States be?
- [16:07]
Maya Tusi
Yes, well, the Americans should put America first and you should not really get dragged into different walls. And as I said, I'm not advocating for the US troops to put boots on the ground. Iranians are not asking that either. This is not Iraq in 2003. On the one hand, on a more kind of personal, emotional level, I would say in my own subjective opinion, well, the US government in 79 with Jimmy Carter caused this chaos. Not necessarily just for the Iranians, for themselves and for the region. You create instability and an enemy. It will be nice if you could fix it for yourself at least. But you don't have to directly do regime change because the people are ready to finish the job. Right now the priority is just stop the killings and paralyze the regime. And the hope is that those inside the Iranian military who are saying they are defecting, they can defect and they can continue and finish the revolution. That is a priority. I'm not asking for President Trump to come in and take over Iran and force them to change their regime, simply help the people to finish the job that they want to do. Because whether we like it or not, this is the American empire and the United States is the world police. It doesn't have to mean that the American soldiers lives should be at risk every single day. Doesn't mean the Americans have to be involved with every war. But if America is not keeping an Eye on the world. The Chinese will.
- [17:26]
Blake
Well, so one quick question and we're nearing the end here, so you can make a quick response. But if you say our goal is to stop the killings, what would be the military strike America could do that would stop the killings? Is there a particular place, Is there a particular target?
- [17:40]
Maya Tusi
Well, the President has been presented with about 50 targets apparently. I'm not really sure exactly what specific targets they have overall. You obviously have a lot of IRGC bases, you have a lot of government buildings, you have the actual generals and CIA know where they are. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is currently in a bunker in east of Iran in Tabas. So if they go for those things and, or if they could pick up Khamenei and give him an Uber Lyft like with Maduro, that would be nice. But because he has to face justice, he has to actually stand on trial, just like the National Socialists did in Germany. But if you paralyze the actual irgc, we believe that there are people in the military, the actual military, the army of Iran, who are ready to take control until the Crown Prince returns to his country and then they can have a referendum on their future constitution.
- [18:34]
Andrew
Well, fair enough. I mean, you know, listen, the President to your point, has been presented a suite of options, from diplomatic options to military options. And listen, we stand with the people of Iran. We would love to correct the wrong of 1979 and have an Iran that we can work with and that was welcomed back into the international community. Those things are all. We're completely in agreement. We'll see what happens. The position of this show is we've learned to trust Trump's instincts on some of these things. So thank you for joining us. Thank you for that analysis. It was very, very fascinating. Think about it. Every single dollar you spend is either supporting your values or working against them. In today's economy, where you spend your money, it really matters. And that's how we take back our country. Patriot Mobile is leading the way as America's only Christian conservative wireless provider. And you can switch today without sacrificing quality or service. You'll get exceptional nationwide coverage because unlike most budget wireless providers, Patriot Mobile has access to all three major networks. Or you can do what I do and you can add two numbers on two different networks on one phone, something the big guys can't even do. So stay connected with flexible unlimited data plans to fit your lifestyle. And get high speed data, mobile hotspots, international roaming, device protection and even Internet backup. Here's the best part. When you switch to Patriot Mobile, you're supporting faith, family and freedom. You're supporting a company that supports you and supports this show, supports Turning Point usa. If you believe in our first and second amendment rights, the sanctity of life and supporting our veterans, this is where you belong. Switching is simple. Keep your number, keep your phone or Upgrade. Patriot Mobile's 100% US based team will get you activated in minutes.
- [20:16]
Charlie Kirk
Call 972 Patriot today or go to patriotmobile.com Charlie. Use promo code Charlie for a free month of service. That's patriotmobile.com Charlie or call 972 Patriot and make the switch. Today.
- [20:30]
Andrew
We are honored by an in studio guest and that is Kelly Lefler, 28th administrator. I always love that administrator of this Small Business Administration. So sba and we were joking because we call you. Change the titles. Yeah.
- [20:46]
Blake
Do we call you Administrator Lefler?
- [20:48]
Kelly Loeffler
Well, you can call me Kelly. That's my Twitter handle, sba. Kelly, I'm so honored to serve in the Trump administration. I don't care what my title is as long as I'm a part of it.
- [20:58]
Andrew
Yeah, well, I was.
- [20:59]
Kelly Loeffler
Tommy. Kelly.
- [20:59]
Andrew
I was struggling, Kelly. I was struggling about this with Lee Zeldin yesterday, who's the administrator of the epa. And I was like, lee. I just kinda. We defaulted to calling him Lee anyways.
- [21:11]
Kelly Loeffler
They might as well call us bureaucrats.
- [21:13]
Andrew
I know, right?
- [21:13]
Blake
Thanks for joining us.
- [21:16]
Andrew
So, Kelly Loeffler, former senator, you have a rich history in the state of Georgia. You are now in the Trump administration. But we were joking. I think the best place to start for our audience is for you to just describe what the Small Business Administration does.
- [21:33]
Kelly Loeffler
Well, you're right, Andrew. As we were talking, a lot of people don't know the Small Business Administration is essentially a public private partnership. We're not giving grants out to small businesses. We're providing a government guarantee on commercial loans for your local community banker to have the incentive to make that loan to a startup business to help that community have flourishing. Small businesses have an ecosystem of startups and expansion and that goes into even manufacturing. Most manufacturers in America meet the small business threshold.
- [22:07]
Andrew
What is the threshold?
- [22:08]
Kelly Loeffler
Well, it depends on your industry. But for manufacturing, you can have up to 1500 employees as long as you're not over the net worth level. And that's why 98% of America's manufacturers qualify as small businesses. I just came from a great small business manufacturing startup in Tempe just down the road. And this is the heartbeat of America. And you've got everything coming, bringing to bear there, from the capital that SBA provided for this facility to the skilled workforce. You know, I met some of the contractors there in hard hats. And this is what it's all about in the Trump administration. His economic agenda is going to create more and more of that. That's why we set a record in 2025 of putting out 85,000 small business loans totaling $45 billion. The economic multiplier effect of getting $85 billion out is huge in the economy.
- [23:00]
Andrew
Well, there's also a trade deficit. This is a lot of news this morning. So the US Trade deficit is at one of its lowest points in at least recent memory, last couple decades. You put up a tweet here, 370. The trade deficit has reached its lowest level in nearly two decades, while our exports hit a record high of 302 billion. Do so. President Trump's fair trade policy is restoring America's industrial dominance and strength. So obviously we have much further to go. But, you know, and then we've got this tariff question that is looming. The Supreme Court's gonna rule on that. I do believe even just we had John Carney on Breitbart, economics editor there, saying that even if the Supreme Court rules against this, there's other levels, levers the Trump administration could pool to still, you know, enact tariffs because they are powerful. How have you seen those play out with small businesses? Because, you know, some small businesses are probably going to see a negative impact, but a lot are going to see a positive impact.
- [23:57]
Kelly Loeffler
Absolutely. I mean, I've crossed this country from Alaska to Maine, walking factory floors, talking to builders, entrepreneurs. Look, when you hear the word tariff, think fair trade. And that's what this country has not had. And I am just grateful for President Trump for his courage and his vision to believe in American industry to help us re industrialize. And you look at every part of the Trump economic agenda, from tax cuts to deregulation to generating a skilled workforce and those incentives to get back in the workforce, and you see the building of this boom on top of the $18 trillion coming in. So, look, tariffs are just one piece of it, but they're an important piece that we haven't had. And everyone forgets that Biden had a Rose Garden ceremony adding tariffs to China during his term that the Democrats never.
- [24:48]
Andrew
Well, it felt like this crazy scenario where America was just willing to get fleeced in countless ways because we had almost this guilt about being the richest, most powerful nation. So we didn't feel that we had the moral standing to exert our force to benefit our own people. So we just let everybody else have trade barriers to us. We let everybody else bilk off the American military. And President Trump has revolutionized balancing those relationships. I've been completely in favor of President Trump's tariff agenda from the start. I think, Blake, you've had some questions. This is typically the yin and yang that we play here on the show. Blake's the contrarian. I'm sort of like, more on board with what. Normie, you're the narrative acceptor. I am. Okay, listen. Okay. All right. Now, we're gonna get into debate here in front of Kelly, and I don't want to do that to her. But here's the thing, though. I do agree with that. But then. And so SBA is this engine sort of behind the scenes, providing capital, taking some of the risk out of these capital arrangements with riskier small business startups. But then there's this other side of it that you've inherited, where there is fraud that you are uncovering. Now, we're talking about Somali fraud. We're talking about foreigners coming in again, bilking off the system. What have you uncovered? What are you investigating right now?
- [26:06]
Kelly Loeffler
Well, that's right. I mean, from day one, we came in and I said, I will have a zero tolerance policy on fraud. We convened a task force right away. I called for an audit of the agency. The agency hadn't passed an audit in four years. And President Trump likes to say, you're the biggest bank in the country. Well, guess what? The biggest bank in the country is going to finally have an audit where we're accountable for the shortcomings. That includes investigating fraud.
- [26:28]
Blake
We need a number on this.
- [26:30]
Maya Tusi
Yeah.
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Andrew
Headline right here. SBA investigating 1.2 trillion. That is with a T. We've seen a lot of B's floating around with Somali fraud. Nine, 19 billion, whatever the number.
- [26:40]
Blake
And to give a number on suspected fraud, specifically their internal watch in 2023. So this is Biden era. They said about estimated $200 billion in potential fraud with the PPP loans.
- [26:53]
Andrew
Was that all run through SBA?
- [26:55]
Kelly Loeffler
It was. That's the 1.2 trillion that ran through SBA during COVID while our own OIG said that about 200 trillion billion was marked as fraudulent. And guess what the Biden administration did. They started forgiving it, sweeping it under the rug. Exactly right, Blake. And so we came in and said, we're going back. We're looking at it all. And that's what we did when it came to Minnesota. As soon as that came on the radar, I asked the team to dig through the Minnesota loans. They immediately found about 7,000 borrowers, 400 million in fraudulent loans in Minnesota alone. That tells you that there are billions and billions of out the door fraudulently to thousands that should never touch SBA services again. And they need to be referred to the doj. And that's what we're doing.
- [27:37]
Andrew
Are these mostly Somali networks or is it kind of across the board or.
- [27:41]
Kelly Loeffler
It's widespread. We're investigating further to see how systemic it is because the level of fraud is almost organized, and I've called it organized crime in some cases. And we need to look across all government programs and see where people are systemically defrauding the government.
- [27:59]
Blake
The thing that stands out about this, which is if you or I were to say, okay, I want to scam Medicaid and you just went to 20 people we know and said, hey, I have an idea to scam Medicaid, one, a lot I think would say no. I think they'd all say no. And some of them might say, I'm going to call the police. I think this is a crime. Well, and what you have some communities that we've voluntarily brought into our country where that's just not the natural reaction, where they'll either 100% say nothing or a lot of them will help you.
- [28:26]
Andrew
Well, because they don't feel culturally tied or their heritage is not tied to the proud culture.
- [28:32]
Blake
It's wrong to scam your cousin or your brother, but not to scam the government.
- [28:35]
Andrew
And to your point, I totally agree that it is organized because, you know, we think of organized crime as the Italian Mafia, but so often it's these.
- [28:43]
Blake
An immigrant cabal.
- [28:45]
Andrew
Well, yes, exactly. But that's, you know, those are the movies and, you know, it's been sensationalized. But so often it's just more subtle than that. It's a cousin calling a cousin saying, here, listen, I figured out this way, you should go set up your own, you know, childcare center over here. You should do this. Or listen, we found a way to smuggle all this money back to Somalia. It's more subtle, it's less dramatic, less, you know, movie Hollywood, but it's massively insidious and widespread.
- [29:11]
Kelly Loeffler
Well, especially when there's no oversight. And so we are going to go state by state and look for those states like Minnesota, that really, as their largest expenditure is welfare. And in the federal government, I'm talking that's at the state level. In the federal government, we operate about a trillion dollars worth of welfare programs across 80 unique systems. And so we really need to have a hard look at that. And that's what's great about the working families tax cut that was passed this year. There's a lot of verification that's now required. There's work requirements. We're going to start cracking down on this very systemically ourselves, because we can't trust the states to do it, particularly those like California, Illinois, Minnesota and others who've shown a willful disdain for taxpayer dollars. By the way, small businesses are some of the biggest taxpayers. And so that's part of my advocacy, is to say I'm going to make sure these programs are to deserving job creators on Main Street.
- [30:03]
Andrew
Yeah, it's like you know them when you see them. You know, the real deal companies that should be getting the backing of the SBA. And here's President Trump just having your back here. Cut. 313. He's suspending SBA loans. It sounds like it. Specifically with scammers in Minnesota.
- [30:20]
Donald Trump
313We have also suspended nearly 8,000 SBA loans, Small Business association loans, two suspected scammers in Minnesota, of which there are many. It's a great state. It was a great state. Now it's getting destroyed by that stupid governor. What a stupid guy he is, but he's a crook. I mean, he's a incompetent guy, but he's a crook. He allowed this to go. You can't have, you can't have corruption on a scale that nobody's ever seen before. And you're sitting as a governor and you don't know what's going on. It's impossible.
- [30:54]
Andrew
Even though he's a stupid guy, it's a really important. You know, I love this about President Trump that he gets. His instincts are almost always right. So when you guys are at the sba, are working on rooting out this fraud, auditing it, this task force, have you gotten any cooperation from the state of Minnesota?
- [31:14]
Kelly Loeffler
Well, of course not. And we've even had other state governors attack us for looking into Minnesota. So that tells you it lays another pretty strong trail of breadcrumbs, and we're going to continue to do that. The president has been right about everything. He's right about fraud. And we're going to continue to do it because first of all, it's right for the taxpayers. And second of all, it's creating an incentive system, when it goes unchecked, to do it even more. So imagine that if 20%, as treasury secretary, Besant said 20% of all these programs are fraudulent. Someday it could become 30% of an even larger number because these programs continue to grow.
- [31:52]
Andrew
Well, in Covid, really, I mean, Blake, you know, calling me the normie. Blake was actually the guy that during some of the aftermath of COVID and these loans that went out and these scam artists that would set up like a transportation company and it was like, I mean, this became a meme online because you could all spot it, how it was, you know, what it was, what it looked like.
- [32:11]
Blake
You could find obvious scam businesses. One employee very recently created and consulting a leering center.
- [32:19]
Andrew
Leering center, exactly. Yeah. And so Covid unleashed a lot of this. And I think you're completely right, Administrator Lefler.
- [32:26]
Kelly Loeffler
Kelly.
- [32:27]
Andrew
Kelly. That when you do not police this, you're only going to incentivize the creation of more and more and more fraud.
- [32:33]
Kelly Loeffler
Well, and that's our commitment to small businesses and taxpayers is that we're just getting started. We're not letting up. We're not like dusting off our hands and saying we've sent it over to the doj. This has given us a playbook, really, a blueprint of how we go state by state now and how we handle this. This needs to become expertise of the government is tracking down fraud.
- [32:52]
Andrew
Well, I'm going to be saying prayers for you when you start cracking the books on California and New York.
- [33:00]
Lane Schoenberger
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- [33:20]
Charlie Kirk
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- [34:09]
Andrew
We are joined by Kelly Leffler. She's the administrator of the Small Business Administration which is the biggest bank in the country. People don't realize just how much power the SBA wields to help the economy. And now you're rooting out fraud. Blake has a really good question though about a certain variety of loans and other.
- [34:28]
Blake
Yeah, another part of your portfolio. So there is, it's not super famous but it's called 8A certification. It means basically being certified as a disadvantaged firm as someone say minority owned but can also be women owned or certain other groupings and it makes you eligible for favorable federal treatment. And it's getting noticed by a lot of people, especially online. This is a vector the federal government has used for, let's just call it DEI or as we say on the show, anti white discrimination. Anti white male discrimination. And, and my understanding is this does still exist within the sba. So could you talk to us a bit about that?
- [35:07]
Kelly Loeffler
Blake, you're right. Now let's just level set on what small businesses. It makes up 99% of all businesses in this country. And under President Trump we have a record 36 million. There's a group of small businesses that are under statute entitled to about 5% statutorily of federal contracting. So small business businesses that are socially and economically disadvantaged. Well under Biden they tripled that target to 15% and it created a big vacuum for veteran owned businesses to get federal contracts. Well what we found in that was it was a front for Shell and pass through companies to put someone in front of the business and say that they were a small business, that they were socially and economically. They self certified that they were disadvantaged and then they were able to get these huge contracts. Now when Kamala was searching out root causes, she put of immigration, illegal immigration. She put a $700 million contract out and it ended up coming through bribery. The DOJ is investigating it through an 8A program. Now that's not a small business that does a $700 million contract.
- [36:13]
Blake
And there's other ones. I remember, I think when that hurricane hit Puerto Rico a decade ago, there was an issue where they hired like a one. It was a, I think a black woman owned a company to supply like 50,000 meals to the island. And that was a disaster and it never happened. And I have, I've personally had friends who have Set up a business to get a government contract where they just cut in a guy who was part Native American or something and said, you get 51% of it, we'll do the work. We get our cut, you get your cut. It just seems to clearly incentivize that. And so. So I guess, as you say, Congress requires this to exist, but they don't.
- [36:48]
Kelly Loeffler
Require it to be rife with abuse. It has never been audited in its 45 year history. It came in under Carter. We are conducting the first audit in 45 years. And what we've already found is a lot of malfeasance, a lot of fraud. We're going to get to the bottom of it. We're going to clean up the program and make sure deserving entrepreneurs get these opportunities.
- [37:09]
Andrew
So this brings up this. It's been percolating, bubbling up a little bit because of all this fraud. And this is a reintroduction of this conversation about Doge. I thought Doge was amazing. Charlie always loved Doge because it changed the culture and the focus in D.C. to actually start rooting some of this stuff out. But then you have this falling out between Elon Musk, even Elon and Scott Besant, and it got all messy. We acknowledge that. But there is a coming back together. I mean, Pete Hegset just announced a partnership with Grok and Xai. So what is going on with Doge? How would you guys at SBA use it? How did you use it? And can we reignite this culture to root out some of this fraud?
- [37:52]
Charlie Kirk
Yeah.
- [37:52]
Kelly Loeffler
Doge was incredibly important in kicking off what is accountability in government. It helped us facilitate a lot of the changes that we made very, very quickly. And the mindset remains in this administration, which is. Right. Sizing the government. We've cut our agency by 52% in terms of headcount, 30% by spending in just the first year. And we've done more business than ever. That is a Doge mindset and that's what we have to continue to have. I hope that it will stay within every agency in terms of what they look at is data. We simply go through and look at the data and accountability. Who's doing what and what are the.
- [38:30]
Andrew
Results now, is Palantir involved in this? Well, I know there's been a lot of, like, there's a lot of weird theories about conspiracies around Palantir. Basically what Palantir is as far as far as I understand. Send us your emails. Freedom. Charliekirk.com if you think I'm wrong. It's basically getting databases to talk to one another. So you cross reference different agencies and what they know and you can root out fraud that way, which seems very common sense to me.
- [38:52]
Kelly Loeffler
I actually independently brought on Palantir because this scale of the fraud that we're looking at is so vital that we use AI, that we are data driven in our analytics. And then we have this support externally because there's a lot of resistance internally to. Right. Sizing the federal government and tracking down fraud.
- [39:10]
Andrew
How big is your staff?
- [39:12]
Kelly Loeffler
Well, we've gone from about 8,000 to about 4,000 now.
- [39:15]
Andrew
Wow.
- [39:16]
Kelly Loeffler
So we do more with less. We're like a small business. We're very efficient to have the economic impact that we do. We estimate it's about a trillion dollars annually. When you take a leverage impact of putting out 100 billion a year, I should say a trillion dollars over the four year term of President Trump. And it's meaningful on Main street because small businesses create two out of every three new jobs.
- [39:38]
Andrew
Wow. I mean, I'll just be honest. I'm sort of sitting here feeling educated. I hope the audience is getting a lot out of this cuz I candidly didn't fixate on SBA that much. I didn't think about it that much, but it's apparent. I mean, if Trump's calling you the biggest bank in the country, that says a lot.
- [39:54]
Blake
He knows banks.
- [39:54]
Andrew
He knows banks.
- [39:55]
Kelly Loeffler
I think he's being kind, but I think he knows how important small business and Main street is. He always says to me, Kelly, small business is big business. He loves our job creators. Like I said, I just came from a construction site. Hard hats and everything. These are the people who make this country great. And we've got to support them and get big government out of the way and get back to supporting free enterprise.
- [40:15]
Andrew
Well, in this, ridding it of this DEI stuff, this anti white garbage, ridding of it of the fraud. I mentioned Scott Besant before. Let's go ahead and play this. I think this is from yesterday, the day before. He's talking about how much fraud we're dealing with. 384.
- [40:30]
Scott Besant
We are going to hold people accountable. We're going to press this to the full extent possible for American taxpayers, for American families. The gao, the General Accounting Office believes that there is somewhere between 3 and 600 billion of annual fraud. Roughly 10% of government spending that disappears due to fraud. If we can recapture that, that is 1 to 2% of GDP.
- [41:01]
Andrew
So Kelly, let's end this where Scott ended this. Economics. The economy it's rip roaring. But Scott has also said we were setting the table in 2025. This year we get to enjoy the feast and the banquet. Are you seeing that?
- [41:15]
Kelly Loeffler
Absolutely. I see it every day. I mean, the Trump economic agenda is rocket fuel for Main street, for this country. We see GDP growth, we see wage growth, inflation coming down, interest rates coming down. These factors together with deregulating is making sure that this economy is primed for 2026 and beyond. We're just getting started. $18 trillion pouring into this country and investment. We've never seen anything like it.
- [41:38]
Andrew
Yeah. And all the data centers, the AI, the crypto, the small businesses. And by the way, if you're deploying capital more efficiently to better operators and you're getting rid of this DEI garbage, you're going to end up getting a bigger multiplier force multiplier on the backside. It's going to have a bigger economic impact. Well, we're running out of time. I feel like I could keep talking about it for a long time, Kelly, but thank you for joining us. It's been an honor to have you in the studio. Thanks for visiting Phoenix and doing all this great work for the administration.
- [42:06]
Kelly Loeffler
Thank you both.
- [42:13]
Blake
For more on many of these stories.
- [42:15]
Andrew
And news you can Trust, go to charliekirk.com.