[Music] Chris Cuomo here welcome to news Nation what's right is right everybody wants to see less waste Fraud and Abuse in government we hear it from every politician asking for power they just don't deliver and it should be easy estimates of what they call in politics WFA that's how common it is it has its own acronym waste Fraud and Abuse the estimates are wild Reports say anywhere from 100 to$ 500 billion another estimate says five % of all Global funding by the federal government is wasted the OM the Office of Management and budget just reported
that in 2022 the government spent 247 BBB billion in improper payments what does that mean payments made an error duplicate or without proper basis the GAO the government accountability office which both sides rely on for government research has a high alert list of programs and areas that need to be checked the Department of Defense Medicare the prison system food safety cyber security they're all there major concerns of mismanagement and waste Fraud and Abuse but I have suspicions about what we're seeing here early on and increasingly they are Justified now that list I just told you
the high alert list that the GAO does do you know what's not on that priority list usaid why well one it's relatively small it's less than 1% of the federal budget and by the way its share of the budget has shrunk since Reagan so it's not like it's rapidly growing I'm not saying there isn't waste there and the more you find the better I'm on board and it's got a $44 billion budget but that's nothing compared to the people on this list Health and Human Services 2.4 trillion Department of Defense 1.3 trillion this is in
one year usad is not Aid is not even in the top 10 it's not even close and guess what we spend more on federal prisons than we do on foreign aid every year think about that on federal prisons more than on foreign aid think about it so again I can't think of a reason to be against efficiency efforts but why start with usaid and I think the answer is about who's looking and that's Elon Musk now the first reason is from what I can glean is it's low fruit it's easy usaid isn't attached to a
big dog like Lockheed Martin or AT&T or Microsoft all of whom feed at the government trough way more than usaid and those companies have had real issues with hacking and cost overruns which I'll tell you in a second and then I got suspicious because this magga pod Bros story that broke of course on Twitter falsely claiming that usaid was funding Politico and other outlets with these huge amounts they never break things that are correct and sure enough it wasn't correct USA wasn't feeding them in these huge amounts as suggested so why did they get fed
this story and by whom again I think it points to Elon Musk and so then we started doing more reporting and guess what comes out did you know that Elon Musk is one of the entities benefiting from usaid thousands of Starling terminals from musk satellite internet company provided to Ukraine we all know the story right didn't you think he gave them all turns out he didn't but it did give access to musk's Advanced Internet system to people who needed it now problem with that promise is he said only Ukraine would have access not Russia but
now there's evidence and allegations that Russians did have access their military so what did usaid do they opened an investigation into Elon Musk this past September you didn't know that did you usaid paid political only 40 Grand in US subscriptions in 2023 2024 you want to end them fine the whole entire federal government paid political 8 million for subscriptions in 2024 and by the way a lot of Republicans were on their list of subscribers but again you want to get rid of it fine guess how much musk got from usaid after saying he was donating
the terminals he didn't donate all of them usaid had to buy over 1,300 of them at $1,500 a piece and the weird thing is the terminals retail for $600 musk made over 2 million in that deal from usaid why didn't he donate all of them why wasn't it disclosed that he's being investigated in connection with that and how can it not have something to do with why he picked them first shouldn't he have to at least explain if it's a personal beef or something he learned about the agency while dealing with them if you're not
going to go after the big dogs you're going to go after low fruit that's a fraction of the problem and you have this problem with them and an obvious conflict of interest this is why I say musk should have been vetted not because I love process I love bureaucracy no but because you want to make sure you have the right person doing the job because why aren't you going after the real alligators in the swamp was just announced by a watchdog group that the Department of Defense is going to now pay Lockheed Martin 2 trillion
for the F-35 lightning 2 program the fighter jet was supposed to be 200 billion in the early 2000s talk about waste and abuse why why so much why do we need it that much this Watchdog group cited the government's inability to control costs as the reason so why don't you start there last year the DHS awarded AT&T 150 million contract for 5G services but guess what they get the contract and then all of a sudden we learn the story that all of their customers data was stolen in a hack in 2022 including dozens of federal
agencies why don't you look into that contract the dod spends hundreds of millions in IT services from Microsoft they've been plagued by high-profile hacks by China and Russia on their federal government computer network why don't you look into that give it to somebody else they're getting hacked they're losing our information they're getting billions and trillions so I like the mission but I have questions you remember that om memo that Trump issued that paused trillions in federal grants and financial assistance and it had to be rescinded a recent report found that nonprofits and Healthcare Providers are
struggling to maintain their operations because of these freezes and they help real people who need real help people with disabilities the Head Start programs Youth Care and hospitals I know I know I'm not saying that Trump means to punish these people I'm sure he doesn't want these things to happen but it is what happens when you go too fast and you cut too much with someone who doesn't know what they're doing mus is a genius he does amazing things I had a Tesla I get SpaceX I think it's amazing starlink is amazing what they're doing
with healthc care is amazing but who says he's got this way of doing efficiency we don't know that and we don't know much about him and his relationships with the government and it's a mistake he's got this anonymous group of minions one of whom was just exposed as having access to our Treasury Department data while also being a fan of eugenics and other racist tropes who else is he connected to look it's got to be about results and demanding action I say here every night talk is easy you got to walk the walk the right
way and I'm going to keep paying attention for you because this is starting off in a way that may be well-intentioned but it's getting increasingly suspicious hey thanks for watching go to join nn.com to find news Nation on your screen and don't forget click the red subscribe button below to get more of news nation's fact- driven unbiased coverage
