The Tucker Carlson Show
Sen. Ron Johnson: What’s Really in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” and Uncovering the Truth About 9-11
Wed, 28 May 2025
Here’s what happened when Sen. Ron Johnson started to ask forbidden questions about 9-11, the COVID vax and America’s looming bankruptcy. (00:00) Introduction (01:19) How Financially Ignorant Is Congress? (09:05) What Happens if the Current Spending Trajectory Continues? (16:34) Are We in a Debt Crisis? (30:29) What Would Happen if We Fall Into a Massive Debt Crisis? (35:09) The Truth About the “Big Beautiful Bill” Paid partnerships with: Levels: Get 2 free months on annual membership at https://Levels.Link/Tucker ExpressVPN: Go to https://ExpressVPN.com/Tucker and find out how you can get 4 months of ExpressVPN free! XX-XY Athletics: Use code TUCKER25 for 25% off at https://thetruthfits.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What questions did Sen. Ron Johnson raise about 9-11?
You tried the other day to raise science-based questions about 9-11, and you asked, Building 7 was never hit by a plane. Why did it fall down in exactly the same way the first two towers did?
Chapter 2: How financially ignorant is Congress?
156 witnesses, you know, first responders saying they heard explosions before the buildings came down. There was never a steel building that ever collapsed because of a fire.
The vaccine injured. So these would be American citizens who obeyed their government and took a shot that they were required to take and then were injured by or killed by that shot.
To date worldwide, there's over 38,000 deaths associated with COVID vaccine. 24% of those to date either occur on the date of vaccination or within one or two days. We're right now burning about a half a trillion dollars a quarter just to get us by into next year. That should shock everybody. That's my whole purpose here. We haven't talked about the numbers.
We haven't put this in context of the big mess we're in, the deep hole we've dug ourselves. And I'm just going to force that debate.
So you told me something that made me laugh at breakfast in a dark way, which is that none of or very few of the people you work with, your colleagues, whose job it is to appropriate money to run the U.S. government, have any idea how much they're appropriating. They don't know what the numbers are. Can you walk us through a description of the ignorance of Congress when it comes to numbers?
So you want me to throw my colleagues under the bus?
It was just like, I was amazed by what you told me.
Of the dollars they appropriate, they know that. But that's only 25% of the budget. The story I told you at breakfast is a couple of years ago. This was after the COVID spending spree, but we continued on that spending spree. We were in the midst of an omnibus spending debate. And this is where McConnell was doing a deal with Schumer on a massive omnibus spending bill.
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Chapter 3: What happens if the current spending trajectory continues?
And we were going to violate, for the first time, our conference's position on earmarks. You know, our conference's position is we do not accept earmarks. All of a sudden, the Republican Senate is going to be accepting earmarks. So... I got up in front of the group. I'm generally the skunk in the room or the kid who says the emperor has no clothes.
I just asked my colleagues, hey, anybody know how much we spent last year in total? Dead silence. I went out to the Washington press corps. By which you meant what we spent last year. In total, the federal government, what the federal government spent in total. Just the bottom line number. If anybody knew, they didn't volunteer.
And I went out to the Washington Press Corps, asked them the same question. And one of the reporters said, well, it's over a trillion dollars. Now, that's just discretionary spending. That's about 25% of the budget. I mean, total spending. The answer is, I think, $6.3 trillion. Understand, the federal government is the largest financial entity in the world.
We, in theory, are the 535 members of the board of directors. And nobody really knows in total how much the federal government spent because we never talk about it. And... As that relates to the current— What a weird thing not to talk about, since that's your job. But that's how it's been set up. Discretionary, which we appropriate, and then mandatory. That just gets spent.
It's on automatic pilot. So it's out of sight, it's out of mind, and it's completely out of control.
May I ask how that works? So I thought the Constitution gave the Congress the responsibility, the duty, to appropriate the money. Yeah.
So Congress has written laws like the Social Security law, then Medicare and Medicaid, and they call those entitlements. So they're not annually appropriated. It's just you set up a law saying if you qualify, you get X number of dollars. So it's on automatic pilot.
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Chapter 4: Are we in a debt crisis?
And there's no cap on that spending?
No, none. You qualify, you get it. So whatever it takes. What has happened over the years is in addition to Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, they've slid what should be, in my mind, discretionary spending into mandatory. And so I'm the guy that pointed out the conference.
Again, do you guys realize in 2019, other mandatory, again, not Social Security, not Medicare, not Medicaid, other mandatory, pretty well runs the gamut of other appropriation accounts. That was $642 billion. Last year, fiscal year 2024, that was $1.3 trillion. This year, it's a little over a trillion. And that's pretty much, as far as the eye can see, according to CBO, a trillion dollars.
So, again, total discretionary spending is about $1.7 trillion. But they've literally slid about a trillion dollars now ongoing of other mandatory or what should be discretionary into what they call now other mandatory spending. A trillion dollars. And I don't think anybody was really aware of that either.
So what's right now for 2025, or let's say 2024, what did the federal government spend total? So in 2019, total federal government spending was $4.4 trillion.
Yes. This year, we will spend over $7 trillion. So I remember somewhere around during the Obama administration, about when I got elected, 2010, 2011, we had our first trillion dollar a year deficit in 2009. You know, I think it was 1.4 trillion. And we stopped talking about hundreds of billions, which used to move the needle to now trillions.
You know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, it just doesn't seem that much. Yeah. $4,400 billion spent in 2019, $7,000 billion spent this year, projected to spend $7,300 billion next year. And now let's kind of bring this back to the debate that we're talking about on the one big beautiful bill.
Wait, may I just one more bottom line number? Okay, so we're going to spend over $7 trillion this year. How much do we take in in tax receipts every year?
6%.
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Chapter 5: What would happen if we fall into a massive debt crisis?
My guess is it's more than 50%. And, of course, that's the death knell of a democracy is when the population, the voting public, realizes they can vote themselves benefits at the expense of somebody else. And what they don't realize, the expenses, it's costing them all because the massive deficit spending, because we're not taking enough revenue to cover the expenditures.
That's what has eroded the value of our dollar. That's what caused 40-year high inflation. And that hurts everybody.
So you think that most, at this point, your guess is most Americans receive more from the federal government than they do?
From government levels. Again, I shouldn't even say because I haven't checked that figure. Yeah. My guess is probably more than 50%. I mean, when you consider all the entitlements, whether it's Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and people say, oh, that's my money. Well... In some cases, it is. Most people probably get more out of Social Security than they actually did put in.
Certainly do that out of Medicare, certainly out of Medicaid. Nobody puts any money into that. That all comes out of the general funds. So we have food stamps. We have all these trillions of dollars worth of transfer payments.
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Chapter 6: What is the truth about the 'Big Beautiful Bill'?
why is this not sustainable? You often hear it's not sustainable. What happens if it continues?
Well, again, when I ran in 2010, we'd just experienced our first deficits in excess of a trillion dollars. We were spending about $3.5 trillion a year, 3.5. So it's more than double just since 2010? Yeah, yes.
We were $14 trillion in debt.
I remember I announced in April of 2010, started my campaign in basically June 2010 doing parades. And what I would shout is this is a fight for freedom. We're mortgaging our children's future. It's wrong. It's immoral. It has to stop. That was my campaign theme. Again, we were $14 trillion in debt, spending $3.5 trillion. Now, we're almost $37 trillion in debt.
We're spending $7,000 billion, $7 trillion. And CBO projects... Over the next 10 years, we will add another $22 trillion to the debt. That's what our projected deficits over the next 10 years is, $22 trillion. Again, that's assuming about a $4 trillion increase because taxes are scheduled to automatically increase.
If those taxes don't increase, first of all, I'm not sure you get the full $4 trillion. But again, take $4 trillion away if we extend current tax law, which is I'm in favor of that. I don't want to increase anybody's taxes. But I don't think this is necessarily time to do additional tax cuts, particularly when those things aren't focused toward economic growth. But anyway, just real quick.
We are projecting deficits for the next 10 years of a minimum of $2.2 trillion. And I would argue that is a rosy scenario. And particularly when you take a look at what they've done with the one big, beautiful bill, they're not seriously reducing spending to what I've been calling for as a pre-pandemic level. Again, the danger is spouting out too many numbers here.
I just want to put this in perspective. President Obama, over the course of his eight years, his average deficit was $910 billion. Over the last, and I want to quickly do this so I'm accurate, over the last four years of his administration, it was about $550 billion, okay? So half a trillion dollar deficit over his last four years. President Trump came into office in his first three years
the average deficit was about $800 billion. So he bumped up Obama's four-year average from 550 to 800. Then COVID hit, and we had a deficit of $3.1 trillion just that one year. Now, what we should have done— In 2021, when Biden came into office, we should have returned to a reasonable pre-pandemic level. The pandemic was over.
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