Jesse Ventura: “How on earth can we give out foreign aid?”

6/15/2009

Cody Willard: Former governor Jesse Ventura, author of “Don’t start the revolution without me” joins Eric and I now for “Trading Places”. Welcome back, governor, how are you doing?

Jesse Ventura: I’m doing pretty good. How are you guys doing today?

Cody Willard: We’re doing great. First things first with this: You know, the SEC is supposed to be making sure that contracts are always enforced and no one is fraudulent. The Fed is supposed to make sure that the banks aren’t all levered up ridiculously and risking too much money, and meanwhile the FDIC is supposed to be protecting depositors. None of that is happening but those laws are already there. Why are we changing anything?

Jesse Ventura: I don’t know, you know. I guess we’re distracted by all the wars we’re involved in, you know. Instead of taking care of the home front we’re looking around the world trying to police everything else going on in the world. I don’t have the answer for you.

Eric Bolling: So, governor, would you just suggest that we kind of put our hands up? It sounds very Libertarian. Can I put you in that bubble? You’re a Libertarian so you put your hands up and say, “Hey, you know, let the world deal with their problems, we’ll deal with ours?”

Jesse Ventura: In a way, yeah. You know I always find it kind of interesting. I saw a thing the other day on Egypt and they talked about how Egypt is second only to Israel in our foreign aid. And I sat back and looked and thought, “foreign aid?” Our country is totally in debt up to its neck, we’ve got problems up to Ying Yang here. How on earth do we give out foreign aid? I was only a governor so maybe that’s beyond me.

Cody Willard: Governor, that’s just it. I mean when we looked at that I actually wrote about this on CodyWillard.com today. The fact is that the magnitudes of the numbers are so astounding. For example, CitiGroup today is going to be working with the World Bank to invest $1.25 billion in the emerging markets. That’s welfare money that could be feeding kids three blocks down in the projects from CitiGroup’s headquarters.

Jesse Ventura: Well, it could be. You know I don’t know. I am one of these people that, like I said, we’ve got enough problems inside our own borders. Why don’t we focus on fixing the United States of America, fixing our infrastructure, fixing everything that needs to be done here?

Cody Willard: Governor, isn’t that sort of what they are saying they’re trying to do, but I come back to those rules and laws that we already have in place.

Jesse Ventura: But they still have foreign aid. Let me be simple. How can you have foreign aid? It’s like you individually, you house is mortgaged to the hilt, you’re going to lose it, it’s going to be repossessed. But uncle bob calls up and wants 500 bucks from you. How do we give out foreign aid? I’m baffled over that.

Eric Bolling: Where would you draw the line, tough? So we just cut off all foreign aid completely. There would be starving people in countries that are developing?

Jesse Ventura: Why not? Why don’t we cut off foreign aid and why don’t we bring all our troops home? That would be a good start.

Cody Willard: So governor, have you seen any of these details from Timothy Geithner who I actually thought was one of the guys in charge of the Federal Reserve when all of this stuff was happening. And he is saying that he needs more authority in order to actually carry out the regulations that he’s creating now or something.

Jesse Ventura: Well, you know, I don’t think anyone truly knows what they’re doing. I can’t sit here and tell you and look you in the eye and say what they’re doing is correct. I don’t know. I think it’s a roll of the dice. I think they grabbed the dice, they rolled it, they’re hopping a seven comes up and nobody else seems to have any alternative. Because let’s remember, George Bush started the bailouts. He was the first to do it, the Republicans voted for it. Then when Barack Obama does bailouts, I notice the Republicans now don’t vote for it. So it shows me the two parties are still making decisions based upon party power and maybe not what’s good for the country as a whole.

Eric Bolling: Jesse, real quickly because we’re running out of time, you’re okay with welfare to our own starving people in this country?

Jesse Ventura: Well, I’m alright with a safety net of welfare. I think that we’re a rich country and we should always look after our poor people and try to give them a boost up so that they can become contributing citizens. I think when you really judge a country, judge a country by its poor. When you look at a country look at its poor and that will tell you how successful the country is.

Cody Willard: Thank you so much for joining us once again, Governor Jesse Ventura.