CNN’s Michael Smerconish was having no part in a pitch by investment firm CEO James Fishback to create a “DOGE Dividend” for American taxpayers, with Smerconish comparing the plan to a “Ponzi scheme.”
In an at times bitter exchange on the Saturday morning broadcast of The Michael Smerconish Program, the CNN host invited Fishback to discuss a plan he claims came to him “in a dream.”
“How did this all come to pass?” Smerconish asked Fishback, the head of the Washington, D.C.-headquartered Azoria.
Fishback began by suggesting that Americans should receive 20 percent of all savings created by DOGE. Yet upon getting into the details of how such a proposal would work, Smerconish proffered that “at some level, isn’t it all illusory.”
“[American taxpayers] sent their money to D.C. to be spent in America, not to be abused, not to be disrespected and not to be defrauded,” Fishback curtly shot back. “That $20 million to Iraqi Sesame Street, that money sent for a transgender operations in Colombia—all at the same time, Michael, that we have roads and bridges crumbling.”
Smerconish applauded his guest’s “great soundbites,” but argued that “when you drill down,” much of US investment abroad over the past few decades has made sense in the bigger picture of maintaining soft power on the international stage.
Fishback interjected with, “Hold on, there was a terrorist attack in Iraq last month that killed 40 people,” continuing to rail against foreign development spending.
Then Smerconish shot back, “Well maybe the terrorists would have been better off watching Big Bird than learning in a madrasa.”
Joking aside, Smerconish said that America’s national debt really was where “the rubber hits the road” on Fishback’s “DOGE dividend” proposal.
“There is no money in the till!” protested Smerconish, alleging that the suggestion that federal cuts would free up money to be returned to taxpayers amounted to nothing short of a “Ponzi scheme” and an outright “fraud.”
Amid lots of back and forth between the two men, a visibly rattled Smerconish eventually exclaimed, “I never do this, I don’t wanna be that guy! But do I have to silence your microphone?”
