‘Do I Have To Silence Your Mic?!’ CNN Host Gets Fed Up With DOGE Expert’s Interruptions

CNN host Michael Smerconish got fed up with DOGE expert James Fishback’s interruptions and threatened to cut his mic — but with a smile on his face.

The Trump-Musk Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) steamroller has come to dominate the discussion of Trump’s first month in office — with a new wrinkle being added this week. Trump and Musk are now floating a 20 percent “DOGE Dividend” check to be sent to all Americans.

On Saturday morning’s edition of CNN’s Smerconish, the host interviewed Fishback — who hatched the DOGE dividend plan — and called out the plan:

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: I’m going to get to the economics. Go ahead. I gave you a chance for a great a great sound bite you got–. And those soft power exercises make for great sound bites.

But when you drill down, for example, on Sesame Street in Iraq, they often make sense. Joseph Nye from Harvard, who gets credited with the coinage of the words soft power, you know, you’d rather spend on that than bullets. But wait, you want to talk?

JAMES FISHBACK: Well, there was a terrorist attack in Iraq last month that killed 40 people. It’s clearly not working! Soft power and Sesame Street — (CROSSTALK)

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: C’mon. Listen to me.

Maybe the terror. Maybe the terrorists would have been better off watching Big Bird than learning in a madrassa.

Let me make my point. Put on the screen from the Peterson Foundation. This is where the rubber meets the road. We are $36 trillion in debt. I don’t know if you can see that, but that’s 106,121 for every single person in America.

So if Elon Musk is successful in saving us money from waste, fraud and abuse. And by the way, James, I hope that he is. I don’t like the approach, but I like the fact that something’s being done.

There is no money in the till! We owe oh 36 trillion. We owe $106,000 each. So whatever the savings ought to be, it’s not like President Trump is doing us a favor by giving us 20%.

Everything ought to go to the debt because the Peterson people say by 2050, 50% of all revenue, it’s going to go to satisfying interest on the debt. We should be paying the debt. Your response?

JAMES FISHBACK: My response is this. We should be paying the debt, which is why the Doge dividend incentivizes every American to call out waste, fraud and abuse, to lower the budget, to narrow the deficit, and to bring down the debt.

Where was this emergency? Over the debt when we sent $350 billion to Ukraine to be wasted.

Where was this emergency, Michael, on CNN, when you guys were advocating $7,000 to migrants in Chicago–.

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: (LAUGHS) Oh my God!

JAMES FISHBACK: $7,000 a month per migrant, and now we want to spend $5,000 one time. From President Trump to hardworking Americans, the migrants didn’t receive $7,000 a month. Hardworking Americans deserve a $5,000 check with President Trump’s name on it. So enough with the–.

(CROSSTALK)

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: Listen to me. Listen to me. This is Madoff- like. This is a Ponzi scheme.

JAMES FISHBACK: No Ukraine was a Ponzi scheme–.

(CROSSTALK)

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: James. James. Give me a chance to speak. Theoretically it’s my program. We don’t have the money. Is what I’m trying to tell you. It’s a Ponzi–.

JAMES FISHBACK: So we didn’t have the money for Ukraine, right?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: Am I gonna–.

JAMES FISHBACK: We didn’t have the money for Ukraine. Am I getting 50 billion?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: I never do this. I don’t I don’t want to be that guy. Do I have to silence your microphone? So that I can respond to what you’ve said? Because there’s so much fallacy in what you’ve just offered.

JAMES FISHBACK: Please go ahead and refute it.

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: I have a very simple premise here. We’re $36 trillion in debt. It’s a fraud. As much as I want to see us cut waste, fraud and abuse, it is an absolute fraud to say to the American people because of what Musk is doing, we have five grand to give each of you.

The only way we have five grand is if we’re borrowing it because we’re that far in debt.

I’m trying to meet you halfway, which is simply to say, what a good thing that finally we’re going to look at waste, fraud and abuse, albeit it shouldn’t be in this haphazard fashion, but let’s at least be honest with the American people that whatever we quote unquote save, we already owe.

Watch above via CNN’s Smerconish.