I believe he's referring to assertions made by Robert Bussard in this talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6z1vP4Eo8. Bussards comments on the DOE and funding tokomaks is toward the end iirc. Bussard is by no means a crank, he IS from a different era for sure.
Edit; for those just discovering polywell fusion; Bremelstrung radiation is the primary reason why it may or may not be practicable.
Bussard was one, but there's a lot of alternative fusion research going on, including MIT's levitated dipole, Sandia's MagLIF, several variants of laser fusion, stellerators, focus fusion, General Fusion, Helion, Lockheed's high-beta design, Tri-Alpha, and probably others I've forgotten.
Some of these are well-funded, others are struggling. Even some of the other tokamaks are struggling. MIT's Alcator C-Mod has the highest magnetic field of any tokamak in the world, and the potential to lead to a smaller, cheaper power plant. The whole project was nearly cancelled a year ago.
Edit; for those just discovering polywell fusion; Bremelstrung radiation is the primary reason why it may or may not be practicable.