Best of the Program | Guests: Stephen Moore, Ben Lamm & Richard Werner | 4/10/25

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Speaker 2 We got a ton on today. Stuff that's going to blow your mind.
Stephen Moore is on about the tariffs. Ben Lamb, he is the, you know, the dire wolf that they just produced.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they're working on bringing back some other animals. We have a fascinating conversation.
And Professor Richard Werner, he is from Germany. He's the guy who coined the term quantitative easing.

Speaker 2 They kind of turned it upside down. I'm a little pissed about that.
But

Speaker 2 he talks about what's really going on with the tariffs, Europe, what Trump is actually fighting fighting that he may not know about.

Speaker 2 It is, I learned more in 10 minutes than I've learned in quite a while. Richard Werner joins us on today's podcast.
You don't want to miss it.

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Speaker 2 You're listening to

Speaker 2 the best of the Blenbeck program. The one, the only good friend of the program, Stephen Moore, the...

Speaker 2 The founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

Speaker 2 Boy, it has been

Speaker 2 a scary few days,

Speaker 2 Stephen. The president, you know, he is a great negotiator because he just doesn't blink.
Some people will say he blinked yesterday. I think he just

Speaker 2 smart. He's not suicidal.
He's just reevaluating things and doing what, Stephen?

Speaker 3 Well, good morning, Gladden. You know, look, Trump, one thing I've learned from Donald Trump,

Speaker 3 having worked with him for the last eight years or so, off and on is he oftentimes the guy is crazy like a fox.

Speaker 2 He really is.

Speaker 3 And so sometimes these two or three moves on the chessboard ahead of everybody else. And so I don't know if calling this a retreat

Speaker 3 is a right way to describe it.

Speaker 2 No, I don't think so, but you'll hear the media saying that. Yeah, the media is saying that.

Speaker 3 And what I'm saying is, and maybe it is a retreat, but maybe this was part of the plan all along. I mean, in terms of

Speaker 3 trying to get these countries to come to the table, negotiate. And look, Glenn, you know me.
I'm more of a free trade guy than Trump is, and I'm not a big fan of tariffs. But if he can pull this off,

Speaker 3 and this would be a maestro if he could do it, then all of a sudden you get fairer and freer.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 you're breaking up.

Speaker 3 Basically agree to play into level playing field. And so

Speaker 3 Trump, and the other thing that Trump is doing, and I think this is masterful, and I agree with him wholeheartedly on this. Look, there is one major villain in the world today, and that is China.

Speaker 3 And you've been on the story a long time. I'm glad as long as I've known you.
China is,

Speaker 3 in my opinion, I don't know if you agree with me on this, they are like Japan circa 1937. Oh, yes.

Speaker 2 They really are.

Speaker 2 Big time.

Speaker 2 Japan told us what they were going to do in 1937. Exactly.
They told us.

Speaker 2 China is now, too. They're doing the same thing.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 And we're not listening. Right.
And so, you know, and what Trump is basically doing is, and this is a big moment for the, you know, the world economy and for world peace.

Speaker 3 Trump is saying to these other countries in the world, you've got to make a choice. Are you with us or are you with China? And I don't even know.
These Europeans are so stupid.

Speaker 3 You know, they were saying a couple of weeks ago, well, maybe we'll just trade with China and stop trading with the United States. Now, that would be a catastrophically bad decision.

Speaker 3 But the whole idea here, as I see it, maybe I have, you know, like I'm not in Donald Trump's mind, so

Speaker 3 sometimes he sees it way beyond what I do. But I think what he wants to do is

Speaker 3 basically decouple.

Speaker 2 You're breaking up, Stephen. You there? What did you just say? Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you now.
What did you just say?

Speaker 3 Okay, sorry. I was saying that I think he wants to decouple.
This is Trump's

Speaker 3 plan. He wants to decouple the world economy.

Speaker 2 Yes, from China.

Speaker 2 You got to get into into another room or another state.

Speaker 2 Have you tried Patriot Mobile?

Speaker 2 I will say we are tariffing Steven's phone call today. So that could be the cause of this.

Speaker 2 Are you on Huawei?

Speaker 3 Sorry, I lost you there again. We had a bad connection, but I can hear you now.
Okay.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 he wants the world to decouple from China. But I think also, at the same time, he wants the world to, the Western world, to decouple from this idea of

Speaker 2 a managed decline.

Speaker 2 Right. You know,

Speaker 2 and he's trying to, and I think this is,

Speaker 2 I think this is hopefully working with the rest of the world. He needs to break all the barnacles off that have just been, you know, on.

Speaker 2 on the hull of this ship forever now, saying, oh, well, this is the way it's going to be. He's scraping all those barnacles off and saying, no, it's not going to be that way anymore.

Speaker 2 So you need to make a decision.

Speaker 2 You're either going to manage your own decline and throw in with China, or you're going to go a new direction that really only he and Malay and a few others are laying out.

Speaker 3 You know, it's so funny you should mention that because do you know who the two most popular politicians in the world are today?

Speaker 2 Malay and

Speaker 2 Donald Trump?

Speaker 3 Trump.

Speaker 3 I mean, the two populists, pro-people, pro-free enterprise, anti-big government

Speaker 3 leaders. And I've been predicting this.
I think I said this on your show a few weeks ago, and I maintain this. I think you're going to see a Trumpian revolution all over the world.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 3 these European leaders, they are so out of touch with their voters. I mean, remember the very start of the Trump Revolution was when Britain was shocked that all of the

Speaker 3 majority of their people wanted out of the European Union.

Speaker 3 They said, we're not going to have these bureaucrats in Brussels tell us how we live our lives and what tea kettles we can use in our kitchen. And so

Speaker 3 these arrogant, out-of-touch, self-righteous politicians are going to be thrown out of office for pro-people

Speaker 3 and pro-working class politicians.

Speaker 3 So I think Trump has started a world revolution here. I really do.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think Baloney is in that category. She's just, I think, a little softer.

Speaker 2 But I think she could be in that.

Speaker 2 You know, I don't know about Maureen Le Pen now that they've thrown her out. I mean, that just.

Speaker 3 I'm bogus. I'm bogus charter.
It just seems like they did to her exactly what the left tried to do to Donald Trump. Correct.
Bogus lawsuit, correct.

Speaker 2 And those countries like France that are doing that, I think, are going to be in real, real trouble. You know, it was interesting to me that

Speaker 2 the Prime Minister of England came out, Starmer, who is absolutely a WEF clone.

Speaker 3 Oh, he's horrible.

Speaker 2 He's horrible. And he came out and it's like, the age of globalization is over.
You can't play this game. You can't say that and then be part of globalization.
It's going to end really badly for him.

Speaker 2 Do you agree or disagree?

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. I think the Britain is really in a bad shape right now, and

Speaker 3 they need to find a Trump candidate. And maybe it's,

Speaker 3 you know, who's the one who, I'm blanking out his name, the guy who led Britain out of

Speaker 3 the friend.

Speaker 3 Senior moment here.

Speaker 2 Anyway,

Speaker 3 I do think that's going to be

Speaker 2 Nigel Farage.

Speaker 3 Nigel, yeah, right, exactly.

Speaker 3 And I'm friends with Nigel. I couldn't remember.
But anyway, I think he could be the next leader of Britain. And

Speaker 3 so I don't know which way the Europeans are going to go, frankly. I mean, I think they're totally confused with their leadership in these countries.

Speaker 3 And by the way, I've got to tell you, Glenn, I've been doing over the last month almost every day, like BBC and all these European stations and, you know, and and some of the Asian stations.

Speaker 3 And they're so indignant. And they're like, Trump is causing a trade war here.
What is wrong with this guy? Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 And I just very calmly say, well, listen, your terrorists in Britain or Germany or Japan, whatever country it is, you're a terrorist of three or four times higher than ours.

Speaker 3 So you're saying Trump is starting a trade war. We're saying you already started the trade war.
How can you self-righteously say, how dare Trump raise a terrorist?

Speaker 3 Well, you're a terrorist of three or four times. You know what? They They never even answer the question.
Well, because they just move on.

Speaker 2 Here's the thing. They expect that to be the norm because we rebuilt.
I mean, the reason why we accepted these things early on was because we didn't want to,

Speaker 2 we wanted to make sure the Germans, Germans not having jobs is a very bad idea. We wanted Germans to be able to rebuild their factories and Mercedes-Benz and everything else.

Speaker 2 So we had those, and now they just expect that to be the norm. And Donald Trump is like, it was the norm.
It can can no longer be the norm.

Speaker 3 And you know what? So you're exactly right about that, Glenn. And I would just add something.
One of the things we've learned from this is that

Speaker 4 is no longer being recorded. Sorry.

Speaker 3 One of the things we've learned from this. Are you in prison?

Speaker 2 Are you calling from a prison?

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 what you were just describing, that kind of American relationship with like rebuilding Europe, it's like the welfare state, you know, where people become dependent on a welfare state, and Europe is dependent on the welfare that we give them.

Speaker 3 And that's why one of the first things Trump did that I thought was so fantastic: is that, you know, if you're not paying your NATO dues, we're out.

Speaker 3 And they, you know, again, they bitched and they moaned and they complained. But guess what? They played their notice.
I know.

Speaker 3 You know, I mean, I think I just, the indignation and the self-righteousness and the sense of entitlement of these countries, it drives me absolutely nuts.

Speaker 2 So let me ask you: the stock market is down again.

Speaker 3 It's down again. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Why?

Speaker 3 It's been topsy-turvy for a while. Well,

Speaker 3 that's a good question. Why? I don't know.

Speaker 3 I mean, who knows why? It was way up. Yesterday,

Speaker 3 Dow Jones on a per point basis was up more than any time, any day in American history. But,

Speaker 3 you know, look, it's going to be up and down, up and down, until

Speaker 3 this reset happens. And so it's going to be topsy-turvy, I think, for the next several months.
So

Speaker 3 get ready for that, folks. But at the end of the day, I think Trump will prevail.
I think we're going to have a much secure economy.

Speaker 3 And these countries are going to stop treating us like we're daddy warbucks.

Speaker 2 So because we're out of, we're not, seemingly never out of war, but we are out of bucks.

Speaker 2 There you go.

Speaker 2 Stephen, yesterday I sent you something about the basis trade, and this is something that's so in the weeds for most people.

Speaker 2 But what's happening to the hedge funds and our

Speaker 2 bonds, and that looked really frightening. Is that going to stop? Because that was something that they were doing before.

Speaker 2 It might have been

Speaker 2 blown over with a feather of Trump,

Speaker 2 but this is something that's been going on, and there are deep, deep cracks in it.

Speaker 2 How is that? How's that going?

Speaker 3 Well, yeah, so just for background, what happened starting a few days ago is that foreigners started to

Speaker 3 sell their U.S. bonds.
And that happened in Japan. And then Russia was selling some of their bonds.
China was selling their bonds.

Speaker 3 And the interest rate on those bonds, when people sell bonds, that means you have to pay more interest to get people to buy them.

Speaker 3 And so the interest rate went from

Speaker 3 like 3.5 to 4.5.

Speaker 3 Not exactly, but almost up a full percentage point.

Speaker 3 And so that's bad for America because that means we owe $35 trillion and the debt turns over. And that means

Speaker 3 when those bonds come due, then we have to issue new bonds at a higher interest rate. And as you know, you've reported on this many times.

Speaker 3 I think interest expenses are like the second highest expenditure on our federal budget.

Speaker 3 If you're not going to invest in U.S. bonds are still the safest in the world by far.
There's not no other, you know, are you going to buy Russian bonds? Are you going to buy European bonds?

Speaker 3 So I'm not too concerned about it.

Speaker 3 I think that, but, you know, China has several trillion dollars of our bonds. And this is why having such an enormous deficit is a problem.

Speaker 3 And, you know, because then we have to borrow money from, you know, from people we don't want to have to borrow money from.

Speaker 2 Right. Are they,

Speaker 2 I mean, you know, they're serious. We just said Trump is serious on China.
China is

Speaker 2 serious on us.

Speaker 2 Are they

Speaker 2 able

Speaker 2 to dump our bonds, survive? Are they able to really fight this war out? I mean,

Speaker 2 they're not. So

Speaker 3 this is the key insight that Donald Trump has made, which is so right on the mark, that our economy is still substantially bigger than China's.

Speaker 3 In fact, our stock market is five times higher than China's. So they're not even close with respect to the net worth of their companies.

Speaker 3 I mean, you just take the seven, the Magnificent Seven, they have more value than every company in China. So we have a huge lead on them.

Speaker 3 And the fact is that, now, look, they've been catching up, no question. And look,

Speaker 3 I want to give you guys, you know, your listeners, a little history lesson.

Speaker 3 What happened in China, and it's first of all, Mao was the greatest villain who ever lived probably in the history of mankind. He murdered 100 million people of his own people.

Speaker 3 And yet he's still on the currency. They still have pictures of Mao.
That would be like, you know, us putting Benedict Arnold on our currency.

Speaker 3 And And so

Speaker 3 then you had

Speaker 3 the free market revolution that happened in the early 1980s, which was amazing. It shows what they went from communists overnight to free markets and their economy exploded.

Speaker 3 Exploded for about 20 years. Then we decided to let them into the World Trade Organization because they were on the road to freedom.

Speaker 3 And then President Xi comes in and he goes back to communism. I mean, this is an oversimplification, but not much of one.
So we're not dealing with a free enterprise.

Speaker 3 We are dealing with a very dangerous country right now. And Xi has said this.
In 20 years, he said, we want China to take over the world.

Speaker 3 And we were just sitting by and letting that happen. And Trump finally said, no, that isn't going to happen.
Now,

Speaker 3 look, we have benefited over the last 30 years from being able to get cheap things from China, but their economy is completely dependent on having access to America's $20 trillion consumer market.

Speaker 3 If Trump says you don't have access to that anymore, they go through a Great Depression that makes what happened in the United States in the 1930s look like a picnic.

Speaker 3 And that's the leverage that Trump is using with China. He's saying that you either start behaving yourself or we're going to throw you into the worst depression you ever had.

Speaker 3 Now, it will hurt us, but it's not going to hurt us nearly as much as it's going to hurt them.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 2 it'll hurt the people that shop at Walmart hardest. Right.

Speaker 2 You know, the bottom of the society, you know, the ones that are just scraping by all the time, they're the ones that are going to be hit the hardest here in America.

Speaker 2 But it is something where we're just going to have to help our neighbors more, not expect the government to do it, but help our neighbors more because it is crucial that

Speaker 2 we

Speaker 2 decouple the world and ourselves from China as much as we can.

Speaker 3 So, can I know

Speaker 3 one other quick point?

Speaker 3 We have to have a movement, you and I, called Sell China. And what I mean by that is every one of us as citizens of this great country, just make a point of it.
Just stop buying things from China.

Speaker 3 You might have to pay $3 more for a pair of shoes. You may have to

Speaker 3 pay $3, $4 more for the T-shirt. Do it.
If you love your country, stop buying China.

Speaker 2 Yep. Thank you so much.
Appreciate it. Stephen Moore.

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Speaker 2 he didn't move again. Well, he rolled around on the ground going, my eyes, my eyes.
That was a problem. You know, police came.
They gave him a washcloth. It was all right.
Burna launcher.

Speaker 2 It means business. I have one.
My wife has one. I've given it to all the members of my family as soon as they turned 18 because it's legal in all 50 states.
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Now, back to the podcast.

Speaker 3 This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Speaker 2 Richard Werner, he is an economist. You can find him at professorverner.org.
Professor Werner.org.

Speaker 2 Richard Werner, professor, how are you, sir?

Speaker 4 Very well, thank you. Good to be on your program.

Speaker 2 Yeah, good to have you on again.

Speaker 2 You're looking at the situation, and it is changing by the hour.

Speaker 2 What are you feeling? Especially, you're from Germany. Are you still in Germany today, or are you here in the United States?

Speaker 4 I'm actually in the U.S. In the US.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 What is happening in Germany and in Europe? And

Speaker 2 how is this whole trade thing affecting everybody?

Speaker 2 Well, it is affecting everyone because

Speaker 2 if you have

Speaker 4 sort of list of tariffs that were announced last week, presently suspended, then but if you look at the numbers, for some countries these were significant changes.

Speaker 4 And potentially, even now that they're being suspended, but they're still in place with China in very, very high numbers. You mentioned it, you know, and the triple digit percentage tariff.

Speaker 4 for China and China retaliating and this escalating. That is very dangerous because China is part of supply chains across the globe, even involving other countries.

Speaker 4 And of course, the US, I mean, President Trump has a point, the U.S. is the most attractive market.
Everyone wants to export to the US.

Speaker 4 So it's true that the US has some leverage there. The question is, what do we want to achieve and how do we go about it in order to make sure we actually achieve it?

Speaker 4 At the moment, there is a risk the situation will escalate, particularly this confrontation now laser focused on China as the bad guy. And

Speaker 4 you see, in Asia, it's very important not to lose faith and not to be publicly accumulated.

Speaker 4 And at the moment,

Speaker 4 of course, that's why

Speaker 4 they can't easily give in. One has to create an opportunity, an opening for a compromise or even for China to give in.
So what would be allowed? At the moment, the way it's done is very hard.

Speaker 2 President Trump said this yesterday. He said, look, it's important in China that they don't lose

Speaker 2 face, that they're not humiliated. And he said, I feel like they feel like they're being humiliated right now.
So what should he be doing while still staying tough?

Speaker 2 What kind of opportunity should be presented to de-escalate this?

Speaker 2 I think it's important to take it off the,

Speaker 4 I mean, you know, President Trump's very transparent in those things publicly, but maybe in this case, where we are at this point, it's important to take it off

Speaker 4 the public focus and have some private conversations with the Chinese leadership.

Speaker 4 And maybe they even suggest a way in which this may be done.

Speaker 4 Essentially, one needs a face-saving solution that makes both sides look good. This can be done because the Chinese are as much interested in

Speaker 4 making a deal as President Trump is. The Chinese are famous for commerce, for trading, for doing deals.
So it just has to be done in such a way that they're not forced into a corner

Speaker 4 and then they feel obliged to also, you know, stand up to what appears to be bullying to them and and and appear tougher than they actually should be at this stage.

Speaker 3 So I think it can be done.

Speaker 4 I mean, I'd be glad to help, you know, get me into the the Trump team. I've got good relations.

Speaker 4 I was invited to to be professor of finance at one of their top universities, Fudan, in Shanghai, met very senior people in China. And I mean, I've been in Japan for 12 years.

Speaker 4 I know how to talk to them in Asia. At the moment, there is perhaps

Speaker 4 this

Speaker 4 lack of the right approach. But it's fantastic news, as you mentioned, that President Trump is now acknowledging this.
And I think this

Speaker 4 creates an opening with the right advice. The other point I'd like to make, actually, is that

Speaker 4 I think it is very smart of President Trump to raise fundamentally the trap the tariff issue and how the U. S.

Speaker 4 had not always been treated equally by other countries when it comes to trade and tariffs. That is very valid.

Speaker 4 And tariffs in history have been

Speaker 4 well, actually mixed, but they have been very successful and good for America and also for other countries that use them if and when they're used in combination with the right policies,

Speaker 4 domestic policies. And that's where I think the Trump team still needs some good advice.

Speaker 4 The Trump team knows that this official mainstream neoclassical economics is not to be trusted, and that's very true. But they're still lacking the right advice.

Speaker 4 I'm an expert in high-growth economics, and I think the U.S. can have 15% growth for 40 years like China had.
This can be done.

Speaker 2 There is no real

Speaker 4 if you have the right policies in place.

Speaker 2 What needs to happen? What is he missing? I mean, because I think what's missing is the Congress doing their job and putting other things in place. What are you saying is missing?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 Well, it's a key thing

Speaker 4 is to do with money

Speaker 4 and those who create money. Now, the Fed has created a lot of money, far too much, you know, in recent years, and has caused inflation and everything.

Speaker 4 But actually, normally, central banks only create 3% of the money supply. 97% of the money supply normally is created by who? The banks, the banking system.

Speaker 4 And the banks normally, and this is, you know, this is capitalism, where you don't have central planners making decisions, but you've got private commercially oriented enterprises making decisions.

Speaker 4 And so the more diversified your banking system, and particularly the more small local banks you have, the stronger your economy, the stronger job creation.

Speaker 4 And that's where in the past the US has been extremely strong. But in recent years, under other presidents and

Speaker 4 the other

Speaker 4 regulatory authorities, have really reduced the number of small local banks. I mean, there's been a collapse in the number of community banks and local banks almost across the United States.

Speaker 4 And that's very bad for job creation and for small firms and their competitiveness.

Speaker 4 And China is the best case in point. You know, they used to have this centralized

Speaker 4 Soviet-style system with only one bank.

Speaker 4 And then when the leader Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978,

Speaker 4 he felt, let's forget about all this ideology under Mao, chairman Mao, let's deliver outcome, let's deliver performance and growth. How do we do it? Well, let's learn from those who did it.

Speaker 4 And he went to Japan and asked the Japanese, what's your secret of success?

Speaker 4 And they told him.

Speaker 4 You need banks. How many banks do you have? One bank.
Are you serious? For 600 million people at the time, something like that. Well, do you need more banks than that? How about 5,000?

Speaker 4 And that's what he did. So he went back to China and created 5,000 small banks, local banks, village banks, credit unions, regional banks, rural savings banks, provincial banks.

Speaker 2 So what does Trump need to do to do that here?

Speaker 4 That lends the small firms. Sorry?

Speaker 2 What does he need to do to create that here? How should he be encouraging?

Speaker 4 Well, first of all, one needs to take the pressure off the small banks to merge because the Federal Reserve and the FDIC have been closing banks and forcing them to merge.

Speaker 4 That's why thousands of banks have disappeared in the U.S.

Speaker 3 job creation.

Speaker 4 Politicians talk about job creation, but who is the main employer? It is small firms.

Speaker 4 SME, small and medium-sized enterprises, employ between 65% and 75% of total employment. And there is a special thing about small firms.
They can't get money from capital markets.

Speaker 4 Wall Street is not open to them. Their only external source of funding is banks.
Now with banks, that we all have another rule, big banks don't lend to small firms. It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 4 So who lends to small firms? It's only small banks. And that's why America in the past was very strong.

Speaker 4 When there were you know, going a few decades back, we had more than twenty thousand banks, mostly these thousand, thousands of small local banks, community banks, and that was great.

Speaker 4 But the regulators and the centralization have led to mergers and the number of banks have been going down rapidly. FDIC closing down healthy banks.
For some reason, they think it's a good idea.

Speaker 4 Same in Europe, you know, the ECB European Central Bank says we have too many banks, we have to close the small local banks. Well, that's how you kill the middle class.
Right.

Speaker 4 That's really what happened to the middle class, that the small firms are not supported anymore.

Speaker 4 You know when there's a new technology coming out, the small firms, they're not necessarily innovators, but they're the ones that have to quickly adapt, adopt the new technology.

Speaker 4 And for that, you need money. If you have a small local bank that knows you, you will get your funding, you can upgrade, you can maintain your market share and stay competitive, expand jobs basically.

Speaker 4 But in countries where the banking system gets too concentrated, and the US is now at risk of becoming one of those countries.

Speaker 4 For example, look at the UK, you know, five big banks.

Speaker 4 The small firms get nothing from these big banks.

Speaker 3 But isn't this big they can't afford afford to do the small loans.

Speaker 4 They have to do big business. They lend to the hedge funds and private equity funds in billions.
And that works for the big banks. Is it really good that the US is heading that way? No.

Speaker 4 We have to change that. So we have to change policies at the FDIC and also at the Fed.
They have to be bank friendly and therefore small firm friendly and therefore employment friendly.

Speaker 4 So if we combine the tariffs with the right

Speaker 4 monetary and banking policy, the U.S. can be hugely successful.
I mean, you know, Blen, you could could connections help me to get to the Trump team to deliver this.

Speaker 2 Can we go?

Speaker 2 I'll put a word in for you, but I mean, I'm lucky to talk to the janitor.

Speaker 2 So, Richard,

Speaker 2 let me go to Europe here for a second, because I think what Trump is trying to do on many of his things is to break this elite,

Speaker 2 almost World Economic Forum grip on dismantling the West. He doesn't believe in the

Speaker 2 slow decline of the West. He is looking to change directions 180 degrees.

Speaker 2 And I think that's part of what these tariffs on Europe and everything else is to say, look, we're going in a different direction. We have to go in a different direction.
Who's with me?

Speaker 2 Do you read it that way or not?

Speaker 4 Well, I think that that is

Speaker 4 certainly

Speaker 4 one possibility. And would be

Speaker 4 that would be a good goal because Europe is really still in under the throw of World Economic Forum and the deep state,

Speaker 4 and including the US deep state. It's still very active in Europe.
We mustn't forget that.

Speaker 4 So sometimes when President Trump ends up arguing with European leaders, he is still arguing with his old member state, his old enemy, which is the CIA.

Speaker 4 They're running Europe, they've got all their assets in place. And of course, the World Economic Forum is a CIA asset.

Speaker 4 It was under Kissinger that the CIA funded this program, which brought Karl Schwab to the fore.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 4 President Frank needs to realize that he's still fighting the old enemy, but now

Speaker 4 he won domestically, but the old enemy is strong in Europe and other places still

Speaker 4 where they've had their foothold through

Speaker 4 traditional military foreign bases,

Speaker 4 where the US Army is and so on, Japan included.

Speaker 4 And that explains a lot of this friction. And so yes, in many ways, it's good that Europe sees, okay, there's going to be a change in policy,

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 they're just going to now

Speaker 4 while they're still under instruction from their miners at the CIA, they're just

Speaker 4 really agitating against the United States, against Trump. They're talking about, well, we have to decouple.
We can't trust America anymore at all.

Speaker 4 When the reality is, they're now just totally

Speaker 4 still following their minders.

Speaker 4 So the Deep State Minders World Economic Forum.

Speaker 2 You're streaming the best of Glenn Beck.

Speaker 3 To hear more of this interview and others, download the full show podcasts wherever you get podcasts.

Speaker 2 Ben Lamb, Colossal Co-Founder, CEO. Welcome to the program.

Speaker 3 Hey, thanks for having me back, Glenn. It's good to talk to you again.

Speaker 2 Yuva, it's great to talk to you. First, I have to show this picture of George R.R.
Martin

Speaker 2 with the dire wolf. That is, I mean, that's brilliant.
It's really brilliant.

Speaker 3 I mean, George R.R. Martin and Game of Thrones, you know, made dire wolves popular in pop culture.
Many people think they're a myth, but, you know, they were an American wolf.

Speaker 3 They were the largest, strongest American wolf. And, you know, we got challenged.

Speaker 3 You know, you know, we're working on the mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger and the dodo, but we got challenged by some of our indigenous partners and the government and a few others saying, Why aren't you working first on an American species?

Speaker 3 Like, why are you not prioritizing that? So, we got a lot of pressure and feedback. And then, when we got close to it, we were like, Well, if we don't bring George R.

Speaker 3 Martin in, we're kind of mean because he's the guy that made him the most popular. You know, it kills me.

Speaker 2 Everybody saw, I mean, I did the same thing. I saw the video of the wolves howling and stuff as little babies, and I'm like, Oh, that's so cute.
They're an apex predator. They are, they are.

Speaker 2 Been gone for now 10,000 years.

Speaker 2 Why bring them back?

Speaker 3 So, Colossal is a de-extinction and species preservation company, right? And so, we're going to lose up to 50% of biodiversity between now in 2050. And so, we need new tools in the fight, right?

Speaker 3 We think it's better to have a de-extinction toolkit than

Speaker 3 not need it, than not have a de-extinction toolkit and need it. And so, we're working on all these different species.

Speaker 3 And we started having meetings with MHA Nation, one of the largest tribal groups here in the United States, and they started giving us the feedback that, you know, we need to do more for wolf conservation, not there's not enough going on with wolf conservation.

Speaker 3 It would be amazing if we could work on something like the great wolf. So then they started telling us that from their oral tradition, they believe that the great wolf was the dire wolf.

Speaker 3 And I kind of sat with you. I was like, oh, the Game of Thrones wolf.
And so we had these great conversations.

Speaker 3 And then a few months later, we were in North Carolina and we learned that the most endangered wolf in the world is the American wolf. The red wolf, there's only 15 left.

Speaker 3 And so, like, when you think about Americana, you think about the bison, and you think about the bald eagle, and you think about wolves, it would be a travesty to lose these.

Speaker 3 And it's like, they've been on the endangered wolves.

Speaker 2 But, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 2 I mean, I live for half the year in a place that has mountain lions and wolves. They're both very, very important to have, but they're also spooky as hell.

Speaker 2 And you're not talking about, I mean, you're not talking about preserving that species.

Speaker 2 You just introduced a species that's been gone for 10,000 years.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 we have. And they are on a secure, expansive ecological preserve in the north.
And if they ever go back into the wild, it will be in collaboration with the government as well as some of the tribes.

Speaker 3 And they would go back on secure private lands.

Speaker 3 We're not rewilding dire wolves. I mean, they're not going to be walking down the street worried about dire wolves.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, I just just know last time the government got involved with wolves, it was at Yellowstone, and that didn't work out well for anybody.

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 rewilding works as long as it's done thoughtfully and managed.

Speaker 3 And the problem is, is sometimes people just get so overzealous on certain sides of the table that they just go out and, you know, muck with nature. It really needs to be studied.

Speaker 3 It really needs to be managed. It needs to be.
thoughtfully taken out. But a lot of times people don't realize that and they just get overzealous, right? And they politicize it.

Speaker 3 At the end of the day, losing biodiversity, it should be a bipartisan issue.

Speaker 3 And we really need to save these animals. And so, by doing what we're doing, though, Glenn, we're actually building technology to save animals.

Speaker 3 And so, we were actually able to clone, no one's talking about this, which is crazy.

Speaker 3 We were actually able to clone four red wolves with more genetic diversity than the existing 15 that are still left in the wild.

Speaker 3 That's a 25% bump in genetic diversity that has been gone for tens for over a decade.

Speaker 2 So, okay. So,

Speaker 2 I mean, you describe your company. I'm sorry.
I love the technology. I love what you're doing.
I love the way you think. No, I know,

Speaker 2 we've totally terrified.

Speaker 3 We've talked a lot about it, right? Okay, yeah, I know.

Speaker 3 And on our last time we talked, you asked about the CIA because Inqtel is an investor, but

Speaker 3 we fall into a category called synthetic biology, right? So being able to use AI and software, as well as being able to edit and rewrite genomes, is really critical to technology.

Speaker 3 It's as important as technology as space technologies and other defense-related technologies. And our adversaries are advancing these technologies.
Right.

Speaker 2 And then we are trying. So let me.

Speaker 2 This is like everything now, especially with AI and any of this, you know, CRISPR, all of this technology. You can't stop it.
You can't put it back in the bottle

Speaker 2 because others are doing it. What China is doing with this on trying to breed smarter humans, stronger humans, you know, fighters.
I mean, it's the stuff of Nazi movies.

Speaker 3 That's what they've... That's actually what they've said publicly.
So everything you're saying is what they've said publicly.

Speaker 3 They said that the Beijing Genomics Institute is sequencing as many humans as possible. They use COVID as this ruse to like pull in as many samples as possible, sequencing them.

Speaker 3 And then they said, we're looking for the genes that make the smartest people and we are going to engineer people. I mean, that's not even like crazy, concerned, you know, conspiracy.

Speaker 3 They have said that out loud. So what have they not said out loud?

Speaker 2 Right. Any idea what they haven't said out loud?

Speaker 3 Well, I mean, well, what, I mean, if you think about like what Colossal's trying to do, right, is we're trying to at least do it. We don't do anything with humans.

Speaker 3 So we do, even though we work with the federal government, we do have this kind of moratorium that we are not working on humans, only on animals. We won't even work on, you know,

Speaker 3 non-human primates. So we're only working on the species that are working, but we are advancing these technologies that have applications to humans, right?

Speaker 3 And we are understanding from like a 72,000-year-old skull, what made a dire wolf bigger and stronger and had a bigger jaw and stronger muscles and denser bones.

Speaker 3 We can now understand that with our technologies and engineer that into its closest living relative being the gray wolf, right? And so think about that same type of data apply to humans, right?

Speaker 3 I think that you can look at it as, you know, adversarial countries can advance these technologies in a way where they can look at how can we enhance humans.

Speaker 3 And so for us, I think we as an American company that works very, very closely with the federal government, the Secretary of Interior just endorsed our work and we work very closely with the Department of Interior.

Speaker 2 It's not necessarily an endorsement that my audience likes. You should de-emphasize that with my audience because that's not

Speaker 2 a good thing.

Speaker 3 It's not what anyone likes. It's just about

Speaker 2 you.

Speaker 3 Like, I think it's important for us to always be, you know, colossals,

Speaker 3 we're pretty bipartisan. We work with both sides.
But I do think it's important to be transparent when things happen. And I think that us as America has to lead in synthetic biology.

Speaker 3 And Colossal is one of the most advanced synthetic biology companies on the planet.

Speaker 2 What is the difference between directed evolution and playing God?

Speaker 3 It's a great question. You asked me this last time, right? I think that we as humans play God quite a bit, right? And so I'll look at it from an ecosystems perspective.

Speaker 3 When we overfish the ocean or we cut down too much of the rainforest, we are playing God on some level when we eradicate species.

Speaker 3 But now we have these tools and technologies that we can biobank species, protect them, and even bring them back, right?

Speaker 3 And I think this is going to be really helpful for how we balance progress as well as how we balance protection.

Speaker 3 And I think that we need these tools more now than ever because we could lose up to 50% of biodiversity, all life on Earth between now and 2050. That's That's the current trend line.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 AI

Speaker 2 is dangerous. It's glorious and horrifying at the same time.
Just depends on, you know, who's using it and how that thing goes.

Speaker 2 And it's why Elon Musk says we have to have... We have to have the singularity as

Speaker 2 defined as human-computer interface.

Speaker 2 So we merge as one.

Speaker 2 That's something of sci-fi movies.

Speaker 2 Do you believe that the genetic editing tech that you are helping to design is going to be transferred to humans? Is there a time that you think, oh, well, that probably has to?

Speaker 3 I think that we will be able to look. So one of the biggest things that Colossal works on is what's called multiplex editing,

Speaker 3 being able to edit multiple parts of the genome at the exact same time, right? And so that's part of what

Speaker 3 we really, really need to continue to advance because most disease states,

Speaker 3 specifically ones that drive, you know, predispositions to cancer and Alzheimer's and others, are multigenic in nature, right?

Speaker 3 And so for us, I think it's very, very important to advance those technologies so that you've probably heard about sickle cell anemia, where there's CRISPR tools and technologies that are being used to do a single knockout.

Speaker 3 But most genes or most disease states are multigenic in nature. So you have to be able to edit multiple parts of the genome.

Speaker 3 So I do think that a lot of our technologies will be beneficial long term to helping cure inherited disease states in humans. And I think that's a good thing.

Speaker 2 How much of this is AI driven?

Speaker 3 I'd say 30% of our work wouldn't be possible without AI.

Speaker 2 And imagine that number is growing exponentially. I mean, I know our...

Speaker 3 Exponentially. Exponentially.

Speaker 2 You know, you named the dire wolves Romulus and Remus, and I'm not a mythology expert, but I do know Abandoned Birth, raised by Wolf, founded Rome, yada, yada. But didn't Romulus also kill Remus?

Speaker 3 Yeah, we are Romulus loves Remus, and

Speaker 3 Romulus is the bigger one, but they do love each other pretty well. So we're hoping that not all of history will repeat itself, right? Including the fall of Rome.
So

Speaker 3 we're pretty bullish that it'll work out better better this round.

Speaker 2 Okay, good, good.

Speaker 2 So am I, I guess. I mean, I guess we're rooting for that.
All of us are together on that one. That's a great goal to have.

Speaker 3 We're all rooting for the non-fall of Rome.

Speaker 2 What's the next thing that you can talk about that you're going to tell the world about someday?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so, I mean, we're making a lot of progress.

Speaker 3 I think we're on the very cusp of a pretty big breakthrough for the Dodo project, right? So I'm talking about balance, going from dire wolves to dodos.

Speaker 3 Um, uh, we're, you know, we made some updates on the Tasmanian tiger, another apex predator that we announced uh last week.

Speaker 2 Can we slow down on the apex predators? There's a little bit very important.

Speaker 3 I mean, look, elephants kill more people than wolves.

Speaker 2 No, I know, I know.

Speaker 3 There's only been five wolf-confirmed attacks in the last a hundred years.

Speaker 3 You have you have a higher probability of getting struck by lightning by getting while getting eaten by a shark than getting attacked by wolves.

Speaker 2 No, I know that. Have you ever been?

Speaker 2 Have you ever been in the wild and a wolf?

Speaker 3 I've never been in the quite a bit of the wild, yeah.

Speaker 2 With a wolf by yourself? You know, a wolf walks up. Yeah.
Terrifying.

Speaker 3 Well, I've actually never been, I've been very close to wolves in certain ecological preserves.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I've been on my own land and a wolf walks out from the bushes and you're like, oh, dear God. Because they

Speaker 2 are

Speaker 3 spooky.

Speaker 3 It's definitely,

Speaker 2 it's definitely spooky, right?

Speaker 3 I'm more scared of mountain lions than wolves personally, but I saw a mountain lion once.

Speaker 3 The scariest thing I ever saw was I was actually in Cape Tribulation in Australia once and a cassowary, a bird, walked out. And that thing's like a living Velociraptor.

Speaker 3 And it was just me. I was by myself and I was like, I'm going to die because they are very aggressive.
They're very hard to, you very rarely even see them.

Speaker 3 But yeah, I mean, look, living with nature is what we got, right? We got to figure out how we do that. But our next species that we'll probably have some big updates on is the dodo.

Speaker 3 We're really close to a fundamental step in the dodo resurrection. We don't have dodos.

Speaker 3 We won't for a long time, but I do think that we are pretty close to a fundamental step that we'll be able to match.

Speaker 2 One last thing.

Speaker 2 You say that you are trying to help species survive because we're going to lose all these species.

Speaker 2 Why are you bringing back things like the dire wolf that humans didn't have anything to do with the extinction? Why are you bringing those back?

Speaker 3 So anthropologic effects, if you look at at kind of the rise, if you look at kind of the rapid younger dryest cooling period, also compared globally, not just in America, of the rise of anthropologic effects, early humans did drive a lot of the extinction of megafauna here in the United States

Speaker 3 as well as globally. I do think that there's a lot of

Speaker 3 data that's starting to suggest some of the effects of the younger dryest cooling period. That was a rapid period that may have had

Speaker 3 meteorological effects that affected it, right?

Speaker 3 And so for us, we want to build these, we want to use these technologies to bring back these species so that we can study them, so that we can look to rewild them if it makes sense, and also pair them to build technologies for wolves, right?

Speaker 3 In the case of the dire wolf or the or Asian elephants in the case of the mammoth.

Speaker 3 And one of the things that we don't, that no one really talks about is every single week, we get dozens of letters from parents and kids and pictures of little woolly mammoths and dodos, hopefully now dire wolves.

Speaker 3 And people are telling us and teachers are telling us that their kids are excited about science now, right? And people are getting more and more excited about science. And so if you ask

Speaker 3 a teacher or a parent about Colossal, many of them know, more teachers and parents know because their kids are telling them in the classroom. And I think we need science now more than ever.

Speaker 3 And I think getting kids excited about science through de-extinction while also helping conservation is a really good thing.

Speaker 2 Ben, there is no better spokesperson for Colossal than you. Colossal co-founder and CEO Ben Lamb.
Thanks, Ben, for being on. I pray.
Thanks, Blen. I appreciate it.
God bless you.

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