Best of the Program | Guests: Justin Haskins & JP Decker | 7/17/25

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, No, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

All right, today's program.

It's riddled with great stuff.

We start with the good news of the Senate saying no more NPR or PBS.

Oh my gosh, the number of children that are going to starve because Big Bird has been put out of his house.

What a bunch of crock.

But we get into that also a little bit more on

what's really going on with the Epstein thing.

A reminder that the Ten Commandments is more than a tale from the Bible.

It's the foundation of everything in Western civilization.

And the reason why I tell you that, there's this movement now that Mercury One and the American Journey Experience are behind, and it is to get the Ten Commandments in every school in America.

Two states now have passed laws where if you just

give them the proper copy of the Ten Commandments, it must be posted in the classrooms.

So we'll tell you all about that because this is a way you can really help.

And Justin Haskins is here to talk about tariffs and

am I wrong on tariffs or just not as right as I usually am?

All this and more on today's podcast.

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Hello, America.

You know, we've been fighting every single day.

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Now, let's get to work.

You're listening to the best of the Blandback program.

There is a website I want you to go to.

It's called RestoreAmerican Schools.com.

And it is a partnership with the American Journey Experience.

If you don't know what the American Journey Experience, that is an offshoot of Mercury One.

It is our history department.

And you're going to be hearing a lot about the American Journey Experience soon.

But

this is the one that we are collecting all of the documents.

We're preserving history and we're teaching history.

So we put a partnership together with Patriot Mobile, American Journey Experience, and Wall Builders, plus the Pro Family Legislative Network, which is an amazing organization.

10 other groups have all gotten together.

And this is a movement to restore the Ten Commandments back into public school classrooms.

This is really, really important.

The commandments were in, you know, in our education system for 150 years.

Our textbooks, it was hanging in many classroom walls.

You know, it's what the Supreme Court justices look at when they are sitting at the bench adjudicating.

They look, and right in front of them is Moses with the Ten Commandments.

Why?

The Ten Commandments are critical for a free society.

Why?

Oh, here he goes on that God stuff.

No.

Hear me out.

Commandment number one, you'll have no other gods before me.

Oh, see, there's a gods up.

No, no, no.

This doesn't have to be about

theological differences, okay?

This is a warning against idolatry in all of its forms.

When we make the state or money or race or creed or technology, anything the ultimate authority, we create a God that will consume us.

Okay?

This commandment teaches us that the truth comes from something much, much higher.

It's the beginning of limits on power, limits on government, because they are not a God.

I want to show you how the Ten Commandments alone can restore our republic.

You just have to know how to read them without

just focusing on the religious aspect of it.

So,

no God

before me, no king, No mob.

No party.

No job.

Nothing.

Nothing.

You shall not make yourself a carved image.

Okay.

I haven't made a graven image in

a very long time.

In fact, maybe ever.

I don't think I've made.

I've always skated past number two because I'm like, got that one down.

You know?

Hey, Lord.

You say what you want, but I never made a graven image.

This is actually when people begin to serve images instead of truth

because tyranny always follows.

This frees your mind.

It's a call to seek truth, not manipulation.

All right?

We are full of images in the media, manufactured images.

And its relevance with AI, which is now creating images that will be your partner, your lover, your friend,

don't create those images.

Now that is more urgent than ever, because if you bond with that, now you've made that technology your God.

So now you've got the graven image thing and God.

You shall not take the Lord of the name,

the Lord thy God, in vain.

This is not just about

cursing.

This is about the misuse of moral authority.

And I learned that we have now American Journey Experience, we have the largest collection of Jamestown and pilgrim documents and artifacts in the world.

And one of the things that

the pilgrims printed right before the king went and tried to get them was

a

little pamphlet almost, and it was going to their church.

in Perth, England.

And they printed it and said, don't do these things.

They're not in the Bible.

But their testimony is on the front page.

And I didn't understand this at first.

All it said was, you shall not take the Lord thy God's name in vain.

And I'm like, okay, they go, all right, I know that.

So they're not swearing in the pamphlet.

What does that mean?

No.

It means we will not misuse our moral authority.

We will not invoke God or any higher cause for wicked ends.

They're saying, we know we are speaking on behalf of God.

We know the punishment for that.

So we are telling you the truth.

That is, I mean, that's an amazing thing.

If you could live that one so much, where your testimony is,

I know the commandment not to take the

Lord God's name in vain.

Number four, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Well, I don't want it.

What is that?

What is that for

Western society?

What does that mean?

You don't work seven days.

Now, where would the progressive movement be

if they couldn't stop child labor?

Well, not in pot farms, but if they couldn't stop child labor under Teddy Roosevelt.

Do you think we would have a do they have do they have seven-day work weeks or do they have weekends off, you know, in China?

Did when slaves were around, did they have weekends off?

They're like, hey, you can whip me, but not on a Saturday or a Sunday because I'm not working today.

No.

This is something radical.

Dignity for workers, the right to rest, the rhythm of renewal.

In a world that never sleeps, we forget the human soul needs time, unmonetized, unplugged.

Rest one day.

Do you see, are you beginning to see how these are the reason why we have lost our way as a society is because we've forgotten the Ten Commandments and it really doesn't, I've said this for a year.

If Moses would have come down and said, these are the Ten Commandments and God commanding,

we get what we get.

When you go into an amoral society and nobody cares about God, everybody forgets it.

But if we would just repackage it as Mo's top 10 tips and we put it into a slick Instagram thing and Mo was there going, hey, hey, I got something cool to tell you about, everybody would live it because it's what builds civilizations.

Honor your father and mother.

Why?

Why is that so important?

Because civilization begins with the family, not with the state, not with a corporation.

It doesn't survive without generational wisdom.

Without generational wisdom, you have cultural amnesia.

And a society that mocks its elders and abandons its children is suicidal.

That's what that means.

Six, you shall not murder.

That's a pretty good one.

It's always been misinterpreted.

God never said you shall not kill.

He says you shall not murder.

That one should be obvious.

But, you know from the womb to the street to the clinic we've redefined life to suit this convenience but the commandments say no one is expendable life has value not because the state permits it because life is sacred and doesn't belong to you you cannot snuff it out

why as we lose

our understanding of the Ten Commandments are we suddenly seeing this rise in assisted suicide.

Why are the bluest states in the Union saying, Yeah, the state can kill you?

You know, you just, you need a

doctor to help you out on that.

No, that's murder.

That's murder.

That's why it's on the rise, because we have lost the understanding, thou shalt not murder.

What it's really saying is, life is sacred,

you shall not commit adultery.

This one

is today.

This one is almost everything we've talked about in the last few weeks.

And we haven't talked about marriage.

We haven't talked about adultery.

This one is about trust.

This one is about making a covenant and keeping your word.

A society that treats vows as disposable,

as disposable, treats people as disposable.

If there is no vow, if I look at you in the eye and say, I vow to do this,

and then I'm like, yeah,

that was on Saturday,

then fidelity is dead.

Trust is dead, and a community dies.

Shall not steal.

Pretty clear.

I'd like to bring this one into the IRS.

Property rights, personal responsibility.

This one is the foundation of capitalism, not cronyism.

Earned stewardship.

Without this, there's no incentive to build.

This is why we have the patent laws.

That's just another way of our society saying, you shall not steal.

That person came up with it.

They have the right to that idea, not you.

You want to use that, pay them, otherwise you're stealing their idea.

Without thou shalt not steal, you wouldn't have patents.

Without patents, you wouldn't have America.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Truth matters.

In court, in media,

in conversation.

If lies rule, justice dies.

We're seeing that.

This is the anchor of fairness.

This is the anchor of journalism.

This is the anchor of law.

This is the anchor of all society.

You can't lie.

You shall not covet.

That's all about greed.

All about

envy.

If we don't stop

envying, if we look at what's happened.

Our society has started, because we've lost track of the Ten Commandments, our society now pits the rich and the poor.

It pits, we've never, in my lifetime, I've never seen it where people are like, yeah, they're rich.

Who cares?

Let their children die in a flood.

I've never seen that.

Never.

That's covet.

That's they have something I want, and I don't care what happens to them because I want their stuff.

You have no civilization.

When we removed the Ten Commandments, we didn't just remove God.

We removed the blueprint for all civilization.

Without the Ten Commandments, we cannot write the ship.

We cannot fix ourselves.

So here's what I want you to do.

I want you to go to

restoreamerican

There are two states right now, and many more are being worked on.

This year, Texas passed the Ten Commandments Bill, SB 10, sponsored by Phil King and Candy Noble.

Arkansas just passed SB 433, sponsored by Jim Dotson and Representative Alyssa Brown.

These two states, now it is by law.

If the community produces the Ten Commandments and it's in a certain form, certain size, whatever, can we show the one that we have?

And you can frame it or you can just have it, you know, a stiff thing that they can put up,

then they have to put this up in the school.

They must.

They're required by law.

So here's what I'd like you to do.

I'd like you to adopt a school.

In one of those two states, I'd like you to adopt a school.

I'd like you to tell all of your friends and go to the website because it's also talking about other states where this is a movement.

If we can restore the Ten Commandments with the understanding of what it means to civilization,

we can fix our society.

Now, these Ten Commandments, nobody's making any money on it.

They're a dollar each.

So

you got a school and you've got, you know, 10 classrooms, buy 10 of them.

It's 10 bucks.

Bring them to the school and say, or send them to the school and say, under law, these are required to be posted.

Send them as many as you possibly can.

So, because they have to post them.

So, you know,

because I know there'll be some that are like, we posted it.

It's in the closet behind this door.

I don't know how the laws are written, but they have to be posted.

So state can't do it.

If we want the state to do less, then we have to do more.

This is a dollar.

dollar.

Get the Ten Commandments into every single one of these two state schools and help us turn the other states.

It is the answer.

It is the formula for Western civilization.

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Now, back to the podcast.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

listening.

All right,

I don't,

I don't, I can't.

I can't believe I'm alive to see the day when the Senate actually passes the defunding of NPR and PBS.

I've been doing this forever and forever I've wondered, how come we have to pay for everything and they don't?

How come we have to do, but they don't.

And then, and then it was like, and we're paying them to do the things that we're against.

At least half the country is against what they do.

Why are we paying?

And then

the bird and the guy in the garbage can show up.

And you're like, my kids want their plush toy and every time i say you know maybe they can fund themselves everybody says you want to kill big bird big bird is living in a penthouse okay big bird can afford the bird seed do you know how much money these guys have made

and yesterday the senate votes to default i i don't

But here's what makes me really happy.

Here's the PBS

CEO.

Listen to this, cut five.

We're always interested, obviously, in making sure that we're serving a multiplicity of viewpoints.

You know, Bill Buckley made his home on public broadcasting with a series called Firing Line, which continues today with Margaret Hoover.

We are interested in having different perspectives that we bring forward.

But when I look at the range of our programmings on public broadcasting,

I can't make any sense of an argument that we are somehow biased in any way.

Okay.

Okay, whatever, whatever.

Here's the case I'd like to make.

You got to make money just like everybody else.

We're not living in a communist system.

Why are we paying for stuff that most people don't use?

Why?

When they can make the money themselves.

They can do it on their own.

Why would we pay for a government?

Why?

I don't care who it is.

Let's say they were all just the big organ of the Republican Party.

Would you want that?

I don't.

I wouldn't want to fund that either.

Why?

Why would we fund a government-run institution that is supposed to be giving us facts?

Do you trust the government on anything?

Because I don't.

I don't want to hear it from the GOP.

I don't want to hear it from the DNC.

And here's the idea.

You can make money

on your own.

Yeah,

I know it's crazy.

It's crazy.

Why not?

Why?

Well,

for the first time, first time I don't have to make that argument to a member of the Senate.

They voted them out.

Funding done as long as it goes through the House.

House, we're so close.

We're so close, please.

We're so close.

Now, I will tell you

that millions of children are going to die.

Millions of children are going to starve to death.

They will go uneducated.

They will not know anything about the Wright brothers.

They will never even know what a documentary is.

They'll just be indoctrinated by these hateful people on the right,

you know, that are running things like

ABC and NBC.

What?

Just know, millions of children are going to die.

You're going to hear a lot of that.

But as long as the House does their job, too late.

I mean, may I just take a moment and admire what has happened in the last six months?

Six months ago, would you have even thought we could get to NPR and PBS?

Six months ago, when he holds his hand up, he's like, I promise to be a president, I'm going to be a good one, I'm going to protect and defend the Constitution, whatever that is.

He stands up there and says that.

Did you even think that we would get to a point to where NPR and PBS were out?

Nope.

Nope.

Not

for a second.

Not for a second.

So let's just take a moment and admire.

No, House, if you screw this up.

What are the odds of actually

what are the odds that?

I would have said zero yesterday.

I was talking to Senator, who was it, Senator Schmidt, and I was like, really?

I mean, come on, it's going to...

And he's like, no, I'm pretty optimistic.

I'm like, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, so am I.

And it passed.

Yeah.

It's fantastic.

Well, let's say hello to Pat Cray.

Hello.

Hi, Pat.

Now that you've covered the happy talk,

oh boy.

Are you going to be Debbie Downer?

Afraid so.

Really?

I'm a little pissed off today.

Oh, are you?

Yeah.

Just a little.

I can't imagine.

Actually, a lot.

Okay.

I'm on fire pissed off today.

You really?

You don't sound it.

You know,

this whole thing that

they ratcheted up,

including President Trump, ratcheted up because they got our expectations so high that this Epstein situation was going to be dealt with.

We were going to find out the real story on what happened to him in the jail cell.

We were going to find out the real story on who was abusing these children for years.

We're going to find all that out.

It's coming out day one.

As soon as we're in office, we're doing it.

Believe me.

Okay, we wait five months for it and then we're told, oh, I'm sorry, none of that exists.

What?

That's...

That is not a hoax that we've been ratcheting up.

I don't even think it's a hoax.

The Democrats ratcheted up.

They did that to us.

The people in office now are the people who got our expectations this high.

It's really

fucked me off.

I heard someone on your show today call in and say,

I am so pissed.

I'm a supporter of Donald Trump.

I have been.

I voted for him.

And now he's calling me stupid.

Now he's calling me a traitor or whatever.

No,

sweetheart, take that off your plate.

He's not.

He's calling me stupid.

Well, that's true.

He's calling

me and people like me, including you, Pat.

Yes.

He's calling people like us

stupid.

And not you.

He's not saying that.

That whole message is not directed to you.

Just like when he sat down in the cabinet room

and he said to the New York Post reporter, are you even, that's a stupid question.

Are you even thinking?

You're still talking about that.

That was not directed to the American people.

That wasn't even directed just solely to the guy from the post.

That was directed to all of the other reporters in the room.

You want some of this?

Because I'll give it to you.

Yeah.

Okay.

It was an intimidation tactic.

So he is not, he's not mad at you.

He's not calling you names.

He's calling people like me names.

All right.

And quite honestly,

wish he wouldn't,

but you know, it just comes with our job.

It just comes with our job.

The president, if the president likes you, no president has ever liked me.

If the president likes you, great.

If he doesn't like you, oh well.

This is our job.

Okay.

And my job is not to help him get elected, even though I think I, you know, in my personal time, I think I did that

because I so believed this is the end of the country without him.

And I still believe

he is moving towards the best president in the history of the country, absent George Washington, Abraham Lincoln.

And he might, if we go through what I think we're going to go through, he might actually rival Abraham Lincoln.

So I have tremendous respect for what he's doing.

Only time will tell if any of that is true and history will judge.

But on the pace that he's at right now and the things that he has done, it is remarkable.

It's breathtaking.

It's breathtaking.

So I applaud him for all of those things.

I'm a huge fan of all of those things, but not on this.

And I'm just not going...

Look, I...

I'm in this weird position, this really weird position, internally here.

I've got half the staff saying, well, I have the entire staff saying,

you really don't want Donald Trump as an enemy.

And I'm like, yeah,

he's been an enemy before.

Not pleasant.

It's not

pleasant.

That's very pleasant.

But I've been here before.

And part of me that says, oh, no, not again.

But.

That's just the job.

I have everybody warning me.

Oh, you don't want to do that.

Then I have people warning me everywhere, you're going to alienate half your audience.

I can't worry about that.

Okay.

I'm not doing this for business.

I could, believe me.

I would have retired a long time ago.

I'm doing this because I believe in something and I believe in truth.

We're supposed to be pursuing truth.

Okay,

now half my staff says

this this is absolutely real.

This is a cover-up, blah, blah, blah.

And half the staff says there's nothing there.

And so I had to get between the staff today and have, and they're all so honest and nobody's playing politics with this.

I have the best staff.

I think of anyone in radio or broadcast and maybe the history of radio and broadcast.

These guys are so dedicated, but

I'm going to rat Jason out because Jason absolutely believes this is a conspiracy.

That's fine.

That's fine.

And I asked him because he's head of research.

I said, guys, I want you to go and I want you to spend the next few days and I want you to track where did this begin?

When did this begin?

When was it we first started hearing about files?

When did we first start hearing about, you know, Bill Clinton is on that list, executives are on that list.

Was it back in 2008, 9, 10, 11?

Because if it started then,

it wasn't about politics.

Because right now,

after 2016, that's when everything went crazy.

Things were bad in 2010.

But

it was the

Obama administration going after

Jeffrey Epstein at the time.

Okay.

What did they say back then?

Was there all this evidence that they had collected and not used?

When did it become a conspiracy that it was being hidden?

Now, I went to Grock today.

I don't trust Grock.

That's why I have actual researchers.

But I asked Grock today, when was it?

And it said it started around 2019.

Now, I don't think that's right.

That's not right.

That's not right.

No, that's not right.

But anything after 2016,

I throw up red flags everywhere because then it's all about politics.

It's either about getting Donald Trump or getting somebody elected,

which leads me to there's nothing in this about Donald Trump because they would have used it.

I believe that too.

You know, he cannot be in this because

they would have used it.

The other thing is people are saying he's not releasing this because he's got friends involved or there's big donors involved or the GOP.

Donald Trump would burn the GOP down to the ground if he could.

Are you kidding me?

He'd burn it down to the ground.

And with an exception of like Kavanaugh, which he was wrongly accused, tell me the person that has been in the administration, his administration, that has done something stupid or wrong that he spent any political capital trying to save.

If you did something wrong, you screwed something up.

He's like, see ya.

Okay, right?

He doesn't spend that capital.

Why would he spend this much capital today?

For a friend?

For

a supporter?

We know it's not him.

because they would have used it against him.

It's not not a supporter because

he has no record of spending political capital unless you're wrongly accused.

Then he did it, Kavanaugh.

He spent a lot of political capital on that.

So what's his motivation?

I did a show last night.

Man, it is on fire.

right now,

the number of views it has.

And I don't know if any of his right, but I walked on the set last night and I had this whole script that we had prepared for days.

We'd been working on it.

And we had guests line up and everything else.

And I walked on the set and I put the script down and I looked at Jason and I said, Jason, I hate to say this to you.

Take the script out of Prompter.

I can't honestly say any of this anymore because of his tweet yesterday.

Something in that tweet stuck out.

And something in that tweet made me go, wait a minute,

Something's really wrong here.

What people are saying now, what Donald Trump is saying is, there's nothing in this.

There's nothing in it.

There isn't anything.

And you know what?

I began to really think about this last week when they were throwing up all kinds of walls.

And I'm like, okay, why would you say that?

Well, maybe there's nothing in it.

This is my first thought.

Maybe there's nothing in it that is provable.

Okay.

Maybe these names are out there, but you can't prove anything.

And it has had, now this is key, this is my thinking last week, they have the fingerprints of a thousand people on it.

They have, it, it sat around at the Justice Department on God knows whose desk or in what vault and who had access to it for at least four years under the Democratic control.

So you don't know what's true.

You don't know what's been taken out.

You don't have no idea.

I was thinking last week, what was taken out?

Then Donald Trump yesterday said, this is a hoax.

No, it's not a hoax.

Wait a minute.

He said it was a hoax written by the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, Brennan, and all the usual suspects.

And he said written by.

Is it possible that all of a sudden, lo and behold, gee, we look through it, look who's in here?

And he can't prove other than that I didn't do that.

I didn't do that.

Or there's something in there that has been written by the left, Brennan in particular.

You don't think Brennan would do this?

If he was actually there, Donald Trump would not be the president today.

Okay.

They would have used it.

But maybe it was a booby trap.

Knowing he was running on that, go ahead, release it.

Release it.

Look what, oh, look what you'll find.

Booby trap.

So they always put us in a lose-lose situation.

Is that possible?

You're listening to the best of Glenn Beck.

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Check out the full show podcasts anywhere you download podcasts.

Justin Haskins is here.

He is the president of our republic and the editor-in-chief of stoppingsocialism.com.

He is also the co-author with me of The Great Reset, Dark Future, and Propaganda Wars.

So in other words, I'm saying he doesn't have a lot of credibility,

but he is here to report.

I don't even think you're

you're, you were wrong on this too with the tariffs, right?

Well, at some point I was wrong about everything.

Okay, yeah, right.

We're all on the road to being right.

But this is coming as a shock.

You called yesterday and you said, Glenn,

I think the tariff thing,

I think the president might be right.

And this is something I told him, if I'm wrong, I will admit that I'm wrong.

but I don't think I'm wrong, because this goes against everything that economists have said forever.

That tariffs don't work, they increase inflation, it's going to cost us more, all of these things.

You've been studying this now for a while to come up with the right answer, no matter where it fell.

Tell me what's going on.

Okay, so the most recent inflation data, price data that came out from the government shows that in June, prices went up 2.7%.

In May, they went up 2.4%.

That's compared to a year prior.

And most people are saying, well, this is proof that the tariffs are causing inflation.

But when you actually start...

That inflation is.

The target is two.

The target is two.

I mean, we're not...

I mean, when I was saying that it was going to cause inflation, I thought, you know, we could be up to 5%.

But anyway, go ahead.

So the really incredible thing, though, is the more you look at the numbers, the more obvious it is that this does not prove inflation at all.

For starters, these numbers are lower than what the numbers were in December and January, before Trump was president, and before we had any talk of tariffs at all.

So that is a big red flag right from the very beginning.

When you dive even deeper into the numbers, what you see is that there's all kinds of parts of the Consumer price index that track specific industries or kinds of goods and services that should be showing inflation if inflation is being caused by tariffs, but isn't.

So for example, clothing and apparel, 97%, basically, about 97%, according to one report, of clothing and apparel comes from overseas.

It's imported into the United States.

Correct.

So prices for apparel and clothing should be going up, and they're not going up.

According to the data, they're actually going down compared to what they were a year ago.

Same thing is true with new vehicles.

Obviously, there were huge tariffs put on foreign vehicles, not on domestic vehicles, so it's a little bit more mixed.

But

new vehicle prices are staying basically flat.

They haven't gone up at all, even though there's a 25% tariff on imported cars and car parts.

And then when you just look at the overall import prices, you just sort of as in an index, which the government tracks, what we're seeing is that prices are basically staying the same from what they were a year ago.

There's very, very little movement overall.

No, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Let me just make something clear.

Somebody's eating the tariffs, and it appears to be the companies that are making these things, which is what Donald Trump said.

And then

the economists always say, well, they're just going to pass this on in the price.

Well, they have to.

They have to get this money someplace.

So where are they?

Is it possible they're just doing this right now to get past?

Because they know if they jack up their price, you know, they're not going to be able to sell anything.

What is happening?

How is this money?

being coughed up by the companies and not passed on to the consumer?

Yeah, well, there's a few ways this could be happening.

I think the most likely scenario is that they are passing it along to consumers.

They're just not passing it along to American consumers.

In other words, they're raising prices elsewhere to try to protect the competitiveness with the American market because the American market is the most important consumer market in the world.

And they probably don't want to piss off Donald Trump either by jacking up prices and then potentially having tariffs go up even more as a punishment for doing that because that's a real option.

And so I think that's what's happening right now.

Now it's possible that we're going to see a huge increase in inflation in six months.

That's entirely possible.

We don't know what's going to happen.

But as of right now, all the data is suggesting that recent inflation is not coming from consumer goods being imported or anything like that.

That's not where the inflation is coming.

Instead, it's coming from housing.

That's part of the CPI data.

Housing is the cause of the inflation right now.

Wait, it's not housing, is it?

Because

the things to

make houses is not going through the roof, pardon the pun, right?

It's not building.

No, no, the way the CPI calculates housing is really stupid.

They basically look primarily at rent.

That's the primary way that they determine housing prices.

So

they're not talking about housing costs to build a new house or housing prices to buy a house.

They're talking about rent.

And then they try to use rent data as a way of calculating how much you would have to pay if you owned a house, but you had to rent the same kind of house.

And that's how they come up with this category.

That's

the question that's coming from.

Is everybody in Washington

are they all retarded?

Because I, I mean, I don't.

What the hell?

Who's coming up with that formula?

I mean, look,

I mean, sort of underlying this whole conversation,

as you and I know, Glenn, and Pat too, the CPI is a joke to begin with.

There's all kinds of problems with this system to begin with.

So,

I mean, come on.

Okay, so

because I promised the president, if I was wrong and I had the data that I was wrong, I would tell him.

Do I have to, out of all the days to do this, do I have to call him today and do that?

Are we still looking at this going, well, maybe?

I think there is a really solid argument that you don't need to make the phone call.

Oh, my gosh.

Today's not the day to call Donald Trump.

Today is not the day.

And the reason why is because

we probably do need more data over a longer period of time to see if corporations are doing something in order to try to push these costs off into the future for some reason, maybe in the hopes that the tariffs go down or maybe

there's all sorts of ways they could play with it to try to avoid paying those costs today.

So it's possible that's what's going on.

But as of right now, that is not at all what is happening.

But as far as I can tell from the data.

But isn't the other side of this, because everybody else said, you know, oh, and it's not going to pay for anything.

Didn't we last month have the first surplus since, I don't know, Abraham Lincoln?

Yes.

Yes, we did.

I don't know how long that surplus is going to last us.

Probably not.

We had one month.

I don't think I've ever heard that before in my lifetime.

Hey, United States had a surplus.

I looked it up.

I think it was like 20-something years ago was the last time that it happened, if I remember right.

It was like 20-something years ago.

So

this is incredible, really.

And if it works, and you and I have talked about this before, I actually think there is an argument to be made that this whole strategy could work

if American manufacturers can dramatically bring down their costs to produce goods and services so that they can be competitive.

And I think that advancements in artificial intelligence and automation is going to open the door to that being a reality.

And if you listen to the Trump administration talk, people like Howard Luttnick, Secretary of Commerce, they have said that this is the plan.

The plan is go all in on artificial intelligence, automation.

That's going to make us competitive with manufacturers overseas.

China is already doing that.

They're already automating their factories.

They lead the world in automation.

Yeah, but

they could take half their population, put them up on a plane, and then crash it into the side of the mountain.

They don't care.

What happens to the people that that now don't have a job here?

How do they afford the clothes that are now much, much cheaper?

Well,

I think the answer to that is there's going to be significantly more wealth, trillions of dollars that we send overseas every year now in the American economy.

And that's going to go into other things.

It's not as though when new technology comes along, it's not as though people just lose their jobs and then that's it.

They just sit on their couch forever.

The real danger here is not that new markets won't arise in that situation the the problem and jobs with it the problem is

i think there's a real opportunity here and then i think this is going to be the fight of the next election potentially presidential election um and and and going forward next 10 20 years this is going to be a huge issue democrats are going to have the opportunity uh when the ai revolution truly goes into full force they're going to have the opportunity like they've never had before to say you know what we'll take care of you don't worry about it we're just going to take all of the corporate money and all of rich people's money and we're going to print trillions of dollars more.

And you can sit on your couch forever and we'll just pay you because this whole system is rigged and it's unfair and you don't have a job anymore because of AI and there's nothing you can do.

You can't compete with AI.

AI is smarter than you.

You have no hope.

I think that is coming.

And it's going to be really hard for free market people to fight back against that.

Well,

I tend to agree with you

because the, you know, I thought about this.

I wargamed this probably 2006, and I'm thinking, okay, if the tech is going to grow and grow and grow, and they're going to start, they'll be responsible for taking the jobs, they won't be real popular.

So they're going to need some people that will allow them to stay in business and to protect them.

So they're going to need to be in with the politicians.

And if the politicians are overseeing

the

decrease of jobs, they're going to need the

PR arm of things like social media and

what can be done now.

I was thinking at the time, like what Google can do.

But they need each other.

They must have one another.

And

unless we have a stronger foundation and a very clear direction, And I will tell you, the president disagrees with me on this.

I said he's going to be remembered as the transformational AI president.

And he said, I think you're wrong on that.

And I don't think I am.

This time period is going to be remembered for

transformation.

And he is transforming the world.

But the one that will make the lasting difference will be power and AI.

Agree with that or disagree?

1,000%.

1000

this is by far the most important thing that's happening in his administration in the long run if you're projecting out 10 20 30 years they will be talking about this moment in history a thousand years from now yeah they will like that will happen and they will and and if america becomes the epicenter of this new technology they will be talking about it a thousand years from now about how americans were the ones that that really developed this that they're the ones that promoted it that they're the ones that took advantage of it that's why this AI race with China is so important that we win it.

It's one of the reasons why.

And I do think it's a defining moment for his presence.

Of course, the problem with all this is AI could kill us all.

And so,

you know, you have to weigh that in.

Yeah, right.

Right.

Well, we hope you're wrong on that one.

And I'm wrong on it as well.

Justin, thank you so much.

Thank you for giving me the out where I don't have to call him today, but I might have to call him soon.

Thanks, Justin.

I appreciate it.

I don't think he's real happy with people like me today.

No, not real happy.

No, no, no, no.