Best of the Program | Guest: Sen. Tom Cotton | 2/17/25

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.

Hey, welcome to Monday, the podcast.

Today we spend a little time just talking about the results of a hockey game and how it shows maybe America is really back.

Also, Germany and Europe no longer allies on the free speech front.

It is disappointing that 60 Minutes didn't push back harder in favor of free speech, but who are the allies?

in the war on freedom.

And Senator Tom Cotton makes a lot of news in today's guest spot.

He was on with us to talk about the seven things you can't talk about about China.

And we also talk about Tulsi Gabbard, Cash Patel, and Ratcliffe in the CIA.

And are we going to war with China?

All that and more on today's podcast.

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You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

All right, well,

does the world hate us or are we gaining respect?

Let's look.

Last week, Trump was busy with the world leaders.

On Wednesday, Trump said he had a very lengthy phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which they agreed to begin negotiations around Ukraine.

On Truth Social, Trump posted good possibility of ending this horrible, very bloody war.

They also discussed the Middle East, energy and other issues and agreed to make visits to each other's country.

The President also spoke to the Australian Prime Minister.

They discussed defense, trade investment, mineral supply chains and concerns about China's aggressiveness.

Also last week, the world came to the White House.

King Abdullah of Jordan, he was at the White House.

They discussed the situation in Gaza.

And then late in the week, it was the turn of India's Prime Minister, Prime Minister Modi, he visited the White House.

They talked about launching a new initiative on military partnership, commerce, and our countries are going to work together on semiconductors and AI.

In the end, the Prime Minister of India said, we're going to make India great again as well.

The 51st governor, the one that runs Canada, is still not happy with Trump.

It played out this weekend in a Canadian soul-crushing event.

I'll get to that in just a minute.

In Germany over the weekend, they were listening to our new vice president, J.D.

Vance.

They were a little upset.

because he said the control of thoughts and free speech has to end.

It actually made one of the leaders of the group

weep openly, saying that it just showed how far apart Europe and America really are.

And yes, as the Germans bust down doors

for a retweet, I agree.

On free speech, we're quite far apart.

60 Minutes did a segment on it.

That's our topic next hour.

But the Germans are now claiming that it was free speech that led to the Holocaust.

Excuse me?

In Paris, European leaders huddled behind closed doors over the weekend, debating Ukraine's future.

Official statements spoke of unity, but is that the reality?

France and Germany, they're whispering peace talks while Poland and the Baltics brace for something much, much worse.

It's a war of words at this point for now.

But history suggests words don't end wars.

Back home, Washington in its own battlefield, this time over tariffs the president announced last week a simple plan whatever you charge us we're gonna charge you China was very upset boohoo Wall Street panicked in the heartland farmers remembered fair trade means fair play

over the weekend storms rolled in as well.

They came fast and they came hard.

It was Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Virginia, four states that are now digging out from flash floods that swallowed roads and homes and lives.

But among the storm clouds, there was a little parting.

Some good news.

Small-town America doesn't wait for Washington.

Neighbors showed up.

Churches opened doors.

And somewhere, a farmer with a backhoe is already clearing a neighbor's driveway.

That's America.

Back in Washington this week, President Trump is delivering on his promises while even attending the Super Bowl in NASCAR.

He's done all kinds of things, including last week a decisive 25% tariff on foreign steel and aluminum aiming to protect American jobs and industries.

Those jobs and industries here in America took a leap on the stock market.

Critics are grumbling, but Main Street applauds as finally a leader puts America first.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans are tackling a six-point agenda.

This is all about the budget and a looming shutdown.

Budget resolutions and reconciliation bills aim to bolster defense, secure our borders, all the while keeping a keen eye on the deficit.

It's a tough balance.

Democrats support the

Democrats' support is absolutely needed to keep the government from running post-March 14th.

Bipartisan cooperation is a necessity, it seems, because we're going to lose some stupid rhinos.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is undergoing transformation.

Seven prosecutors have resigned after being directed to drop corruption charges against New York City's Mayor Eric Adams.

Acting Deputy Attorney, Attorney General Emile Bove cites governance concerns for the dismissal.

Critics say it's a political maneuver.

Just it's Nixon's Saturday night massacre.

We'll see.

As Cash Patel should be confirmed early this week and as he is, if he is, on day one, expect the Epstein client list to follow within hours of him arriving at the Hoover building.

The budget committee, back to them, they have approved in the Senate

approving a fiscal year 2025 budget.

The plan emphasizes bolstering border security, military strength, independence, and an annual allocation of $85.5 billion, an offset by corresponding spending cuts reflecting a commitment to fiscal responsibility.

House Republicans are navigating their internal debates over their budget approach.

And the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, advocates for a comprehensive bill that combines Trump's tax cut agenda with increased funding for border security military priorities.

Our friend and serious budget cutter Chip Roy is with the House package.

We'll see if they can bring them both together.

Both chambers are working on this because

funding expires on March 14th.

Gee, have we ever heard that before?

We can't shut down the government.

Really?

I don't know.

Democrats are licking their chops at a government shutdown as usual, but wouldn't it be them that shut the government down?

And quite honestly, really?

I've had enough of this game.

Would anybody notice?

Maybe this time the Republicans won't blow it.

Trump sent the Pentagon a Valentine on Friday.

That Valentine just pretty much said, be mine.

He sent the Doge team out to the Pentagon on Friday.

Their mission is to cut the waste, cut the crap at the Department of Defense.

I think they're going to do that.

Last night, I don't know if Stu watched, Hollywood.

They took the stage.

Saturday Night Live celebrated 50 years of laughs.

or depending on who you ask, 50 years of diminishing returns.

The golden age was when Main Street was in on the joke, not

the joke.

Tom Hanks is in trouble.

He played a MAGA supporter.

Oh,

and the liberal laughs ensued.

Is it 2016 again?

And the hockey game.

I don't know if you saw the hockey game between the U.S.

national team and Canada this weekend.

Normally,

I'm not really into sports,

but sports sometimes, because it's part of culture, has a way of transcending and defining the era we live in.

Sometimes

it says out loud what we're all thinking.

And like the horns of Jericho, it announces our arrival and our future.

So let's see if we can find any echoes.

that

sound an awful lot like this weekend.

In 1980, the United States was in the same situation we're in right now.

And it was a hockey game that changed everything.

By and large, the world had lost respect for us because, just like now, we lost respect for ourselves.

Our nation had gone through some of the most intense movements in civil unrest that we had ever seen.

The left seized on it, keeping us in perpetual cycle of class and societal warfare, patriotism, and trust, and the government was spiraling out of control.

Three years after Jimmy Carter accepted the Democratic nomination for president, he addressed these concerns in a televised speech.

It happened on July 15, 1979.

He said there was a threat to the nation.

And let me quote,

the threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways.

It's a crisis of confidence.

It's a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.

We can see this crisis in confidence, in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of unity and purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of America.

Wow, does that sound familiar?

And isn't it amazing how Carter could see

what all of these policies were doing?

He could deliver impassioned speeches on the dangerous results, but then he would go back and double down on the policies that continued the spread of the virus.

The great inflation of the 1970s, it's what they used to call it.

It hit a fever pitch by 1980.

Interest rates spiked.

They fell briefly.

Then they flew up from there.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Banks stopped lending.

Unemployment skyrocketed.

The economy was clearly in a recession.

The geopolitical landscape, pretty much the same.

We had lost respect for ourselves, so the world didn't respect us.

Soviet Union appeared to be winning the war for global hearts and minds.

And then hockey.

Hockey came into play.

It was the battlefield of the Cold War.

By 1980, the Soviet Union had taken home the gold in five of the six past Olympic Games.

But then came the night of February 22, 1980.

The game had already happened hours earlier due to a broadcast delay.

Americans were expected to lose the mighty Soviet national hockey team.

But then we heard Al Michaels.

Maybe the greatest sports call in modern history.

You've got 10 seconds.

The countdown going on right now.

Morrow.

Up to soul.

Five seconds left in the game.

Do you believe in miracles?

Yes!

Unbelievable.

Do you believe in miracles?

It was called the Miracle on Ice.

Movies have been made about it.

It was an announcement party, was what really it was.

It was the changing of the guard.

It was the birth of a new era.

Herb Brooks brought together a group that everyone said could not win at a time when America was convinced it could not win.

And what it announced is America is back and we're not going to be pushed around anymore.

We would no longer be taken advantage of.

We would no longer allow people just to laugh at us or belittle us because we were back.

Reagan came in shortly after.

Now, like 1980, we've just spent four years years under a political ideology, as Carter put it, that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.

Our young people, they don't care about America anymore.

They don't have pride or love for the country because we haven't raised them that way.

In most cases, school is saying, there's no reason to be proud of your country.

People take it for granted.

They're ashamed of the accomplishments of America, her history, and the very ideology on which she stands.

Now, before I get into this last part, I want to say I don't like the arguments between us and Canada right now.

I don't like it.

We've always been friends, and it's a beautiful country.

It's cold.

I don't want to live there, and I don't want it to be the 51st state.

I think it's actually pretty funny that our president is calling the prime minister the governor.

But the Canadian government, led by their progressive prime minister, our governor Justin Trudeau, is an annoying mascot for everything that is wrong in global politics.

Well, he was at the hockey game on Saturday in Canada between the national Canadian team and the U.S.

national team.

Rumor was

our boys were a little sick and tired of being booed

every time the national anthem is sung.

And they weren't going to take it.

Canadians didn't care.

Why would they?

Our country under the Democratic leadership has been toothless and apologists for four years.

We've been taught to be ashamed of our country.

Why not boo the national anthem?

And boo,

they

did.

If you saw it, it made your head explode.

When the puck finally dropped at the start of the game, the American center

He barely looked at the puck.

He didn't care about playing the game at that point.

He immediately tore off his gloves, dropped his stick, and clocked his opponent, taking him to the ground.

When the referees pulled the American away, he skated with his head high, glaring at the hostile crowd.

The message was clear, screw old glory to your peril.

It was kind of awesome.

There were a total of three fights in the first nine seconds, again, which I didn't like, but the Americans were on a mission.

The intensity through the game was brutal.

And the Americans delivered an old-fashioned American beatdown.

The U.S.

team delivered a message and won 3-1.

I don't know.

Was it the miracle on ice of 1980?

Because that was more than a hockey game, and I couldn't help but feel the same way on Saturday.

I think America is back.

We're not ashamed.

We're not going to be intimidated nor cower anymore.

But we don't hate our neighbors.

We just love our country, what she stands for,

and the birth of a new, prosperous, and proud era, I think, is upon us.

Congratulations, Team USA.

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Now back to the podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Senator Tom Cotton, welcome to the program, sir.

How are you?

I'm doing very well, Glenn.

It's good to be back on the program with you and looking forward to talking about just what a dangerous risk China poses to American life.

Yeah.

You know, I read your book.

I haven't finished it yet, but I've been reading it.

You know, you talk about the seven things you can't say.

Let me just say them.

China is an evil empire.

Thank you.

China is preparing for war.

China is waging economic world war.

China has infiltrated our society.

China has infiltrated our government.

China is coming for our kids.

And China could win.

That's what your book lays out.

Let's take some of these one by one.

China's an evil empire.

Clearly,

make the case.

Glenn, as Ronald Reagan said about communist Russia, we could say the same thing about communist China.

It's an evil empire.

That's something that is often unsaid in our society because China has infiltrated so many corners of American society and people don't want to lose contracts or access or jobs or what have you.

But I think a simple look at the facts tells you that China, in some ways, is probably worse than Soviet Russia ever was.

Remember, Mao Zedong, the founder of Chinese communism, is the worst mass murderer in all of history, worse than Stalin, worse than Hitler.

And China has never repudiated him.

You know, when Stalin died, Khrushchev and the Politburo,

you know, kind of exposed him, so to speak, and repudiated him.

China venerates Mao to this day.

You know, his picture hangs over Tiananmen Square.

His remains are still embalmed in a mausoleum.

Xi Jinping, the current dictator of China, is an open Maoist and aspires to be more powerful than even Mao.

But just look at what they've done to their people, the monstrous crimes against their people.

Like the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s and 60s killed anywhere from 45 to 50 million people.

The Cultural Revolution.

in the 1960s was an effort to totally destroy all of cultural Chinese traditions, much worse than anything you saw in the French Revolution.

The one-child policy, which continued well after now, probably resulted in more than 300 abortions, 300 million abortions, and 200 million forced sterilizations.

And

how many people had their child, their baby,

and then only to have the Chinese government come in and drown it in a mud puddle?

I mean,

they are brutal.

Yeah, and just and what they do today in Tibet and Xinjiang, trying to ethnically cleanse and erase those peoples forever by taking their kids away from them and putting them in communist indoctrination schools.

Or considered Christians, Gwen.

Many people are surprised to know that China is one of the largest Christian nations in the world, maybe as many as 100 million Christians in China.

Yet they face severe persecution.

They face risk of arrest and punishment.

Children are banned from going to church or Sunday school and required to sign atheism pledges at school as they try to snuff out Christianity among the next generation.

China is even rewriting the Bible, literally.

It's substituting the word of God with the word of Mao.

And of course, they treat other religious and ethnic minorities even worse.

I mean, consider the Falong Gong, a harmless spiritual movement

that has roots in Buddhism.

Americans, to the extent they're familiar with it, have probably seen them doing their yoga and breathing exercises in parks, all because of one peaceful protest 25 years ago.

These people have been brutally oppressed, tortured, disappeared, murdered.

There's credible reports that

tens of thousands of them have had their organs harvested while they're still alive, Glenn.

Again, China could not be more brutal, more depraved in the way it treats its own people.

And it's really constructed a kind of techno-totalitarian police state beyond the wildest dreams of George Orwell, the author of 1984.

You know, he said in that book that

tyranny is like a boot stomping on the human face forever.

With China, you might add, it's a smartphone app monitoring the human face forever.

You know, I talked to

Chris Stewart a couple of years ago, and he said, going over to China,

he said, you know, we were informed there's nothing secret here.

Don't bring your phone.

Don't do anything.

He said the only place that wasn't under surveillance was up against one corner in the shower.

He said, everything else is being watched.

Everything is being watched and listened to.

That is a panopticon.

Oh,

absolutely, Glenn.

More than half the world's surveillance cameras are in China.

Think about that.

China makes up maybe

a sixth or a seventh of the world's population, but more than half of the surveillance cameras are in China.

They are everywhere.

And they're also powered by advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence.

China boasts that it can identify the face of any one of its subjects anywhere in the country in just a matter of seconds.

And it's right about traveling there.

I can tell you, I mean, I've never personally been there.

I don't plan to, Glenn, because I was sanctioned five years ago for pointing out the origins of COVID and standing up for Hong Kong or freedom.

But I know people have traveled there to include people that traveled there for U.S.

government business or just as US government employees.

And China isn't even subtle about it.

You know, they said that they would create a a dummy account on Gmail or Hotmail or some other web-based email just so they could you know tell their family or friends that everything's going fine.

And they'd they'd open it up at night and all the emails are already clicked as red.

So you know, the Chinese communist spies are reading their emails and not even bothering to mark them as unread.

No, I think they want you to know.

They want you to know.

Yeah,

they're so aggressive and so blunt force in the way they want to push you.

It's like what Chinese officials have said to countries on their periphery is that you're a small country and we're a large country and therefore you have to dance to our tune.

So

I want to come back because there's so much to talk about COVID and everything else that is really, truly evil.

But before we leave into the next thing you can't say about China,

why is it, do you suppose, I mean, we all think that we would be, you know, for the emancipation of slaves.

You know, if I lived in 1850, I would have been all over it.

Really?

Because what's happening in China is slavery.

And we are all buying Apple products.

We're all buying Google products.

Google is in bed with China.

Facebook is in bed with China.

I mean, everybody is.

Why is it we can't seem to

understand

that China is an evil empire?

We kind of got it with the Soviet Union.

Well,

I think I would say that our people do understand that China is an evil empire.

They may not understand the full extent of it, and that's what I want to explain in my first chapter in Seven Things You Can't Say About China, about how it is an evil empire.

But however bad they think China is, however dangerous it is, it's actually much worse.

But it's a lot of our elites that want to paper over it, that don't want to ring the alarm, which is what I'm trying to do with this little book.

In part because our elites are often co-opted by China.

Over the last 40 years, due to failed policies that frankly both parties supported in the 1990s and the 2000s and the early teens,

We shipped not just jobs or this or that factory or even business overseas.

We shipped entire industries overseas.

And there are many, many Americans who are deeply invested in China and who won't say a critical word about China, even raising the point that slave labor is being used in northwest China to oppress ethnic and religious minorities, so much so that companies came up to the capital years ago and were lobbying against legislation that would force them to inspect and audit their supply chains to make sure that Chinese slaves, literal, actual slaves, were not making products in their supply chains.

They were lobbying against that legislation.

Unbelievable.

Again, probably China was compelling them to.

And you could just see when they testified that their bosses had said, you know, we know this is going to put you in a hard spot with Senator Cotton and other China hawks testifying.

But if you say a single word that costs us any business in China, you're going to be fired immediately.

So where is the president, do you think, on recognizing that China is an evil empire?

Oh, I think there's no question that Donald Trump is the toughest president we've had on communist China since at least the end of the Cold War and probably the end of World War II since the Chinese took over in 1949.

I mean, I guess Eisenhower could give him a run for his money, Glenn.

But I mean, remember, Eisenhower threatened to nuke communist China.

I mean, that's what it takes to be tougher on China than Donald Trump.

And for Eisenhower, in some ways, it was easier

because Eisenhower was a Republican.

The Republican Party was 100%

behind

Cheng Kai-shek, the nationalist Chinese government that lost the Chinese Civil War and repaired across the Chinese or the Taiwan Straits to Taiwan.

So Eisenhower had the wind in his sails on being tough on China.

When Donald Trump came into office eight years ago, he had the wind in his face because you still had, by and large, bipartisan consensus that that we shouldn't rock the boat with China, we shouldn't confront them, we shouldn't make them feel uneasy, we're still going down this path of so-called economic liberalization, which is going to lead to political moderation, which had long since been disproven.

And President Trump really changed the terms of the debate about China.

There's still a lot of people who are not as strong as he is or as I am.

or some other Republicans, but you saw it with President Biden's administration.

He was very hesitant to reverse President Trump's policies on China.

He reversed almost everything else, but he was hesitant on China because he knew how unpopular China is and that the American people do recognize China as a threat, even if they don't understand the full extent of it because so many of our elites refuse to speak the truth.

You're streaming the best of the Glenn Beck podcast.

To hear more of this interview, find the full episode wherever you get podcasts.

So

last hour I played a little bit of J.D.

Vance's speech at the German or Munich security conference and he talked about how free speech is under attack in Europe.

And he didn't just point out that it was Europe that was having this problem, but he said it had to end.

But let's not stand here and point the finger at you.

Let's point it to ourselves as well.

Cut seven.

And in the interest of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation.

Misinformation, like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely

leaked from a laboratory in China, our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.

So I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer.

And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that.

In Washington, There is a new sheriff in town.

And under Donald Trump's leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree.

Wow.

Didn't go over well.

In fact,

here's the Munich Security Conference chairperson closing out the convention.

Listen to this.

This conference started as a transatlantic conference.

After the speech of Vice President Vance on Friday, we have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore.

I'm very grateful to all those European politicians that spoke out and reaffirmed the values and principles that they are defending.

No one did this better than President Selensky.

Let me conclude, and this becomes difficult.

He was applauded for crying that we don't have the same values in common anymore.

If this is the way Germany and the rest of Europe feels about free speech, then yes, we don't have the same values.

And I don't care if we stand completely alone.

We've done it before.

And when it comes to freedom of the individual, if that's what it takes, that's who we must become.

We have to square our shoulders and remember our principles.

Yes,

if you want to shut down free expression and free speech, which means you have to let the worst be said

so you can actually have dialogue, learn from one another, learn from the past, and not just become a zombie robot.

with an out-of-control government that you can never speak against.

Well, that's who we are.

That's what we stand against.

I will will tell you that their own people, I can guarantee you, are not for it.

How do I know?

Well, let me show you what happened on 60 Minutes.

Here's 60 Minutes joining a German police censorship raid.

It's 6.01 on a Tuesday morning,

and we were with state police as they raided this apartment in northwest Germany.

Inside, six armed officers officers searched the suspect's home, then seized his laptop and cell phone.

Prosecutors say those electronics may have been used to commit a crime.

The crime posting a racist cartoon online.

At the exact same time across Germany,

more than 50 similar raids played out.

Part of what prosecutors say is a coordinated effort to curb online hate speech in Germany.

Now, I don't like hate speech.

I don't like seeing racist cartoons.

But that is part of life.

It depends on who's in power,

on how you define hate.

And when you have a government able to take away inalienable rights, you have a real problem on your hand.

60 Minutes continues.

Is it a crime to insult somebody in public?

Yes.

Yes, it is.

And it's a crime to insult them online as well?

Yes.

The fine could be even higher if you insult someone in the internet.

Why?

Because in the internet, it stays there.

If we are talking here face-to-face, you insult me, I insult you, okay, finish.

But if you're in the internet, if I insult you or a politician, that sticks around forever.

Politician.

The prosecutors explain German law also prohibits the spread of malicious gossip, violent threats, and fake quotes.

If somebody posts something that's not true and then somebody else reposts it or likes it, are they committing a crime?

In the case of reposting, it is a crime as well because

the reader can't distinguish whether you just invented this or just reposted it.

That's the thing that

themselves.

Punishment for breaking hate speech laws can include jail time for repeat offenders.

Jail time.

Jail time.

If you say something offensive about a politician, did anybody catch that?

If you say something offensive about a politician, you can be charged with a hate crime.

You do it several times and you'll go to prison.

Ja volle mein Führer.

That's a question of how much did we have in common before JD Vance's speech.

Apparently not that much.

Apparently not.

Clearly not.

If those are your laws,

it's a crime.

You can't trust people to be able to decipher whether a quote is fake or not.

It's not their responsibility to look it up themselves.

Listen to Cut 3, CBS, not pushing back.

To build their cases, investigators scour social media and use public and government data.

Lau says sometimes social media companies will provide information to prosecutors, but not always.

So the task force employs special software investigators to help unmask anonymous users.

So this is suggesting you kill people seeking asylum here.

Laos says his unit has successfully prosecuted about 750 hate speech cases over the last four years.

But it was a 2021 case involving a local politician named Andy Groet that captured the country's attention.

Groet complained about a tweet that called him a pimmel, a German word for the male anatomy.

That triggered a police raid and accusations of excessive censorship by the government.

As prosecutors explained to us in Germany, it's okay to debate politics online, but it can be a crime to call anyone a pimmel, even a politician.

So it sounds like you're saying it's okay to criticize a politician's policy, but not to say, I think you're a jerk and an idiot.

Exactly.

Comments like, you're a son of a bitch, excuse me, for using the words.

Oh, these words have nothing to do with political discussions or a contribution to a discussion.

And it's up to him to decipher whether it contributes or not.

Yes.

Yes.

Boy, you better be careful if you're going over to Germany anytime soon.

60 Minutes finally asks about some free speech issues.

Listen to this.

The criticism that, you know, this feels like the surveillance that Germany conducted 80 years ago.

How do you respond to that?

There is no surveillance.

Josephine Ballon is a CEO of HAITAID, a Berlin-based human rights organization that supports victims of online violence.

In the United States, a lot of people look at this and say, this is restricting free speech.

It's a threat to democracy.

Free speech needs boundaries.

And in the case of Germany, these boundaries are part of our constitution.

Without boundaries, a very small group group of people can rely on endless freedom to say anything that they want

while everyone else is

scared and intimidated.

And your fears that if people are freely attacked online, that they'll withdraw from the discussion.

This is not only a fear, it's already taking place.

Already, half of the internet users in Germany are afraid to express their political opinion

and they rarely participate in public debates online anymore.

Half of the internet users.

Yeah.

Of course, you're putting them in prison when they get the thing when they say the wrong thing.

I mean, it is Gestapo with today's technology.

I've warned you, with today's technology and what is right around the corner, you put a Hitler in charge of it.

And there's not a Jew left in the world.

There's no place to hide in the entire world.

This is extraordinarily dangerous.

Now,

that was the extent of the CBS pushback on the Germans.

That was a lot.

Then you get Marco Rubio,

and they go to Marco Rubio to ask him about this.

Listen.

Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.

And he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties.

to extreme groups.

The context of that was

changing the tone of it.

And you know that, that the censorship

specifically about the right.

No, I have to disagree with you.

Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide.

The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews.

There was no free speech in Nazi Germany.

There was none.

There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany.

They were a sole and only party that governed that country.

So that's not an accurate reflection of history.

The free speech caused the Holocaust.

Amazing.

Free speech.

You couldn't speak out against the Nazis.

Who doesn't learn that in school?

Well, probably most Americans and clearly the journalists here in America.

You had no free speech.

How do you get everybody to give the Heil Hitler salute?

You don't do that by becoming popular.

They didn't.

They did it by beating people in the streets.

You will do this when we salute.

If you don't, we'll beat you to death in the streets.

And we can get away with it because our guy is in power.

There was no free speech.

This is insanity.

Now, I want to show you what

J.D.

Vance

said that made the guy cry

in Germany.

Now,

I want you to remember that the Munich Security Conference chair cried at the closing of the conference, cried because he realized the United States was no longer on the same side as Germany and Europe.

Now that seems crazy,

but no, I'm not on on the same side of people who want to silence anyone.

I am not for the silencing of people on the left here.

I am not for silencing the people in the middle or the right.

Even to the extreme, free speech is an absolute unless you're calling for violence and it actually turns into violence.

No.

But you can say whatever it is you want.

I know that sounds extreme.

It didn't used to, but apparently it does now.

Here's what J.D.

Vance said.

And if you think that Germany is the problem,

listen to this from J.D.

Vance.

Cut six.

I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they've judged to be, quote, hateful content.

Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, combating misogyny on the internet, a day of action.

I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Koran burnings that resulted in his friend's murder.

And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden's laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact grant, and I'm quoting, a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.

And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs.

A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes.

Not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.

After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.

Now the officers were not moved.

Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person's decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility.

He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.

Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person, but no.

this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.

Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime.

In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.

What part of of that did you disagree with?

What part of that makes you want to embrace the European Union?

For me, it's quite the opposite.

I've always believed that Europe are brothers and sisters and we're fine and we should help one another.

But I have to tell you, I no longer am comfortable with a single dollar going over to Europe to defend those kinds of policies.

You're not on the same side.

We are not on the same side if you violate freedom of speech that way.

And remember, this is why Klaus Schwab told Europe, just believe in the system.

Well, what is the system?

We found out the system is if the people vote for a candidate that is not going to play ball, if they are at all in line with freedom of speech, they're a radical, need to be shut down, and we cancel that election until the people get it right.

That's a dictatorship.

We are seeing the hatred of the old Germany and Europe start to grow again, and Europe could become a very large foe of freedom.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.