Best of the Program | Guests: Carol Roth & Luis Valdes | 3/14/23
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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.
A really good show for you today.
I talked to Carol Roth, who we kind of went into a different conversation than I thought we were going to have because I thought we were on the same page about the FDIC.
We're not.
We ended up at the same place, both gravely concerned that the average American does not have any idea
what a full banking collapse does,
what it will look like afterwards.
You don't want to miss that conversation with Carol Roth.
Also, we talk about the Second Amendment and the government still coming after your guns.
We'll talk about that all on today's podcast.
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you're listening to
The best of the Blenbeck program.
So much, so much to talk about with Carol Roth.
She is a former investment banker, but she speaks the language of Main Street and cares about Main Street over Wall Street.
Are we at the end of this?
Are we at the beginning of something bigger?
What happened to Silicon Valley Bank
for the English?
Did they actually buy this bank for a pound?
Is it
the same bank?
What is happening?
Also, bailing out
by using the FDIC,
the FDIC is now out of money and it didn't even cover what they bailed out.
So who's stuck with that bill?
Oh, and if treasuries were the problem,
aren't all banks kind of in the same boat?
Isn't even the Fed in the same boat?
And all of our allies that buy treasuries?
Carol Roth, welcome back.
Hi, Glenn.
What a crazy couple of days here.
Never ceases to amaze, does it?
No, it really doesn't.
First of all, let me
get your reaction.
We spoke on Friday on the Friday exclusive that I do for Blaze TV.
And this story was just breaking.
They bailed everything out with the FDIC,
but this isn't just the
depositors that they bailed out.
I'm for FDIC, covering depositors,
but
they just changed the law with a stroke of a pen, did they not?
I mean, you had $400 million in that bank.
It says clearly on the door, deposits up to $250,000.
Yeah, you know, it's funny.
I have a different take on this than a lot of people that I've been talking to, some friends and colleagues.
You know, they did not do what I would consider to be a full bank bailout.
They did not protect the shareholders.
They showed management, the door.
So the people who should be taking on risk took on the risk.
In terms of the depositors, I mean, you could say, oh, why should these tech companies be saved?
But I challenge people to change the name.
If it wasn't called Silicon Valley Bank, if it was called the Small Business Bank of Iowa, would you want those small businesses' money to be at risk?
Well,
there is a difference
in those small businesses, and I'll tell you what the difference is.
There's no way in hell this federal government would bail out a small business bank in a red state.
I just don't believe it.
That may be the case, but at the same time, if you think about the potential contagion effect, and and we can use this now as a benchmark to say they've done it before that god forbid the small business bank of you know red state were to fail in the future but if you think about just the ripple effects the example i like to use is etsy etsy is a marketplace where artisans and you know small entrepreneurs do crafts and they sell them etsy had all of their working capital or not all of their working capital, a large portion of their working capital with Silicon Valley Bank.
So if that money were to have to gone away, they wouldn't have been able to pay all of the entrepreneurs.
The same thing with a payroll company.
They had their money with Silicon Valley Bank.
And so another company wouldn't have been able to pay their entrepreneurs.
So that kind of reverberation throughout the system and then, you know, not quelling the fears that this could happen again and potentially taking down not just other regional banks, but having contagions up to big banks, it would have been really bad for everyone.
And this is a- But wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I agree with you.
I agree with you that it would have been horrendous.
Okay.
However,
I had
under the FDIC limit in Silicon Valley Bank for one of my businesses, we ran our payroll through Silicon Valley Bank.
We never put more than 250 grand in that.
We never do it unless we care care to lose it.
So, why do I have to play by the rules and expect that I'm not going to get something?
But all of the big guys will always expect, oh, well, they're going to bail me out.
I'm too big to lose.
I'm too big to fail.
Yeah, I mean, listen, this is, I think, sort of
an expectation sort of game.
But the reality is that we didn't want to have that failure happen.
And this was a bank that was very different than some of the other failures that had happened before.
I mean, this was not about making toxic
loans or derivative products.
This was really a liquidity issue that should have never gotten to the panic.
And I think that's the bigger issue that the way this was communicated, the hubris, I mean, the fact that the head of Silicon Valley Bank sat on the board of directors of the San Francisco Fed and didn't anticipate that it might not be a good idea to lock up money for 10 years in treasury.
I mean, there are a lot of really weird questions here.
And I think we can certainly debate, you know, what we should do on a go-forward basis, but we have to have faith in the banking system.
And for companies to take their cash management and now have to go through paperwork and chop it up into little blocks so that they can be covered and have this in all different kinds of banks and all different kinds of accounts isn't particularly efficient.
So I think
that the, I think the insurance program probably needs to be re-looked at.
But you can't just write the rules as you go.
That's the problem.
They do all the time.
I know.
And it's not that.
It's the first time that they've done it.
And it's wrong to do that.
So fundamentally, it is definitely wrong to do that.
But if they're going to continue to do it on an ongoing basis, this was not the time to put the flag down and go, nope, this isn't the time that we should do it.
That's just, you know, it was a very sort of practical decision.
Yes, in principle, we need to fix the underlying system.
But as I said, let's not pretend that we have capitalism here in the United States.
You've had the Fed who's been interfering with
Main Street to Wall Street on a historic basis.
So, you know, I'm not going to sit and pretend, oh, this was, you know, some affront to capitalism that didn't actually exist.
No, the Fed is, the Fed is completely out of control, overstepped.
And all of the, you know, the big banks, the really big banks, they are rolling with our cash.
And we're on
literally.
So let me go back to the bonds here for a second.
They lock these treasuries up for 10 years.
And
when the interest rates go up, they lost about 25%.
on their bonds if they tried to sell them in an emergency.
They were going to lose 25 cents on the dollar.
That's what caused the panic because if you lose 25 cents on the dollar, you don't have enough to cover all of the things that you have to cover.
Let me add one other thing that added into the panic because this was on paper.
Should they had held them to maturity, there wouldn't have been no problem.
Like you said, only in an emergency.
What happened is that within Silicon Valley,
because interest rates were rising and the bank was only paying a small amount on deposits, you could pull your money out and park it into a treasury bill now and get 5% percent without very long duration so you had more depositors pulling their money out than they had modeled and expected in this rising interest rate environment as well as probably companies that needed more operating cash because of the economy so they didn't have that expectation and that sort of mismatch is saying oh wait we have a liquidity need because we didn't estimate for this that's what forced them to sell the bonds at that loss and then created this pack and that's where this boob that is sitting on the Federal Reserve Board in San Francisco, these guys are, I'm convinced these guys are arrogant morons.
However,
how many other banks
have put
their
money into longer-term treasuries?
Oh, I mean, it's throughout the system.
If you think about it,
go ahead.
If you take, Bank of America, they also had a situation where they had to take a big loss on selling treasuries.
The difference is that they have a large and diversified business.
They only had 69% of their liabilities being deposits.
Where Silicon Valley Bank, it was 89%.
They have a lot of retail deposits that were under the threshold.
They have investment banking and trading and all these wealth management, all these other things.
So for them, it wasn't an issue.
But on a smaller scale, for a bank that, you know, really does rely on that deposit business.
And because they had so much of that as these, you know, smaller business deposits that were uninsured, that made it different than it was for, let's say, some of these bigger banks or banks that are structured different.
Right.
So, but I mean, I'm looking at banks
like, you know, JP Morgan Chase, all of the, they're fine.
They got plenty of money and they're going to get all the depositors as the little banks go out.
Exactly.
Right.
So let's understand what I'm asking.
What I'm asking you is
what gives us any indication that this
is
that it's over, that we're safe now.
I mean, it might be because right now, but this is going to happen again.
So that's exactly why they put out the press release that they did, you know, the Fed and the Treasury and that very comforting statement from our president, I'm sure that gave you all the confidence in the world.
I'm stuck.
But that was the point: is the reason that those depositors pulled out their deposits is because they were worried it wasn't going to be backstop.
And if there was this liquidity issue that was incurred, oh boy, you know, what are we going to do?
So, yes, there are other banks who are probably in the same situation, but if their customers don't panic and pull their deposits and they have the time to plug that liquidity hole,
then that's what that statement was meant to do.
Now, it really just depends on the temperament of individuals and businesses.
If you believe that, if you believe they're going to step in and backstop, then you're not pulling out the money.
These companies can, the banks can deal with it.
And if you don't, then we're going to see more of this.
Certainly, I think, you know, particularly Silicon Valley Bank was different than Silvergate and Signature that had more crypto exposure.
I would imagine those that have more exposure to crypto were probably going to see some additional issues.
But Silicon Valley Bank being that second largest bank to fail in history, one of the top 20 banks in the U.S.,
systemically important, as you said, obviously plugged in and connected was just
a bit of a different animal.
But
I do want to go to that point that you make because I think this is really huge.
Just like they closed down the small businesses during COVID and all of that went over to the big guys you know the big guys couldn't really step in there's some laws in place about them buying more deposits but what has happened in letting this play out the way it does is people have just decided to organically move their deposits so jp morgan and citigroup like they're having a field day so much so that jamie diamond just bought something like 26 million dollars worth of jp morgan stock because he's doubling down because he knows all of those depositors are rolling in and he did not have to pay a red cent for them.
The great consolidation continues.
This is the best of the Glenn Beck program and don't forget, rate us on iTunes.
Okay.
So
as the
as the
Fed rate goes up,
these treasuries are worth less and less if you have to sell them, correct?
Yeah.
So, you know, obviously, the not to get too wonky, but the interest rates or the yield on the bond trades in inverse to it.
And if you think about it, you know, why would you buy a 10-year that was, you know, on the market from a long time ago that's yielding 1 point something
percent interest when you can buy something that's at two years right now that gives you like 5% interest.
Right.
So their current value on the market is lower.
But again, if you hold them to maturity, maturity, if they hold them to 10 years, you still get the full amount of the face value plus the interest.
It's just the tradable value today in that interim time period because there's not a lot of demand for that.
Right.
So for any small bank that is holding these, if there's trouble, they could be in trouble just like Silicon Valley Bank.
Now,
the FDIC,
We were told, you know, that's the insurance.
And he said, well,
don't worry.
You don't have to worry about it.
The banks have paid into it.
Well,
they don't have enough money just to cover what they covered yesterday.
So they're already upside down.
So that means if we do have runs on the bank in future, you know, near future, they don't have any money, which leads me to believe we will just print the money.
Doesn't that, I mean, the inflation rate of what we're doing
is crazy.
Are Are we,
is this the beginning of the currency death cycle?
Well, the currency death cycle began a long time ago.
I'd say a couple of things.
So, from an FDIC standpoint, you know, they are saying we're going to put a fee out to other banks.
So, when Joe Biden comes out and says the taxpayer is not paying for this, you're not paying for it directly, but you certainly will be, whether it's a lower interest rate on your money or more fees or whatnot, if all the other banks have to go in.
What I do think can happen here in the meantime is, you know, with the bank, they're trying to sell off pieces of it
and they're trying to find new homes for it.
So the FDIC is covering it, its insurance, if it needs to make it whole, but if somebody else were to buy it or to, you know, buy other assets, there's a way to, you know, that that structure sort of happens.
And obviously that's the best case scenario.
And again, frankly, we should have just never gotten to the point where we had this panic, but
the idiots
didn't prevail there.
Should there be a, God forbid, wide run, yes, then, you know, in terms of trying to solve this, it would be money printing, which is again, if I can respond, because some people did not like what I had to say.
That's sort of my point.
Someone's saying I'm a paid show.
I'm not, I'm not paid by anybody.
I'm saying that we wanted to say, we wanted to stem this
because what would happen to everybody, people who were not involved at all, would have cost you a lot more than this kind of temporary pin here.
I don't think people understand
the destruction that is coming our way.
It's coming.
This is going to happen.
It's just a matter of when.
And people are like,
you know, I'm fine.
Bring it on.
No, you really don't understand.
You should be, in a healthy way, terrified of what is coming.
And I use the word terrified.
Do you remember our grandparents went through something that
they were 50 years away from and they were still like, it could happen at any time.
That's the kind of pain that America is about to go through.
And remember, those people grew up without indoor toilets.
Okay.
They grew up without all the fancy stuff that we have now.
They didn't have that far to fall back.
We have an enormous way to go back.
You should be terrified of it.
The best of the Glenbeck program.
With Carol Roth.
She is the...
author of the new book that is coming out this summer, You Will Own Nothing.
And, you know, Carol, I want to talk to you about where we were here a second ago, because I think it is important to discuss nuance here
with,
because
I am against bailing everybody out, and I know there's a difference.
They didn't bail out the crooks that were running it or the stupid people that were running it or anything else.
They did, they bailed out the people who were doing business with the bank, not the bank itself, correct?
Well, I wouldn't say they bailed them out.
They offered to backstop.
They created, and we don't know.
We don't know if any of that is going to be required.
You know, they're going to go through a process.
They're going to look to sell assets.
That money is going to be used to cover things.
But they stepped in and said, you know, if this needs to be covered, we're going to find a way to spread that out through the banking system.
So it doesn't.
So, again, this is a highly nuanced discussion.
They did not bail.
They did not save the bank.
The bank closed.
They did not save the shareholders.
They did not save the management who made the bad decisions.
I personally think that they should go back after any of the stock sales that the senior management made in the weeks leading up to this.
So it's not that.
It's about, you know, not completely burning down the system.
And there's some people who say, you know what, we should just light a match.
Let's burn down the entire system.
system today.
I'm more in the camp of let it burn slowly because there are more people who need to get prepared.
And like you said in our previous segment, the amount of carnage that would be happening to everyone, people who are not directly related to this.
This is not about the people who are related to this.
This is about the contagion effect to everybody else, including the people who are listening to this program.
And it is a nuanced discussion about the interconnectedness and
how messed up our financial system is.
It is, in the worst-case scenario, it is the end of the Western way of life for at least a while.
Yes.
And I don't think people really understand that.
I was for TARP for about two days.
I had a friend who was in the meeting with the Treasury that Sunday night, and he called me, and he's a really reasonable, buttoned up, you know, guy, and he was a CFO.
He called me in tears.
He was walking home from it in New York, and said, I'm walking up Broadway, and I'm looking at the cars coming down.
And he said, I'm looking at the faces of people.
They have no idea what's about to happen.
Yeah, well, it's funny because I was actually against TARP and against those bank bailouts because it was a different situation.
Well, I was, hear me out.
I was for it for about two days after talking to him because I saw what was happening and what it meant, and no one was prepared.
And I thought, okay, he said to me, Glenn, we're going to slam into the side of a mountain.
This will allow us to come down in the trees.
But then I realized nobody was actually doing that.
They weren't preparing to bring it down.
They had another scheme up their sleeve.
And that's why I immediately changed my mind.
I went, wait a minute, wait a minute.
This is a game being played.
Correct.
So
there's part of me that
I want to slow it down in any way possible and land in the trees.
However,
the more time that goes on, the worse it's going to be, A,
B,
the more prepared
the government is to fall into digital currency and everything else, which is going to be the end of freedom as the world knows it.
Yeah, and that's actually my concern, as I've expressed to you before, that having a bank run and having, you know, wide bank runs gives the government the perfect cover story for CBDC.
They can say, you know, you can't have a bank run if there isn't a bank.
So if we control this, then you're completely, you know, quote unquote secure because the government is here to help you.
And that just gives them that crisis to be able to push central bank digital currency, which is the end of freedom and independence and individual rights and property rights here in the United States, which, as we both know, is coming.
It's a matter of time.
I just want more people to understand this, to get into some level of hard assets, to really be prepared, because people are not prepared for this to happen tomorrow.
They think that it's just going to,
we haven't seen anything like this since the 1930s.
And this is
probably more destructive than what we had in the 1930s because of the scale of debt all around the world.
Correct.
And think about this.
You know, the U.S.
has been the global center of the universe, the world's reserve currency for only about 80 years.
So people who are alive today have never been in a situation where we have not been in the center of the financial universe.
And as that shifts, that's going to have severe implications for for the quality of life, for the actions of the government.
And by the way, every time there has been one of these shifts in modern history, from the Dutch Empire to the British Empire to the U.S.
Empire, there's usually a catalyst for that, which is war.
So there are really bad things that go along with the shifting of the financial world order.
And you're right.
It is going to happen.
happen.
It's a question of when, not if it's going to happen, but everybody needs to be prepared.
And this weekend was not the time for that to happen.
I will tell you that I'm always, thank God, I'm always wrong on timing, but direction, I'm usually right on.
But I really feel that
war, collapse, whatever, is coming before the next president is sworn in.
Because if I'm China, why wouldn't I do it at our weakest point?
One other thing.
Did you get the email I sent you from Seeking Alpha?
So I did.
It's about the
you didn't get a chance to read it?
I didn't get a chance to get in there yet.
Okay, so it is
for the first time in the Fed's history,
they are operating in a loss.
The last quarter of 22, they
posted a loss of 15 billion.
So usually all of their profits go to the Treasury and that helps, you know, our deficit.
But they are now expecting losses this year
of, gosh, what was it?
Like $115 billion.
And they're kind of in the same kind of situation
where we're not getting the money.
And then they also said they're carrying a huge unrealized loss in their SOMA portfolio.
Do you know anything about that?
What does that mean?
Yeah, so I mean, a few things is that the Fed over time operates at losses and also at, you know, quote-unquote profits.
And like you said, when they have profits, they give it back to the U.S.
Treasury, which is why I always laugh when people tell me that the Fed is an independent organization.
What independent organization gives their profits when they seem to have them back to the U.S.?
Guys, this is all tied in together.
In terms of the unrealized losses, I mean, you know, the Fed has
close to still like, it's over $8 trillion, close to $9 trillion on their balance sheet
from this funding money that they've printed from nowhere.
And they've gone out in the market and they've purchased the same kinds of securities.
But again, in terms of unrealized, we've talked about before in terms of tax policy.
Unrealized doesn't mean anything.
It's theoretical.
It's only when it becomes realized that it's an issue and the Fed has no incentive.
If they have things that have unrealized losses on their balance sheet, they'll just keep them on their balance sheet forever.
The bigger issue is the fact that they have anything, let alone that level on their balance sheet and everything that they have done to put us in the situation we are today, to transfer epic amounts of wealth from Main Street, from the working class, from the middle class to Wall Street.
I mean, that's the issue.
We've got the Fed who, you know, alongside the government is the arsonist who burns your house down and then is standing there with like a little bucket of water being like, oh, look at me.
I'm helping.
I'm trying to put this out.
I mean, this is the crux of the issue.
This is what we need to be addressing systemically if anything is going to change.
Their powers,
it's not just about abolishing the Fed, which a lot of people are talking about, it's abolishing their powers because the only thing that would be worse than the Fed having these ridiculous powers that they have would be for Congress to take them over.
So we have to be very, very specific.
We want those powers abolished.
We should be letting the market dictate things like interest rates and not having a committee of people play God here.
The problem that people will say is, well, then you'll have crashes all the time.
But the crashes we used to have were very short-lived.
And the recovery always came back because it is part of
the free market to burn out the
underbrush that is dying.
You let the trees die and it burns out and that replenishes the soil.
And so we had short crashes.
They are not preventing crashes.
They are building these crashes.
And that, you know, it used to be the mantra, these banks are way too big.
Well, they keep making everything bigger.
They're going to to push it into four banks.
Then it will be the Federal Reserve.
And the Federal Reserve will eventually become a global thing.
And, you know, then what?
I mean, there's no place to push it other than God after that.
Yeah.
I mean, I think about the scope of the boom and the bust cycles.
Like you said, you know, not only do they get perhaps more frequent, but they get huger in scope, the huge bottoming out and then that huge bubble run up.
And what this does, most people don't realize this, is I call it sort of the vulturing of these boom and bust cycles because it wipes out the wealth of the average person who panics and says, you know, I've had enough of this.
Then they run the prices up and who benefits from that?
It ends up being the wealthy and well connected.
Then everything busts out again.
It goes down to lower prices.
The vultures that have all the money, they put their money in and they keep putting in them in these huge, huge cycles.
So they're creating not necessarily just more frequent cycles, but these larger cycles.
If we had a stable currency that was backed by something like gold, like it used to be, it would be a very different situation.
And it would take the moral hazard away from the Fed and the government to just do whatever they wanted and destroy the purchasing power of the people who have worked so hard to earn that money.
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Senator Mark Kelly called for social media to censor anyone to prevent bank runs.
You know, don't censor, but
don't cause a run on the bank.
It's probably a good safety tip.
Bitcoin is being blamed for a lot of this, although Bitcoin went up, gold went up.
Carol, I talked to so many friends and family.
They were all calling me yesterday.
What do we do?
What do we do?
Gold and silver.
I mean, if
that, I mean, that's the only thing that you can count on, right?
Yeah, I mean, we had Twitter spaces on this last night.
I actually put a
video out today for gold virgins, people who've never bought precious metals before because it can be a little bit intimidating.
But yeah, I mean, this is,
you know, when there are changes in the new financial or the financial world order, historically, it has always been something that goes back to a commodity that everyone agrees on.
You know, that's been gold.
Central banks, we know, have bought a record amount of gold last year.
So, you know, the idea is to get yourself into hard assets, a form factor that you can control, because particularly, as we said, if this rolls into things like central bank digital currencies, you want to be able to control and have access to a portion of your wealth, hard assets, physical metals.
Use a reputable dealer.
I know, Glenn, you and I both work with Goldline, not to be a commercial here, but you want to have physical, not ETF, something that you can hold.
And then certainly things like land, water rights, real estate, things that are tangible and hard that don't have that same manipulation factor.
But for that buying, that bartering, the trading, putting some of your long-term wealth in precious metals, I think is imperative.
And just as Carol said, we're both spokespeople for Goldline, but
we're only spokespersons for Goldline because we believe it.
So So this is not a commercial.
I mean, go ahead and buy your, I think you'll regret it, but go ahead and buy your gold or silver wherever.
But
if you're not awake to gold or silver, and people say, I don't have the money for gold.
Well, maybe not.
But silver, you have the money for.
And silver will be probably more
usable in the short run because you're not going to be buying huge, you know, know, huge things.
You need to barter.
If you are really down and I can't afford gold, well, you have to just think,
how do I barter?
How do I get something of value for my family that I need?
And, you know, it's most likely not going to be in $5,000 chunks.
Yeah, and you can get smaller gold coins and fractional amounts of golds as well, which are important.
If you think about a situation like Venezuela, those metals are what they're using for things like food and hospital visits and things things like that.
So
it happened to them.
Just don't panic, but be prepared.
Yeah, look at Venezuela.
Once they started nationalizing things in Venezuela, it was over quickly.
They were on about a 20-year time line, and we're headed towards 20 years now of this timeline.
That's kind of the outcome that could come here to America.
And don't think that it can't.
Prepare so you don't worry about it.
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
Welcome to the Glenn Beck program.
Last hour we had Carol Roth on and I was a little surprised, Pat, I don't know about you, when she agreed with me that digital currency is coming and it means the end of freedom for mankind.
I mean,
that's terrifying.
And, you know, the only thing,
in a hundred years from now,
historians are going to look back and see the systematic dismantling and destruction of this country and our rights as citizens.
And they will look at it in horror and also in
awe.
I mean, it is
so well done
that
and executed.
it's remarkable
and the one thing that
make no make no mistake they are coming for your guns i think it's just going to be the last thing they need a huge crisis and everything else to go along with it but they have the ways to do it if you don't strengthen your state florida the legislature there just moved a step closer to passing constitutional open carry which i don't know why we didn't call it constitutional carry forever.
That just means
brilliant
to say.
It's like,
no, no, no.
I'm just, I'm pro-choice.
It's that brilliant.
Yeah.
Luis Valdez is with us now.
He is from Gun Owners of America, the Florida state director of Gun Owners of America.
Hi, Luis.
How are you?
Doing very good.
And I just want to say, longtime listener, going all the way back to when you even did the pitchfork.
Oh, my gosh.
Boy, do we need the pitchforks and the torches now, huh?
Yeah, I was part of the group that sent you the pitchfork with a tactical weapons light attached to it.
Oh my gosh.
It's going apart.
It's going way back.
Can I tell you something?
I got in so much trouble at CNN because I said, you sent us pitchforks, and so many came into the mail, and CNN was out of their mind.
You have people sending you pitchforks?
Yeah, just, you know, just a reminder to the politicians.
You have to stop that right now.
It is a badge of honor to get in trouble there.
Anyway, Louise,
the constitutional open carry,
the ones who are standing in the way seem to be the Republicans.
It's very much that.
Florida has been under a Republican supermajority control now for the last two decades.
And the horrible part is it's been Republicans that have been blocking pro-gun legislation, solid, real pro-gun legislation for over a decade now.
You've had various committee chairs and speakers and senate presidents just refuse to move forward bills like campus carry, open carry, constitutional carry,
the repeal of gun free zones, the passage of Second Amendment Protection Acts.
And instead,
they either just kill it or they give us watered down bills and that's currently what's going on here with the florida legislature right now the governor pledged that he would enact constitutional carry before he leaves office whether that means he runs for the white house in 2024 or his second term is up yeah but he made that pledge to floridians
and the current senate president kathleen pasademo has basically said She refuses to move forward on a real constitutional carry bill.
She will only allow a permitless concealed carry-only bill, which, while a step in the right direction, is a very small step.
It's not the large leap we've been promised.
What is the difference between constitutional open carry and what she's saying, a permitless open carry?
It's not even open carry.
Florida, this bill will only allow you to conceal carry a firearm.
And just to put things into perspective, 47 states have open carry on the books in one form or another.
Only Florida, New York, and Illinois outright ban it.
California is ambiguous.
They let their counties determine whether or not you could open carry.
But just put that into perspective, 47 states have open carry legalized on the books.
Florida, the only Republican state, has it outright banned.
So what is her problem?
Her problem is very simple.
The Florida sheriffs are against it.
The Florida Sheriffs Association has historically been anti-gun, going all the way back to 1987 when Florida became Shell issue with concealed carry permits.
They were against that.
All throughout the 2010s, they were against any bill that would either advance campus carry or open carry or permitless carry.
Usually the sheriffs are our last line of defense for
the Constitution.
It's odd that they would be against the Bill of Rights.
Well, in Florida, these are Republican sheriffs that are against the Second Amendment rights.
The Democrats have no power in Florida.
This is all Republicans.
See, you know, I tell you, we have this problem in Texas.
You know, people just think they're safe.
He got an R after his name, so I'm safe.
And in states where you have super majorities like that, people don't run as Democrats.
And you get progressive Republicans who really
are Democrats
or they're just such slimy Republicans and they get in because they have an R and everybody thinks they're safe and the the reddest of red areas are the ones in the most danger
very very much so and just to just to really give you a shocker
the bill sponsors for both the house and the senate they don't even know what's their own bills.
The bill sponsor, Representative Chuck Brannon, this past weekend,
you had some political activists.
They were distributing flyers through his neighborhood and they stopped by his house.
And Brannon literally told him, I don't know what constitutional carry is.
Just take the win.
He was berating the person that was handing out the flyers.
And look, personally,
I don't agree with going to politicians' houses in their neighborhoods, but look, there was nothing criminally wrong.
There was nothing wrong.
They were distributing flyers in a neighborhood and
again he's the bill sponsor for the house and he was caught on film literally saying i don't know i don't even know constitutional carry oh my gosh uh the person that was the person that was passing out said look you know we we want a real second amendment bill we want open carry we want this we want that and he just said you know maybe i'll just pull the bill how about that you know you could always vote for democrats and on the Senate side, during debate, a couple of Democrat senators asked Senator Jay Collins
questions about the bill.
And one such question was, okay, well, what about gun-free zones?
Is that still going to be upheld?
And he was like, well, yeah, basically.
And she says, oh, so the state capital, that could still be a gun-free zone?
And he said, yes, mind you, the state capital under Florida law is not a gun-free zone.
Another question that was asked of him was, well, what about securing firearms in the vehicle?
And he's like, well, you know, you have to keep it in a safe in your car.
Again, that's not part of state law.
These guys, man, I got to tell you,
it is shameful that people go to work in our state houses and especially in Congress and the Senate, and they literally are clueless about many,
many things.
Most of them revolve around the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
I've only got a couple of minutes left, and I want to ask you about the ATF pistol brace rule.
There are 40 million of these firearms, and anyone who has one is, I think we're probably 60 or 80 days away now from being a felon if you have one.
What's the latest on that?
Do you know?
Well, the latest on that is we've teamed up with
your Attorney General
Pasha out of Texas to file a lawsuit against the overreach from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Farms and Explosives.
What the Biden administration doing
is arbitrary, is capricious, and is a direct violation of millions of American civil liberties.
This is draconian and despotic in basically bypassing Congress, bypassing the Bruin decision, bypassing previous Supreme Court decisions that reinforce and enumerate the Second Amendment as an inalienable right belonging to all the people.
And basically, the Biden administration is saying, I don't care.
I'm going to try to do what I want to do.
And if Congress won't even work with me, fine.
I'll do it with the stroke of a pen as if I was a dictator.
Crazy.
But we're here fighting it, and we will prevail.
Okay.
Last thing.
How can people help?
If you're in Florida,
what do you need to do to get this thing voted on for the constitutional carry?
Well, the best thing that they could do is they could call the governor, they could call the Senate President, and they could call the House Speaker.
The bills have already passed committee, so they're going to the House and Senate floor here in Florida, and they need to hammer their legislators.
but especially the governor and the senate president and the house speaker that they want a real open care a real constitutional carry bill that includes open carry the governor even said he wants open carry included in this bill.
And when I asked him about that, he said, absolutely, I'd do it, but I don't think they'll do it, meaning the legislature.
He, as a Republican governor governing a state with a super majority, he thinks his own legislature under his own party won't pass a real pro-gun bill.
Wow.
Well, call the three of them, House, the Senate leader,
and
Governor DeSantis.
Thank you so much for everything you guys are doing to keep our guns in our hands.
Appreciate it.
Thank you very much for having me on the air, and thank you for being a beacon of freedom in these dark and troubling times, Glenn.
You got it.
Thanks, man.
Gunowners.org.
Gunowners.org.