Best of the Program | Guests: Jeff Brown & Mike Pompeo | 2/10/23

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Hey, today's podcast goes right to the future with Jeff Brown.

He is one of our best guests ever.

Very, very popular.

He is a guy who's on the podcast on Saturday, full podcast, about 80 minutes with him, talking about future predictions.

We play some of it in the first part of today's podcast, and then I have him on to really go into

what

is he worried about with this tech.

End of AI week with Jeff Jeff Brown.

First part of today's podcast and the full podcast tomorrow.

Then we had Mike Pompeo on to talk about the balloon, to talk about Ukraine, and some of the things that he learned while he was over in South Korea.

You don't want to miss Mike Pompeo.

We then wrapped up the final hour with Mike Lee.

who had done his homework and is going to be doing some more homework over the next four or five days.

Did we blow up the Nord Stream pipeline?

He did his homework.

He thinks he has an answer, but he wants to ask questions in the SCIF, the

top secret room himself and look at all of the documents he can.

He brought up a point that no one else is really bringing up on this.

Even if we didn't blow up the Nord Stream pipeline,

there's a question that has to be answered, and you'll hear that in today's podcast.

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You're listening to

the best of the Glenbeck Program.

This is the Glenbeck program.

We welcome now to the program Jeff Brown.

I'm sorry, Jeff, I thought you were coming in.

I'm glad we have you on the phone.

On the phone.

I'm hearing talk back a bit.

Okay, so Jeff, we were...

We played a bunch of the really positive stuff that's coming our way, but I ended the interview asking you if you were a pessimist or optimist, because

this is the best of times, this is the worst of times.

This technology is the greatest

tool authoritarians have ever had by far, and it could enslave the entire world.

First, is that hyperbole?

And if not,

are you

optimistic or pessimistic and why?

Well,

I wish I could say it's not hyperbole.

The worst case scenario is absolutely

a possibility.

We can't discount that.

And ignoring it would be, I think, even more dangerous for us.

But perhaps history may be a good guide.

As we think back over the last 100 years, for example,

we've always been faced with new technologies that were highly disruptive and could certainly be used

for ill will.

But so far, the world, society,

has found a way

to continually bring out more and more abundance.

for the world to lift billions of people out of out of poverty

and increase the quality of life and living for the entire planet.

And so we have very good reasons to be optimistic about managing through this

next transition in terms of employing these incredible technologies.

So I would feel like we, you know, nuclear weapons that could have killed everybody on the planet 100 times over and killed the planet.

But we didn't because there was

we have common decency and intelligence.

However,

I don't feel like this is the 1950s where you have to talk about it and talk about it in a rational way, you know, the threats of nuclear war and what it means, like Eisenhower said, the military-industrial complex.

I see,

as we spoke about yesterday, I don't see a lot of good guys.

that have global power and are in governments.

I don't see the Winston Churchills that are like, no, no, no, wait a minute.

That belongs to people.

That's a dramatic difference, isn't it?

I agree with that.

And

perhaps another framework for us to

consider that is that

nuclear weapons,

they're hardware, right?

ICBMs, they're rockets, like we can count them, we can figure out where all of the silos silos are located, we can determine how much uranium is being enriched, and we can kind of assess the threat level and how much of it is out there.

But with artificial intelligence, this is a completely new framework.

It's software.

It's nearly impossible to understand

how it's proliferating or how it's being used

by bad actors.

And you know,

you have things like the World Economic Forum, where you've combined big tech, big business, big government,

and authoritarians who are arrogant.

It can't fall into the hands of those guys.

That's correct.

It is

too much.

It's too much power to be given to a small group of people who believe that they can make decisions on behalf of all of us.

You've done a couple of things.

You're working on, you're looking for

people that will

run a company that would actually take like these chat GPT and take AI and make it so it is personal, so it can fight against,

you know,

the chat GPT that's owned by Google or Apple or whoever, and it actually protects the individual.

Is that possible to do this?

It absolutely is.

And I think there's even

a way to do it in a way that it does not become

politically polarizing.

Right.

You know, you and I yesterday we explored the idea of,

let's just creating an objective

large language model that can be improved or enhanced, desired on the learner or the individual's or the group's particular preferences

by making kind of, let's just call it a core engine, a core artificial intelligence engine.

and productizing that and then allowing that engine to be customized with additional inputs as determined by again the individual the learner the group you know even a country perhaps could find value in that so that it's contextually relevant so that it's socially relevant culturally relevant given whatever the needs of those individuals or groups actually are and that could be done you know, without the kind of

data surveillance models that are employed by the Googles and the Facebooks of this world.

When you look at the surveillance models, I asked you, and we never even got to this, but I asked you about WAMI.

I was reading about,

what does that stand for again?

Wide angle

motion imagery.

And the way it's being used, for instance, in China is terrifying.

I mean, there is no escape at any time from being monitored, predicted,

moved,

you know, recorded.

I mean, it is terrifying.

And whammy is starting to spread over the globe, is it not?

We have whammy.

The most prominent country historically has been the UK, right?

Right.

In terms of the number of cameras and video surveillance of a population, it's really quite extraordinary what's happened in the UK.

But you're absolutely right.

Obviously,

the geography of China is much greater, so it's a harder problem to solve.

But it's just infrastructure.

And it's not just what's become more interesting, we talked about how the aerospace industry has really been transformed by SpaceX lowering the cost of launching kilograms to orbit by more than 90%,

that's resulted in a proliferation of companies that launch

basically CubeSats or small satellites that are used for imagery from space.

So

this is, think about this as almost a complement or a supplement to cameras and video surveillance on the ground.

These data sets These video inputs are literally ingested into

machine learning and forms of artificial intelligence to determine whether something is or isn't wrong

as defined or programmed by whoever the overlords are that feel that they need to monitor their entire population.

So yes, this, you know, what technology can do, the problem previously wasn't the video cameras, it was how to analyze and ingest and provide actionable intelligence from all of the video.

Humans can't possibly do that.

It has to be automated, and the way it's automated is through machine learning and artificial intelligence.

I wanted to talk to you.

We've got about three minutes left.

I want to talk to you about Project Perceptron.

This is a system that you and your team have built, and it revolves around cryptocurrency.

Can you explain what's coming in about 60 days?

Well, or no, what's coming?

I mean, it it is launched, but it's not is it operable now?

Yes, I've been running

I built my own artificial intelligence, a deep neural network,

and we took a very kind of obscure data set, which is cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and we built it in a way where it's able to predict price movements.

So it predicts assets that will

rise in price within a specific time horizon within 60 days.

It's been an amazing project.

It was an interesting way to apply artificial intelligence to the investment markets.

And I've actually been developing that even further to identify price movements in equities or stocks, which is something that

I'll be actually doing within the next 30 or 60 days that I'm very

excited about.

It's incredible technology because it can ingest an unbelievable amount of information and synthesize it and then be highly predictive

in terms of price direction.

And how has it worked out with the cryptocurrency?

Well, last year, 84% of its recommendations were profitable.

So

in the world of trading, those types of numbers are pretty incredible.

And

what is your feeling on cryptocurrency,

its life

with Britain just last week, or was it this week, saying that they are launching their own, you know,

Bank of England central bank cryptocurrency, and we're right behind them.

We are.

We've been in a very antagonistic policy environment for digital assets of all kinds.

And I believe that that's been done on purpose.

I believe that the U.S.

government has been holding the whole industry back, at least in the United States,

because they want to carve out their role in this space, specifically the U.S.

dollar, central bank-backed digital currency, an e-dollar, whatever we call it.

And I think we're in for a very big surprise in the coming months.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

had collaborated with MIT last year and finished a major project, Project Hamilton, I'm sure you know.

Oh, yeah.

And that work was just wrapped up.

And I believe that they are gearing up for the launch of this digital currency,

digital wallet for

all Americans.

And once that happens, once they've defined exactly what role they're going to play, then I think the regulatory environment will open up for the entire blockchain industry and for other digital assets.

They were threatened by stablecoins in particular.

And once they've settled that and settled their role, then I'm actually optimistic and bullish about the industry moving forward once that happens.

Really?

You don't think they're going to try to trap all of us?

Because, I mean, once they have control, digital control of every dollar that is ever traded,

they have complete control of people.

The risk, given, you know, whatever the prevailing political narrative is, is this...

you know, social credit system similar to what's being employed in China.

That's my biggest fear

because a digital wallet can very quickly turn into

a means of control

of your money and your life and your actions and your behaviors.

This is the best of the Glen Beck program.

Mike Poppeo.

Mike, how are you, sir?

Glenn, I'm great.

How are you today?

I'm really good.

I've been looking forward to this.

I hope we find time to sit down for a longer podcast because I promise you, I'll do it.

Okay, good.

I've got so many things for you, but I want to start with something that is in your book that I absolutely love.

When you met Kim Jong-un

in North Korea,

the meeting began with Kim saying what to you.

It was really quite something.

Easter weekend, 2018, Clandestine mission, Dark and Night, flew in, met with Chairman Kim.

I had one colleague with me from the CIA.

And the first thing he says to me, I walk in, there's lots of theater,

and we walk in, and he says, Mr.

Director, I was the CI director at the time.

He said, Mr.

Director, I did not think that you would come since you've been trying to kill me.

Obviously through a translator.

And I remember, Glenn, you'll appreciate this.

I'd prepared for this.

We'd studied.

What might he say?

This was not on the bingo cart.

and so i i remember i hear the translator i paused for just a second and i thought well that's pretty tough and i said uh i said mr chairman you should know i still am trying to kill you oh my god

my colleague my colleague smiled andy kim great guy smiled and uh and then the translation hits him and he laughed too which was a very hard thing to make yeah that's uh that's kind of that's good when you're standing with a dictator who kills people and he's on his turf

He knew it was tongue-in-cheek a little in the same way that his barb at me was, but I think it also set the course for the relationship that we built over the coming years.

How would you describe the American deep state?

And did you see it in action?

And

what is it exactly?

Oh, Glenn,

yes, I saw it.

It is real.

One can describe it as the deep state or the resistance.

Here's what it really is.

Here's how I came to experience this.

Really at the State Department.

Less at the agency, to be honest with you.

It is a left-of-center, left-of-left, perhaps left-of-center bureaucracy that is deeply of Washington, D.C., deeply establishment.

And so when you have someone like President Trump or me who says, those didn't work, we're going to try it a different way.

We're going to take a little more risk.

We're going to defend America first.

Oh, my gosh, Glenn, it was a mess.

I bet it was.

They resisted what we did.

They undermined.

They would leak memos.

I saw memos in the press before they got to my desk, Glenn, so many times.

And this is problematic, not because of me.

It's problematic because that's not what the Constitution requires.

It's not how our founders thought about America.

And so the next president, it's going to take,

it's a boatload of work.

It's going to take a while, but this could be fixed.

How can a president come in, be elected?

Because I'm concerned.

I agree with term limits, but term limits also for people who are serving in in Washington, D.C.

in all jobs, all levels.

How can you clean this up without shutting it down?

And, you know, did you unplug it and plug it back in?

That's pretty much what we have to do.

No,

that's a great analogy.

Yes, unplug it.

You got to break it down.

And by the way, not just the State Department, good parts of the Justice Department, most of specialists, Civil Rights Division, the entire Department of Education.

These places are lost.

And so, yes, the next president, there's two things I'd say.

First, you got to get your team on the field.

One of the things we did not do is we were two years into the administration, and we still had Obama people occupying political positions.

You just, that's just a failure, and we got to get good at that.

The conservative movement has to get good.

Just like we have to collect and harvest ballots, we've got to get good at being fearless about terminating the bad guys and promoting the good guys.

And then second, big, deep structural reforms inside these.

And it'll cost political capital, Glenn.

I can see why a president would not do that.

You've got a million things.

But this is a lasting change that one can make about how you do hiring, how you get rid of DEI programs.

We had three unions at the State Department.

Glenn, nobody even knows this.

Every one of my career employees was covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

You can't promote merit.

You can't fire those who aren't on the team.

This is a calamity.

But it is fixable.

You put a good team in, you put good cabinet members in, they hire the right folks.

You can clean it up.

It will take years, I'll be honest, because you have to get the the feedstock right.

The talent that comes in has to be American patriotic, not about being part of the Washington establishment.

But it is doable with serious and thoughtful effort.

I'm sure you know that I'm one of the chief

conspiracy theorists on the World Economic Forum and the Great Reset.

Do we have a lot of time?

I mean, it is very concerning with tech and the way it seems the entire West

is throwing in their lot with

a

very authoritarian style

plan.

I'm very concerned about it.

Time is short, not hours, days, weeks, months, but we are on the precipice of heading down the direction.

And Glenn, you know this.

It starts in the schools.

You teach kids garbage.

You teach kids crap.

If parents don't know what's going on there, the next generation doesn't understand logic, reason the things that right the things that we know prevent us from being in a liberal small ill liberal society that has made america such an exceptional civilizational hero uh we got to get it right it's um it is a collective it is in all of our big institutions i'm very worried i was a soldier a long time ago now i'm worried about our military headed down that same path of forgetting what its mission is

that is an institution that is central to

culturally and from a security perspective And when we get these things wrong, Glenn, hard to get back from.

We're talking to Mike Pompeo.

He has a book out that is extraordinarily frank and great.

It's called Never Give an Inch.

He's a former CIA director and former U.S.

Secretary of State.

Let me ask you a couple of questions here.

First of all,

Ukraine.

I mean, I've done enough research on Ukraine and the Biden administration and the obama administration that is deeply corrupt um i i i don't mind you know aiding and praying for and even helping privately you know people who want to be free but uh i'm very concerned where we're going on this because it it it appears to me everybody who is in charge is like yeah let's go let's go we're going to war do you agree with tanks being sent over and offensive weaponry

Glenn, I actually do, but

not for the reason that some have articulated.

Your predicate there is exactly spot on, and I talk about this a little in the book, and you're right.

It's a pretty wide open

document.

You know me long enough, Glenn.

This is how I think about something.

Not for the reasons often articulated.

Ukraine's got huge corruption problems.

But my concern is about the American people.

We lost deterrence, right?

You know, Vladimir Putin didn't invade Europe on our watch.

He took a fifth of Ukraine under Obama.

He went at it again as soon as we left under Biden.

We cannot allow him to continue to roam about Europe freely.

The innocent civilian lives are tragic, but there's an American interest there.

It's not, but and I think we could do this.

He hasn't asked for our kids yet.

We shouldn't send our young men and women.

He didn't want the 82nd airborne.

He's just asking us to provide him with tools and capabilities.

And that's the quickest way to bring this to a conclusion.

And the quicker it concludes, the less likelihood that Putin does something really dumb that draws the whole world into this damn thing, which which is a real danger.

And, you know, I spent a fair amount of time with Vladimir Putin.

I'm more concerned about it than others.

I think he is not going to go quietly into the night.

So if we can get the Ukrainians what they need, they're prepared to have their own kids fight and die.

That's something that matters to every American, and we ought to try and get it right there.

So I

Mike Lee spent a lot of time yesterday looking at the Seymour Hirsch article and trying to track down.

He's coming on the air in about an hour to tell me what he found.

He said uh initially he was disturbed because he didn't believe it but he also kind of did i mean he he didn't he was he said i hate to put words in his mouth but he was like i

these are the kinds of things that now we do need to actually seriously question because these kinds of things could happen.

But he didn't think it was true.

As former CIA director, the Nord Stream pipeline,

Do you think we had anything to do with that at all?

Let me begin by saying, I don't know.

I don't have access to that kind of information any longer.

But see, that's what Mike was saying.

He was disturbed that he did.

He should have access.

He's a United States Senator.

Right.

He should have access to that.

I'm glad he's going to go suss it out and figure out what happened there.

I'll say this.

Joe Biden wouldn't shoot down a balloon over Montana.

The chance he would blow up a pipeline that belonged to the Germans seems low to me.

It seems out of character.

Good.

Okay.

But goodness, we should figure it out.

Look,

I think it's more likely than not that the Russians actually did this.

I've read the piece.

There are a couple comments from Victoria Newland, who works at the State Department,

who worked at the State Department, and from the President himself.

They're kind of odd statements, so we should go figure it out.

But my sense is if I was, if you maybe take my own money, I think this was a Russian operation aimed at denying energy to what they thought would be a cold winter in Europe that just hasn't panned out.

And the spy,

Chinese spy balloon.

I mean, we spend a million dollars on a rocket to shoot it down with a $40 million plane.

And then what are they saying?

They're saying, oh, yeah, well, it was not a risk.

Well, then why do we shoot it down?

What is this?

They've dissembled since the beginning.

This was a spy operation by the Chinese Communist Party.

They were clearly collecting at least imagery pictures, probably

signals too, trying to listen to what was going on.

And they were also testing our air defenses.

And finally, they were testing President Biden to see what he would do.

And, you know, someone asked me yesterday, would this have flown over America that way for five days under the Trump administration?

And I said, yes.

And I would have been the former Secretary of State very quickly.

So

and it was funny, Glenn you remember they came out and first said, oh, this happened under Trump.

And we all came out and said,

you know,

I guess we were all just smoking dope, right?

Come on.

And the truth of the matter is that we know they lied.

No one knew about this before.

This was a blunder on their watch.

Not so much about the collection.

Okay, that's some risk.

But Xi Jinping now is confident that he can push this president around.

And

that deterrence model that we had, Glenn, that was so important to the American people.

When you lose that,

you create space.

What's the old Southwest Airlines line?

Feel free to move about the cabin, right?

I think the bad guys are feeling pretty damn free to move about the cabin.

And if you live in Arizona or Tennessee or Montana, that creates an awful lot more risk to your kids and grandkids.

Is

China the risk I think it is?

And is it

how much of a role does the business dealings of the Biden administration or Biden and his family have to do with

giving China a pass on so much?

Boy, I don't know if that's the motivation for their failure to confront this greatest threat to the United States, the Chinese Communist Party.

It could be we should get to the bottom of everything that's on that laptop and figure out where the leverage might be from the Chinese Communist Party on not just President Biden, but lots of folks in his administration who are doing lots of business in China before they came into office.

I mean, Mitch McConnell is a big one, too.

Mitch McConnell.

By the way, totally not partisan.

Get this right for America.

This isn't about D's and R's or, you know, putting on the yellow helmet or the blue helmet.

This is about protecting the United States.

Glenn, they're inside our institutions all across America.

I know they are.

They're at our universities.

They have a massive spy operation being run out of the consulate in Houston, Texas that I shut down.

And we'd let it go on for years.

If we get a chance to do the podcast, I'd love to spend more time because...

My fear from the Chinese Communist Party isn't about something that might happen in Taiwan or Japan or Vietnam.

It's what's happening inside the gates here, and every American should be aware of it.

And we should protect ourselves.

And we can, and we can be successful, and I believe we will.

I see no evidence this president's prepared to do that.

Well, Mike, I appreciate your time.

And we will, I'll, in my office, reach out to yours today.

And let's book some time on a podcast because we'll make it happen.

Glad you

have a lot of information.

Thank you so much.

God bless.

Thank you, sir.

You bet.

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

Senator Mike Lee, how are you, sir?

I'm doing great, and it's an honor to be on the phone with the most well-preserved 37-year-old on radio.

You know, Mike,

I wanted to invite you to my party this weekend, but I, you know, last time you came, the neighbors called.

I called you 37.

That's a compliment.

So, Mike,

this week has been really,

it it taught me something.

I don't, in the end, I don't believe the Seymour Hirsch article.

He's got only one source and he's got a reputation of, you know, making things up and really only respected by, you know, the far, far left.

But I don't know.

And it

disturbs me that I couldn't out of hand reject that as a nonsense idea.

You feel the same way?

Yeah, yeah, I feel the same way.

I have the same reaction.

That's why when I tweeted it out, I said, if

false, slanderous, if true, war.

That's the part that's troubling.

Now, since then, I've had the opportunity to talk to a number of my colleagues, colleagues who have delved deeply into some classified matters across the board.

All of them who expressed an opinion on it

have said that they believe it to be false.

I've asked for a classified briefing on it.

It may take a few days for me to get that set up.

But what this does do is it tees up some questions.

Okay, hang on just a second.

Hang on.

When they said, before you go there, let me ask you, let me clarify.

They said they don't think it's true or they said it's not true.

They said it's not true.

Okay, good.

They affirmatively believe it to be false.

Those who expressed an opinion.

Not all of them had

had enough information

to really speak to it, but those that did

uniformly said, yeah, this isn't true, and I have reasons for it to believe that it's not true.

But here are some things that kind of linger.

First of all, does President Biden, and does the executive branch of government generally in and out of Republican and Democratic administrations, does it believe that it's got the authority to undertake this kind of hostile action without informing Congress?

This is what was so troubling about it is it described in great detail how one would go about it if they wanted to engage in a clandestine military operation, one that could somehow bypass not only a constitutional requirement for a declaration of war or an AUMS, but even notified congressional leaders.

Right.

Explain this, Mike.

There is a gang of eight, which is...

the represents the Senate and the House,

both Intel committees, right?

And

those eight people are

read in at the highest level of anything like this.

But this article from Seymour Hearst said,

yeah,

we can go around that easily and laid it out in great detail.

Have you done any work on that to see if that's even possible?

Yeah, so

there are theoretically ways in which they could avoid that.

And if they did, the geopolitical consequences would be enormous.

Enormous.

If in fact this attack was designed to force Europe to end its reliance on Russian natural gas, you know, in order to secure support for the effort against Russia in Ukraine, if they in fact did that, then these consequences would be enormous.

This would be not only a direct attack on Russia, but also an act of hostility that has massive impacts on Germany, on France, spillover ramifications really all over Europe.

Whole world.

We're talking about millions of Europeans who have had gas supply affected by this disruption.

So if this report were true,

then it would be incredibly troubling, to say the least.

I'll tell you, Mike,

we have seen things in the past that our government did that they did in secret and we didn't know.

And when we find out, we correct it,

or at least try to.

But this one, to me, is different than anything I've seen in history.

Because as this came out and I first read it, I thought to myself, good Lord, if this is true, our children are going to be fighting a war that none of us had any idea or any participation in any of this stuff.

It's a group of people who have decided they know best.

And they're committing us to war.

That is so un-American, so against, I mean, it felt like, you know what, I would rather have our military go in and march up and get those guys that did all of this and try them than go fight Russia, because I would kind of agree with Russia.

We shouldn't have done that.

No, that's exactly right.

And regardless of how this happened or whether any of this happened at all,

I really would like to know who did it because it's not just anyone who can go out into the ocean

and go deep down

into the ocean and sever multiple pipelines

and then

set it up in such a way that you're not anywhere near the blast zone when the event finally takes off.

Have you talked to anybody?

I'm curious to know who that is.

Have you talked to anybody who knows how many nations could pull something like that off?

Yeah, I've talked to a handful of colleagues who have said

that, you know,

they can think of some that could have done it.

And it's not something we can talk about outside of a classified environment, but that's part of why I've requested this briefing.

Okay.

And is but there are some

some other suspects that would make sense?

I don't know.

I don't know that I can make sense of it before I know who it is who could even, technologically speaking, pull it off.

So I just had Mike Bompeo on, and he said that he thought it was Russia to drive up the price of oil.

Yeah, okay, so that one is really hard for me to accept.

Remember, Glenn, Russia is pulling in, or has been pulling in a billion dollars a day

in natural gas revenue, natural gas revenue that it's selling to Europe.

I believe Germany alone sends them money

along the lines of about a billion dollars a day for their natural gas.

To bite the hand that feeds in so prominent and severe a way, it doesn't really add up.

You never know.

Russia can do some weird stuff.

That one seems to be stretching the imagination a little.

Mike, on the same day that this came out, about two hours later, there was a report from CNN that had security insiders that

found out that we had evidence that Vladimir Putin shot down the Malaysian airliner and that it was the missiles came from Russia and that it was tracked to him

saying that they were going to shoot this down.

I found the timing to be extraordinary.

Russia comes out with a story or Seymour Hearst comes out with a story that we did an act of war and and two hours later,

lo and behold, here is Vladimir Putin

committing an act of war.

Is that it?

Yes.

Coincidence?

One could argue that it is not.

Look, Vladimir Putin is an evil man.

Oh, yeah, I know that.

He's a megalomaniac.

He is

one who has genocidal ambitions and his ambitions know no boundaries.

And so I wouldn't put anything past him.

When you look at what

England is doing, training pilots now in Ukraine, that's clearly the next step to receiving planes for them to fly.

Are you concerned at all about the equipment and everything that we're sending over?

That at some point, I mean, I know I would really, at this point, if I was in Russia's shoes, shoes, I'd be like, what?

I mean,

you know who we're really fighting.

It's not the Ukrainians.

It's the West.

Look at what they're doing.

So

is there a point that is a breaking point where

people like you will stand up?

And I know you have already spoken out about a lot of this stuff, but where you're like, no more.

This is it.

This is insane.

Yeah, look,

I believe that we have to tread especially carefully when approaching a nuclear-armed near-peer geopolitical adversary, which Russia is.

And I believe that

while these are questions of degree, and many people will focus on the difference between defensive weapons and assistance and non-defensive,

I think if we take one step further, we will have obliterated any distinction.

And I think if we're going to take one step further in that direction, we need to have an authorization for the use of military force or a declaration of war.

If it's one day, we're going to get involved in a war with Russia.

I don't want that at all, to be sure.

But if America is going to consider that, it needs to have elected representatives in Congress making that decision and not just have it made sort of sideways through appropriations for funding and bold statements by our executives.

I mean, that's why England was in so much trouble by the time we entered World War II.

Congress had blocked any of the sales of stuff.

I mean, it had to go through Congress.

Mike, when the president at the State of the Union was talking about, you know, defunding Social Security, I love the look on your face.

The camera

got to you and you were just dumbfounded.

You were like,

what is going on here tonight?

First of all, do you have any comment on the speech and how you were feeling that night?

Yeah, I was stunned.

Look, this is my 13th State of the Union that I've attended since I friend at the United States Senate, and I've never seen such

brazen

falsehoods spewed from the President of the United States.

He sat there and accused Republicans, claimed quite falsely that Republicans were saying that they were going to mess with Social Security

in our negotiations over conditions for raising the debts you.

It's just false.

It is categorically false.

And he sat there and said that in front of us, then looked stunned that we took exception to it.

And then, after that,

the next day, gave speeches and sent out tweets, tried to make us look like hypocrites, but still demonstrating that he doesn't understand what he's dealing with.

He doesn't even understand the facts that he's trying to raise.

Right.

And so, one of the things that they sent out was a clip of you.

We have the clip.

Let's play that, please.

I'm here right now to tell you one thing

that you probably haven't ever heard from a politician.

It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots and get rid of it.

People who advise me politically always tell me that's dangerous, and I tell them, in that case, it's not worth my running.

I said to my wife when I heard that, she said, oh my gosh, I can't believe they're saying this about Social Security.

And I said, yeah, I know, because if that was really what the Republicans were doing, I'd want to vote for them.

But we have to take on Social Security.

But that doesn't mean leaving old people without any kind of

fulfillment of the promise.

Can you explain this clip?

Yes, absolutely.

First of all, through programs like that, through Social Security in particular.

The government has created a program.

They promised people back in the 30s when they created it.

This will be your money, your account, your retirement.

We can't, we won't touch it because it's your money.

It was absolutely false.

They were lying.

They've been lying for decades.

They've been stealing, plundering this Social Security trust fund.

They do it all the time.

They've done it even just in the years since I've been in the Senate.

So what I was channeling there was the fact that Social Security, as it's been set up, as it's been managed, has really hurt people.

And it's been an act of deception.

What the president, of course, didn't play,

and what you didn't play was the rest of the sentence, the rest of that communication and any other that I've ever had, which was where I said, we of course have to honor the promises of people who have paid into this thing.

You can't just leave them hanging having been promised.

In other words, it's a long-term objective, one that would take decades to complete because you do have to honor those promises.

But Social Security, as we know it, as it's been raided and plundered, has been used as a tool to take money from Americans, to provide this little slush fund piggy bank for Congress to raid whenever it wants to.

Mismanage and to distribute to other pet progressive priorities, which is awful.

I have to tell you, I'm 59, so I'm just, you know, a few years away from Social Security.

I've known my whole life.

Pardon me?

Yeah, I know.

You raised the level of a six-year-old.

Right.

Thank you.

I've known my whole life Social Security is going to collapse.

So I haven't counted on it.

Now I'm in a situation where I don't have to count on it.

But if they would have invested my money, I started working when I was eight

and I started getting an official paycheck when I was 13.

So I've been paying into Social Security for many years.

If my money would have been invested and would have been in stocks, I can't tell you how wealthy I would be today.

And that's really what they promised us they were going to do.

And they didn't.

So now we can't pay for anything.

But there does come a time.

There's not anybody my age that hasn't heard this from the beginning.

I was in high school.

I heard it from Reagan.

I mean,

we've known it's not going to last.

There comes a time when you have to say, guys, we're going to finish the generation that really needs it right now, but

we've got to shut the taps down.

We're going to do it slowly, methodically, and with lots of time, but we got to shut this off.

And I commend you for that, Mike.

I commend you.

thank you in all my 12 years in the senate i've never proposed abolishing those benefits of course not instead look for ways to make them sustainable and shame on the president for lying about this wow he actually used it he actually used the lying word mike is so temperate at everything mistruths

but uh thank you mike god god bless you i love you thank you very much thank you bye bye

thank you he is such a

He's such a radical, isn't he?

Mistruths.

Did anybody notice that the first time he couldn't bring himself to say lie he didn't want to go there and i thought this is the guy that everybody tries to make into a radical please

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